Category: Technology

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Department of Justice Seizes $2.3 Million in Cryptocurrency Paid to the Ransomware Extortionists Darkside

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Linden NJ, The Department of Justice today announced that it has seized 63.7 bitcoins currently valued at approximately $2.3 million. These funds allegedly represent the proceeds of a May 8, ransom payment to individuals in a group known as DarkSide, which had targeted Colonial Pipeline, resulting in critical infrastructure being taken out of operation. The seizure warrant was authorized earlier today by the Honorable Laurel Beeler, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California.

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How to Easily Communicate With Your Customers in Real-time

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Communication is crucial in the world of business. You want to facilitate and build on your relationships with customers. If you focus on their needs, people will be more likely to return to your company and give you their time and money. Here are methods to foster those customer relationships with ways to easily communicate with them in real-time.

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Applications of Prime Numbers and Ordinal Numbers

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Prime numbers can be defined as numbers that can only be divided by one and the number itself. A prime number will always have only two factors, that is, the number itself and one. 2, 3, 19 are examples of a prime number. Suppose we take the number 10. The factors of 10 are 1, 2, 5, and 10. As it has more than two factors (apart from 1 and 10), it is known as a composite number. Prime numbers are an arithmetic mystery that is not just limited to having only two factors. Once Euclid proved that the list of primes is endless, there has been constant research going on about primes that continue even to date. One ongoing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search aims to find prime numbers. It has yielded the largest prime number that has 23,249,425 digits and can fill 9000 pages of a book taking 14 years to compute this value. Prime numbers see great use in cybersecurity and cryptography.

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Rogue killer drone ‘hunted down’ a human target

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

New York NY, in March last year, a KARGU-2 quadcopter targeted and killed a soldier without instructions to do so. The drone was operating in an autonomous mode, hunting down the target as they tried to retreat. It is likely the first time drones have attacked humans without being directed to. The incident raises concerns about the future of autonomous drones. Scientists and human rights groups have called for restrictions on the technology.

 

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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Clouds on Mars

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

MARS, the science team is studying the clouds, which arrived earlier and formed higher than expected, to learn more about the Red Planet.

Cloudy days are rare in the thin, dry atmosphere of Mars. Clouds are typically found at the planet’s equator in the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. But one full Martian year ago – two Earth years – scientists noticed clouds forming over NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier than expected.

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Floating Wind Farms Could Maximize Power Output

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, maximizing power output to make windmills more efficient and more profitable has plagued mankind since the age of Don Quixote. The expression ’tilting at windmills’ derives from Cervantes’ Don Quixote – first published in 1604, under the title The Ingenious Knight of La Mancha. The novel recounts the exploits of would-be knight ‘Don Quixote’ and his loyal servant Sancho Panza who propose to fight injustice through chivalry. The symbolism for Don Quixote battle with windmills is not over looked by modern technologists.

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Google now lets you password-protect all your searches

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Google users now have the option to add a password to their Web and Activity page. Turning on the option will prevent anyone who picks up a logged-in device from seeing the device owner’s search history, YouTube watch history, and Google assistant queries without first entering a password. Instructions on how to turn the feature on are available in the article. Google focused a lot on privacy at its I/O keynote last week, announcing a new Private Compute Core for Android, a locked photos folder, and a feature that deletes the last 15 minutes of browsing in Chrome.

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Bitcoin Pizza Day

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, May 22, 2021, marked the eleven-year anniversary of the first Bitcoin transaction, in which a Florida man paid for two pizzas with the cryptocurrency. The day has become part of folklore, not because of the transaction, but more the price: the man in question paid 10,000 Bitcoins, which today is worth over $80 million, for the two pizzas.

On May 22, 2010, now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day, Laszlo Hanyecz agreed to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for two delivered Papa John’s pizzas. Organized on bitcointalk forum, the Florida man reached out for help. “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day,” Hanyecz wrote.

The man who took up Hanyecz’s offer and bought the two pizzas for him in exchange for the 10,000 Bitcoins. Even then the recipient of the Bitcoins got himself a bargain, paying $25 for the pizzas, while 10,000 Bitcoins were worth around $41 at the time.

We know the 22nd was Saturday but we are trying to make this a “Monday Holiday” .

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Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell outlines the Federal Reserve’s response to technological advances in the global payment systems

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Washington DC, Technological advances are driving rapid change in the global payments landscape. The Federal Reserve is studying these developments and exploring ways that it might refine its role as a core payment services provider and as the issuing authority for U.S. currency.

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Online Privacy Tips: How To Protect Your Personal Information

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We are living in an age where refrigerators can send you reminders that your food is going bad. Others will even produce a list of the groceries you’re running low on. An age where you can control your home lighting, tv, bathroom water temperatures with simple voice commands. Tech is all around us, and it has made our life better in many ways. 

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6 Simple Tips That Can Help You Become A Successful Online Seller

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Selling online and e-commerce have seen a lot of development in recent years, probably because of the unlimited range of customers you can reach. However, a significant challenge with selling online is, more than ever, the competition. Even though one can reach millions of customers, hundreds and maybe thousands of other sellers are also fighting for their attention.

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How Web Design Can Help Your Business Grow

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For modern-day businesses, strengthening your brand and increasing revenue is something that you have to think about every day. From setting up growth strategies to keeping an eye on the manufacturing process, the aim is to constantly evolve and create a better future for the business, and in order to do so, you always have to pay attention to every little detail and make timely adjustments if needed. If there is one key aspect of the business that you should get right from the start to ensure better growth, it is your digital presence. 

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Heads for Earth with Samples Collected from an Asteroid

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, After nearly five years in space, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is on its way back to Earth with an abundance of rocks and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

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Group Responsible for the Colonial Pipeline Hack Apologizes

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Linden NJ, the FBI confirmed that Darkside ransomware is responsible for the compromise of the Colonial Pipeline networks. In an odd twist DarkSide, the group behind the ransomware attack that took down Colonial Pipeline, has apologized for the consequences of the hack.

The group clarified that its goal was to make money and not to create problems for society. It promises to vet future victims to avoid social consequences. DarkSide also claimed it isn’t associated with a specific nation-state but it tends to avoid targeting systems running in certain Russian and Eastern European languages. Colonial Pipeline aims to restore service by the end of the week.

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Time to Update those Passwords

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog, we know we are a day late !

Ridgewood NJ, The first Thursday in May is World Password Day, which was originally created by Intel in 2013 as a global effort to address the critical need for strong, unique passwords and emphasize the importance of this first line of defense in securing information, networks, servers, devices, accounts, databases, files, and more against cyberattacks. This day also serves as a reminder to update and organize all recent passwords. Now more than ever before, many users are connected to the internet and access multiple accounts and services for business, including email, applications, and vendor websites. Users also have access to multiple personal accounts, such as email, social media, online banking, bill payment, utilities, healthcare, shopping, entertainment, food delivery, dating apps, and more. The increased use of online accounts and services, combined with users engaging in risky password management practices, puts both themselves and employers at risk of account compromise and data breaches. Therefore, it is important to practice good password hygiene to protect accounts and data, not just on World Password Day, but year-round.

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