vivweb01blog

  Unfortunately it's more likely than you might think….here’s why. There are a host of opportunities for a would-be hacker to find a way into your email account, and some of the 'professionals' are really expert at it.  We’re all familiar with many of these methods, ranging from phishing emails designed to elicit personal info from you by purporting to be someone else, to the use of ‘easy to guess’ account passwords which never get changed. I won’t list them all here, but the results are worrying, particularly when it comes to more vulnerable individuals, or those who are not sufficiently ‘computer savvy’ to realise the dangers. One into your account, hackers can usually glean enough info to steal your identity. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), there were 1,291 publicly reported data breaches and ca 166 million victims in 2022 - if taken at face value, this means there's a good chance that hackers may already have access to your email account

Last year  I took a look at various options that we in the UK might use for energy conservation as part of a wider review of our energy crisis and its consequences.  Since then, political parties of all hues have weighed in on the ‘greening’ debate and there appears to be a general consensus that we need to replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear for our energy generation and supply. The only dispute is over how quickly we should do it, and in the UK at least this is tied up with the pre-election tussle between the two major parties. (Sunak's recent 'go slow' initiative was designed primarily to wrong-foot Labour on their over-hasty introduction of Cameron's eloquently described 'green crap' and was I suspect largely based on the Uxbridge motoring electorate's by-election 'shot across the bows' against Labour in response to Khan's over-enthusiastic widening of London's ULEZ. It may in practice have given them few crumbs of comfort,

  Introduction ‘Big Tech’, as the corporate technology giants are often collectively known, have a business model that is based on planned obsolescence. Their argument for defending this practice in the face of recent and growing worldwide concern about e-waste is that they are merely responding to consumer demand, and must therefore ‘innovate to survive’.   What they carefully avoid highlighting is that their products are designed to be replaced frequently,  are usually not ‘upward compatible’ and don’t allow easy upgrades or repairs to the existing product. This applies not just to hardware but to the firmware (i.e. chips) and software (i.e. programs) that invariably control it. Indeed, one of the most frequently used tools in big tech’s ‘obsolescence arsenal’ is introducing new software and / or firmware that is incompatible with older hardware. Moreover, upgrades are often installed automatically, with users having to take active steps to switch off auto-install to prevent them

  I first published this in summer of '22 around the time of the mini-budget and the ensuing financial crisis, when prayer was back in fashion, particularly for those with risky investments...it remains relevant at a time when our uncertainties seem to be increasing, rather than starting to resolve themselves..... Introduction As is often quoted: ‘..there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes…’.   In the UK recently we have all heard quite enough about taxes recently, so I’ll focus on the former in this article, if I may, as a diversion from our economic woes. As we age, our thoughts naturally turn to the prospect of our own deaths – and what might or might not happen to us afterwards. Although death itself is a certainty for all of us, there is a surprising reluctance on the part of society to discuss its practicalities and consequences, both physical and spiritual.  In my view, this enduring taboo makes the subject more painful than it need be,  for the individ

  This post was first released in October 2022 as a response to the political 'crises' of the time. Note the more recent updates at the end of the main text - nothing really changes, does it..... As a bit of light relief from the momentous events of recent weeks in politics, I thought I’d take a wry and admittedly somewhat irreverent look at what motivates our politicians….if Radio 4’s ‘News Quiz’ can get away with it each week, despite the BBC’s draconian rules on all things pc, then so can I… In seemingly perpetual 'crisis' situations like this one,   as individuals we only really have two options - either to laugh or cry; I prefer to laugh – for now, at least. Recent upsets at the top of the political tree, and the almost obsessive speculation about the outcome of yet another leadership race in the media, prompted me last week to ask myself the question:  “Why on earth would anyone actually want to be PM at a time like this ?” The role is, after all, a positiv