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error 021 – February 16, 2021 Canada Revenue Agency Locks Online Accounts

Canada Revenue Agency

February 16, 2021 CRA or Canada Revenue Agency has locked it’s online account – for more than 100,000 users. The reason is – users’ email address has been removed from their online account.

For those who are not familiar with CRA – “CRA or The Canada Revenue Agency is the revenue service of the Government of Canada. The CRA collects taxes, administers tax law and policy, and delivers benefit programs and tax credits for the federal government and most provincial and territorial governments”.

Affected user tried to call the customer service to get their accounts unlocked, but had to wait a long time – some even more than three hours. They did not receive any reasonable explanation from the help line. Worried users vent their frustration in social media platforms – saying they all encounter “error 021”.

February 17, 2021 CRA spokesperson Christopher Doody said in an email – “An internal analysis revealed evidence that some account credentials (i.e. user IDs and passwords) may have been compromised, and may be available for use by unauthorized individuals,”

Also assured that CRA not been the target of a cyberattack. But that affected the user’s credentials may have been breached from another online account.

Last year August 2020, CRA had a similar incident and they had to shuts down online services.The shutdown blocks Canadians from applying for some emergency COVID-19 benefits. User email addresses (one that is registered with CRA), direct deposit information was altered.

It seems like – attackers have been using the similar technique for each attack. And CRA is only “patching” their security protocols.

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COVID19 Nadia and Other

Answer – Can the corona virus be transferred through items bought from China

A four-year-old female Malayan tiger named Nadia at the Bronx (New York, USA) Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus. This is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with Covid-19 in the US.

This raised lots of new questions –

Is other animals are infected also ?
What about house pets ?
What if our pets get infected and we have no clue about that.
What if firm animals get infected ? can we eat their meat/milk/eggs ?

And here is the most vital question- can we ‘human’ get infected from these infected ? If the answer is yes – then we are facing a new danger.

Our current tactics may not work.

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Answer – Can the corona virus be transferred through items bought from China

Answer – Can the corona virus be transferred through items bought from China

When ever we have any “health outbreak” – misleading (don’t want to use the word “rumor”) information start spreading like wildfire.

I really like to think that people who spread these “misleading” information – do this to help others.

But the reality is, if we are not a specialist on a subject (eg. medical professional) – then we should not share information about that subject. As in most cases these misleading information become more harmful than the “outbreak” itself.

For the last few days – I have been receiving information from people about corona virus . And most of these information I received, falls in to “misleading information” category.

One of the common information I receive is
“Can the corona virus be transferred through items bought from China ?”

After spending some time I was able to get some “reliable information”. Here is the summary –

  • There is no evidence this is a risk (from items bought from China).
  • To get infected with corona virus, we require close contact with another person.

Here is the full detail –

There is no evidence this is a risk. Some diseases – including the coronavirus that causes Sars – can spread through surfaces contaminated by people coughing or sneezing on them.

 

It has not been shown this new coronavirus can do that. Even if it could, there would still be questions about whether international shipping would be a major problem.

 

Cold viruses tend to survive less than 24 hours outside the human body although norovirus (a severe stomach bug) can last months outside the body.

 

The most reassuring fact so far is that cases seem to require close contact with another person – say, a family member or healthcare worker – in order to spread.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51176409

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Apple Mac Pros not Re-Booting and Hollywood is Sweating.

Sees like things are not going well for Apple. Tariffs, weak iPhone XS sale one after another. Now their top of the line Mac Pros are creating headache for the Apple management.

Tweets and news are flooding with this title – “Mac Pros are not rebooting”.

Mac Pros has some heavy duty clients in Hollywood (California US). And they use Mac Pro for video editing and related works.

Savvy users are urging others – not to restart or shutdown the machines as it may not boot. And backup all their data.

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Apple Mac Pros not Re-Booting and Hollywood is Sweating.

Seems like things are not going well for Apple. Tariffs, weak iPhone XS sale one after another.

Now their top of the line Mac Pros are creating headache for the Apple management. Tweets and news are flooding with this title – “Mac Pros are not rebooting”.

Mac Pros has some heavy duty clients in Hollywood (California US). And they use Mac Pro for video editing and related works.

Savvy users are urging others – not to restart or shutdown the machines as it may not boot. And backup all their data.

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2019 Week 22 Tech and Science Update

Weekly Tech News Update

Father Quarks of Murray Gell-Mann Dead at 89

American Particle physicist Murray Gell-Mann died on 24 May, aged 89.He was one of the founders of modern particle physics. Gell-Mann was born in 1929 in New York City and spend most of his work life at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In 1969 Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his ground breaking work on particle physics and for the discovery of “quarks”.

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2019 Week 19 Tech and Science Update

Weekly Tech News Update

WhatsApp Used for Targeted Surveillance Attack

WhatsApp one of the most popular messaging app has a major problem. Which hackers used to remotely install surveillance software on phones and other devices with a single miscall. Monday 13 May 2019 WhatsApp advice their 1.5 billion users to update their apps as a safely measure.

Facebook – which owns the WhatsApp issued a explanation on Monday “A buffer overflow vulnerability in WhatsApp VOIP stack allowed remote code execution via specially crafted series of SRTCP packets sent to a target phone number”

If you have the following version, then you need to update your WhatsApp-
WhatsApp for Android prior to v2.19.134
WhatsApp Business for Android prior to v2.19.44
WhatsApp for iOS prior to v2.19.51
WhatsApp Business for iOS prior to v2.19.51
WhatsApp for Windows Phone prior to v2.18.348
WhatsApp for Tizen prior to v2.18.15

 

SpaceX to Sell Wireless High-Speed Internet from Space

FCC gives approval to SapceX to Sell Wireless High-Speed Home Internet from Space. Wireless internet signal broadcasting from satellite is nothing new. Problem with the current solution – those satellites are in higher orbit, slower speed and has data-cap.

SpaceX has a solution – they will launch 4,425 satellites in much lower orbit than the current Wireless internet system.

SapceX’s satellites will be able to provide faster internet signal.They will cover rural areas (where high speed fiber network is not available) and underdeveloped countries.

One of the biggest advantage of this will be for the people working in areas disaster zone. With his new satellite system they will be able to use high speed internet. SapceX has already tested the system with fewer satellites.

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2019 Week 17 Tech and Science Update

Weekly Tech News Update

App Called WiFi Finder Leaked Private Data

WiFi Finder (headquartered in China) is an app that locate and provide credentials for public wifi hotspots to it’s users. This week thousands of this app’s users find out that their information has been exposed online Information includes their home network names (SSID), precise geolocation, ‘plaintext’ passwords and other data.

When the users install the app – they also provide their home network information and it all stored in app’s database. But the app has no mechanism to differentiate between public hot spots and home networks. Now the app’s database has been exposed – which puts thousands of it’s user at risk. As most the users are not aware of this – which makes them an easy target for the cyber criminal. A cloud host company called DigitalOcean has already took the database offline. But damage has already been done.

 

Brain Implant Turns Thoughts in to Speech

The team at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a brain implant that can read people’s minds and turn their thoughts to speech.They are calling it “exhilarating” technology. Electrode are implanted in the brain. It picks up the electrical signals that maneuver the lips, tongue, voice box and jaw. Then the algorithm analyze these movement. It then simulate how those result would form different sound in mouth and throat.

At this point – this is in very early stage. But in time – it will be perfect. This is break through technology. In near future individuals with speech impairments will regain the ability to freely speak their minds and reconnect with the world around them.

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2019 Week 15 Tech and Science Update

Weekly Tech News Update

First Ever Black Hole Image Captured

It measures 40 billion km across ! This massive black hole is three million times the size of the Earth. And 500 million trillion km away. But scientist ware able to capture the whole thing in one frame.Yes astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole.
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10 April 2019, the images of the black hole was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. It’s a network of eight linked telescopes. But Katie Bouman 29-year-old computer scientist was behind the impossible.Dr.Bouman’s algorithm rendered the collected image and construct the final image. She has been working on this project for the last three years.
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Different telescope took images from different section.But the black is self larger than the size of our entire Solar System.So Dr. Bouman and others developed a series of algorithms that converted telescopic data into one whole image.Image was published on 10 April 2019. This picture give us the opportunity see the an actual blackhole, which is “unseeable” to the naked eye.

Three-person Baby Boy Born in Greece

A baby was born on Tuesday April 9, 2019 through an experimental form of IVF in Greece.The procedure uses an egg from the mother, sperm from the father and another egg from a donor woman.The baby will carry a tiny amount of genetic makeup from the donor woman as mitochondria have their own DNA. Mother and baby both are in good health.

Nearly every cell of the body has mitochondria that convert food into use-able energy.But there is also speculation (claim has not been tested) mitochondria may have a role in a successful pregnancy too.The patient had endured four unsuccessful cycles of IVF.

President of the Institute, Dr Panagiotis Psathas said:”We are very proud to announce an international innovation in assisted reproduction, and we are now in a position to make it possible for women with multiple IVF failures or rare mitochondrial genetic diseases to have a healthy child.