March 5 2024
Hoopla hoop
FLASH Supreme Court votes 9-0 to overturn Colorado ruling, reinstate Trump on ballot
1 Threshold to afford home has increased 80% since 2020
2 Cyberattacks might worsen in severity, cause physical damage
3 Red Sea internet cable damage interrupts service in whole countries
4 Big Tech faces global onslaught of regulation
5 Chinese one-man rule faces growing dissent
3/5/1963 Hula Hoop patented
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1 Threshold to afford home has increased 80% since 2020
Having a shot at home ownership requires an increasingly high salary these days. Now, Americans must earn roughly $106,500 in order to comfortably afford a typical home, a significant increase from the $59,000 annual household income that put homeownership within reach for families in 2020, according to new research from digital real estate company Zillow. Home ownership is commonly considered affordable if a buyer spends no more than 30% of their pre-tax income on housing costs, including mortgage payments, which at the time of the study, was around 6.6%. In 2020, the U.S. median income was roughly $66,000, making home ownership a real financial possibility for more than half of American households. Today, the landscape looks a lot different. The threshold required to comfortably afford to buy a home has risen 80%, to roughly $106,500. That exceeds the median household income which has only grown 23% over the same period, to $81,000, according to the American Community Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CBS
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salary-homes-how-much-you-need-to-earn-to-buy-a-home/
2 Cyberattacks might worsen in severity, cause physical damage
When most people hear about cybersecurity hacks they envision frozen monitors, ransomware demands, and DDoS attacks that compromise connectivity for a few hours or even days. Some experts, though, are worried that with the arrival of widespread artificial intelligence in the hands of hackers — both lone wolves and nation-states — we may be entering the era of the “cyber-physical attack.” In fact, last month the FBI warned Congress that Chinese hackers have burrowed deep into the United States’ cyber infrastructure in an attempt to cause damage. FBI Director Christopher Wray said Chinese government hackers are targeting water treatment plans, the electrical grid, transportation systems and other critical infrastructure inside the U.S.
Madnick said that he and his team have simulated cyberattacks in the lab, resulting in explosions. They were able to hack into computer-controlled motors with pumps and make them incinerate. Attacks that cause temperature gauges to malfunction, pressure values to jam, and circuits to be circumvented can also cause blasts in lab settings. Such an outcome, Madnick said, would do far more than simply taking a system offline for a while, as a typical cyberattack does. “If you cause a power plant to stop from a typical cyberattack, it will be back up and online pretty quickly, but if hackers cause it to explode or burn down, you are not back online a day or two later; it will be weeks and months because a lot of the parts in these specialized systems are custom made. People don’t realize downtimes can be substantial,” Madnick said. He added that the technology, now boosted by AI, exists to wreak havoc on physical systems.
CNBC
3 Red Sea internet cable damage interrupts service in whole countries
Conflict in the Middle East is drawing fresh attention to one of the internet’s deepest vulnerabilities: the Red Sea. Most internet traffic between Europe and East Asia runs through undersea cables that funnel into the narrow strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. That chokepoint has long posed risks for telecom infrastructure because of its busy ship traffic, which raises the likelihood of an accidental anchor drop striking a cable. Attacks by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have made the area more dangerous. The latest warning sign came Feb. 24, when three submarine internet cables running through the region suddenly dropped service in some of their markets. The cuts weren’t enough to disconnect any country but instantly worsened web service in India, Pakistan and parts of East Africa
WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/red-sea-conflict-threatens-key-internet-cables-a564f7ca
4 Big Tech faces global onslaught of regulation
By Thursday, Google will have changed how it displays certain search results. Microsoft will no longer force Windows customers to use its Bing internet search tool. And Apple will give iPhone and iPad users access to rival app stores and payment systems for the first time. The tech giants have been preparing ahead of a Wednesday deadline to comply with a new European Union law intended to increase competition in the digital economy. The law, called the Digital Markets Act, requires the biggest tech companies to overhaul how some of their products work so smaller rivals can gain more access to their users. Those changes are some of the most visible shifts that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta and others are making in response to a wave of new regulations and laws around the world. In the United States, some of the tech behemoths have said they will abandon practices that are the subject of federal antitrust investigations. Apple, for one, is making it easier for Android users to interact with its iMessage product, a topic that the Justice Department has been investigating.
NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/technology/europe-apple-meta-google-microsoft.html
5 Chinese one-man rule faces growing dissent
Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power has cleared the path for him to break China’s cycle of debt-driven growth and put the economy on a more sustainable footing. But there’s a big problem: He’s failing to convince the nation that’s a good idea. As the world’s second-biggest economy undergoes a prolonged slowdown, Xi’s move to shun the old playbook of unleashing broad stimulus is spurring discontent. The China Dissent Monitor, a project of US-based Freedom House that collects information on protests, says economic demonstrations have remained elevated since August, with many focused on labor disputes and a real estate crisis that’s cutting into household wealth. Thousands of angry retail investors last month flooded the US Embassy’s Weibo page with criticism of the government’s handling of the economy in the midst of a $7 trillion stock rout. Elsewhere on the platform some even insinuated that only a change in the top leadership would spur markets — comments that managed to skirt censors before they were eventually taken down.
Bloomberg
3/5/1963 Hula Hoop patented
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