Year: 2024

The Internet Archive is even more essential than I realized  Fast Company
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How to Buy Crypto in India: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners  DailyCoin
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Secure Gaming during holidays is essential as cyberattacks rise by 50%. Protect accounts with 2FA, avoid fake promotions, use secure downloads, and trust verified tools to enjoy safe, uninterrupted gameplay.

The holiday season is a time of joy for gamers, with more free time to play, exciting events, and in-game promotions. However, this festive period comes with higher risks of cyberattacks than any other period of the year.
Studies by Wowvendor, a company dealing in WoW services, indicate that hackers increase their activity by 50% during the holidays and especially prey on gamers via malware and phishing. This article will detail these risks and give some useful advice on how to enjoy gaming without compromising your account security.
The gaming community gets busy during the holidays. Unfortunately, cybercriminals find this an attractive target. The key reasons for increased risks are as follows:
For instance, cybersecurity companies have informed that the number of phishing emails with “in-game rewards notifications” and “discount offers” have spiked around the times of past holiday seasons. These examples of threats put the importance of vigilance during peak gaming hours deeper into focus.
Cyber threats range from gaming cyber attacks and data security incidents to DDoS attacks. This will likely impact some players more and possibly their performance during peak gaming periods. Understanding these dangers can help players stay protected:
Hacks through counterfeit mods are common in games such as World of Warcraft. Hackers distribute these infected mods using counterfeit mods and give the malware the chance to steal login credentials or infect the device they’re playing on. Additionally, fraudulent links and websites trick people into providing personal information or downloading malicious software.
The gaming industry is seeing a lot of DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service attacks), wherein hacker group gets a network of infected devices (botnet) that perform a network DDoS attack to inundate a game server or a group of players with a massive amount of traffic. This overload disrupts the server or network connection and has broken the game so that normal users can’t even get in.
These attacks send many requests and place a heavy load onto the server. Hackers aim at certain players’ IP addresses and try to degrade their connection, or that of the player behind it, to give themselves an in-game advantage. This type of targeted interference disrupts competitive gameplay and can negatively impact a game’s experience for the player.

Additionally, the number of ransomware attacks against gaming accounts has risen as well. They involve locking players out of their accounts and asking for payment to access them. When you are faced with unfamiliar software or links, it’s best to stay awake and alert to risks.
A large number of cyber attacks on gamers can stem from unauthorized downloads, according to leading cyber security firm Kaspersky. To enjoy your games safely during the holidays, follow these cybersecurity tips:
Working with your use of strong, unique passwords across all your accounts, these measures can go a long way toward mitigating your risk of being victimized in this way.
Leading gaming companies have stepped up their efforts to combat cyber threats. Their initiatives include:
For instance, World of Warcraft’s creators, Blizzard Entertainment, is constantly monitoring its ecosystem for threats and expelling them while at the same time urging players to use solutions, for example, 2FA. Machine learning has been introduced into other companies, such as Valve and Riot Games, in an attempt to detect possible hacking through in-game behaviours.
Gamers now have access to cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions tailored to safeguard their online experience:
With these state-of-the-art tools, gamers will be protected from changing threats, which will protect gaming for the holidays and beyond.

Stay on the Safe Side

The holiday season is a wonderful opportunity to connect with your favourite games and communities. While cyber threats do increase during this period, staying informed and adopting secure practices can protect your gaming experience. From using official platforms to enabling two-factor authentication, every step you take helps reduce risks.
Gaming companies are also playing their part by providing services and insights that enhance player safety. By working together and staying alert, gamers can fully embrace the holiday spirit, free from cybersecurity concerns.
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Divisive rhetoric based on religion big challenge for constitutional ideal of fraternity: SC judge  Hindustan Times
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MADISON — Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) has been reappointed Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government last week by Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). This will be Rep. Novak’s fifth term serving as Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government. 
Rep. Novak was also reappointed to serve on the Assembly Committee on Agriculture, The Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, and will serve for the first time on the Joint Committee on Criminal Penalties.
“I want to thank Speaker Vos for re-appointing me to serve as Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government, said Novak. “I am immensely proud of the work of this committee over my four sessions as Chairman, including the passage of the massive shared revenue legislation last session. 
“The shared revenue legislation provided much needed investments to municipalities and counties throughout Wisconsin. This session, I am looking forward to continuing my work in supporting local governments as well as serving on the Agriculture and Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committees.”
Rep. Novak will be inaugurated as a member of the 107th Legislature on January 6th 2025, beginning his sixth term serving the 51st Assembly District as State Representative.
Rep. Novak can be reached at (608)-237-9151 or by email at Rep.Novak@legis.wisconsin.gov. Additional information on Rep. Novak can be found at his website RepNovak.com.MADISON — Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) has been reappointed Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government last week by Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). This will be Rep. Novak’s fifth term serving as Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government. 
Rep. Novak was also reappointed to serve on the Assembly Committee on Agriculture, The Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, and will serve for the first time on the Joint Committee on Criminal Penalties.
“I want to thank Speaker Vos for re-appointing me to serve as Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Local Government, said Novak. “I am immensely proud of the work of this committee over my four sessions as Chairman, including the passage of the massive shared revenue legislation last session. 
“The shared revenue legislation provided much needed investments to municipalities and counties throughout Wisconsin. This session, I am looking forward to continuing my work in supporting local governments as well as serving on the Agriculture and Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committees.”
Rep. Novak will be inaugurated as a member of the 107th Legislature on January 6th 2025, beginning his sixth term serving the 51st Assembly District as State Representative.
Rep. Novak can be reached at (608)-237-9151 or by email at Rep.Novak@legis.wisconsin.gov. Additional information on Rep. Novak can be found at his website RepNovak.com.

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The South Dakota Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Dec. 27, 2024, results for each game:
03-07-37-49-55, Mega Ball: 06, Megaplier: 3
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
15-21-24-32-43, Lucky Ball: 11
Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a South Dakota editor. You can send feedback using this form.

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3 Family Members Die After Eating Homemade Christmas Cake, 3 Others Ill  PEOPLE
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In recent weeks, the digital library dedicated to preserving the internet’s history has been under attack by the internet itself. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library based in California, was founded in 1996 to archive and preserve the World Wide Web. Today, it saves roughly twenty thousand URLs every second, or about a billion URLs daily. Last week, it was revealed that hackers had accessed sensitive information from millions of the archive’s users. Shortly after, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the site offline. As of this publication, much of the Internet Archive’s services remain unavailable while staff examines and upgrades its internal systems (though the Wayback Machine, a popular initiative of the Internet Archive, is back online). The attacks come after the Internet Archive lost a major legal battle surrounding copyright violations last month. In short, the Internet Archive can’t seem to catch a break. “@internetarchive team spirits high, but tired,” Brewster Kahle, the archive’s founder, tweeted Tuesday. 
When the internet was in its baby era, few worried about archiving it—partly because there wasn’t nearly as much Web content to preserve. Today, it’s a common misconception that publishing text on the Web is like carving letters into stone, protected in a digital cloud and immune from fires or other disasters that physical books have to worry about. In reality, the internet has been disappearing since its inception. A quarter of all webpages that existed between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, according to the Pew Research Center. To preserve our collective digital history, the Internet Archive deploys digital spiders to capture snapshots from across the Web. The pages are stored in the Internet Archive’s free repository, the Wayback Machine, which allows users to see what a website used to look like (if you’re curious, here’s CJR’s first archival snapshot, from 1996). The archive also enables users to track changes to government websites, revisit defunct media sites like Gawker and The Messenger, and browse preserved cookbooks. “The idea is to build the Library of Alexandria Two,” Kahle told The New Yorker in 2015. 
While an accidental fire—bruited to have been started by Julius Caesar’s men—destroyed parts of Alexandria One, intentional cyberattacks have made some serious, albeit nonlethal, stabs at Alexandria Two (a/k/a the Internet Archive). In late September, bad actors stole a user authentication database containing thirty-one million unique records of users’ email addresses, usernames, and encrypted passwords. (The leak of passwords is especially sensitive, as people tend to reuse passwords across many platforms.) The hackers left an ominous Javascript message on the archive’s webpage: “Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering from a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!”
The text “HIBP” refers to “Have I Been Pwned”—a website that lets internet users check if their personal data has been compromised. The hackers sent word of the security breach to Troy Hunt, the creator of HIBP, on September 30. Hunt, however, was traveling and didn’t realize the significance of the breach until almost a week later, per his X feed. Hunt eventually notified the Internet Archive and gave the organization a seventy-two-hour window before publicizing the data breach. While that crisis was being dealt with, another began: the DDoS attack—a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a service with internet traffic that results in a digital jam—knocked the library offline. It is not clear if the two attacks are related. “DDOS on a tuesday? Last time it was a monday. Geez,” tweeted Kahle, who has been providing frequent updates on X. 
Social media has swirled with questions surrounding the attack: Who would go after a digital nonprofit library? One group called BlackMeta has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack, citing pro-Palestinian motives. “We believe that highlighting the plight of innocent Palestinian people is essential, and targeting a significant digital resource like the Internet Archive serves to underscore the importance of their story and experiences,” the group tweeted over the weekend. But some say the pro-Palestinian motives are a false flag for two main reasons: first, the archive contains many valuable resources about Palestine that are now inaccessible due to the attack; second, the library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public charity, and nongovernmental organization, with no direct affiliation to the US government, Israel or Mossad, or counterterrorism, as X’s Community Notes pointed out. 
At a time when an onslaught of falsehoods and disinformation is swirling around the election, it’s crucial to maintain a record of what’s been said in its original form. In other words, we need to keep our digital receipts in a safe drawer. According to the Financial Times, this need became increasingly clear to the Internet Archive after the 2016 election, when the conversation around fake news intensified. In response, the organization launched several initiatives, including archiving Donald Trump’s television appearances and cataloguing his tweets. “It’s not about trying to archive the stuff that’s true, but archive the conversation. All of that is what people are experiencing,” Kahle told the paper at the time.
I spoke with Maria Bustillos, a writer and information activist, about the attack. She noted that the timing of the incidents, so close to the election, was “striking.” Shutting down the Internet Archive, she said, stops people from “finding stuff out.” As Bustillos previously wrote for CJR, the Internet Archive is behind Democracy’s Library, which collects government publications worldwide and makes them available to journalists, researchers, and the general public. “It’s a very fundamental form of journalism,” Bustillos wrote. 
For now, Democracy’s Library remains inaccessible—as are many of the other services provided by the Internet Archive. While this isn’t the first time bad actors have attacked the archive, the incidents are a reminder of how little stands between the library and a digital abyss. While other digital archives exist, none started capturing the Web as early as the Internet Archive did, making it almost impossible to replace. “The archive lacks powerful defenders,” Bustillos told me. “It’s all falling on one nonprofit.”
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
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Jersey City Times
The Place for Jersey City News

This holiday season, a leader of the group Blacks in Law Enforcement Servicing the Community, commonly known as BLESC, is reflecting on his group’s mission to give back to the community.
“Sometimes people say that cops or even minority cops are just locking up your community members and not giving back and showing alternatives,” says Detective Rashaun Spence, who serves as BLESC second vice president.
Over Christmas, Spence says the Jersey City-based not-for-profit continued its efforts to dispel such stereotypes, participating in or helping to organize four holiday events for kids.
BLESC participated in Hispanic American Law Enforcement’s Association Shop with a Cop at a Walmart in Secaucus on Dec. 17, and the Police Benevolent Association 109 Toy Giveaway in Jersey City and Hudson County schools on Dec. 19.
Its efforts went county wide this year, with PBA 109, which represents Hudson County corrections officers, and Commissioner Bill O’Dea getting involved as well, says Spence.
BLESC organized its inaugural “Share a –TON– Drive” on Dec. 19, with the help of PetSmart and the city of North Bergen, distributing toys and clothes to anyone who stopped by Ocean Avenue Baptist Church in Jersey City, and offering a selfie with Santa Claus. On Dec. 28, the organization is also taking many of its hard working kids on a field trip to see the movie “Wicked.”
“On a personal level, being in the police department for the past 12 years, I’ve seen a lot of tragedy around the holiday times, responding to calls or even seeing my fellow officers lose their lives, and sometimes as a distraction, honestly, I’ve volunteered my time,” said Spence.
“You see citizens themselves, during the holiday times, you go into a home and a loved one passed away because of drugs or suicide, or was murdered, or was victim to old age or sickness. It takes a toll.
One kid was jumping up and down, hugging us and thanking every single person in the room. He got PawPatrol. The kid was probably about four years old. He was yelling ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘hello’ to everybody.”
The organization’s efforts come during a month that many of its leaders acknowledge has been chaotic — personally and organizationally — with obligations and challenges sometimes soaring.
But the experience of giving back was all that more refreshing because of the response they received from the kids, say the cops from BLESC.
“They all were appreciative,” Spence said. “Some kids got excited for the basketballs or soccer balls. Some got excited about the dolls. Some got excited for the remote control cars.”
But the desire to give back doesn’t stop once the calendar turns to 2025, says Spence. Beyond the holiday season, BLESC runs an after school mentoring program. It recently received approval to build classroom and community space along with affordable housing on Martin Luther King Drive.
“With our program, we’re able to do so by speaking with these kids at a very young age, showing them that being a cop is not bad, corrections officers are not bad. We’re looking to bridge that gap with the kids” said Spence.
Andy Milone has been a freelance reporter covering local government for various New Jersey and New York news outlets since May 2024. You can reach him at 201-406-7222 (call/text) or andymilone@protonmail.com. The… More by Andy Milone

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