The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Design by committee meeting earlier today where everyone had the bestest ideas about the new office space layout. Half the people don’t really care and make it blatantly obvious, half the people are very passionate indeed about their proposals (as long as they get what they want), and the last half is trying to be pragmatic about finding a solution that will be workable and that management will sign off on. Fun times.
Whisky expert Jim Murray awarded a record-equalling 97.5 marks out of 100 to Suntory’s Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013, hailing it as “near indescribable genius” in his comments in the forthcoming 2015 World Whisky Bible.
It is the first time since the guide was first published 12 years ago that the top award has gone to a whisky from Japan. The country’s whiskies were once the butt of jokes but have won a slew of awards and widespread critical acclaim in recent years. To compound the pain felt in the spiritual home of the “water of life”, this is the first time that not a single Scottish whisky made it into the top five in Murray’s respected guide.
Second, third and fourth places in this year’s awards went to three bourbons from the US; the prize for best European whisky went to Chapter 14 Not Peated, from the English Whisky Company.
Murray warned Scottish distilleries that reputations counted for little now that other countries were producing their own world-class whiskies. “Where were the complex whiskies in the prime of their lives? Where were the blends which offered bewildering layers of depth?” he wrote. “It is time for a little dose of humility … to get back to basics. To realise that something is missing.”
According to researchers at Newcastle University in the UK, the card system developed by VISA for use in the United Kingdom fails to recognize transactions made in non-UK foreign currencies and can therefore be tricked into approving any transaction up to 999,999.99.
What’s more, because the cards allow for contactless transactions, wherein consumers need only to have the card in the vicinity of a reader without swiping it, a thief carrying a card reader designed to read a card that’s stored in a wallet or purse could conduct fraudulent transactions without the victim ever removing their card.
Since the transaction is done offline without going through a retailer’s point-of-sale system, no other security checks are done.
“With just a mobile phone we created a POS terminal that could read a card through a wallet,” Martin Emms, lead researcher of the project that uncovered the flaw, noted in a statement about the findings. “All the checks are carried out on the card rather than the terminal so at the point of transaction, there is nothing to raise suspicions. By pre-setting the amount you want to transfer, you can bump your mobile against someone’s pocket or swipe your phone over a wallet left on a table and approve a transaction.”
In tests the researchers conducted, transactions took less than a second to be approved. In the UK, contactless payments are limited to a maximum value of £20, requiring a PIN for anything more than this. But the researchers found that the system doesn’t recognize foreign currency transactions and therefore doesn’t require a PIN for these.
“This lends itself to multiple attackers across the world collecting small transactions of perhaps €200 at a time for a central rogue merchant who could be located anywhere in the world,” Emms notes. “This previously undocumented flaw around foreign currency, combined with the lack of POS terminal authentication and the ease of skimming contactless credit cards, makes the system more vulnerable to high-value attacks.
It is not clear from reading the payment protocol how banks would deal with the inconsistencies we have found through our research, hence we believe the vulnerability poses a potential threat,” he said. “The fact that we can by-pass the £20 limit makes this new hack potentially very scalable and lucrative. All a criminal would need to do is set up somewhere like an airport or the London underground where the use of different currencies would appear legitimate.”
So, I’m on hold right now, and the background music that is playing is Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”…
Last year, we didn’t have a chance to put up the Christmas display. This year, we’re starting early. The truly sad part is that I have about just as much stuff still in storage. We’ll need to reorganise the flat next year to get everything out :-)
He showed me how to wear my cap so that it looks cool, like when you’re on a skateboard. We cut his hair yesterday. It’s amazing how much more grown up he looks without a wild mop of curls.
At the expat fair.