I just finished the sublime Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset, in the Tiina Nunnally translation. If you have any interest in the medieval period or specifically medieval rural Norway, it really brings that setting to life and this is reason enough to give it a try. Much more than that though, it deals with so many profound themes -- mostly related to family and faith -- in a very natural and poignant way. I feel like reading it gave me one big long meditation running parallel to my life, to which my mind would dip in and out throughout all sorts of other goings on (it took me almost a year to finish). I would say the cumulative effect was transformative.
Your global figure includes both donations and value of time donated ([2], pg.8)
Your US figure ([1]) doesn't say anything about value of time donated so I'd assume it is not included.
Finally, the metric where Netherlands and Switzerland come out on top in [3] is in size of philanthropic assets vs GDP. This is noteworthy for sure but is a an entirely different thing than amount of yearly donations.
You're totally right about donations + value of time. Thank you for pointing that out. It's hard to tell if these numbers can be compared. Also [4] paints a very different picture (although it's for 2016).
I think that philanthropic assets should correlate to donations, but you're right also here the numbers from this source cannot be compared to the numbers I mentioned before.
I'm not sure that ruling really has the impact you say it does here. That ruling held that of the 8,000 plaintiffs in the class action suit, only 1,853 had standing because their incorrect credit reports were actually sent to businesses. The remaining 6,332 did not have standing because although their files were incorrect, this incorrect information was never transmitted to anyone (I am getting this from scotusblog coverage). I wouldn't call this a very, very high bar to clear.
It is a joke based on Aquinas' style of answering questions. He begins with a handful of "objections" that take the opposite position to the one he eventually lands on. To take a random example, "Whether a man is bound to give thanks to every benefactor?" (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q106.A3)
In some ways you're trying to steel man (as opposed to straw man) the opposing arguments. It was a reflection of the oral debating style used in universities at the time.
Strange that that answer doesn't include the fact that they were heavily influenced by Aristotle (who had just been rediscovered by Europeans) who explicitely recommended doing this.
My reading of the joke was that it wasn't about Aquinas's question/answers/objections/resolution style, but just suggesting that Aquinas got a lot of things wrong but got them wrong very clearly, making him a useful person to argue against in order to develop better answers to his questions.
That quote is from the Bluetooth standardisation group’s response. They are clearly trying to downplay the seriousness with their choice of language here. “All within a narrow time window” is, generally speaking, something computers are capable of handling. I have no idea from that statement how easy/tricky this attack is. Also, is it really necessary to block transmissions, or can the attacker just “get lucky” and have his transmissions received first? (Honest question, I have no idea)
For BT, it's not a matter of transmitting first (for Wifi it would be), but rather transmitting in the exact time slot that the two devices are expecting each other to transmit. This is tightly timed in BT devices (tens of microseconds)--they are only listening on tiny intervals and only expected to transmit on tiny intervals. It would sound like periodic chirping if you were able to hear it with your ears.
Meanwhile, the two BT devices are going to be transmitting in their normal time slots, so you would need to prevent them from being heard by the peer-- otherwise, the combined transmission (of the attacker and original BT device) will look like noise to the receiver and the attack would fail.
The attack is certainly doable, but in a practical setting would be extremely difficult.
The attacker has to hit the precisely correct time slot. However, there is no penalty for hitting the wrong time slots, so the easy solution is to just sync the timeslot boundaries by listening once and then retransmit on every timeslot.
The attacker has to somehow prevent the listener from hearing the original transmission. If the attacker retransmits at a similar power, as BT devices usually do, the combined transmission will look like noise. However, the attacker doesn't need to care about things like FCC rules or BT standards, and can simply transmit at a power few order of magnitudes greater, so that what the receiver hears is pretty much just the attacker.
There certainly is a penalty for missing time slots (especially if you're trying to overpower the other transmitter). There are two reasons for this: (1) the victim device will have hit the time slot and the pairing process will move into the next stage and (2) packet counters will prevent you from using the same packet in the wrong slot.
Trying to overpower the transmission of the BT peer is certainly the technique to take (although I was hoping not to broadcast that publicly in my original post). You will still have a tough time, however, because you're probably trying to overpower the transmission of two collocated devices (e.g. keyboard+computer) while you are 5-50feet away. In many cases you'll probably end up saturating the receiving antenna. It will be largely a trial-and-error technique, but it will work eventually.
The way you're describing this makes it sound like an extremely difficult process. In some ways, it is. However, every BT device that exists is currently capable of doing this frequency tracking and tight timing. It's merely a matter of starting to transmit slightly earlier and significantly louder than a normal BT transmit after sniffing the start of the connection.
This attack should be possible from any software-defined radio that's capable of sniffing on and forming BT connections.
Quoting my response to Tuna-Fish:
"Trying to overpower the transmission of the BT peer is certainly the technique to take (although I was hoping not to broadcast that publicly in my original post). You will still have a tough time, however, because you're probably trying to overpower the transmission of two collocated devices (e.g. keyboard+computer) while you are 5-50feet away. In many cases you'll probably end up saturating the receiving antenna. It will be largely a trial-and-error technique, but it will work eventually."
Well, by my Maths, 10^18 would require close to 7,000 trees for every square meter of dry land on the planet Earth. Even if we allow the use of Bonsai, that would be a stretch :)
NFc and wireless credit cards urgently need to implement something like this...
It's only a matter of time till NFC credit cards get read with a high power reader and proxied across a cell connection to steal money from someone hundreds of miles away from the thief.
Lying in the hospital bed, the "Get well" cards decorating the space around you, the creams and ointments soothing, you realise you haven't checked your bank account since The Incident.
You pick up your phone and log in to internet banking.
"Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Why is it taunting me? Sacramento was _nothing_ to this. _Nothing._"
A tear rolls down your cheek.
Through the window a lone bee watches. The tear it sees is good, but not enough. It will go back to the hive and dance to communicate to the others your pain, but their ultimate failure in their plan. They will regroup. They will be back.
