Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-15-2020, 02:24 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Police say ‘hoax’ emergency call prompted Ubisoft Montreal studio scare
Update 12:46 PST: Employees are being safely escorted out of the building and a heavy police presence remains. Montreal Police say “no threat has been identified,” while a group of people remain on the building’s rooftop.
Update 2:01 PST: According to Journal de Montreal, those on the rooftop were being evacuated one by one with hands raised. Police sources speaking to Canadian media confirm the 911 call that prompted the emergency response was a “hoax.”
News reports are emerging that a possible hostage situation is underway at Ubisoft Montreal.
The news outlet Journal de Montreal has reported that a “possible hostage situation” is taking place in the building that houses Ubisoft’s Montreal offices in Canada. Their reporting states that “dozens of people” are being held hostage.
The Journal’s reporting was quickly corroborated by Ubisoft employees working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Community developer Eric Pope tweeted that he was on a call with several employees from the office, who had to leave abruptly before the Journal’s report emerged.
Aerial shots (via the Journal) show numerous people on the roof of the building, which houses other businesses aside from Ubisoft Montreal.
Some Ubisoft Montreal employees have tweeted that they were at the building and were able to leave and are safe, while still stating concern for the colleagues still in the building.
A Ubisoft spokesperson told Gamasutra the company is “aware of the situation and working with local authorities.”
Update 12:30 PST: Police have told Radio-Canada’s Kim Vermette that the operation near the Ubisoft building in Montreal seems to be related to an armed robbery.
Montreal police also tweeted that there are currently “no injuries” and it is inspecting the building.
Update 12:46 PST: Employees are being safely escorted out of the building and a heavy police presence remains. Montreal Police say “no threat has been identified,” while a group of people remain on the building’s rooftop.
UPDATE 4:30 PST: Ubisoft issued a statement on today’s incident via Twitter:
Two mega trends can be observed in the 21st century: (I) the proliferation of data—and (II) the reorganization of the biggest market in the world: the global labor market towards project-basedfreelancing work.
By positioning yourself as a freelance data scientist, you’ll not only work in an exciting area with massive growth opportunities but you’ll also put yourself into the “blue ocean” of freelancing where there’s still much more demand than supply.
This article shows you six fundamental building blocks (pillars) that will lead you towards success as a freelancer in the data science space.
Pillar 1: Money—How Much Can You Earn as a Data Science Freelancer?
A recent study from O’Reilly found that data science is a wide field with many specializations and job descriptions. However, the average earning of an employed data scientist—45% of all respondents would consider themselves as such—is between $60,000 and $110,000. This means that experienced data scientists over time quite certainly reach six-figure income levels if they keep improving and searching for new opportunities.
There are significant opportunities “down the line” that earn significantly above six-figures by working as an architect, team leader, or manager. Becoming an employed data scientist remains an attractive way to make a great living.
But what about freelance data scientists? Do they earn more?
The best data comes directly from the source: Upwork, the biggest freelancer market in the world. Let’s dive into some profiles from freelance data scientists!
Here’s a table of 24 freelance data scientists incomes from the Upwork results:
Freelancer
Hourly Income
Earned
Job Success
Data Science & Machine Learning
$60
$100.000
100%
Data Science & Machine Learning
$300
$100.000
100%
Data Science Consultant
$50
$10.000
97%
Data Science & Machine Learning
$25
$10.000
91%
Data Science/Analyst, Statistician
$70
$100.000
97%
Applied Machine Learning
$300
$50.000
100%
Chief Technology Officer
$55
$200.000
100%
Computer Vision
$32
$2.000.000
100%
Data Engineer
$50
$10.000
100%
Research Scientist
$150
$700.000
95%
Analytics Expert
$52
$10.000
100%
Deep Learning Expert
$195
$10.000
100%
Data Scientist
$60
$10.000
77%
Scalable Analytics Consultant
$300
$500.000
100%
Machine Learning
$40
$8.000
91%
Machine Learning
$80
$30.000
100%
Tutor
$30
$20.000
92%
Math
$38
$4.000
100%
NLP
$35
$30.000
71%
Machine Learning
$50
$4.000
100%
Big Data Engineer
$50
$10.000
100%
AVERAGE
$96
$186.476
96%
The tabular data is drawn from 100 Upwork freelancer profiles as they appeared in the Upwork search. We randomly chose profiles and filtered them for data availability (e.g., total money earned). The result is that the average freelance data scientist earns $96 per hour. For 1700 working hours per year and a full schedule, this results in an average annual income of $163,200. To accomplish this, you need to join the ranks of relatively high-rated freelancers above 90% job satisfaction.
Let’s have a look at some other data sources: As a data scientist, you’re a programmer—in a way. The demand for programming talent has steadily increased in the preceding decades.
Here’s a quick tabular overview of what you can earn as a data scientist—it shows that as a data scientist, you’re in effect a well-compensated coder with specific skill sets.
Title
Best Programming Languages
Yearly Income (Average US)
Web Developer
JavaScript + HTML + CSS + SQL
$78,088
Mobile Developer Android
Java
$126,154
Mobile Developer Apple
Swift
$123,263
Back End Developer
Python + Django + Flask
$127,913
Front End Developer
JavaScript + HTML + CSS
$109,742
Full-Stack Engineer
Python + JavaScript + HTML + CSS + SQL
$112,098
Data Scientist
Python + Matplotlib + Pandas + NumPy + Dash
$122,700
Machine Learning Engineer
Python + NumPy + Scikit-Learn + TensorFlow
$145,734
Let’s dive into the different freelance developer career choices for maximum success!
Pillar 2: Confidence—Can You Become a Data Science Freelancer?
Before becoming a Python freelancer, you have to learn the very basics of Python. What’s the point of offering your freelancer services when you can not even write Python code?
Having said this, it’s more likely that you live on the other extreme. You do not want to offer your services before you don’t feel 100% confident about your skills. Unfortunately, this moment never arrives. I have met hundreds of advanced coders, who are still not confident in selling their services. They cannot overcome their self-woven system of limiting believes and mental barriers.
May I tell you a harsh truth? You won’t join the top 1% of the Python coders with high probability (a hard statistical fact). But never mind. Your services will still be valuable to clients who either have less programming skills (there are plenty of them) or little time (a big part of the rest). Most clients are happy to outsource the complex coding work to focus on their key result areas.
Regardless of your skill level, the variety of Python projects is huge. There are simple projects for $10 which an experienced coder can solve in 5 minutes. And there are complex projects that take months and promise you large payments of $100 to $1000 after completing each milestone.
You can be sure that you will find projects in your skill level.
Pillar 3: Learning—What Skills Do You Need as a Data Science Freelancer
Most freelance developers don’t have any experience when they get started on freelancing platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr. You can succeed by follow the three simple steps: (1) get your first gig, (2) learn what’s needed, (3) complete the gig. By repeating this, you’ll learn, grow, and, over time, earn the average hourly rate of $61 per hour for freelance developers.
Teaching many freelancing students, I have come to learn that most don’t believe they have all the skills they need to get started as a freelance developer. And why should they come to that conclusion given that there are so many different skills to be learned?
Programming
Marketing
Sales
Communication
Empathy
Positioning
Administration
Business Strategy
Copy Writing
Networking
Yet, while all of the listed skills are highly important for your freelancing business, I have yet to meet a single person that is highly skilled in all of those.
Consider each of those skills to be an axis of a multi-dimensional coordinate system. Now, you can assign to each person a score between 0% and 100% for each skill. Here’s the skill score card for two imaginary freelancers Alice and Bob:
Given are two freelancers: Alice and Bob.
Alice has a talent for marketing and copywriting. She’s an average coder and not very good in administration.
Bob is a master coder—the classical nerd—but he’s not skilled in marketing, sales, communication. He is a great administrator though.
Here’s the million dollar question: who’s the better freelance developer?
Posed like this, you may find the question ridiculous. Of course, it depends how both position themselves in the marketplace. Alice may have a small edge over Bob due to her people, sales, and marketing skills. However, it will be a close win because Bob’s programming skills are also highly valued by the marketplace.
Both will earn some money between minimum and maximum wage (say, around the average earnings of $51 per hour for freelance developers). The key is to understand that every single person on the planet has some value to the marketplace.
Let’s have a look at a third freelancer: YOU.
Say, Alice earns $55 per hour due to her ability to sell her skills. Bob earns $51 per hour due to his super programming skills.
Suppose you are a beginner in both: sales and programming. Your programming skills are only 30% and your sales skills are even worse with 10%. But you have solid networking, communication, and empathy skills as a human being. That’s all you need—you can offer value to the marketplace! Your skills are worth $23 per hour!
The only thing left for you to do is to sell your skills, keep engaging with the marketplace, and increase your skills over time. You’ll increase your sales and marketing skills. You’ll build confidence. You’ll increase your programming skills over time. By engaging the marketplace, you automatically increase your value to it. Your hourly rate increases with it!
So, do you have enough skills to get started as a freelance developer? Let’s have a look at the following video:
Most people never feel ready to get started with a project. They always want to learn more so that they feel better prepared for the tasks ahead. This may be a result from our modern-day educational system that teaches young people that they have to learn more and more before they can become successful in the real world. Grown ups with 18+ years believe they must learn for 10 more years before they can get started creating value and earning their own income.
The problem is that you’ll never feel ready no matter how much you learn. This is inherent in knowledge acquisition. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know, and the less ready you will feel to get started.
Therefore, a much better model will be proposed next. Most people understand this model rationally but they don’t internalize it—they don’t really get it.
So, what is it?
BIAS TOWARDS ACTION!
Your value to the marketplace is already larger than zero. If you start as a freelance developer, your hourly rate will be larger than $0. I don’t know what it is but you can already give value to clients. Say, you are a complete beginner and a client can hire you for $1 per hour. They will probably do it. Why? Because even as a complete beginner, you can create, say, $3 on their $1-spent, so you help them increase their business and they purchase as many of your services as they can afford. After all—how often would you buy $3 for a buck?
No matter what your current value, no matter where you start, the strategy is always the same: know your hourly rate, work for it, and increase it over time.
And what’s the best way to increase your hourly value? The answer is simple: create value for clients. Get started now. You have an actual value to contribute to clients no matter your current value. Just select any start hourly rate that you feel comfortable with. And then commit on the path to learning and improving your hourly rate by doing practical work for clients.
There’s no better way. If you want to improve your chess game, you better play chess a lot. If you want to improve your golf games, you better practice golf every day. If you want to become a more successful freelance developer earning a higher hourly rate—which is one of the key success metric of freelance developers—you better be out there on a freelancing platform doing the work and actually increase your hourly rate.
So, you go out there, create an account at Fiverr or Upwork, and get started today, now!
To commit on a quest to continuous improvement of your hourly rate, you can also check out the detailed FINXTER Python freelancer course.
Pillar 4: Clients—How Can You Get Clients and Deliver Value to Them?
Many people struggle with finding clients on a freelancer platform. They apply for one or two freelancer projects and wait for a few days until they get a response. The response is usually negative because the probability of getting accepted for a gig is maybe 5-10% — even if you underbid people. Oftentimes, clients want to have freelancers who have a lot of experience with past projects. If you are just starting out, you cannot showcase your experience.
So they apply for one or two projects and get rejected. If they are motivated, they try the same thing again. Only the super-committed ones repeat the same thing a third time. But after this fails too, they are out of the game. They are frustrated, argue that it’s not possible to earn money on freelancing platforms and go on with the next idea to make money online (on which they’ll fail, too).
I recently read the “The 10x Rule” by Grant Cardone. In his book, he invented the concept of taking massive action towards a goal.
Solution—Massive action.
Not a timid amount of action.
Not thinking in small numbers like “1” or “2”.
Massive action creates a new level of problems where you have too much instead of too little response from the real world.
It’s a simple idea but it’s really powerful. Applying this idea to finding clients on a freelancer platform is very effective and usually leads to success.
Yet, it’s so simple to find clients. It’s a numbers game.
Just realize that the acceptance rate of getting a freelancer gig is 10%. What’s the result? It means that on average, you need to apply for 10 projects to get one gig. If you apply for two projects, you have to be very lucky to get a gig — but most likely, you’ll fail. Even if you are serious and did everything right.
Before working as a self-employed Python coder, I was an academic computer science researcher. During my Ph.D. program, my goal was to get at least four high-quality research papers accepted. The acceptance rate was very low at 10-15% — even if you wrote a very good paper. So how to solve this problem? The only answer is massive action. Just submit the paper 10 times, improving it on the way. Then, you have a good chance of getting it accepted.
Realizing this early, I just committed to submitting a lot of papers. Because if I only submitted four times to a conference, it would have been virtually impossible to get accepted on four quality conferences. Instead, I submitted to maybe 15 conferences. Most papers got rejected but over time, more and more papers got accepted.
The only way of controlling your success in a competitive research environment is to submit papers regularly.
The same applies to get freelancing clients as a Python freelancer. I just want to encourage you to apply for 10 projects at once. If you do this, you’ll get accepted by maybe one or two.
Many people fear too much work when applying for 10 projects. But think about it: wouldn’t it be great if you got accepted for all 10 projects? This means that you can focus on the most interesting ones and simply write a nice email to the remaining clients telling them that you need a bit more time finishing their projects. It’s better to have too many clients than too few. Actually, you want this problem of having too many clients. Only this way, you can increase your hourly rate over time.
A fundamental law of economics is that if demand exceeds supply, prices rise. Your prices.
This is how you will break through your ceiling. Applying for two projects and waiting is not massive action. Ask yourself whether you really want success or whether you manipulate your own success. Massive action is applying for 10, 20, or even 50 projects. And creating yourself a new level of problems (having too many projects rather than too few).
This way, you’ll create your first experiences and a lot of profitable work for yourself.
Pillar 5: Business—How to Build Your Business as a Freelance Data Scientist?
As a freelance data scientist, you’re first and foremost a business person. Only second you’re a data scientist. You need to have solid data science skills but there’s so much more to creating a business system that throws lots of cash at you.
Everyone can create better burgers than McDonalds. But who can create a better business system? If you’re reading this article, chances are that you’re a far better coder than business person (the Finxter community consists of far more coders than business persons). So, stop learning tech-related stuff now and focus on building a great business system. How?
Here are my top tips:
Give More Value Than You Take in Payment
Eat Your Customers Complexity
Perform From Your Strengths
Position Yourself as a Specialist
Be Hyper-Responsive
Be Positive and Upbeat
Create a Client List
Create a Simple Ad Funnel
Lead Acquisition: Contact One Potential Lead Per Day
Lead Conversion: Implement Strategy Sessions
Join Freelancing Platforms
Use Testimonial Videos on Your Website
Get the Referral Engine Rolling
Leave Freelancing Platforms
Use Systems and Templates
Know Your Hourly Rate
Increase Your Hourly Rate
Contribute to Open-Source Projects
Market Yourself on LinkedIn, Not Facebook
Create Your Own Blog
Give, Give, Give, Right Hook
Befriend Colleagues
Be a Coding Consultant, Not a Freelance Developer
Read More Programming Books
Read More Business Books
Seek Expert Advice
You can find a detailed explanation on all of those points on my in-depth blog article.
“A limited liability company (LLC) is a business structure in the United States whereby the owners are not personally liable for the company’s debts or liabilities. Limited liability companies are hybrid entities that combine the characteristics of a corporation with those of a partnership or sole proprietorship.” (source)
So, if you create an LLC, you are generally not liable for any debt or liabilities of your freelancing business. Most likely, your freelancing business doesn’t need a lot of debt—after all, you’re selling your time for money—however, there may still be liabilities!
For example, you may have signed a contract that requires you to pay for all damages incurred by your software. Yes, you shouldn’t have done it—but assuming you have, if you signed in the name of the LLC, you personally cannot be hold accountable for the potentially devastating liabilities.
What are some advantages and disadvantages of a liability?
LLC Pros
LLC Cons
Limited Liability – If you keep your finances separate and fullfil your duties as a business owner, you cannot be personally held liable. Your personal assets like real estate, stocks, bonds, mutual funds will remain protected even if your business fails.
Limitations of Limited Liability – this is called “piercing the corporate veil” and it means that if you don’t follow the rules of the LLC, a judge may decide that your liability protection will be removed and you, personally, can be held liable.
Pass-Through Federal Taxation on Profits – Per default, the profits are not taxed on the company level but are passed through to its owners who then tax them individually. This is an advantage if you have a relatively lower tax rate and it avoids double taxation on the corporate and individual level.
Self-Employment Tax – Per default, you must pay self-employment taxes on the profits of an LLC because it is a pass-through entity.
Management Flexibility – The LLC can be managed by one or more owners. This is a perfect structure for partnerships where ownership percentages can be divided in a flexible way.
Turnover – If an LLC partner dies, goes bankrupt, or leaves the company, the company will be dissolved. You need to create a new one and you take over all the leaving partners’ obligations that result in dissolving the LLC.
Easy Startup Overhead – It’s relatively simple and cheap—a few hundred dollars—to start an LLC. For the amount of protection it offers, it’s a very cheap way to organize your freelancing business.
Investments – It’s difficult to raise outside capital. This is usually not a problem for you as a freelance developer because freelance developing has only minimal capital requirements.
Unproportional ProfitDistribution – Members can receive profits that are not proportional to the ownership percentage they hold. This allows you to reinforce members for great work.
Credibility – Being an LLC gives you more credibility as a freelance developer. Clients tend to trust you more, as a freelance developer organized in an LLC, for two reasons: you’re an US-based business and you’re a serious business.
Upwork places a great focus on quality. This is great for clients because it ensures that their work will get delivered—without compromising quality.
For freelancers just starting out, Upwork poses a significant barrier of entry—oftentimes, new profiles will get rejected by the Upwork team. They want to ensure that only clients who take their freelancing jobs seriously will start out on their platform.
However, the relatively high barrier of entry also protects established freelancers on the Upwork platform from too much competition. There is no price dumping because of low-quality offers which ultimately benefits all market participants.
Fiverr initially started out as a platform where you could buy and sell small gigs worth five bucks. However, in the meantime it grew to a full-fledged freelancing platform where people earn six-figure incomes.
Many jobs earn hundreds of Dollars per hour and many freelancers make a killing—especially in attractive industries such as programming, machine learning, and data science.
If you want to start earning money as a freelance developer with the hot Python programming language, check out my free webinar:
Toptal has a strong market proposition: it’s the platform with the top 3% of freelancers. Hence, it connects high-quality freelancers with high-quality clients.
It’s extremely hard to become a freelancer at Toptal: 97% of the applicants will not enter the platform. However, if you manage to join Toptal, you can greatly benefit with the best-in-class hourly rates. You can easily earn $100 per hour and beyond.
Also, the high barrier of entry ensures that the freelancer stays the valuable resource—he or she doesn’t become a commodity like on other freelancer platforms.
If you are an upcoming freelancer, you should aim for joining Toptal one day. Here’s a great freelancer course that shows you a crystal-clear path towards becoming a highly-paid freelancer.
You can find out about more freelancing sites at the following resource on this Finxter blog with more than 60 links sorted by the size of the freelancing sites.
There are many different ways of starting your Python freelancing adventures. Many freelancing platforms compete for your time, attention, and a share of your value creation. These platforms are a great way to start your freelancing career as a Python coder and gain some experience in business and coding, as well as get some testimonial to kick off your freelancing business. But keep in mind that they are only the first step and in the mid-term, you should strive to become independent of those platforms if you want to avoid global competition for each project in the future.
Where to Go From Here?
Enough theory, let’s get some practice!
To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?
Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!
Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?
Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.
Exit Limbo: Opening is the first chapter of a neo-retro side-scrolling beat ’em up with adventure elements, elaborated fighting mechanics, memorable enemies and a truly unique setting and visual art style. https://youtu.be/xUoLvGskkmU
We’re happy to share an exciting update: Epic Games is now a minority investor in SideFX. In Epic, SideFX gains a strong partner whose passion for the industry closely aligns with ours.
Kim Davidson remains the majority owner of SideFX, as well as President and CEO. He continues his strong, unwavering commitment to SideFX’s staff, customers, and partners.
SideFX and Epic are both committed to SideFX continuing its work with other industry partners – including all other content creation applications and game engines. This new development will have no impact at all on the Houdini development roadmap, as SideFX will continue to define its own path as an industry-leading procedural 3D platform for the film, TV, advertising and games sectors.
Dollar values of the investment were not disclosed. From the announcement it appears the investment should have minimal impact on neither Houdini or Unreal Engine. Epic Games have been making more and more investments of late including their $15M investment in Manticore Games.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-14-2020, 10:04 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Cyberattacks targeting health care must stop
Two global issues will help shape people’s memories of this time in history – Covid-19 and the increased use of the internet by malign actors to disrupt society. It’s disturbing that these challenges have now merged as cyberattacks are being used to disrupt health care organizations fighting the pandemic. We think these attacks are unconscionable and should be condemned by all civilized society. Today, we’re sharing more about the attacks we’ve seen most recently and are urging governments to act.
In recent months, we’ve detected cyberattacks from three nation-state actors targeting seven prominent companies directly involved in researching vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. The targets include leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States. The attacks came from Strontium, an actor originating from Russia, and two actors originating from North Korea that we call Zinc and Cerium.
Among the targets, the majority are vaccine makers that have Covid-19 vaccines in various stages of clinical trials. One is a clinical research organization involved in trials, and one has developed a Covid-19 test. Multiple organizations targeted have contracts with or investments from government agencies from various democratic countries for Covid-19 related work.
Strontium continues to use password spray and brute force login attempts to steal login credentials. These are attacks that aim to break into people’s accounts using thousands or millions of rapid attempts. Zinc has primarily used spear-phishing lures for credential theft, sending messages with fabricated job descriptions pretending to be recruiters. Cerium engaged in spear-phishing email lures using Covid-19 themes while masquerading as World Health Organization representatives. The majority of these attacks were blocked by security protections built into our products. We’ve notified all organizations targeted, and where attacks have been successful, we’ve offered help.
These are just among the most recent attacks on those combating Covid-19. Cyberattacks targeting the health care sector and taking advantage of the pandemic are not new. Attackers recently used ransomware attacks to target hospitals and healthcare organizations across the United States. Earlier in the pandemic, attacks targeted Brno University Hospital in the Czech Republic, Paris’s hospital system, the computer systems of Spain’s hospitals, hospitals in Thailand, medical clinics in the U.S. state of Texas, a health care agency in the U.S. state of Illinois and even international bodies such as the World Health Organization. In Germany, we recently saw the resulting threat to human health become tragic reality when a woman in Dusseldorf reportedly became the first known death as a result of a cyberattack on a hospital.
Today, Microsoft’s president Brad Smith is participating in the Paris Peace Forum where he will urge governments to do more. Microsoft is calling on the world’s leaders to affirm that international law protects health care facilities and to take action to enforce the law. We believe the law should be enforced not just when attacks originate from government agencies but also when they originate from criminal groups that governments enable to operate – or even facilitate – within their borders. This is criminal activity that cannot be tolerated.
The good news is that we’re not alone. Our voice at Microsoft is just one of many speaking up from the multi-stakeholder coalition that will be needed to make progress. In today’s virtual Paris Peace Forum event addressing an audience of international leaders, Brad will discuss these issues with France’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves le Drian, Ambassador Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota of Brazil and Ambassador Jürg Lauber of Switzerland. Ambassador Patriota is chair of the UN’s Group of Governmental Experts, and Ambassador Lauber is chair of the UN’s Open-Ended Working Group – both important bodies in determining the future of cyberspace.
In the leadup to this year’s Paris Peace Forum, more than 65 health care-related organizations have joined the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace. They include organizations like Merck working on vaccines, top hospitals like Hospital Metropolitano in Ecuador, and government health institutes like Poland’s National Institute of Public Health. There is no question the attacks we’ve seen in recent months are creating energy for action across the health sector. The Paris Call remains the largest multi-stakeholder coalition addressing these issues, and its first principle is the prevention of malicious cyber activities that threaten indiscriminate or systemic harm to people and critical infrastructure.
In May, a 136-strong group of the world’s most prominent international law experts, in what has become known as the Oxford Process, issued a statement making it clear that international law protects medical facilities at all times. In August, the Oxford Process issued a second statement emphasizing that organizations that research, manufacture and distribute of Covid-19 vaccines are also protected.
Earlier this year, the CyberPeace Institute and International Committee of the Red Cross led an effort by 40 international leaders calling on governments to stop the attacks on healthcare. They included former secretary of state Madeline Albright, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, former Member of the European Parliament Marietje Schaake and former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon among many others.
Organizations are also taking steps to protect themselves. In April, we announced that we were making AccountGuard, our threat notification service, available to health care and human rights organizations working on Covid-19. Since then 195 of these organizations have enrolled in the service and we now protect 1.7 million email accounts for health care-related groups. Any health care-related organizations that wish to enroll can do so here.
At a time when the world is united in wanting an end to the pandemic and anxiously awaiting the development of a safe and effective vaccine for Covid-19, it is essential for world leaders to unite around the security of our health care institutions and enforce the law against cyberattacks targeting those who endeavor to help us all. You can learn more about what Microsoft is doing to advance cybersecurity here.
Three Indie Publishers Team Up For Black Friday Switch eShop Sale
Indie publishers QubicGames, Klabater and All In! Games have teamed up to offer a special Black Friday sale on the Nintendo Switch eShop.
Several games will be discounted over the next couple of weeks, with the sale starting today and ending on 30th November. You can find all of the discounts on a new webpage dedicated to the sale here, but we’ve got a list of the highlights for you below:
If you visit the link, you’ll notice that you can also take part in competitions to win free games and eShop vouchers, as well as a custom-painted Switch console. The sale and competitions are live for residents in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
It varies from person to person, of course, but your favourite console generation is often the one you played most in childhood — in that impressionable pre-to-early teen sweet spot where a foundation of gaming memories are formed. That’s when you play the classics you return to later in life for the sheer pleasure of seeing old friends and blasting though a comfortingly familiar game using muscle memory. For many of us, the 16-bit era cemented our love for video games, and later this month the Super Famicom turns 25.
With the anniversary fast approaching, we’d like your help to assemble the top 50 Super NES games ever. We recently asked asked you to rank the top 50 Wii games, and the ordering of this list will be similarly fluid, dictated by the games’ User Ratings in the Nintendo Life Games database and therefore subject to change even after publication. Once an entry reaches a minimum number of ratings, it becomes eligible for our Top 50 SNES games list.
Below you’ll find a partial list of the SNES library. Feel free to let us know in the comments anything missing that you’d like to rate — preferably games you think could make the top 50 — and we’ll do our best to accommodate additions. To rate any title, simply scroll through the alphabetical list to find the game you want (or type the title into the search bar at the top to save your scrolling finger), click the star to bring up a rating of 1-10, and click the score you feel it deserves — job done! If you’ve previously rated your SNES games, just put your feet up; those scores are already logged. And if you need a reminder on a particular game, feel free to click the game title and check out our vintage reviews and screenshots.
We’ll publish the results around the anniversary, but in the meantime happy rating!
Thank you for rating your favourites (or otherwise). Feel free to discuss your favourite Super Nintendo games below, and we’ll reveal the results next week.
Destiny 2: Where Is Xur This Week? Exotic Items / Location Guide (Nov. 13-17)
Destiny 2's new expansion, Beyond Light, has arrived, bringing new Exotics, gear, and story to the game, along with a lot of other changes. But Xur's arrival with a bag of Exotics hasn't changed--he's back in the solar system this weekend. Head to the Tower, to the Hangar area, to find Xur this week. For his weapon, Xur is offering Lord of Wolves. Hunters can pick up the Raiden Flux chest armor; for Titans, there's the Aeon Safe gauntlets; and for Warlocks, Xur has the Chromatic Fire chest armor.
Xur Location
Look for Xur in the Hangar, up on a catwalk near the edge of the area.
Spawn in at the Tower Courtyard transmat location and turn left to head toward the Hangar. At the bottom of the stairs, turn left again and head up the stairs near the edge of the area, at the north end. You'll find Xur on a catwalk looking out over the city.
MFi hearing aid static issues reported by iPhone 12 users
Users of MFi heading aids are reporting problems using their audio devices with the iPhone 12, with some also experiencing static issues along with difficulty in pairing them with the new smartphones.
Forum threads are suggesting there are issues with how Apple’s Bluetooth connectivity functions for users of MFi-compatible hearing aids. Pairing to the iPhone, the “Made for iPhone” hearing aids are able to stream audio from the iPhone to the user’s ear, such as music, phone calls, and notification sounds, among other benefits.
An email tip from an AppleInsider reader explains how they endured connection issues when they moved to the iPhone 12. While the iPhone 11 Pro Max and current-generation iPad Pro 12.9 both work without issue, the same can’t be said about the iPhone 12, with the reader experiencing rapid disconnections and reconnections, with seemingly no stability at all.
For the reader, the problem is also still evident when using the beta of iOS 14.3.
Users on the HearingTrackerforum also say there are problems using hearing aids with the iPhone 12, while connecting to other Apple devices worked fine. The connection issues included a “massive amount of static” through two hearing aids for one user, then one or both of the hearing aids disconnect.
Similar issues were also endured by others, as well as individual hearing aids becoming unpaired. One user also claimed they were informed it would be potentially fixed in the iOS 14.2 update, though it still persists.
Posts made to Apple’s support forums advise of the same sort of problems, including static and disconnections, and again seemingly limited to the iPhone 12 generation of devices.
This is not the first time hearing aid users have encountered difficulty in using new iPhone models. An update for iOS 13.1.3 was released in October 2019 to fix Bluetooth connection reliability issues, specifically for hearing aids.
It is probable that a similar fix will be issued by Apple as part of an incremental software update in the coming weeks.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-14-2020, 03:46 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Launch of Xbox Series X|S is most successful debut in Xbox history
Thanks to you, the launch of Xbox Series X|S is now the most successful debut in our history. While we missed the emotional spark of being together with you in person, it was incredible to celebrate a new generation of gaming with the millions on our celebration livestream and everyone who participated in our global launch across 40 countries.
Your support, and what you accomplished in the first 24 hours of launch, inspire us and demonstrate the connective power of play is more important than ever.
More new consoles sold than any prior generation, with Xbox Series S adding the highest percentage of new players for any Xbox console at launch
More games played, 3,594 in total, spanning four generations, setting a record for the most games ever played during an Xbox console launch
Next gen means more ways to discover and play, 70 percent of Series X|S consoles are attached to new and existing Xbox Game Pass members
As none of this would be possible without great games to play, we also want to thank our development partners around the world and congratulate them on their own respective launches this week, including delivering more than 40 new and Optimized games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, Dirt 5, The Falconeer, Tetris Effect: Connected, Watch Dogs: Legion and Yakuza: Like a Dragon to players on day one, 30 of which support Smart Delivery.
We know that not everyone was able to get an Xbox Series X|S immediately and are working tirelessly with our partners around the world to bring as many new consoles to as many of you as possible over time and encourage you to check in with your local retailers directly for more details on availability in your market.
Your early reaction and excitement for the next generation of Xbox has us feeling grateful and energized to continue building the future of gaming with you. On the behalf of Team Xbox: Thank you.
