Month: April 2022

Enlarge (credit: Tony Armstrong-Sly / Flickr)

The urgency of action on climate change is a complicated thing. On the one hand, the harm of inaction is real and growing every year. On the other hand, there's no such thing as "too late." Plug in some numbers, and you can define a corresponding deadline to hit a target, but we're not dealing with an all-or-nothing proposition. There is a continuum of consequences, and our choices can always move us one notch toward "better" or one toward "worse."

With that in mind, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows the next few years are a critical window of opportunity for our hopes of limiting global warming to the benchmarks of 1.5° C or 2° C. Those numbers aren't magic, but they are meaningful. First, they represent better futures than any larger number on the thermometer would. Second, these are the targets that international negotiations have long centered around.

(Giga)tons of work to do

The release is the third and final section of the 6th Assessment Report. The first two releases handled the physical science of a changing climate and the impacts of climate change. This one deals with climate solutions—what is called "mitigation" in hazards parlance. The release examines past and present greenhouse gas emissions and illuminates the path to eliminating emissions and stabilizing the climate of our planet.

Enlarge / A long COVID patient in German takes a pulmonary function test at Hufeland Clinic's Center for Pneumology. (credit: Getty | picture alliance)

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued a memorandum directing the secretary of Health and Human Services to coordinate and speed efforts to understand and treat long COVID, which is estimated to affect up to 23 million Americans.

In a White House press briefing Tuesday, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said the administration's plan has three main goals: to improve care and support for long COVID patients, enhance education and outreach on long COVID and disability services, and step up research on causes and evidence-based treatments.

"Long COVID is real," Becerra said, "and there's still so much we don't know about it. Millions of Americans may be struggling with lingering health effects, ranging from things that are easier to notice—like trouble breathing or irregular heartbeat—to less apparent, but potentially serious conditions related to the brain or mental health."

Enlarge / Laundering of stolen cryptocurrency was a key service offered by Hydra. (credit: Getty Images)

Hydra, the world’s biggest cybercrime forum, is no more. Authorities in Germany have seized servers and other infrastructure used by the sprawling, billion-dollar enterprise along with a stash of about $25 million in bitcoin.

Hydra had been operating since at least 2015 and had seen a meteoric rise since then. In 2020, it had annual revenue of more than $1.37 billion, according to a 2021 report jointly published by security firm Flashpoint and blockchain analysis company Chainalysis. In 2016, the companies said Hydra had a revenue of just $9.4 million. German authorities said the site had 17 million customer and over 19,000 seller accounts registered.

Cybercrime bazaar

Available exclusively through the Tor network, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered sales of narcotics, fake documents, cryptocurrency-laundering services, and other digital goods. Flashpoint and Chainalysis identified 11 core operators but said the marketplace was so big that it likely was staffed by “several dozen people, with clearly delineated responsibilities.”