Tags: University of Toronto

INFECTED.

How many times have we been told not to click on a strange link or attachment? Because if we do, someone can hack our bank account, steal our identity, take over our phone, switch on its camera and microphone, read our messages and track us wherever we go.

Sadly, that advice is stale-dated.

Now, you’re reading the news on your phone. A banner ad for running shoes, a concert, a local restaurant or whatever slides into view. You barely notice it. You don’t need to tap it. But you, dear reader, are now infected.

Last week The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto published “Exposing AdFection,” the first public proof that mercenary spyware can be delivered through an ordinary “Zero-Click” targeted ad.

Read on…

Allons enfants de la Patrie.

Do you think Jews should pay twice what non-Jews pay to attend the University of Toronto? Or Blacks twice as much as whites to go to Western? Or women, twice as much as men to go to Queen’s? Non bien sûr que non!

But this month, Quebec announced it would double university tuition for students from outside the province. Double it at the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec, or Université Laval? Non. Fees are only doubling at English-speaking universities like McGill and Concordia.

Said Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry: “Quebeckers will no longer pay for the training of English-speaking Canadian students, most of whom return to their province after graduation.”

Read on…

On fire.

One of life’s enduring myths is that a book can change your life. But looking back on your own life, can you point to a single volume that set your life off in a new direction? Neither can I. But books shape our lives all the time, and I’ve just started one that’s already changing how I view our extreme weather, and Canada, and Alberta, and the petroleum industry, fire, risk, travel, and of course mass death.

I first came across John Vaillant in 2011 when a friend urged me to read The Tiger, his true story of the hunt for a Siberian Tiger in Siberia. This tiger not only attacked people without warning or mercy, he went after the hunter who first wounded him. The tiger targeted him. It was mesmerizing stuff. As The New York Times said: “Few writers have taken such pains to understand their monsters, and few depict them in such arresting prose.”

Meanwhile…

RamsayWrites

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