Ukraine orders evacuation of city as Russia makes gains | BBC News

August 20, 2024August 19, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of a key city in the Donbas region as Russian forces continue to make gains in the east of the country, despite Ukraine’s ongoing offensive into Russia’s Kursk region.

Officials said families with children living in Pokrovsk and surrounding villages would be forced to leave.

The head of the city’s military government, Serhii Dobriak, said residents had at most two weeks to flee the Russian advance.

The strategically important city is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistical hub for Kyiv’s troops on the eastern front.

Ukrainians told to ‘charge everything’ as power grid hit by Russia | BBC News

October 20, 2022October 19, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ukraine’s national energy company has urged citizens to “charge everything” by 07:00 (04:00 GMT) Thursday because of expected power cuts caused by Russian missile strikes.

Energy plants were hit by Russian missiles again on Wednesday – part of a wave of such strikes since 10 October.

Outages of up to four hours at a time will affect the whole country on Thursday, grid operator Ukrenergo said.

Phones, power banks, torches and batteries need to be charged, it urged.

Which companies are pulling out of Russia? | BBC News

March 14, 2022March 13, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Thirty years ago when communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, Western firms stepped up their presence in Russia.

The arrival of big Western companies symbolised the start of a new era with Russians becoming eager consumers of brands ranging from fast-food chain McDonalds to Levi jeans and luxury goods.

Now, in the wake of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a growing number of firms have suspended activities in Russia.

So which firms, in which sectors, are exiting and why have others held back?

A Russian cyberwar may not boost security stocks much further | CNN

March 8, 2022March 7, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tech stocks, like the rest of the broader market, have seen their fair share of ups and downs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February. But for one part of the technology sector — cybersecurity -— it’s been a roaring bull market for the past few weeks.

The ETFMG Prime Cyber Security (HACK) and First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity (CIBR) exchange-traded funds, which both own shares of top cybersecurity companies such as Zscaler (ZS), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Cloudflare (NET), Fortinet (FTNT) and Splunk (SPLK), have each surged about 10% since Russia attacked Ukraine.

The rally makes sense. After all, there are growing concerns about cyber warfare from Russia against the West in response to sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Millions in Bitcoin pouring into Ukraine from donors | BBC News

February 28, 2022February 27, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Cryptocurrency analysts say at least $13.7m (£10.2m) has so far been donated to the Ukrainian war effort through anonymous Bitcoin donations.

Researchers at Elliptic, a blockchain analysis company, say the Ukrainian government, NGOs and volunteer groups have raised the money by advertising their Bitcoin wallet addresses online.

More than 4,000 donations have been made so far, with one unknown donor gifting Bitcoin worth $3m to an NGO.

The median donation is $95.

35 Years Later, Studies Show a Silver Lining From Chernobyl | WIRED

May 3, 2021May 2, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

ON THIS DAY in 1986, workers ran a safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine. But the test went awry, starting a fire in a reactor and leading to one of the largest nuclear disasters in history. Smoke from the fire and a second explosion launched radioactive elements into the atmosphere, scattering them over the surrounding fields and towns. Now, 35 years later, scientists are still uncovering the extent of the damage and starting to answer questions about the long-term legacy of radiation exposure on power plant workers, the people in the nearby community, and even their family members born years later.

In two papers published Thursday in Science, an international team of researchers took on two very different but important questions. The first paper tracked the effects of radiation on the children of people who were exposed and found that there were no transgenerational mutations that were passed down from those parents. The second focused on thyroid cancer caused by radiation exposure and examined how radiation acts on DNA to cause the growth of cancerous tumors.

Crash Override Malware Took Down Ukraine’s Power Grid Last December | WIRED

June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

AT MIDNIGHT, A week before last Christmas, hackers struck an electric transmission station north of the city of Kiev, blacking out a portion of the Ukrainian capital equivalent to a fifth of its total power capacity. The outage lasted about an hour—hardly a catastrophe. But now, cybersecurity researchers have found disturbing evidence that the blackout may have only been a dry run. The hackers appear to have been testing the most evolved specimen of grid-sabotaging malware ever observed in the wild.

So How Will Drone Deliveries Work Exactly? | Co.Exist

June 29, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ukraine has joined a number of postal services that are testing drones. But these tests are doing more than hooking up a parcel to a quadcopter, flying it, and then discussing the implications. The Ukrainian postal service, UkrPoshta, is working with the Israeli drone company Flytrex to bring regular drone deliveries to the country.

The chief advantage of drone deliveries is that they are cheap. Each drone delivery costs just $0.15, even though it runs point-to-point, heading out from the depot to the delivery destination and back again for each package. Three drones are expected to be able to ferry the same amount of cargo as one van—without the expense of a driver. “It never needs to take a lunch break,” says Flytrap CEO Yariv Bash.