_Happy boy

Keto diet, also known as the ketogenic diet, is a low-carb diet in which one consumes fats in high amount while protein is consumed in adequate amounts along with fewer carbohydrates. So if you are someone who follows the keto diet, which is known to promote rapid weight loss, we have the perfect recipe for you. However, it is always advised to seek medical opinion before you begin with any diet. This easy recipe not only requires just two simple ingredients but also has just 1 net carb! So why don’t you check out the recipe and try these yummy crackers over the weekend? 60 g – Almond flour 60 g – Parmesan cheese Seasoning (optional) Water Steps Take a mixer grinder and add blanched almond flour and grated parmesan cheese in equal amounts (60 grams). Now mix it and then add 2 tbsp water to it. Mix again for a minute and repeat the process, but with 1 tbsp water. Now knead the mixture into a dough and place it over a parchment sheet on the kitchen slab. Press it flat and using your hands, roughly giving it a rectangular shape. Cover it with another parchment sheet and roll it using a rolling pin. Once you see the top parchment sheet becoming transparent, stop. Remove the sheet and cut it into little square pieces. Using a toothpick, mark tiny holes on the surface of the dough. Cut out the extra parchment sheet from the corners and transfer the crackers onto a flat glass plate and put in the microwave. Cook them for 2 minutes with a one-minute interval. Let them cool down for 5-10 minutes. Once done, add some salt or oregano for garnishing (optional) and enjoy! Here are other keto recipes you can check out:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today his government is bracing for potential "disruptions" if the U.S. election results are not clear. During an event to announce funding for electric vehicle production today, Trudeau said he watched only "clips" from the televised presidential and vice-presidential debates. He said his focus is squarely on keeping Canadians safe during the pandemic — but added that his government is also tracking political developments south of the border and their potential impact on Canada. "I think we're certainly all hoping for a smooth transition or a clear result from the election, like many people are around the world," Trudeau said. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today his government is bracing for potential "disruptions" if the U.S. election results are not clear. During an event to announce funding for electric vehicle production today, Trudeau said he watched only "clips" from the televised presidential and vice-presidential debates. He said his focus is squarely on keeping Canadians safe during the pandemic — but added that his government is also tracking political developments south of the border and their potential impact on Canada. "I think we're certainly all hoping for a smooth transition or a clear result from the election, like many people are around the world," Trudeau said. Last week, Trudeau urged politicians of all stripes to unite behind the fight against COVID-19 after U.S. President Donald Trump tested positive following months of downplaying the pandemic. Trudeau said the pandemic has become a political lightning rod in the U.S. "Obviously, there is an election going on in the U.S. where the stances or approaches on COVID-19 have been a polarized, political issue," he said. "In Canada, we've been extremely lucky that it has not. There has been a concerted effort across orders of government, across political parties, to work together to be there for Canadians and to get this virus under control. We're certainly going to continue with that in Canada and we recommend it as a path for people all around the world." Wednesday evening's vice-presidential debate focused largely on the Trump administration's response to the global pandemic — with U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence defending actions that he claimed saved thousands of lives, while Democratic challenger Sen. Kamala Harris condemned Washington's pandemic response as "the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country." Trudeau, who was holding a joint event with Ontario Premier Doug Ford today, said the pandemic has drawn the two former political adversaries together to help Canadians get through the health and economic crisis. "Governments across the country, of whatever political stripe, all want the same thing — to keep people safe, to bring our economy back as quickly as possible and support these communities into the future," the prime minister said. "On that, Premier Ford and I and all others find great common ground."

Contra . low activity channel ts3

Privacy-focused web browser Brave has announced its websites will now be available directly from the dark web, which will provide a greater pool of users with secure access to its service. Built upon the notion that advertisements should be optional and web browsing private, Brave is committed to allowing its users to protect their metadata, shield activity from internet service providers (ISPs) and block ad trackers. In support of this mission, Brave-operated websites have been made available via Tor, the portal to dark web .onion addresses. Although the dark web is renowned for the illegal activity it facilitates, many of these addresses provide a legitimate option for netizens without full access to the public internet. Check out our list of the best VPN services out there Here's our list of the best Windows 10 VPN apps around We've built a list of the best business VPN services on the market Via Tor, Brave.com can now be accessed at Brave.onion (a dark web URL), which gives even those with censored internet access - e.g. citizens of China or India - the chance to download and use the Brave browser. Anonymous browsing Brave announced its first integration with Tor back in 2018, in the form of a Tor-powered private browsing Window, described as “a new mode that helps protect users’ privacy not only on device but over the network.” During the same period, Brave also began contributing to the Tor network by operating a handful of relays, through which internet traffic is ricocheted in order to conceal the identity of the individual making the original request. The move to make Brave websites available via Tor marks yet another step in the relationship between the two organizations, whose objectives so often overlap. “We are, and always have been, hugely thankful for the work and mission that the Tor team brings to the world,” wrote Ben Kero, DevOps Engineer at Brave. “To continue our support, we wanted to make our website and browser accessible to Tor users by creating Tor onion services for Brave websites. These services are a way to protect users’ metadata, such as their real location, and enhance the security of our already-encrypted traffic,” he added. Here's our list of the best anonymous browsers right now

It's October now, which means it's mask season. Or, it would be if this whole year weren't mask season. At any rate, it seems that Nvidia's getting in on the holiday cheer with its newly announced Nvidia Maxine video streaming platform, which (among other features) essentially lets you video chat while wearing a deepfake style mask of...yourself. Maybe the result wasn't intended to be spooky, but looking at Nvidia's video demonstrations, Maxine is perfectly fitting for October. Maxine actually comes with a bunch of features, but the one that first caught my eye was its new AI-assisted video compression tool. Have you ever wanted to deepfake your own face? Or turn your own face into a virtual chat avatar to then animate with something like the Facerig tool that's so common among virtual youtubers like Kizuna Ai? Because that's essentially what this tool does, all with the end goal of reducing bandwidth and (maybe) improving video streaming quality. Essentially, rather than constantly sending video data to whoever you're chatting with, this new video compression tool sends them a static picture of your face, then reads the movements of your lips, eyes, cheeks and other key facial features to animate that picture on the other end using AI. Nvidia gives an example of a video stream using nearly 100KB per frame vs. an AI compressed stream using just 0.12KB per frame, meaning about a 1000X difference in size. The result is a mostly realistic depiction of what you actually look like talking, but with much less data being sent over the network. Emphasis on "mostly." Because the compression tool isn't actually sending video, but is instead animating a static picture, it has to make some guesses, which results in things like blurry teeth, fuzzy edges and an animatronic style feel on some motions. It's up to you whether a lower bandwidth cost is worth some uncanny valley imagery, but it does kind of feel like a little like an alien is wearing a skin suit in Nvidia's example video. Assuming those kinks get worked out, it still feels odd that we could eventually live in a future where video chats essentially use computer-generated facsimiles of our own faces...which we would operate using actual video of those same faces. And, like deepfakes, this does raise questions as to potential impersonation. Could I send someone a picture of Tim Cook and just map my facial movements to his face? But given that this is currently being positioned as a developer-focused tool rather than a consumer-facing one, companies might consider the tradeoff in realism worth it for increased performance. Of course, Maxine doesn't stop just at recreating your face. It's also promising AI-powered 'enhancements,' like Face Re-animation. The concept here is pretty simple. Say you're focusing your eyes on a certain corner of your monitor screen, or tilting your head off to the side so you can look at a second monitor. Much like the AI video compression outlined above, Face Re-animation will use a still reference image and your facial movement data to adjust how you look on camera so that you appear to be looking directly at the screen, with your eyes focused on its center. Nvidia's example video shows that this still has a ways to go, as the re-animated face is distinctly lower quality than the input data and stutters a bit as it moves to the center. It also comes with the same uncanny valley quality as the AI video compression tool. But assuming this all gets worked out, I could see something like this being helpful for workers who need to multitask during meetings, or even students dealing with overly aggressive virtual learning software punishing them for not looking directly at the screen. On a less unsettling end of the spectrum, Maxine also promises AI-assisted video upscaling, which could help those who don't have the best webcams, as well as similar features to RTX Voice's noise reduction and Nvidia Broadcast's auto-frame. Nvidia's demo video also briefly shows off tools for live language translation and for mapping facial movements to cartoon avatars, which might help offset the uncanny valley nature of Maxine's AI compression and Face Re-animation tools. We currently don't know much about these features, but they seem like they'd be genuinely helpful regardless of whether someone is a developer or not. For now, Nvidia Maxine isn't coming straight to consumers. Instead, Nvidia's offering free cloud access to it to third-party firms, who can then use it to improve their own software. That's probably good, because while running these tools locally off your own RTX cards could improve performance, keeping them to the cloud will make them more accessible to the average person and will go further toward normalizing them. Still, communications firm Avaya is the only partner to have currently announced that it's using Maxine, so don't expect to see these features popping up in your Zoom calls anytime soon. All jokes aside, as work-from-home continues to be the new normal acrossplenty of industries, it's not surprising to see companies like Nvidia step up to try to make these spaces easier and more professional. Even if it means they have to walk through the uncanny valley first.

Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto are meant for, well, cars and automobiles, but despite the emphasis on landlubber locomotion, there’s technically no reason that one couldn’t use them for navigating the high seas. And that’s just what Boss Audio’s new aftermarket MRCP9685A head unit promises: a weatherproof module that offers the ability to use CarPlay and Android Auto not just in regular cars, but in off-road vehicles like Jeeps and even boats. Installing an aftermarket head unit into a boat isn’t a new concept, but getting a weatherproof one that supports both CarPlay or Android Auto and the rigors of the seafaring life is more difficult. At least one enterprising Reddit user has already tried to jury-rig a similar implementation by installing a standard car unit, noting that CarPlay worked “perfectly,” but that they still had some work to do to make everything water-resistant. But the MRCP9685A neatly dodges that issue: it’s designed with “marine-grade” weatherproofing, meaning you’ll be able to install it in any boat that accepts a standard double DIN head unit. In addition to support for CarPlay and Android Auto (over a standard USB cable, just like a car), the MRCP9685A also features support for Bluetooth audio, rear camera inputs for cars, and an integrated radio tuner. Of course, being an aftermarket head unit, you’ll still need to install the MRCP9685A yourself (or hire a professional to do it for you). But if you’ve been dying for a way to use Android Nautical or BoatPlay out on the water, Boss Audio’s new setup seems like it could be the answer. The MRCP9685A is available from Boss Audio’s website for $289.99.

DAYTON, Ohio (WKEF/WRGT) - Five River Metro Parks is launching an initiative to help improve peoples physical and mental health by taking them outdoors. The Heart Healthy Trails initiative involve three existing trails : Wolf Creek Trail, Island MetroPark and Germantown MetroPark. According to the Five River Metroparks, these trails are: Easy to moderate 1 to 2.5 miles long Walkable at a brisk pace Marked every quarter mile to help keep track of pace. “These are easy, entry-level trails on paved or flat surfaces without a lot of elevation change,” said Angie Sheldon, MetroParks outdoor recreation coordinator. “Signage on the trails also helps people start walking outdoors as part of a heart-healthy lifestyle. Each trail is a little different, depending on the location and length, so people can try them all or pick a favorite.” According to the American Heart Association, exercising outdoors provide benefits that traditional gym workouts do not. These include reduction in depression and stress, an increase in vitamin D and more. Plans are currently in the works to add two additional trails as well.

Coronavirus vaccine tracker: The United States drug regulator, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has asked developers of coronavirus vaccine to monitor the health of trial participants for at least two months before applying for an approval. The new stricter guidelines issued by the FDA on Tuesday almost rules out all chances of a vaccine becoming available, or getting approved, before the US Presidential elections on November 3, something that President Donald Trump has repeatedly said was possible. The guidelines were finalised and sent for President’s approval about two weeks ago, but the White House had been sitting over it all this while, according to a report in The New York Times. The approval finally came on Tuesday. Four leading candidates for coronavirus vaccine are currently undergoing phase-3 clinical trials, the last stage of testing, in the United States. Pfizer has said that it hoped to get reliable data on the effectiveness of its vaccine in the month of October itself. It has said if the effectiveness data was satisfactory, it would immediately apply for emergency use approval for its vaccine. Pfizer’s timeline had triggered speculation that a vaccine might indeed get approved before the November 3 date. However, FDA’s new guideline could delay such ambitious timelines. The new guidelines also ask the developers to submit additional data on their trial participants, including on those who have been administered a dummy instead of the actual vaccine. The trials of AstraZeneca vaccine, stopped a month ago after one of the trial participants in the UK had developed a serious ailment, are yet to resume in the United States. The US authorities have ordered an investigation into the entire episode, even though trials in other countries, UK, Brazil, South Africa and India, have re-started. The two other companies, whose vaccines are in phase-3 trials, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, have said they hoped that their vaccine would be ready early next year. Russia fast-tracking a second coronavirus vaccine Russia has been developing another coronavirus vaccine, its second, and is speeding up its development to ensure an approval by the middle of this month, a report in The Wall Street Journal said. Russia’s first vaccine, approved by the country’s regulator on August 12, had been widely criticised because it had not undergone phase-3 clinical trials, something that is being initiated only now. It was later clarified that the approval was only conditional, and for emergency use, and that it was contingent on phase-3 trials being conducted later. That vaccine is already being administered in Russia, and is planned to be used by other countries as well, including India. Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy’s Laboratories has entered into an agreement to distribute the vaccine in India. But before it can be used on Indian po[CENSORED]tion, the Russian vaccine, as is the case with any vaccine developed outside the country, would have to undergo late stage clinical trials in India. Those trials are expected to begin next month. The Wall Street Journal said the second vaccine was being developed by a former Soviet bioweapons research laboratory called Vector State Virology and Biotechnology Centre. It quoted the Russian Health Minister as saying that he expected the vaccine to get the approval as early as mid-October. Hunt for coronavirus vaccine: The story so far 193 vaccine candidates in pre-clinical or clinical trials 42 of them in clinical trials Ten in final stages, phase-III of human trials At least eight candidate vaccines being developed in India. Two of these have entered phase -II trials after completing phase-I. The ones most talked about: * AstraZeneca/Oxford University * Moderna * Pfizer/BioNTech * Johnson & Johnson * Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline * Novavax * Russian vaccine, developed by Gamaleya Institute in Moscow * Three Chinese vaccines that have been approved for use in China without phase-3 trials being completed. One of them has been given emergency use authorisation in UAE (As on October 6; source: WHO Coronavirus vaccine landscape of October 2, 2020)

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Game information Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Nintendo 3DS) Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Released: December 9, 2014 MSRP: $29.99 The visual novel has been ubiquitous in Japan since the early ‘90s, but in the West they've never truly caught on. Whether it was the U.S.’s love for its own home-grown adventure games like Sierra’s King’s Quest, the SCUMM games by LucasArts, or the absolute pain it is to translate games from Japanese that can be over 450 English pages long, it's never been clear as to why that is. In fact, it wasn't really until the early 2000s that they finally started catching on. The Nintendo DS was the platform many English-speaking gamers experienced their first visual novel on, through none other than Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney had the right blend of Japanese humor and adventure aspects to break into the Western market. Hardcore gamers weren't the only audience to fall in love with Phoenix Wright though. The DS was in part responsible for the now multi-billion-dollar casual gaming industry and the Ace Attorney himself gained fans from all walks of life. The series has only continued to grow in scope and fanbase, and a new sequel is said to be in the works for the Nintendo 3DS. The English version that debuted the character of Phoenix Wright, which released on the Nintendo DS, is actually a port. The original version of the game was released on the Game Boy Advance and has since been ported to Windows, iOS, Wii, and recently the first three in the original Phoenix Wright Trilogy were ported to Nintendo 3DS. Going into reviewing the 3DS trilogy, I was initially concerned that the series wouldn’t stand the test of time, but I was pleasantly surprised. The first game is by far the simplest of the series. It follows the titular Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright during his first cases straight out of law school, and focuses on his relationships with his law firm boss' sister Maya Fey and childhood friend turned rival Miles Edgeworth. The story still holds up solidly throughout the game's main four cases (and one bonus case), but compared to the later entries in the series, the cases are played in a fairly straightforward manner, with cross-examinations, introduction of evidence, and objections being fairly obvious and non-branching. It’s still an absolute blast to play through, especially if you’ve never experienced it before, but like I felt in 2005, I wish there had been multiple ways to get a verdict. The fifth case is a bit more exotic though, as it’s the bonus case made specifically for the Nintendo DS and as such uses the touch screen and microphone for dusting for prints, or spraying luminol. The second game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All, is probably my favorite of the three and is where the series really came together to define the formula that would take Ace Attorney from merely good to excellent. The game takes place roughly a year after the first and all the familiar faces return. It offers four cases to solve, involving amnesia, mediums, circuses, kidnappings, and dirty, dirty, murder. It features the best pace and variety of the three games, and the cases don’t go by too fast or too slow, remaining challenging without being frustrating. It introduces the Psyche-Lock system, in which Phoenix can use the correct evidence to “unlock a witness's heart” and allow questioning that they would otherwise clam up at. Unfortunately though, this game’s cases received none of the DS treatment the bonus mission did in the first game, so after completing it, this game can feel like a step back, even with the addition of Psyche-Locks. Unfortunately, the finale of the trilogy, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, is for me the weakest in the series as far as gameplay is concerned, lacking the originality of the first, or the innovation of the second. It feels like more of the same, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as the story is still quite strong in its own way. Trials and Tribulations serves as a prequel focusing on Mia Fey, Phoenix’s first boss, and on the events directly after Justice For All. However, this game can be quite frustrating because of its expansion of a concept introduced in the second. At times Phoenix can get an answer so wrong that the Judge instantly gives you a game over. In the second title this was fairly rare, and easy to recover from, but in Trials and Tribulations the frequency has increased quite a bit, and for a game that is at its core fairly linear, making a player repeat 15 or twenty minutes of dialogue is a sure way to get them to turn off their 3DS. While the games are still excellent, there’s not really anything new added for their 3DS release. These are basically a port of the iOS version, with a simple yet adequate 3D layer tacked on. What you see is what you’ll get. There are no new bonus cases or ways to play -- just regular old Phoenix Wright un, deux, and trois. It is somewhat disappointing that these games aren’t a true remaster, but at ten dollars a game, it could be a lot worse. I typically do my handheld gaming on my 3DS, so it’s nice to have a copy of the three games that’s sharp, easy on the eyes, and digital. If you’ve never played Phoenix Wright, or if you’ve only played one or two of the original trilogy, this collection is a great way to finally rectify that. However, if you’ve picked them up for the DS, or the Wii, or iOS (or Windows for our Japanese friends), you may want to pass unless you're looking for a convenient way to experience the games. With no new features aside from the rudimentary 3D, this collection is meant to satisfy those who haven’t come to love the unique and colorful world of Phoenix Wright. If you know someone who hasn’t been so fortuitous, take one of those shiny new gift cards you just got and get them a copy. You’ll be doing them a favor. System Requirements OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8.1, 10 (64bit) Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-4160. Memory: 4 GB RAM. Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 4400. DirectX: Version 11. Storage: 1.8 GB available space. Additional Notes: *Recommended Controller Xbox 360 Controller (Windows®7/8.1) Xbox One Wireless Controller (Windows®10)

If you’ve opened up Task Manager recently, you may have been surprised to see a long list of processes all connected to your web browser. Well, Microsoft has explained why your seemingly lightweight browser has so much going on behind the scenes. In a recent blog post, the Microsoft Edge team explained that modern browsers perform an increasingly large number of processes – they are far more than just document viewers – and this is reflected in the amount of memory they use at any given time. This Firefox update should prevent your browser from crashing Everyone’s least favorite web browser will soon be impossible to uninstall Best anonymous browsers of 2020 Trust the process Like many other modern web browsers, Microsoft Edge employs a multi-process architecture in order to provide better security, reliability and resource accountability. By splitting up and isolating a browser’s processes, it means that even if the renderer process – the one interacting with a website – is compromised, an attacker cannot take control of a user’s device entirely. Similarly, in terms of reliability, if one web app or extension crashes, others should remain unaffected. “Browsers today are more like operating systems than document viewers,” explained Allison Pastewka, Program Manager at Microsoft Edge. “Users are performing an increasing number of tasks in the browser, and fewer in desktop applications. However, every web page, web app, and extension uses memory. As a result, users are often concerned about how memory usage impacts their experience.” In addition to the main browser process and the renderer process, among the most common processes that make up a browser’s architecture are the GPU process, utility processes, plug-in processes and the crashpad handler process. When checking Task Manager, a user may see multiple versions of these processes for each tab or extension that they are currently running. If you’ve ever wondered why your browser was using so much of your computer’s resources, now you know.

There will not be an International Auto Show in Quebec City in March 2021. Organizers say the event could not be held safely due to the pandemic. The protection of visitors and the quality of the experience offered remain at the heart of our concerns. It would be unrealistic to produce an international auto show in Quebec as grandiose as in past years while respecting the sanitary measures prescribed by Public Health, said in a press release the director general, Charles Drouin. Management still says it is working on a plan B for March 2021. The month of March is a very important month for the automotive industry in the greater Quebec City region and rest assured that we will participate in promoting the latter, announces Charles Drouin. The cancellation of the Quebec City Auto Show could affect the revenues of some businesses in the region, particularly in the tourism sector. The event generates, according to its organizers, nearly $ 4.7 million in economic benefits in six days, including $ 1.2 million in the tourism sector. Almost 70,000 people annually visit the Quebec City International Auto Show.

Every day we are bombarded by the amount of deaths and new cases of the virus. We are told to wear our mask, avoid gathering in groups, wash our hands, stay home if we are sick, and the latest one: get tested. But why is our state barely emphasizing the importance of living a healthy lifestyle? Our politicians should be considering the work of individuals and community organizations that work toward educating the public about the importance of healthy lifestyle behaviors. Like most in the fitness industry I am out of work and I have no control over when I can return to doing what I enjoy. Other people may disagree, but I believe that fitness and nutrition are the foundation to prevent chronic illness and disease. After taking some time to reflect, our society seems to be more invested in preserving the lifestyle that has led us to this pandemic. But here is the hard truth: we were already a virus as a whole. We numb our flaws and insecurities with self-sabotaging behaviors that lead to heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, and obesity. People buy and consume food that is terrible for our overall nutrition, a majority of individuals live a sedentary lifestyle, and social media controls how we feel. The hysteria of the virus has led most of us to be in a state of fear, loss, and scarcity. In all our minds leading into 2020, we were all doing everything right, and yet everything went wrong. The way I see it, this pandemic was bound to happen. As human beings we have lost our self-awareness and forgot how the sum of all our negative and ignorant actions can make an impact. We were complacent and took things for granted. We now have this “outrage at everything, I am not to blame” mentality. Root Causes The true lesson from the pandemic is that we have failed to follow the basics. If we want to move forward and be proactive with our approach to the virus, we should be asking: Why was the standard to care for ourselves mentally and physically set so low in the first place? Why weren’t adults practicing simple hygiene, like washing your hands? Why was it okay for places of public gathering like airlines, hotels, and cruise ships to not have deep cleanings on a regular basis? If we are working to prevent the virus, then public health officials should discuss the root causes of a dysfunctional immune system. Some lifestyle factors that pose a higher risk for illness are chronic stress, lack of sleep, nutrient deficiencies, and physical inactivity. Currently, we have people trapped inside their homes, sitting around, stressing about unemployment, and living in fear from every new story about or related to the pandemic. Furthermore, the long-term effects of people’s health will end up outweighing the minimal effects that COVID-19 has statistically had throughout the world. It is easy to be swayed by the mainstream media outlets that this virus is more tragic due to the push on people’s moral compasses when speaking of the death toll, but the reality is that being locked down and restricted is going to hurt us more due to obesity, depression, and stress, which have each caused more deaths in comparison. Most of our current problems can be avoided with common sense and preventative lifestyle measures. Instead of only talking about social distancing to prevent the spread of disease we should be talking about how we can improve our lifestyles to live with and be strong enough to beat the virus. Community Voices aims to encourage broad discussion on many topics of community interest. It’s kind of a cross between Letters to the Editor and op-eds. This is your space to talk about important issues or interesting people who are making a difference in our world. Column lengths should be no more than 800 words and we need a photo of the author and a bio. We welcome video commentary and other multimedia formats. Send to news@civilbeat.org. The opinions and information expressed in Community Voices are solely those of the authors and not Civil Beat. Before you go… During a crisis like this, it’s more important than ever to dig beyond the news, to figure out what government policies mean for ordinary citizens and how those policies were put together. This is perhaps the biggest, most consequential story our reporters will ever cover. And at no other time in Civil Beat’s history have we relied on your support more. Please consider supporting Civil Beat by making a tax-deductible gift.

Conflicting accounts of the president’s condition underline the fact that the public does not have a definitive answer about the president’s health. WASHINGTON — When Dr. Sean P. Conley stepped in front of the cameras at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday, he delivered a briefing that seemed intended less to inform the American public than to satisfy the public relations demands of a famous and famously demanding patient — President Trump. “He’s doing great,” he said. But moments later, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, speaking off camera and on the assumption he would not be identified, offered a contradictory assessment, noting “the president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning, and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.” “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery,” he added. The radically different message was stunning, and at first attributed, at Mr. Meadows’s insistence, to “a source familiar with the president’s health” speaking on background, but later identified as the chief of staff. The discordant statements were a revealing insight into the dynamics behind the Trump White House’s frequent release of misleading information, particularly about the president’s health. Dr. Conley is a Navy doctor and Mr. Trump is not only his patient but his commander in chief. The president is known to be especially interested in presenting his health in the best possible light, and his health has never been an issue the way it is now. It is almost certain he was watching Dr. Conley’s news conference on TV in his hospital room. For Mr. Meadows, the clarification appeared to be an effort to lay some groundwork for the possibility that Mr. Trump’s condition could worsen, raising the prospect of a potential transfer of power to Vice President Mike Pence under the 25th Amendment. Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina, also may have been concerned about his own credibility with journalists in a post-Trump political world. But the net result of the two conflicting accounts was that in the middle of a pandemic and election that have accentuated the distrust of the government by both left and right, the American public does not have a definitive answer to the condition of the first president to be hospitalized since Ronald Reagan. Unlock more free articles. Create an account or log in While misleading information has been a hallmark of the Trump presidency, the White House physician — Dr. Conley and before him, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson — has been put in a particularly awkward position and provided murky, inaccurate and sometimes inappropriate accounts of Mr. Trump’s health that have included a description, in Dr. Jackson’s case, of the president’s “incredible genes.” All have been in service of a president who has refused to disclose any details about his physical condition that would undermine the narrative that despite his age, 74, a diet that is heavy on fast food and a deep aversion to exercise, he has the stamina and strength of a man half his age. Hours after Dr. Conley’s Saturday news conference, during which he dodged questions about whether the president had been on oxygen and inaccurately suggested that Mr. Trump was only “slightly overweight,” Dr. Conley was forced to issue a correction on some of his remarks. After saying the president had been diagnosed 72 hours before, which would have meant that Mr. Trump continued with a normal schedule of rallies and fund-raisers despite knowing he was ill, Dr. Conley retracted the timeline. “I incorrectly used the term ‘72 hours’ instead of ‘Day 3’” with regards to Mr. Trump’s diagnosis, he said, adding that the president first tested positive on Thursday night. It was not the first time Dr. Conley found himself in an awkward position because of his patient. In May, Dr. Conley — an osteopathic physician — issued a statement announcing that Mr. Trump was taking hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug the president promoted as a measure to fight the coronavirus, despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration that it can cause heart problems and from the medical community that its use should be discouraged. “This, perhaps, is a case of the president, not the physician, guiding the course of treatment,” Matthew Algeo, the author of “The President Is a Sick Man,” wrote in The Atlantic. He has described Mr. Trump as less transparent about his health than even other presidents who have hidden serious ailments. In the statement, Dr. Conley said he had “concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks” and later said that the president completed the treatment “safely and without side effects.” The White House doctor has also never provided any explanation for the president’s unannounced trip to Walter Reed in November 2019, when it was recently disclosed in a book by Michael Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, that Mr. Pence was put on standby to take over the powers of the presidency. In response, Dr. Conley released a statement backing up the president. “I can confirm that President Trump has not experienced nor been evaluated for a cerebrovascular accident (stroke), transient ischemic attack (ministroke) or any acute cardiovascular emergencies, as have been incorrectly reported in the media,” Dr. Conley said.

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Nickname : @#Loenex Tag your opponent : @XZoro™ Music genre : Rap Number of votes : 6 Tag one leader to post your songs LIST : @XZoro™

my vote is DH2 its good muisc good luck ❤️

Game information Wattam (PC, PS4 [reviewed on PlayStation 4 Pro]) Developer: Funomena Publisher: Annapurna Interactive Released: December 17, 2019 MSRP: $19.99 Wattam, the new "goof-around" game from Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi, is like burrowing yourself in a fuzzy blanket that's still radiating heat from the dryer. It's silly, jovial, and above all, cozy. I came in expecting a toy-box world with an eclectic band of characters, and that's pretty much what I got. There are no wild game mechanics to master or brain-busting puzzles to decipher – but there is a proper story, one that kept me surprisingly engaged and motivated the whole way through. If you're in the mood for a cute game about cute people doing cute stuff, you'll feel at home Starting as the lonely Mayor, a green box-shaped fellow with a playful bomb tucked under his hat, you'll continuously expand not only your list of playable pals (to over 100), but also the scope of the world, which is split up across several floating islands. Each step of the way, you'll make new friends – the game has two separate buttons dedicated to hand-holding! – and try to solve their problems. A sushi father might need help rounding up his roe children. A towering tree might want to suck up people, Whispy Woods-style, and turn them into fruit. A toilet might want to flush some junk. A huge part of the joy of this game comes from the fun and funny ways in which characters interact. By the end, it devolves into beautiful chaos, sometimes to the detriment of the frame rate (but not in a game-breaking sort of way). Initially, you'll use the right analog stick to swap between characters with a hovering cursor. Further in, you'll come to rely on a collection list that lets you instantly switch over. Wattam has a few tough puzzles to crack, but for the most part, you'll be able to immediately glean what you need to do next and how to go about doing it. In some ways, I wish the game was a bit more gradual with this information – that it gave you more breathing room before dishing out clues. That said, I also understand who Wattam is for: a whole range of people with different backgrounds. The controls, objectives, and visual concepts are simplified and universal enough that casual players should have a smooth time working things out. There's also enough creativity to hold seasoned players' attention. While the game doesn't make a big fuss about this, drop-in local co-op is the way to go. Wattam is definitely something I'll want to revisit when I have kids. It's a toy-box come to life How long is the game? I spent five hours on the story, then a few extra hours messing around and trying to work out some of the more obscure character interactions, which felt like plenty. (Do yourself a favor and don't stop playing until you've filled in the final spots on the roster. They're such a pleasant surprise.) If you want to eke out even more time in this lovable world, there are quite a few trophies. I'm not sure if Takahashi will ever be able to top Katamari Damacy – for my money, it's one of the greatest video games ever made – but Wattam captures that sense of whimsy and magic in its own way. The care-free music and gosh-darn-huggable character designs make this a must-play for fans. I kind of hope Funomena never makes figurines, because I'll spend way too much money on them. Operational System: Windows XP. Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.10GHz / AMD Athlon II X3 455. Video Card: GeForce GT 720 / Radeon R7 240. RAM Free: 2 GB RAM. Disk Space (HD): 15 GB Free. Directx Version: Directx 9.

Shares of Ford Motor Company rose 2.1% on Friday after the automaker reported 3Q US sales data which reflects the industry’s stronger-than-expected recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The company noted that though its US auto sales fell 4.9% to 551,796 units year-on-year, it significantly outperformed an industry decline of 10%. Ford’s (F) 3Q sales data also reflected a robust sequential improvement of 27.2%. Strong demand for pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles mainly boosted the second-largest US automaker’s 3Q sales. The combined sales of F-Series and Ranger pickup trucks increased 4% to 249,997 units year-over-year. Sales for F-Series pickup trucks grew 3.5% while Ranger demonstrated an 8.2% growth. Deliveries for Ford’s sports utility vehicles – Explorer and LincoIn – grew 73.9% and 222%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis. (See F stock analysis on TipRanks). Mark LaNeve, Ford vice president, U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service said, “Despite the challenging pandemic environment, our retail unit sales were down only 2 percent and we had our best third quarter of pickup truck sales since 2005. F-Series finished the quarter on a high note with September sales up 17.2 percent with over 76,000 F-Series pickups sold. This is a testament to our winning product portfolio and the performance of our great dealers.” On August 17, Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy reaffirmed a Hold rating on the stock and a price target of $8 (16.1% upside potential). In a broader industry research note, Levy said that Ford should use the strength in its North American trucking business to fund its electric vehicle development programs. Currently, the Street is sidelined on the stock. The Hold analyst consensus is based on 6 Holds, 3 Buys and 1 Sell. With shares down nearly 25.9% year-to-date, the average analyst price target of $7.54 implies upside potential of 9.4% from current levels.

My fellow anarchists of New York City: OK, it looks like the jig is up. The government is on to us. The White House recently labeled New York City an “anarchist jurisdiction,” along with those felt-wearing, Teva-sniffers in Portland and Seattle. Come on! The first rule of New York City Anarchy Club is nobody talks about New York City Anarchy Club. Who squealed to the Feds? Still: There’s nothing to be embarrassed by. If you live in New York City, you know anarchy isn’t a dirty word—it’s a lifestyle. This is a town that gave the world the chaotic greatness of the Ramones, Lou Reed, Public Enemy, street-cleaning double-parking and the 1986 Mets. This is town where jaywalking is a right, where a crosswalk is a mere suggestion, where real-estate agents show studio apartments with toilets in the kitchens, and, if you don’t give a stranger a middle finger before 9 a.m., you’re living completely wrong. Anarchy is in the water here, like fluoride, and toilet alligators. This town embraces chaos. New York City is home to LaGuardia Airport, the most haywire travel hub in the history of humankind. Have you ever flown out of LaGuardia? When they scan your ticket, they just look at you, laugh, and say “Sorry.” If you haven’t been delayed six hours at LaGuardia and eaten a soft pretzel for dinner, you’re not officially a New Yorker. Anarchy is in the water here, like fluoride, and toilet alligators. New York City remains a place where you can order weed and a lobster at 2 a.m., where people light fireworks on a Tuesday night just because, and if you can’t fit your brand new couch up your staircase, some guy named Gus will come with a chain saw and slice it up right there on the sidewalk, like a brisket. Then Gus will carry your Frankencouch upstairs and magically stitch it together—all for the low, low price of $1100. Everyone knows this. None of it is new. I don’t get what point the Feds are trying to make. Have the Feds ever stepped into a New York City Trader Joe’s on a Sunday? Have the Feds ever tried to call an NYC cable company and asked them to fix the cable? Have the Feds ever been to a Brooklyn open house for a two-bedroom apartment under $1 million? Have the Feds ever watched the Knicks? They have no idea what anarchy is.

When Mira Assaf Kafantaris’s husband woke her up late Thursday night, she was worried that something had happened to her parents. They live in Lebanon, she told me, and because of the time difference, she’s always afraid that if they were ever hurt, she would get a call while she was asleep. But her husband had less personal news to share—he wanted to tell her that President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, had contracted COVID-19. Kafantaris, a college professor who lives in Columbus, Ohio, said that her husband had seen the news when checking his phone on a late-night bathroom break. (The president announced his diagnosis in a tweet around 1 a.m. Friday morning. Later that day, he was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.) Her husband decided he couldn’t wait until morning to tell her. After he had, she said, he fell back asleep, leaving her awake and anxious. She ended up logging into the Calm app on her phone and listening to one of its “sleep stories,” read by celebrities, to soothe herself. “I put my headphones in and fell asleep to the dulcet tones of Harry Styles,” she said. When news like this breaks, the knee-jerk impulse to tell whoever is closest seems to be a common one—and strong enough that many people decide to wake their sleeping loved ones. People would surely find out information as major as the president’s diagnosis on their own, so the rush to tell others must be about something more than making sure they’re informed. The reason could be that we want our friends and family to hear news from us, rather than from another source. “Privileged information earns you status,” Matthew Feinberg, an organizational-behavior professor at the University of Toronto, told me in an email. “Those who are in the know must have a strong social network and therefore must be po[CENSORED]r.” Perhaps people have an irresistible drive to signal that they’re well informed. That would explain the rush to share breaking news on Twitter, at any rate. But it doesn’t quite explain the urge to tell our loved ones. One would imagine that your status is already secure with your nearest and dearest, whether you’re the one to bring new tidings or not. Kafantaris told me that for herself and her husband, sharing big news helps them process it communally. “You want to experience this cultural moment with someone,” she said. Neither of them “respects the other person’s sleep schedule,” when news breaks. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Kafantaris burst in on her husband in the shower to let him know. Stacy Torres, a sociologist at the UC San Francisco who has studied gossip, suspects that the drive to tell people about news you’ve just read relates to the “pleasures of sharing secrets or rumors.” Although gossip tends to be about people one actually knows, and news is public information, “in both situations, there’s that moment of wanting to connect, to say, ‘Hey, this thing happened, and it’s affecting us in some collective way,’” she told me. Read: Have you heard? Gossip is actually good and useful. In addition to the national magnitude of these stories, Torres suspects that people are more likely to shake someone awake for such news because it feels personally relevant. Torres said that she likely wouldn’t feel compelled to share just any story that interested her if it didn’t seem to practically impact her life. The president’s contracting COVID-19, however, brought up a lot of questions and worries for her, as it likely did for many other Americans. Had Trump infected other public figures? What would his illness mean for the election? Would this change anything about the country’s response to the pandemic? She wanted to reach out to her partner, but he was in a different time zone and likely already asleep, so she resisted. But when she woke up Friday morning, she had gotten a text from him about the news. Gail Parenti, a 61-year-old retired attorney based in Umbertide, Italy, also resisted the urge to rouse her husband Thursday night, but says she told him “the minute he woke up.” “Just sitting there thinking about it is one thing,” she told me, “but saying it out loud is something else. I think it helps me process my own feelings to hear his perspective.” In my experience, the conversations I have with those around me when news breaks are often extremely brief. “Hey, did you see what happened?” “Yes, I saw.” These exchanges seem to be more about mutual acknowledgment than extended processing. “The impulse to share, even if you don’t have a big conversation about it, could be a way to confirm that this is happening,” Torres said. When I see news that fundamentally shifts my reality, I want to bring those I love into the strange new world with me. No one wants to face the future alone.

With the world moving online at an unprecedented pace, there is a heightening vulnerability when it comes to cybersecurity. Just in the past few months alone, we have seen a ransomware attack against K-Electric and data breaches at Bykea and Swvl. Expand the timeline a little further and you get names like Careem and BankIslami joining the ranks. What should be obvious by now is that investments in technology infrastructure and teams aren’t being complemented by security concerns or at least capabilities. But that’s a challenge, and an opportunity this Karachi-based startup wants to take head on. Meet Cloudnosys, a software for cloud security and compliance. It integrates with your system and lets companies audit the existing technology infrastructure without any expert knowledge of the technicalities, while also helping them achieve the relevant standards (such as General Data Protection Regulation or The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, depending on the geography and industry). All of this works on a checklist style that you can see from the dashboard, with the platform spelling out high and low risk areas and suggesting remedies as well. What more, it gives a clear workflow to follow in order to improve cyber security in weak areas. You can zoom in to find out which users are lacking where or the standing with respect to each server the data is hosted on. Unlike on-premise servers where one basically owns the data centres and can pull the plug as a last resort, public cloud is built on a community basis that in a way results in loss of control. And despite the checks and balances meant to ensure security of the infrastructure by the service provider, the shared responsibility model delegates the operational maintenance to an individual client. That means contrary to the po[CENSORED]r belief, hosting data with, say, Amazon or Microsoft doesn’t mean the cybersecurity headache ends there. However, in the case of Pakistan, cybersecurity doesn’t exactly feature among the top headaches at organisations, at least beyond clearing audits by regulators if applicable. Whatever little landscape that does exist is mostly served by managed service providers, which act as IT consultants, offering customised solutions, reselling global products locally or conducting trainings. As far as the product-based ecosystem is concerned, it’s largely missing. Cloudnosys spun out as a separate product from Atompoint, a tech company operating out of Karachi. “We used to make Wordpress themes and plugins, of which some got po[CENSORED]r. Then in 2017, my partner — Kamran Mahboob — who lives Atlanta, spoke to me about the growing proliferation of cloud and how that creates a need for enhanced security. Soon after, we started developing the software and finally launched it in 2019,” founder CEO Yunus Jamal tells Dawn. As for the funds, Yunus and co are currently bootstrapping and plan to keep it as such, at least until boarding 15 or more medium/large enterprise clients. Regarding the business model, you probably guessed it: the startup’s revenues come from subscriptions with plans starting from $499 a month which comes with 100 ‘instances’ and two compliance standards among other things. Then come the work group and growing packages at price tags of $1,250 and $2,500, and finally there’s the enterprise option for customisable features and rate. With that pricing, one naturally wonders how many can even afford this software? After all, there are not a lot of companies, definitely not in Pakistan, that can or are at least willing to dole out such an amount for cybersecurity needs? That too for an agent-less product? “The cost of running this product for us is high, so we need to first position ourselves in the enterprise market before expanding into the SME with more basic features,” the founder says. Within the cloud security software space, the startup is directly up against Armor, a well-established Texas-based company operating in the industry for over a decade with almost $150 million funding. There’s also AT&T Cybersecurity, which acquired AlienVault, to consolidate its position in this space. But the founder is confident of his product. “Our unique selling point is flexibility and centralisation of security monitoring. Cloudnosys can accommodate enterprises by letting them integrate their own security scripts and third-party tools. This allows us to provide full end-to-end monitoring and response for all layers of the application and not just the cloud,” explains Jamal. With regards to the latter, he says: “First of all, their solution is 5x more expensive, starting at $7,000. They have security tools, rather than a platform which means it basically lacks flexibility and integration with other external platforms.” Keeping all my blabbering aside, what’s the scope for a product catering to cloud security when on-premise data centres reign supreme in our country? “As a follower market, we will eventually make the move towards cloud and cybersecurity. It’s only a matter of time,” opines Jamal. He has a point. In fact, just on September 28, the State Bank of Pakistan issued a circular allowing financial institutions - which despite their many shortcomings are still perhaps the most regulated players in terms of cybersecurity - to host their non-critical data on cloud servers. Once that transition kicks in, there would be an increased need for security and with that, possibly a more willing market for Cloudnosys. The writer is member of staff: m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com Twitter: @MutaherKhan Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2020