【推荐2】You may study English for years and still not understand a native speaker of English when you meet one. Many language learners know that native speakers say a lot of things that you can’t find in a dictionary. Well, here’s a secret for you: A lot of British people can’t understand each other either!

Across the UK, a number of regions have different dialects. There are many different accents (口音) in London, because it is not just where a person is born in the UK that decides their accent. Language and accents also change across social class and level of education. Therefore, “Multicultural London English” was created at the end of the 20th century.

Other factors are also important in the invention of new accents and ways of speaking. These include the influence of people from different countries and different age groups, too.

“Yoof culture” is an example. The word “yoof” is a slang (俚语) spelling of “youth”. Young people are creating their own language, ideas and identity. By using words that their parents don’t understand, children can talk about things that their parents might not agree with. For example, instead of saying something like “That’s good!” or “I understand”, yoof will use a single adjective like “Safe!”, or “Sorted!” Yoof would use “kind-a-thing” or “sort-a-thing” to replace “if you understand what I’m saying”. In this way, they are starting to find freedom, independence and self-expression.

As learners of English, we may wonder how well we can talk to a native speaker, but perhaps we should worry less about this. Research by the British Council shows that 94 percent of the English spoken in the world today is spoken between non-native speakers of the language. In fact, when we think about “international English”, there is no such thing as a native or non-native speaker. The UK no longer owns the English language.

【推荐3】Last year, a popular restaurant released a live stream of a family dining in it, without asking their permission. After finding out what the restaurant was doing, the family showed their objection, but the restaurant ignored it and insisted that they had the right to do it. Moreover, they tried to silence the family, saying that their behavior was damaging the restaurant's image. This event has caused a debate on the violation of privacy and portrait rights by webcasts.

It doesn't bother some people when their images are unconsciously recorded by cameras and shown through live streams on different online platforms. They may even enjoy appearing on screens and cooperate with some businesses. In that way, the restaurant can have more public exposure and thus attract more customers, which is their purpose of webcasting. However, others including the family mentioned above, are against it. The family thought that their portrait rights were violated, considering no one had asked if it was okay to use the images of them. They found intolerable that their actions captured by the camera were webcast live to millions of viewers, not to mention the fact that some of them were not so decent. Thus they demanded an apology from restaurant.

People may behave in a relaxed way when eating or resting, and they don't want others to see them in this way. Thus, from a legal perspective, if businesses webcast their customers for commercial reasons, they have violated customers portrait rights.

Webcasting someone without his or her consent amounts to a violation of portrait rights, which is getting increasingly common these days as cellphone webcasting is growing in popularity for technical convenience, However, public awareness of privacy protection is still falling behind. More should be done to make sure webcasting is developing sustainably, without violating people's legal rights.

【推荐2】Blowing bubbles is fun! The best thing about bubbles is that it's easy to make your own bubble solution (溶液). You can make as much as you want and blow as many bubbles as you'd like. If you add a “secret” ingredient (配料), you’ll get bigger and stronger bubbles! Do just as follows:

Measure 6 cups of water into one container, then pour 1 cup of dish soap into the water and slowly stir it until the soap is mixed in. Try not to let bubbles form while you stir.

Measure 1 tablespoon of glycerin (甘油) or 1/4 cup of corn syrup (玉米淀粉) and add it to the container. Stir the solution until it is mixed together.

You can use the solution right away, but to make even better bubbles, put the lid on the container and let your super bubble solution sit overnight. The soap mixture on the outside of a bubble is actually made of three very thin layers: soap, water, and another layer of soap. A bubble pops when the water that is trapped between the layers of soap evaporates (蒸发). The glycerin or corn syrup mixes with the soap to make it thicker. The thicker skin of the bubbles keeps the water from evaporating as quickly, so they last longer. It also makes them stronger, so you can blow bigger bubbles.

Dip a bubble wand or straw into the mixture, slowly pull it out, wait a few seconds, and then blow. If you don't have a ready-made “bubble wand”, you can make your own by cutting off the end of the bulb of a plastic pipet. Dip the cut end in solution and blow through the narrow end. You can also make a loop out of thin wire or pipe cleaner. Just twist a round end on your wire to blow the bubbles through. You can even make it heart-shaped, square or use other shapes if you're clever enough to bend it well.

【推荐1】Typing your password or credit card number into a computer is a moment’s work. But if you think your personal details disappear as soon as you hit the Return key, think again: they can sit on the computer’s hard disk for years waiting for a hacker to rip them off.

As people spend more time on the web and hackers become more sophisticated, the dangers of storing personal information on computers are growing by the day, security experts say. There are some safeguards, such as never allowing your computer to store your passwords. But even that is no guarantee of security.

When you type in a password, it is stored in random access memory (RAM), where it is held temporarily until other data overwrites it or the computer is switched off.

But every so often, the computer copies the contents of its RAM onto hard disk, where it is easy prey for a hacker, who can read it directly or design a worm to e-mail it back. The longer sensitive data stays in RAM, the more likely it is to be copied onto the disk, where it stays until it is overwritten—which might not happen for years.

Tal Garfinkel and colleagues from Stanford University have created a software tool which simulates the workings of a complete computer system. Within the simulation, sensitive data can be tagged and then tracked as it passes through the system. Next, Garfinkel and his team simulated computers running common software that regularly handles passwords or confidential personal information, such as Internet Explorer, the Windows login script and Apache server software.

In a paper to be presented, they conclude that the programs took virtually no measures to limit the length of time the information is retained. Some of the tested software even copied the sensitive information, apparently without restraint.

This is the first time anyone has tried to measure the extent of this problem, says Rebecca Wright, a security expert at Stevens Institute of Technology. Garfinkel hopes the results will arouse software developers to take action.

【推荐2】We seem to find out someone broke into a big company’s databases and left with millions of credit card numbers, passwords or other valuable information. Now a new kind of worry: someone could seize control of your wireless home network and steal your information from under your nose.

That’s the possibility raised by a couple of cyber security researchers from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The problem, they say, is a weakness in the very protocol meant to make wi-fi secure. That protocol is called Wi-Fi Protected Access II, WPA2. And WPA2’s weakness could allow an attacker within physical range of your wi-fi network to make a copy of that network that they could then control. The researchers call their approach a key reinstallation attack, or KRACK.

It’s important to know that a KRACK attack remains a possibility for now. The scientists realized the threat while investigating wireless security. They’ll present this research on November 1st at the Computer and Communications Security (CCS) conference in Dallas and in December at the Black Hat Europe conference in London.

In their KRACK assumption, wireless devices would be fooled into connecting to the false network. And the attacker would be able to access all of the information that devices send and receive while connected to that network — even if that information has been coded. Android and Linux would be especially easy to attack because of how their encryption keys (密钥) are set.

One measure of protection against such an attack would be to make sure they you’ve installed the most up-to-date versions of your apps, browsers and wireless router software. Updated software is most likely to include the security patches (补丁) needed to avoid falling victim to a KRACK attack, because chances are that KRACK won’t remain simply a proof-of-concept for long.