Connect with us

News

Smoke and Sandstorm, Seen from Space

Published

on

The scale of the Western crisis is demonstrated by a time-lapse photo of dust from a storm in Colorado and smoke from wildfires in New Mexico.

The video is captivating. A sheet of brown spills down from the north like a swash on a beach as three whitish-gray geysers erupt from the New Mexico highlands in the direction of the east.

What it represents is far more destructive.

Two deadly occurrences are depicted in the time-lapse photo, which was taken by a satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The first is a wildfire outbreak that began in northern New Mexico last month and has grown in size over the last two weeks as a result of an extremely dry climate and strong winds. The second is a dust storm in Colorado brought on by strong winds.

Both serve as illustrations of the kinds of natural disasters that, as a result of climate change, are growing more severe and frequent.

The NASA Earth Observatory reported that as of Tuesday, there were seven sizable fires active in New Mexico. Four of them are visible in the satellite view. The Cerro Pelado fire, which has burned about 27,000 acres close to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the most western. The Cooks Peak fire, which has burned around 59,000 acres close to Taos, is the most northern. The Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak fires, which combined into a single massive, 160,000-acre conflagration around April 22; are located immediately south of that.

An area greater than Indianapolis is covered by the 380 square miles of burning land visible in the satellite image. Numerous people have had to leave their homes due to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire, including those in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a community of 13,000 people located approximately an hour east of Santa Fe.

Although wildfires naturally occur in Western ecosystems, human activity has made them more worse. A significant factor is drought. The American Southwest has seen the driest two decades in 12 centuries, partly as a result of climate change, and there are currently no signs that the situation will soon get better.

The wind is another significant aspect that is currently stoking all of the flames in northern New Mexico. In actuality, the Hermits Peak Fire began as a planned burn, which is a fire purposefully started under controlled circumstances to remove dry vegetation and lower the risk of larger, uncontrolled fires, but blustery, uncontrollable winds caused it to spread quickly.

The Colorado dust storm, the second event visible in the NOAA image, was likewise brought on by strong winds.

The National Weather Service in Pueblo, Colorado, warned of highly hazardous driving conditions on Friday: “Visibility is lowering to near nil and winds are gusting to 50-60 m.p.h. within this blowing dust.”

The effects of these catastrophes can be extremely extensive, as shown by the satellite images. Even though the “brownout” conditions during the dust storm were largely confined, winds carried the dust particles hundreds of miles through southeast Colorado, western Kansas, and the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles.

Air quality is lowered by fine particulate matter, which also poses health risks, especially for those who already have heart or lung conditions. That holds true for all wildfire by products, including smoke, soot, and dust.

The sun turned red as far east as New York City last summer due to wildfires, which caused air quality alerts to be issued over practically the entire nation. Additionally, scientists discovered in January that harmful ozone and smoke levels were rising over most of the Western United States.

Continue Reading

News

Blogging – When Traffic Defines Success

Published

on

By

When Traffic Defines Success

When you talk about a blog making money, traffic is what you need. Content is king but it is given. What actually makes the money is the traffic that comes to see your content. You may have the best blog posts in the world, but if nobody sees them, they’re not going to make money. This is why traffic should always be the number one consideration after a blog has been set up. A lot of webmasters are having a hard time with the money-making part because they seem to forget the value of traffic building. Some of them actually refuse to believe just what proven SEO and traffic-generating techniques can do. The fact is, you need to work on your blog beyond the posting part and all work should be geared towards getting as much traffic as possible. Today

There could be many tips and guides you encounter about how to let that blog make money online through increased traffic. Actually, the basics apply. For example, word of mouth may not bring you all the traffic you need, but it contributes something. Classified sites are also helpful. Search the Internet for the top classified ads sites where you can advertise your blog for free. This will definitely give you considerable exposure but since the free ads are only good for 30 – 90 days, you need to go ahead and advertise your blog as much as you can on these sites within this time frame. This can be a lot of work but you can’t deny that it can pay off enormously if you do it regularly – a daily basis is very good especially since most classified ad sites let you post up to five free ads each day. Just imagine if you’re able to post at least five ads every day for 90 days on ten different classified sites. That’s a whole lot of visibility advantage and the best thing is, it’s all for free. Market

Articles are great for adding visibility to your blog, too. Submit these articles to online directories and you can expect a high search ranking. Remember, search engines prioritize these article directories which means that s a great advantage. You need to write at least four to five articles per day and then you’ll get more and more visitors daily. Over time, you’re going to build up your readership in these article directories and this can significantly increase your search rankings. It will not happen overnight but definitely, if you submit consistently to these directories, it will happen. You will get to the top! Then making money won’t be too much work when you achieve this level.

Forum posting is also a great way to get to people what your blog is all about. A lot of readers out there appreciate good content so you’re going to have to make sure your blog posts are of good quality. Forums can be likened to a real community with real live people which means you actually get to interact with potential readers. To maximize your exposure with forums, it’s a good idea to sign up for at least 5 different sites and post here as frequently as you can. The higher the page rank of these sites, the higher your page rank will be as well. Again, consistency is important. If you want to build traffic, you have to build it steadily.

You can even create Squidoo lenses which are, no doubt, favorites of search engines. Then you can promote your blog on Twitter and other social media sites. Over time, as long as you keep yourself focused on your goal, you will achieve a blog that will be bankable enough to actually make real money. Blogging is quite easy to do but how to make money blogging is the real challenge. It is, however, very much doable but it will all depend on the amount of patience and dedication you can give to actually let that blog make money.

 

Continue Reading

News

Sam Bankman-Fried draws fire from DeFi proponents after regulation proposal

Published

on

By

  • Various individuals in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry are lambasting Sam Bankman-Fried after the FTX CEO shared a regulatory proposal that, critics claim, hamstrings decentralized finance.
  • Defenders of Bankman-Fried’s proposal cite the inevitability of regulation, as well as its supposed necessity to onboard public companies into crypto.
  • Decentralized finance proponents have taken to Twitter to criticize Sam Bankman-Fried after the FTX CEO shared an “industry norms manual” that suggested websites facilitating trading on decentralized exchanges should be regulated.

    Bankman-Fried’s suggestion of regulation for tools enabling retail traders to access DeFi protocols triggered horror among those who argue apps like Uniswap are simply software, not a legal entity that can be censured. To DeFi proponents, these decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are different beasts to the classic central counterparties required in traditional finance: they exist purely as code allowing individuals to trade with one another.

    “If you host a website that makes it easy for U.S. retail to connect to and trade on a DEX, you would likely have to register it as something like a broker-dealer/FCM/etc. You would also potentially have KYC [know your customer] obligations,” Bankman-Fried wrote on Wednesday. At the same time, the crypto exchange executive said it’s “extremely important that on-chain code and Defi remain free and open, and uncensored.”

    One particularly loud voice is that of scupytrooples, the pseudonymous founder of DeFi protocol Alchemix, who tweeted a list of unsubstantiated complaints against Bankman-Fried.

    “I see them using the playbook of large corporations, where they ascend to the top, and then get involved in lobbying to make rules favorable for them to hurt the competition, and ultimately cement their position there,” scupytrooples told The Block in separate comments. “No different from Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Goldman, etc.”

Continue Reading

News

Amazon begins targeting fake review brokers in Europe, starting with Spain and Italy, where it has filed a criminal complaint against a “high-profile” broker

Published

on

By

MILAN, Oct 20 (Reuters) – U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN.O) said on Thursday it has filed legal challenges in Italy and Spain as it steps up global efforts to shut down fake review brokers.

Amazon has long been struggling with fake or manipulated reviews and the problem only got worse as more people flocked to its site to shop during the coronavirus lockdowns.

Tens of thousands of people have joined dedicated channels on the Telegram instant messaging site, where anonymous brokers sign up people to write glowing five-star reviews of products on Amazon in exchange for a financial reward.

We continue to improve our proactive controls, inventing new technologies and machine learning to catch the bad guys and find new ways to hold them accountable,” said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of selling partner services at Amazon, in a statement.

In its first criminal complaint in Europe, Amazon said it was targeting a “high-profile broker in Italy selling fake reviews” but did not name the person.

Click here to read more.….

Continue Reading

Trending

© 2020 Copyright- Buc Stop. All Right Reserved