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You won't need your flannel long johns tonight
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
At least with the weather, Costa Ricans in the Central Valley are
spoiled. Let the temperature drop a degree below 60 F, and residents
report they are freezing and the popular Spanish-language press runs
drawings of little men with icicles hanging from their ears.
This week the situation is the reverse. Nowhere in the country, it
seems, did the mercury hit 100 degrees, and in the Central Valley the
highest was barely 90 F. Still taxi drivers and police officers, street
vendors and grocery clerks all are complaining about the weather. Some
folks even like standing on the long bank lines to take advantage
of the air conditioning.
They will be back in line today. The Instituto Meteorológico
Nacional says more of the same with perhaps the heat cranked up a bit.
The weather report said that the stable dry air and little rain allows
the radiation of the sun to augment the perceived temperature.
Today's predictions are for 35 C (95 F) in Puntarenas, 34 C (93.2 F) in
Quepos, 35 C in Nicoya and 37 C (98.6 F) in Liberia. Central
Valley predictions include 30 C (86 F) in Alajuela, 28 C (82.4 F) in
San José and 30 C in Heredia.
San José reached just 26.7 C (80 F) Monday, although the sun
made people think the mercury was higher.
Juan Santamaría airport saw a high of 32.2 C
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(90 F) and Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia hit 35.6 C (96 F),
according to the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional.
Any North Americans who stacked hay bales or worked construction in
July are not likely to be too sympathetic, although the heat wave is
good for tourism.
However, weather reports say that a cold front with thunderstorms and
falling temperatures is likely to arrive by Thursday.
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Hacker attacks on feed provider triggers warnings
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some readers who use Google's experimental Safe Browsing API got
a warning Monday morning when they attempted to open A.M. Costa Rica
pages that contained news feeds.
The warning came because the news feed provider, Feedzilla.com, had
been listed as a possible source of so-called malware by Google partner
StopBadware. Feedzilla has been targeted among the thousands of sites
that crooks try to compromise.
StopBadware said that after a review Feedzilla was taken off the list
of suspects later Monday. Periodically hackers manage to slip past
Feedzilla's tight security and put trojans and other malware in the
company's news feeds.
Feedzilla obtains news stories from all over and packages them for
Internet publication. In A.M. Costa Rica, the news feeds include the
newspaper's own Top Story feed of major headlines. Feedzilla also
prepared for publication news feeds from the British Broadcasting Co.
And there are news feeds of sports, Latin American news and Internet
news headlines. |
Feedzilla was one of 70,000
legitimate Web sites that were compromised
by hackers in late August 2009, according to news clips. Google said on
its online security blog that the number of compromised sites on its
list of malware-hosting URLs has grown to more than 300,000 this year,
according to one
report.
The malware tries to cause a Web user to go to an infected site where
other software might try to steal private information or install a
virus. The Web security firm ScanSafe said that hackers
registered a
number of sites to host their malware via the reputable GoDaddy.com
Inc. in advance of their attacks.
Rather than detecting malware, the Google Safe Browsing API just
matches a Web sites name against those listed by StopBadware.
StopBadware
said
it is an anti-malware effort started at Harvard University’s Berkman
Center for Internet & Society, that has begun operating as a
standalone non-profit organization. Google, PayPal, and Mozilla
have
together committed the initial funding to support the launch of
StopBadware, Inc., the firm said. |
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