Good job, YouTube.

Well, Google has once again amazed us by how accurate it is while pointing a gun to its own foot, and shot themselves once more with the stupid redesign on the YouTube layout.
This time it goes beyond changing the graphics, which they did, to match their inorganic, minimalist, sterile layouts of Google+ and the rest of their products (It looks like that from in here, as I type in Blogger, another product under the Google wing).
This time they seriously fucked with the functionality of the website. First of all, your home page is not your customized experience you were used to until now. Now, Google will FORCE you to check out a list of videos their amazingly stupid algorithm has picked for you, which often includes videos you have already watched (check image below).

Holy shit, you recommend something I already watched? You must be a mind reader!!

I used to have my homepage as the latest videos uploaded by my subscribed channels, hiding all other activity such as comments and likes. Now, to get to that page, you have to click in several places, and it will not remember your preference for the next time.
If you would like to go directly to your subscriptions, I recommend you change your current bookmark from going to http://www.youtube.com to http://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions/u

Lastly a message for Google, which I'm sure they'll never see, but I gotta get it off my chest...

STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH THE LAYOUT AND IMPROVE THE GOD DAMN FUNCTIONALITY. DO YOU WANT TO BE THE REALPLAYER OF ONLINE VIDEO STREAMING WEBSITES?


The only reason why flocks of people are not leaving YouTube already is because the content creators are still attracted by Google's ad revenue network, which is one of a kind right now in the websphere. With nobody to compete with realistically, YouTube is getting sloppier and overall, worse. What a damn shame.

Boson discovery announced by CERN

Today CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced that after 3 years of research using the brand new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, they have gathered enough data to recognize a new sub-atomic particle. This discovery has been made in the frame of the search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a particle that has been predicted theoretically, but never observed, as an essential part of the most widely accepted model for quantum mechanics, the Standard Model.

There are currently two independent teams working at the collider with this goal in mind, and combined data results show that a previously unknown particle has been definitely observed, and it is with certainty a boson. However, in the press conference this morning, scientists and project leaders have made it clear that while it was a boson, they could not yet confirm it was the boson.

Much more analysis of the data will be needed for this, however the news has been well received by the science community, and the general consensus is that, while it will take a little more confirmation, this is probably it.

Whichever the end result is, whether it's the Higgs boson or a completely new boson, it is certainly a historic day and it will unlock new paths for quantum physics.

A Q and A followed the press conference as usual and some pertinent questions were answered. The team was very careful to let know that this was not the definite answer to whether or not the Higgs boson exists yet, and that the Standard Model was incomplete and this is just another piece of the puzzle.
Some other journalists in the room seemed more interested in when will the particle be confirmed, why are we putting so much budget into research in a time of crisis, and other irrelevant questions.

The fact of the matter is, after much hard work with the aid of an superb machine, scientists once again delve deeper into the makings of the universe around us, taking us closer maybe to the ultimate question of what is everything made of and where did it come from?

Recovering a failed hard drive. Part II, the solution

Getting SpinRite to start working is really easy. With the burnt CD inside the CD drive, all one has to do is turn the computer on, with the intended hard drive to recover connected, and wait some time. A welcome screen with clear options tells you what you need to press for which operations, and off you go.


SpinRite has different “levels” of operation, for different functions. The default and recommended level is level 2, which will scan the contents of the disk and attempt to recover whichever sectors are damaged or unreadable. I chose this option and let it go. At first, the scan seemed to go quite fast. Obviously the scanned parts were healthy and were duly being skipped. After about 12 hours of operation, the screen was telling me it was 2.89% done, trying to repair the first bad sector… at which point I understood it was going to take a while, lost interest, and turned the screen off. I let it work for around 12 hours before I checked on it again.

Recovering a failed hard drive. Part I, the problem.

Two weeks ago I was going through old computer parts I stored in a box when I came across 6 defunct hard drives. What I mean by defunct is that the data inside them is not accessible any more for a bunch of different reasons. Data loss is one of the nightmares of any computer user, and all hard drives will eventually fail: it's not a matter of IF, but a matter of WHEN. Since I've had personal computers for more than ten years, it only makes sense that I have a fair collection of failed hard drives.

The problem

iPad 3... too hot, too cold? Revolutionary, dull?

Reports are coming in that the new Apple tablet, the iPad 3, is getting too hot for comfort, literally. It can run 7º C hotter than its predecessor, the iPad 2, and is causing concerns among experts.

The simple fact is that the iPad 3 packs quite some punch compared to the previous one, thanks to a new faster quad-core processor and graphic unit, as well as a bigger capacity battery and a much more higher resolution display, dubbed the "retina display", boasting 'as much resolution as a human eye is capable of seeing', a claim contested by some.
All of this packed in about the same case, albeit a tiny bit thicker, means the device can run a little hotter, which concerns some people who claim it could cause "toasted skin syndrome", a skin condition normally attributed to using a hot laptop on one's legs, leading to lesions, and to low sperm counts on males.

Toasty...

This is only minor news though compared to the disappointment Apple fans felt when it was introduced. The device looked exactly like the iPad 2, and nothing like the edge-to-edge, 3D, revolutionary display everyone was expecting. Quite the contrary, many have dubbed this 3rd generation 'the least innovative of the iPads'.
Others on the other hand are declaring the iPad 3 is the "PC Killer". This is, that it's going to be the first device that will mark the beginning of the end for big, bulky personal desktop (and maybe even laptop) computers.
I don't see that happening but people are free to speculate. In the mean time, I will be using my very good Samsung Laptop which doesn't burn my crotch.

Artist concept of what the community expected the iPad 3 to look like...

How to access iPhone location data

After last post where I mentioned iPhones and Androids stored some location information, some people asked me how could they check theirs.
The truth is I don't have a smartphone, neither do I plan to get one since my old trusted Sony Ericsson keeps working perfectly after 4 years. The other truth is I know exactly who can help you.

MyPhoneTracker in action

This easy to use software is located at the very excellent source for Apple news, applications and other goodies, Mac-and-I .  As well as MyPhoneTracker you will find all kinds of tips and tricks, recommended programs for your Mac, games, etc.. Check it out and leave him a thanks for his work on this free and open source app!

The struggle to keep online privacy

As social networks and smartphones advance, it seems that privacy recedes into an ever shrinking pocket of the online experience. While ten years ago it was hard to find out someone's email address and with that perhaps his username at a certain forum, today a dedicated stalker can get all kinds of information about someone with very little effort.

Google is in the headlines because as of past thursday their new privacy policies kicked in, which in a nut shell claim to be aimed at offering a better experience to the user by suggesting relevant ads and interesting videos, for example, based in their searches, visited websites, etc. While one could see the advantage of this, many question what would happen if this sort of information fell in the wrong hands. Others ask why is there no way to opt-out of this tracking, which is active whenever someone's logged into any of the many services Google offers, including Gmail, YouTube and Google+. The reality is that this sort of data has always been collected and used to show advertisements (how else would a company who spends millions in infrastructure and offers mostly free services to the public make money?), and the only change is that instead of having around 60 privacy policies for each of their services, they have a unified one to better understand their target audiences and market their ads better. If you're concerned about what's being gathered, click on this link and find out, by accessing the Google dashboard.

Tracking data from an iPhone

Apple is also on the radar since there seem to be some apps that can access users' photos with the excuse of looking at "location information" in these files. With smartphones not only storing important information about contacts but also about GPS generated locations, this could be a little more dangerous than simple advertising. A deceivingly harmless looking application could be transmitting user location data to someone or something, and that's worrying. Of course the only thing Apple can do is ask app developers to add a privacy policy of sorts so users have to agree to it before using the software, but that doesn't quite work since almost nobody takes the time to read them.

Whatever these two giants will do to counter the accusations, only one thing is clear: as our lives get more and more digital, our privacy disappears slowly but steadily.

Apple and Samsung at it again

Shortly after losing a case in the German courts, Apple, creator of the very famous and loved by the masses iPod, iPhone and iPad, is at it again, suing Samsung for 'copying' their products. All in all, these two electronic giants are engaged in 30 patent infringement battles in 10 countries, and honestly I think it's becoming kind of pathetic.

We were the first! Oh wait no we weren't.

Basically Apple is sad because their iPhone and iPad design was "copied" by other companies, never mind the fact that touch-screens have been around for decades and present in smart phones even from the day when there were no color screens, or that commercial lithium ion batteries were developed by Sony in 1991, and all other technologies behind the iPhone were not Apple's idea; putting them together, however, it was, and that is commendable and gave them unprecedented success. But you can't sit on your laurels forever. Other companies are bound to catch up and copy your ideas, eventually even improving them somehow, which is what all other phone companies are trying to do in order to remain competitive which is what companies are all about.

This has a Samsung processor... Awkwaaard

My point is: crying over this is just hypocritical and wrong. Almost none of the products Apple offers were originally their ideas, but ideas borrowed from others and improved into something people like.

The bottom line is that Samsung's devices are outselling Apple's. Instead of trying to improve their products in some way that will give them an edge, they are spending millions in courthouse bullying. Since Samsung holds some patents of their own, it's throwing some punches back.

In the end it's all about who manages to convince people who don't need these gadgets to lay down the better part of a thousand dollars to get one, just to be cool.

Windows 8 is coming

Microsoft announced they will make publicly available a preview version of their newest Operating System. While a developer version was released last september, this one is aimed at the common user, albeit with the tag of "trial", which means some features might not be available.

The software giant will announce the release february 29 in Barcelona, during the World Mobile Congress, aiming their new OS towards the mobile market, both phones and tablets.

Many people have tried this already and both screenshots and videos are readily available, showing a radical departure from the traditional layout first introduced in Windows 95, almost two decades ago.



Some sources state that the most noticeable change will be the removal of the ever present Start menu, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was an optional choice; many people like the way it works and are comfortable with what's familiar, so completely removing it would mean shooting oneself in the foot. Microsoft isn't famous for taking such high risks.

So will it suit computers, since it was designed for tablets? We'll have to wait for the 29th and try it ourselves.

Tech news

It's been a busy week in the technology world. Here's a quick round up of the main articles:

The Pirate Bay founders refused appeal

The founders of the popular torrent hosting and tracker The Pirate Bay were denied an appeal by the Swedish Supreme court, thus making their previous sentences final. Guilty of "assisting in making copyright content available", Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde are sentenced to one year and in jail and to pay around 3 million euros all together as reparations.
From Sunde's blog:

"From having the minister of justice pressured by the US to illegally make a case of TPB, through the police officer responsible for the investigation (Jim Keyzer) 'just happened' to get a job at Warner Brothers the weeks before I myself got promoted from a witness to a suspect to the judges in the court cases being either board members, or in one case the actual chairman of the board, for the Swedish pro-copyright society, it was clear to us that the supreme court – where many of the judges make a lot of money on their own copyrights – would be hard to persuade to take the case." 

The site moved to the domain www.thepiratebay.se , but taking the recent event with Megaupload, it is quite possible that their site will be taken down by the US justice department, despite SOPA and PIPA not passing. It would seem they never needed those laws in the first place to blatantly censor the internet; they were just an mirage.

Apple's appeal to ban Samsung products in Germany fails

An appeal to ban Samsung smartphones and tablets was rejected by the Munich Regional Court. Apple Inc. claimed these devices to be in violation of their patents on who knows what. At the end, the final verdict was "Apple should go eat some oranges, this is just a case of sour grapes."

Gadget of the Year, 2011

If there's something that's proliferating like cockroaches it's handheld gadgets, otherwise known as "smartphones", but I refuse to call them that until I see them doing something smart.

The winner for me this past year was:

Samsung Galaxy S II



Samsung seems to have found a good formula for making these gadgets, since many specialty sites considered the second iteration of the Galaxy series to be superior to many other Android based phones, and even superior to the grandaddy of them all, the iPhone.

I got to have one of these in my hands not long ago and played with it a little bit, and it was pretty good. This however hasn't changed my opinion that people who don't need most of the features (and certainly being in Facebook 24/7 is not something anyone really needs) shouldn't spend a small fortune on one of these things.


 Originally, the S II was shipped with Gingerbread Android and now it's upgradeable to the Ice Cream Sandwich version, keeping it up to date, until the S III is launched (to be announced in February this year).

The honorable mention goes to the iPhone and it's wonderful auto-correct feature, which gives us laughter every day.

SOPA, and why it sucks

Let's talk about something shameful. Online censorship. 

One of the reasons why the internet grew at the rate it did was because people felt liberated and freed by it, the ability to say anything and read anything at any time. View content from across the world in a few seconds, created by someone like you. Soon, this shape of the internet might change drastically. Enter SOPA.

What is it? 

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that's proposed to become a U.S. Law, soon to be voted by congress. Basically, it's a censorship program, which would allow corporations, through intimidation of multi million dollar lawsuits, to close any website they deem are infringing their copyrights. If those websites refuse to close, they could go straight to the companies that host the domains and servers of said websites and sue them instead, giving the corporations such as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) the power to basically squash any little bug that's smaller than them.

Why is this so bad?

Basically, anything that even slightly breaks the copyright laws is liable to get censored. Even more, websites that host user submitted content are liable for what those users are saying. So if anyone posts lyrics of a song in Facebook, for example, then the copyright holders could force Facebook to block that post unless they wanna face legal action. There go all those lovely song covers in YouTube, any tribute band hosted in MySpace, etc..

Let's make believe SOPA passed on the year 2000, which websites would probably have never existed (or would have been extremely less successful)?

Google
Yahoo!
MySpace
DeviantArt
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Reddit
and many, many more.

What is the drive behind SOPA?

Nothing else but greed. The reason why these corporations see this is necessary is because they are "losing over 100 billion dollars annually". What the mean is they are not earning those 100 billion (allegedly, this figure is probably fabricated and false) on top of their already multi billion dollar earnings. The musicians nowadays live a much wealthier lifestyle than those in the 50s or 60s when piracy was nowhere to be seen. The movies keep breaking income records year after year. Movie stars are paid millions of dollars for 3 months worth of work, more than any normal human being will make in their entire lives. Socialites out of stupid reality TV shows are paid thousands of dollars just to show up at an event.

Why is it ridiculous?

I think everyone can figure out their own reasons to find this bill extremely laughable but worrying at the same time. For me, it's a couple of reasons. First of all it's so against everything the United States of America is usually proud of, "freedom". It is sadly funny to see how America opposes countries like China, Iran or Syria censoring their internets for the sake of religion or government control, and now they're bound to pass a law for the sake of making fat corporations even fatter.

Secondly, it's a case of bullying. It's exactly like that fat, big, not so bright bully at school, getting what he wants by force. Instead of adapting to the changes of the times, these corporations are looking to stomp on change and innovation. They are crying because they didn't have such ideas first. With this attitude not only would they be crushing already existing content, but also hampering the growth of new ideas, companies, and ventures. A study shows that venture capitalists would be extremely fearful to invest in new start-up companies in fear of the legal consequences.

Lastly, some copyright infringement actually leads to earnings for these companies. I have, on many occasions accidentally, come across new bands I had no idea about in YouTube videos which used them as a background music.
For example, this famous video by MadV has a soundtrack by Mogwai, which led me to download (yes, illegally) some more of their music and ultimately to become a fan. Remember this post back from summer? Yes, I paid 75 euros to attend a festival with friends mainly to go see them play and I loved the experience, and will go see them again if they play here. I am sure many people have examples just like this where "illegal" content is actually doing something the record companies have failed doing these past 10 years, advertising and promotion.

I'm not American, why should I worry?

As we all know, the western world has a tendency to follow on the footsteps of the US, whether we like it or not. There are other initiatives in the U.S., such as the PROTECT IP, which could be implemented even if SOPA fails, and more worryingly, something international is being pushed called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) which, quote, "the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy."

What are our weapons?

Luckily, there is a lot to be done by many people. Many huge internet ventures like Google (by extension, YouTube), Facebook, Mozilla, Wikipedia, to name a few. The president of the United States, Barack Obama, has said he would move to veto this bill, but the congress could still overrule him. Hopefully, even if it becomes law, the Supreme Court could deem it unconstitutional (which it is, see link below), and scrap it.
Visit this website to learn more about what can you do in your current position, be it as a webmaster, just a user, US citizen or not.

Other links:

Funny anti-censorship comics

SOPA is unconstitutional

A list of companies supporting SOPA

A world of planks is dangerous

Have you ever thought we should have buildings made entirely out of planks?
And then, what would happen if someone came along with a giant catapult shooting balls at these structures?

Yeah me neither...

Despite that, some people find it fun to simulate structures made out of planks and then crashing stuff into them, posting the videos which are extremely entertaining to watch.

Laptop shopping

Since my last laptop completely died on me, I have been putting off buying a new one for a number of different reasons, not having enough money being the primary one. In the past few weeks I've been out and about both in electronic stores and their websites, reading and comparing models, and here's what I've found out:

THERE'S TOO MUCH CHOICE

Yeah how can this be a bad thing do you ask? Because when you really start comparing, you begin noticing that there are tiny differences between models sometimes, only varying slightly in the processor they use, or the amount of memory, the size of the hard drive.

It is then when you begin to wonder "what if I buy something, and two days later I find there was something much better for exactly the same price?" that you start to get frustrated. It baffles my mind and I've been around computers since I was 6 years old, but even more than that, I can't understand the logic behind this.  Sometimes the same brand will do 3 different laptops with a tiny difference in their incoherently long names of letters and numbers. I'll give you an example with these three Samsung models, which cost exactly the same:

RV520-S01
RC520-S01
RC520-S02

These three are basically the same except one of them has a 500 GB hard drive instead of a 640 GB. It's the middle one. But the middle one has 1 GB of memory dedicated to it's graphics card, the top one has only half of that, 512 MB. But the bottom one has both the nice hard drive and the nice memory. So why do they have to build all 3 instead of just offering the nice one?!

It gets even funnier. The RV520-S02 is worse than the RV520-S01, and costs less. Why not call it the RV519 or something and make it simple? Higher number, better quality, makes the world a lot easier to figure out.

It's not a Samsung thing, either, all the brands fall on to the same mistakes. It's becoming quite hard for me to choose one without getting that feeling that my money would have better be spent on another model. I haven't even dipped my toes in the world of tablets, 'cos I know if I did, my head would explode in a thousand different directions.

I've made up my mind though... I'm going to buy 600 euros worth of pens and paper. Brb.

Science and tech roundup

It has been a very interesting week as far as scientific and technological news. In the middle of the whole economic crisis, this gives me both entertainment and hope. Here's a quick round-up.

Astronomers find Tatooine!

It doesn't look like this at all.

Well not so much, but they think they've found proof of a planet orbiting around a binary star system, that is, two stars rotating around each other. The planet is thought to be a cold gas giant, something like Saturn, and not the hot arid Star Wars deal. We will have to keep searching for the Jedis somewhere else.

The Pwnie Awards

A couple of days ago the Pwnies were handed in Las Vegas. In case you're not familiar with them, they're basically the Oscars for achievements in technology (more specifically Information Security), awarded to those who move the field forwards, but at the same time they're the Raspberries, giving the dreaded "Most Epic Fail" award to those who deserve it.

The ponies pwnies

The big loser this year was Sony. It came as no surprise because it was the only nominee, albeit for a number of different reasons:

Sony After Fail0verflow and GeoHot published how to jailbreak the PS3, Sony got a bit miffed. Apparently unfamiliar with how the Internet works and how difficult it is to remove the piss from a swimming pool, Sony proceeded to try erase the information from the Internet and sue GeoHot et al. into oblivion. Needless to say, this was about as successful as the MiniDisc.

Sony Speaking of piss in a swimming pool, that just happened to be how well Sony protected their Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) users' account info and roughly 25 to 77 million account details were stolen by unknown hackers. That metaphor makes just about no sense at all, but you get the point: FAIL.

Sony Sony is definitely good at one thing: keeping the hits coming and their fans entertained. Oh wait, did we say Sony? We meant LulzSec. I guess that counts as another FAIL for Sony.

Sony After learning the hard way that their PlayStation Network was about as porous as air, Sony had to shut it down for over two months to rebuild it from scratch. In doing so, they made everyone from your 8-year old cousin to your barber learn about the importance of security. Hooray for us, sorry Sony shareholders.

Sony Noticing a pattern here? But wait, it gets better. Sony might have been able to better repel the multitude of attacks if they hadn't just recently laid off a significant number of their network security team. Great timing, guys.

The polar opposite, Epic 0wnage, which goes for "the hackers responsible for delivering the most damaging, widely publicized, or hilarious 0wnage.", went to Stuxnet this year, a worm that targets Siemens industrial equipment and that some say was engineered on purpose to tackle Iran's nuclear program supposedly using black marketed Siemens machinery.

How many centrifuges did your rootkit destroy? How many national nuclear programs did your worm disrupt? How many 0day exploits and rootkits for equipment that no one you has ever heard of have you written? Exactly.

Other nominees included LulzSec, Anonymous and Wikileaks.

Click here for the rest of the winners.

Goodbye to all that

Today, at about 5:57 local time, the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time, ending the Space Shuttle program, after a 13 day mission. I watched it live; it felt  like it is the end of an era, and space exploration won't be the same.

For 30 years we have seen these black and white, goofy looking crafts going up roaring through the skies, it almost felt routine.
The International Space Station will now be serviced by reliable, yet dated, Russian Soyuz rockets, however it feels that we're giving up, sort of ignoring our spirit of adventure. With so much economic turmoil all over the globe, nobody really knows if this is the passing of the torch to another western program, or if a new space power will emerge. NASA's funding is being pulled out in favor of other, less noble, projects. There are no big missions planned; no mission to Mars or even going back to the moon. We have so much to learn out there; canceling space exploration instead of investing heavily on it shows how immature we are as a species yet again. Countries much rather keep bickering at each other instead of pulling together somewhere. Things like these make me lose hope in mankind. 40 years ago we could go to the Moon. 10 years ago we had a supersonic passenger plane. Yesterday we had Space shuttles. What can we be proud of today? Smart phones? Are we regressing?

I can go on and on for years but I'll let some of these pictures do the talking for me.

To laugh, or to cry?

The last mission badge added to the ISS

Mission control applauds the last undocking

Welcome home indeed.

 I digress. I'm sad. See you next time.

Flying from home

From a very early age I've been interested in airplanes, thanks to my father and some 80s movie starring a short scientologist, who is nowadays crazy. This interest of mine grew over the years by building Airfix models of war planes, throwing wooden gliders I had constructed, and when I finally got a computer of my own I got my hands on a piece of software that would become a hobby for me ever since.

Welcome IPv6, about time.

Today, June the 8th, we welcome Ipv6 to the Universe of the Interwebs.
Organized by the Internet Society, a number of companies and Internet providers will enable this new technology for 24 hours (including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!), on the first public worldwide test of the future of internet addressing.

What exactly is IPv6?

Well, to understand that we need to know that for every network connection using the Internet Protocol (being it a single person, a website, a server, a mall, a school....) there is a unique address assigned to it. It is commonly known as an IP address and consists of 4 series of 3 numbers (called octets, because each one of them is composed of eight bits, that is, a combination of eight 1s and 0s). With this method of numbering the entities inside a network we have exactly 4294967296 unique numbers. Those numbers are given by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) in chunks for Internet Service Providers to use with their customers. By knowing an IP, you can know where a connection is being made from with pretty good accuracy, and is sort of your fingerprint while you browse the internet.

I spy on you.

Welcome June, and 200 followers

Another month gone. May wasn't a very good month for me. A lot of worries and bad news that left me with little time or inspiration to write in this blog, however, the momentous 200 followers mark has been reached. Hooray!

Never thought I'd be still blogging after two months, I sort of lose interest in things rather quickly, but it's been fun. Now, on to some topical news!

Are you afraid of cell phones poisoning your ear with radiation? Do you wear a tinfoil cap? Are you just curious?
Past tuesday the World Health Organization (WHO) classified cell phones as potentially carcinogenic to humans - more specifically the radiation they emit, strongest when making contact with the cell antennas, making or receiving a call, navigating the internet, sending texts.
They measure the amount of energy traveling through  your body in watts per kilogram (W/Kg) and for a phone to be used in the United States, for example, this value has to be below 1.6 W/Kg.


So here's a list of the top ten least/most harmful ones, at least in theory, at sale today.