A company that manufactures video doorbells found by Consumer Reports to contain serious security vulnerabilities has issued a fix, the consumer advocacy group is reporting. Eken Group has issued a firmware update for the affected security products under its own name, as well as those from other brands it has licensing deals with, including Fishbot, Rakeblue, Tuck, and others. All the video doorbells use the Aiwit smartphone app and could be purchased from popular online retailers like Amazon, Shein, Temu, and Walmart.Ā
Technology
Eken fixes āterribleā video doorbell issue that could let someone spy on you
After an earlier Consumer Reports investigation found security vulnerabilities in Eken cameras, the Chinese company has issued a firmware update.
Back in February, CR reported that it found vulnerabilities in Eken-produced video doorbells that ācould allow a dangerous person to take control of the video doorbell on their targetās home.ā
Gaining access to the doorbell didnāt even require any level of hacking knowledge: bad actors could simply download the Aiwit app, go to their targetās home, and hold down the doorbellās button to pair it with their own smartphones, change their Wi-Fi network, and take control of the device.Ā
Additionally, anyone with the doorbellās serial number could remotely view still images from the video feed āĀ no password or account required, CR security experts found. Doorbell owners didnāt receive a notification of any kind if another user accessed their video feed in this manner.
The doorbells also didnāt encrypt the userās home IP address or Wi-Fi network, leaving both potentially exposed to criminals.
The doorbells that CR initially rated were sold under the brand names Eken and Tuck and seemed identical, down to them both requiring users to download the Aiwit smartphone app. The group later found 10 other seemingly identical doorbells made by Eken but sold under a number of different brand names.Ā
CR has reviewed Ekenās firmware update and says the problem has been fixed. āWhile we would prefer that products be safe and secure from their initial launch, the ability of our testing to uncover vulnerabilities results in better products for consumers,ā CRās senior director of product testing, Maria Rerecich, said in its report.Ā
As a result of CRās reporting, the FCC has asked Amazon, Sears, Shein, Temu, and Walmart for more details about how they vet products sold on their platform. None of the five retailers have responded to CRās request for comment on the matter.
Ekenās video doorbells also lacked Federal Communications Commission ID labels, which are required by law, CR found. The company has since added the FCC IDs to the electronic manuals for the doorbells.Ā
Since CR published its February report, many of the Eken doorbells have been pulled from online retailers. Notably, a number of the doorbells were selected as Amazon: Overall Picks or with the Amazonās Choice badge, a label with mysterious criteria that Amazon has refused to explain fully and can be found on many dubious products.
If you own an Eken-produced video doorbell, be sure to check if your firmware is up to date. Your doorbell should receive the update automatically, but itās smart to double-check. Go to the āDevicesā page on the Aiwit app and tap on the doorbellās name, which should open up the settings. The firmware number should be 2.4.1 or higher, which indicates itās up to date.
Technology
They turned cattle ranches into tropical forest ā thenĀ climate changeĀ hit
The Area de ConservaciĆ³n Guanacaste in Costa Rica is a success story for forest restoration. Now, conservationists face a new challenge: climate change.
Ecologist Daniel Janzen wades into the field, clutching a walking stick in one hand and a fist full of towering green blades of grass in the other to steady himself. Winnie Hallwachs, also an ecologist and Janzenās wife, watches him closely, carrying a hat that she hands to him once he stops to explain our whereabouts.Ā
Together with other conservationists who have dedicated decades of their lives to this place, the couple has brought forests back to the Area de ConservaciĆ³n Guanacaste (ACG). Itās āāan astonishing 163,000 hectares of protected landscapes ā an area larger than the Hawaiian island of Oahu ā where forests have reclaimed farmland in Costa Rica.Ā Ā Ā
The grass isnāt supposed to be here. Janzen and Hallwachs only keep this small field around as a reminder of ā and to show visitors like me ā how far theyāve come since the 1970s, when pastures and ranches still dominated much of the landscape.
Across from the field, on the other side of a two-lane road that winds through the ACG, is one ofĀ the first stretches of young forest that Janzen and Hallwachs started nursing back to life. Tree limbs stretch out over the road, as if trying to reach the remaining patch of grass left to seed on the other side.Ā
āThis is just weird.ā
ACG is a success story, a powerful example of what can happen when humans help forests heal. Itās part of whatās made Costa Rica a destination for ecotourism and the first tropical country in the world to reverse deforestation. But now, the coupleās beloved forest faces a more insidious threat.
Across the road, the leaves are too perfect. ItāsĀ like theyāre growing in a greenhouse, Janzen says. Thereās an eerie absence among the foliage ā although youād probably also have to be a regular in the forest to notice.Ā
āEvery year it seems worse,ā Hallwachs says. āWe should have found bugs.āĀ
There should have been bees, wasps, and moths along our walk, she explains. And plenty of caterpillar āhousesā ā curled up leaves the critters sew together that eventually become shelter for other insects. āThe houses were everywhere, now itās almost exciting when you see one,ā Hallwachs says. āThis is just weird.ā
The bugs play crucial roles in the forest ā from pollinating plants to forming the base of the food chain. Their disappearance is a warning. Climate change has come to the ACG, marking a new, troubling chapter in the parkās comeback story.Ā
It also serves as a lesson for conservation efforts around the globe. More than 190 countries have recently committed to restoring 30 percent of the worldās degraded ecosystems under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Billionaire philanthropists are pledging to support those efforts. Whatās happening here in the ACG says a lot about what it takes to revive a forest ā especially in a warming world.
āWhen I was here earlier, a younger person, I could win a case of beer by betting on the first day that the rains would start,ā Janzen tells The Verge. Now, at 85 years old, he says, āI would never dream of betting anything because it can start a month early or a month late.ā
The dry season is about two months longer than it was when Janzen arrived in the 1960s. Climate change is making seasons more unpredictable and weather more erratic across the planet. And thatās posing new risks to the sanctuary scientists like Janzen and Hallwachs have created at ACG.
MarĆa Marta ChavarrĆa, ACGās field investigation program coordinator, describes the unpredictability as āel alegrĆ³n de burro.ā Strictly translated from Spanish, it means ādonkey happiness.ā Colloquially, it describes a fake-out: short-lived joy from a false start.
ChavarrĆa, who speaks with the upbeat tilt of an educator excited to teach, explains it like this, āA big rain is the trigger. Itās time! The rainy season is going to start!ā Trees unfurl new leaves. Moths and other insects that eat those leaves emerge. But now, the rains donāt always last. The leaves die and fall. That has ripple effects across the food chain, from the insects that eat the leaves to birds that eat the insects. They perish or move on. And next season, there are fewer pollinators for the plants. āThe big trigger in the beginning was false,ā ChavarrĆa explains. āThey started, but no more.āĀ
In 1978, Janzen jumped down a ravine because he was āyoung and carefree and just 40 years old,ā in his words. Slipping on wet rocks, he broke three ribs. While recuperating, he spent a month sitting outside of his home on the edge of the forest in the evenings. Next to a 25-watt light bulb outside, the āfront wall was literally plastered with adult moths,ā he recalls in a 2021 paper he and Hallwachs published in the journal PNAS. The title was āTo us insectometers, it is clear that insect decline in our Costa Rican tropics is real, so letās be kind to the survivors.ā
That observation in 1978 led the couple to focus their research on caterpillars and their parasites. In 1980, they used light traps to inventory moth species across the country, documenting at least 10,000 species. Since then, however, theyāve seen a steady decline in caterpillars whose feces used to blanket the forest floor.Ā
Hanging a white sheet and lights at the edge of a cliff overlooking a vast stretch of both old and new-growth forests, they photographed moths that came to rest on the sheet in 1984, 1995, 2007, and 2019. The first photograph is an impressive tapestry of many different winged critters. By 2019, thatās been reduced to a mostly white sheet speckled here and there with far fewer moths. Instead of an intricate tapestry of wings and antennae, the sheet looks more like a blank canvas an artist has only started to splatter with a brush.Ā
Hallwachs and Janzen can see the same phenomenon now standing in broad daylight in the forest across from the field. Just because forests have come roaring back across the ACG doesnāt mean the struggle to survive is over.
1/3
How to turn a ranch into a forest
In a roundabout way, butterflies brought Janzen to Guanacaste. A ninth-grade trip to collect butterflies in Mexico sparked his love of tropical ecosystems in the 1950s. He returned to Veracruz, Mexico, as a PhD student a decade later, collecting insects for a research project. Guanacaste is biologically similar to Veracruz, Janzen says ā filled with tropical dry forests. The parallels brought him to Costa Rica in 1963 to research interactions between plants and animals.
Compared to rainforests that have cafes and even an e-commerce giant named after them, dry forests arguably arenāt in the spotlight so much. And yet theyāre disappearing faster across Latin America than their rainier counterparts. Dry forests are less humid and a little more hospitable to people and agriculture, so people came to raze them. In Costa Rica, which exported as much as 60 percent of its beef to Burger King at one point, ranches and pastures replaced forests. Grasses, good for cows, grew in their place. Between 1940 and 1990, forest cover in Costa Rica shrank from 75 to just 29 percent.Ā
Another American conservationist, Kenton Miller, first envisioned a national park in Guanacaste in 1966. Commissioned by the Costa Rican government to plan a national monument to one of the countryās oldest ranches in the area, he instead made the case for preserving a stretch of Guanacasteās remaining, albeit damaged, dry forest. The aim was to protect 10,400 hectares of land thatās now the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa. And Miller wanted to do more. Park staff still quote him saying his ādream was the creation of a national park that would stretch from the sea to the peaks of mountains and volcanoes.ā
Janzen was ambling around the area around the same time, albeit more focused on research than conservation. āI studied it, they saved it,ā he wrote in 2000. Hallwachs joined him as a volunteer research assistant in 1978, and the two married soon after.Ā
In Santa Rosa, Hallwachs studied agoutis, rodents that can get to be about as big as domestic cats. She devised an ingenious way to study how the animals disperse seeds throughout the forest, Janzen boasts proudly, by placing a bobbin of thread inside the thick-skinned fruit of the guapinol tree that agoutis bury to eat later.Ā
The nature of their work started to change in 1985 after a trip to study Australiaās dry forests. There, they saw how ranchersā fires had caused so much devastation over the years that even some biologists had no idea that what they saw as grass plains were really overgrown pastures that used to be forest. They realized that fires could do the same in Guanacaste, as long as the grass remained.Ā
The problem is sometimes called the human-grass-fire cycle: when invasive grasses, often introduced through agriculture, crowd out forests and then dry out and become fuel, making the landscape more fire-prone. Itās a threat in a lot of places outside of Costa Rica, contributing to the devastating fire that tore through Maui last year.Ā
In Guanacaste, ranchers had wielded fire since the 1600s to keep the forest at bay, preventing it from creeping back into pastures. If Santa Rosa was to survive, fires and invasive grasses would have to go. The national park would also need to grow with the support of the local community.
The couple drafted a plan to expand Santa Rosa into a larger conservation area, enlisting residentsā help in stamping out fires and even hiring former ranch hands to form a firefighting crew. Over 30 years, the initiative to create ACG raised enough money to buy more than 350 surrounding farms and ranches. Serendipitously, by the 1990s, declining international beef prices and a landmark forest law that outlawed deforestation and paid people to protect natural resources also served to transform the landscape across Costa Rica.Ā
Itās a victory that, lately, has been in the shadow of splashy commitments by influencers, billionaires, and policymakers to plant a ton of trees. Itās become a popular way for companies and consumers to try to offset some of their environmental footprint. āWe see all the hype coming from people who are going to plant a billion trees and nobody gives us any credit,ā Janzen laments. Whatās worse, a lot of those corporate tree-planting campaigns are fundamentally flawed.
The first seeds blew in with the wind
āA lot of the reforestation projects are kind of assuming that trees are mechanical objects,ā Hallwachs says. But they donāt stand alone, not in a healthy forest.Ā
Merely plant rows of trees, and the result is a tree plantation ā not a forest.Ā Bringing back a forest is a much different endeavor. Itās more about restoring relationships ā reconnecting remaining forests with land thatās been cleared and nurturing new kinds of connections between people and the land.Ā Ā
In ACGās dry forest, they didnāt have to plant trees by hand. By getting rid of the grass and stopping the fires, they cleared the way for the forestās return. The first seeds blew in with the wind.
Hallwachs and Janzen recognize them like old friends āĀ stopping next to a Dalbergia tree that was one of the first to grow where they stomped out the fires. Its seeds are light and flat, allowing them to float on a breeze. When those trees start to grow, they attract animals in search of food or shelter.Ā
Janzen measures each animal up by how many seeds they can hold and then spit or defecate onto the forest floor. āWhen you see a bird fly by, what youāre seeing is a tablespoon full of seeds,ā he says. āEvery deer you see is a liter of seeds.ā
Now, ACG is estimated to hold as many as 235,000 different terrestrial species ā representing around 2.6 percent of global biodiversity. For comparison, Costa Rica as a whole holds roughly 4 percent of the worldās biodiversity, home to more species than the US and Canada combined. The ACG is now a world heritage site spanning not just dry forest but nearby rainforest, cloud forest, and marine ecosystems.Ā
The forest across the field is considered āsecondary.ā In other words, itās not the original forest; itās one thatās grown back after being cleared. Today, more than 75 percent of the country is blanketed by forest, and more than half of that canopy is young secondary forest. It plays a critical role in protecting biodiversity, giving threatened species a home and slowing climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Ā
Itās also where the couple has built a humble home nestled under a secondary canopy. They spend three months at a time here, bouncing back and forth between Guanacaste and Philadelphia, where Janzen is a professor of biology emeritus and Hallwachs is a research biologist at the University of Pennsylvania.Ā
The front porch is a couple of plastic lawn chairs on the forest floor, shaded by corrugated metal. A web of clotheslines hangs from wooden rafters inside, clothespins securing bags of plants and other specimens theyāve collected over the years. Somewhere among the glass jars and more plastic bags on Janzenās desk, he fishes out a wooden bobbin like those that his wife used to track agoutisā movements by following threads along the forest floor. Now, thereās an agouti foraging outside the front door the couple keeps open to the forest.Ā
āThere was a time when we thought [agoutis] would never show up at our house because our house was in the pasture. It was so far away from all of this,ā Janzen recalls. āToday, theyāre there every morning.ā
āThe living deadā
A short drive from Janzen and Hallwachsā home, along a stretch of the winding paved road through the ACG, the tree canopy seems to close in overhead. With the windows rolled down, you can smell the shift to musty, moist earth. Stop and step outside, and the forest floor is darker, spongier. The thick foliage above filters out more sunlight; more of those leaves have accumulated and decayed on the ground for centuries without burning. In other parts of the park, Janzen can bring his walking stick down with a thud, hitting harder, more compact soil. Here, his walking stick rustles through layers of leaf litter.
āYouāre standing in the only piece of original dry forest between Brownsville, Texas, and the Panama Canal [along] a paved road,ā Janzen says.Ā
This 22-hectare sprawl, just half as big as the Mall of America, is a gem in the ACG. Itās the source of seeds that blew into old pastures. In an ideal world ā with several more centuries and a stable climate ā primary forests like this might have grown to infiltrate the secondary forests it now has as neighbors. In other words, more of the ACG might look and feel like this original forest.Ā
āThe intent was always that. Then comes climate change,ā Hallwachs says.Ā
While itās hotter and drier in this part of the world because of climate change, itās noticeably cooler in the original forest than in areas nearby that have been razed. Itās another benefit of the old evergreen trees towering overhead. Janzen leads us to a 300-year-old tree. The common name for it, he explains, is chicle ā the Spanish word for chewing gum, which can be made from the white latex under its bark.
We visit another ancient tree, the guapinol. Amber jewelry is made from its fossil resin. Its seeds are the same ones the agouti bury across the forest. āAnd thatās how the forest moves,ā Janzen says.Ā
But the last time the tree bore fruit was about 25 years ago. For a tree that only flowers every quarter-century, everything needs to be just right for it to successfully reproduce ā enough water and nutrients and plenty of pollinators (in the guapinolās case, bats). If that doesnāt happen, you could lose the next generation. Here in the ACG, the guapinol is one of what Hallwachs and Janzen call āthe living dead.ā
āThe climate for their successful reproduction has already moved on,ā Hallwachs says. āSo what will be here in 25 years? We are very much hoping there will be forest in 25, 50 years. But there will be some of these classic species that wonāt be able to make it.ā
āThis is what gives me hopeā
The forest is changing faster than Janzen, Hallwachs, and other researchers can document.Ā Thereās not much to do about it except to stop climate change and deforestation, they say, and keep on with their work of restoring the landscape. The ACGās other ecosystems have suffered from climate change, too ā from coral reefs losing their color in the heat to cloud forests losing their clouds.
āAt this point in time and budgets, ACG does not require more classical academic scientific study of climate change impacts,ā they wrote in their 2021 PNAS article. āConfronted with a metaphorical burning house today in the tropics, the critical priority is the complex of fire departments, fire codes, fire alarms, fire exits, emergency rooms for burn victims, and rules and views that prohibit candles in Christmas trees, rather than for more and fancier thermometers.āĀ
Scrolling through photos of ACGās coral reef bleaching last year, ChavarrĆa tells The Verge, āThis is really hard for me being here, documenting this. Sometimes I want to cry.ā The water was so hot it felt like jumping into soup. Under stress, corals expel the algae that give them their color and energy. If the bleaching lasts too long, the corals could die.
Sheās tried to get funding to restore the reef and figure out which corals could be more resilient to climate change but hasnāt had luck yet, she says. Still, she believes they can be saved. āThis is what gives me hope,ā she says, pointing to a colony of coral that didnāt bleach. Itās still pink. This is what conservationists should pay attention to, she says, her voice still upbeat.
When things get rough, ChavarrĆa heads to a lookout point where she can see the hectares of forest below that sheās helped to revive. It reminds her of whatās possible.
There is still hope and growth in Guanacaste. The ACG teamās restoration efforts are expanding outside of its official borders. Working with local women on a former salt flat, ChavarrĆa is restoring a coastal mangrove forest, which has proven to be even more effective at storing carbon dioxide than other kinds of forests of the same size, keeping the greenhouse gas from further heating the planet. Thick mangrove roots also grip the earth so tightly that they can protect coastlines from rising seas and erosion.Ā
The project is also expected to improve fishing prospects for residents who depend on it for food and livelihood. That kind of community buy-in to the forestsā survival has been one of the pillars of ACG since its inception. Officially, they call it biodesarrollo, or biodevelopment. In practice, itās relationship-building. ChavarrĆa started a program for kids in a local fishing town, taking them snorkeling to learn more about the ocean ecosystem. She remembers one of the very first kids in the program jumping out of the water, screaming, āMarĆa, they are colorful!ā Before that moment, she says, āThese kids know the fish just fried in the pan, never alive in the reef.ā The program got mothers in town curious and, now, more involved in projects like restoring the mangrove forest.Ā
Itās tough work, planting seedlings along newly dug canals while your boots sink into brackish mud. But they wonāt have to plant too many trees ā just enough to stabilize water canals that bring back the natural ebb and flow of the tide to this former salt flat. Each tide washes away layers of salt, picks up seedlings from surviving mangrove trees nearby, and deposits them here to grow.
Photography by Justine Calma / The Verge
TheĀ International Center for JournalistsĀ supported this reporting, andĀ Punto y AparteĀ contributed to the report.
Business
Pakistanās economy on recovery path amid global tides: Governor SBP
Jameel Ahmad says that inflation had reached 38 per cent, the FX reserves were fast depleting, the exchange rate was under a lot of pressure and uncertainty was quite high.
Karachi: Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Jameel Ahmad said that the firm commitment of the government and the SBP to respond to the macroeconomic challenges has resulted in significant improvement and Pakistan’s economy is on the path to recovery amid global challenges.
The SBP governor, while delivering a keynote address to the Members Convocation of ICMA Pakistan late Saturday night, elaborated on the recent improvement in Pakistan’s economy and shared that it is worth taking a step back and analysing where our economy is standing and where it is headed.
Referring to the challenging macroeconomic environment Pakistan was facing a year ago, he said that inflation had reached 38 per cent, the FX reserves were fast depleting, the exchange rate was under a lot of pressure and uncertainty was quite high.
However, today, inflation is coming down sharply, our reserves have risen to around US$8 billion despite heavy debt repayments and will so cross the $ 9 billion mark, the current account deficit has narrowed quite significantly, and as a result, the PKR is stable while the stock market is reaching new highs, Jameel Ahmed stated adding that uncertainty has also reduced and Pakistan’s bilateral and multilateral partners are continuing their support.
The governor, while citing Pakistan’s economic improvements, shared that progress was made possible because of a firm commitment of the government and the State Bank of Pakistan to effectively respond to the macroeconomic challenges.
“Unpopular yet necessary measures had to be taken as the State Bank raised the policy rate to 22 per cent, in order to reduce pressure on inflation and the current account,” the SBP governor said and added that the government also undertook fiscal consolidation by constraining non-essential current expenditures and the coordinated policy response was now yielding the desired results.
Governor SBP stressed the need for fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to address the longstanding issues facing our economy and said that fresh perspectives and innovative thinking have become more necessary, as the global shocks facing our economy are getting increasingly complex. He shared that climate change, technological advancements, cyber security threats, and financial innovations are adding new dimensions to the risks to economic and financial stability.
Governor Jameel Ahmad congratulated the graduating accounting professionals and encouraged them to make a mark for themselves and proactively respond to the emerging challenges as our country needs professionals with in-depth knowledge of economics, finance and accounting to find workable solutions.
He said that leadership skills are also paramount to designing and implementing the policy and regulatory decisions with courage and fortitude. In conclusion, the Governor encouraged the graduates to work with dedication, hard work, and unwavering commitment to excellence to help in shaping the economic landscape of Pakistan.
Earlier, President ICMA Pakistan Shehzad Ahmed Malik extended a warm welcome to Governor SBP Jameel Ahmed, Deputy Governor Dr. Inayat Hussain and Deputy Governor Saleem Ullah for attending the Convocation. He congratulated the SBP team on their efforts for stabilizing the economy.
In the end, Governor SBP bestowed degrees upon the graduating CMAs.
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