Tag: computers

The Oracle Healthcare hack and implications for Cybersecurity in America

It seems like not a single day goes by without someone hacking into another system in the country. Oracle, one of America’s most important information technology companies has had a huge hacking incident occur early in this year. Even though North Korea’s skilled hackers have already stolen hundreds of millions of crypto, there are hackers who already saying: hold my beer.

According to an article written on TechRadar, Oracle is now admitting the servers of a company that they acquired in 2022 had been hacked and medical records were copied to an external location. The company has been undergoing many attacks recently, however, this one is causing ripples across the health IT sphere in America.

Cybersecurity is generally speaking seen as a boring sphere in the news. The only time that it gets any attention is when there Crypto in the title. The chaos involving Crypto is why the industry has the reputation that has now. The media loves having chaos in the industry in order to scare people, but the crypto people are still attempting to get their money in there, confident that it will change the culture of banking in the West.

However, cybersecurity is increasingly becoming more of an issue in Healthcare. The push for electronic medical records was sold as a way of making healthcare more efficient. However, it is clear that there is a cost to it. While people may not want to go through papers of medical records like in the past, these systems have to be maintained and protected against threats.

In spite of the usage of the internet since the early 1990s, many companies are still seemingly incompetent at preventing lone hackers or teams of hackers from stealing information or even attacking healthcare systems. While this race seems like a whack and mole game, hackers seem to have the edge more and more.

The issue that Oracle faces right now is that they were not honest about the hacking attacks on the healthcare clients. They basically stated they were not hacked and now there is information they are attempting to help those same clients with this issue. Oracle should have been honest but instead they decided to chose secrecy. In the case of a major hack as this, transparency is a virtue. While some companies may not want to reveal such incompetency, it is important the IT sector be able to relate to the average person.

The hack and its effects will continue to ripple through the industry and America. We shall see what it means for cybersecurity.

However, one thing is clear here.

The black hat hackers have an advantage here. Considering their lack of morality and inclination towards breaking rules, they are in some ways embracing the internet’s chaos.

Unlike on the regular television or even the printed pages of magazines, newspapers or books, the internet is a liminal space filled with information, videos and images. To the hacker, he is like the descendant of the pirates of the Golden Age in those years in the 1710s and 1720s. This time however, he is in a society which is unable to comprehend his actions.

The hacker to some is a romantic rogue. Chaos for chaos sake, tussling with the sellout white hats who get government paychecks is a high ideal to the black hat hackers.

This constant battle between the black hats and white hats isn’t as binary as it seems but in the realm of big companies, it is an arms race of people tapping away at their computers.

Oracle needs to understand that people are only going to be questioning the cyber landscape even more. What was once an interesting place to buy things and look at images has become a space of war between multiple factions all with their own beliefs and biases. Being honest about the hack is important and can motivate other companies to not hide behind spokespersons but be reliable and amicable to the public.

Civilization VII is not a great game

It has been some time since the release of Civilization VII on February 11th, 2025. However, it is clear that time has moved on and the game is languishing almost like a middle child between Civ 6 and Civ 5. The idea that Civ 5 is within striking distance of Civilization VII on Steam player’s count, shows that a game from the early 2010s is showing its staying power with the fanbase in Civilization.

However, there is always need for corporations to put out feelers in order to get people’s interest, even when it is clear that the game is not up to par. Firaxis Games seems to have put little effort into responding to the community, relying on “journalists” to write up sycophantic articles. Especially in the beginning of the games release, many journalists were trying to play nice with the Firaxis Games, so they can get exclusive insights which would help boost their video channels as well as their websites.

However, since the release of the game, there has been very little written about Civilization VII. Even on YouTube, hardly any of the influencers are caring about it. Even the release of the newest path, 1.1.0 was not enough to bring players back into the game.

The game is currently not making splash on Steam.

While Steam does not represent every player who bought the game, Civilization VII is trailing Civilization VI by many thousands of players. No matter what the devs are saying about the game, the game is not selling well in comparison to Civilization VI, when it was released in October 2016.

Civilization VII is a game that is seeking an audience. What is that audience? Civilization VII is made for casual fans who do not want any micro. It also takes ideas from Humankind which were better implemented in that game. I think that the team who made this game were just throwing ideas together, without much consideration for whether they would be part of a coherent whole.

Civilization VI will remain the most popular game for many years to come. Unless Firaxis makes a Stellaris-style change to the gameplay, it is unlikely that any DLCs or expansions will revive this game.

Civilization VI was more popular at the same time in comparison to Civilization VII. This is a clear sign that Civilization VII does not have the staying power of previous games in the series.