U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced new action as part of an effort to curb exploitation of de minimis rules for small-value ecommerce orders. At issue for these imports are activities within the scope of the agency’s Entry Type 86 Test and the treatment of Section 321 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930.
How CBP proceeds could have implications for international retailers, including China-originated shipments ordered through Shein and Temu. The companies fell under scrutiny by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in 2023, along with other companies.
During the investigation, the committee looked at the current de minimis environment for imports. An update in 2016 allowed that a single person on one day could import articles with a total value of up to $800 without formal customs declarations. That de minimis threshold allows shipments to avoid certain import duty and tax obligations. It was raised from a previous level of $200.
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What Happened to Make Google Search Bad?
Google Search, once the go-to source for internet users seeking information, has been under scrutiny recently. A growing number of users and researchers are raising concerns about the declining quality of search results123. But what exactly has led to this perceived deterioration? Let’s delve into the details.
The Rise of SEO Spam
A recent study by German researchers from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence revealed a significant issue plaguing Google Search: SEO spam1. The researchers examined 7,392 product review queries on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo for a year and found that a torrent of low-quality content, especially for product search, is drowning any kind of useful information in search results1.
SEO spam, particularly in the form of low-quality product reviews, has become hyper-prevalent, often appearing at the top of Google’s rankings1. This has led to a constant battle between search engines and spam sites, with the latter seemingly gaining the upper hand1.
The Impact of User-Generated Content
Google’s increasing reliance on user-generated content has also contributed to the decline in search result quality3. Spammers have found ways to manipulate this reliance, leading to an influx of low-quality content in search results3.
The Advent of Generative AI
The advent of generative AI has exacerbated the problem. This new technology can produce low-quality copy instantly, flooding the internet with low-effort content from SEO farms and affiliate link sites2. As AI-generated spam becomes more prevalent, the quality of search results is likely to deteriorate further1.
Googles Response
Despite these issues, Google maintains that the study does not reflect the overall quality and helpfulness of Search1. They argue that the study focuses narrowly on product search, which does not represent the billions of queries they process every day1. Google also points out that they have launched specific improvements to address these issues and that third-party measurements of search engine results for other types of queries have found Google to be of significantly higher quality1.
Conclusion
While Google Search has seen some decline in quality, particularly in relation to product searches, it’s important to note that the company is aware of these issues and is actively working to improve. However, with the rise of SEO spam and the advent of generative AI, the battle for high-quality search results is far from over. As users, staying informed about these changes can help us navigate the evolving landscape of online search.
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Cybersecurity firm Hive Systems has released the results of its latest annual analysis on cracking passwords through brute-force attacks. The tests showed that any password under seven characters can be cracked within hours. In last year’s tests, weak 11-character passwords were cracked instantly using brute force attacks. With Bcrypt, the same 11-character password now takes 10 hours to crack.
Hive’s analysis showed that strong passwords (containing numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols) and fairly strong passwords (containing uppercase and lowercase letters) are difficult to crack if they are more than eight characters long — it takes months or years to crack such passwords if they are protected with Bcrypt.
Hive’s study assumes that the attacker has obtained a hash associated with a randomly generated password and attempts to crack it.
“Non-randomly generated passwords are much easier and faster to crack because humans are fairly predictable. As such, the time frames in these tables serve as a ‘best case’ reference point. Passwords that have not been randomly generated would be cracked significantly faster,” the company explained.
