1
DROI
LGBT discrimination prevails in Ukraine by Yuliia Tsytsyliuk and Anastasia Zhuravleva
CONTENT LGBT discrimination prevails in Ukraine Things Story Money, money, credit card The coolest and strangest transport systems Combating industrial espionage Energy saving goes classy
3 4 5 6 8 9
Layout: Katerina Lipovka
2
Even with different sexual orientations and gender identities becoming more accepted around the world, discrimination based on a sexual orientation and/ or gender identity still remains an issue that transcends Ukrainian society and affects all of us. Unfortunately, despite the formal existence of anti-discrimination laws in Ukraine, the real situation leaves much to be desired. According to the latest statistics, Ukraine ranks 44th out of 49 in terms of protecting the rights of the LGBT community. On the other hand, LGBT acceptance in Ukraine is in doubt as Ukrainian society is not ready for the moment to welcome and to tolerate such diversity. Ukrainian government hasn’t acted actively in solving this issue: from 2011 to 2014, only one out of seven bill proposals on LGBT discrimination got adopted. It gave the possibility for foreigners of same-sex marriage to use reproductive technologies in Ukraine. In 2015, under the pressure of European Commission, Ukrainian Parliament passed a law banning discrimination in the workplace, including that based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Adopting this law was the European Union requirement in the Visa Liberalization Action Plan. Recent Ukrainian polls are also showing terrifying statistics: - 95% of Ukrainians consider it unacceptable to have sex with someone of the same gender; - 63% consider homosexuality to be unnatural, immoral, a form of mental illness. Nikita Sokolov, one of the two chairpersons for DROI, states: “In Russia one of my friends faced discrimination: he was fired because of his sexual orientation. We have to change the mentality. Switching the mindset of a younger generation is our main goal.» In recent years, many states have taken decisive steps to strengthen the protection of the rights of LGBT people. Now it is a turn of Ukraine to take an example from European countries, to reduce the number of discrimination incidents and to provide LGBT community with all the necessary protection. 3
CULT
IMCO Things Story
Money, money, credit card by Yuliia Tsytsyliuk
by Yuliia Tsytsyliuk
The world where even lifeless things could act as if they were alive was first shown in “Toy Story” cartoon, released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1995. Four years later, a British technologist Kevin Ashton made this idea real by founding a system which was later called “the Internet of Things” (IoT). It introduced the idea that usually trivial material objects can be connected to the Internet, which allows them to send and receive data.
With the development of the invisible money concept in the digital age, payment methods are becoming more virtual nowadays. In the not too distant future, it is likely that people will never have to carry cash with them or to pull out their wallets every time they want to pay for their purchases: it is expected that in order to move towards cashless future and contactless digital payments more 20 billion devices will become payment devices by 2020. Just imagine that in few years we will be able to make payments not only with our gadgets or fingerprints, but also with some trivial things like rings or keys or even within our social media accounts. The perception of money has evolved significantly, and it continues to evolve: physical money is becoming completely invisible. In fact, bank cards owners haven’t even noticed when they started using mobile wallets such as Android Pay and Apple Pay, which allow making payments through identity authentication. These innovations made people dream of a world without banks and other financial institutions, as well as without the need of paper currency. Furthermore, social media are also following the new trend of contactless payments, which means that the era of banks domination in facilitating the transfer of money is coming to an end. Social networks’ users were given the possibility to buy something they liked through their favourite brand’s Twitter page while Facebook Messenger created a system allowing users to transfer money directly from their bank account to the recipient’s without even closing their chat window!
Being one of the biggest revolutions of the Internet over the last few years, IoT is still a mysterious concept for a lot of people. “The classic misunderstanding is that [the Internet of Things] is the toaster talking to the fridge or the toaster talking to an app to tell you when the toast is ready”, says Kevin Ashton. In fact, the toaster connected to the Internet which can interact with other toasters via Facebook or Twitter is a myth many people believe. Nevertheless, any new technology produces a certain amount of fears that, in case of the IoT, have been exaggerated and misrepresented. Indeed, the scary thing about the security of the Internet of Things is that the attacks that only had virtual consequences before went beyond the Internet: currently they are causing unfavorable effects on everyday life like loss of privacy and security or lesser employment. Furthermore, one should not forget that even the greatest technical innovations have chinks in their armour, and therefore can be hacked. This is why potential IoT security concerns should not be a stumbling block for its further development: if inventors had been ruled by security fears in the past, we probably wouldn’t have cars, planes, phones, computers or even the Internet today. With the toaster first connected to the Internet in 1990 and 50 billion connected devices by 2050, will “Things Story” become real one day? Wait and see… 4
The role of money cannot be overestimated as it affects every aspect of our lives. We cannot predict how the way we pay for things will evolve in the future, but it will be definitely continuing the strategy launched by IT predecessors according to the world development and the needs of the society. All in all, one should accept that money will still be everywhere and in everything. 5
TRAN The coolest and strangest transport systems by Marfa Umanskaya Public transportation can be the bane of your existence. But it doesn’t have to be. Below the weirdest and best systems are shown, some of them have survived the test of time, others have become obsolete. But anyway they deserved to be seen. The shortest regular passenger air travel The shortest regular passenger flight is between the airports of the Wesley’s and Papa-Westray on the Orkney Islands in Scotland. This route connects two small nearby inhabited patches of land in the North Sea. The duration of the flight in the air is only 47 seconds, and the flight as a whole - 2 minutes.
Cable car as the main public transport Georgia is also a country with a rather complex mountainous terrain. Instead of street elevators, there they use cable cars. A prime example is the small village of Chiatura, where such vehicles are the main form of urban transport. Currently there are 10 cable car lines in the city, and before that, there were even more - 17. Most sites use incredibly outdated equipment that has been working continuously since the fifties. There is a legend that it was the ridiculous forms of metal trailers from Chiatura that became the prototype for the famous Pepelats in the film Georgy Danelia «Kin-Dza-Dza». 6
Street lift to the other side We are used to the fact that elevators are transportation within multi-storey buildings. But there are regions where lifts are a quite popular urban vehicle. Most often, this happens in cities with difficult terrain, like in Lisbon. But the most unusual and beautiful street elevator appeared in 2013 in Pamplona, the capital of the Spanish province of Navarre. This street elevator connects two urban areas. Earlier, the inhabitants had to go around, but now the communication between neighbouring streets has become much simpler.
The longest railway route in the world Until 2010, the longest passenger train route of the world was the Kharkov-Vladivostok train. This route, launched in 1957, covered the distance of 9714 kilometres between the cities in 7 days, 7 hours and 34 minutes. In 2010, this train was cancelled due to the small number of passengers. The new record holder is the Moscow-Vladivostok route. This train travels 9259 kilometres in 7 days and 10 hours.
7
JURI
ITRE Combating industrial espionage by Wladyslav Korshenko As long as there has been commerce, there has been industrial espionage. Given that commerce is one of the economic pillars the European Union stands upon, the creation of effective intellectual property legislation is an important issue. A few year ago, a former Motorola employee — Hanjuan Jin — was accused of stealing the company’s trade secrets worth millions of dollars. In total Ms Jin stole more than 1000 confidential documents. She was checked at Chicago’s international airport. A customs officer found that she had a one-way ticket to China, $30,000 in cash, Motorola documents as well Chinese military documents. According to a report made by the Ministry of Security and Justice of the Netherlands, industrial espionage attacks on Dutch companies were of structural character. To make things worse, two thirds of the companies affected were not aware of such attacks. Most of them were aimed at the defense industry and high-end sectors. Industrial espionage is dire not only to the private sector, but to the government as well. It undermines governmental and political authority and therefore is a threat to democratic legal order. Industrial espionage is targeted at different types of data. First of all, it’s aimed at stealing trade secrets. While the definition of a “trade secret” varies from country to country, it generally means protected information about existing products or products in development. Another popular target is client information. It includes all the private data of company’s clients. Last two targets are market and financial information. Given the complexity of industrial espionage, there is no easy way to tackle this issue. Since the definition of a trade secret is very broad, encompassing business or technical information that has commercial value, first of all, stakeholders need to agree on the definition of trade secrets. Another step is to mark them confidential and keep them out of the public – for example, to limit employees only to information necessary to perform their duties. Employers should also make sure that their employees are educated about protection of trade secrets. When an employee is hired, they should sign a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting the sharing of any of the company’s confidential information while employed with the company and thereafter. Last but not least, IP law legislation concerning industrial espionage should include provisions on public liability since the majority of violations are made because of monetary reasons.
8
Industrial espionage prevention is an important part of intellectual property law. Nowadays, especially in Ukraine, disclosure of trade secrets, client, market and financial information is a huge threat to the development of commerce. However, the European Union is constantly adopting and improving its IP legislation. For example, the European Parliament adopted Directive (EU) 2016/943 (Directive for the protection of trade secrets in the European Union) which contains all the contemporary standards of commercial data protection.
Energy saving goes classy by Myhailo Komarov Electric energy is an extremely important resource. Soon after its appearance businessmen rapidly understood that energy is one of the long lasting key currencies. Unfortunately, the problem of energy saving started being regarded as an important one only a few years ago. The realisation could have happened much later, if it hadn’t been for a number of open-minded individuals who happened to have enough will and resources to break the system and lobby of corporations. These companies want to keep their high levels of income by using outdated technologies to the point of complete exhaustion of the natural resources. Elon Musk is a remarkable example of such an individual. At the age of 45 he already has car and spaceships producing companies, and one of the biggest factories producing energy saving equipment like Powerwall 1 and Powerwall 2. These are power saving batteries with can stabilise the an entire power grid of a region. «@mcannonbrookes Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free,” tweeted Musk to a representative of South Australia. “That serious enough for you?” As of now, South Australia hasn’t managed to build a 100MW Powerwall 2 yet. But the fact that business connections for billions of dollars are becoming that transparent and easy is definitely good news. 9
10