Most visitors come to the UK expecting the rain and weather for which the country is famous. However, when summer finally arrives, British people like nothing more than heading for the coast. Here are some of more famous places of interest that you could expect to visit on a trip to Britain. Black pool, in the northwest of England, is the most visited place in the UK. Each year around 6.5 to 7 million people come to enjoy the miles of sandy beaches, the 158m Black pool Tower and the 11km-long Golden Mile, where there are entertainments, pubs, ice rinks (溜冰场) and even a zoo. On the south coast of the country you can find Brighton. Until 1786, Brighton was a sleepy village. Then the future king, George IV, decided to build a house there, and now it has become a large, international centre. Apart from the beaches, Brighton is famous for its pier (码头). There are theatres, entertainments and restaurants there. Brighton is also fantastic for shopping. If you want to travel a little further, why not go to Cornwall in the far southwest of the UK? South Cornwall offers miles of sandy beaches and beautiful scenery. The climate there is warmer than the rest of Britain, and you can even find palm trees. For a bit more excitement, go to North Cornwall. The scenery there is nicer, and the beaches are famous for their powerful waves. As a result, North Cornwall has become the home of British surfing. One word of warning though, if you are using the roads in the UK during holidays, you can expect long traffic jams on the motorways. It might be better to take the train.

    Technology offers conveniences such as opening the garage door from your car or changing the television station without touching the TV.

    Now one American company is offering its employees a new convenience: a microchip implanted in their hands. Employees who have these chips can do all kinds of things just by waving their hands. Three Square Market is offering to implant microchips in all of their employees for free. Each chip costs $300 and Three Square Market will pay for the chip. Employees can volunteer to have the chips implanted in their hands. About 50 out of 80 employees have chosen to do so. The president of the company, his wife and their children are also getting chips implanted in their hands.

    The chip is about the size of a grain of rice. Implanting the chip only takes about a second and is said to hurt only very briefly. The chips go under the skin between the thumb and forefinger. With a chip in the hand, a person can enter the office building, buy food, sign into computers and more, simply by waving that hand near a scanner. The chips will be also used to identify employees. Employees who want convenience, but do not want to have a microchip implanted under their skin, can wear a wristband or a ring with a chip instead. They can perform the same tasks with a wave of their hands as if they had an implanted chip.

    Three Square Market is the first company in the United States to offer to implant chips in its employees. Epicenter, a company in Sweden, has been implanting chips in its employees for a while.

    Three Square Market says the chip cannot track the employees. The company says scanners can read the chips only when they are within a few inches of them. “The chips protect against identity theft, similar to credit cards.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the chips back in 2004, so they should be safe for humans, according to the company.

    In the future, people with the chips may be able to do more with them, even outside the office. Todd Westby is Chief Executive Officer of Three Square Market. He says, “Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc.”

    A new web standard is expected to kill passwords, meaning users will no longer have to remember difficult logins(登录) for each and every website or service they use.

    The Web Authentication (WebAuthn网络认证) standard is designed to replace the password with tools that users already own, such as a security key, a smart phone, a fingerprint scanner or webcam. Instead of having to remember long characters, users can authenticate their login with their body or something they have, communicating directly with the website through Bluetooth, USB or NFC.

    "WebAuthn will change the way that people access the Web," said Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that controls web standards. One example of how WebAuthn will work is that when a user visits a site, they put in a user name and then get a message on their smart phone. Tapping on the message on their phone then logs them into the website without the need for a password.

    WebAuthn promises to protect users against phishing attacks(钓鱼攻击) and the use of stolen information as there will be nothing to steal, the authentication sign is produced and used once by their special tool each time the user enters.

    "After years of increasingly serious data and password being stolen, now it is the time for service providers to end their dependency on easily-attacked passwords and use phishing-resistant FIDO Authentication(快速身份认证联盟) for all websites and apps," said Brett McDowell, CEO of the FIDO Alliance, one of the bodies pushing the new standard.

    WebAuthn should also help people use special login details for each and every service they use, instead of using the same login and password for every site, which many people still do, leaving them further attacked if one site is hacked(黑客攻击).

    The W3C has moved WebAuthn to what's called the "candidate recommendation" stage – the last-but-one step before it becomes an approved web standard – inviting sites and services to begin using it. The web standards body announced that Google, Microsoft and Mozilla had been devoted to supporting WebAuthn, meaning that all major web explorers except Apple's Safari will use the new standard.

    "While there are many web security problems and we can't fix them all, relying on passwords is one of the weakest links. With WebAuthn's solutions we are removing this weak link," said Jaffe.

    Several sites and services already use similar methods to enter, including Google and Facebook, which can both be entered using a USB security key. But a single cross-platform, cross-service standard approved by the W3C will mean that many more sites and services will be able to kill the password as the login method.

    WebAuthn is the top of many years of work and the change will not happen overnight. But as it increasingly seems unavoidably that our email or other online services will get hacked into, removing the password is an important step in improving online security and making using sites and services easier.

Teens For Planet Earth

    This is a social networking site for teenagers who want to get involved in protecting our planet. They can connect with other green-minded teens, choose a project or create their own. Teens For Planet Earth encourages young folks to get busy in their own communities. They offer guidance on local projects with categories such as habitats, animals, water and education. Awards are given to active members.

Meez

    At Meez, teens can create their own avatars (头像), rooms and virtual pets. It is a social community of creative people that combines avatars, virtual worlds and games. Meez offers contests and chat as well as homework help, a fashion central and a writers'corner. A chat area for younger teens is available. Other areas are music, geek (极客) central, art and sports.

Cyberteens

    Cyberteens is another cool site that celebrates the teen years. Here teenagers can find community, games, and news. There is a link called "creativity" where teens can share their poems, stories, photos and artwork. The "cool links" section offers a huge variety of options to the curious teens. This site also has surveys and helps with jobs and school work.

Student.com

    Student.com is a resource site for teens and high school students. Its social network has over 900,000 members. Members earn points to win prizes just by browsing and they offer several multi-player games. Points are used to buy items at auction (拍卖会). Student.com is filled with useful information and articles.

    A court battle between German and Israeli archives （档案馆） over Kafka's manuscripts （手稿）raised literary, not just legal, questions. At the time of his death, Kafka hardly seemed like a candidate for world fame. He had a minor reputation in German literary circles. He published a few stories in magazines, but they received little attention.

    After he died in 1924, his friend Max Brod collected, edited and published his works - despite Kafka's own instructions in his will ordering the manuscripts to be destroyed - thus making Kafka a household name after his death. When the Nazis invaded Prague, Brod escaped to Israel, bringing the manuscripts with him. When he died in 1968, his manuscripts, together with those of Kafka, were transferred to his secretary Esther Hoffe.

    Even though Brod asked in his will that the manuscripts be given to a public archive, Hoffe sold some of them abroad for a great deal of money. Many of them eventually made it to the German Literature Archive. In 2007, she died and left her properties to her daughters. Then the case about the manuscripts started after the death of one of her daughters. The court said Hoffe had no rights, and could not have any such rights for the documents Brod took from Kafka's apartment after his death.

    Ironically, Kafka's stubborn homelessness and non-belonging in his works were accurately what ensured his place at the center of 20^th-century literature. W. H. Auden proposed that Kafka was to the cold, absurd 20^th century what Dante or Shakespeare had been to their times - the writer who captured the spirit of the age. That is why, in the end, it hardly matters whether Kafka's manuscripts stay in Germany or Israel. What counts is that we are all living in Kafka's world.

    Move over, helicopter parents. "Snowplow(扫雪机) parents" are the newest reflection of an intensive(强化的) parenting style that can include parents booking their adult children haircuts, texting their college kids to wake them up so they don't sleep through a test, and even calling their kids' employers.

    Helicopter parenting, the practice of wandering anxiously near one's children, monitoring their every activity, is so 20th century. Some rich mothers and fathers now are more like snowplows: machines moving ahead, clearing any difficulties in their children's path to success, so they don't have to suffer failure, frustration(挫折)or lose opportunities.

    It starts early, when parents get on wait lists for excellent preschools before their babies are born and try to make sure their kids never do anything that may frustrate them. It gets more intense when school starts: running forgotten homework to school or calling a coach to request that their children make the team.

    Rich parents may have more time and money to devote to making sure their children don't ever meet with failure, but it's not only rich parents practicing snowplow parenting. This intensive parenting has become the most welcome way to raise children, regardless of income, education, or race.

    Yes it's a parent's job to support the children, and to use their adult wisdom to prepare for the future when their children aren't mature enough to do so. That's why parents hide certain toys from babies to avoid getting angry or take away a teenager's car keys until he finishes his college applications.

    But snowplow parents can take it too far, some experts say. If children have never faced a difficulty, what happens when they get into the real world?

    "Solving problems, taking risks and overcoming frustration are key life skills," many child development experts say, "and if parents don't let their children experience failure, the children don't acquire them."