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Submission + - Hospital Autoclavers may allow safe reuse of N95 masks (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: "[Autoclaving] is like a pressure cooker — basically you enclose items into a chamber, you lock down the chamber, you heat it up and actually increase the pressure inside the chamber," Kumar said. The machines heat up to about 121 C for 15 minutes, killing bacteria and viruses. "It'll sterilize anything". The assumption has been that if you tried this on an N95 mask they would degrade rapidly. We thought we'd give it a try anyway," Kumar said. "And actually what we found is while it does degrade some [types of] masks, there's a certain group of masks that are made of kind of a fabric-type material, rather than being moulded closely to the face they're called pleated [masks]," he said.

Submission + - Waterfox Sells Out, Independent Browser Options Continue To Dwindle

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: As the usage share of web browsers continues to show a lopsideded dominance by Google Chrome, many previously-independent browsers have fallen by the wayside or have been reinvented as Chrome variants (i.e. Opera, Edge, Brave). Apple forges on with its Safari browser while other, smaller projects tend to be quite limited for multi-platform users, such as Dolphin and Bromite. Mozilla continues independently with Firefox for almost every platform, while variants such as Pale Moon and Sea Monkey have attempted to provide products that avoid drastic and/or controversial changes made by Mozilla but sometimes do not match the multi-platform support of Firefox. Let us not forget Tor, the Firefox-based anonymity-focused browser. Alex Kontos is a developer who attempted to provide continuity with dropped Firefox capabilities in his multi-platform Waterfox browser, proudly declaring that Firefox's user data sharing and telemetry collection was not included. For that privacy focus a certain popularity of Waterfox occurred. Now Kontos has revealed that his Waterfox project has been sold to System1, a company describing itself as 'a consumer internet and applications company with the most powerful audience expansion platform in the industry.' In short, a data-collection company.

Submission + - Bill Gates orders £500m hydrogen-powered superyacht (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Bill Gates has ordered the world’s first hydrogen-powered superyacht, worth an estimated £500m ($644m) and featuring an infinity pool, helipad, spa and gym. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft has commissioned the Aqua ship – a 112-metre (370ft) luxury vessel completely powered by liquid hydrogen – which was publicised last year at the Monaco yacht show by the Dutch design firm Sinot. Speaking about the project last year, the marine designer Sander Sinot said: “For the development of Aqua we took inspiration from the lifestyle of a discerning, forward-looking owner, the fluid versatility of water and cutting-edge technology, to combine this in a superyacht with truly innovative features.” The boat has five decks and space to accommodate 14 guests and 31 crew members. In a further environmentally friendly feature, gel-fuelled fire bowls allow guests to stay warm outside without having to burn wood or coals.

Submission + - Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak 'shows global manipulation is out of control' (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles. More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” are set to be released over the next months. It comes as Christopher Steele, the ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk and the intelligence expert behind the so-called “Steele dossier” into Trump’s relationship with Russia, said that while the company had closed down, the failure to properly punish bad actors meant that the prospects for manipulation of the US election this year were even worse.

Submission + - Transport Canada official says 737 MAX MCAS system "must go" (aerotime.aero)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: In a growing line of whistleblowers and skeptics voicing their concerns before the expected re-certification of the Boeing 737 MAX, another rogue agent has emerged. In an email sent to regulators in the U.S., Europe and Brazil, a Transport Canada safety official called for the entire removal of the MCAS system from the 737 MAX. The official believes that the U.S. plane maker should remove the software, largely blamed for the two deadly 737 MAX 8 crashes, before the aircraft is cleared to fly again. “The only way I see moving forward at this point is that the MCAS has to go,” Jim Marko, manager of Aircraft Integration and Safety Assessment at Canada’s aviation regulator – Transport Canada – wrote in the email, according to The New York Times, which first reported the news. In the email, sent to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) on November 19, 2019, Marko expressed his “uneasiness” about Boeing’s attempts to fix the MCAS software. “Judging from the number and degree of open issues that we have, I am feeling that final decisions on acceptance will not be technically based,” he was quoted as saying by Canada’s National Post. “This leaves me with a level of uneasiness that I cannot sit idly by and watch it pass by”

Submission + - 'Platinum' hacking group strikes again with complex Titanium backdoor to WIndows (securelist.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Platinum is one of the most technologically advanced APT actors with a traditional focus on the APAC region. During recent analysis we discovered Platinum using a new backdoor that we call Titanium (named after a password to one of the self-executable archives). Titanium is the final result of a sequence of dropping, downloading and installing stages. The malware hides at every step by mimicking common software (protection related, sound drivers software, DVD video creation tools).

Comment Re:Nazism has never been very big in the USA. (Score 1) 186

The Bund had been thoroughly infiltrated by FBI agents and informants, so your 20K number is way too high a count of bona fide Nazis in that group. Anyways, I don't see why you've brought this up in the context of the IronMarch database leak, which is/was an international forum.

Submission + - Mysterious hacker dumps database of infamous IronMarch neo-nazi forum (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: A mysterious hacker has published today a database dump of one of the internet's most infamous neo-nazi meeting places — the IronMarch forum. The data published today includes a full copy of its content, including sensitive details such as emails, IP addresses, usernames, and private messages. The database dump is currently being analyzed by a multitude of entities, including law enforcement, in the hopes of linking forum members to accounts on other sites and potentially exposing their real-world identities. The drive to unmask forum members comes from the fact that IronMarch, while a little-known site to most internet users, has been the birthplace of two of today's most extreme far-right neo-nazi movements — the Atomwaffen Division and SIEGE Culture — with the first being accused of orchestrating at least eight murders around the world.

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