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Comment Re:DOOM DOOM DOOM (Score 2) 175

Doesn't make up for them increasing more than everyone else's reductions. The rest of the world can go net zero and China would still be above what is recommended. Solar panels are a bit of a scam right now. They leak toxic chemicals into the soil, don't work at night, don't work well in series, are easily obstructed, require lots of strip mining, etc. You'll pivot to battery storage, which has also traditionally incurred large amounts of strip mining and chemical leakage. That hopefully gets better with better batteries, but it won't solve all the problems in the time we are told we have.
Russia has been funding green scams around the world. I am not falling for their propaganda. https://thehill.com/opinion/en... https://www.newsweek.com/putin... https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Comment DOOM DOOM DOOM (Score 0) 175

"Pay me money and I can tell you how to fix it!" It's an old scam that works quite well, sadly. Propose ways to curb the big producers and maybe I'll actually care. Almost everywhere has lowered their CO2 emissions, except China and India who increased enough to cover everyone's reductions and then some.

Submission + - DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATIONS OF JFK, RFK and MLK (whitehouse.gov) 4

schwit1 writes: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy and Purpose. More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.

Submission + - Backdoor Infecting VPNs Used 'Magic Packets' For Stealth and Security (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can’t be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip the backdoor with a passive agent that remains dormant until it receives what’s known in the business as a “magic packet.” On Thursday, researchers revealed that a never-before-seen backdoor that quietly took hold of dozens of enterprise VPNs running Juniper Network’s Junos OS has been doing just that. J-Magic, the tracking name for the backdoor, goes one step further to prevent unauthorized access. After receiving a magic packet hidden in the normal flow of TCP traffic, it relays a challenge to the device that sent it. The challenge comes in the form of a string of text that’s encrypted using the public portion of an RSA key. The initiating party must then respond with the corresponding plaintext, proving it has access to the secret key.

The lightweight backdoor is also notable because it resided only in memory, a trait that makes detection harder for defenders. The combination prompted researchers at Lumin Technology’s Black Lotus Lab to sit up and take notice. “While this is not the first discovery of magic packet malware, there have only been a handful of campaigns in recent years,” the researchers wrote. “The combination of targeting Junos OS routers that serve as a VPN gateway and deploying a passive listening in-memory only agent, makes this an interesting confluence of tradecraft worthy of further observation.” The researchers found J-Magic on VirusTotal and determined that it had run inside the networks of 36 organizations. They still don’t know how the backdoor got installed.

Submission + - Bill Gates' TerraPower Signs Agreement For Nuclear To Power Data Centers (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: TerraPower, a nuclear energy startup founded by Bill Gates, struck a deal this week with one of the largest data center developers in the US to deploy advanced nuclear reactors. TerraPower and Sabey Data Centers (SDC) are working together on a plan to run existing and future facilities on nuclear energy from small reactors. A memorandum of understanding signed by the two companies establishes a “strategic collaboration” that’ll initially look into the potential for new nuclear power plants in Texas and the Rocky Mountain region that would power SDC’s data centers. [...]

TerraPower’s reactor design for this collaboration, Natrium, is the only advanced technology of its kind with a construction permit application for a commercial reactor pending with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the company. The company just broke ground on a demonstration project in Wyoming last year, and expects it to come online in 2030. Electricity demand from data centers has tripled over the past decade, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). That demand is only expected to grow with the rise of AI, a trend that could prolong the lives of aging fossil fuel power plants and revive retired nuclear plants. Microsoft made a deal in September to help restart a retired reactor at Three Mile Island. Both Google and Amazon, meanwhile, announced plans last year to support the development of advanced reactors to power their data centers.

Submission + - Scammers Use Venmo To 'Deceive and Defraud Customers' On Flights (sfgate.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The same morning that JetBlue Airways announced that it was the first airline partnering with Venmo to begin accepting payments for booking flights, an account on the popular payment platform was already raking in money. A Venmo user named Owen Miller paid the JetBlue Checkpoint Store for a drink on Wednesday morning, which is a typical transaction between a traveler and airline, except for the fact that JetBlue doesn’t operate that account. “At this time, JetBlue does not accept Venmo payment for inflight purchases such as food and beverages,” a representative for the airline told SFGATE in an email. “Unfortunately, we have seen accounts falsely representing themselves as JetBlue to deceive and defraud customers.”

As the first airline to accept Venmo payments, JetBlue is also the first to contend with online fraud that’s common with any digital marketplace. JetBlue only accepts Venmo as a payment option for U.S. customers when booking flights on its website. The airline said it plans to fold Venmo payments into its mobile app later this year. Travelers looking to book JetBlue flights with Venmo on its website are provided with a pop-up window that has a QR code for them to scan on the Venmo app. The airline said it works with a cyber fraud prevention business partner and its legal counsel to identify fraudulent accounts on Venmo impersonating the airline. “Still, new sites, unrelated phone numbers and social media profiles do pop-up online,” JetBlue wrote, “... so we urge our customers to ensure they are always interacting with verified JetBlue channels.”

Submission + - Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election (brennancenter.org)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The influence of wealthy donors and dark money was unprecedented. Much of it would have been illegal before the Supreme Court swept away long-established campaign finance rules. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision that swept away more than a century’s worth of campaign finance safeguards, turns 15 this month. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it the worst ruling of her time on the Court. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently expressed disapproval of the ruling, with at least 22 states and hundreds of cities voting to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Citizens United reshaped political campaigns in profound ways, giving corporations and billionaire-funded super PACs a central role in U.S. elections and making untraceable dark money a major force in politics. And yet it may only be now, in the aftermath of the 2024 election, that we can begin to understand the full impact of the decision.

Submission + - Is Bambu Labs Locking Down Users' 3D Printers? (arstechnica.com) 1

jenningsthecat writes: 3D printer manufacturer Bambu Labs has faced a storm of controversy and protest after releasing a security update which many users claim is the first step in moving towards an HP-style subscription model. Ars Technica reports:

"Part of Bambu's "just works" nature relies on a relatively more closed system than its often open-minded counterparts. Sending a print to most Bambu printers typically requires either Bambu's cloud service, or, in "LAN mode," a manual "sneakernet" transfer through SD cards. Cloud connections also grant perks like remote monitoring, and many customers have accepted the trade-off.

However, other customers, eager to tinker with third-party software and accessories, along with those fearing a subscription-based future for 3D printing, see Bambu Lab's purported security concerns as something else. And Bambu acknowledges that its messaging on its upcoming change came out in rough shape."

The Ars article also mentions that "Repair advocate Louis Rossmann, noting Bambu's altered original blog post, uploaded a video soon after, "Bambu's Gaslighting Masterclass: Denying their own documented restrictions." Rossmann also took aim at Bambu's Terms of Use, suggesting that the company was asking buyers to trust that Bambu wouldn't enact restrictive policies it otherwise wrote into its user agreements."

When Bambu Labs removed the controversial original blog post from their website, it also disappeared from Archive.org. Not mentioned in the Ars article, but confirmed in Rossman's YouTube video, is that Rossman recovered the blog post anyway from archiving site Archive.is

Submission + - Anti-Trump Searches Appear Hidden on TikTok (ibtimes.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Searches for anti-Trump content are now appearing hidden on TikTok for many users after the app came back online in the U.S. TikTok users have taken to Twitter to share that when they search for topics negatively related to President Donald Trump, a message pops up saying "No results found" and that the phrases may violate the app's guidelines. One user said that when they tried to search "Donald Trump rigged election" on a U.S. account, they were met with blocked results. Meanwhile, the same phrase searched from a U.K. account prompted results. Another user shared video of them switching between a U.S. and U.K. VPN to back up the user's viral claims, which has since amassed more than 187,000 likes.
Crime

Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Pardoned (bbc.com) 339

Slashdot readers jkister and databasecowgirl share the news of President Donald Trump issuing a pardon to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC: US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son. Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.

"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!" Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht's website, hosted on the hidden "dark web", sold more than $200 million worth of drugs anonymously.

Submission + - Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder (nypost.com)

databasecowgirl writes: President Trump announced Tuesday night that he had granted a âoefull and unconditionalâ pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the notorious dark web site Silk Road.

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