Tuesday, December 03, 2019

Naked Security: HPE warns of impending SSD disk doom

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HPE warns of impending SSD disk doom
by Danny Bradbury,

[HP Enterprise] released a critical firmware patch for its serial-attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs, after revealing that they would permanently fail by default after 32,768 hours of operation. That’s right: assuming they’re left on all the time, three years, 270 days, and eight hours after you write your first bit to one of these drives, your records and the disk itself will become unrecoverable.

All I can say is, "d'Oh!". And if you are using one of these SSDs, get the firmware updated as soon as you're able to.

Monday, December 02, 2019

Translation of Gikfun's EK1885 kit

1 comment:
I've recently taken an interest in electronics and decided I wanted to try my hand at soldering surface-mount devices (SMD) to circuit boards. I've seen many YouTube videos (see links below) on how to do this, but my practical experience has been minuscule, involving only a few single-chip breakout boards.

In order to gain a bit more experience with SMD soldering, I searched Amazon for any SMD practice boards. There aren't many, but there are a few. I selected the Gikfun EK1885 kit (Amazon link), because in addition to being a board to practice on, half of the board actually does something - it uses a timer and a counter chip to make a group of LEDs flash in a simple pattern.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

IEEE Spectrum's 2019 Gift Guide

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IEEE Spectrum’s 2019 Gift Guide
By Stephen Cass, 26 Nov 2019 | 20:00 GMT

Techie gifts for all budgets

Pinball machines, musical Tesla coils, computer kits for kids and more.

When you want to get something for that geeky relative that doesn't like any normal presents you don't want to settle for a gift card or cash.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Security tip: watch out for expired DNS domains

2 comments:
For quite some time, my computer at work has exhibited many signs of a malware infection, but none was ever to be found.

More specifically, at random times (usually when quickly typing a URL into a web browser) I would end up on the wrong page - usually a page trying to convince me that I'm wanted by the FBI, or trying to sell black market Viagra ('scuze me, "V1@gkr4"), or other kinds of annoying spam.

Of course, when you see something like this, you immediately assume you are infected by a virus or have some kind of malware. And I did all the right things - boot from a known-good recovery disk and run all kinds of scanners. And none of them revealed anything.

So what was going on here? The answer is that I got hit by a perfect storm of coincidence.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Naked Security: Warrantless searches of devices at US borders ruled unconstitutional

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Warrantless searches of devices at US borders ruled unconstitutional
by Lisa Vaas,

A federal court in Boston on Tuesday ruled that suspicion-free, warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at US border entry points are unconstitutional.

Great news. While most people would agree that Customs has the right to search baggage in order to make sure no prohibited items are being brought into the country, there is no law (as far as I know) prohibiting the importation of data of any kind, which pretty much clobbers any alleged "right" they may have for searching the content of electronic devices.

Of course, if some other law enforcement agency presents them with a warrant, that's a different story.

Yes, I know you can't import child pornography. But that's a law enforcement issue in general, not a Customs issue. Just like police and FBI can't search your computer without a warrant, neither should Customs be allowed to. And that's just what the court ruled.

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Naked Security: Warrant let police search online DNA database

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Warrant let police search online DNA database
By Lisa Vaas,

Detective Michael Fields of the Orlando Police Department in Florida ... successfully used GEDmatch to identify a suspect in the 2001 murder of a 25-year-old woman that he’d spent six years trying to solve. So, because Fields didn’t want to stop using DNA records – he was searching for suspects in the case of a serial rapist who attacked a number of women decades ago – he took his disappointment to the court.

As Fields reportedly announced at a police convention last week, he won what he was after: a warrant to search GEDmatch’s full database. As the Times reports, he’s now working with the forensic consulting firm Parabon to try to find a DNA match that will lead him to that rapist.

Legal experts told the Times that overriding a site’s policies in this way is a “huge game changer” for genetic privacy. The newspaper quoted Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University:

The company made a decision to keep law enforcement out, and that’s been overridden by a court. It’s a signal that no genetic information can be safe.

I've been telling friends and relatives for years that submitting DNA samples to geneology databases is risky, and now we're seeing why. Courts are now deciding that law enforcement should have complete access to the databases. This sets a precedent that will, in short order, be used to justify use and abuse of this data by every law enforcement employee, government agency and elected official that asks for it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Naked Security: Stalker found pop star by searching eyes’ reflections on Google Maps

1 comment:
Stalker found pop star by searching eyes’ reflections on Google Maps
By Lisa Vaas,

A predator has confessed to stalking and attacking a young Japanese pop star by zooming in on the reflections in her eyes from photos she posted on social media.
...
A 26-year-old man by the name of Sato was arrested and confessed to police that he’d used the star’s selfies to figure out where she lived. Each of her pupils reflected the nearby streetscape, which he plugged into the street map function of Google Map to find out matching bus stops and scenery.

Holy cow! This is the kind of analysis I used to think only existed in science fiction.

Monday, October 28, 2019

Auto-brewery syndrome

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Rare medical condition can turn bodies into breweries.
Here's how auto-brewery syndrome works

Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY. Published 2:30 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2019 | Updated 3:31 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2019

Free beer: Great. Beer that ferments inside your stomach without you knowing why you're getting drunk: Not so great.

In a case study published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal Open Gastroenterology, doctors describe a patient who repeatedly had elevated blood alcohol levels but denied ever drinking a drop.

The cause: a rare condition known as "auto-brewery syndrome," or ABS, which causes the carbohydrates one ingests to turn into alcohol, fermented by fungi or bacteria in the gastrointestinal system.

"ABS is probably an underdiagnosed condition," the study authors wrote, adding that no diagnostic criteria exists to confirm the syndrome or treat it. However, the researchers do propose treatment that could be tested in future studies.

A friend told me about this today. I didn't believe it could be true, but it apparently is.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Gee, this feels familiar...

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The Register:
Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet
By Team Register. 10 May 2019 at 07:03

5-minute job? We've heard that old chestnut before

Have you got that Friday feeling? El Reg does, mainly because we're bringing you the latest instalment of On Call.

Every week, we trawl through emails recounting the times readers have been faced with a particularly tricky call-out, searching for the best one to take you into the weekend.

This time, we meet "Wayne", who got rather more exercise than he'd bargained for when asked to do a "five-minute" extra job after finishing an upgrade to a pair of network routers. ...

You definitely need to click through the article's link and read the whole story.

And remember it the next time I say I'm coming home late from work because I needed to fix "one last bug before leaving the office".

Thursday, May 09, 2019

ECN Magazine: Radical Desalination Approach May Disrupt the Water Industry

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Radical Desalination Approach May Disrupt the Water Industry
Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science - Tue, 05/07/2019 - 1:50pm

Hypersaline brines—water that contains high concentrations of dissolved salts and whose saline levels are higher than ocean water—are a growing environmental concern around the world. Very challenging and costly to treat, they result from water produced during oil and gas production, inland desalination concentrate, landfill leachate (a major problem for municipal solid waste landfills), flue gas desulfurization wastewater from fossil-fuel power plants, and effluent from industrial processes.
...
A Columbia Engineering team led by Ngai Yin Yip, assistant professor of earth and environmental engineering, reports that they have developed a radically different desalination approach—"temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)"—for hypersaline brines. The study, published online in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, demonstrates that TSSE can desalinate very high-salinity brines, up to seven times the concentration of seawater. This is a good deal more than reverse osmosis, the gold-standard for , and can hold handle approximately twice seawater salt concentrations.

This is incredible news. Now that we have seen the process in a lab, hopefully it can be scaled up for use in a commercial desalinization plant. A cheap and low-energy technology would pretty much solve the world's fresh water supply problems.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

The Register: It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G

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It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G
By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco, 25 Apr 2019 at 20:12

Let's cut the crap, El Reg style

Comment We thought the hype over next-generation mobile broadband networks couldn't get much thicker, but we were wrong. So let's just jump into the five biggest lies about 5G.

  1. China is using the tech to spy on God-fearing Western nations
  2. There is a "race to 5G"
  3. 5G is ready to go now
  4. 5G is the answer to all our broadband / fast internet needs
  5. Spectrum auctions will solve all the issues

I've been saying some of this for some time now. Especially the first two. I listen to a lot of political news podcasts and people can't stop making insane claims that if Huawei sells a cell tower to Verizon that they will be able to listen in on every conversation and intercept every web session that crosses the tower (or in some more paranoid versions, over Verizon's entire network).

Even if they built in a "send all packets to China" feature, and somehow managed to turn it on without Verizon's NOC noticing that the amount of traffic has instantly doubled, how is this any less secure than using public Wi-Fi in a restaurant? The answer is that it isn't. Which is why every web site and Internet service that cares about security (including your banks, e-mail services and social media sites) use encryption - that little "s" in https: isn't just for decoration.

Sure, maybe the Chinese want to fill their servers with thousands of terabytes of encrypted spam so they can spend the next decade decrypting it in order to learn a secret that, by the time they decode it, will have been all over the New York Times for several years. But I think they have better things to do.

Those people who are likely targets of espionage already need advanced security, with or without 5G. The fact that Huawei makes some equipment used by your cell carrier doesn't magically give them the ability to decrypt all the traffic flowing through that equipment.

That having been said, I am opposed to Huawei selling equipment to the US or anyone else. Not because they're going to take over the world, but simply because they shouldn't be allowed to profit from decades of intellectual property theft and massive government subsidies. Level the playing field by taking those away and I'll be happy to let them (try and) compete against Ericsson and Nokia.

All of that now having been said, there actually is a national security threat from Chinese network equipment like that from Huawei and ZTE. Not that they can intercept the world's communications, but that they could turn it off. They could build a hidden kill switch into their products that would probably not be detected. If a war should break out between China and some other nation, they could trigger that switch, disabling their enemy's entire communication network. I think that threat is plausible and should be taken seriously.

Could Ericsson or Nokia build in a kill switch? Sure they could, but since they are not owned by any government, the odds of them doing it on their own or in response to a government request is far lower than products built by companies that are subject to control by a foreign and hostile government.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Hello World on the Qualcomm QCA4020 developer board

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I have recently started working on an IoT project involving the use of a Qualcomm QCA4020 Development Kit prototype board. The board has many useful features for IoT prototyping, but a clear set of "getting started" instructions is not one of them.

Qualcomm's developer network has published a Hello World demo application, but the procedure is for Windows PCs and I want to use Linux for my development platform. Qualcomm's SDK says that Linux and macOS are supported platforms, but any documentation resembling a tutorial is strictly Windows-based.

This blog post is the procedure I worked out for getting their Hello World demo working using a Linux PC to cross-compile the code and flash the Qualcomm developer board

Monday, April 01, 2019

Interpreting Verizon's contract buzzwords

11 comments:
I recently upgraded my phone to a new iPhone 6+. It's great, but that's not the point of this article. In reading through the contract information, both before and after signing, I became aware of the fact that my contract has a lot of buzzwords that are not clearly defined.

In Googling for the definitions, I found that it is very hard to find definitions for most of these. As a service to my readers, here are all the line items from my contract, and the best explanation I've found so far for them. Some come from Verizon or from user-forum discussions I ran across. Some are based on my own intuition and understanding of wireless technology.

Corrections are welcome and will help to make the list more complete. I don't promise that it's all correct, but I hope people with specific knowledge will be able to help me improve it and make it correct.

Updated on June 4, 2015, based on reader comments. Thanks much!

Updated on April 1, 2019, based on the receipt we got when we upgraded one of our phones last July.

Friday, March 29, 2019

New invention: the phone booth!

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T-Mobile installs phone-charging purple booths on city streets
by Linda Hardesty |

Every Phone BoothE comes with power for smartphone charging along with a compatible cord. And the booth features a large vertical screen that connects to the customer’s T-Mobile smartphone to use with video calls or just to enjoy a big screen for better internet browsing. The large screen can also be set as a background for customers to take selfies.

The booth offers a quiet, temperature-controlled space complete with walls and windows. If they could fit a couch in the booth, people may never leave.

Phone BoothE is reserved just for T-Mobile customers, who can unlock the booths with a smartphone app. They can download the T-Mobile Phone BoothE App from the App Store or Google Play (coming soon). They can also use the app to find and reserve a BoothE nearest them.

It's about time. Ever since the demise of public phone booths, we've needed a way to make a private call without renting office space.

Of course, now T-Mobile is going to have to deal with the problems that AT&T had with the classic phone booths - of homeless people living in them, drug addicts shooting up in them, etc. But maybe they have a solution in place for all this.

Update: It appears that the "Phone BoothE" was an April 1st joke, even though they announced it on March 29th. It still sounds like a good idea, though.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Dry Bones: No big deal

No comments:

DryBonesBlog. March 27, 2019

Hamas Rockets From Gaza Hit Israel ...again!!

Sadly, this seems to be the absolute truth. Terrorists can bomb Israel and nobody cares, but if Israel fires even one bullet in retaliation, then they are condemned by the entire world.

You would think that after 60 years of this, Israel would stop caring what the world thinks. If everything you do makes the world hate you, then why should you even listen to them?

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

The Verge: An exclusive look at an original iPhone prototype

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An exclusive look at an original iPhone prototype
Apple's red iPhone M68 in all its glory
By Tom Warren | @tomwarren |

Apple had developed the iPhone in secret over those two and a half years, and for many inside the company, the device had only been known by the codenames “M68” and “Purple 2.” Apple was focused on surprising everyone with the iPhone, and that meant that many of the engineers working on the original handset didn’t even know what it would eventually look like.

To achieve that level of secrecy, Apple created special prototype development boards that contained nearly all of the iPhone’s parts, spread out across a large circuit board. The Verge has obtained exclusive access to the original iPhone M68 prototype board from 2006 / 2007, thanks to Red M Sixty, a source that asked to remain anonymous. It’s the first time this board has been pictured publicly, and it provides a rare historical look at an important part of computing history, showing how Apple developed the original iPhone.

Awesome bit of history.

Get well soon, Yaakov Kirschen

No comments:

Yaakov Kirschen, author of the famous Dry Bones comic has been sick with pneumonia for over a week. Please include him in your prayers for a speedy recovery.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Washington Free Beacon: California Gov. to Go Against Voters, Institute Death Penalty Moratorium

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California Gov. to Go Against Voters, Institute Death Penalty Moratorium
By: Charles Fain Lehman,

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) will on Wednesday announce a moratorium on his state's death penalty, placing an indefinite pause on executions on the largest death row in the United States.

... "The intentional killing of another person is wrong. And as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual," Newsom is expected to say.

... In 2016, California voters approved a ballot measure to fix the state's death penalty system, limiting the length of death penalty appeals to five years after conviction. That same year, they voted by a wider margin against a ballot measure to abolish the death penalty in the state altogether. Newsom's moratorium will therefore fly in the face of the most recent expression of the views of the people of California.

Come and see the Democrats' total lack of principles. In addition to flat-out defying the wishes of his constituency, Newsom shows a total disregard for humanity.

He says that it is wrong to kill another person. But he clearly doesn't believe what he said.

He and his party have no problem killing the unborn (abortion), the just-born (late-term abortions and children who survive botched abortions), the elderly and the terminally ill (demanding only palliative care and by supporting assisted suicide).

It would seem that the only class of person Newsom and the Democrats don't want to see killed are convicted serial killers.

There's an old saying: If you are kind to the cruel, then you are being cruel to the kind. And Mr. Newsom is a perfect example.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Gizmodo: Goodbye Big Five

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Goodbye Big Five
Kashmir Hill

Reporter Kashmir Hill spent six weeks blocking Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple from getting her money, data, and attention, using a custom-built VPN. Here’s what happened.

A great series of articles illustrating very succinctly why it is pretty much impossible to completely avoid the "big five" Internet companies unless you want to disconnect from civilization altogether.

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Washington Free Beacon: Study: Crackdown on Prescriptions Drove up Hep. C Infections

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Study: Crackdown on Prescriptions Drove up Hep. C Infections
BY: Charles Fain Lehman.

A key decision made to curb the opioid crisis not only made that situation worse, but also caused a surge in deadly hepatitis C infections, a new paper argues.
...
Prior to reformulation, OxyContin was extremely popular in illicit markets because its timed release mechanism meant that it contained large quantities of oxycodone—substantially more than "all-at-once" pills. Users would crush the pill and extract the oxy within, getting a longer lasting and more potent high.

Amid a nationwide crackdown on prescription opioids under the Obama administration, the Food and Drug Administration gave Purdue permission to reformulate its flagship drug. The new version gelled up on crushing, leaving it useless. This, regulators thought, would help slow the increase in deaths then attributed to OxyContin.

Instead, users began switching from pills to injected heroin, with all of the dangers that entails. That includes infection with hepatitis C, which can be transferred by sharing improperly sanitized needles.

Never underestimate the law of unintended consequences.

And don't assume that an addict is going to quit just because you made his favorite drug impossible to get. They're quite likely to switch to something else, and in this case, that something else was more dangerous than what they were forced off of.

Monday, February 18, 2019

AppleInsider: Huawei cloning Apple parts, rewarding employees for tech theft

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Huawei cloning Apple parts, rewarding employees for tech theft
By Roger Fingas. Monday, February 18, 2019, 07:27 am PT (10:27 am ET)

In November, a Huawei engineer heading up smartwatch development tracked down a supplier that helps build the Apple Watch's heart rate sensor, The Information said. The person arranged a meeting with the claim he could offer a manufacturing contract, but instead probed for details about the Apple Watch, an anonymous executive at the supplier said.

The engineer was accompanied by four researchers, and together the group is said to have spent an hour and a half asking about the Watch. With nothing given Huawei went silent.

Huawei has reportedly used similar tactics against companies like Cisco, Motorola, and Akhan Semiconductor. The U.S. Justice Department in fact claims that Huawei has a program that rewards employees for stealing data, with better bonuses based on how confidential information is.

This should come as no surprise, given the fact that the Chinese government has been stealing military and technology secrets for decades. And an important reason why nobody should buy Huawei equipment. Getting something for a low price should not be enough justification to reward theft.

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

YouTube: Imam Tawhidi speaks from Auschwitz

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Imam Tawhidi speaks from Auschwitz
Australian Jewish Association, Feb 3, 2019

Have you ever seen an Imam condemn antisemitism from Auschwitz?

WATCH 2 min video.

He also has a message for America where Democrats have recently elected two highly anti-Israel and antisemitic Islamist representatives.

"The US Congress should be focusing on serving US citizens. It should not be a platform for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to promote hatred against the Jewish people. My message from Auschwitz!"

I wonder if any mainstream media outlet will run this video.

A transcript of the video, in case it should become unavailable in the future:

Wednesday, February 06, 2019

Can't Unsee: UI design game

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Can't Unsee is a game where you are presented with two different sample screens from iOS-like applications and must choose which one is correct and which one has design flaws.

Things like alignment of objects, shapes, colors, layout, etc. They start out simple, but get much harder as you go on.

h/t to Daring Fireball.

Naked Security: Firefox 66 will silence autoplaying web audio

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Firefox 66 will silence autoplaying web audio
by John E Dunn

It’s been on the to-do list for a while, but a new blog by the company has confirmed that from Firefox 66 for desktop and Firefox for Android, due on 19 March, media autoplay of video or audio will be blocked on websites by default.

Great news and it's about flippin' time.

Read the rest of the article for more information.

Friday, February 01, 2019

MacRumors: Hands-On With Dell's Massive 49-Inch 5K Ultrawide Display

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Hands-On With Dell's Massive 49-Inch 5K Ultrawide Display
Wednesday January 23, 2019 2:21 pm PST by Juli Clover

Dell recently unveiled the first 49-inch ultrawide 5K monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio, the result of which is a wide, immersive display with an impressive resolution.

... The U4919DW might look impractical at first glance, but it's essentially designed for people who like to use two 27-inch monitors side by side. It's a dual QHD display with a total resolution of 5120 x 1440 pixels and a curve that makes it a bit easier to see everything at once.

Nice display. Too bad you have to deal with Dell's gang of idiots if you want to buy one. But I'm sure we'll soon see these sold elsewhere (Amazon, probably) in the near future.

MacRumors: UltraViolet Digital Movie Locker Service Will Close on July 31, 2019

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UltraViolet Digital Movie Locker Service Will Close on July 31, 2019
Thursday January 31, 2019 6:33 AM PST by Mitchel Broussard

Between January 31 and July 31, 2019, users will be able to keep accessing their UltraViolet Library, purchase new movies, and redeem digital codes. After the shutdown date, all UltraViolet Libraries will automatically close, but the company has detailed a way that users will be able to continue accessing their content.

To do this, UltraViolet is advising users to log into their accounts and verify that they have another retailer linked to their UltraViolet Library, which will allow them to watch their movies and TV shows on another platform after July 31. Retailers include Fandango Now, VUDU, Kaleidescape, Paramount Movies, and Verizon Fios.

The company implores that users do not unlink or close their UltraViolet Library, because UltraViolet and other retailers will continue working together to "maximize your continued access to movies and TV shows" after the shutdown. The company says that "in the majority of cases," movies and TV shows will remain accessible at previously-linked retailers after July 31.

I've always thought streaming media is no substitute for physical media, and here's yet another example why. When you "buy" content to stream, you are simply renting it. Your ability to play the content goes away when the publisher decides to take it away, whether that's because they removed the content, revoked your access or went out of business.

At least legitimate owners of UltraViolet codes also own the corresponding movies on DVD or Blu-Ray. I realize that it is illegal (thanks to brain-dead laws) to rip a movie you have purchased, but in the final analysis, that is the only way to retain control of the content that you purchased.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Jerusalem Post: A cure for cancer? Israeli scientists say they think they found one

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A cure for cancer? Israeli scientists say they think they found one
Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, January 28, 2019 23:14

A small team of Israeli scientists think they might have found the first complete cure for cancer.

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, of a new treatment being developed by his company, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi). ... “Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said.

... Aridor, chairman of the board of AEBi and CEO Dr. Ilan Morad, say their treatment, which they call MuTaTo (multi-target toxin) is essentially on the scale of a cancer antibiotic – a disruption technology of the highest order.

... Morad said that so far, the company has concluded its first exploratory mice experiment, which inhibited human cancer cell growth and had no effect at all on healthy mice cells, in addition to several in-vitro trials. AEBi is on the cusp of beginning a round of clinical trials which could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available in specific cases.

Aridor added: “Our results are consistent and repeatable.”

Incredible. Here's hoping that the treatment works as well on humans as it has on mice.

Monday, January 28, 2019

Physicsfun: The right-pointing Arrow

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Right Pointing Arrow
Instagram @physicsfun, April 30, 2018

Right Pointing Arrow: spin this arrow 180 degrees and it still points to the right- only in a mirror will it point left (and only to the left). Another incredible ambiguous object illusion by mathematician Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University in Japan, the inventor of this illusion and art form. A clever combination of reflection, perspective, and viewing angle produce this striking illusion.

Click through to see the video showing how it works.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Judicial Support: Are Traffic Cameras Rigged Against Drivers?

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Are Traffic Cameras Rigged Against Drivers?
January 16, 2019

... One critic of the cameras, an engineer from Sweden, Mats Jarlstrom, who now resides in Oregon, decided to conduct his own investigation on the cameras and he was slapped with a fine from the state for having engaged in unlicensed practice of engineering because he isn’t a licensed professional in the eyes of the state of Oregon.

... Jarlstrom filed a federal lawsuit in defense, he argued that their crackdown equated to a violation of his 1st Amendment Constitutionally-protected right to free speech. After all, shouldn’t free speech apply to discussions about math? It took several years but recently the attorney general in Oregon allegedly admitted that they had violated his free speech rights with their actions. Jarlstrom has partnered with the Institute for Justice and he isn’t over yet because he says that he wants the law declared unconstitutional; he doesn’t want to see others fall victim just like he did for what should be considered protected speech.

We need more people like this in our society. Any time the government can use a legal technicality to silence legitimate criticism of the government (like Oregon fining an individual for making a science-based argument without a license from the state), it is an act of tyranny that can not be allowed to stand in a society that is allegedly based on laws designed to protect our inalienable human rights.

Tough Lawyer Lady: No good deed goes unpunished

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No good deed goes unpunished
Tough Lawyer Lady, Faye Riva Cohen, P.C. - January 11, 2019

... The story involves a homeless drug-addicted man, Johnny Bobbitt, who allegedly used his last $20 to help a young lady, Kate McClure, when she allegedly ran out of gas near the spot where Bobbitt was panhandling. In turn, McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, started a GoFundMe.com page for the purpose of helping Bobbitt with his drug addiction problems and finding him a home. The public responded graciously and $400,000 was raised to assist Bobbitt.

... This entire story fell apart as a court appointed lawyers to protect Bobbitt’s interests, and an investigation began. It appeared that all three of the players were in cahoots with each other from the beginning, spinning a false story, which disintegrated into three separate versions, placing blame on each other.

Read the full article for the details.

It is very sad when criminals pull scams like this. In addition to conning the public out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, many people will see this story and decide that all of the needy poor are scammers. People legitimately in need of charity will suffer because of what these three people did.

Monday, January 07, 2019

Adding Dell to the list of companies I will never again do business with

3 comments:
As you may know if you've been reading this blog for a while, I have zero tolerance for incompetence. Especially when it comes from large corporations that allegedly want my money and my business. So far, eBay and PayPal have both demonstrated themselves so incompetent that I will never do business with them ever again.

Today, we can add Dell to that list.

Here's the story of what they did to get me this angry and why I don't think anybody should do business with them ever again.