Random Rants 92 - Not Enough Snerk

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Hmmm, hot chocolate.
 
To make bombs.

Thorium reactors are much better. There is no risk of runaway meltdown and they consume nuclear waste as fuel. Can't make bombs out of them though.
One day somebody will actually build a few to assess how well they work. The collaborations between the
US and Russia and US and China might not be going as well now as when they started. :)
Until then...
Without engineering, physics is just philosophy.
 
I hope you all know what 'snerk' is?

Norwegian for the yucky skin formation on the surface of hot chocolate.
Snerk is the AU animagus form for a human poster who has never revealed to us which School of Magic he attended.
 
already late to the party that the change of the title makes my subscription rant even more irrelevant .
 
Usually it takes me a couple of hours to wrestle with the Writers of the Future website. This quarter, I've fought with it for two days.:gripe:
 
Am being made redundant.
Sorry to hear that. I hope the payout and / or prospects are good. I am as well as it happens, but at least the benefits are OK this time.
 
Don't know the payout yet, but hope it is ok.
Prospects are not quite as good locally so I expect to spend a lot of time gardening this summer.
 
I am stupid to rant about the web site decisions made by the mouthpiece of the Qatari state, but I just do not understand why they do it.

Al Jazeera make all their graphics 1921 x 1921 pixels, but display them as 770 X 770 pixels on their web site. They do this in the image server, with the size specified by URL parameters. This means, for me at least, what they display is blurry whereas the original, even though it is being scaled by the web browser to the same size (if I change the window size appropriately). I do not know exactly what is going on, but I am sure that Al Jazeera is doing something that is making their web site worse.

If other people see the 2 images below the same I would love to know, it could be just me.

Spoiler What they show :
INTERACTIVE-Russian-and-Ukranian-wheat-export.png

Spoiler What they make :
INTERACTIVE-Russian-and-Ukranian-wheat-export.png
 
The bigger image is crisper, but if I hadn't had the two of them I would not complain about the first.
 
The bigger image is crisper, but if I hadn't had the two of them I would not complain about the first.
Yeah, I did not complain when I found out they were showing the smaller one. I only got "upset" when I figured out how much work they were doing to show a blurry image. I have never seen them shown at the full size on their web site, so they could have just made it at 770 pixels, or converted it with a bit of software that does anti-aliasing (?) right one time (like my browser is doing), and not have to downsize it badly every time the image is served (though there must be some caching going on), and had a crisp image. It is like every stage would have been easier, and the result would have been better.
 
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Social media companies give up your data to hackers if they have an email address that looks like the police (paywalled, perhaps try private window)

Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Apple and Meta provided basic subscriber details, such as a customer’s address, phone number and IP address, in mid-2021 in response to the forged “emergency data requests.” Normally, such requests are only provided with a search warrant or subpoena signed by a judge, according to the people. However, the emergency requests don’t require a court order.

Cybersecurity researchers suspect that some of the hackers sending the forged requests are minors located in the U.K. and the U.S.

Hackers affiliated with a cybercrime group known as “Recursion Team” are believed to be behind some of the forged legal requests, which were sent to companies throughout 2021, according to the three people who are involved in the investigation.

The information obtained by the hackers using the forged legal requests has been used to enable harassment campaigns, according to one of the people familiar with the inquiry. The three people said it may be primarily used to facilitate financial fraud schemes. By knowing the victim’s information, the hackers could use it to assist in attempting to bypass account security.

The fraudulent legal requests are part of a months-long campaign that targeted many technology companies and began as early as January 2021, according to two of the people. The forged legal requests are believed to be sent via hacked email domains belonging to law enforcement agencies in multiple countries, according to the three people and an additional person investigating the matter.

The forged requests were made to appear legitimate. In some instances, the documents included the forged signatures of real or fictional law enforcement officers, according to two of the people. By compromising law enforcement email systems, the hackers may have found legitimate legal requests and used them as a template to create forgeries, according to one of the people.

“In emergencies, law enforcement may submit requests without legal process,” Meta states on its website. “Based on the circumstances, we may voluntarily disclose information to law enforcement where we have a good faith reason to believe that the matter involves imminent risk of serious physical injury or death.”

Compromising the email domains of law enforcement around the world is in some cases relatively simple, as the login information for these accounts is available for sale on online criminal marketplaces. “Dark web underground shops contain compromised email accounts of law enforcement agencies, which could be sold with the attached cookies and metadata for anywhere from $10 to $50,” said Gene Yoo, chief executive officer of the cybersecurity firm Resecurity, Inc.
Do we need a "rant at big data accumulators" thread?
 
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