This is so amazing it made me tear up
Author: officially ᗩᑎGEᒪIᑎᗩ
I predicted this
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/25/ports-france-ireland-brexit-cherbourg-rosslare
I predicted that folks would start skipping Great Britain, and would go straight to Ireland and vice versa. I also said that old-fashioned smuggling might start up again if (when) some products in Great Britain became too hard to get or too expensive.
Simple things
This is worrisome: Li-ion battery fires on the rise. Don’t charge e-bikes and scooters overnight.
Why? Because if they catch fire or explode, the resulting fire can develop so quickly that you may not have time to get out of the house.
If you charge it while you’re away and it blows up or catches fire, and you’re in a freestanding home, at least only the home would be damaged.
A plane that had just taken off from San Diego, for Newark, had to return a few weeks ago when a battery pack or a battery in a laptop caught fire. Four cabin crew were taken to the hospital as a precaution.
They had manage to stop the fire by putting the object into a thermal containment bag, but I could imagine that that sounds much easier than it is in reality.
Watching this video made me realize that it’s far worse than I thought. Hmm.
“But of course, the main, the central, the chief point is one of principle: that the freedom of the individual is a precious and hard-won value which these measures corrosively attack.”
Roald Dahl’s work: My take
Leave the books unchanged. They represent the era in which he wrote the books and as such will show readers that times have changed.
Editing his works is an insult to the creativity of the author and in spirit almost, albeit not quite, akin to removing references to the Holocaust from books.
It’s not as if he wrote in incomprehensible medieval English after all.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his works but I can imagine that editing them may also take part of their charm away.
I believe that the publisher has now decided to publish both the original and the edited versions. That’s a good compromise, as long as their covers make very clear that the latter books have been edited.
This was also in the news in the Netherlands, along with the bit below, which I’ve seen mentioned on the CNN site as well.
How hackers think
This one in the video immediately below was based in Canada. Was working as an IT guy at Canada’s National Research Council (!) when he was already shipping and selling huge amounts of drugs. Got arrested, went to prison, then got himself a job as an IT guy at Public Services and Procurement Canada (!).
He targeted hospitals, medical research institutes and other organizations during the pandemic, at a point when a lot of people were tired and anxious.
Yes, it’s true that the NHS still had a lot of Windows XP computers at the time and that that was why it was so vulnerable.
I’ve read that more recently, it still had a considerable number of computers and laptops relying on Windows XP. (See for example this article in Computer Weekly, 2019.) So did the UK’s court system. So did police forces. (See for example this article, 2019.)
Back in 2020, many ATM machines still did too: https://www.techradar.com/news/atm-security-still-running-windows-xp
Did you know that the checkouts at the Asda in Portsmouth used to run on Windows XP too, until they did that big makeover a few years ago? (Yes, I’ve seen it, and should have taken a photo, but didn’t.) I wonder how many supermarket checkouts currently still rely on Windows XP.
Tesco did too. See below.
While I was looking on the web to see how many store self-checkouts still use Windows XP, this popped up for those who need an explanation of what for example Windows XP is: https://www.porthosp.nhs.uk/departments/it-training/jargon-buster_2.htm
The problem is not so much that they’re running XP. The problem is when those systems no longer receive updates. Microsoft used to have special maintenance contracts for organizations that continued to run XP after its “expiry date”, such as the British and Dutch government, but I doubt that it still does that.
Now, to end with, here is a ransomware story that will make you smile:
This attack used EternalBlue.
PS
Want more? Then watch this. About an attack of a very different nature.
24 February 2023: Ouch. Big Dutch data theft involved someone who people did not see this coming from… He worked at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, but he didn’t abuse data there as far as people are able to tell at this point. (It’s not that easy to get access to data there other than when you’re really working closely with specific data.) His access was blocked as soon as folks found out. He was seen as a pleasant colleague who gave off no signs whatsoever that he might be doing things that he shouldn’t be doing.
PFAS
Do you know who alerted us to the problems with these forever chemicals? The people who were living near the plants where they are manufactured and… pet bird owners. It was not instantly clear what caused it, but pet birds started dying horrible deaths because their owners used non-stick cookware. These pet birds served as the canaries in this coalmine. Eventually, avian vets and pet bird owners put two and two together.
Be inspired
Left-wing traditionally seen as more threatening than right-wing in England?
That might explain a few things…
Fawning as trauma response in older adults (and disabled people) – plus self-defense techniques
When you get older, you feel much less able to defend yourself against physical attacks or simply run away as fast as you can.
The fawning trauma response, which is often described as motivated by a “need to avoid conflict”, can have a lot to do with that. It’s what you do when you can’t fight or flee and when freezing is not part of your mental make-up.
The fawning response serves to keep you physically unharmed, helps you avoid physical trauma.
This is the phenomenon that I have noticed in older women here in the UK who live on their own. I didn’t know that there was a name for it. As soon as you turn 45, you’d better make sure that you have a black belt in judo that you keep up or quietly fade into the background and smile a lot, right?
Wrong. But this is what we are taught.
The way to overcome this fawning response is to very deliberately risk physical harm in conflict situations. What do I mean by that?
If you stand up for yourself in conflict situations that are often the result of older adults being widely ridiculed and demonized in the UK and you very deliberately risk getting injured, knowing very well that there won’t be a thing that you can do against it anyway, you radiate strength.
You radiate “I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, I’m gonna say what I want, I’m gonna say how I feel about how you are behaving and if I end up on a hospital ward with a broken arm, a concussion and a black eye as a result of that, so be it.”
You likely feel that you don’t want to spend even a second of your time on the abusive fools that you encounter and prefer to ignore them and contentedly live your life.
But until you do spend those few seconds on them and let them know what’s what, they may well continue to force you to see them if these are people who you encounter on a regular basis. Because people who are abusive desperately want to be seen and heard. They want a sense of power and if you ignore these people, you motivate them to keep bugging you.
The fawning response, on the other hand, may feed their addiction to a certain feeling. That too can keep them coming back for more.
Also, get as fit as you can. Do what you can to stay fit. Even if it’s just a daily Tai Chi session that someone teaches on Vimeo or YouTube. You’ll feel so much better. It’s not true that old age comes with muscle weakness and illnesses by definition. You do have to work harder at staying fit, or so we think, but the reality is that we simply were much more active when we were younger and may have gotten lazy.
I don’t think that older adults should need to get nose and eyebrow piercings or start wearing chainmail and biker jackets just to discourage aggression and feel safer.
How some hacking works and what a VPN does
This. About infantilising other adults or propelling them into super hero status. Relax. They’re merely as human as you.
Reading this story made me smile. It’s a feel-good story about every-day people living their lives, but other people insisting that they can’t possibly be every-day people like everyone else, and there is something quite hilarious to that.
The overall message this story gives off is a strong “hold on, don’t give up, just continue to live your life your way and they will eventually come to their senses”.
For some reason, a lot of people have a tendency to define people on the basis of one characteristic only and it’s immensely short-sighted.
Continue readingHere we go again…
Which UK govt department (ultimately) oversees the use of non-human animals in scientific research?
The Home Office, asserts a paper that I am reading. That cannot possibly be true, was my first thought. But which one it is, then? Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, maybe? Because DEFRA is part of it and often holds public consultations on the use of almost anything to do with genes in plants and non-human animals.
No.
The Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU) is indeed part of the Home Office. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/animals-in-science-regulation-unit
Burglary in action?
Sigh
Strange stuff continues
We need more folks like him
Watch this eco-engineer use his hands
Trailblazer from the States making waves for women in England
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/03/emily-hunt-rape-survivor-helps-change-law-voyeurism
How these things go (when people are pestering you)
Around the holidays, there was a lot of interference again, apparently as punishment for a web page in which among other things I talk about stuff that has happened to me here in Portsmouth. (Weeks-long punishment also happened around Easter for writing about stuff done from the the day I picked up the keys to my first flat here. I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut, quietly sit in a corner of a back room and knit hats.)
This time, among other things, two of my SIM cards were suddenly asking for a PUK code, including my Dutch SIM card. I later found that I couldn’t access my account online for that card either, when I thought of asking for a replacement.
Some time later, both cards were working fine again and no longer asking for a PUK code.
So, I have some money – 20 euros – in my Dutch bank account right now so I could ask and pay for a replacement card.
First of all, is it necessary? I don’t know. I did transfer one of my English numbers – the one that I use for 2fa – to a new SIM card last year. Because it is something that I can DO.
Second, would they be willing to send the card to the UK?
Third, if so, would it arrive?
Fourth, if so, might it then already have been tampered with? Because of what’s going on here?
Fifth, would it really make a difference? As it would likely still remain just as easy to interfere with it.
This morning, one of my phones said “Angelina stalking ja” in my typing suggestions.
“Angelina stalking yes”
That phone also keeps telling me that Google feels that there is unusual traffic coming from my phone and then asks me to do one of those visual verification exercises with bridges or fire hydrants. (This has happened before in the past few years.)
It also now keeps insisting on downloading the NOS app when I go to the NOS news site, which it didn’t do before, just like LinkedIn currently insists on logging me in and out automatically, via Google, on my computer, which it didn’t used to do before. LinkedIn also insisted on changing the interface language to Dutch, which it also did not used to do before. These three things may merely be quirks, however.
I didn’t try to order the replacement SIM. Every time I do one of these things, either several more problems crop up or the thing that I was trying to solve still has not been solved or gets done again.
(Such as me adding and upgrading locks. No, folks, candy bars don’t walk into my flat all by themselves, CoQ10 bottles don’t empty themselves all by themselves and monitors sitting somewhere safely don’t move themselves around and rearrange themselves while I am out, just to name a few things.)
I didn’t top up my phone balance on that card either. (It’s zero.) Why bother?
But two of my English banks often won’t let me make a payment without demanding verification in their app. Their ways of verification are rather haphazard, which is of course a good thing. But I often can’t access the apps and I currently don’t have a single phone that isn’t compromised. If I allow that situation to continue, I am asking for problems, am I not?
So I have looked at Apple products, but they tend to be far too pricey for me and when they’re not, because used, they tend to be so old that they are no longer supported.
Should I try to get a fixed landline again, then?
But my landline got fucked with too in the past. It told me that I was at death’s door and that my mailbox was full.
I’d better learn to go sit on the patio and yodel or use smoke signals if I want to communicate with anyone, including my banks.
Continue readingHow otherization and contempt can work out in practice
IT trouble, big time
Two, no, three phones that stopped going online and next, two SIM cards, one of which Dutch, that asked for PUK codes but that were working again a few days later.
That was recently. Over the holidays.
That, apparently, was punishment for my web page about things that were done to me in Portsmouth because I always get punished for when I talk about things being done to me in Portsmouth and because when I went to the public library to use the computers there, someone kept opening that page on the computer that I was on. It wasn’t me who was accessing that page at the time.
I found mysterious rubbish files on one or two of the phones. Have had mysterious rubbish files, before, on my computer’s fixed HDD, the older one. Of naked women’s thighs. I figured they were mine, made with my own phone, and I just deleted the lot. They were filling up deeply hidden directories so fast that my operating system no longer had enough space to run.
I currently have loads of rubbish files filling up at least one of my phones again.
Plus, I not only got a message that my 80 GB data have almost run out, which is pretty NUTS (though I may have a potential explanation for it that would also be a bit nuts; ok let’s assume that), my HDD has been buzzing like crazy and keeps buzzing like crazy, too, and my internet connection keeps breaking up. (I tether. Have to.)
I can’t get fixed broadband here (because just like in Southsea, it appears that my address has disappeared off some of the official address records database, or whatever).
I don’t want broadband via wifi, for obvious reasons.
I can’t report any of this anywhere. There IS no agency where you can report hacking that isn’t done to steal money from you but to pester you and to sometimes cost you money, sometimes even relatively large sums, but not to steal money from you (as far as I can tell).
Even if hacking is done to steal money from you, all you can do is report it on a national website, for the statistics.
(And there’s a lot of weird shit going on in the flat under me, but hey, this is Portsmouth, so it’s likely not related, even though for example hacking activity has come from that flat before.)
There is nowhere I can report this.
But I can talk about it here. That’s all.
Oh, and the lock-picking explains a lot of this too. I can’t take a van load of stuff with me every time I leave the flat, just to keep my stuff safe. Even a police officer has in the past spontaneously volunteered that shortly after I first discovered that my locks were getting picked, let alone that I discovered a few months ago that this had been going on for many more years than I initially was aware of.
“Do not minimize the extent of my having been changed from a vivacious, sensual, happy, loving, athletic, healthy, wealthy, bright, articulate, fairly socially adept human to being melded and moulded to accommodate an autistic adult into exactly the opposite of who I am for the sake of a one-sided relationship.” (works both ways, I bet)
This is from this web page:
https://www.theneurotypical.com/how-to-spot-aspergers.html
Just in case the above-listed web page disappears – such things happens; nothing to do with hacking – I have copied its contents below.
Continue reading“He does not get it.”
What do you mean? Breakfast? His birthday present? The ball in the garden?
The literal interpretation versus the interpretation of “understand”.
