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NBC News: The FBI's seizing one bitcoin wallet won't stop ransomware — but it's a start
by jim bell 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

NBC News: The FBI's seizing one bitcoin wallet won't stop ransomware — but it's a start. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fbis-seizing-one-bitcoin-wallet-wont-…

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[info@fsf.org: FSF and GNU move official IRC channels to Libera.Chat network]
by Se7en 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

FSF joins Anti-Freenode Crusade. ----- Forwarded message from "Greg Farough, FSF" <info(a)fsf.org> ----- Reply-To: "Greg Farough, FSF" <info(a)fsf.org> From: "Greg Farough, FSF" <info(a)fsf.org> Subject: FSF and GNU move official IRC channels to Libera.Chat network List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:crmmailer+u.163495.66503010.438e24c67c337aa3@fsf.org> job_id: 163495 Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2021 22:56:09 -0400 Message-Id: <E1lrtof-0006ED-0P(a)crmserver2p.fsf.org> *Please consider adding <info(a)fsf.org> to your address book, which will ensure that our messages reach you and not your spam box.* *Read and share online: <https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-gnu-move-official-irc-channels-to-libera-c…>* Dear Free Software Supporter, On May 27th, we held a [community meeting][1] to discuss the future of the FSF and GNU Project's official presence on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Although this meeting was called as a response to recent changes in the Freenode IRC network's governance structure, it also gave us the opportunity to assess the viability of chat protocols that had not been developed at the time of the FSF and GNU's [2002 announcement][2] to choose Freenode as our official IRC network. [1]: https://www.fsf.org/events/community-meeting-on-the-future-of-our-irc-prese… [2]: https://www.gnu.org/press/2002-08-26-freenode.html **As a result of this meeting and our review, the FSF and GNU have decided to relocate our IRC channels to [Libera.Chat][3]. Effective immediately, Libera is the official home of our channels, which include but are not limited to all those in the #fsf, #gnu, and #libreplanet namespaces.** [3]: https://libera.chat **On June 25th, at 10:00 AM EDT (UTC 14:00), we plan to forward any channels remaining in the #fsf, #gnu, and #libreplanet namespaces on the Freenode network to their corresponding ##fsf, ##gnu, and ##libreplanet counterparts. As per Freenode policy, channels with the `##` prefix are unofficial "topical" channels, and accordingly, they will not be moderated by GNU or FSF staff.** Please note that the irc.gnu.org address, which has historically pointed to the Freenode network, will be disabled on June 25th, to give any users still connecting with this address sufficient notice. It is important to emphasize that this decision is **not** binding on GNU package maintainers. However, we invite GNU maintainers to join us and many other free software projects by migrating to the Libera network. Maintainers are encouraged to email <maintainers(a)gnu.org> with their questions or concerns. ## Rationale Our decision-making process was twofold, and involved weighing the community feedback we received against a set of criteria our working group developed to gauge a chat network's acceptability to software freedom activists. This working group was drawn from both FSF and GNU, with Greg Farough of the FSF staff joining Amin Bandali and Jason Self, two long-time GNU webmasters and volunteers appointed by Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman, to investigate the issue. We made our decision based on the following criteria: * Is it possible to connect to the network using exclusively free software? Is it easy to do so? * How does the network staff approach their duties? Do they apply their policies consistently and reliably? * Is the wider community able to provide meaningful input on the network's governance and decision-making? * Are a large number of free software projects and communities on the network? * What steps does the network take to preserve user anonymity? Being software freedom activists, the first of these points was by far the most crucial, and had the most involvement in our selecting IRC over an alternate protocol. Having made this decision, and once we had weighed the community feedback we received along our criteria and personal experiences as Freenode channel operators, our choice of Libera.Chat became clear. Despite its age, IRC remains a strong favorite of the free software community. Although we are optimistic about the Matrix protocol and remain committed to following its development closely, we were not able to justify a full relocation of the FSF and GNU's official channels to a Matrix server. Doing so would create the unacceptable situation of encouraging a large number of users to run nonfree software in the form of nonfree JavaScript, which is used by the flagship Matrix.org server to authenticate users. At the same time, we could not commit to moving fully over to XMPP, which would impose certain technical limitations on both users and FSF staff, and which does not offer many compelling advantages over IRC. We've also definitely heard from many of our members showing renewed interest in the XMPP server the FSF provides as an [associate membership benefit][4], and we are looking at the possibility of devoting more resources to it. To reiterate, though IRC remains a key venue for communication in and around GNU and FSF, we are keeping an open mind and eye towards other existing or new communication protocols and software, including Matrix and XMPP, that enable users to communicate in freedom. [4]: https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits.html As we have had nearly twenty years of positive experiences with the Freenode staff, most of whom now comprise the staff of the Libera network, we are confident in their technical and interpersonal expertise, as well as their ability to make the network as long-lasting and integral to the free software community a ----- End forwarded message ----- -- |-----/ | Se7en / The One and Only! | se7en(a)cock.email / | 0x0F83F93882CF6116 / | https://se7en-site.neocities.org

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Wccftech: Starlink On Verge Of Losing Fight For Crucial Infrastructure To Amazon
by jim bell 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

Wccftech: Starlink On Verge Of Losing Fight For Crucial Infrastructure To Amazon. https://wccftech.com/starlink-on-verge-of-losing-fight-for-crucial-infrastr…

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Fw: Chloroquine is "highly effective" at inhibiting reproduc
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

washingtonexaminer.com: Hydroxychloroquine study further erodes credibility of health 'experts'.Hydroxychloroquine study further erodes credibility of health 'experts' | | | | | | | | | | | Hydroxychloroquine study further erodes credibility of health 'experts' Trump Derangement Syndrome might be a silly term, but the phenomenon itself was real. Almost every time the former president opened his mouth, members of the media and expert class would run forward with their list of reasons why he was wrong — befor | | | | Jim Bell's Note:Chloroquine and hydroxy chloroquine are not identical, but they are closely related. >From this recent article: Hydroxychloroquine study further erodes credibility of health 'experts' By Kaylee McGhee WhiteJune 11, 2021 - 12:42 PM Trump Derangement Syndrome might be a silly term, but the phenomenon itself was real. Almost every time the former president opened his mouth, members of the media and expert class would run forward with their list of reasons why he was wrong — before actually checking to see if he was. The immediate condemnation of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug touted by Trump during the early days of the pandemic, is a great example. Trump claimed that the drug could be used as an effective treatment against COVID-19, and within minutes, there were dozens of headlines slamming him for pushing an “unproven” and “disproved” medication. The health experts agreed and warned the public that hydroxychloroquine, a drug that had been in common use for more than 60 years, could be “dangerous.” As a result, the Food and Drug Administration pulled its emergency use authorization for the drug and suspended trials testing its effectiveness. The World Health Organization urged the international community to abandon using hydroxychloroquine. And Twitter even restricted the account of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., because he posted a video of several doctors touting the effectiveness of the drug, which amounted to “spreading misleading and potentially harmful misinformation,” according to the social media gian(End of partial, recent quote) On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 9:18 PM jim bell <jdb10987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: [chloroquine is an old-line drug typically used against malaria] [partial quote follows] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020620/could-an-old-malaria-drug-… ASBMB Today Science Could an old malaria drug help fight the new coronavirus? Could an old malaria drug help fight the new coronavirus? By John Arnst February 06, 2020 Chloroquine might be getting new life as an antiviral treatment for the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and has infected some 25,000 people in more than 25 countries. For decades, the drug was a front-line treatment and prophylactic for malaria. In a three-page paper published Tuesday in Cell Research, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s State Key Laboratory of Virology write that both chloroquine and the antiviral remdesivir were, individually, “highly effective” at inhibiting replication of the novel coronavirus in cell culture. Their drug screen evaluated five other drugs that were not effective. The authors could not be reached for comment. Though the paper is brief, John Lednicky, a professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, found its results intriguing. “It’s interesting in that it really lacks a lot of details but, nevertheless, if you look at the data as presented, at least in vitro, it seems like chloroquine can be used as an early-stage drug,” he said. “It would be very good if these types of experiments were repeated by more laboratories to see whether the same results occur across the board.” Chloroquine is a synthetic form of quinine, a compound found in the bark of cinchona trees native to Peru and used for centuries to treat malaria. Chloroquine was an essential element of mass drug administration campaigns to combat malaria throughout the second half of the 20th century, and remains one of the World Health Organization’s essential medicines. However, after the malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax began exhibiting resistance to the drug in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively, it was replaced by similar antimalarial compounds and combination therapies. Chloroquine is still widely used against the three other species of plasmodium and to treat autoimmune disorders and some cases of amebiasis, an intestinal infection caused by the amoeba Entamoeba histolytica. Chloroquine’s antiviral properties were explored in the mid-1990s against HIV and in the following decade against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which is closely related to the novel coronavirus. In 2004, researchers in Belgium found that chloroquine inhibited replication of SARS in cell culture. The following year, however, another team at Utah State University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong evaluated a gamut of compounds against SARS replication in mice infected with the virus, finding that chloroquine was only effective as an anti-inflammatory agent. They recommended that it could be used in combination with compounds that prevent replication. Nevertheless, in 2009, the Belgian group found that lethal infections of human coronavirus OC43, a relative of SARS, could be averted in newborn mice by administering chloroquine through the mother’s milk. [end of partial quote] Also: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0 Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro Manli Wang, Ruiyuan Cao, Leike Zhang, Xinglou Yang, Jia Liu, Mingyue Xu, Zhengli Shi, Zhihong Hu, Wu Zhong & Gengfu Xiao Cell Research (2020)Cite this article 171k Accesses 1108 Altmetric Metrics details Dear Editor, In December 2019, a novel pneumonia caused by a previously unknown pathogen emerged in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China. The initial cases were linked to exposures in a seafood market in Wuhan.1 As of January 27, 2020, the Chinese authorities reported 2835 confirmed cases in mainland China, including 81 deaths. Additionally, 19 confirmed cases were identified in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 39 imported cases were identified in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, United States, Vietnam, Singapore, Nepal, France, Australia and Canada. The pathogen was soon identified as a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which is closely related to sever acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV).2 Currently, there is no specific treatment against the new virus. Therefore, identifying effective antiviral agents to combat the disease is urgently needed. An efficient approach to drug discovery is to test whether the existing antiviral drugs are effective in treating related viral infections. The 2019-nCoV belongs to Betacoronavirus which also contains SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV). Several drugs, such as ribavirin, interferon, lopinavir-ritonavir, corticosteroids, have been used in patients with SARS or MERS, although the efficacy of some drugs remains controversial.3 In this study, we evaluated the antiviral efficiency of five FAD-approved drugs including ribavirin, penciclovir, nitazoxanide, nafamostat, chloroquine and two well-known broad-spectrum antiviral drugs remdesivir (GS-5734) and favipiravir (T-705) against a clinical isolate of 2019-nCoV in vitro. Standard assays were carried out to measure the effects of these compounds on the cytotoxicity, virus yield and infection rates of 2019-nCoVs. Firstly, the cytotoxicity of the candidate compounds in Vero E6 cells (ATCC-1586) was determined by the CCK8 assay. Then, Vero E6 cells were infected with nCoV-2019BetaCoV/Wuhan/WIV04/20192 at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.05 in the presence of varying concentrations of the test drugs. DMSO was used in the controls. Efficacies were evaluated by quantification of viral copy numbers in the cell supernatant via quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) and confirmed with visualization of virus nucleoprotein (NP) expression through immunofluorescence microscopy at 48 h post infection (p.i.) (cytopathic effect was not obvious at this time point of infection). Among the seven tested drugs, high concentrations of three nucleoside analogs including ribavirin (half-maximal effective concentration (EC50) = 109.50 μM, half-cytotoxic concentration (CC50) > 400 μM, selectivity index (SI) > 3.65), penciclovir (EC50 = 95.96 μM, CC50 > 400 μM, SI > 4.17) and favipiravir (EC50 = 61.88 μM, CC50 > 400 μM, SI > 6.46) were required to reduce the viral infection (Fig. 1a and Supplementary information, Fig. S1). However, favipiravir has been shown to be 100% effective in protecting mice against Ebola virus challenge, although its EC50 value in Vero E6 cells was as high as 67 μM,4 suggesting further in vivo studies are recommended to evaluate this antiviral nucleoside. Nafamostat, a potent inhibitor of MERS-CoV, which prevents membrane fusion, was inhibitive against the 2019-nCoV infection (EC50 = 22.50 μM, CC50 > 100 μM, SI > 4.44). Nitazoxanide, a commercial antiprotozoal agent with an antiviral potential against a broad range of viruses including human and animal coronaviruses, inhibited the 2019-nCoV at a low-micromolar concentration (EC50 = 2.12 μM; CC50 > 35.53 μM; SI > 16.76). Further in vivo evaluation of this drug against 2019-nCoV infection is recommended. Notably, two compounds remdesivir (EC50 = 0.77 μM; CC50 > 100 μM; SI > 129.87) and chloroquine (EC50 = 1.13 μM; CC50 > 100 μM, SI > 88.50) potently blocked virus infection at low-micromolar concentration and showed high SI (Fig. 1a, b).

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Los Angeles Times: FBI's $86-million cash seizure in Beverly Hills sparks outcry
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

Los Angeles Times: FBI's $86-million cash seizure in Beverly Hills sparks outcry. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-09/fbi-beverly-hills-safe-… Jim Bell's comment: If a fully-functioning AP-type system had been working, this type of action would have been impossible.

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TorrentFreak: Wormhole: Instant Encrypted File-Sharing Powered by WebTorrent
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

TorrentFreak: Wormhole: Instant Encrypted File-Sharing Powered by WebTorrent. https://torrentfreak.com/wormhole-instant-encrypted-file-sharing-powered-by…

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ExtremeTech: Chia Demand Is Driving HDD Sales, Keeping Seagate's Factories Full
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

ExtremeTech: Chia Demand Is Driving HDD Sales, Keeping Seagate's Factories Full. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/323616-chia-demand-is-driving-hdd-sal…

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The Verge: The race is on for quantum-safe cryptography
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

The Verge: The race is on for quantum-safe cryptography. https://www.theverge.com/22523067/nist-challenge-quantum-safe-cryptography-…

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CNBC: Google claims it is using A.I. to design chips faster than humans
by jim bell 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

CNBC: Google claims it is using A.I. to design chips faster than humans. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/google-is-using-ai-to-design-chip-floorplan…

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Remailers
by Karl 11 Jun '21

11 Jun '21

What happened to the old remailer network? It sounds like every single node came down, and new operators are needed?

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