Donate to support the Ukrainian Red Cross to help civilians in this difficult time for Ukraine! – Товариство Червоного Хреста України

If the situation in Ukraine gets worse, volunteers and staff of the Ukrainian Red Cross would provide first aid in areas where access to medical services will be limited; сommunication will be established and awareness of health risks will be raised. And, of course, we will provide humanitarian aid to all people in need.

RSS feed available if you don’t want to clutter your inbox.

Cargo ship sinks off Odessa after explosion, crew members missing -ship manager | Reuters #war

The Estonian-owned cargo ship Helt sunk on Thursday off the Ukrainian port of Odessa after an explosion, the vessel’s manager said.

Two crew members were in a life raft at sea while four others were unaccounted for, Igor Ilves, managing director of Tallinn-based manager Vista Shipping Agency, told Reuters.

"The vessel has finally sunk," he said. "Two of the crew are in a raft on the water and four others are missing. I don’t know where they are at the moment."

Gazprom resumes westbound gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany | Reuters #economy

Russian energy company Gazprom on Thursday resumed westbound natural gas supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Germany from Poland, data from Gascade pipeline operator showed, with flows expected to continue until at least Friday morning.

Early on Thursday, Gascade's data showed the flow had stopped on the pipeline, which usually accounts for about 15% of Russia's westbound supply of gas to Europe and Turkey.

Gazprom has intermittingly sent gas westward via the link in recent days amid high demand in Europe. It has also increased supplies to Europe via Ukraine, another key route.

'My city is being shelled, but my mum in Russia won’t believe me' - BBC News #war

"When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared," she says.

The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.

"I didn't want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying," she says.

"But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it's Ukrainians who're killing their own people."

Never Change Your Password - TidBITS #security

Some sites still allow 8-character passwords, but my anecdotal experience is that most want something longer, like 10 or even 12 characters. The shortest secure password resistant to modern cracking is a minimum of 12 characters if it’s randomly generated from nearly all typable symbols and at least 20 if it is composed of randomly selected words. Passwords that meet those limits have sufficient resistance to brute-force cracking that they should last well beyond your lifetime or cost a cracker far more than your specific password is worth—perhaps tens of billions of dollars, by one estimate. Substantial breakthroughs in certain forms of computation would be required to render those passwords weak enough to break. (Astonishingly, Microsoft still recommends a minimum password length of 8 characters in its Windows 10 administrator guidance and allows none longer than 14.)

World's only An-225 destroyed by Russian airstrikes - ch-aviation #aviation #war

The government of Ukraine has confirmed that the world's only An-225, operated by state-owned Antonov Airlines (ADB, Gostomel), has been destroyed during a Russian airstrike on Gostomel airport.

UR-82060 (msn 19530503763) operated its last revenue flight on February 5, 2022, flying from Billund to Gostomel, Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows. As it was under maintenance, it was thus not able to leave Ukraine before the Russian invasion. Despite the government's confirmation, Antonov Design Bureau said on February 27 that it was still unable to inspect the aircraft and report on its condition. Earlier recordings from Gostomel airport showed a fire raging in the hangar in which the An-225 was usually stored.

Leaflet - a JavaScript library for interactive maps #software #ukraine #war

Leaflet was created 11 years ago by Vladimir Agafonkin, an Ukrainian citizen living in Kyiv.

Vladimir is no longer in Kyiv, because Russian bombs are falling over the city. His family, his friends, his neighbours, thousands and thousands of absolutely wonderful people, are either seeking refuge or fighting for their lives.

The Russian occupation of Ukraine contravenes and violates several international laws, including the United Nations Charter. It is an unprovoked, unjustifiable, and despicable action that endangers countless civilians.

BBC resurrects WWII-era shortwave broadcasts as Russia blocks news of Ukraine invasion - The Verge #war #information

The BBC is resorting to broadcasting news bulletins over shortwave radio in Russia after the country blocked access to BBC websites, The Guardian reports. The BBC announced it was bringing back the WWII-era broadcasting technology in the region just hours before its sites were banned. News of the ban was also reported by Russian state news agency RIA.

Ukraine to be accepted as a Contributing Participant to NATO CCDCOE #war #information #ukraine

This week, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) held its 30th Steering Committee. With a unanimous vote, the 27 Sponsoring Nations in the Steering Committee of the CCDCOE agreed to Ukraine’s membership in the NATO CCDCOE as a Contributing Participant.

“Ukraine’s presence in the Centre will enhance the exchange of cyber expertise, between Ukraine and CCDCOE member nations. Ukraine could bring valuable first-hand knowledge of several adversaries within the cyber domain to be used for research, exercises and training,” emphasized Col Jaak Tarien, Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

Windows Defender is enough, if you harden it #security #software

This article is not intended to convince you to abandon your current antivirus solutions. In this post I would like to share my observations and ways to improve the effectiveness of Defender.

You don’t need to buy expensive antivirus software. If you are a standard user, surfing the web, you don’t want to install additional software (eg. which can slow down your PC), or you just have other better things to buy, you can definitely use antivirus software built into your Windows operating system. There is no perfect solution, and no mater if you install free or paid antivirus, you can always be infected, if you do not use your own brain. Sometimes it is easier to break a person than their computer security. Then even the most expensive solution will not help.

EU Buried Its Own $400,000 Study Showing Unauthorized Downloads Have Almost No Effect On Sales | Techdirt #copyrights

The contract was awarded to Ecorys, a “research and consultancy company” based in the Netherlands that has written many similar reports in the past. The value of the contract was a princely €369,871 — over $400,000. Given that hefty figure, and the fact that this was public money, you might expect the European Commission to have published the results as soon as it received them, which was in May 2015. And yet strangely, it kept them to itself. In order to find out what happened to it, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request was submitted by the Pirate Party MEP, Julia Reda. It’s worth reading the to and fro of emails between Reda and the European Commission to get an idea of how unhelpful the latter were on this request. The European Commission has now released the report, with the risible claim that this move has nothing to do with Reda’s FOI request, and that it was about to publish it anyway.

FSB Whistleblower gulagu.net #war #information #inteligence #longread

Read, analyse, but don't believe everything you see on the internet

Even if this note was really written by an FSB employee, keep in mind that:

They were sleep deprived

The narrative seems to lean more toward emotional thought than logical reasoning

The note was translated in haste and some things may be lost in translation

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Dainius