ReHacked #99: American spy hacked Booking, they stayed silent; Moon's top layer has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years; How to build a second brain as a software dev and more

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5 Projects to Become Qualified as a Web Developer » Rad Devon #programming #career #learning

Everywhere you look, you see “we can’t hire enough developers.”

Yet here you are – a newly minted developer, ripe for the picking – but utterly unable to land a job, no matter what you try.

And you’ve tried hard! Shotgunning resumes, rolling the dice with each application to jobs that want 3-5 years of experience (while you have none), hoping for some company to take a chance on you.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent - NRC #security #privacy

In early 2016, an American hacker broke into the servers of hotel website Booking.com and stole details of thousands of hotel reservations in countries in the Middle East. After two months of research, four Booking.com IT-specialists determined that the hacker was a man who had close ties with American intelligence services.

Booking.com requested help from the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, in its investigation into the extensive data breach, but did not notify the affected customers or the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP). The management claims it was not legally required to do so at the time, based on advice it received from the law firm Hogan Lovells. The AP declined to comment.

IT-specialists from Booking were uncomfortable with the management’s decision to remain silent about the data breach, according to sources involved. Experts are also critical of the decision. Under privacy laws applicable at the time, a company was required to notify affected persons of data theft when the breach in question „would likely have adverse effects on the private lives of individuals.”

Firefox is the 45. result when searching for “firefox” on Windows Store : firefox #software #video

How to build a second brain as a software developer - Aseem Thakar #learning

Building a Second Brain is an integrated set of behaviors for turning incoming information into completed creative projects. Instead of endlessly optimizing yourself, trying to become a productivity machine that never deviates from the plan, it has you optimize an external system that is more reliable than you will ever be. This frees you to imagine, to wonder, to wander toward whatever makes you come alive here and now in the moment.

Essentially, a second brain is a personal knowledge management system that serves as an extension of your mind so you don’t have to think as hard or remember as much. You offload thinking and remembering to your private second brain.

Windows 11 blocks Edge browser competitors from opening links #software

Something changed between Windows 11 builds 22483 and 22494 (both Windows Insider Preview builds.) The build changelog makes a few mentions of changes to the protocol and file associations/default apps system. However, it omitted the headline news: You can no longer bypass Microsoft Edge using apps like EdgeDeflector.

EdgeDeflector is an app that intercepts microsoft-edge:// links — found throughout the Windows 10 and 11 shells and other Microsoft apps — and redirects them to regular https:// links that open in your default web browser. Microsoft uses these links instead of regular web links to force users to open them in its Microsoft Edge web browser. When opened, Edge will aggressively push the user to set it as the default web browser. Edge will even “declutter” your browser settings, as Microsoft calls it, and unpin competitors from the taskbar and replace the pinned apps with Edge.

The Moon's top layer alone has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years #space #engineering #futurism

Alongside advances in space exploration, we’ve recently seen much time and money invested into technologies that could allow effective space resource utilisation. And at the forefront of these efforts has been a laser-sharp focus on finding the best way to produce oxygen on the Moon.

In October, the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the Moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the Moon.

Although the Moon does have an atmosphere, it’s very thin and composed mostly of hydrogen, neon and argon. It’s not the sort of gaseous mixture that could sustain oxygen-dependent mammals such as humans.

SpaceX is beginning to get the hang of human spaceflight | Ars Technica #space #engineering

Finally afforded serene skies and fair seas, SpaceX successfully launched four more astronauts for NASA on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday night.

Flying atop a once-used Falcon 9 first stage, the Crew Dragon spacecraft ascended into thin clouds above Kennedy Space Center and safely reached orbit. The first stage subsequently returned to Earth, landing on a drone ship. The crew—NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as European astronaut Matthias Maurer—will dock with the International Space Station on Thursday evening.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Wednesday night's launch is that it seemed almost routine.

Just a game? Study shows no evidence that vio | EurekAlert! #psychology #society #games

Research by Dr Agne Suziedelyte, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at City, University of London, provides evidence of the effects of violent video game releases on children's violent behaviour using data from the US.

Dr Suziedelyte examined the effects of violent video games on two types of violence: aggression against other people, and destruction of things/property.

The study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, focused on boys aged 8-18 years – the group most likely to play violent video games.

Dr Suziedelyte used econometric methods that identify plausibly causal effects of violent video games on violence, rather than only associations.

She found no evidence that violence against other people increases after a new violent video game is released. Parents reported, however, that children were more likely to destroy things after playing violent video games.

Dr Suziedelyte said: “Taken together, these results suggest that violent video games may agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people – which is the type of violence which we care about most.

A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work — eavesdropping on Japan | CBC News #history

At age 97, Marjorie Stetson has never told anyone her secret code number — until now.

That's the identity code — 225 — that she typed on every page of her highly classified work for the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War.

The retired sergeant's wartime work was so covert, she said, she had to sign 15 separate copies of Canada's Official Secrets Act.

"Nobody knew where I worked," Stetson told CBC News from her home in Massachusetts ahead of Remembrance Day. "Nobody knew what we did. Even my parents never knew what I did in the service."

Her husband, an American sailor she met at a celebration marking the end of the war, passed away a decade ago. She never told him what she really did during the war.

Today, Stetson herself is only now learning about the true scope of her role and the significance of all those sheets of white paper she filled with encrypted messages from Japan.

Searx: moving away from DuckDuckGo #privacy #software

Searx is a metasearch engine that aggregates results from multiple sources and eliminates the tracking. It can be used over the Tor network to also provide search anonymity. Anyone can install and deploy their own Searx instance, either for private use or for everyone to use as a contribution to the community. The user interface is modern and can be customized to a degree. For instance, it provides a couple of UI themes and dark mode is available for both.

Running a law firm on Linux - decoded.legal: Internet, telecoms and tech law decoded. #software

We are now three or so months into the world of running decoded.legal, and doing legal work, exclusively* on Linux, so I thought I'd write about it.

Zombie river? London's Thames, once biologically dead, has been coming back to life : NPR #nature #history

In 1858, sewage clogging London's Thames River caused a "Great Stink." A century later, parts of the famed waterway were declared biologically dead.

But the latest report on "The State of the Thames" is sounding a surprisingly optimistic note.

The river today is "home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself," Andrew Terry, the director of conservation and policy at the Zoological Society of London, writes in a forward to the report published Wednesday. Terry points to "reductions in pressures and improvements in key species and habitats."

MacOS Zero-Day Used against Hong Kong Activists - Schneier on Security #privacy #security

Google researchers discovered a MacOS zero-day exploit being used against Hong Kong activists. It was a “watering hole” attack, which means the malware was hidden in a legitimate website. Users visiting that website would get infected.

Nuclear radiation used to transmit digital data wirelessly | Lancaster University #technology #engineering

Engineers have successfully transferred digitally encoded information wirelessly using nuclear radiation instead of conventional technology.

Radio waves and mobile phone signals relies on electromagnetic radiation for communication but in a new development, engineers from Lancaster University in the UK, working with the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia, transferred digitally encoded information using “fast neutrons” instead.

The researchers measured the spontaneous emission of fast neutrons from californium-252, a radioactive isotope produced in nuclear reactors.

Modulated emissions were measured using a detector and recorded on a laptop.

EU interior ministers welcome mandatory chat control for all smartphones | European Pirate Party #privacy

“The surveillance mania of the EU interior ministers does not even stop at our personal correspondence and private photos. Our smartphones are to be turned into spyphones and used against us.

Such mass surveillance has so far only been practised by totalitarian regimes like China. What will be next? Will all letters be opened and scanned? With mandatory chat control, all EU citizens will be placed under general suspicion. This poking in the fog will almost never end abuse but will only drive criminals further into the Darknet, making prosecution even more difficult.

I call on all Europeans now to stand up against this unprecedented plan. The opposition to the project is beginning to bear fruit which can be seen from the fact that the Commission has already had to postpone its totalitarian plans time and time again. But Zensursula and StasYlva will proceed anyway if we let them.”

restic · Backups done right! #software #privacy #security

About - Project Euler #programming #learning

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

Those Bullet Effects In Terminator 2 Weren’t CGI | Hackaday #culture

These foam rubber splash patterns — which look like metal but aren’t — were deployed using a simple mechanical system. A variety of splashes in different sizes get individually compressed into receptacles in a fiberglass chest plate. Covering each is a kind of trapdoor, each held closed by a single pin on a cable.

A Docker image for Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP4. #software #history

Yann LeCun’s Deep Learning Course at CDS – NYU Center for Data Science - now free #datascience #learning

This course concerns the latest techniques in deep learning and representation learning, focusing on supervised and unsupervised deep learning, embedding methods, metric learning, convolutional and recurrent nets, with applications to computer vision, natural language understanding, and speech recognition. The prerequisites include: DS-GA 1001 Intro to Data Science or a graduate-level machine learning course.

Journal of Functional Programming moving to Open Access « Computer Science « Cambridge Core Blog #learning #programming #copyrights

As the year winds down, the Journal of Functional Programming gets ready to open a new chapter. From January, every article in JFP will be available under Gold Open Access.

The published ‘version of record’ will be made available to all upon publication, and will be found from the journal’s homepage. Papers will be free to read for anyone, anywhere.

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