Culture Foam: Bubbling Up

Police dismantle world’s ‘most dangerous’ criminal hacking network January 28, 2021

CriminalNetwork Hacking Emotet malware ransomware

“(Reuters) – International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide.”

“

“Emotet is currently seen as the most dangerous malware globally,” Germany’s BKA federal police agency said in a statement. “The smashing of the Emotet infrastructure is a significant blow against international organised Internet crime.”

Emotet is used by cyber criminals to first gain access to a victim’s computer before then downloading additional malicious software, such as trojans designed to steal banking passwords or ransomware which can lock a computer until an extortion fee is paid.”

The Right-Wing American Love Affair With One of the Most Disturbing Serial Killers | Common Dreams Views August 15, 2019

The roots of Republican thought are evil.

Source: The Right-Wing American Love Affair With One of the Most Disturbing Serial Killers | Common Dreams Views

Steam-powered spaceship could cruise the cosmos indefinitely without running out of gas January 22, 2019

Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world’s first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it’s exploring. By continuously turning extraterrestrial water into steam, this microwave-sized lander could, theoretically, power itself on an indefinite number of planet-hopping missions across the galaxy — so long as it always lands somewhere with H20 for the taking.

Source: Steam-powered spaceship could cruise the cosmos indefinitely without running out of gas

Asteroid Rate Jumped in Solar System’s Past | Quanta Magazine January 21, 2019

Some 290 million years ago, as the last trilobites scuttled across the seafloor, the skies above grew just a little more ominous. At that point, large asteroids — including the impactor that would later kill off the dinosaurs — began to rain down on our planet between two and three times more frequently than they did before, according to a study published today in Science. Researchers spotted the trend while surveying impact craters on both Earth and our closest celestial neighbor, the moon. In these records, many impact craters date back to the past few hundred million years. Older ones are few. “It was surprising,” said Sara Mazrouei of the University of Toronto, the lead author of today’s paper. “We see the footprints of it, but what really happened to cause this?”

Source: Asteroid Rate Jumped in Solar System’s Past | Quanta Magazine

Take This Road Trip To Visit The Best Thrift Stores In Cleveland January 21, 2019

This Bargain Hunters Road Trip Will Take You To The Best Thrift Stores In Cleveland Sometimes you just find yourself itching to go out and go shopping. There’s a particular pleasure that comes with treating yourself, especially when you know you’re getting a deal. Thrift stores are a perfect way to indulge in the bliss of spontaneous shopping, as they often offer incredible deals and feature unique finds that you won’t obtain anywhere else. Clevelanders have many options when it comes to thrift shopping—so many options, in fact, that you could make these shops into a road trip to take time and time again.

Source: Take This Road Trip To Visit The Best Thrift Stores In Cleveland

Laughing Squid January 21, 2019

While building a comb off the branch of a tree, a colony of honey bees in Vietnam engaged in a defensive wave, a process that sends murmuring ripples down the line in order to keep predators away. While this wave function is purely utilitarian, the resulting audio-visual effect is absolutely fascinating.

This ‘wave’ is utilized against wasps and is referred to as ‘shimmering’ behavior or defense waving. Bees in the outer layer thrust their abdomens 90° in an upward direction and shake them in a synchronous way. …The signal is transmitted to nearby workers that also adopt the posture, thus creating a visible, and audible ‘ripple’ effect across the face of the comb.

Defensive Waves Ripple Through Honey Bee Colony

Source: Laughing Squid

Kelly’s grandparents immigrants who spoke no English. May 12, 2018

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210606784

John Kelly said immigrants could not ‘assimilate well’ — so a genealogist dug up the Kelly’s family history

DOMINIQUE JACKSON

11 MAY 2018 AT 23:14 ET

White House chief of staff John Kelly, made highly offensive comments about immigrants during an interview with National Public Radio on Friday.

Kelly said immigrants are: “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society.”

-snip-

Jennifer Mendelsohn, looked up Kelly’s ancestry to prove to him and the rest of America that we all come from immigrants. Mendelsohn found out through a 1900 census bureau that Kelly’s great grandfather lived in America undocumented for 18 years and could not “read, write, or speak English.”

She revealed her findings on Twitter:

The 1930 census shows those great-grandparents living with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, one of whom was Kelly’s mother.

John DeMarco had been here for 47 years and was not an American citizen (“AL”). Crescenza had been here for 37 years and spoke no English. pic.twitter.com/5Nyfsu48y0

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s leaving Facebook April 9, 2018

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s leaving Facebook, amid concerns about security safeguards on the personal information that users share with the social media giant. “I am in the process of leaving Facebook. It’s brought me more negatives than positives,” Wozniak wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday. “Apple has more secure ways to share things about yourself. I can still deal with old school email and text messages.”

Source: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s leaving Facebook

Steve Bannon and The Camp of the Saints. April 5, 2018

The book, published in 1973 by a French writer named Jean Raspail, is called The Camp of the Saints. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described it as “a racist fantasy about an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.” (In the novel, the leader of the refugees is described as regularly eating human feces.) Raspail once said that “the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction.”

Source: Steve Bannon and The Camp of the Saints.