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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Rather than using tools like YUMI and many others to create a multidistro boot usb stick, with Ventoy you can copy over .ISO files and boot from them on a multidistro USB!

With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.

You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (screenshot).

x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.

Most type of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/VMware/Xen...)

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)!

- Github page for Ventoy

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Comcast hides upload speeds deep inside its infuriating ordering system:

But while upload use on Comcast's network quickly grows—driven largely by videoconferencing among people working and learning at home—the nation's largest home-Internet provider with over 30 million customers advertises its speed tiers as if uploading doesn't exist. Comcast's 56 percent increase in upstream traffic made me wonder if the company will increase upload speeds any time soon, so I checked out Comcast's Xfinity.com site today to see the current upload speeds. Getting that information was even more difficult than I expected.

The Xfinity website advertises cable-Internet plans with download speeds starting at 25Mbps without mentioning that upstream speeds are just a fraction of the downstream ones. I went through Comcast's online ordering system today and found no mention of upload speeds anywhere. Even clicking "pricing & other info" and "view plan details" links to read the fine print on various Internet plans didn't reveal upload speeds.

Even after adding a plan to the cart and going through most of the checkout process, I could not find any mention of upload speeds. I got to the point where you have to enter credit card information to continue, so I initially stopped there. I later confirmed that Comcast's ordering system will show upload speeds after it checks whether your credit card is valid, in the final page where you submit an order.

Eratosthenes writes:

As reported by APNews,

NEW YORK (AP) — A new national study adds strong evidence that mask mandates can slow the spread of the coronavirus, and that allowing dining at restaurants can increase cases and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study Friday.

"All of this is very consistent," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing on Friday. "You have decreases in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have increases in cases and deaths when you have in-person restaurant dining."

The study was released just as some states are rescinding mask mandates and restaurant limits. Earlier this week, Texas became the biggest state to lift its mask rule, joining a movement by many governors to loosen COVID-19 restrictions despite pleas from health officials.

"It's a solid piece of work that makes the case quite strongly that in-person dining is one of the more important things that needs to be handled if you're going to control the pandemic," said William Hanage, a Harvard University expert on disease dynamics who was not involved in the study.

The new research builds on smaller CDC studies, including one that found that people in 10 states who became infected in July were more likely to have dined at a restaurant and another that found mask mandates in 10 states were associated with reductions in hospitalizations.

The CDC researchers looked at U.S. counties placed under state-issued mask mandates and at counties that allowed restaurant dining — both indoors and at tables outside. The study looked at data from March through December of last year.

The scientists found that mask mandates were associated with reduced coronavirus transmission, and that improvements in new cases and deaths increased as time went on.

The reductions in growth rates varied from half a percentage point to nearly 2 percentage points. That may sound small, but the large number of people involved means the impact grows with time, experts said.

Original Submission

Eratosthenes writes:

So I have always enjoyed Etruscan art, even back in the day when it was fresh, as in fresh frescos. Unfortunately, the remnants now are mostly in tombs, and in bad shape. But it seems technology is coming to the rescue? News from Live Science, on the use of

a technique called multi-illumination hyperspectral extraction (MHX), which involves taking dozens of images in the visible, infrared and ultraviolet bands of light and processing them using statistical algorithms developed at the National Research Council of Italy in Pisa, said team member Vincenzo Palleschi, a senior researcher at the research council.

And, voila! If not a restored painting, a much closer to the original image!

Scientists using a new technique have uncovered the colorful and once-hidden scenes in paintings of the ancient Etruscans, a group of people who flourished on the Italian peninsula around 2,500 years ago at a time before Rome became powerful.

For instance, they found new details in a painting from the "Tomb of the Monkey" and scenes of an underworld in another work of art.

The Etruscans created detailed paintings, but the passage of time has meant that many of them are now only partly visible and that much of their color has been lost.

"A major issue is the significant loss of information on the polychromy [colors] of the preserved paintings, with special regard to some specific colors owing to their physical chemical composition," Gloria Adinolfi, a researcher at Pegaso Srl Archeologia Arte Archeometria (a research institute), said in a presentation given Jan. 8 at the virtual joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for Classical Studies.

The fact that some colors survive the passage of time better than others can give a distorted view of what ancient paintings looked like at the time they were painted, Adinolfi said. For example, some shades of green tend not to survive well, whereas red often does, she said. "Red oaks [sic] usually seem to be more resistant so that sometimes reds are dominant and alter the correct perception of the original polychromy of the pictorial decoration," Adinolfi said.

Yes, I do look forward to being able to utilize this technology on my family photo albums, many of which have suffered the fading of colors with the ravages of time. And, remember, the Estrucans were the ones who taught the Romans about government and social justice. Well, about government.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel's next-generation "Rocket Lake" CPUs will be some of Intel's last desktop models on a "14nm" node, and include "backported" Willow Cove cores (referred to as "Cypress Cove") from "10nm" Tiger Lake mobile CPUs, with improved instructions per clock. Notably, the lineup only goes up to 8 cores, instead of 10 cores for the previous Core i9. The review embargo ends on the launch date, March 30th, but some retailers have been selling the CPUs early. AnandTech obtained an 8-core i7-11700K and wrote a review of it. The results were not great.

Power consumption of the 125 W TDP chip peaked at 224.56 W when running an AVX2 workload, compared to 204.79 W for its i7-10700K "Comet Lake" predecessor and 141.45 W for AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X. The i7-11700K reached 291.68 W with an AVX-512 workload.

The i7-11700K not only failed to beat the 5800X in many benchmarks, but trailed the previous-gen i7-10700K in some cases. The major exception is performance in AVX-512 workloads. Gaming performance of the i7-11700K was particularly bad, in part due to an increase in L3 cache and core-to-core latency.

It's possible that there will be some improvements from a final microcode update before launch. There's also models like the Core i9-11900K, which have the same 8 cores but can clock up to 300 MHz higher.

See also: Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core Rocket Lake CPU Review Published By Anandtech – Very Hot, Consumes More Power Than Core i9-10900K & Slower Than AMD In Core-To-Core Tests

Related: Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512
Former Intel Principal Engineer Blasts the Company
Gigabyte Confirms Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Will Launch in March

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Samsung Electronics, Mastercard and Samsung Card develop fingerprint biometric payment card - Help Net Security:

Through this strategic collaboration, the companies aim to provide faster and more secure payment experiences. The biometric authentication capability allows safer interactions with reduced physical contact points by eliminating the need to enter a PIN on a keypad.

It also adds an extra layer of security to currently available credit cards by verifying the cardholder's identity via a unique fingerprint.

The biometric cards will adopt a new security chipset from Samsung's System LSI Business that integrates several key discrete chips, streamlining the overall component design and enabling more efficient development. These cards can be used at any Mastercard chip terminal or point of sale (POS) terminal.

[...] Samsung Card will lead the roll out in South Korea, with plans to introduce the biometric card later this year. The adoption of the solution will be a gradual process, starting from corporate credit cards that have more frequent international transactions.

Also at Engadget, Businesswire, and hypebeast.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The 40-Year-Old Version: ZX81's sleek plastic case shows no sign of middle-aged spread:

It has been 40 years since the launch of Sinclair's ZX81, a device that welcomed countless Brits to the delights of home computing at the dawn of the 1980s.

Released on 5 March 1981, the ZX81 was the successor to 1980's ZX80 and, like its predecessor, was based around a Z80 CPU. Both machines also featured 1KB of memory and required a UHF television to display the monochrome output.

The ZX81 was, however, a far sleeker affair than its white plastic-encased stablemate. A Rick Dickinson-designed case made for a more consumer-friendly computer, even if the pressure sensitive membrane of the keyboard was somewhat less easy to use.

[...] The BBC Micro would launch toward the end of 1981, and the rivalry between Acorn and Sinclair has been well documented over the years, including a dramatization in the form of the BBC's Micro Men.

[...] You can't beat the real thing, however. Fitzpatrick pointed out that the Centre for Computing History had a number of the devices, including some featuring creative modifications to overcome limitations like that keyboard. "There's always one on display," he said, "there's never a display without a ZX81."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

FCC approves $50 monthly internet subsidies for low-income households during pandemic:

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved final rules for a new broadband subsidy program that could help struggling families pay for internet service during the pandemic.

The agency's $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit Program provides eligible low-income households with up to a $50 per month credit on their internet bills through their provider until the end of the pandemic. In tribal areas, eligible households may receive up to $75 per month. The program also provides eligible households up to $100 off of one computer or tablet.

The congressionally created program is aimed at closing the digital divide, which has become painfully apparent over the past year as millions of Americans have been forced to work and learn remotely. Some have also raised concerns that the digital divide could affect access to the vaccine as signups typically happen online.

[...] Last year, Congress passed a coronavirus relief package that contained provisions for the FCC's new program. And the FCC has established a fresh task force this year to improve the data it collects on broadband availability, which could ultimately help the agency better target its efforts to close the gap.

[...] "This is a program that will help those at risk of digital disconnection," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "It will help those sitting in cars in parking lots just to catch a Wi-Fi signal to go online for work. It will help those lingering outside the library with a laptop just to get a wireless signal for remote learning. It will help those who worry about choosing between paying a broadband bill and paying rent or buying groceries."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Torvalds warns the world: Don't use the Linux 5.12-rc1 kernel:

In a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List yesterday, founding developer Linus Torvalds warned the world not to use the 5.12-rc1 kernel in his public git tree.

Hey peeps - some of you may have already noticed that in my public git tree, the "v5.12-rc1" tag has magically been renamed to "v5.12-rc1-dontuse". It's still the same object, it still says "v5.12-rc1" internally and it is still is signed by me, but the user-visible name of the tag has changed.

As it turns out, when Linus Torvalds flags some code dontuse, he really means it—the problem with this 5.12 release candidate broke swapfile handling in a very unpleasant way. Specifically, the updated code would lose the proper offset pointing to the beginning of the swapfile. Again, in Torvalds' own words, "swapping still happened, but it happened to the wrong part of the filesystem, with the obvious catastrophic end results."

[...] Torvalds' warning matters above and beyond what individual users might do with a release candidate kernel, however. It's even more important that kernel developers not base their own work around that release and potentially carry a very nasty bug forward further down the line.

I want to make sure that nobody starts new topic branches using that 5.12-rc1 tag. I know a few developers tend to go "Ok, rc1 is out, I got all my development work into this merge window, I will now fast-forward to rc1 and  use that as a base for the next release". Don't do it this time. It may work perfectly well for you because you have the common partition setup, but it can end up being a horrible base for anybody else that might end up bisecting into that area.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Klara Systems has an article with a deep dive into the origins of FreeBSD jails. These ideas have been around for many decades and taken form in several stages and finally became part of FreeBSD over 20 years ago. FreeBSD jails share the main system's kernel and are therefore a relatively light weight means for userspace isolation, compared to "containers". Within the jail, the environment appears as a normal system and processes within the jail can not see upward into the host or laterally into other jails.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Someone Is Hacking the Hackers:

In the latest in a string of "hits" on Russian dark web forums, the prominent crime site Maza appears to have been breached by a hacker earlier this week.

This is kind of big news since Maza (previously called "Mazafaka") has long been a destination for all assortment of criminal activity, including malware distribution, money laundering, carding (i.e., the selling of stolen credit card information), and lots of other bad behavior. The forum is considered "elite" and hard to join, and in the past, it has been a cesspool for some of the world's most prolific cybercriminals.

[...] KrebsOnSecurity reports that the intruder subsequently dumped the stolen data on the dark web, spurring fears among criminals that their identities might be exposed (oh, the irony). The validity of the data has been verified by threat intelligence firm Intel 471.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

AdGuard names 6,000+ web trackers that use CNAME chicanery: Feel free to feed them into your browser's filter:

AdGuard on Thursday published a list of more than 6,000 CNAME-based trackers so they can be incorporated into content-blocking filters.

CNAME tracking is a way to configure DNS records to erase the distinction between code and assets from a publisher's (first-party) domain and tracking scripts on that site that call a server on an advertiser's (third-party) domain. Such domain cloaking – obscuring who controls a domain – undoes privacy defenses, like the blocking of third-party cookies, by making third-party assets look like they're associated with the first-party domain.

[...] The most commonly detected CNAME trackers, according to the researchers, come from the following companies, in order of prevalence: Pardot, Adobe Experience Cloud, Act-On Software, Oracle Eloqua, Eulerian, Webtrekk, Ingenious Technologies, TraceDock, LiveIntent, AT Internet, Criteo, Keyade, and Wizaly.

[...] "In order to prevent it you'll need to use a content blocker that can access DNS queries," Andrey Meshkov, CEO of AdGuard, told The Register.

"The whole problem is that the majority of users don't use them and just stick to Chrome or Safari browsers with extensions. These users can only 'react' to the problem, they can only start blocking a new disguised tracker as soon as we detect it on AdGuard DNS and update the list."

Meshkov acknowledged that this is not a proactive approach, but it works within the existing system for applying filtering lists to content blockers.

[Ed Note: I use and can recommend Pi-hole for your home network. That doesn't help though when you're on the road unless you VPN back to your home network first. - Fnord]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Google-free /e/ OS is now selling preloaded phones in the US, starting at $380:

/e/ OS, the "open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled" fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe.

Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive.

[...] Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.

[...] There's a chance you don't have to actually buy a phone to run /e/ OS. Just like with Lineage, you can install the OS at home, for free, if you have a compatible device. There are 138 devices officially supported by /e/ OS (oddly no up-to-date builds for Pixel phones, which are probably the most popular unlocked devices), although only about 60 are on the latest version. There is even an "Easy Installer" for some Samsung Exynos devices.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/natural-histories/black-death-new-culprit

When it comes to the Black Death, rats are usually cast as the villains of the piece – and with good reason. After all, it was most likely thanks to them that the plague (Yersinia pestis) was reintroduced to Europe. Though there has been some debate about how and where the original infection occurred, there is little doubt that Italian traders caught the disease from rat fleas in Black Sea ports before taking it back to Messina aboard Genoese galleys in October 1347. Granted, rats were probably not solely responsible for the speed with which the pestilence spread in the weeks that followed. In 2018, researchers from the universities of Ferrara and Oslo demonstrated that human fleas and lice played at least as important a role in transmission between people. But because rats can tolerate higher concentrations of the bacillus in their blood, and tend to live in close proximity to humans, they greatly amplified its virulence. Exactly how many people died is difficult to establish, but it is estimated that, in the period 1347-53, the plague killed 30-50 per cent of the European population. Understandably, rats have borne most of the blame.

But is this really fair? A recent study suggests marmots might have been just as guilty.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-makes-anal-swab-covid-tests-compulsory-for-foreign-arrivals-mvthjq8c7

China has made anal swab tests for the coronavirus mandatory for almost all international arrivals, deepening a row with other countries over a practice many have described as humiliating.

The Japanese government has already raised concern about its citizens being subjected to the "undignified" procedure while American diplomats have also complained. Katsunobu Kato, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said it would ask China to alter its testing regimen after some Japanese travellers reported suffering "psychological pain" from the invasive procedure.

Original Submission