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Last night Jasmine dumped me. That's two in a week, and a new personal best.

I had felt some distance between us over the last month or so. The biggest sign was slower responses to text messages I would send to her. Normally she would respond within minutes, but it started dragging out to hours, then days. She said she had some busy weeks (and I'm sure she did).

Last time I saw her, I asked her what she wanted in our relationship. I asked if she wanted me to integrate her more into my life. Things like meeting my wife and coming over for dinners every once and a while. She said she didn't know, and that she would think about it.

I guess she thought about it, and decided it was time to move on. I think that she is seeing someone else, and I'm guessing that it's going well and she wants to see where that goes. I understand that. Our relationship was never going to be permanent. I knew I was just a transition between her ex-husband and her getting another 'real' relationship.

We started dating sometime in September, so we dated for 6-7 months. She was a good person and I will miss her. I appreciate the memories we made together, and I will remember her with fondness. I hope she finds what she is looking for. She deserves someone that can offer more than I.

All in all, I would say our relationship was a success, even if the ending hurt a bit. I wish her well.

Godspeed Jasmine. Godspeed.

'Biggest' UK tulip grower stockpiles bulbs over Brexit

The UK's biggest outdoor commercial tulip grower has said it has been stockpiling bulbs as uncertainty over Brexit continues.

Belmont Nurseries, near King's Lynn, said the future of the UK's relationship with the European Union (EU) was a cause of major concern.

"We're very much UK based, but we do also sell to Europe," nursery director Mark Eves said.

Tulip futures.

Rejected submission by RandomFactor at 2019-03-24 01:38:13 from the I have a dream (viewable online in 2038) dept.
Tens of thousands rally across Europe protesting EU Copyright 'Reform'

RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

On Saturday demonstrators protested by the tens of thousands in various cities across the EU, including in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Portugal, protesting against a coming EU copyright reform.

Effects that will be seen once it takes effect

o - include proposals to oblige YouTube and other platforms to remove illegal content using automatic filters.
o - make internet companies pay more to news organisations for reproducing or linking to their content.

News organizations, journalists, film-makers and photographers have pushed for the move, arguing that companies such as Facebook and Google are making billions in advertising tied to the content they publish.

Conversely, arguments against include the concern that

the reform will harm freedom of information and small publishers on the internet.

As is well known, there are simple mechanisms to avoid having your news pages crawled by Google, Facebook, and other news aggregators.

The problem isn't that Google isn't making the publisher more money, it is that Google is making itself too much money.

P30 Pro Teardown Proves Huawei's Flash Catch-up

Content from page 2 (pages 3-9 are images):

Periscope camera
Of all the units inside the P30 Pro, however, the biggest news is the periscope. Huawei placed a CMOS image sensor vertically and put a mirror angled at 45 degrees at the back to increase the optical path. This is the first time a 10x zoom – without any loss in quality -- has gone inside an actual smartphone, according to Elisabeth. He noted that at Mobile World Congress in 2018, Oppo showed a prototype 5X zoom, but never launched an actual product.

Asked who put together a module for the periscope camera, Elisabeth said that System Plus believes Sunny Optical Technology in China did it by using IP from Corephotonics in Israel.

Changes in RF partners?
One additional System Plus discovery was that Skyworks no longer seems to be Huawei’s main RF supplier. P30 Pro uses Qorvo’s mid/high-band front-end module (QM77031). Skyworks now supplies only a low-band front-end module (SKY78191). Previously Skyworks provided three separate front-end modules to meet the needs of three different bands.

In the following pages, we will share the teardown done by System Plus, revealing who got design wins for which slots.

Rejected submission by RandomFactor at 2019-03-17 15:42:48 from the glad I don't browse those sites dept.
RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

In recent months one of the hot new (again) trends in separating people from their money on the internet is something referred to as "Sextortion."

In brief, sextortion is a form of blackmail predicated on exploiting common human behavior people want to keep private.

Sophos provides a video explaining

                Is webcam malware technically feasible?
                Is there anything at all behind these threats?
                Is it a worry if the crooks know my password or other personal information?
                Is it really possible to be tracked via email as the crooks claim?
                Is there still a risk if I don’t watch porn?
                Is it worth reporting these emails to my ISP?
                What to do next?

Typically current sextortion messages attempt to convince the reader that their machine has been taken over in various ways, such as providing a password previously exposed in a data breach, and that they have been filmed by their own webcam while browsing adult sites. Here's a quick approximation

                Hi, you don't know me, I am a (criminal/hacker/supra-genius) that has taken over your computer.
                You can believe me on this because I know your password/phone number/address is DreadPasswordRoberts

                I installed a (trojan/virus/rat/keylogger) on your machine and accessed your web cam
                I filmed you watching (porn/adult/fun) (videos/sites/web pages..). (You have good taste!)

                I have recorded your activities and what you are watching into a video side by side, it is timed perfectly!
                I will immediatley send this to all your friends and associates if you do not pay me:

                (some amount of bitcoin, to a single use wallet, within this timeperiod)

                I know you opened this email because I have a (bug/webbug/tracker/cookie...) in it

                if you pay it I will most assuredly delete the video.
                if you do not or you try to cheat me I will definitely send it to everyone you know.

That's more or less the gist of it.

As with most spam, very little is consistent from email to email, as it's source is essentially a big randomized mail merge of similar terms. It is done this way so that blocking of any specific string or information won't work. (This approach incidentally is part of why even spam by native speakers is often choppy reading and seems to have strange word choices and sentence structure.)

In any large corporate environment, you can be relatively certain that all email addresses have been leaked and targeted by this form of attack repeatedly. The vast majority of these emails are routinely caught in their millions by email spam filtering solutions daily. Still, the odd one reaches people, and if this didn't fool people and make money, the bad guys wouldn't be doing it.

With all those millions blocked, still there are no videos showing up due to not getting paid, go figure.

Don't be fooled, and as per usual, delete and move on.

Bonus Section - A Current Digital dirty dealing Roundup provided for your bemusement:

                New Zealand Tragedy-scams and malware campaigns (also here)

                HaveIBeenPwned - latest breaches Ixigo breach exposes 17.2 Million

                Gearbest exposed millions of records. Also here.

                Malware spreading spam campaign using Boing 737 Max crashes

                800k Singabore Blood donors exposed in Secur Solutions data leak.

I am a Firefox user. Firefox has Pocket, which will suggest articles to read when you open a new tab.

Today, one of the articles was: Can We Touch?

I love being touched. One of my favourite things in the world, probably more than sex, is my wife rubbing my back. She uses the tips of her fingers to gently run her fingers up and down and side to side. When she comes across an imperfection like a little bump or tiny scab or whatever they are, she will use her nails and pick it/scrape it off. Sometimes she will look for tiny blackheads and squeeze them, which is quite painful, but I love it. It's gross, but strangely intimate. My girlfriend from High School would do the same thing, so it can't be that uncommon.

It's almost like some sort of primal ritual. You see monkeys grooming each other in a similar way. Searching each other and removing bugs or parasites or whatever else they find.

My Love Language is Physical Touch. I just love being touched. There is a guy at work who is Persian or something and he is really touchy. When you pass him in the hall he might greet you and touch your shoulder. He super friendly, and I find his touch comforting, even if it's a little weird.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but the article was about how being touched in the right circumstances can bring health benefits. However, modern society (probably in large part because of the Me Too movement) is moving away from casual touching. I get it. I don't initiate touch hardly ever because it's just too risky. Even on a date when touch is pretty much expected, it can be scary to break the touch barrier. In normal day-to-day life, being touched is a very rare occurrence.

Maybe I'm just feeling a little down/lonely because Annie dumped me earlier this week, but I would love a nice hug right now :)

Rejected submission by RandomFactor at 2019-03-13 13:37:55 from the foxy filesend, I think I, love you dept.
Mozilla debuts Free, Easy, Secure, no local software required, DLP Destroying file sending service

RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

Mozilla's "Firefox Send" a free encrypted file sharing service has been moved from testing to release status as of Tuesday.

Firfox Send is

a way to encrypt local files and store them on Mozilla's servers, provided by AWS, for retrieval with a one-time use URL.

Send supports up to 1GB, or 2.5 GB if you are signed in to a free Firefox Account. (this also increases the number of times a file can be downloaded)

Links can be used (settable) up to 100 times and (settable) up to 7 days.

"Send uses end-to-end encryption to keep your data secure from the moment you share to the moment your file is opened," said Nick Nguyen, Mozilla's VP of Firefox Product, in a blog post.

This is really cool. Blocks incoming on corporate firewalls in 3....2.....1.........

[Darth Vader voice]: Sissterrr... If you won't turn to the dark side, perhaps she will...

Rejected submission by RandomFactor at 2019-03-10 14:56:47 from the I still have one foot left dept.
RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

Well here's a twist.

Anyone that tracks polyticks in the U.S. knows about 'Sanctuary Cities' that won't enforce federal law they don't agree with.

However whenever a new tactic is introduced, there is a downside. Whatever one side does will inevitably be adopted by the other. This leaves no moral high ground to protest and there's now precedent as well. To wit, the other side of the political spectrum is getting in on the sanctuary act [santafenewmexican.com].

The governor of New Mexico has signed a bill outlawing private gun sales without a background check in the state. In response

officials in 25 of New Mexico’s 33 counties have adopted “Second Amendment Sanctuary” declarations as of Wednesday, effectively refusing to enforce the new law.

The governor of course has railed against this in a copy-paste echo of the statements made against sanctuary cities, and with similar effectiveness.

It's a sticky wicket indeed. Preemption? Local control? Purview? Borders? 2nd Amendment?

If you root for Sanctuary cities? Then must you not root for sanctuary counties? If the sanctuary cities need to go, don't the sanctuary counties need to go?

Is it even possible to have a consistent position on this without significant cognitive dissonance?

Lets hear it!

There may be a cure...

We have to do like A Clockwork Orange. Only now we make everybody watch C-SPAN. Make them look at what they reelect, 24/7 until they get the hint, or they puke, and make them watch more until they puke and puke and puke, and make them watch more, just to be sure.