Ars Technica reported Saturday that "The Falcon 9 rocket was ready. Its payload of 143 satellites were ready. But Mother Nature was not ready." Although SpaceX pressed ahead with fueling of the Falcon 9 booster on Saturday morning, the company scrubbed the launch attempt of the Transporter-1 mission a few minutes before the window opened due to weather. Conditions at Cape Canaveral violated the electrical field rule for a safe launch. The company now plans to try to launch again on Sunday morning, with the launch window opening at 10am ET (15:00 UTC). Slashdot noted earlier that SpaceX plans to launch the most satellites ever deployed in a single mission, 143, from Florida for more than a dozen customers. UPI reports: A 2017 mission by the India Space Research Organization launched 104 spacecraft, which would be the previous record if the SpaceX launch is a success... The Transporter-1 mission is the first in a series of regularly scheduled SpaceX rideshare projects for multiple customers. SpaceX also plans to carry 10 of its Starlink communications satellites on this mission. "The Starlink satellites aboard this mission will be the first in the constellation to deploy to a polar orbit," according to the SpaceX mission description. Polar orbits circle the globe by passing over the North Pole and South Pole, while many satellites circle above equatorial regions. Houston-based space firm Nanoracks is acting as a broker to arrange some customers for the launch, said Tristan Prejean, a mission manager at Nanoracks. Nanoracks' two customers for Transporter-1 are two satellite companies, California-based Spire Global and Montreal-based GHGSat. Spire launches fleets of small satellites that monitor weather and patterns for shipping for aviation interests. GHGSat monitors industrial emissions of gasses from space -- especially greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

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Many years ago I got interested in massage, meditation, consciousness -- really it was all about being more observant. Looking at everything from different perspectives. I told my fellow explorers, many of whom had been to India, about the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra. Everything he said was about being more conscious! But his sayings were so concise and ironic, they passed for folksy humor. It's all the same thing. My friends loved that he was called Yogi. It sort of wrapped the whole thing in a bow.

As you may know, I got vaccinated on the 20th. Only side-effect: a shoulder-ache at the injection site. I wonder why there isn't a database I'm registered in, so data can be gathered on the effectiveness of the vaccine over time and geography, so it can be added to other data to learn more about the virus. I registered for the Kinsa groupware thermometer for that purpose. Millions of people have been vaccinated all over America, but as with everything it's fairly disorganized. I do have an official-looking CDC identification card, but no corresponding web registration.

Google released Chrome 88 this week — and besides improving its dark mode support, they removed support for both Adobe Flash and FTP. PC World calls it "the end of two eras." The most noteworthy change in this update is what's not included. Chrome 88 lays Adobe Flash and the FTP protocol to rest. RIP circa-2000 Internet. Neither comes as a surprise, though it's poetic that they're being buried together. Adobe halted Flash Player downloads at the end of 2020, making good on a promise made years before, and began blocking Flash content altogether a couple weeks later. Removing Flash from Chrome 88 is just Google's way of flushing the toilet. On the other hand, FTP isn't dead, but it is now for Chrome users. The File Transport Protocol has helped users send files across the Internet for decades, but in an era of prolific cloud storage services and other sharing methods, its use has waned. Google started slowly disabling FTP support in Chrome 86, per ZDNet, and now you'll no longer be able to access FTP links in the browser. Look for standalone FTP software instead if you need it, such as FileZilla. That's not all. Mac users should be aware that Chrome 88 drops support for OS X 10.10 (OS X Yosemite). Yosemite released in 2014 and received its last update in 2017... But Google killing Flash and FTP might be the footnotes that hit old-school web users in the feels. Chrome 88 will also block non-encrypted downloads originating from an encrypted page, the article reports. And the Verge notes Chrome also offers less intrusive website permission requests (as an experimental feature enabled from chrome://flags/#permission-chip ), while Bleeping Computer describes Chrome 88's new experimental feature for searching through all your open tabs. And Chrome's blog points out some additional features under the hood: Chrome 88 will heavily throttle chained JavaScript timers for hidden pages in particular conditions. This will reduce CPU usage, which will also reduce battery usage. There are some edge cases where this will change behavior, but timers are often used where a different API would be more efficient, and more reliable.

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"America first" is a dog whistle for "White people first." Even that's a lie. It really means "Let's watch the world burn."

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a recent Wired.com article that purports to reveal "how law enforcement gets around your smartphone's encryption." Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have increasingly called for backdoors in the encryption schemes that protect your data, arguing that national security is at stake. But new research indicates governments already have methods and tools that, for better or worse, let them access locked smartphones thanks to weaknesses in the security schemes of Android and iOS. Cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University used publicly available documentation from Apple and Google as well as their own analysis to assess the robustness of Android and iOS encryption. They also studied more than a decade's worth of reports about which of these mobile security features law enforcement and criminals have previously bypassed, or can currently, using special hacking tools... once you unlock your device the first time after reboot, lots of encryption keys start getting stored in quick access memory, even while the phone is locked. At this point an attacker could find and exploit certain types of security vulnerabilities in iOS to grab encryption keys that are accessible in memory and decrypt big chunks of data from the phone. Based on available reports about smartphone access tools, like those from the Israeli law enforcement contractor Cellebrite and US-based forensic access firm Grayshift, the researchers realized that this is how almost all smartphone access tools likely work right now. It's true that you need a specific type of operating system vulnerability to grab the keys — and both Apple and Google patch as many of those flaws as possible — but if you can find it, the keys are available, too... Forensic tools exploiting the right vulnerability can grab even more decryption keys, and ultimately access even more data, on an Android phone. The article notes the researchers shared their findings with the Android and iOS teams — who both pointed out the attacks require physical access to the target device (and that they're always patching vulnerabilities).

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NBC News reports: A number of pro-Trump extremists used Facebook to plan their attack on the U.S. Capitol, a watchdog organization has found, contradicting claims by Facebook's leadership that such planning was largely done on other sites. Private Facebook groups spent months advising one another about how to "take down" the U.S. government, particularly after Joe Biden was elected president, according to a report from the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project, which tracked several of them. Many of the groups specifically talked about traveling to the Capitol on Jan. 6, the date Congress counted the electoral votes that affirmed Biden's victory."Calls to 'occupy Congress' were rampant on Facebook in the weeks leading up to the deadly Capitol riot, making no secret of the event's aims," the report found... A sample recruitment call by a page called "Florida Patriots" said, "We are actively seeking well armed citizens to join our emergency response unit in all zones." BuzzFeed News notes the report contradicts earlier remarks from Sheryl Sandberg deflecting blame for the event: Last week, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company had acted appropriately to prevent election misinformation and the incitement of violence, and attempted to pin the blame on smaller websites and apps with less content moderation. "I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, don't have our standards, and don't have our transparency," Sandberg said in an interview with Reuters. Facebook spokespeople have since tried to walk this statement back, noting that Sandberg made the point earlier in the interview that the platform played a role in fomenting the unrest.

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Follow-up on the Rijksmuseum download. It's huge, 1.72GB uncompressed. But it's a JSON file. Not sure what I'd use it for. I wanted the images. Oy. Also it took a couple of days to download.

David Leonhardt won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. This week in a New York Times newsletter, he argues that early in the pandemic experts around the world mistakenly discouraged mask use because of "a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also [at the time] unsure how much ordinary masks would help." But are they now spreading a similarly misguided pessimism about vaccines? Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They're not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn't change their behavior once they get their shots... "It's going to save your life — that's where the emphasis has to be right now," Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are "essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease," Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said. "It's ridiculously encouraging." Here's my best attempt at summarizing what we know: - The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That's on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn't even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic. - If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One. Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. The article suggests less-positive messages are being conveyed in part because "As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty." But the article ultimately concludes that in fact, "the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure."

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Earlier this week security experts disclosed details on seven vulnerabilities impacting Dnsmasq, "a popular DNS software package that is commonly deployed in networking equipment, such as routers and access points," reports ZDNet. "The vulnerabilities tracked as DNSpooq, impact Dnsmasq, a DNS forwarding client for *NIX-based operating systems." Slashdot reader Joe2020 shared Help Net Security's quote from Shlomi Oberman, CEO and researcher at JSOF. "Some of the bigger users of Dnsmasq are Android/Google, Comcast, Cisco, Red Hat, Netgear, and Ubiquiti, but there are many more. All major Linux distributions offer Dnsmasq as a package, but some use it more than others, e.g., in OpenWRT it is used a lot, Red Hat use it as part of their virtualization platforms, Google uses it for Android hotspots (and maybe other things), while, for example Ubuntu just has it as an optional package." More from ZDNet: Dnsmasq is usually included inside the firmware of various networking devices to provide DNS forwarding capabilities by taking DNS requests made by local users, forwarding the request to an upstream DNS server, and then caching the results once they arrive, making the same results readily available for other clients without needing to make a new DNS query upstream. While their role seems banal and insignificant, they play a crucial role in accelerating internet speeds by avoiding recursive traffic... Today, the DNSpooq software has made its way in millions of devices sold worldwide [including] all sorts of networking gear like routers, access points, firewalls, and VPNs from companies like ZTE, Aruba, Redhat, Belden, Ubiquiti, D-Link, Huawei, Linksys, Zyxel, Juniper, Netgear, HPE, IBM, Siemens, Xiaomi, and others. The DNSpooq vulnerabilities, disclosed today by security experts from JSOF, are dangerous because they can be combined to poison DNS cache entries recorded by Dnsmasq servers. Poisoning DNS cache records is a big problem for network administrators because it allows attackers to redirect users to clones of legitimate websites... In total, seven DNSpooq vulnerabilities have been disclosed today. Four are buffer overflows in the Dnsmasq code that can lead to remote code execution scenarios, while the other three bugs allow DNS cache poisoning. On their own, the danger from each is limited, but researchers argue they can be combined to attack any device with older versions of the Dnsmasq software... The JSOF exec told ZDNet that his company has worked with both the Dnsmasq project author and multiple industry partners to make sure patches were made available to device vendors by Tuesday's public disclosure.

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While NBC News reported on Tuesday that Facebook "has no plan in place to lift the indefinite suspension on President Donald Trump's Facebook account," there was a new twist two days later. "Facebook on Thursday announced that it will refer its decision to indefinitely suspend the account of former President Donald Trump to its newly instituted Oversight Board," reports CNBC: The independent body, which has been described as Facebook's "Supreme Court," will review the decision to suspend Trump and make a binding decision on whether the account will be reinstated. Until a decision is made, Trump's account will remain suspended, the company said in a blog post. The board will begin accepting public comments on the case next week, it said in a tweet. It will have up to 90 days to make its decision, but its members have committed to move as quickly as possible, a spokesman for the body told CNBC. A decision can't be overruled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg or other executives. "We believe our decision was necessary and right..." Facebook's VP of Global Affairs wrote on their blog, adding "We look forward to receiving the board's decision — and we hope, given the clear justification for our actions on January 7, that it will uphold the choices we made..." Some said that Facebook should have banned President Trump long ago, and that the violence on the Capitol was itself a product of social media; others that it was an unacceptable display of unaccountable corporate power over political speech. We have taken the view that in open democracies people have a right to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can be held to account. But it has never meant that politicians can say whatever they like. They remain subject to our policies banning the use of our platform to incite violence. It is these policies that were enforced when we took the decision to suspend President Trump's access. Whether you believe the decision was justified or not, many people are understandably uncomfortable with the idea that tech companies have the power to ban elected leaders. Many argue private companies like Facebook shouldn't be making these big decisions on their own. We agree... It would be better if these decisions were made according to frameworks agreed by democratically accountable lawmakers. But in the absence of such laws, there are decisions that we cannot duck. This is why we established the Oversight Board. It is the first body of its kind in the world: an expert-led independent organization with the power to impose binding decisions on a private social media company. Its decision will be available at the board's website when it is issued.

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I read in the comments of a story on Facebook how particular people in Vermont are about people who come from other places. They think it's charming; I think it's ugly. I wrote in a comment: The places I like best are where people don’t have any weird ideas about how they’re better than people who were born elsewhere. I’m a first gen American, child of people who ran for their lives, and were welcomed to this great country. They had no other place to go. What if America hadn't welcomed us? I've been to places where they hate outsiders, and many more places where they welcome them. I had a warm feeling walking around a small city in Italy, where I didn't speak the language and almost no one spoke English, but people were patient and smiled a lot and were gentle with the tourist from America. I got lost on the train, hundreds of miles out of my way, and the workers on the train spoiled me, passing me off to the next one to get me to my destination. Maybe they laughed, but I never saw it. The note they gave me explained my predicament in Italian, very respectfully (it was translated for me by my host when I arrived in Trieste). So I try to go out of my way to welcome visitors. Because it's a generous thing to do, but also because I know that I have benefited from this kind of generosity myself. And I always try to remember that I'm no better than anyone else, even if they were born in Vermont.

Wouldn't it be great if, on Monday, everyone in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, dressed up like Bernie, including the mittens. I would be so impressed. A country that can laugh at itself is the most powerful, respectful country in the world.

Today's song: On the Road to Freedom.