Best Of

Yep, last Monday we woke up to 19 F and had freezing rain, 87 F today.

Hotter than blazes, way too early for this

Research suggests people who read before bed every night have a fundamentally different brain than people who watch TV

What Happens When You Watch TV
Television is a fundamentally different cognitive experience. The brain is receiving rather than constructing. Images are provided. Sounds are provided. Emotional cues are delivered through music, pacing, and cinematography. Your brain doesn’t need to build anything. It just needs to process what’s being handed to it.

This isn’t inherently bad. Some television is genuinely excellent storytelling. But the neurological difference matters, especially before sleep. A causal analysis published in Human Brain Mapping using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study found that screen use, particularly watching TV and movies, had a significant causal influence on lower language skills. The same study found that reading habits were positively associated with brain volume in multiple areas, including bilateral prefrontal cortex, insula, and temporal lobes, regions essential for cognitive control, emotional processing, and language.

https://siliconcanals.com/gen-research-suggests-people-who-read-before-bed-every-night-have-a-fundamentally-different-brain-than-people-who-watch-tv/

The contrast is stark: screen time was linked to reduced cognitive performance and, in some cases, reduced brain volume. Reading was linked to the opposite on both counts.

Got a home network?
...
The four botnets targeted by the US in Thursday's takedown had all evolved new techniques that let them infect types of devices that even Mirai had never managed to access. Kimwolf in particular took advantage of cheap internet-connected gadgets that acted as “residential proxies” that—often unbeknownst to their owners—let hackers pivot into users' home networks to compromise devices that are typically protected behind a home router, says Chad Seaman, a principal security researcher at networking firm Akamai. “It really shook the foundations of what we considered to be a secure home network,” Seaman says.
...

Aisuru and Kimwolf, a distinct but Aisuru-related botnet, had together comprised more than a million devices, according to DDoS defense firm Cloudflare, with Aisuru infecting a variety of devices ranging from DVRs to network appliances to webcams, and its Kimwolf offshoot infecting Android devices including smart TVs and set-top boxes.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-takes-down-botnets-used-in-record-breaking-cyberattacks/

Cellulite

"cavil". I have never seen or heard anyone use this word. Useful word nonetheless.

To “cavil” is to engage in an argument that borders on bad faith. It may be an argument made in good faith, but over trivialities or petty concerns few others take seriously. In the 17th century, Dr. Samuel Johnson defined the verb as “raising frivolous objections.” Unfortunately, frivolity is in the mind of the speaker; often a person who chooses to cavil feels they are making a significant argument concerning a subject of importance to them. Caviling ultimately results in an argument that few but the person making it believe is worth their time or trouble.

@genareddog said:

@ShawnOL said:
To prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapon capability.

Cant say I agree with that.

You can't agree with that being the reason for the war, or agree with Iran having nukes?

@ShawnOL said:
To prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapon capability.

Or……