The end goal here isn't ambiguous. It's not to just promote radicalism. It's to make it preeminent and to raise it above everything that you believe in and hold dear. It's only going to get worse from here. The far left is playing for keeps, and dominance is the point.

Building Christlike character one story at a time.

We’d like to introduce to you our collection of rare books and audio dramas along with a colorful cast of characters who live out a biblical worldview centered around four truths:

1. God is good.
2. God works all things together for good.
3. God keeps His promises.
4. God allows suffering to grow our character so we can experience His love.

Steeped in these biblical themes, each Lamplighter book and audio drama demonstrates how “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope never disappoints, because God’s love is gushed out into our lives” (Romans 5:3-5).

As you engage in these life-transforming stories, you’ll experience the Word of God as it was intended, for it is alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword! In a day and age when Hollywood and social media have captured the hearts and minds of our children, it is our goal that each reader and listener be inspired to know God intimately, proclaim Him passionately, and enjoy Him infinitely!

mustached-dog Seniorius Lurkius
22y
30
Subscriptor
Interestingly enough, "Jia Tan" is very close to 加蛋 in Mandarin, meaning "to add an egg". Unlikely to be a real name or a coincidence. //

choco bo Ars Praetorian
11y
402
Subscriptor++
Performance hit is quite substantial, actually. I have no doubt that this thing would have been detected, eventually. However, it might have happened months from now. Then it would have been everywhere already.

But this is a good thing. A very good thing, actually.

There have been discussions about supply chain attacks, for years. Decades, actually. We used to call it "poisoning the well" many years ago. But no matter how much we talk about it, it was all theoretical. I mean, people even assumed that compilers have been backdoored many years ago. But noone was going to spend this much effort just to show that it was possible and to make people accept the possibility. So not much was really done about it.

Until now.

Now we are already seeing changes being made to OpenSSH that would have not been possible few months ago. Native systemd notification integration is already been developed (since 30th of March), so no need for libsystemd linking anymore. It will take some time to get integrated but it will happen. We are seeing people understanding that there is absolutely no need to have binary blobs in source repositories (except rare cases, of course, but those are going to be audited even more now). Checking source repositories against tarballs have been done before, many times. But obviously it wasn't good enough or often enough. That will change as well. People being dicks to maintainers are going to get greeted with "go fuck yourself" now, without a second thought. It will be extreme but it will be safer. For eternity I was terrified of compiling software myself because every time I invoked "./configure ..." I would think "fuck knows what is going on there right now". I did occasionally check scripts, I would grep for unexpected things but I was aware I'd never detect a very skilled attacker, like this one. Now there is going to be much more checking of autoconf/make/CMake/etc files in source repos. It won't be easy to detect things, but it will be easier. More eyes will be put on sources. For example, I am going to pick a random smaller project and just read the commit history, look for oddities, etc. Not because I expect to find something but I want to see what else should be looked at, etc. Eventually, I might end up with toolset that might help speed this process up. So there will be at least one more set of eyes looking at sources. I imagine that companies/organizations with more resources are going to put tons of effort into automating all this. So yeah, xz backdoor is actually a good thing, in a very bizarre way.

Also, I can't hunt all the references at the moment but I believe it was certificate (not the SSH key) that is used as a vector of attack, because certs are checked early and no configuration options will disable that check, while it wouldn't be the case with keys. A change to OpenSSH has already been suggested so OpenSSH will only get more secure because of this and one less vector of attack is now available.

Amount of skill and time/effort invested in this is mind blowing. I don't think people outside security really comprehend the skill/time involved here, this was insanely well executed attack. My first thought was "This had to be TURLA" because it was insanely smart and whoever did this had lots of patience. This does not (and will not) happen often.

So yeah, we were incredibly lucky that a Postgres developer caught it early.

However, it is mind blowing how many times security incidents have been detected by looking at CPU/RAM usage on systems, it is really no surprise that this is how xz backdoor got detected.

The chaplains say the Department of Defense continues to defy a 2023 law rescinding its Covid vaccine mandate. //

“The Department of Defense is hostile to religion,” said the chaplains’ lawyer, Art Schulcz, who is also a veteran. He said the way the DOD handled the vaccine mandate has contributed to the military’s recruiting crisis by repelling recruits and current soldiers with serious faith convictions. In response to ongoing shortfalls, U.S. military branches are lowering enlistment standards and issuing waivers of risk factors such as marijuana use.

The U.S. military’s chaplains “recruiting deficit is extreme,” wrote Rear Adm. Gregory Todd, the Navy’s chief of chaplains, last year.

According to Limming, technology is a catalyst that causes loneliness and isolation because it gives the illusion of comfortable communication without the awkwardness. But it is by no means the only causation. People spaces that used to help forge connection, like going to a 9 to 5 job, commuting to that job, drinks after work, clubs, and social events, are no longer places where people connect. Remote work has cut into this significantly, and the pandemic and its ills further contributed to the breakdown of social interaction. Our dependence on technology also contributes to the lack of socialization. In order to accomplish tasks and negotiate, we have to learn a certain set of soft social skills. Reading facial expressions and emotional cues (boy, did the masking ever do damage to that!). Learning to read body language. Smiling when appropriate. Shaking hands and making eye contact (my personal pet peeve). Listening to people, and learning when and how to speak (tone). //

During a talk March 20 at Harvard Law School, MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, whose books include “Reclaiming Conversation” and “The Empathy Diaries,” outlined her concerns over the fact that individuals are starting to turn to generative AI chatbots to ease loneliness, a rising public health dilemma across the nation. The technology is not solving this problem but adding to it by warping our ability to empathize with others and to appreciate the value of real interpersonal connection, she said.

Turkle, also a trained psychotherapist, said it’s “the greatest assault on empathy” she’s ever seen. //

It appears that, just like with the so-called pandemic, the government is working hard to invent yet another crisis that they plan to swoop in and solve. After 2020-2023, any time appointed bureaucrats or elected officials feel the need to speak to a problem, people immediately tune out. The experience of the last four years has made their agendas suspect. The initial appearance of care and concern for Americans is merely gaslighting. The real intent is to push some nefarious drug we'll be forced to take or institute a program that we will be forced into. The fact that Murthy's advisory has been picked up by the World Health Organization (WHO) should give one pause. //

Hanging out and deeper face to face interactions is not all that hard when you boil it down to basics. Making connections with our fellow humans requires three things: 1) shared values; 2) shared experiences; and 3) shared spaces. Human beings are wired for connection; devices may make connection seem fluid and seamless, but it is anything but. However, when we are sharing space, purpose, and ultimately our experience, that is the lubricant to the gears of community. //

There is no substitute for human interaction. While sometimes uncomfortable, it is essential to our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and it is not something we want to outsource through technology or allow the government's involvement. As the "Hang Out" author Limming says, "Cultivating meaningful relationships and experiences requires active participation, effort, decision, stamina, and care." But it is worth the investment of expanding your worldview and forging lifelong connections. "Reclaiming Conversations" author Turkle says, “Face-to-face conversation is where intimacy and empathy develop. At work, conversation fosters productivity, engagement, and clarity and collaboration.”

Matt Taibbi was asked “why doesn’t he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from “the right”?”

He gave a great answer:

Why I don’t spend a lot of time on the Republicans:

1) There is a enormous army of MSM reporters already going after them from every angle, with most major news organizations little more than proxies for the DNC, to the point where stations hire Biden spokespeople as anchors;

2) The Republicans have very little institutional power nationally. It’s not their point of view prevailing in schools, on campuses, in newsrooms (where over 90% of working reporters vote blue), and especially in the intelligence and military apparatus, which has openly aligned itself with Democrats. Even if Donald Trump were a “threat to Democracy” he lacks the institutional pull to do much damage, which can’t be said of Democrats;

3) The Democrats’ ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance — all plans being executed globally as well as in our one country — they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans. I lived in third world countries and the endless criminal indictments of people like Trump and ongoing lawfare efforts to prevent even third party challenges are classic authoritarian symptoms. The Republicans aren’t near this kind of capability;

4) Last and most important, the Democrats are being organized around a more potent but also much dumber, more cultlike ideology. People like Yuval Harari and his Transhumanist “divinity” concept scare me a lot more than the Rs, and I was once undercover in an apocalyptic church in Texas. Ask your average Russian or Cuban what overempowered pseudo-intellectuals are capable of.

I have a pretty good record of picking dangerous phenomena ahead of time. I feel confident on this one, and that’s before we get to the demographic/class shifts in the parties.

The Equal Protection Project, which is equalprotect.org, is a nonprofit that I founded in order to fight against what I loosely call DEI racism. So racism done in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our operative motto is that there is no good form of racism and that the answer to racism is not more racism. And that’s what has developed on campuses throughout the country and increasingly corporations and government, is that people seem, some people seem to think that the answer for past discrimination or even current is more discrimination, to discriminate against whites or Asians or Hispanics or anybody else. And we are against any of that. We’re against discrimination against any person on the basis of race. And that’s why we founded it. And we bring legal challenges too, we’ve done over 20 so far to programs that on their face have discriminatory eligibility requirements.

A review of recent scholarship on the shaping of the modern Middle East in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and how Islamist hate has roots in Nazi antisemitism.

Hezbollah’s escalation coincides with the recent visits by the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to Iran. Hamas and PIJ, both Iran-sponsored terrorists groups, fear an imminent Israeli offensive on their last-standing Gaza stronghold of Rafah.

Hezbollah’s actions in the north could be a bid to ease pressure on Iran-backed terrorists group in Gaza. Israel will score a major strategic victory if its captures Rafah, and thereby eliminating Gaza’s terrorist leadership, jihadist fighting forces and freeing the remaining hostages.

anon-ymous99
7 hours ago
“I got a year’s MREs stored in my basement, a 2500 gallon plastic clean water tank, rice, beans, antibiotics, medical supplies and tools. Whadda YOU got?”
“Not much. Just a rifle, and your address.” //

mikwcas DaveM
3 hours ago
I'd be happy to make it a month in a SHTF scenario. Other than that I am not even supposed to be of this present kingdom so I should win out anyhow. Just a thought. //

Min Headroom llme
6 hours ago
There’s at least two kinds of go-prep, as compared to hunker down prep:

• Movie type wide area apocalypse in which urbanites head for the boonies they aren’t prepared for and will be unwelcome in.

• Neighborhood or at most city wide disasters that need evacuating.

The latter includes things like local wild fires that rip through a neighborhood, hurricanes, floods, etc. This is the kind where driving 20 - 200 miles (if one can) will generally get one out of the disaster area, and “living off the land” can be as simple as using a credit card in a roadside diner. While it’s possible to be prepared for the latter with as little as a full gas tank and a credit card, it would likely be a lot easier with a go bag suitable for living a week or two in motels, shelters or whatever, and a big variable in what that includes would depend on the region. For example, being prepared for an emergency road trip in an Idaho winter (or Iowa’s either for that matter), is somewhat different from a road trip fleeing a Gulf coast location in the summer ahead of a hurricane.

In the latter kind of scenario, the advantage comes from being first out the door before the highways jam and/or whatever the disaster is catches up. So having a mind set and a prep that enables just grab and run is what’s needed. I grant this sort of prepping and disaster isn’t as exciting as a zombie apocalypse, but it’s a good deal more likely, and, good news, more survivable. //

TheOtherOne
7 hours ago
Well said. Preparing for an event (tornado, earthquake, hurricane) is doable and a good target. But a cataclysmic life altering event where society collapses? You can’t store enough water or food to wait it out. I’m hoping to go in the first wave personally. //

Louise1
6 hours ago edited
I try to buy emergency food that I don't have to cook. (Either the company selling the food has cooked it, or the food can be eaten raw.) Mountain House says you can eat their food (at least the stuff that I've bought) without cooking it. You soak it in cold water for twice the time that you'd soak it in boiling water.

Make sure that you store enough water to re-hydrate dried or freeze-dried food, besides storing drinking and cleaning water.

I have some prepared meals, like Mountain House meals. I can eat maybe one of them a day. But most are way too salty to eat nothing but them for a week or a month.

So most of my emergency food is canned, dried or freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, TVP, and food from Ready Harvest / Food Storage Depot. (I don't have to cook the TVP that I get.) No canned soup or chili; too salty.

I emailed Ready Harvest / Food Storage Depot customer service, and a lady replied:

Most of our products are 25-30 year shelf life with a couple exceptions. And you are right, we may not have fuel to heat up our foods. That is why we carry what we have in the store. All our products but popcorn and eggs can be eaten right out of the can. Some items require longer soaking in water, but all will soften even with cold water. I did a test with Belgian pasta. I heated the water in the microwave to just about boiling and then put the noodles in. They were perfect within 10 minutes. The pasta soaked in cold fridge water was done within 35 minutes. Beans/Potatoes took 2 to 3 hours with room temperature water. The rice 4 or 5 hours room temperature water. If you have hot water 20 minutes.

If it's an emergency, and I have to eat my emergency food, then the power probably will be out. So I won't be able to cook my food. So I want not-too-salty food that I don't have to cook.

Louise1
6 hours ago edited
I try to buy emergency food that I don't have to cook. (Either the company selling the food has cooked it, or the food can be eaten raw.) Mountain House says you can eat their food (at least the stuff that I've bought) without cooking it. You soak it in cold water for twice the time that you'd soak it in boiling water.

Make sure that you store enough water to re-hydrate dried or freeze-dried food, besides storing drinking and cleaning water.

I have some prepared meals, like Mountain House meals. I can eat maybe one of them a day. But most are way too salty to eat nothing but them for a week or a month.

So most of my emergency food is canned, dried or freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, TVP, and food from Ready Harvest / Food Storage Depot. (I don't have to cook the TVP that I get.) No canned soup or chili; too salty.

I emailed Ready Harvest / Food Storage Depot customer service, and a lady replied:

Most of our products are 25-30 year shelf life with a couple exceptions. And you are right, we may not have fuel to heat up our foods. That is why we carry what we have in the store. All our products but popcorn and eggs can be eaten right out of the can. Some items require longer soaking in water, but all will soften even with cold water. I did a test with Belgian pasta. I heated the water in the microwave to just about boiling and then put the noodles in. They were perfect within 10 minutes. The pasta soaked in cold fridge water was done within 35 minutes. Beans/Potatoes took 2 to 3 hours with room temperature water. The rice 4 or 5 hours room temperature water. If you have hot water 20 minutes.

If it's an emergency, and I have to eat my emergency food, then the power probably will be out. So I won't be able to cook my food. So I want not-too-salty food that I don't have to cook.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been making bad Hamas terrorists into good Hamas terrorists since shortly after the Oct. 7th massacre last year ... //

The IDF Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit has uncovered caches of weapons and un-alived two more senior Hamas operatives. //

International pressure for a cease-fire notwithstanding, this isn't the time for the IDF to stop revoking Hamas members' birth certificates. //

And if Hamas's leadership continues to press for a Palestinian state, point them towards Jordan and tell them to start walking.

anon-9ung
7 hours ago
The same people mad about this cheer the use o sold aborted baby parts, go figure. //

Green River mountain fan
6 hours ago edited
Folks ought to read an English translation of the original Hippocratic Oath. What we usually hear is a short summary of medical ethics. “First, do no harm”. What we don’t hear is the command to not give pregnant women poison to kill their babies, and a command to not participate in assisting a suicide.

Current levels of medical ethics and morality are atrocious and sometimes purely Satanic. Doctors and nurses who participate in abortions or euthanasia will meet their Maker on the Day of Judgement.

I stopped by Biden-Mart.com and was greeted with the message:

Putting food on the table has become harder than ever thanks to "Bidenomics." As costs for everyday items continue to rise, American families are struggling more and more to foot the bill.

Check off the items from the list below to compile your weekly grocery list and see how much more expensive your bill has become under Joe Biden. //

Grocery prices have jumped by 25 percent over the past four years as Americans are routinely shocked by the cost of a typical visit to the store. //

And now Biden is proposing a $7.3 trillion budget bloated with social justice efforts and green energy giveaways.

Learning how to use the Fire TV Stick isn't exactly easy, as its menus may feel a bit laborious and features can seem a bit hidden. Once you smarten up how to use your brand new Fire stick to stream live TV or binge-watch amazing shows like A League of Their Own and The Boys. And now that Amazon has a new Fire TV remote, the Fire TV Stick is even easier to use than before.

Keeps Smack-Fu Master, in training
23y
86

sryan2k1 said:

I'd pay any amount of money for a Roku remote with ABCD buttons I could configure rather than the streaming platforms of the month (seriously, buy a replacement remote and it's buttons are unlikely to be the same as the one it is replacing). But they know what makes them money, unfortunately.

That's a pretty low bar for all the money! That's how I've run my Roku for the past ten or fifteen years; any universal remote that can send arbitrary REST commands can do this.

All you do is send a "POST /launch/<appid>" command, where <appid> is a unique number for the app inside Roku's database. That ID used to be exposed in the web addresses on https://channelstore.roku.com, now it's obfuscated somewhat, but you can go to http://<Roku IP Address>:8060/query/apps to get a list of all the installed apps and their IDs on any particular Roku.

Depending how fancy you want to get with the remote, Roku even hosts thumbnails for each app on its internal web server, so that http://<Roku IP Address>:8060/query/icon/<appid> gives you each specific icon, and you can build a copy of the app list with direct launching and everything. There are other commands and features, but it looks like I caught Roku half-transitioned to a new website - the old documentation was here: https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program/debugging/external-control-api.md And the new documentation looks like it's started to be here: https://github.com/tispratik/docs-1/blob/master/develop/guides/remote-api-ecp.md And neither seems to be complete at the moment.

The app buttons at the bottom of the newest Fire TV Remotes and Fire TV Smart TV remotes can either be fantastic or useless. They’re great if it’s an app that you use often, but they’re a complete waste if you don’t even have the app that they’re for installed. This guide will show you how to reassign the app buttons to open any app you want. This method uses my Remapper app and works for Netflix, HBO, Hulu, PS Vue, Disney+, CTV, Crave, DAZN, TVNOW, and other buttons. It works on the new remote paired to a Fire TV, Fire TV Cube, and Firestick, as well as Fire TV Edition devices from Element, Toshiba, Insignia, Onida, Grundig, JVC, and more.

The following tutorial will show you How to Block Amazon Firestick & Fire TV automatic updates.

6. Acquire the Downloader app. There are multiple ways to install Kodi, but the simplest way is with the free Downloader app. You can find it in the Amazon Appstore.

7. Point Direct Downloader to the Kodi website. The best URL to use is http://www.kodi.tv/download, but you can use other sources, if you prefer.

8. Select the Android app. The Fire TV’s operating system is an Android branch, so the Kodi Android app will work just fine.

9. Choose the 32-bit installation. In my experience, this version of the app works best with Fire TV devices, but you can try others if you want to experiment.

10. Click Install. You can also use this screen to review Kodi’s permissions.

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