Daily Shaarli

All links of one day in a single page.

July 31, 2024

Don’t Let Your Domain Name Become a “Sitting Duck” – Krebs on Security

potential problems can arise when a domain’s DNS records are “lame,” meaning the authoritative name server does not have enough information about the domain and can’t resolve queries to find it. A domain can become lame in a variety of ways, such as when it is not assigned an Internet address, or because the name servers in the domain’s authoritative record are misconfigured or missing.

The reason lame domains are problematic is that a number of Web hosting and DNS providers allow users to claim control over a domain without accessing the true owner’s account at their DNS provider or registrar. //

In the 2019 campaign, the spammers created accounts on GoDaddy and were able to take over vulnerable domains simply by registering a free account at GoDaddy and being assigned the same DNS servers as the hijacked domain. //

How does one know whether a DNS provider is exploitable? There is a frequently updated list published on GitHub called “Can I take over DNS,” which has been documenting exploitability by DNS provider over the past several years. The list includes examples for each of the named DNS providers.

Although it’s not final, SpaceX just got good news from the FAA on Starbase | Ars Technica

wagnerrp Ars Legatus Legionis
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SpaceHamster said:
Seems like a lot of animosity toward the NIMBY-ites, but after thinking about it while reading this article and comments, I don't blame them at all; I'd do the same if SpaceX (or anyone else) tried to build a giant launch facility in my backyard.

You're speaking of two different things, NIMBYism and Boca Chica Village. The latter never really existed. A developer bought up a bunch of land and tried to make it something, but then a hurricane destroyed it all. Power was restored, but no water. When SpaceX started buying up land, there were only six permanent residents. By the time they decided to shift Starship operations there, it was down to four permanent residents.

There was no town, and sure it sucks if someone decides they're going to set up a rocket manufacturing facility right next to your retirement home, but they did it exactly there because there was no one left there. The biggest problem was that the "very generous offers" were based off the tax assessed value of the land, which was next to nothing.

The next closest population is 8km away, and it's doubtful that's even where much of the NIMBYism is coming from.
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SpaceX moving Dragon splashdowns to Pacific to solve falling debris problem | Ars Technica

SpaceX returned its first 21 Dragon cargo missions to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles. When an upgraded human-rated version of Dragon started flying in 2019, SpaceX moved splashdowns to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to be closer to the company's refurbishment and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The benefits of landing near Florida included a faster handover of astronauts and time-sensitive cargo back to NASA and shorter turnaround times between missions.

The old version of Dragon, known as Dragon 1, separated its trunk after the deorbit burn, allowing the trunk to fall into the Pacific. With the new version of Dragon, called Dragon 2, SpaceX changed the reentry profile to jettison the trunk before the deorbit burn. This meant that the trunk remained in orbit after each Dragon mission, while the capsule reentered the atmosphere on a guided trajectory. The trunk, which is made of composite materials and lacks a propulsion system, usually takes a few weeks or a few months to fall back into the atmosphere and doesn't have control of where or when it reenters. //

In May, a 90-pound chunk of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that departed the International Space Station fell on the property of a "glamping" resort in North Carolina. At the same time, a homeowner in a nearby town found a smaller piece of material that also appeared to be from the same Dragon mission.

These events followed the discovery in April of another nearly 90-pound piece of debris from a Dragon capsule on a farm in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. SpaceX and NASA later determined the debris fell from orbit in February, and earlier this month, SpaceX employees came to the farm to retrieve the wreckage, according to CBC. //

This means SpaceX can no longer splash down off the coast of Florida because the trajectory would bring debris from the trunk down over populated areas in the United States or Mexico.

When recoveries shift to the West Coast, the Dragon capsule will fire its Draco thrusters to slow down, and then once on course for reentry, release the trunk to burn up in the atmosphere on a similar trajectory. Any debris from the trunk that doesn't burn up will impact the Pacific Ocean while the capsule deploys parachutes for a slow-speed splashdown. //

“One benefit of the move to the West Coast is much better weather," Walker said. "We have a number of sites in Florida, that we feel like we’re sometimes threading hurricanes a lot. When we look at the flight rules for wind, rain, wave height, all of the criteria that determine our flight rules for return, we actually saw that the West Coast sites that we’re looking at have much better weather, which allows us to have much better return availability.”

New USPS Practices Threaten Biggest Voting 'Precinct'
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Since the 2020 Covid election, the USPS has effectively become the largest “precinct” in our elections with little citizen observation. But recent incidents, reports from the USPS Office of the Inspector General, and independent investigations have revealed that the USPS may not be prepared to handle the volume of vote-by-mail ballots this November.

As recently reported in The Federalist, the USPS Election Mail system apparently created a major problem in the June primary election in Utah. According to local election officials, hundreds of ballots that were purportedly mailed before the vote-by-mail cut-off were not processed by USPS in time to meet the “postmark” deadline, making those ballots ineligible to be counted in the election.

This incident in Utah is a symptom of a nationwide problem with the USPS Election Mail system.

PJM Capacity Auction Procures Sufficient Resources To Meet RTO Reliability Requirement | PJM Inside Lines

PJM’s capacity auction has competitively secured resources to meet the RTO reliability requirement for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year. Auction prices were significantly higher across the RTO due to decreased electricity supply caused primarily by a large number of generator retirements, combined with increased electricity demand and implementation of FERC-approved market reforms.

While the overall resource mix is adequate, two zones cleared just short of their reserve requirement, resulting in prices being set at the zonal cap.

The higher prices send a clear investment signal across PJM’s 13 states and the District of Columbia. //

The auction cleared a diverse mix of resources, including 48% of gas, 21% of nuclear, 18% of coal, 1% of solar, 1% of wind, 4% of hydro, 5% of demand response and 2% from other resources. //

The amount of supply resources in the auction decreased again this year, continuing the trend from recent auctions and underlining PJM’s stated concerns (PDF) about generation resources facing pressure to retire without replacement capacity being built quickly enough to replace them. Approximately 6,600 MW of generation have retired or have must-offer exceptions (signaling intent to retire) compared with the generators that offered in the 2024/2025 Base Residual Auction (BRA).

Meanwhile, the peak load forecast for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year has increased from 150,640 MW for the 2024/2025 BRA to 153,883 MW for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year. Additionally, FERC-approved market reforms contributed to tightening the supply and demand balance by better estimating the impact of extreme weather on load and more accurately determining resource reliability value.

These reliability concerns associated with reducing supply and increasing demand are not limited to PJM; the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has identified elevated risk to the reliability of the electrical grid for much of the country outside of PJM. To facilitate the entry of new resources, PJM is implementing its FERC-approved generation interconnection reform, with approximately 72,000 MW of resources expected to be processed in 2024 and 2025. //

The auction produced a price of $269.92/MW-day for much of the PJM footprint, compared to $28.92/MW-day for the 2024/2025 auction. Capacity auction prices fluctuate annually based on the need for investment in generation resources.

This year’s auction procured 135,684 MW for the period of June 1, 2025, through May 31, 2026. The total Fixed Resource Requirement (FRR) obligation is an additional 10,886 MW for a total of 146,570 MW.

The total procured capacity in the auction and resource commitments under FRR represents an 18.5% reserve margin, compared to a 20.4% reserve margin for the 2024/2025 Delivery Year.

Athletes Say 'Pas Plus' To Unlivable Olympic Village Living Conditions – RedState

“They had a charter that said 60 percent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones. The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets… let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.” //

The Olympic Village in all of its eco-friendly glory was clearly not designed and planned by anyone who has participated in sports at a high level. But as has already been demonstrated, the 2024 Paris Olympics are not so much about the spirit of competition as they are about political correctness and, apparently, climate change. //

The Real Liekitisn’t (not Parody)
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$1.6b environmentally friendly Olympic village has no AC, backbreaking cardboard beds, vegan food (and food shortage), and small bathrooms that have to be shared by 10 people.

Sign me up for the New Green Deal!
6:44 PM · Jul 29, 2024

'Twisters' Is A Success Because It Omits F-Words, Sex, and Politics

The weather theme of “Twisters” could have easily lent itself to a climate change angle, but there’s no hint of an agenda. That’s on purpose, according to Director Lee Isaac Chung.

“I just wanted to make sure that with the movie, we don’t ever feel like (it) is putting forward any message,” Chung explained in an interview with CNN. “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”

There’s something I never thought I’d hear from Hollywood.

For all its apparent lack of message, my roommates and I agreed the tornado-chasing left us feeling strangely patriotic.

Perhaps that’s because the movie centers on the characters’ dedication to serving their community.

Weird - by Erick-Woods Erickson
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Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb once wrote, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized .… As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral — the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called — is now seen as pathological.”

The Democrats are taking a bet that Americans are far more willing to embrace men who think they are women and men who dress as dogs to have sex than a veteran married to an Indian woman with mixed-race kids who thinks perpetuating humanity and the nation is a good thing.

It is the logical end of deviancy becoming normal. When Democrats think J.D. Vance is weird and Rachel Levine is not, we reach a tipping point in the direction of the nation.

BREAKING: Senior Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Assassinated on Iranian Soil – RedState

The IRGC report claims that Haniyeh's residence was targeted and his bodyguard was killed as well. And, as the New York Times observes, a targeted killing like this in Tehran "raises questions about the safety of Iran’s top leaders who were in close contact with Mr. Haniyeh just hours before his assassination." //

The Left only destroys
11 hours ago
I'd say it's a good bet that Mossad deliberately waited until this guy was in Iran rather than nailing him in Qatar. Iran will loudly huff and puff and make more of the usual threats against Israel, but privately Iran's leaders have to be sh!tting their drawers.

Although it’s not final, SpaceX just got good news from the FAA on Starbase | Ars Technica

As a part of this multi-year process, the Federal Aviation Administration completed a Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment in June 2022. Following that review, SpaceX received approval to conduct up to five Starship launches from South Texas annually. //

SpaceX has asked the FAA for permission for up to 25 flights a year from South Texas, as well as the capability to land both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stage back at the launch site. On Monday, the FAA signaled that it is inclined to grant permission for this. //

SpaceX also is developing more powerful variants of its rocket, and the launch of these vehicles would also be permitted. Under the environmental assessment completed in 2022, SpaceX's plans called for a 50-meter-tall Starship and a 71-meter-tall Super Heavy booster stage. Its upgraded Starship would be 70 meters tall, atop an 80-meter boost stage, for a total stack height of 150 meters.

The company is contemplating a far greater thrust for each of the vehicles, more than doubling Starship's thrust. A bigger, more powerful launch system will require more than 1,500 tons of liquid oxygen and methane propellant. //

After the public comment period, the FAA will prepare a final environmental assessment and render a decision on the request.

Mint 22, the Ubuntu Noble-based version, is here • The Register

Linux Mint 22 "Wilma" debuted late last week and holds on to the crown as the most sensible choice if you're looking to move across from Windows.

OpenBSD enthusiast cooks up guide for the technically timid • The Register

If you want a simple step-by-step, this is the best we've seen.

French BSD enthusiast Joel Carnat has written a how-to guide on setting up a laptop with OpenBSD for general use. It's worth a go for the Unix-curious.

Carnat calls his guide "OpenBSD Workstation for the People," and says:

CONFIRMED: Israeli Airstrike Eliminates Hezbollah Commander Behind Soccer Field Attack – RedState

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed Tuesday that their airstrikes in Lebanon eliminated Fuad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander who ordered a drone attack on a soccer field in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights that killed 12 victims, mostly children.

The deceased terrorist also had a connection to the horrific 1983 bombing that killed 241 of our military personnel:

Gab Social's CEO Nails Deputy FBI Director for His Misleading Testimony to the Senate – RedState

The social media account Abbate referred to in his opening testimony predates the Gab posts and comments, so they emphasized something Crooks wrote when he was younger than 15 and ignored what he wrote when he was older.

None of this means that Abbate lied; it just means that he gave calculated, incomplete information to the country via his public testimony. He knew that "anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, espouse political violence, and are extreme in nature" would be like catnip to the media and set the basis for a narrative that Donald Trump's rhetoric motivated the shooter to act with the implication that this was karma. This is not a man or a law enforcement agency that we can trust.