I guess when DownDetector goes offline, it’s a bit tricky to figure out just how wide the impact is

I guess when DownDetector goes offline, it’s a bit tricky to figure out just how wide the impact is of an outage at a major internet service.

Cloudflare outage cuts off connections to Discord, DownDetector and others – Engadget

“In at least one case, even the status page for the status page was down.”

Cloudflare DNS goes down, taking a large piece of the internet with it – TechCrunch

Fortunately Cloudflare and others are able to get the word out on that famously reliable alternate channel [checks notes]…Twitter 😬

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Not surprisingly, yesterday’s mass bitcoin-scam-from-verified-accounts attack was the result of abusing Twitter’s internal employee tools, …

Not surprisingly, yesterday’s mass bitcoin-scam-from-verified-accounts attack was the result of abusing Twitter’s internal employee tools, not hacking all the accounts individually. But who actually did it and how did they gain access?

Twitter says a social engineering attack targeted employees with access.

Vice says sources told them they *paid* a Twitter employee with access to do it. 😬

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos

#twitter

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Moving Windows

I remember easily moving a Windows 10 system to an SSD using Acronis. Not this time. The clone tool isn’t willing to clone *some* partitions instead of a whole disk, so I can’t use that, and the bootable restore tool can’t see the external drive where I put the backup file.

Looking into alternatives. For tomorrow. Or maybe Saturday.

Next morning:

It’s my dual-boot system, so I’ve got a full Linux installation on there anyway. Last night I created an image of the Windows partition, saved it to the external drive (which Linux can see just fine, unlike the so-called universal restore image) and now I’m trying to restore it to the new drive.

Beginning to wonder if it *would* be easier to install Windows fresh and then figure out how to transfer all my saved games. All the other data is easy.

That evening:

I did a clean install, copied my AppData folders, got everything working…then discovered I couldn’t boot it without going through the BIOS screen. I’d accidentally booted the install image without UEFI, so it installed MBR. I couldn’t get GRUB2 to chain load it & the Windows UEFI boot loader could only see the old installation I wanted to remove.

So I did ANOTHER clean install, in UEFI mode, but this time set aside just the save files I wanted.

Bleah.

But it’s working now!

I’ve got UEFI loading GRUB2, which can boot Fedora or chain to the Windows UEFI menu, which will load the shiny new installation of Windows.

Now I just need to figure out how to tell the Windows boot menu that the alternate Windows installation isn’t there anymore & remove it from the list!

Interesting article about how a burst of quick & cheap building in the 1950s of terraced balcony homes resulted – by accident – in a vertical mix of economic classes & vibrant urban life. “Behind the Accidentally Resilient Design of Athens Apartments”

Interesting article about how a burst of quick & cheap building in the 1950s of terraced balcony homes resulted – by accident – in a vertical mix of economic classes & vibrant urban life.

“Behind the Accidentally Resilient Design of Athens Apartments”

covid mask studies

It’s starting to look like wearing a mask may not only reduce your chance of spreading the virus to others, but it might also reduce your chance of getting a severe case.

Outbreaks with higher mask-wearing seem to have higher rates of asymptomatic cases among positive tests, and lower death rates.

Speculation is that it might reduce the viral load you get so that you’re still infected & infectious, but not impacted as severely.

Masks offer much more protection against coronavirus than many think

The article is paywalled, but some of the interesting cases they point to include:

– an outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon where employees had masks, and 95% of those infected were asymptomatic

– a cruise ship where all passengers & crew got masks, & 81% of those testing positive were asymptomatic

-death rates staying low even when cases have surged in places like southeast Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore & the Czech Republic

More research needed, of course!

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Waiting at home for a video link is in some ways better…

Waiting at home for a video link is in some ways better than waiting at the doctor’s office, because you’re *home*, but there’s always that nagging suspicion that the email with the conference link has been lost and they’ve been waiting for you to connect for the last 10 minutes and will just move onto the next patient.

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It has now been an hour since the front office called to do check in over the phone. No message has arrived with the link to video chat with the actual doctor.

*yawn*

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So it turns out the zoom link was buried in a message from way back when I scheduled the appointment, and they marked me as a no show. Rescheduled with another doctor at the practice who has an open slot this afternoon.

The appointment info in their portal said that directions would be sent in a message…but not that they already had been.

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covid and asthma (+/-)

Good: Asthma alone doesn’t seem to increase your risk of Covid-19 hitting so bad you need to be hospitalized.

Bad: Other co-morbidities might.

Weird: Stress/exercise-induced asthma does seem to increase your risk of a severe case…but allergy-induced asthma doesn’t. In fact, some researchers are speculating that allergies might reduce ACE2 expression and actually *protect* from infection! (Don’t worry, I won’t rely on that even if it pans out.)

Does asthma increase Covid-19 risk? Emerging research suggests a complicated connection – STAT News

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covid/masks/uspol

So if I understand the conservative position, a business should be allowed to refuse service to anyone based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc., but *not* based on whether they’re wearing enough clothing?🙄


Shoppers are suing over mandatory mask rules, but doctors don’t buy it

A Pittsburgh grocery chain is facing multiple lawsuits over its no-exceptions mask policy

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No shirt, no shoes, no service, right?

(And I’ve always found it amusing that they don’t specify pants.)

And now I’m thinking of the news story about a group of Czechs who were sunbathing nude back in, idk, April, and were cited for not wearing masks.

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Garbage disposal replaced (vaguely covid-adjacent)

Garbage disposal replaced, so we can use both halves of the kitchen sink again. It was leaking from the bottom, which means internal damage. And we couldn’t use that half of the sink at all because of the leak.

The plumber was scheduled to arrive between 10 & 12, got here at 10:30, and was done by 11. First time we’ve had someone else in the apartment in *months*. And it was kind of weird wearing masks at home. It’s like…what’s the etiquette here?

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I just realized we wouldn’t have known without the water detector the landlord put in after the dishwasher leak a few years back.

It’s two contacts on the cabinet floor, hooked up to a battery and very loud speaker. Discovered the leak instantly, instead of weeks later after the cabinet turned into a forest of warped particle board and mold.

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