Spring Must Be Here
Seattle Mariners baseball season opens this Thursday, Mar. 29.
Chinese space station to fall between this Friday and Sunday
China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, has exhausted its fuel, thus it cannot still be controlled to keep it in orbit. The 8.5-ton station is gradually falling into the thin upper atmosphere, being slowed more and more by air friction.
It is expected to fall, appearing like a meteor, with the date now pinned down (?) to between this Friday, March 30 and Sunday, April 1. It will be torn and burned up by the heat and friction, and only a few, or perhaps no fragments are expected to survive long enough to hit the ground. The fragments, if any, are expected to fall toward the ground within a 200-mile area, likely at latitudes less than 43°, south of our latitude of about 46°.
It is tumbling, thus the air friction is varying, so its rate of slowing is varying. Until it gets closer to its final fall, where it will fall can’t be determined.
The Tiangong-1 or Heavenly Palace lab was launched in 2011 – part of China’s scientific push to become a space superpower. It was used for both manned and unmanned missions and visited by China’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, in 2012.
Queen Prefers Jam First Then Cream
English people in the communities of Cornwall and Devon have disagreed bitterly for centuries about whether, on a scone, the jam or cream goes on first.
When a publication recently published an ad in Cornwall showing scones with the cream on first, Devon style. Many subscribers reacted by writing nasty letters and quitting their subscriptions.
The Royal Chef has given at least the Queen’s preference.
At tea in Buckingham Palace, he reports the Queen always had her scones with home-made Balmoral jam first with clotted cream on top.
Editor Note: I’ll go get a couple of scones and try it both ways- I guess sour cream is about the same as clotted cream. Stay tuned and I’ll give you the scientific answer: which is best.
Millions are deleting Facebook accounts
Facebook has long been known to accumulate massive personal data about almost every person in the world, for the purpose of selling this data to advertiser corporations, governments, researchers, and just now learned, to political parties.
Facebook is a huge worldwide operation costing billions of dollars to run. Facebook’s expenses are paid using the money earned from such sales.
Facebook is nothing but the accumulating and selling of our personal information.
Multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, essentially the owner of Facebook and probably the wealthiest person in the world, just testified before Congress last week about selling personal data of millions of Americans to a political party.
Because of his control of what millions see and accept as truth, Zuckerberg is termed “possibly the most powerful man in the world.”
Zuckerberg once called people who gave him their data “dumb f**ks.”
Facebook users worldwide have become disturbed by this sale of their personal information, and millions are deleting their Facebook accounts.
Facebook sued for privacy violation by Cook County, Illinois
In this sixth case against Facebook to be filed in federal courts, the county claims Facebook violated users’ privacy when it violated Illinois laws against fraud.
Elon Musk joins deleteFacebook movement, deletes SpaceX and Tesla.
Musk deleted the SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages as soon as he was told they existed. He had not known his companies had Facebook pages until then.
Our Facebook personal data is being sold for $5.20.
The most important parts of your identity can be sold online for just a few dollars.
Consumers have to spend hours of their time — and, sometimes, their own money — when they find out their driver’s license, Facebook “likes” or Social Security number have been exposed to hackers. But those who sell them are making only petty cash.
Facebook logins can be sold for $5.20 each, Criminals buy them because they then have access to personal data that could potentially let them hack into more of an individual’s accounts.
You can use your Facebook account to log into many of your sites, including, likely, your bank. Just so, a criminal with your Facebook credentials can do the same.
The Shopper has strongly advised readers against logging into any site using their Facebook or Google identities.
How to delete your Facebook account
Deleting your Facebook account is not easy; many who have tried have been unsuccessful.
Here is one apparently good set of instructions from YouTube:
How to delete your data in Google
Google is as bad or worse than Facebook at accumulating and selling our personal data, and this is true even for people who have never been Google users, so people should consider deleting their info also from Google. Again, it’s not easy. One set of instructions from YouTube:
Intel new chips to protect against against Spectre & Meltdownin NEW devices only.
Almost all Intel chips in computers and other devices have internal flaws making them vulnerable to the Spectre & Meltdown attacks discovered recently.
Intel has developed new chips which block this vulnerability. They will start shipping the chips later this year, to be used in manufacture of new devices.
Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich said the new chips would guard against hardware flaws dubbed Meltdown and Spectre which could leave millions of computing device vulnerable to hackers.
The vulnerability in existing devices cannot directly be fixed. Partially effective and troublesome software fixes for many existing devices containing Intel chips are offered from various sources, but are not fully effective, may be difficult to install, and are unlikely to get installed in millions of devices. No fixes are even offered for jillions of inexpensive low-tech consumer devices like webcams and routers.
Microsoft, for example, in its many Windows updates, including its monthly “Second Tuesday” updates, has provided such partial fixes, but the vulnerability is in the hardware, the manufactured chips, and cannot be well fixed by software such as Windows.
Info: shpr.fyi/2GeBTuK