sman

iheart radio live - "https://www.countrymusicchannel.com.au/shows/top-30-countdown"

A warning from ancient tree rings: The Americas are prone to catastrophic, simultaneous droughts "https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/warning-ancient-tree-rings-americas-are-prone-catastrophic-simultaneous-droughts" For 10 years, central Chile has been gripped by unrelenting drought. With 30% less rainfall than normal, verdant landscapes have withered, reservoirs are low, and more than 100,000 farm animals have died. The dry spell has lasted so long that researchers are calling it a “megadrought,” rivaling dry stretches centuries ago. It’s not so different from the decadelong drought that California, some 8000 kilometers away, endured until this year. By analyzing tree ring records, scientists have now found evidence that such tandem droughts are more than a coincidence: They are surprisingly common over the past 1200 years, and they may often share a common cause—an abnormally cool state of the eastern Pacific Ocean known as La Niña. “We did not expect there to be as much coherence as we see,” says Nathan Steiger, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University who presented the work this month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “They just happen together.” The results suggest that, in the future, extreme aridity could strike all along the Americas’ western coast. Evidence for synchronous, hemispherewide droughts first emerged in a 1994 study in Nature, which documented dead tree stumps in the middle of lakes and rivers in both Patagonia and California’s Sierra Nevada. For trees to grow in stream- and lakebeds, the droughts must have lasted for decades, and at least one of these megadroughts seemed to have hit both continents simultaneously.

Authoritarian Nations Are Turning the Internet Into a Weapon "https://onezero.medium.com/authoritarian-nations-are-turning-the-internet-into-a-weapon-10119d4e9992" From Twitter’s spies to complete shutdowns, repressive regimes are using A.I. and VPN fingerprinting to silence their critics When two former Twitter employees were charged with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia in November 2019, the case spotlighted the new and inventive ways oppressive governments are using technology to stifle dissent. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the two men — a U.S. citizen and a Saudi citizen — passed private information about more than 6,000 Twitter users, including regime critics, to a Saudi official in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars and a designer watch. For most people, the news sparked concerns that companies like Twitter are failing to keep user information secure. But for activists operating in or against repressive regimes, the privacy breach sparked fears that their Twitter data could be life-threatening in the wrong government’s hands. According to court documents, one alleged spy had access to recent IP information — which details a user’s location — despite having “no legitimate business purpose for accessing user accounts.” Twitter says it has since changed its rules and now “restrict access to sensitive account information to a limited group of trained and vetted employees.” But the extraordinary case draws attention to how dictatorships are increasingly using technology to crush online dissent. Digital tools are no longer the existential threat they were at the start of the decade; instead, democracy activists must now contend with social media spies, spyware that can hack into their phones, social media trolls that attack them, and government propaganda and website blocking that can censor online content. Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described cybersecurity as “an arms race,” with bad actors racing to outdo Facebook’s technology to win the information war. But it is not only social media giants that are facing off against increasingly tech savvy autocrats. As governments continue to expand their arsenal of technologies designed to control communication and suppress dissent, so grows the need for more imaginative and reliable tools to defy them. Yet Lowenthal, from Brave, hopes there is a more sustainable future. “I don’t think that safety and security for vulnerable groups should start or end with tools,” they say. “Honestly, I’m pretty embarrassed and sad that we focus on tools so much when we talk about how to ensure activists can do their work without being murdered.”

A man is lying on the beach, sun bathing, wearing nothing but a cap over his manhood. An ugly woman is passing and remarks: "If you were any sort of a gentleman, you would lift your hat to a lady!" He replied: "If you were any sort of a lady, the hat would lift itself!"

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

'Man on the Moon' moment - the year's big breakthroughs "https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50813226" It has been a remarkable year of promise in medical science - from inventing ways of treating the untreatable to reversing paralysis and keeping the brain alive after death. "It was like [being the] first man on the Moon," said 30-year-old Thibault. He was describing the moment he was able to take his first steps since being paralysed in a fall two years ago. He can now move all four of his paralysed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit. His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only in the lab. But researchers say the approach could one day improve patients' quality of life.

The Electric house (1922) - https://youtu.be/FdhWfsqp114 This Train Set Will Deliver Cocktails to You in Your Home "https://www.thrillist.com/news/toy-train-set-deliver-alcohol" "https://twitter.com/MrTimDunn/status/942490071604883461" Tim Dunn ‏ @MrTimDunn I have laid 40ft of train track between sofa and kitchen. A good service is now operating: this train carrying two gin & tonics has just arrived. London Genius Turns Model Train into Personal G&T Delivery System "https://vinepair.com/booze-news/gin-train/" Fritz's Railroad Restaurant: Food Delivery by Toy Trains "https://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/02/fritz-railroad-restaurant-food-delivery.html"

"https://youtu.be/vTpex9wojJA" "https://youtu.be/vTpex9wojJA" "https://vytopna.cz/" "https://www.thejunctiondiner.com/" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-YgGk9gA-A" "http://www.thechoochoo.com/" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsIbgX1w_Hc" "https://youtu.be/mdwlaPGtOfs" "https://youtu.be/tF6PrC0K5Dk"

Yes..maybe this could be a reality if the material becomes commercially viable.

New Material Breaks World Record Turning Heat into Electricity "https://www.tuwien.at/en/tu-wien/news/news-articles/news/new-material-breaks-world-record-turning-heat-into-electricity/" A new type of material generates electrical current very efficiently from temperature differences. This allows sensors and small processors to supply themselves with energy wirelessly. Thermoelectric materials can convert heat into electrical energy. This is due to the so-called Seebeck effect: If there is a temperature difference between the two ends of such a material, electrical voltage can be generated and current can start to flow. The amount of electrical energy that can be generated at a given temperature difference is measured by the so-called ZT value: The higher the ZT value of a material, the better its thermoelectric properties. The best thermoelectrics to date were measured at ZT values of around 2.5 to 2.8. Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have now succeeded in developing a completely new material with a ZT value of 5 to 6. It is a thin layer of iron, vanadium, tungsten and aluminium applied to a silicon crystal. The new material is so effective that it could be used to provide energy for sensors or even small computer processors. Instead of connecting small electrical devices to cables, they could generate their own electricity from temperature differences. The new material has now been presented in the journal "Nature".

@noknojon I do reduce screen size if necessary and capture part or full screen and then paste the contents. If in case normal copy/paste is not possible and this image was copied as it is and pasted. The little girl joke was simply funny. Tks for share. And I use Linux (Peppermint OS) live usb boot since 3-4 yrs , and use tools in it and can do literally all tasks with it. No more HDD , windows for me.

104.5 fm wfmb radio.. A nice radio .. "http://player.listenlive.co/41171"

Happy new year to all !!

My best wishes that you realise your hopes of 2020 and keep treating us with your beautiful snaps.

you keep amazing.. just award winning snaps. Why don't you take them to next level, for the real acclaim they deserve? btw. Happy New Year, Ron !!

Clarity stands out..

Super clarity..

Wow. tks. for the share..

oh.. what a loss. hope you get them back..

Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin Eve 2020 An enduring Times Square classic, the Dick Clark show will see Ryan Seacrest and Lucy Hale as its hosts this year. Billy Porter will take over hosting for the New Orleans-based portion, while Ciara is joining for the Los Angeles celebration. The show premieres on Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. EST. Expect to witness a five-hour party filled with music, laughter and endless fireworks. check - "https://www.timessquarenyc.org/times-square-new-years-eve/nye-live-webcast" Celebrating the Decades in Las Vegas Get a taste of how Los Vegas rings in the New Year by watching a live stream of their local celebrations. KTLA will be live streaming the festivities in over 30 cities, and you’ll also see footage from Honolulu, Denver and New York. Hop on the stream at 8 p.m. PST on Dec. 31 and catch a glimpse of Las Vegas’ vibrant history throughout the decades. check - "https://ktla.com/on-air/live-streaming/" Chicago’s Very Own New Year’s Eve Blast The broadcast starts at 11:30 p.m. CST on New Year’s Eve and lasts 45 minutes. After the clock strikes 12, there’ll be fireworks going off along the Chicago River in a mile-long display. There will also be music and pyrotechnics galore to celebrate the rich history of the Windy City. check - "https://wgntv.com/on-air/live-streaming/"

"https://www.accuradio.com/beautiful/?name=Solo%20Classical%20Piano&b0=Classical&b1=Beautiful%20Music" "http://player.listenlive.co/53411/en/album/87_3914ae8e-3b64-3a5b-bc37-9ff5dddf367d"

Kaspersky Research Finds 41% of Consumers Still Use Unsupported or Nearly Expired Operating Systems "https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2019_consumers-still-use-unsupported-and-near-end-of-life-os" According to Kaspersky research, nearly 41% of consumers still use unsupported or approaching end of support desktop operating systems (OS) like Windows XP or Windows 7. Similarly, 40% of very small businesses (VSBs) and 48% of small, medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises still rely on these systems for their security needs. In most cases, the end of an OS lifecycle means that no further updates will be issued by the vendor including updates related to cybersecurity. As OS become outdated, it is common for security researchers or cyber attackers to find previously unknown vulnerabilities within these systems. Subsequently, these vulnerabilities may be exploited in future cyberattacks leaving users exposed as they will not receive patches to resolve the issue. To gauge how many of these at-risk systems exist at scale, Kaspersky researchers analyzed the anonymized data of OS use provided by Kaspersky Security Network users. The results found that four out of ten consumers still use obsolete systems, including Windows XP and Vista. When identifying the specific versions of outdated OS being used, two percent of consumers and one percent of workstations used by VSBs rely on Windows XP, an OS which has not been supported for over 10 years. Less than half a percent of consumers (0.3%) and VSBs (0.2%) still prefer Windows Vista, an OS that has not received mainstream support for seven years. Remarkably, some consumers (1%) and businesses (0.6% of VSBs and 0.4% of SMBs and enterprises) were unaware of the free update to Windows 8.1 and continue to use Windows 8 which has not been supported by Microsoft since January 2016.

Ron. would love to see more of your collections..

@mountaintree16 there r many similarities like Google services total ban in China, VPN usage ban in Russia (to access already banned sites)