Decode hundreds of file formats and convert or extract content #
Deark is a portable command-line utility that can decode certain types of files, and either convert them to a more-modern or more-readable format, or extract embedded files from them. It also has an option (-d) to display detailed information about a file’s contents and metadata. It’s free and open source.
The demo digs through Inception-like layers in fbm-1.2.tgz to identify and convert a Sun raster image to PNG.
~250 ancient and modern formats are supported:
/nix | Oct 22, 2021
"I have never lied." #
5/18/21, Washington Post: Fact-checking the Paul-Fauci flap over Wuhan lab funding
The National Institutes of Health issued a statement to The Fact Checker which in part said: "NIH has never approved any grant to support 'gain-of-function' research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans."
7/20/21, NBC: Fauci blasts Rand Paul's Wuhan lab funding claim: 'You do not know what you're talking about'
"Senator Paul, you do not know what you're talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially." Fauci said. "You do not know what you're talking about." The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was responding to Paul's claim that the NIH funded gain-of-function research — which looks to increase the transmissibility or pathogenesis of an organism in order to study disease — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci said Paul's accusation was false...
7/20/21, CNBC: 'If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,' Fauci tells Sen. Paul in heated exchange at Senate hearing
"I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied. Certainly not before Congress. Case closed," Fauci said.
8/4/21, National Review: Americans Deserve the Truth about Gain-of-Function Research and the Wuhan Lab
I asked Dr. Fauci a simple question: "Knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11, 2021? Do you still claim that NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?" He insisted that "the NIH has not ever and does not fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
9/9/21, Forbes: Psaki Dismisses GOP Accusation Fauci Lied To Congress About Coronavirus Research In Wuhan
Psaki dismissed these accusations at a Thursday press conference, denying that Fauci lied to Congress about the nature of the research and emphasizing that the viruses studied under the grant program were unrelated to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
9/9/21, The Intercept: NIH Documents Provide New Evidence U.S. Funded Gain-of-function Research in Wuhan
Documents obtained by The Intercept contain new evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, along with their collaborator, the U.S.-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, have engaged in what the U.S. government defines as "gain-of-function research of concern," intentionally making viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, despite stipulations from a U.S. funding agency that the money not be used for that purpose. Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci. The award to EcoHealth Alliance, a research organization which studies the spread of viruses from animals to humans, included subawards to Wuhan Institute of Virology and East China Normal University. The principal investigator on the grant is EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who has been a key voice in the search for Covid-19's origins.
10/20/21, Washington Examiner: NIH admits Fauci lied about funding Wuhan gain-of-function experiments
[A] top official at the National Institutes of Health has conceded that the agency did indeed fund highly dangerous gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
10/21/21, WBKO: NIH acknowledges US funded gain-of-function at Wuhan lab, Sen. Rand Paul reacts
"The NIH kept saying, 'No, we didn't do it, we didn't do it,' until last night they admitted, 'Yes, they did do it," said Sen. Rand Paul.
10/21/21, Yahoo News: NIH Admits to Funding Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan, Says EcoHealth Violated Reporting Requirements
The revelation vindicates Republican senator Rand Paul, who got into heated exchanges with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci during his May and July testimonials before Congress over the gain-of-function question. At the second hearing, Paul accused Fauci of misleading Congress by denying that the U.S. had funded gain-of-function projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
10/21/21, The Hill: Fauci LIES On Gain Of Function Research CONFIRMED By NIH, EcoHealth Failed To Report Findings
Team Rising reacts to the NIH's apparent acknowledgement that Dr. Fauci misled members of Congress on whether the U.S. funded gain of function research.
/misc | Oct 21, 2021
When facts are the enemy #
Emphases addded:
Local epidemiologists and researchers say the Hawaii Department of Health has continually rebuffed their requests for data throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and that the department's latest decision to scale back the information it has been releasing to the public daily on COVID-19 deaths is just the latest example of the department's lack of openness.
"All I can tell you is how absolutely frustrated we are," said DeWolfe Miller, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at the University of Hawaii.
...
For instance, researchers were hoping to get data on the number of people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 broken down by vaccination status and age, which could help to better calculate the efficacy of the vaccines on different age groups, said Sumner La Croix, a research fellow at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization and economics professor at UH Manoa. But he said state health officials have declined to provide it.
"What is really clear to me is that DOH doesn't really want any independent investigators actually looking at the data," said La Croix. "They really don't want anyone second guessing their decisions."
Department of Health officials didn't respond to a request for comment about the criticism, which reached a new height this weekend when the department announced that it would no longer be sending out the detailed information it had been providing for months about COVID-related deaths. A department spokesman, in an email to the media on Sunday, cited the "volume of COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 related deaths" as the reason for no longer sending out the information, even though case counts have declined markedly over the past four weeks.
The daily emails included the age range of the person who died, the county where they died, hospitalization status, gender and whether they had underlying conditions.
Hawaii has the lowest COVID-19 infection rate of any state in the nation. It's also a pandemic standout for a more dubious reason: instituting the most extreme restrictions on the public's access to official records.
In March 2020, Hawaii Gov. David Ige issued an emergency proclamation suspending the state's three-decades-old open records law, which aims to protect the public interest by exposing government to scrutiny.
The suspension came just as people were thirsty for information about what the government was doing to respond to the public health crisis, said Brian Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest.
/misc | Oct 07, 2021
"Seriously, y'all. Trust the science." #
posted to the docs section.
/misc | Oct 04, 2021
"First, they ignore you. Then, they abuse you. Then, they heap you with honors." #
—Attributed to Jean Cocteau
- Ignored
America, Can We Talk?: Dr. Richard Bartlett interview, July 2, 2020: "100% of my patients are alive ... Let me tell you what I've heard from patients when I started using this. They tell me, 'I feel better during the first treatment'. And so their chest pain goes away. Their shortness of breath goes away. Their fever breaks."
NewsWest9: Local doctor believes he has found 'silver bullet' for COVID-19: Dr. Bartlett says COVID-19 starts in the respiratory system but then triggers a severe inflammatory process, called Cytokine Storms, that eventually leads to multi-organ failure and death. But the inhaled steroid helps to prevent that inflammation. "It's like putting out a fire at the base of the fire," Bartlett said. "I'm having patients recover so quick."
CBS7: West Texas doctor claims to have "silver bullet" for COVID-19: "I am not aware of any doctors anywhere that are using this specifically for COVID-19, yet," Bartlett said. Bartlett said he treats people as soon as they show symptoms. "Early treatment is better with this disease," he said. "And I'm having a 100% survival rate. I don't even know how many I've treated...dozens. I have 14 that I'm treating right now." Bartlett said that patients tell him they feel immediate relief.
- Abused
- Honored
Related
/misc | Oct 03, 2021
Dispatches from Dostoyevsky, Shaw, & Twain to the remnant #
I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
—Mark Twain, The Pains of Lowly Life (originally written as a letter to the London Anti-Vivisection Society, May 26, 1899)
Presently the scientist comes along and says to him: "My friend, by a diabolically cruel process I have procured a revoltingly filthy substance. Allow me to inject this under your skin, and you can never get hydrophobia, or enteric fever, or diphtheria, &c. I have even a very choice preparation, of unmentionable nastiness, which will enable you, if not to live for ever (though I think that quite possible), at least to renew in your old age the excesses of your youth."
—George Bernard Shaw, The Conflict Between Science and Common Sense
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Part II, Book V. Pro And Contra, Chapter IV. Rebellion
UPDATE: Cannot forget dear Gandhi:
Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike. ... I cannot also help feeling that vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality.
—Mahatma Gandhi, A Guide to Health (Part II: Some Simple Treatments, Chap. VI. Contagious Diseases: Smallpox)
/misc | Sep 27, 2021
Goodbye, iMessage #
Related
/misc | Sep 07, 2021
Batch download HN comments you've upvoted #
While this post describes how to bulk download comments you've upvoted on Hacker News, the process is virtually identical for upvoted submissions - the URL format is just slightly different, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=miles&p=2 (though there are apparently better ways of downloading upvoted submissions - see Related section below.)
1. Get cURL (complete with cookie) from web browser
Log in to Hacker News and open your profile page
Open the network tab in your web browser's dev tools (e.g., Safari: Develop → Show Web Inspector → Network ⓐ)
Click the "comments (private)" link on your profile page1
In the network tab, right click "upvoted" ⓑ then click "Copy as cURL" ⓒ:
2. Download upvoted comments
Paste cURL command from clipboard into a for loop2 like the one below, making sure to:
- specify the desired range of comment pages to download (e.g., 7 to 11)
- add
--compressed3 to the curl command (if HTTP compression is specified, as below4)
- change the single quotes to double quotes around the URL
- append
&p=${i} to the URL
- append
-o ${i}.htm to the last line of the cURL command
for i in {7..11}; do
curl --compressed "https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=miles&comments=t&p=${i}" \
-X 'GET' \
-H 'Cookie: user=miles&XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' \
-H 'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8' \
-H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br' \
-H 'Host: news.ycombinator.com' \
-H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.1.2 Safari/605.1.15' \
-H 'Accept-Language: en-us' \
-H 'Referer: https://news.ycombinator.com/' \
-H 'Connection: keep-alive' -o ${i}.htm
; sleep 5; done
Footnotes
The URL for the first page of upvoted comments looks like https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=miles&comments=t, while subsequent pages have &p=# appended, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=miles&comments=t&p=2.
HN rate limits requests, so throttling is necessary (otherwise, you will receive a "Sorry, we're not able to serve your requests this quickly." response and ultimately your IP address may be banned). While wget offers a --wait=seconds option, the closest curl comes is --limit-rate <speed>, which sadly did not prevent the warning from occurring when sequencing, even at rates as slow as 1000 bytes per second, hence the for loop with delay. See Implement wget's --wait, --random-wait #5406.
Otherwise, files are saved as compressed, necessitating something along the lines of gzip -d -f -S "" * to decompress. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Without -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br' \, 5-6 times the bandwidth is used to download uncompressed HTML.
Sources
Related
/nix | Sep 05, 2021
When did ivermectin go from "wonder drug" to "horse dewormer"? #
October 2015 - July 2021:
ISGlobal: Ivermectin: A Drug Worthy of a Nobel Prize, but Inaccessible for Those Who Need It
Because of its excellent safety profile and broad spectrum of activity, ivermectin is catalogued by the World Health Organisation as an essential medicine and is regarded by many as a "magic bullet" for global health.
The Japanese Journal of Antibiotics: Global trends in clinical studies of ivermectin (authored by 4 doctors, including Satoshi Ōmura, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2015 for his work on ivermectin)
As of the 27th of February 2021, the results of 42 clinical studies worldwide have undergone meta-analysis and concluded that ivermectin is effective in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. In the UK, a consensus-based recommendation by 75 healthcare professionals from 17 countries around the world has been carried out and submitted to the WHO to further encourage the issuance of guidelines for the use of ivermectin in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19.
The Journal of Antibiotics: Ivermectin: enigmatic multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug continues to surprise and exceed expectations
Antiviral (e.g. HIV, dengue, encephalitis)
Recent research has confounded the belief, held for most of the past 40 years, that ivermectin was devoid of any antiviral characteristics. Ivermectin has been found to potently inhibit replication of the yellow fever virus, with EC50 values in the sub-nanomolar range. It also inhibits replication in several other flaviviruses, including dengue, Japanese encephalitis and tick-borne encephalitis, probably by targeting non-structural 3 helicase activity. Ivermectin inhibits dengue viruses and interrupts virus replication, bestowing protection against infection with all distinct virus serotypes, and has unexplored potential as a dengue antiviral.
Ivermectin has also been demonstrated to be a potent broad-spectrum specific inhibitor of importin α/β-mediated nuclear transport and demonstrates antiviral activity against several RNA viruses by blocking the nuclear trafficking of viral proteins. It has been shown to have potent antiviral action against HIV-1 and dengue viruses, both of which are dependent on the importin protein superfamily for several key cellular processes. Ivermectin may be of import in disrupting HIV-1 integrase in HIV-1 as well as NS-5 (non-structural protein 5) polymerase in dengue viruses.
Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute: Lab experiments show anti-parasitic drug, Ivermectin, eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in cells in 48 hours
A collaborative study led by the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) with the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital, has shown that an anti-parasitic drug already available around the world kills the virus within 48 hours.
The Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Dr Kylie Wagstaff, who led the study, said the scientists showed that the drug, Ivermectin, stopped the SARS-CoV-2 virus growing in cell culture within 48 hours.
“We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours there was a really significant reduction in it,” Dr Wagstaff said.
Ivermectin is an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that has also been shown to be effective in vitro against a broad range of viruses including HIV, Dengue, Influenza and Zika virus.
American Journal of Therapeutics: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines
Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.
The Lancet: Antiviral effect of high-dose ivermectin in adults with COVID-19: A proof-of-concept randomized trial
[A] significant difference was found in patients with higher median plasma IVM levels (72% IQR 59–77) versus untreated controls (42% IQR 31–73) (p = 0·004).
U.S. Pharmacist: Common Supplements Might Reduce COVID Severity
For prophylaxis, the medical school recommends vitamin C (500 mg) and quercetin (250 mg-500 mg twice a day) with zinc (75 mg-100 mg per day), melatonin (0.3 mg-2 mg) each night, and vitamin D3 (1,000-4,000 IU per day). Famotidine (20 mg-40 mg per day) may be added to the mix. For patients with mild symptoms, EVMS recommends the same combination, with optional additions of ivermectin (150 ug-200 ug per kg as a single dose), and one low-dose or regular aspirin per day.
The Journal of Antibiotics: The mechanisms of action of Ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2: An evidence-based clinical review article
Although several drugs received Emergency Use Authorization for COVID-19 treatment with unsatisfactory supportive data, Ivermectin, on the other hand, has been sidelined irrespective of sufficient convincing data supporting its use.
August 2021:
Related
Updates
MSN: Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low
"Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to introduce large-scale prophylactic and therapeutic use of Ivermectin. In May-June 2020, a team at Agra, led by Dr Anshul Pareek, administered Ivermectin to all RRT team members in the district on an experimental basis. It was observed that none of them developed Covid-19 despite being in daily contact with patients who had tested positive for the virus," Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer Vikssendu Agrawal said.
International Journal of Infectious Diseases: Effectiveness of a multidrug therapy consisting of Ivermectin, Azithromycin, Montelukast, and Acetylsalicylic acid to prevent hospitalization and death among ambulatory COVID-19 cases in Tlaxcala, Mexico
"TNR4 is a multidrug therapy (Ivermectin, Azithromycin, Montelukast, and ASA) for COVID-19 cases. TNR4 increased the likelihood of recovery 3.4 times in ambulatory COVID-19 cases. The multidrug therapy TNR4 reduced the risk of hospitalization by 75%. The multidrug therapy TNR4 reduced the risk of death by 81%.
Mainichi: ノーベル賞学者・大村智博士が「予防はワクチン 治療はイベルメクチン」
Dr. Satoshi Omura, Nobel Prize scholar: "Vaccines for prevention, ivermectin for treatment"
Nikkei: 東京都医師会、イベルメクチン投与を提言 重症化予防で
Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association recommends ivermectin administration to prevent serious illness 📺
Yomiuri Shimbun: 「今こそイベルメクチンを使え」東京都医師会の尾崎治夫会長が語ったその効能
"Now is the time to use ivermectin," said Haruo Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association
New Microbes and New Infections: Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19
During mass IVM treatments in Peru, excess deaths fell by a mean of 74% over 30 days in its ten states with the most extensive treatments.
NYT: Scabies Means Misery. This Pill Can End It.
[T]he drug is considered safe enough to give to almost everyone except the youngest infants and pregnant women.
C-SPAN: Medical Response to COVID-19 (Pierre Kory, M.D., pulmonologist at St. Luke's Aurora Medical Center, discusses the efficacy of ivermectin from the 29m26s mark)
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard from medical professionals who advocate for alternative COVID-19 treatments and mitigation measures to those of the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization.
Philippine Daily Inquirer: Uttar Pradesh is ivermectin’s best practice success story
In last week's column, we wrote about the amazing outcome many states in India like Uttar Pradesh and Delhi have attained with an ivermectin-based multidrug prevention and early treatment kits. With a population of 241 million, more than twice that of the Philippines, Uttar Pradesh has been averaging less than 100 new COVID cases daily in the last three months, and less than 20 a day in the last three weeks. The deaths average one a day in the last six weeks. More than half of its districts or provinces have been declared COVID-free with zero active cases. One can't possibly attribute it to its anti-COVID vaccination, because it's one of the slowest among the Indian states in its vaccination rollout, with less than 5 percent of its population fully vaccinated.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Doctors grow frustrated over COVID-19 denial, misinformation
The Associated Press asked six doctors from across the country to describe the types of misinformation and denial they see on a daily basis and how they respond to it. They describe being aggravated at the constant requests to be prescribed the veterinary parasite drug Ivermectin, with patients lashing out at doctors when they are told that it’s not a safe coronavirus treatment.
KETV: Nebraska AG issues opinion on Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatments
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson issued his opinion Friday that health care providers can legally prescribe off-label medications like Ivermectin... "[W]e address only the off-label early treatment options discussed in this opinion and conclude that the available evidence suggests they might work for some people. Allowing physicians to consider these early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital, and provide relief for our already strained health care system."
Interviews with doctors, nurses, and others whose lives were saved by ivermectin:
/misc | Aug 28, 2021
Apple has surpassed Facebook and Google in violating user trust. #
In one fell swoop, Apple destroyed its reputation for privacy and security, surpassing even Facebook and Google in violating user trust:
and then had the temerity to not only blame critics for their "misunderstanding", but also to call the scheme an "advancement" in privacy!
Apple has promised to refuse government demands to expand the surveillance, but their record is not exactly reassuring:
not to mention that the technology itself is fundamentally broken:
inexorably leading to such outcomes as:
As Ars explains:
[T]he system's current design doesn't prevent it from being redesigned and used for other purposes in the future. The new photo-scanning technology itself is a major change for a company that has used privacy as a selling point for years and calls privacy a "fundamental human right."
NebajX pierces to the very heart of the matter:
Do we allow police a daily search of our homes because we have nothing to hide?
It’s now crystal clear why Apple tried to exclude dozens of its own processes from network monitoring last year; to pave the way for total (and leaky and dangerous) control over our digital lives.
Addendum
Topping it all off, the system as currently sold is simply farcical on the face of it:
Updates
/mac | Aug 26, 2021
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