"Should I wear a mask?" "Oh, absolutely not." 📺
"There's no reason to be walking around with a mask." 📺
"A mask is more appropriate for someone who is infected." 📺
"Do we need a national [mask] mandate?" "Yes." 📺
Bloomberg: The David Rubenstein Show: Anthony Fauci, May 22, 2019
Spectrum News: Disease Expert: Flu a Bigger Risk in the US Than Coronavirus
60 Minutes: March 2020: Dr. Anthony Fauci talks with Dr Jon LaPook about Covid-19 (See also Preventing coronavirus: Should you wear a face mask?)
Spectrum News: Disease Expert: Flu a Bigger Risk in the US Than Coronavirus
CNBC: Anthony Fauci on The News with Shepard Smith, October 28, 2020 (See also Fauci voices support for national mask mandate)
CNN: Dr. Fauci responds to study that says masks didn't work
2020:
USA Today: Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands - "Fauci doesn't want people to worry about coronavirus, the danger of which is 'just minuscule.'"
NBC: Do you need a mask? The science hasn't changed, but public guidance might - "Surgeon General Jerome Adams has been outspoken against healthy people wearing masks or other coverings in public. '@WHO @CDCgov and my office have consistently recommended against the general public wearing masks as there is scant or conflicting evidence they benefit individual wearers in a meaningful way,' Adams wrote on Twitter."
Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at University of Minnesota: Masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data by Dr. Brosseau ("a national expert on respiratory protection and infectious diseases") and Dr. Sietsema ("an expert on respiratory protection")
2021:
City Journal: Do Masks Work? A review of the evidence
Independent: 1.6 billion disposable masks entered the ocean in 2020 and will take 450 years to biodegrade - "Waste from throwaway masks created a mass of plastic waste around 7 per cent of the size of the Great Garbage Plastic Patch"
Brownstone: More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms
2022:
2023:
New York Times: The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
Reason: Masks Make 'Little or No Difference' on COVID-19, Flu Rates: New Study
The Atlantic: A New Turn in the Fight Over Masks
CNN: Mask study author: 'More likely than not they don't work'
South China Morning Post: Maskless Joe Biden laughs off pandemic guidance despite first lady having Covid
USA Today: 'Don't tell them I didn't have it on': Biden flaunts not wearing mask after COVID exposure
Politico: Biden casts off his mask
/misc | Sep 18, 2023
Anthony Fauci was interviewed by CNN's Micheal Smerconish* and made the following claim:
"Organizations like the CDC recommend (CDC doesn't mandate anything) I mean recommends, that people wear masks." 📺
The CDC itself contradicts him:
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an Order [PDF – 11 pages] on January 29, 2021 requiring the wearing of masks by people on public transportation conveyances or on the premises of transportation hubs to prevent spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. This Order was effective February 1, 2021 and was published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2021.
"The terms of the Order, which were no longer enforceable as a result of a court order (effective, April 18, 2022), have now expired due to the conclusion of the Public Health Emergency on May 11, 2023."
* Apparently on September 2, 2023 based on the CNN URL.
/misc | Sep 03, 2023
/misc | Aug 26, 2023
Apple silicon (M1) Mac
macOS 13.4.1 Ventura with SIP disabled1
Mozilla Firefox 116.0.1
Bit Slicer 1.7.12 or Cheat Engine 7.4.3 for Mac2
Tower Swap version 55 in single player mode (i.e., not logged in)
Open Tower Swap in Firefox and press Play (optionally go offline once game has loaded)
Press Shift+Esc to open Firefox's Process Manager and find the Tower Swap tab process ID (e.g., 696)
Launch Bit Slicer → from the drop-down menu at top left, select the process ID found in step 2 (e.g., "FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content (696)")
Enter the current number of swaps in Tower Swap (e.g., 5) in the box at top right and press Return
Make a move in Tower Swap to change the number of swaps to 4 → enter 4 in the box at top left and press Return
Repeat step 5 until only two addresses remain
Double click value for first address → change value to desired number of swaps → press Return
Install Rosetta 2 if missing (optionally back up for offline use)
Open Tower Swap in Firefox and press Play (optionally go offline once game has loaded)
Press Shift+Esc to open Firefox's Process Manager and find the Tower Swap tab process ID (e.g., 696)
In Terminal, convert the process ID from decimal to hex via printf '%x\n' 696 → 2b8
Launch Cheat Engine → File → Open Process → click Processes tab → click process matching hex vaule (e.g., "000002B8-FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content") → click Open
Enter the current number of swaps in Tower Swap (e.g., 5) in "Value:" → click "First Scan"
Make a move in Tower Swap to change the number of swaps to 4 → enter 4 for "Value:" → click Next Scan
Repeat step 8 until only two addresses remain
Double click first address → double click the decimal value in the bottom pane → change value to desired number of swaps → click OK
Failure to disable SIP returns "Search Failure: FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content's memory cannot be searched due to system protections." in Bit Slicer and "Error while opening this process. Have you disabled 'System Integrity Protection (SIP) yet?" in Cheat Engine. ↩
Unlike Cheat Engine, Bit Slicer is: signed and notorized, a Universal 2 binary (i.e., Apple silicon-native), and not time-limited trialware. Both projects maintain GitHub repositories: CE | BS. ↩
/mac | Aug 07, 2023
with iSH Shell & GNU Coreutils' shuf and fold:
shuf -n 1 book.txt | fold -w 30 -sEnjoy aleatory quotes from ebooks, etc.
/nix | Jul 27, 2023
/windows | Jul 11, 2023
/windows | May 23, 2023
painted by Graeber & Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything1 is rather economical with the truth. The pair claim that [emphases added throughout]:
"[Native] Americans, by contrast, were equal insofar as they were equally free to obey or disobey orders as they saw fit."
"That indigenous Americans lived in generally free societies, and that Europeans did not, was never really a matter of debate..."
"[A]n office holder could give all the orders he or she liked, but no one was under any particular obligation to follow them."
"Europeans were constantly squabbling for advantage; societies of the Northeast Woodlands, by contrast, guaranteed one another the means to an autonomous life – or at least ensured no man or woman was subordinated to any other."
And while they dismissively acknowledge:
"...[the Wendat] had formal political offices and a stratum of war captives whom the Jesuits, at least, referred to as ‘slaves’..."
the academics knew (assuming they read their primary source2) that Kandiaronk himself3 described such "war captives" in no uncertain terms:4
"...the young Warrior will not embarque in a married State till he has made some Campaigns against the Iroquese, and took some Slaves to serve him..."
"If any one of us have a Mind to build a Canow or a Hut, we all send our Slaves to forward the Work, without being ask'd."
"Besides, our Slaves take all the Drudgery off our Hands..."
"If you lived after our Manner, all of you would be equally Masters ; your Riches would be of the same Stamp with ours, and consist in the Purchasing of Glory by military Actions, and the taking of Slaves ; for the more you took of them, the less Occasion you would have to work : In a word, you would live as happily as we do."
Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021b). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Quotes are from pages 45, 40, 43, 48, and 40 respectively.
Cited as "the 1735 English edition of Dialogues"; since no such title exists, they must be referring to Lahontan's New Voyages to North-America of the same year (which appears in their bibliography and contains the dialogues). While the first French and English (1, 2) versions of Nouveaux Voyages de Mr le Baron de Lahontan dans l’Amérique Septentrionale were both published in 1703, only the English edition contained the dialogues (as alluded to on its title page: "Done into English. In Two VOLUMES. A great part of which never Printed in the Original."). The dialogues appeared the following year in French with the publication of Suite du Voyage de l'Amérique, ou Dialogue de Monsieur le baron de Lahontan et d'un sauvage dans l'Amérique.
Graeber & Wengrow argue that Lahontan's work reflects actual "conversations between Lahontan and Kandiaronk" as opposed to being a fiction invented by himself; in fact, they go so far as to replace the pseudonym "Adario" with "Kandiaronk" when quoting passages from the book.
Lahontan, 1735. New Voyages to North-America. 2nd ed. London: J. Walthoe, et al. Quotes are from pages 114, 156, 145, and 144 respectively.
/misc | May 11, 2023
with Marco Pontello's HdRen, a simple Python 2 script that adds file signatures to filenames, making it easy to spot imposters:
$ls -11.mp3 2.mp3 3.mp3 $hdren.py foo/... $ls -1'4D5A5A01=2.mp3' 'FFFB90C4=1.mp3' 'FFFB90C4=3.mp3'
/nix | May 07, 2023
For almost two decades, MSKey Readme1 has heralded the defeat of Windows XP's product activation, not via mere circumvention, but by cracking the encryption algorithm itself.
Based on the even earlier Inside Windows Product Activation: A Fully Licensed Paper2, WindowsXPKg3 launched on Microsoft's GitHub platform four years ago (see update #3 below). While it can generate product keys, the program relies on an external, third-party server to return the Confirmation ID.
In a post last year on the Windows XP subreddit (Windows XP web activation is finally dead…), retroreviewyt shared xp_activate32.exe4, which calculates the Installation ID then generates and optionally applies the corresponding Confirmation ID to activate Windows XP, all offline. Wiping the system and reinstalling Windows XP results in the same Installation ID being assigned by Windows (assuming no change in hardware or product key), thus the same Confirmation ID obtains even in msoobe's standard telephone activation window.
Long considered out of reach, this development bodes well for salvaging old systems even after Microsoft shuts down the activation servers. Given their curious tolerance (even use!) of MAS (hosted on their own platform!), which impacts all modern versions of Windows, perhaps Microsoft will see fit to release an official XP activation tool for posterity.
The apparently oldest extant copy, dated January 18, 2005, is signed "yag". A few months later, it was posted to Tool_Delphi2005 by Alexandre Trevizoli. By 2007, Kevin Hatfield was hosting it, and he claimed copyright by 2008, thereby becoming associated with the document in later years.
In fact, the paper was released in July 2001, before even Windows XP was released to manufacturing. However, it was kept "a little vague at some points in order not to facilitate the task of an attacker attempting to circumvent the license enforcement supplied by the activation mechanism".
Elliptic Curve Key Tool is a similar app that does not require recompiling for each combination.
18432 bytes with a SHA-256 hash of 5a4bcac5a50eb5113dd6a2f88c35ebdb709c4df8a792c71ad03ea347afaced52 (first seen by VirusTotal on 2020-10-16).
Neo-Desktop has forked WindowsXPKg to include a fix for compiling and running properly under Linux. They are also at work on disassembling xp_activate32.exe.
The purported source code for xp_activate32.exe has been posted to MDL (since deleted) by diamondggg, who referenced such a tool in 2021. See this thread for more information.
On the provenance of WindowsXPKg, Endermanch stated: "This repository is not the original source for the Windows XP Keygen. The original was uploaded to PlanetWPA as part of MSKey 4-in-1 algorithm sources back in early 2000s and was made by z22." The comment has been updated with additional details and, along with his XPKeygen README, is sine qua non for understanding the history and mathematics behind this story.
/windows | Apr 23, 2023