New variant raises alarms

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Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world raced Friday to contain a new coronavirus variant potentially more dangerous than the one that has fueled relentless waves of infection on every continent.

A World Health Organization panel named the variant “omicron” and classified it as a
highly transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the predominant
delta variant, which is still a scourge driving higher cases of sickness and death in Europe and parts of the United States.

“It seems to spread rapidly,” President Joe Biden said of the new variant, only a day after celebrating the resumption of Thanksgiving gatherings for millions of American families and the sense that normal life was coming back at least for the vaccinated. In announcing new travel restrictions, he told reporters, “I’ve decided that we’re going to be cautious.”

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Dow tumbles 900 points for worst day of year on fears of new Covid variant, S&P 500 drops 2.53%

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U.S. stocks dropped sharply on Friday as a new Covid variant found in South Africa triggered a global shift away from risk assets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 905.04 points, or 2.53%, for its worst day of the year, closing at 34,899.34. The S&P 500 lost 2.27% to close at 4,594.62, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 2.23% to finish at 15,491.66. The Dow was down more than 1,000 points at session lows.

My new Rocket Lake CPU is Rocket Hot!

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My computer re-build is complete. Back in July i began the upgrade procedure by mounting an intel i7-11700k CPU into an Asus TUF series motherboard. Upgraded my power supply to a Corsair HX850 and supplied all this awesomeness with 64GB of Dominator RAM. Once all the firmware and driver updates were complete, along with the installation of Windows 11, I decided to run a copy of Prime 95 and do some stress testing of my own. The results of my test were quite different than many of the tech journalist reports. I was able to maintain a stable system running at 100 degrees Celsius (very near boiling water). I was also able to launch a browser and surf around the net, while running all cores at max load. The cooling solution that I choose for my upgrade was a Corsair H115i RGB Pro XT, with its massive radiator and intelligent software made the difference, I am convinced.

My clock speed tapped out at 4.79GHz, with a base clock of 3.60GHz. My BIOS settings were set to the standard Asus extreme tuning, naturally.

Very pleased with my new rig, particularly when editing video in DaVinci Resolve. Can’t wait until 2026 when I can do this all over again!

Food Ingredients to avoid

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Here is a list of the most common ingredients I see at the grocery store. Many are to be avoided, but some are safe. This list completes a few years of research and fact finding in a quest to identify the crap food companies add to our food supply. In some cases bad ingredients are endorsed by the FDA itself.

Bad-FoodDownload

Disney World pauses COVID-19 vaccine mandate

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Walt Disney World confirmed Saturday that it has paused its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“We believe that our approach to mandatory vaccines has been the right one as we’ve continued to focus on the safety and well-being of our cast members and guests, and at this point, more than 90% of active Florida-based cast members have already verified that they are fully vaccinated,” a Disney spokesperson said. “We will address legal developments as appropriate.”

An internal memo from Disney said that the pause will remain in effect as the company “assesses the new state laws protecting workers from vaccine mandates,” according to FOX 35 Orlando. The station said it had obtained a copy of the internal memo sent to Disney cast members.

Nick Caturano, a cast member at Disney World for more than 16 years, said that he had heard managers were leaking e-mails detailing the move two hours before the cast members received them.

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UCF Wins U.S. Department of Energy Cyber Defense Competition — Again

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UCF beat out 119 other teams that represented 105 universities from 33 states and the District of Columbia to earn its second top title at competition.

The Collegiate Cybersecurity Competition Team at UCF has won the 2021 U.S. Department of Energy CyberForce Competition, a challenge that pits collegiate teams from the across the country against each other as they thwart a simulated cyberattack.

This is the second time UCF has won the competition. This year, UCF beat out 119 other teams that represented 105 universities from 33 states and the District of Columbia.

This was the seventh CyberForce Competition hosted by the Department of Energy. Held virtually on Nov. 13, teams were challenged to harden and secure systems of a hydropower company — along with the systems of a subsidiary company – against a malicious cyberattack, all while maintaining service for customers, according to the Department of Energy.

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Federal appeals court halts Biden administration’s vaccine requirement

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A federal appeals court in New Orleans has halted the Biden administration’s vaccine or testing requirement for private businesses, delivering another political setback to one of the White House’s signature public health policies.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, helmed by one judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and two others who were appointed by President Donald Trump, issued the ruling Friday, after temporarily halting the mandate last weekend in response to lawsuits filed by Republican-aligned businesses and legal groups.

Calling the requirement a “mandate,” the court said the rule, instituted through the Labor Department, “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority,” according to the opinion, written by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt and joined by Judges Edith H. Jones and Stuart Kyle Duncan.

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Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2021

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The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of troubles over the past year, but it remains the most-visited torrent site.

The main domain continues to draw millions of visitors per day and that’s not taking the numerous proxies and mirrors into consideration.

The yearly list of popular torrent sites is filled with well-known brands. This year there are two newcomers, TorrentGalaxy and Zooqle. These replace Torrentz2 and Tamilrockers, which have both disappeared.

If we have to signal a clear trend, we would point at an overall decrease in the number of popular English-language torrent sites. At the same time, foreign language sites appear to be growing their audience.

For example, sites such as Rutracker.org, Rutor.info, Yggtorrent.si, Etoland.co.kr, Nnnmclub.to, Dytt8.net, and Torrentdia.com are all more popular than the sites at the bottom of our top 10.

Below is the full list of the top ten most-visited (unique) torrent sites at the start of the new year. The list is based on various traffic reports. Please note that this list is created to keep track of the popularity of these sites over time. We do not recommend or endorse using any of these sites. Some are known to link to malicious ads, at least incidentally.

Click Continue to see the list and additional information….

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