Hashcat is a popular password cracker and designed to break even the most complex passwords representation. To do this, it enables the cracking of a specific password in multiple ways, combined with versatility and speed.

Password representations are primarily associated with hash keys, such as MD5, SHA, WHIRLPOOL, RipeMD, NTMLv1, NTMLv2 and so on. They are also defined as a one-way function — this is a mathematical operation that is easy to perform, but very difficult to reverse engineer.

Hashcat turns readable data into a garbled state (this is a random string of fixed-length size). Hashes do not allow someone to decrypt data with a specific key, as standard encryption protocols allow. Hashcat uses precomputed dictionaries, rainbow tables and even brute-force approaches to find an effective and efficient way to crack passwords. 

This article provides an introductory tutorial for cracking passwords, using the Hashcat software package.

Guidepost’s findings include an email sent by the executive vice president and general council of the SBC’s Executive Committee, in which he comments on those bringing accusations against the SBC:

This whole thing should be seen for what it is. It is a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism. It is not the gospel. It is not even a part of the gospel. It is a misdirection play.

This line of thinking has played out on the mission field, too, as can be seen in published reports on the treatment of victims of child abuse overseas. For example, in 1997, the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Independent Commission of Inquiry reported on claims of abuse at Mamou Alliance Academy, a boarding school in Guinea run by the C&MA from 1950 to 1971. About the students at Mamou, one missionary mother told the commission,

They were never allowed the freedom of expressing their hurts, their problems, their emotions to us. Each week the obligatory letter was not only read but censored, and forced to be rewritten if it appeared at all negative. This destroyed a vital link that could have helped maintain a fragmented family bond. They were repeatedly told not to share adverse happenings either by letter or by word on vacation with parents, lest it upset the parents and interfere with the work they were doing for God. The hidden message to the child was that God was more important, work was more important to the parents that [sic] one’s own child.

The commission summarized the reasoning behind censoring letters as “Children were advised not to upset their parents, lest their ministry to Africans be compromised and Africans left to their pagan ways.” //

We must be alert. Talking points for conversations with children—and adults—should include that secrets shouldn’t be kept, wrongs shouldn’t be hidden, and complaints shouldn’t be silenced in order to “protect the mission.” That needs to be said out loud over and over again to combat all the times that the opposite has been spoken or inferred.

Abuse in the church hinders the mission, not the exposing of that abuse. Silencing or shunning those who make accusations hinders the mission, not the act of hearing them out. //

There’s more to the mission of the church than just going and making disciples. There’s listening to and looking out for the oppressed and the vulnerable. There’s shining the light in dark places. And there’s speaking and acknowledging what is true.

The mission. The mission. The mission. The whole mission.

Welcome to Clearing Customs, by Craig Thompson. This space is part blog, part annotated bibliography. It’s a collection of thoughts, information, links, and articles about cross-cultural interaction and how we deal with transitions from place to place. It’s for those of us who, on our journey, sometimes have to check the box “something to declare.”

Over the years I’ve created a collection of new terms for old things—things that are common to traveling and living overseas but that haven’t had common labels. Most of them have come to me while I’m in the air, looking out the window or thumbing through an inflight magazine.

• bait and glitch
• direct flight to the dog house
• metapacking
• eurekathing
• tetrisness
• TSAT
• fortnightlies
• vontrappish
• flotsam and jetsam and thensam
• disafearance
• duffling
• terminal fowliage
• flaggle
• making a this-line’s-not-for-you-turn
• glizing
• preseating
• passenger of imminent domain
• single-entré seating
• seatemic (pronounced see-uh-tehm-ic)
• post-ping che-klatches
• visatrig

It goes without saying that everything should be done to make aviation as safe as possible. That being said, this seems like a solution that doesn’t actually solve a whole lot. How many people have successfully broken into a cockpit of a commercial airplane in the 20+ years since 9/11? I think zero globally, but someone correct me if I’m wrong. //

Let’s talk about another aspect of the reinforced cockpit door. How many planes have crashed in the past decade due to one pilot being locked out of the cockpit and not being able to get back in? //

To me pilot mental health and one person in a cockpit presents a much bigger risk to aviation than adding a second cockpit door. Admittedly this is more of a global problem than a US problem — at least US airlines are required to always have two people in the cockpit, which is why a flight attendant always has to enter the cockpit when a pilot leaves. This doesn’t apply to foreign airlines flying to the US, though.

Our self-hosted server infrastructure consists of different microservices responsible for varying functionality. The self-hosted server works as the backend that processes and stores your data; it does not include the web application.

The web application is an optional process that you must spin up separately. However, you can use the existing web app or the official Standard Notes desktop app with your self-hosted server.

This striking change is familiar yet also baffling. Only the skin on our fingers and toes wrinkle when immersed in water, while other body parts such as our forearms, torso, legs and face remain no more crinkled than before they were submerged.

This water-induced wrinkling of skin on our fingertips and toes has occupied the thoughts and work of scientists for decades. Most have puzzled over what causes this puckering in the first place, but more recently the question of why, and what purpose it may serve, has attracted the attention of researchers. Perhaps more intriguing still, however, is what our shriveled fingers can reveal about our own health.

It takes around 3.5 minutes in warm water – 40C (104F) is considered the optimal temperature – for your fingertips to begin wrinkling, while in cooler temperatures of about 20C (68F) it can take up to 10 minutes. Most studies have found it takes around 30 minutes of soaking time to reach maximum wrinklage, however.

Fingertip wrinkling was commonly thought to be a passive response where the upper layers of the skin swelled as water flooded into the cells via a process known as osmosis – where water molecules move across a membrane to equalise the concentration of the solutions on either side. But as long ago as 1935, scientists have suspected there is more to the process than this.

Doctors studying patients with injuries that had severed the median nerve – one of the main nerves that run down the arm to the hand – found that their fingers did not wrinkle. Among its many roles, the median nerve helps to control so-called sympathetic activities such as sweating and the constriction of blood vessels. Their discovery suggested that the water-induced wrinkling of fingertips was in fact controlled by the nervous system.

Later studies by doctors in the 1970s provided further evidence of this, and they proposed using the immersion of the hands in water as a simple bedside test to assess nerve damage that might affect the regulation of unconscious processes such as blood flow.

Then in 2003, neurologists Einar Wilder-Smith and Adeline Chow, who were working at the National University Hospital in Singapore at the time, took measurements of blood circulation in the hands of volunteers as they soaked them in water. They found that as the skin on the volunteers' fingertips began to wrinkle, there was a significant drop in blood flow in the fingers. //

With the help of 500 volunteers who visited the Science Museum in London during 2020, Davis measured how much force they needed to use to grip a plastic object. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those with dry, unwrinkled hands needed to use less force than people whose hands were wet – so their grip on the object was better. But when they submerged their hands in a water bath for a few minutes to turn their hands wrinkly, the grip force fell between the two even though their hands were still wet.

"The results were amazingly clear," says Davis. "The wrinkling increased the amount of friction between the fingers and the object. What is particularly interesting is that our fingers are sensitive to this change in the surface friction and we use this information to apply less force to grip an object securely." //

Unsymmetrical wrinkling of the fingers – where one hand wrinkles less than the other despite the same immersion time – has even been suggested as an early sign of Parkinson's disease as it indicates the sympathetic nervous system is not functioning correctly on one side of the body.

So, while the question of why our fingers and toes began wrinkling in water in the first place remains open, our pruney digits are proving useful to doctors in other surprising ways.

The now-renowned Schengen Agreement was signed in a tiny village in Luxembourg’s south-east, a location that was drenched in symbolism. //

Just as I thought I was running out of country, I arrived at tiny Schengen, tucked in among the vines on the western bank of the Moselle. With fewer than 520 residents, it’s certainly not the big-name, bright-lights destination one might expect for an agreement that would change the way people travelled in Europe. Nevertheless, it was here, on a murky morning on 14 June 1985, that representatives of Belgium, France, Luxembourg, West Germany (as was) and the Netherlands gathered to officially seal the deal on this revolutionary new border-free zone. //

As Luxembourg was soon to take over the EEC presidency, the small nation was entitled to choose where the signing of this treaty would take place. It just so happens that Schengen is the only place where France and Germany both join with a Benelux member, securing it as the destination of choice.

As the meeting place of three countries, the choosing of Schengen was drenched in symbolism. To ensure it was a neutral affair, the signatories were assembled on a pleasure cruiser, the MS Princesse Marie-Astrid, to put pen to paper. The cruiser was moored as close as possible to the tri-point border, which runs down the middle of the Moselle River. //

Today, the Schengen Area comprises 26 member states. Of these, 22 are members of the EU, while four (Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein) are not. //

...the European Museum. Here, the story of how the Schengen Area came to exist is expertly told through interactive displays inside and a variety of monuments outside.

Don’t miss the cabinet of official border control caps from the member states at the time they joined the area, each a piece of national identity that was surrendered in order to make Schengen work. Poignant sections of the Berlin Wall sit perfectly placed in front of the museum, set there to remind us all that walls – in this case, world-famous reinforced concrete from one of its founding members, no less – don’t have to remain in place forever.

Although the trail itself is in Belgium, they're actually much closer to German cities and services. "If they have an accident, I tell them they should roll to the German side," she said, "because the ambulance will come faster."

This tiny spot of Germany is entirely surrounded by Switzerland, which makes it both an enclave and exclave, geographic oddities to trivia fans, but confounding to everyone else.

In Roman times, the island was known as "Pausoa", the Basque word for passage or step. Then the French translated this as "Paysans", meaning peasant, before transposing it as "Faisans", for pheasant. Over time, the name Île des Faisans stuck.

The humble island finally came into prominence in 1648, following a ceasefire at the end of the Thirty Years' War between France and Spain, when it was chosen as a neutral space to demarcate the new borderlands. In fact, 24 summits took place, with military escorts on standby should talks breakdown. Eleven years later, the Treaty of the Pyrenees peace accord was struck.

To honour the occasion, a royal wedding was mooted, and, in 1660, French King Louis XIV married the daughter of King Philip IV, Maria Theresa of Spain, on the spot of the declaration. Wooden bridges were built to ease passage, royal parties arrived in state barges and carriages, and tapestries and paintings were commissioned. Diego Velázquez, court painter to Philip and whose magnum opus remains Las Meninas (a portrait of Margaret Theresa with her maids of honour) was put in charge of arranging much of the festivities.

So symbolic was Pheasant Island as a metaphor of peace, in fact, that it was decided both countries would have joint custody of the territory. Spain would hold stewardship from 1 February to 31 July each year, while Pheasant Island would become an official part of France for the other six months. In that moment, the world's smallest condominium was born.

By definition, condominiums are places determined by the presence of at least more than one sovereign state. The sense is derived from Latin, with "com" implying "together" and "dominium" meaning "right of ownership". And over the centuries, numerous countries have become embroiled in geographic tug o' wars over condominiums, with governments spending decades happily arguing the finer points of who owns what and why. Most aren't centres of empire, but rather experimental, geopolitical addendums.

At least for now, there are eight in the world, including Lake Constance, the tridominium between Austria, Germany and Switzerland; the Brčko District shared by Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the disputed territory of the Republika Srpska. Then there is the Joint Regime Area, a shared maritime zone between Colombia and Jamaica; and the Abyei Area contested by South Sudan and Sudan.

Another is the Moselle river and its tributaries the Sauer and the Our – a riverine condominium shared between Germany and Luxembourg; while the Gulf of Fonseca is a tripartite condominium portioned up by Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Antarctica is the last but also the largest and most momentous, a theoretical continental condominium, governed by the 29 signatories of the Antarctic Treaty that have consulting status.

On the day of my visit to Pheasant Island, the territory was in the hands of the Spanish. A group of kayakers was exploring its nooks from the water, and, on land, only one passer-by stopped to take photographs. Besides administering the gardening, maintaining the boat landing site, discussing fishing rights and monitoring the water quality, there isn't much for the Spanish to do on a month-to-month basis. Visitors are only allowed onto the island on rare occasions: either on one of the bi-annual handover days, when the island is abuzz with activity during the official ceremony, with flags, delegates, diplomats and plenty of formal pomp; or as part of ad-hoc, occasional heritage tours.

The Power Hungry podcast spotlights energy, power, innovation, and politics. Author and journalist Robert Bryce talks with top thinkers, writers, and influencers — as well as regular citizens.

• Will Scotchgard waterproof a tent?
  Scotchgard can waterproof the fly and walls of a tent, but it will not seal the seams and floor of your shelter.

• How long does it take to waterproof a tent?
  From setting up the tent to the moment you can take it off and pack it back in its bag, waterproofing an entire tent – comprising floor and tarp – takes 24 hours. If you’re only resealing the seams or fly, account for about 6 hours.

• How often do tents need waterproofing?
  It depends on how often you use the tent. Casual campers using the tent for 2-3 weeks per year on average should waterproof their tent every 2 years. If you use your tent more often, consider sealing it every 6-12 months, or whenever it leaks.

• Do you seam seal inside or outside of tent?
  You should seal the seams with seam sealant on the inside of the tent or the inner side of the fly, applying approximately ¼-inch past the seams on either side.

Canvas is naturally waterproof, and I assumed it would arrive ready to resist all the rain in the world. Unfortunately, your canvas tent will certainly leak the first time it gets wet.

You need to season your canvas tent with water, soaking it thoroughly. Then you can move on to using silicone or fluoropolymer waterproofing spray. If you do not do this, then rain will leak through the tiny holes in the canvas fibers and drench the inside of your tent. //

How to Season a Canvas Tent
Step #1. Set Your Tent Up
Step #2: Get It Wet
Step #3: Soak It Again
Step #4: Test Your Tent
Step #5: Let It Dry
Step #6: Maintain The Seasoning

How to Waterproof a Canvas Tent
Step #1: Select a Product
Step #2: Lay Your Tent Out
Step #3: Spot Clean Your Tent
Step #4: Use Your Product
Step #5: Test Your Tent
Step #6: Let It Dry

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less
by Alex Epstein

Edwin A. Locke 5.0 out of 5 stars

The best book on environmentalism I have ever read

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2022
Verified Purchase

I am a scientist (psychology), so I know how science works even though I am not a climatologist. But for many decades I have read widely in many fields including the physical sciences. I have read about twenty books and scores of articles on climate issues. For many years I suspected that something seemed wrong. There were so many contradictions. Everyone seemed to report findings, using selected data, which supported their side but not findings that contradicted it. It seemed that a political agenda was constantly mixed in with a science agenda. Soon one view became dominant: that fossil fuels were destroying the earth, maybe even in the next ten years, and needed to be abandoned to prevent a world-wide catastrophe. People who disagreed with this could be harassed, mocked, and even risked job loss. Scientific findings could only be published in some journals if they came out with the “right” results. Organizations were pressured to sell their oil stocks. Reporters for many leading newspapers learned quickly that only certain types of articles were acceptable. Opposing oil became a moral crusade, a virtual dogma. Eminent catastrophizers included: Paul Erlich, Al Gore, James Hansen, Paul Krugman, Bill McKibben, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. There have been many distortions of scientific data. But since our Constitution says we have a right to freedom of speech, all critics of the anti-oil crusade could not be silenced. Some catastrophizers openly advocate being dishonest in order to further their agenda. Epstein refutes all the crtics. He presents a list of recommendation for evaluating climate claims

Epstein’s book is a brilliant antidote to the assault on fossil fuels. Its theme is that fossil fuels are one of the greatest benefits to human civilization ever and that there is, for now, no viable substitute. Epstein covers all the relevant issues from every angle, so I will only give a brief summary here.

1. The earth, absent the benefits of machines powered by fossil fuels and electrical energy created by fossil fuels is a very dangerous place, characterized by mass poverty, recurring starvation, death from the cold, poor medical care, poor sanitation, exhausting manual labor, bad water, inadequate shelter, devastating natural disasters, and low life expectancy.
2. The nations that suffer the most today are those that lack such technology. Without fossil fuels, people who lack them will keep suffering because they will stay poor.
3. Coal, oil, and gas are responsible for almost all the energy created today-- about 80%. Solar and wind provide only about 3%. Fossil fuels have allowed humanity, insofar it has advocated reason, to master nature (following the laws of nature and science) thus enabling the human race to multiply and thrive.
4. Fossils fuels are abundant in nature: plentiful, cheap, and reliable when production and transportation are not opposed by government regulations. They supply on demand electricity.
5. The championed substitutes for fossil fuels are: wind, solar and batteries. Epstein notes, as have others, the many problems with these sources. Windmills do not work without wind. Solar panels do not work without sunlight. Batteries are nowhere near cost-effective enough or efficient enough to store and provide sufficient energy when the wind isn’t blowing enough and the sun isn’t shining enough. So in practice, solar, wind, and batteries are not replacements for fossil-fueled grids, they are inefficient, cost-adding add-ons to fossil-fueled grids.
6. Epstein calls the idea that all power would be created by wind, solar, and batteries to be divorced from reality, just from the aspect of cost alone.
7. What about pollution? Epstein shows that it has been decreasing for decades thanks to technology. Further, he identifies the ways that side effects can be mitigated.
8. What other alternatives are there for power? Epstein favors two: waterpower from dams and nuclear. Both are safe, dependable, non-polluting and do not take up much land or harm birds and animals. Unfortunately, both are roundly opposed by the public. He shows that biomass and geothermal are at least decades away from becoming even significant supplements to fossil fuels, let alone replacements.
9. There is a long section on dealing with climate side effects including evidence that fossil fuels lead to fewer storm-related deaths, e.g., floods. Sea level rise today is radically less than in previous history (and can be coped with) and the danger has been greatly exaggerated as with the case of ocean acidification.
10. The book ends with a call for freedom of production and a critique of companies, including oil companies, which have conceded the anti-fossil agenda.

I consider this book to be, by far, the best—most honest, most accurate-- statement of the fossil fuel issue written so far. But each reader will have to decide what to believe by using their own rational judgment.

By Joe McQueen jmcqueen@kpcmedia.com
Nov 5, 2021

Pictured are the three students from Central Noble who were recipients of the American Degree, the highest level of membership that a FFA member can achieve; Breanna Hull, Thad Foster and Sierra Gonzalez.

The following is from an interview with GB News, which Epstein posted on Facebook, he argued “why COP 26 is not a progressive scientific conference but an anti-human, primitive-religious attempt to commit mass genocide,” according to his video description.16
“If you don’t admit that today’s world is amazing because of fossil fuels, you are totally unqualified to make any predictions about the future because either you are anti-human or ignorant.”

Epstein added:

“The fact that we have an impact doesn’t even mean that it’s net negative. I think the jury is out because there’s a lot of beneficial warming and then greening is good.” //

“I am actually an outspoken global warming affirmer. The real point of contention is not whether there is some global warming and whether human beings have some climate impact, but a) whether warming is a problem and b) whether fossil fuel energy should be restricted.

“When catastrophists label me and others ‘climate deniers,’ they aren’t trying to accurately characterize our views–they’re trying eliminate opposition to their political policies.”

April 2016

“If we look at what has been scientifically demonstrated vs. what has been speculated, the climate impact of CO2 is real — but mild and manageable.”

[…] while fossil-fuel use has only a mild warming impact, it has an enormous protecting impact. Nature doesn’t give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous. It gives us an ever-changing, dangerous climate that we need to make safe. And the driver behind sturdy buildings, affordable heating and air-conditioning, drought relief and everything else that keeps us safe from climate is cheap, plentiful, reliable energy, overwhelmingly from fossil fuels.”19

Environment
Climate change scepticism
Climate sceptics – who gets paid what?
Leaked documents show US thinktank the Heartland Institute has been making payments to experts and scientists to cast doubt on climate science. Here, we profile some of the figures