Hello folks,

For my Linux server backups, i really love BorgBackup but i'm looking now for something that natively support S3. I've heard few good things about Kopia and feel like it's the way i may go. I would prefer something free so Duplicacy, which i use and like a lot for my home personnal usage, is not an option. I also want to use encryption, compression and dedup.

What do you use for your backups that support S3 as backend?

On the side i've read few discussions regarding encryption methods, looks like some use good encryption, some others use double encryption which sounds a bad idea (and also use of OpenSSL) regarding some people with security interest, some use also homemade encryption while there is existing good encryption algorithms. I'm not that used to advanced security like that but as most of us i try to make the best choices for long term use.

In the past i've used a lot BackupPC. Useful frontend when your team is not that advanced with SSH, you can keep the compression locally to the BackupPC server even if you get file from remote, etc.

What's your input?

Thanks a lot for all your advices and app sharing!

There are more than 100 types of malaria parasite. The RTS,S vaccine targets the one that is most deadly and most common in Africa: plasmodium falciparum.

Trials, reported in 2015, showed the vaccine could prevent around four in 10 cases of malaria, three in 10 severe cases and lead to the number of children needing blood transfusions falling by a third.

However, there were doubts the vaccine would work in the real world as it requires four doses to be effective. The first three are given a month apart at five, six and seven months old, and a final booster is needed at around 18 months.

The findings of the pilots were discussed by two expert advisory groups at the WHO on Wednesday.

The results, from more than 2.3 million doses, showed:

• the vaccine was safe and still led to a 30% reduction in severe malaria
• it reached more than two-thirds of children who don't have a bed-net to sleep under
• there was no negative impact on other routine vaccines or other measures to prevent malaria
• the vaccine was cost-effective

"From a scientific perspective, this is a massive breakthrough, from a public health perspective this is a historical feat," said Dr Pedro Alonso, the director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.

"We've been looking for a malaria vaccine for over 100 years now, it will save lives and prevent disease in African children." //

Having just seen the world develop Covid vaccines in record time, you might be wondering why it has taken so long with malaria?

Malaria is caused by a parasite which is far more insidious and sophisticated than the virus that causes Covid. Comparing them is like comparing a person and a cabbage.

The malaria parasite has evolved to evade our immune system. That's why you have to catch malaria time and time again before starting to get even limited protection.

It has a complicated life cycle across two species (humans and mosquitoes), and even inside our body it morphs between different forms as it infects liver cells and red blood cells.

Developing a malaria vaccine is like nailing jelly to a wall and RTS,S is only able to target the sporozoite form of the parasite (this is the stage between being bitten by a mosquito and the parasite getting to the liver).

It is why the vaccine is 'only' 40% effective. However, this is still a remarkable success and paves the way for the development of yet more potent vaccines.

Before you waste a bunch of money on some crossover you're not even excited about, consider this useful truck.

The 2022 Ford Maverick is one of those rare vehicles that almost impresses me more for what’s not there than what is there. That’s because what’s not there is something that’s pervasive in not just the automotive world, but so many aspects of life: bullshit. The bullshit content of the new Maverick is near zero. When the bullshit is stripped away, what’s left behind is an extraordinarily clever, honest, flexible, practical, efficient, and appealing machine, and that machine is even cheap. I really like what the Maverick is.

The Lincoln Continental died last year, with production ending almost a year ago now. And yet there are apparently still brand new Lincoln Continentals to be found at dealers. Ford said Monday that it sold all of 14 Continentals last month. //

I have many questions about these 14 Continentals, mainly: Who the hell is buying a Lincoln Continental in 2021? Who are the 14 classiest people in America? Or is it one extremely cool person who bought 14 Lincoln Continentals? Is it a fleet, and where can I find this fleet?

Also, why now? //

If you are one of September’s Continental buyers, please show thyself.

Syniverse, a company that routes hundreds of billions of text messages every year for hundreds of carriers including Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, revealed to government regulators that a hacker gained unauthorized access to its databases for five years. Syniverse and carriers have not said whether the hacker had access to customers' text messages. //

Syniverse says its intercarrier messaging service processes over 740 billion messages each year for over 300 mobile operators worldwide. Though Syniverse likely isn't a familiar name to most cell phone users, the company plays a key role in ensuring that text messages get to their destination.

There’s more than one way to tan a deer hide. This one uses a pressure washer //

When most people hear of tanning a deer hide, it makes them automatically think of the traditional method using brains. Though that is definitely still one way to tan a deer hide, there are easier ways that are just as efficient and cheaper than sending it to a tannery.

With these seven steps, tanning a deer hide is an obtainable feat.
Wait! Don't throw those deer hides in the garbage can!

Before you toss that heap of hide you just peeled from your deer, why not preserve it for display or use?

Follow these step by step directions and see why the way to tan hides may be a bit easier than you think. Sure a taxidermist could do it, but it doesn't have to be that expensive. It's not all hard work, and the payoff is pretty awesome.

Kopia uploads directories and files to remote storage called Repository and maintains a set of historical point-in-time snapshot records based on defined policies.

Kopia uses content-addressable storage for snapshots, which has many benefits:

• Each snapshot is always incremental, no data included in previous snapshots is ever re-uploaded to the repository based on file content.
• Multiple copies of the same file will be stored once. This is known as de-duplication.
• After moving or renaming even large files, Kopia can recognize that they have the same content and won’t need to upload them again.
• Multiple users or computers can share same repository: if users share the same files, they are also uploaded only once.

NOTE: that there is currently no access control mechanism within repository - everybody with access to repository can see everyone’s data.

Encrypted backups made easy.

Backups with strict access controls, strong encryption, data deduplication, incremental uploads and offline decryption keys.

Bupstash is a tool for encrypted backups - if you need secure backups, Bupstash is the tool for you.

Bupstash was designed to have:

• Efficient deduplication - Bupstash can store thousands of encrypted directory snapshots using a fraction of the space encrypted tarballs would require.
• Strong privacy - Data is encrypted client side and the repository never needs has access to the decryption keys.
• Offline decryption keys - Backups do not require the decryption key be anywhere near an at-risk server or computer.
• Key/value tagging with search - all while keeping the tags fully encrypted.
• Great performance on slow networks - Bupstash really strives to work well on high latency networks like cellular and connections to far-off lands.
• Secure remote access controls - Ransomware, angry spouses, and disgruntled business partners will be powerless to delete your remote backups.
• Efficient incremental backups - Bupstash knows what it backed up last time and skips that work.
• Fantastic performance with low ram usage - Bupstash won't bog down your production servers.
• Safety against malicious attacks - Bupstash is written in a memory safe language to dramatically reduce the attack surface over the network.

Stability and Backwards Compatibility

Bupstash is alpha software, while all efforts are made to keep bupstash bug free, we currently recommend using bupstash for making REDUNDANT backups where failure can be tolerated.

We spoke with police officers around the country, and their answers offer a glimpse into the great highs and debilitating lows they experience as they try to serve our communities. Their jobs have been put under a spotlight in recent years––here's what they want you to know.

Legally the Protec Elite and Ruby Exclusive key profiles have the same level of key control, no dealer other than the dealer who originally issued the keys (or the Factory) can cut more keys. Technically, with the standard Protec Elite key profile, all Abloy Protec/Protec2 dealers in the US have access to this key blank. This is a slight security risk as it does mean they could duplicate a Protec/Protec2 Elite key if they wanted to (but they would break their contract with Abloy in doing so and we have yet to hear of a dealer doing so). Our Ruby Exclusive key profile is a key blank that is only issued to us, which removes the option for another Abloy dealer to duplicate your ruby key as they do not have access to the key blanks. A Protec Elite key will not even fit in a Ruby Exclusive lock. The Ruby Exclusive is a very secure level of key control giving peace of mind to even the most worried lock owner.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made a stunning announcement about having the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices coordinate with federal, state, and local law enforcement to deal with “threats” of violence against school boards and people working in schools. //

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has championed the rights of parents to speak on behalf of their own children — something that should be self-evident and unquestionable — threw down the gauntlet, speaking out against this troubling announcement from Garland.

“Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation,” DeSantis tweeted. “Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”

DeSantis has stood up for parents’ rights in the battle over pandemic restrictions, with DeSantis fighting for the parents’ rights to speak on whether to have their children masked. //

RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Biden's Education Secretary Cardona says parents should not be the "primary stakeholder" in their kids' education.

12:55 PM · Sep 30, 2021

One of the fossil fuel and plastic industries’ favorite “solutions” to the plastic pollution crisis may finally be coming under greater scrutiny from the federal government.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, formally announced it was considering tighter regulations for pyrolysis and gasification — controversial processes that are associated with “chemical recycling.” Industry advocates have named these processes as key steps toward building a circular economy — one that minimizes waste — but environmental groups have called them an “industry shell game” meant to keep single-use plastics in production.

So, when I first started gassing up my own car, I used anything that was cheapest — much to the horror of the man who would become my husband. Because in America, 85 octane fuel could actually void your warranty.

In high-altitude areas, 85 octane fuel is offered because it’s less likely to cause engine knock since the air is far less dense — but this specific octane is still advised against in the owner’s manuals of newer vehicles (as in, basically, cars made within the last 30 years).

That’s because of the construction between older and newer vehicles. Older engines had mechanical control of fuel injection and ignition timing — and that depended heavily on your manifold pressure. In higher altitudes, you’re not going to get the pressure you need because the ambient pressure is low.

Newer engines, though, have electronic fuel injection and ignition timing — which enables those newer engines to compensate for any low ambient air pressure. You’ll still lose power, but the engine is able to compensate for any losses. So, the problem won’t be quite as obvious as it would be with a car from, say, 1962.

Hunters frequently discard deerskins because they do not know how to tan them or wish to avoid paying exorbitant fees for professional processing. Although you are unlikely to achieve professional-caliber results on your first attempt, it is possible for beginners to produce usable – if not perfect – hides that are suitable for making clothes or accessories.

Items you will need
Sharp knife
Dull knife
5 pounds of pickling salt
5-gallon bucket
White vinegar
Stirring stick
Towel
Tanning oil

We all rely on data to help us get our job done and enhance our life. Think of business documents, personal pictures, source code for software projects, tax receipts or health records. Some of this data now lives in the cloud. You can sync your pictures or keep your source code on Github. This has left many of us with the impression that someone else is responsible for keeping our data safe.

Since you are reading this, you probably know better. Cloud accounts can be blocked or compromised. Syncing something is not a backup, because deletions are synced as well. Even well-run data centers can burn down.1 That’s why backups are still important if you have any kind of data that’s important. Just consider this: if file or folder X was gone. Would it bother you? Could you still do your job effectively? If the answer is yes for any data you keep on your Macbook, then read on.

Having a structured backup strategy will not just save your precious family pictures, but also ensure business continuity. This article has a list of practical steps and generic templates you can use to make this task as simple as possible.
Goals

After completing the steps in this article, you will have the following:

1. A list of your data assets.
2. Where they are located and how they are backed up.
3. Identified common errors regarding backup correlations, security and frequency.

Backups vs. Archives

This article will mainly discuss Backups, rather than Archives. The main difference between the two:

• Backups are a copy of production data that’s frequently updated without changing the source data. Main challenge is to keep up with changing source data and restore quickly if needed.
• Archives are generally accessed less frequently and the source data is deleted after creating the archive. E.g. tape storage with old accounting data. Main challenge is longevity of the data medium. //

Backup Strategy Template on Google Drive ↩ ↩

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cuTM849Fu6palPUG5SgUJrzw2J4z_hq71g-jZPY4hcw/edit?usp=sharing

Encrypted Backup Shootout (acha.ninja)

https://acha.ninja/blog/encrypted_backup_shootout/

aDfbrtVt 9 months ago [–]

I get that performance is interesting to graph, but it's very much secondary in importance when compared to the backup solution being bulletproof. I've found encrypted Borg very difficult to get wrong and setup is very simple. I've also successfully recovered two systems with the tool without issue.

Not saying that Borg is necessarily the best solution, just that we should evaluate the important metrics. ///

Good discussion re: backup software, including comments from tarsnap author cperciva

Recently I have been spending time on improving the performance of bupstash (my encrypted backup tool), and wanted to compare it to some existing tools to try and find its relative performance in the backup tool landscape.

This post compares bupstash, restic, borg backup and plain old tar + gzip + GPG across a series of simple benchmarks.

What do all these tools have in common?

• They encrypt data at rest.
• They compress data.
• They have some form of incremental and/or deduplicated snapshotting.
• They are all pretty great backup systems.

Just because you got pulled over doesn’t mean that you’re going to wind up with a ticket, says Hamburger. “As soon as you realize you’ve caught a traffic cop’s attention, you’re going to want to slow down, stay calm, and think polite thoughts because there’s a right way to talk to a policeman, and a wrong way. The right way is to be unfailingly polite. The wrong way is any other way.”

A few rules of thumb:

• Don’t get out of your car. No matter how long it takes the officer to make his way to your car, just stay put—because whatever you might be feeling when you’re stopped by a cop, you should assume the cop is concerned for his own safety. Being a law enforcement officer is a dangerous job. “Even with a weapon, every traffic stop a police officer makes could be the last,” Hamburger explains.
• Follow instructions to the letter. This shows you’re making an effort cooperate, and it goes a long way to alleviating the police officer’s own worries concerning the stop.
• Don’t confess. Anything you say can be used against you in traffic court. Instead, as politely as possible, talk about how safe of a driver you generally are and how you understand that driving safely is of critical importance. “You have 30 seconds to convey that you’re a safe-driving, law-abiding citizen,” so use it wisely, Hamburger emphasizes. If whatever you did had a safety reason attached to it, let the officer know.
• Ask politely to be released with just a warning. It can’t hurt as long as you don’t flirt or otherwise act smarmy. The key phrase here is “ask politely.”

President Joe Biden’s migrant crisis has resulted in at least hundreds of deaths.

Recent reports indicate that a significant number of migrants attempting to make the journey to the southern border have died along the way. The issue is migrants attempting to make it to the southern border by walking through the Darien Gap, which CBS News describes as “a 60-mile stretch of lawless jungle.” //

Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies said the administration and the groups encouraging more migration to the southern border “should be ashamed of what is happening.” She told Breitbart News:

Biden’s policy is so wrong, not only in the sense of the law, but morally wrong, because his policies are motivating people across the globe to turn over their life savings and put themselves and their children in the hands of a criminal smuggling organization, to take a very dangerous track through jungles, over danger dangerous bodies of water, breaking the laws of multiple countries on the way, putting themselves at risk for extortion, assault, and many other forms of harm. //

A State Department official in July told Breitbart News:

In Panama, through our international organization partners, the United States provides basic humanitarian aid to asylum seekers, refugees, and vulnerable migrants, and supports efforts to increase access to local services.

Growing up, we had a 1980 Honda Accord four-door sedan, a rolling tribute to rationality if there ever was one. As reliable as noon and almost as exciting, the Accord was a great, sensible car that defined Honda in my young brain. Perhaps that’s why I’m so smitten with the Honda Vamos, the least-rational four-wheeled Honda ever made. It’s also arguably the least car Honda ever made and sold, at least in terms of how much raw “car” you get for your money. //

Honda made their fun car out of their interesting little mid-engined T360 pickup truck, the first four-wheeled vehicle Honda built, starting in 1963.

The T360 was a really clever design for a little truck, with the engine low and in the middle and plenty of room above it for cab and bed. When the Honda Vamos was introduced in 1970, Honda had only been building cars for seven years, and the tool they used to turn the T360 into the Vamos seems to have been an eraser.

I just finished a 3,000-mile road trip from Los Angeles to upstate New York in a U-Haul truck and Mitsubishi Montero (I was helping my friend and former Jalop Andrew Collins move). Since I need to somehow get back to my house in Michigan, I had no choice but to buy a car. So on a whim, I purchased a 1965 Plymouth Valiant, and though it may look like just a standard old 1960s sedan, trust me: There was a method to my madness.

Andrew keeps telling me that there is a cheaper, easier way to travel long distances — something having to do with “1/2 ρ V2 × S × CL” — but I’m just not buying it. We all know that the most effective way to go anywhere is to travel by Plymouth. And not just any Plymouth, one powered by the Leaning Tower of Power.

That’s the nickname for the most unkillable American motor in history: The Chrysler slant six — so named for the 30-degree angle that its cylinder bores make with the Z-axis

Learning how to tan a deer hide is a rite of passage, cementing blood ties to our hunting forebearers who depended upon skins for warmth and who respected slain animals by never letting any part go to waste. Using an alum solution (you can find ammonia alum at pharmacies) departs from the traditional method of tanning hides—ancestral hunters used brains instead—but it will render your deer hide soft and supple. The reward is a memento that serves a dual purpose as a beautiful wall hanging or a comforter for a winter night.