"Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you" from Apollo 8

On the 24th of December 1968, in what was the most watched television broadcast at the time, the crew of Apollo 8 read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman recited Genesis chapter one, verses 1 through 10, using the King James Version text.

Read about & listen to this truly "out of this world" Christmas message at wikipedia

Wishing everyone a truly happy & blessed Christmas. May God bless you!

Crews tackle fire in Portsmouth (Albert Road, Southsea) dry cleaners

A fire has destroyed a dry cleaners in Portsmouth.

Crews were called to Albert Road, Southsea after the fire broke out in the shop shortly before 06:00 GMT.

About 40 firefighters in 10 fire engines with an aerial ladder were used to bring the fire in the terraced building under control.

The road remains closed both ways between Victoria Road South and Fawcett Road. Motorists are advised to avoid the area.

www.bbc.co.uk

Street pastors will save NHS £13million during festive period

Street Pastors are set to save the NHS millions of pounds as they divert drunks away from A&E during the festive period.

On most British high streets a group of Christians will patrol the night time economy providing support and help for people who have had too much to drink.

Premier has calculated that street pastors will save the health service around £13 million in the month of December.

www.premier.org.uk

Blood bikers: The volunteer motorcyclists who help the NHS

Across the UK, a group of volunteer motorcyclists is helping the NHS by delivering blood. What motivates them, asks Simon Fry.

Isabel Kydd is on call for 80 hours of one week each month. At very little notice, she can be woken in the night and find herself riding a motorbike with a vital delivery for a hospital.

But she's not an NHS employee. She's just a volunteer, one of 1,400 advanced qualified riders of the Nationwide Association of Blood Bikers (NABB).

In 2013, the association's bikers responded to around 35,000 rapid transport requests from 262 UK hospitals. They are almost a Deliveroo for the NHS.

www.bbc.co.uk

NETGEAR Security Advisory: Urgent Router Firmware Updates

NETGEAR is aware of the security issue #582384 that allows unauthenticated web pages to pass form input directly to the command-line interface. A remote attacker can potentially inject arbitrary commands which are then executed by the system.

NETGEAR has tested the following products and confirmed that they are vulnerable:

R6250***

R6400***

R6700*

R6900*

R7000***

R7100LG*

R7300DST*

R7900*

R8000***

D6220*

D6400*

All products followed by a single asterisk (*) have beta firmware fixes available. 

All products followed by three asterisks (***) have production firmware fixes available.

kb.netgear.com

The Salvation Army at Christmas

This Christmas, Salvation Army centres across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland will bring joy to those who are lonely, give food and shelter to people with no home and ensure no child goes without knowing that it’s Christmas. Please, take just 30 seconds to watch our video and see for yourself the joy that your support is bringing this Christmas to people in need.

Christmas in Uganda - Advent with Compassion

Please watch this video. 

Be grateful for life, and what we take for granted in the west.

This dear girl, Lyz tells of Christmas in Uganda,

The fellowship, food, worship, excitement & anticipation.

Lyz also mentions some presents that she received in past Christmases:

a mattress, shoes, a mosquito net... 

A simple gifts that could positively change or save a life.

My prayer is that we can reflect on the true meaning of Christmas:

God's gift of Jesus to the world, to bring love & salvation to all.

And for us (mea culpa) to not fixate on the "stuff"...

A crazy thing happens to this guy at a party!

Is he drunk?

Is he in a parallel universe?

Or is this divine intervention?

Yahoo’s billion-user database reportedly sold on the Dark Web for just $300,000

Yahoo, which admitted to two separate breaches that saw 500 million users’ and then 1 billion users’ details stolen by hackers – the New York Times reports that a billion-user database was sold on the Dark Web last August for $300,000.

That’s according to Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence office at security firm InfoArmor. He told NYT that three buyers, including two prominent spammers and another who might be involved in espionage tactics purchased the entire database at the aforementioned price from a hacker group believed to based in Eastern Europe.

It’s lovely to know that it only costs $300,000 to be able to threaten a billion people’s online existence – which means each account is only worth $0.0003 to hackers who can ruin your life online in a matter of minutes.

Yahoo also doesn’t yet know who made off with all the data from the attack in 2013, which is said to be the largest breach of any company ever.

In addition to full names, passwords, birth dates and phone numbers, the database also contains security questions and backup email addresses that could help with resetting forgotten passwords.

www.thenextweb.com

Hey 2016! What happened to the love?

It's been a rough year for so much of the world.

At Christmas we ask, where is the love?

And where is the light and the hope?

Yahoo Suffers World's Biggest Hack Affecting 1 Billion Users

Yahoo has discovered a 3-year-old security breach that enabled a hacker to compromise more than 1 billion user accounts, breaking the company's own humiliating record for the biggest security breach in history.

The digital heist disclosed Wednesday occurred in August 2013, more than a year before a separate hack that Yahoo announced nearly three months ago . That breach affected at least 500 million users, which had been the most far-reaching hack until the latest revelation.

Both lapses occurred during the reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, a once-lauded leader who found herself unable to turn around the company in the four years since her arrival. Earlier this year, Yahoo agreed to sell its digital operations to Verizon Communications for $4.8 billion — a deal that may now be imperiled by the hacking revelations.

abcnews.go.com

Microsoft has just released a patch to fix the recent Windows DCHP issue

Microsoft is investigating reports that a recent Windows update is stopping some PCs from connecting to the internet.

Update (13 Dec 2016): KB3206632 was released to resolve this issue. Customers should first try restarting their PC, if they are then still unable to connect to the Internet, should then install the update. 

Visit the Windows Update FAQ for more information on keeping your PC up to date.

www.microsoft.com

SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul: My life at Mach 3.5

Some people live truly extraordinary lives, and US Air Force pilot Brian Shul is certainly one of them. Shot down and burned half to death over Cambodia, he worked his way back to the top of the game, eventually flying the most extreme aircraft ever built.

A small, select group of men had the privilege of flying the SR-71, chiefly on surveillance missions where its ability to flat-out run away from fighter planes and surface-to-air missiles gave it a perfect record – none of the 32 built was ever shot down.

And of this small group of pilots, one stands out – not for his flying skills, but as a superb storyteller. You've probably already read Brian Shul's hilarious story about trolling a fighter pilot with ground speed tower checks, and maybe you've also heard about the slowest SR-71 flyover ever attempted. Both are terrific, go read them if you haven't.

Read more at: www.newatlas.com

Microsoft just completed its $26B LinkedIn acquisition

Microsoft's deal to buy professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion has officially closed.

Microsoft announced completion of the deal, the largest in Microsoft’s history, just two days after getting the final regulatory sign-off from the European Commission, with conditions. Microsoft announced the acquisition in June, and regulators in the U.S. and other countries had already cleared the deal.

Microsoft had faced opposition from Salesforce, which had competed for LinkedIn and asked European regulators to investigate the competitive implications of the deal.

www.geekwire.com

Netgear R7000 and R6400 router - critical vulnerability

Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers and possibly other models are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection.

An exploit leveraging this vulnerability has been publicly disclosed. By convincing a user to visit a specially crafted web site, a remote unauthenticated attacker may execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on affected routers.

Exploiting this vulnerability is trivial. Users who have the option of doing so should strongly consider discontinuing use of affected devices until a fix is made available.

CERT - Computer Emergency Response Team

Windows 10 Anniversary Update bug drops Wi-Fi connections

If your Windows 10 Anniversary Update PCs (version 1607) are suddenly dropping their Wi-Fi connections and the Network Diagnostics troubleshooter is spouting "Wi-Fi doesn't have a valid IP configuration"; you're not alone.

Although the vast majority of Wi-Fi problem reports come from Win10 version 1607 systems, there are other reports of the same problem on Win 7 and 8.1 PCs using domain-connected and not-connected systems with a wide array of ISPs, routers, and network cards.

If you're having issues with Broadband / Internet access, or getting messages about "incorrect IP configuration", contact Donline for assistance.

BT or Virgin customer with networking issues? Contact Donline for help!

I've been getting lots of calls this week from clients with networking issues. 

These are usually where the ISP is either BT or Virgin.

If you are currently having issues with Broadband, or getting messages about 

"incorrect IP configuration"

contact Donline for assistance.

Child of Hope Uganda - Christmas Party

Thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to our Christmas party appeal – we're well on the way to organising an amazing party, plus gifts, a slap-up meal and clothes each.

We are 40% of the way to our goal... the party costs roughly £4 per child, and there will also be parents, siblings and local VIPs.

Chan (pictured) and all the kids love this annual event, putting on lots of dances and drama... it goes on for hours!

If you've not yet had a chance to donate, please could you help us? Just £4 will pay for a child... but feel free to give more. You can donate safely online by credit/debit card or Paypal, or you can post a cheque or donate via Justgiving.

www.childofhopeuganda.org

"Like and Comment and See What Happens to the Picture" Facebook Like-Farming Scams

A number of Facebook posts are circulating that claim that if you 'like' a picture and then type a number or a word 'something will happen' to the picture.

 A great many people who see the posts obey the instructions in the vain hope of seeing the image miraculously change in some way.

Here is what happens if you do like the picture and type the specified word or number. Absolutely nothing whatsoever! The image will not change in any way. However... 

Read more at: hoax-slayer.com

Thought for the day: The Gift of Safe Water

“And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” Matthew 10:42 ESV

In a country where one in four people lack access to safe water, these children in Rwanda are celebrating the fact they have clean water thanks to a RESPOND Initiative.

“The children are very grateful for this intervention. [They] are very happy to have clean water. And they can use it in many different ways. We have water filters, so they can drink water freely.”

Thank God that we can just turn on a tap and drink: without worrying about contracting stomach worms, dysentery, or cholera. The things that we take for granted, eh? 

www.compassionuk.org

More TalkTalk bad news: Wi-Fi router passwords stolen

TalkTalk broadband customers' wi-fi passwords have been stolen following a malware attack that blocked their internet access last week.

The researcher who discovered the issue said other details had also been taken that would let attackers pinpoint where the equipment was being used, making more targeted hacks possible.

Donline note: frankly I'm amazed that people still use TalkTalk. 

If you have had enough of this shoddy ISP - contact me!

www.bbc.co.uk

Quicksilver: the motorcycle that held the electric land speed title for 38 years

The great tale of how things used to get done. Climbing a power pole with five sets of jumper leads, a young Mike Corbin tapped into mains power to charge up his electric bike for a Bonneville run. Powered by silver "borrowed" from a US Navy vault, Quicksilver went on to set a land speed record that stood for an amazing 38 years. Here's his story.

www.newatlas.com

Crooks can guess Visa details in six seconds

Criminals can work out the card number, expiry date and security code for a Visa debit or credit card in as little as six seconds using guesswork, researchers have found.

Experts from Newcastle University said it was “frighteningly easy” to do with a laptop and an internet connection.

Fraudsters use a so-called Distributed Guessing Attack to get around security features put in place to stop online fraud, and this may have been the method used in the recent Tesco Bank hack.

According to a study published in the academic journal IEEE Security & Privacy, that meant fraudsters could use computers to systematically fire different variations of security data at hundreds of websites simultaneously.

Within seconds, by a process of elimination, the criminals could verify the correct card number, expiry date and the three-digit security number on the back of the card.

www.independent.co.uk

The Shack

Based on the New York Times best-selling novel, The Shack takes us on a father’s uplifting spiritual journey. 

After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips (Sam Worthington) spirals into a deep depression causing him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Despite his doubts, Mack journeys to the shack and encounters an enigmatic trio of strangers led by a woman named Papa (Octavia Spencer). Through this meeting, Mack finds important truths that will transform his understanding of his tragedy and change his life forever.

The Shack Trailer

TalkTalk and Post Office routers hit by cyber-attack

Thousands of TalkTalk and Post Office customers have had their internet access cut by an attack targeting certain types of internet routers.

A spokeswoman for the Post Office told the BBC that the problem began on Sunday and had affected about 100,000 of its customers.

Talk Talk also confirmed that some of its customers had been affected, and it was working on a fix.

It is not yet known who is responsible for the attack.

www.bbc.co.uk