Monroe

I have not checked this version out lately ... this is what I am currently using: uBlock Origin Legacy v1.16.4.35 This is an unofficial, special mod provided by @AstroSkipper. Is this a 'thumbs up' ? ... or am I behind. ...

Just for reading but interesting. Warning :The Dangerous Substance That Can Crumble a Passenger Plane to Dust https://www.jfeed.com/news-world/mercury-aircraft-danger Ariel Sharfer // JUN 3, 2026 It destroys aircraft metal in seconds, penetrates everything, and threatens even the strongest airplanes in the world. What is the scientific secret behind the strict ban on bringing mercury onto flights, and how can a single chemical reaction turn an airplane's fuselage into dust within minutes? Have you ever wondered why airport security checkpoint personnel insist so strictly on confiscating old thermometers? The answer is not just related to toxicity, but to an existential danger to the structure of the aircraft itself. The traditional mercury thermometer is based on a glass tube containing mercury, which expands and rises within a narrow column as the temperature increases. When the mercury heats up and its volume grows, it has no room to expand in the bottom reservoir, forcing it up the tube. In medical thermometers, known as maximum thermometers, there is a constriction at the base that prevents the mercury from dropping back down, allowing the temperature to be read until the device is shaken vigorously. Mercury is the "silent assassin" of aluminum, the metal from which most modern aircraft are constructed. The aluminum in an airplane is naturally protected by a thin, tough layer of oxide that prevents it from breaking down. However, when mercury comes into contact with exposed aluminum, even from a minor scratch, it creates a mixture known as an amalgam. This amalgam disrupts the protective layer of the aluminum and exposes it to the air. Once the fresh aluminum is exposed to oxygen, it begins to oxidize at an incredibly rapid pace, creating brittle, white, feather-like structures of aluminum oxide. Why Is Everyone So Afraid of It? The truly terrifying part of this process is that the mercury is not consumed during the reaction. It simply continues to eat through layer after layer of metal without stopping until it eventually evaporates. A single tiny drop of mercury can cause massive structural damage, and a small hole in the aircraft fuselage is all it takes to create a catastrophic situation during a flight. more ...

I also didn't like their browser. My main search engine for now is Startpage and then DuckDuckGo. Startpage advertises : 'The world’s most private search engine.' ... I don't know, have to take their word on that I guess. https://www.startpage.com/en/ I just use links separate from any browser. ...

DuckDuckGo Installs Surge 30.5% After Google’s AI Search Overhaul 06/01/2026 // Chase Codewell https://www.naturalnews.com/2026-06-01-duckduckgo-installs-surge-after-google-search-overhaul.html DuckDuckGo's US app installs surged 30.5% week-over-week on May 25, 2026, following Google's announcement at its I/O developer conference that it would replace traditional search listings with an AI-driven agent, according to data from app analytics firms cited by ReclaimTheNet and TechCrunch. The growth marked a significant shift in user behavior, with many citing dissatisfaction with Google's new direction. The surge began shortly after Google's May 2026 keynote, during which the company described the overhaul as the "biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago," according to TechCrunch's report. The new system, which the company called an AI agent, answers queries, executes tasks, and runs background monitoring functions without explicit user opt-in, according to the announcement. Between May 20 and May 25, DuckDuckGo's US app installs climbed an average of 18.1% week over week compared to the prior period, according to ReclaimTheNet. more .....

This article dated today 21 May 2026 ... for reading. https://www.naturalnews.com/2026-05-21-game-changing-battery-breakthrough-gotions-sodium-ion-revolution.html The Game-Changing Battery Breakthrough We’ve Been Waiting For: Gotion’s Sodium-Ion Revolution 05/21/2026 // Mike Adams On May 17, 2026, Volkswagen-backed Gotion High-Tech launched its dedicated sodium-ion battery brand, Gnascent, at its 15th Global Technology Conference. This is not a lab experiment. Gigawatt-hour-scale production lines are already running in Tangshan and Hefei, and mass production begins in the fourth quarter of this year. ...

https://www.techspot.com/news/111434-tofu-brine-could-power-safer-batteries-last-decades.html Tofu Brine could power safer batteries that last decades, researchers say A new neutral-electrolyte battery survives more than 120,000 cycles without fire risk By Skye Jacobs Today (Feb 23, 2026) Bottom line: A mixture most people associate with tofu production could soon help make safer, longer-lasting batteries. Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong and Southern University of Science and Technology have built a water-based power cell that runs on tofu brine – the mineral-rich solution left behind after pressing soy curds. The design replaces the complex, flammable chemistry of lithium-ion batteries with an electrolyte that's as safe as saltwater. In lab tests, the prototype endured more than 120,000 charge cycles, an endurance record that far exceeds today's commercial standards. Typical electric-vehicle batteries degrade after just a few thousand cycles – even long-duration grid systems seldom survive beyond ten thousand. ...

I know very little about 'AI' ... just a little here, just a little there. I do know that my electric bill went up last year ... supposedly from all the data centers being built and coming online. This article is interesting and disturbing if all true. Just to add: The article came from here ... https://citizenfreepress.com/ Something Big Is Happening By Matt Shumer • Feb 9, 2026 https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening + Some points from the article ... For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn't just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise. Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch... more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest. I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave. + Second point ... How fast this is actually moving Let me make the pace of improvement concrete, because I think this is the part that's hardest to believe if you're not watching it closely. In 2022, AI couldn't do basic arithmetic reliably. It would confidently tell you that 7 × 8 = 54. By 2023, it could pass the bar exam. By 2024, it could write working software and explain graduate-level science. By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world said they had handed over most of their coding work to AI. On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era. If you haven't tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you. + Some extra ... Amodei has said that AI models "substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks" are on track for 2026 or 2027. AI is now building the next AI There's one more thing happening that I think is the most important development and the least understood. On February 5th, OpenAI released GPT-5.3 Codex. In the technical documentation, they included this: "GPT-5.3-Codex is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself. The Codex team used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment, and diagnose test results and evaluations." Read that again. The AI helped build itself. This isn't a prediction about what might happen someday. This is OpenAI telling you, right now, that the AI they just released was used to create itself. One of the main things that makes AI better is intelligence applied to AI development. And AI is now intelligent enough to meaningfully contribute to its own improvement. ...

Are We Still in the Last Ice Age ??? Climate change just a hoax for some to get very rich. I don't buy into global warming on a large scale ... the Earth gets cold then hot and cold again. Over a span of a person's lifetime ... 60 to 80 years, which is nothing, it could be hot, it could be cold or in the middle. A lot of 'hucksters' got very rich or getting rich pushing this junk. They will die off (not soon enough!) and new ones will pop up talking all this nonsense again for another generation. Most of the dumbbells have never worked a day in their life and live off the population dumb enough to listen to them. It's all being part of the Earth and when certain events happen. Unfortunately we don't live long enough to experience everything ... it may be hot for most of our life or maybe cooler. A volcano or several may erupt and change the climate for a time, as happened in 1816. It's the luck of the draw when we are born to spend a few years on Earth. Some scientists think we are still coming out of the last Ice Age. https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/ask-a-scientist-about-our-environment/how-did-the-ice-age-end Geologist Ro Kinzler answers this question: When and how did the ice age end? Could another one start? It turns out that we are most likely in an "ice age" now. So, in fact, the last ice age hasn't ended yet! Scientists call this ice age the Pleistocene Ice Age. It has been going on since about 2.5 million years ago (and some think that it's actually part of an even longer ice age that started as many as 40 million years ago). melting icicles We are probably living in an ice age right now! But Earth's climate doesn't stay cold during the entire ice age. The curious thing about ice ages is that the temperature of Earth's atmosphere doesn't stay cold the entire time. Instead, the climate flip-flops between what scientists call "glacial periods" and "interglacial periods." Glacial periods last tens of thousands of years. Temperatures are much colder, and ice covers more of the planet. On the other hand, interglacial periods last only a few thousand years and the climate conditions are similar to those on Earth today. We are in an interglacial period right now. It began at the end of the last glacial period, about 10,000 years ago. ------------------------------------------------- ... then there's the 'Little Ice Age' ... commonly applied to the broader period 1300 - 1850. The Little Ice Age followed the Medieval Warming Period (roughly 900 - 1300 ce) and preceded the present period of warming that began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age Then this story from 1816 but caused by a volcano eruption in 1815 ... 1816 - The Year Without Summer (U.S. National Park Service) https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/1816-the-year-without-summer.htm Remembering Vermont's 6-inch snowstorm in June 1816. https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2022/06/08/remembering-vermont-june-snowstorm-1816/7544554001/ Predicting Snow for the Summer of 1816 https://www.almanac.com/predicting-snow-summer-1816 Would you welcome snow in the middle of summer? Here’s a peculiar prediction: A July forecast of 'rain, hail, and snow' mistakenly appeared in The 1816 Old Farmer’s Almanac. Enjoy this oldie but goodie: Robert B. Thomas, the Almanac’s founder, recalled the books and had new ones printed, but news of that forecast had gotten out. He became the subject of much ridicule - until July brought rain, hail, and snow throughout New England! I always kept my eye out for copies of the 1816 edition. When I occasionally find one, in some antiques shop or sent to me by a reader, I immediately turn to the July and August calendar pages to see whether they contain the famous snow forecasts Thomas supposedly made for that summer. 1816, the Year Without Summer https://historicipswich.net/2025/06/25/1816-the-year-without-summer/ The year 1816 was known as 'The Cold Year' and 'The Year Without a Summer'. In our area, it was called 'Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death' and 'the Summer of Mittens'. Throughout New England, there was frost in every month of the year. The winter had been normal, but in April and May, the cold never went away. Trees remained leafless and brown, and oak trees failed to grow at all, deducible from the missing growth ring for that year. Small migratory birds died, their bodies littering the fields. The sky was hazy with a sulfurous tinge. On June 5, a heat wave raised the temperature in Ipswich to 92°, but that afternoon a cold front swept across New England and the temperature fell to 43° by the next morning. For the next four days, there were severe frosts along the Eastern seaboard, and snow was recorded in some locations. By the 9th of June, ice began to form on water left standing outside overnight. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings continued throughout the summer. ...

Just for reading ... these articles posted by this person are usually informative. I just got another notice in the mail that I may have had medical information released by someone no longer working at a large medical organization ... of course not just me but I guess many others are also affected. A few years ago I had the same thing happen, a communications company was involved in a breach. I filled out the forms required online and then got a letter in the mail some time later after the settlement was agreed to. They were sorry but I would be receiving nothing ... there were no 'funds' left to pay anybody. Of course I'm sure the attorneys got paid and then whatever was left was soon exhausted for most of the remaining people ... a waste of time. This new one offers a possible cash settlement or 'one year' of free credit monitoring. Just a 'wild prediction' ... no cash, the attorneys will get most of it. https://www.foxnews.com/tech/5-myths-about-identity-theft-put-your-data-risk 5 myths about identity theft that put your data at risk Why quiet data exposure, not big breaches, is the real driver behind modern identity theft. Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report Fox News / January 28, 2026 Most people think identity theft starts with a massive hack. In reality, it usually starts much more quietly, with bits of personal information you didn't even realize were public: old addresses, family connections, phone numbers and shopping habits. All are sitting on data broker sites that most people have never heard of. During Identity Theft Awareness Week, organized by the Federal Trade Commission, it's a good time to clear up some dangerous myths that keep putting people at risk, especially retirees, families and anyone who thinks they're "careful enough." Let's break them down. ...

Thanks for the input. I'm going to give it a try. I liked what I read about it with respect to Windows 10 / 11. I didn't want to really use ZoneAlarm but that's how it worked out. It will probably be hard trying to get ZA off my computer with everything that it installs. Also thanks to NullEntity for the 'thumbs up' comment. ...

When I set up my Win 7 notebook two years ago I had wanted to use TinyWall as a firewall ... it was listed as a simple firewall that worked. However, it was listed for only Windows 11 / 10 so I went with an older version of ZoneAlarm that worked with Win 7. It works good as just a firewall, no complaints. Just two days ago I discovered that there was an older TinyWall version that did work with Win 7. https://tinywall.pados.hu/ TinyWall is a lightweight, user-friendly, and secure firewall for Windows. It is also completely free. Under FAQ: The latest version of TinyWall runs on Intel- or AMD-based Windows 11 / 10. An older version, TinyWall 3.2.5, also supports Windows 8.1 / 8 / 7. Just asking if anyone is using TinyWall 3.2.5 on their Win 7 setup and if you have any comments, good or bad? Thanks ...

I recently came across: Microsoft Visual C++ Redist 2015-2019 for Windows XP. I posted about it with a link in the 'OpenSSL for Windows XP' thread. I don't fully understand the 'OpenSSL' idea but doing a search I came across this version of Microsoft Visual C++. Is this version of any use here? It did install on my Windows XP setup. Everything below is from the link. Microsoft Visual C++ Redist 2015-2019 for Windows XP Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 v16.7 Redistributable v14.27.29114 XP https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2883-microsoft-visual-c-redist-2015-2019-for-windows-xp/ About This File: This is the official installer for Visual C++ Redist 2015-2019 downloaded directly from Microsoft's website. This version is the last one to support Windows XP, even though Microsoft links to an older version. There was never a 2015-2022 redistributable installer for Windows XP. This is intended for Windows XP since that Operating System is good for older games and EAX support. This will ensure the latest redistributable is installed on the system for those games to use. Zip file contains installers for x86, x64, and arm64 systems. Just run the one you need. For x64 systems install both x86 and x64. What's New in Version 14.29.30139 Released March 22, 2024 Provided a newer version than what the Microsoft website linked to by default, I have confirmed it installable on Windows XP. Previous version can still be downloaded just in case. ...

Just for reading ... not much of a chrome person. https://www.foxnews.com/tech/malicious-chrome-extensions-caught-stealing-sensitive-data Malicious Chrome extensions caught stealing sensitive data Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report / January 5, 2026 Chrome extensions are supposed to make your browser more useful, but they've quietly become one of the easiest ways for attackers to spy on what you do online. Security researchers recently uncovered two Chrome extensions that have been doing exactly that for years. These extensions looked like harmless proxy tools, but behind the scenes, they were hijacking traffic and stealing sensitive data from users who trusted them. What makes this case worse is where these extensions were found. Both were listed on Chrome's official extension marketplace. ... just adding, the comments at the bottom of the article page are many and interesting. They number around 393 at this time. They take a little time to load, that's why I did not see them when I first posted the article. ...

It's my own personal opinion that it was done intentionally so D.Draker's name and maybe a few others, would drop off the 'Popular Contributors' list in time ... which finally happened in the last three weeks, or so. I actually miss his name no longer on the list ... it was interesting watching his 'contributor count' go up and down. I hope I am wrong about the 'topic views' ... but since October nothing, lots of '0s' starting to show up. ...

I have not had any Zone Alarm problems for two days now. I found some information online about creating a 'path'. I found a ZA folder in the System 32 folder ... had no idea it was there. When a problem popped up about a missing ZA dll I would put it in the System 32 folder and the ZA Programs folder but I did not know there was also a ZA folder in System 32. There were three dlls that I added and now also to the System 32 / ZA folder ... so far it seems to be working. I had no prior knowledge of paths or creating a path. There was a gamer online having a problem and he was advised to create a 'path' for a solution, so I took that advice and added the dlls to the Sys 32 - ZA folder, the System 32 folder itself and also the Programs ZA folder ... have them everywhere to be found. From a gamer post online: Add a Directory to the PATH on Windows: Go to Control Panel and open the System icon (Start - Control Panel) Go to the Advanced tab Click on the 'Environment Variables' button Look into the 'System Variables' pane Add or find the 'Path' entry Double click or add the Path entry Enter your ZoneAlarm directory at the end, including ';' before (;C:\) Press OK Note: Be sure to reboot after following the steps above to ensure that the PATH changes are applied. ... I just replaced his game title with the ZoneAlarm directory. I may still have some problems but so far all seems OK. ...