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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Beware new javascript ransomware

A new ransomware attack, designed to kidnap your computer and demand money from you before releasing it, has been written entirely in javascript and is thus more dangerous because many email programs, like Gmail, will not block the running of the .js file.

The bottom like is always the same: Don’t run attachments sent to you unexpectedly, even from friends. Check with them to confirm that they meant to send it, and if they don’t confirm, delete it.

I could also label this story as another reason I don’t use gmail, but that really is a different story entirely.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • NormD

    I thought the JavaScript language does not have access to the files on a computer. There are no file open/read/write/close primitives.

    Forget about ransomware, if any JavaScript program can access your files it can steal anything.

  • m d mill

    Thanks for the tip!!
    The computer related blogs lately have been helpful

  • Stay tuned! I hope to have a regular series of very worthwhile computer tips relating to Linux in the near future.

  • Michael

    It is true that javascript cannot access files but maybe the .js file acts as a carrier for something else.

  • Gene

    Robert,

    I am thinking about buying a @reagan.com email address.

    Who do you use for email service?

    Gene

  • I use a forwarding service provided by the professional science journalism trade organization that I belong to. This is not an option for you.

  • wayne

    Gene:
    What type of email address are you interested? (what features?)

    Gmail, Outlook (Microsoft), and a number of other free email providers do scan your email for key-words & targeted adverts.
    (These services are “free,” and that is the trade-off.)

    The Reagan dot com folks pledge not to scan your email for advertising purposes, and that’s the major feature they offer. They will however, turn your email over to the Feds, if they are required to do so by Law. All providers are subject to that, unless they are off-shore.

  • mivenho

    I’m not a computer guy, but I notice that Chrome offers the option, under “Content settings”: “Do not allow any site to run JavaScript” (with an option to exclude selected sites).

    Would this eliminate the Gmail vulnerability for Chrome users?

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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