In this episode of the Arsenal Women Arsecast, Tim and Jamie Spangher to discuss the signing of Rosa Kafaji and the departure of Cloe Lacasse. Then Tim and Jamie answer listener questions on how the midfield will look next season and whether changes are afoot there, the future of Kathrine Kuhl, a big season ahead for Kyra Cooney-Cross, where Arsenal most need reinforcements and whether the women’s team should have its own away kit every year.

You can follow Tim @Stillmanator and Jamie @jamiespangher

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There exists a delightful subreddit called Council of Cats. This is where you'll find groups of cats having important discussions of matters both urgent and mundane. I have four cats, and I find it difficult to get all of them in one picture if they aren't asleep, so seeing many cats getting along is really nice. You can often guess what they are discussing at their council meeting, or they might be enjoying some group activity like birdwatching or annoying their human. They often get together to make demands on your time, or in other words, they gang up to get what they want.  

(Image source: reddit)

But there are also pictures that show cats just like each other's company. Bored Panda has collected 50 of the most amusing photographs from Council of Cats to give us a taste of a cat colony's strength in numbers, presented in a ranked list for your amusement.

Science experiments are not considered completely valid unless they can be replicated. Replicating an experiment is pretty much impossible unless you've been steeped in the various factors of scientific theory. And even if you are thoroughly trained in those factors, it's easy to lose track when you're doing a casual experiment at home. That goes double when your aim is to debunk something that you find obviously wrong.

Sage the Bad Naturalist jumped into such a debunking experiment with both feet, and then got entangled in them. She spent an entire year trying to replicate a dubious TikTok, which turned into an embarrassing adventure in how not to do science. But negative results are still results, and the goal of science is always to learn something. She bravely admits all the things she did wrong, because scientists have to have humility to be accepted. What's funniest is how many things went wrong, and how they all piled up to the end. What she ended up with is an amusing and rather charming video on the dangers of throwing your heart (and time) into debunking something you saw on the internet. -via Metafilter

Altas Obscura tells us about the S.S. Relief--the formal name for an outhouse that floats in Lake Casitas near Ventura, California. The artificial lake is an important water reservoir for the thirsty people of southern California, so the Casitas Municipal Water District takes its cleanliness very seriously.

The lake is popular among boaters and fishermen. After a few hours out on the water, people need to relieve themselves. They can then paddle up to the S.S. Relief, which is a 2-seater outhouse that floats on the surface of the water. The waste is contained on the barge, so there's no contamination of the lake's purity.

It all starts with the anything-but-smooth introduction...

The Leonid meteor shower peaks in North America overnight from Nov. 17 to 18, with fast-moving fireballs possible in US skies.

An analysis looking at the hand bones of australopithecines, apes and humans reveals that tool use likely evolved before the Homo genus arose.

Welcome to the first episode of the Internet Musician Podcast! Show notes for Episode #1: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: The first episode of The Internet Musician Podcast, hosted by indie artist and internet music marketing junkie Brian Hartzog (http://www.brianhartzog.net).  In this introductory episode, Brian introduces himself, his indie music credentials and […]

Show notes for Episode #2: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: In this episode, I present “Music Tools for the Indie Artist”, a topic that I recently presented to a local songwriting group.  Specifically, I present the tools and process I use to capture and preserve those moments of musical inspiration–no matter whether they strike […]

Show notes for Episode #3: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: Also in this episode, I discuss the five things you must believe cultivate your DIY music attitude, including: 1. The business has been lying to you. Major label artists are not getting rich off of record sales. Radio is fake. Don’t belive […]

Show Notes for Episode 4: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: As a musician, you need a good website.  You know that. But you really don’t need to spend years trying to understand the technology. You also don’t want to spend tons of time working on your site without knowing if you’re doing things […]

Show Notes for Episode 6: Following my recent appearance on the Film and TV Music Licensing Panel at the MidAtlantic Music Conference here in Charlotte, NC, I definitely have music licensing on my mind.  It’s always been a passion of mind…one of those areas of music marketing that I’ve researched exhaustively for years.  It’s also […]

As the holiday season approaches, retail businesses are gearing up for their annual surge in online (and in-store) traffic. Unfortunately, this increase in activity also attracts cybercriminals looking to exploit vulnerabilities for their gain.  Imperva, a Thales company, recently published its annual holiday shopping cybersecurity guide. Data from the Imperva Threat Research team’s

German law enforcement authorities have announced the disruption of a criminal service called dstat[.]cc that made it possible for other threat actors to easily mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "The platform made such DDoS attacks accessible to a wide range of users, even those without any in-depth technical skills of their own," the Federal Criminal Police Office (aka

Canadian law enforcement authorities have arrested an individual who is suspected to have conducted a series of hacks stemming from the breach of cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake earlier this year. The individual in question, Alexander "Connor" Moucka (aka Judische and Waifu), was apprehended on October 30, 2024, on the basis of a provisional arrest warrant, following a request by the

An ongoing campaign is targeting npm developers with hundreds of typosquat versions of their legitimate counterparts in an attempt to trick them into running cross-platform malware. The attack is notable for utilizing Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) server address distribution, according to independent findings from Checkmarx, Phylum, and Socket published over the past few

Zero Trust security changes how organizations handle security by doing away with implicit trust while continuously analyzing and validating access requests. Contrary to perimeter-based security, users within an environment are not automatically trusted upon gaining access. Zero Trust security encourages continuous monitoring of every device and user, which ensures sustained protection after

Over 1,500 Android devices have been infected by a new strain of Android banking malware called ToxicPanda that allows threat actors to conduct fraudulent banking transactions. "ToxicPanda's main goal is to initiate money transfers from compromised devices via account takeover (ATO) using a well-known technique called on-device fraud (ODF)," Cleafy researchers Michele Roviello, Alessandro Strino

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sought assistance from the public in connection with an investigation involving the breach of edge devices and computer networks belonging to companies and government entities. "An Advanced Persistent Threat group allegedly created and deployed malware (CVE-2020-12271) as part of a widespread series of indiscriminate computer intrusions designed

Google's cloud division has announced that it will enforce mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users by the end of 2025 as part of its efforts to improve account security. "We will be implementing mandatory MFA for Google Cloud in a phased approach that will roll out to all users worldwide during 2025," Mayank Upadhyay, vice president of engineering and distinguished engineer at

Meta has been fined 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) by South Korea's data privacy watchdog for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers without their consent. The country's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Meta gathered information such as

INTERPOL on Tuesday said it took down more than 22,000 malicious servers linked to various cyber threats as part of a global operation. Dubbed Operation Synergia II, the coordinated effort ran from April 1 to August 31, 2024, targeting phishing, ransomware, and information stealer infrastructure. "Of the approximately 30,000 suspicious IP addresses identified, 76 per cent were taken down and 59

Cybersecurity researchers are warning that a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos is being distributed within gaming-related applications like installation tools, speed boosters, and optimization utilities. "Winos 4.0 is an advanced malicious framework that offers comprehensive functionality, a stable architecture, and efficient control over numerous online endpoints to execute

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that has racked up thousands of downloads for over three years while stealthily exfiltrating developers' Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials. The package in question is "fabrice," which typosquats a popular Python library known as "fabric," which is designed to execute shell commands remotely over

Cisco has released security updates to address a maximum severity security flaw impacting Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB) Access Points that could permit unauthenticated, remote attackers to run commands with elevated privileges. Tracked as CVE-2024-20418 (CVS score: 10.0), the vulnerability has been described as stemming from a lack of input validation to the web-based management

An ongoing phishing campaign is employing copyright infringement-related themes to trick victims into downloading a newer version of the Rhadamanthys information stealer since July 2024. Cybersecurity firm Check Point is tracking the large-scale campaign under the name CopyRh(ight)adamantys. Targeted regions include the United States, Europe, East Asia, and South America. "The campaign

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malware campaign that infects Windows systems with a Linux virtual instance containing a backdoor capable of establishing remote access to the compromised hosts. The "intriguing" campaign, codenamed CRON#TRAP, starts with a malicious Windows shortcut (LNK) file likely distributed in the form of a ZIP archive via a phishing email. "What makes the CRON#

A new campaign has targeted the npm package repository with malicious JavaScript libraries that are designed to infect Roblox users with open-source stealer malware such as Skuld and Blank-Grabber. "This incident highlights the alarming ease with which threat actors can launch supply chain attacks by exploiting trust and human error within the open source ecosystem, and using readily available

We’ve all heard a million times: growing demand for robust cybersecurity in the face of rising cyber threats is undeniable. Globally small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasingly targeted by cyberattacks but often lack the resources for full-time Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). This gap is driving the rise of the virtual CISO (vCISO) model, offering a cost-effective

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new phishing campaign that spreads a new fileless variant of known commercial malware called Remcos RAT. Remcos RAT "provides purchases with a wide range of advanced features to remotely control computers belonging to the buyer," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Xiaopeng Zhang said in an analysis published last week. "However, threat actors have

In an unusually specific campaign, users searching about the legality of Bengal Cats in Australia are being targeted with the GootLoader malware. "In this case, we found the GootLoader actors using search results for information about a particular cat and a particular geography being used to deliver the payload: 'Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?,'" Sophos researchers Trang Tang, Hikaru Koike,

Threat actors with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK aka North Korea) have been found embedding malware within Flutter applications, marking the first time this tactic has been adopted by the adversary to infect Apple macOS devices. Jamf Threat Labs, which made the discovery based on artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal platform earlier this month, said the Flutter-built

The Iranian threat actor known as TA455 has been observed taking a leaf out of a North Korean hacking group's playbook to orchestrate its own version of the Dream Job campaign targeting the aerospace industry by offering fake jobs since at least September 2023. "The campaign distributed the SnailResin malware, which activates the SlugResin backdoor," Israeli cybersecurity company ClearSky said

Why is it that in every recent Presidential election I’ve found myself saying, “We’re a nation of (now) some 330 million people, and these are the best two we can pick from to lead us?” In a recent piece, Wall Street Journal defined the choice as Awful versus Empty. (Google will get you there, though […]

…remind them of this. I was recently reading “Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans” by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeager. The War of 1812 was going badly for the Americans. The British had burned the White House, and a huge contingent of British troops was in Louisiana planning to march north in conquest. […]

Historically, both law and facts are on the gun owners’ side of the “gun control” debate, and the Other Side had relied largely on emotion.  I respectfully submit that emotion is something our side should play to, as well. I made that point recently at the 2024 Gun Rights Policy Conference in San Diego last […]

Now that I've read it, I can tell you that my fears were unfounded. Indeed, the book isn't a novelization of the videogame and it takes place thousands of years before. Hence, other than sharing that far-reaching universe, one can fully enjoy the book without playing the game and vice versa. Moreover, I'm pleased to report that Exodus delivers on all fronts and that it's Hamilton's best novel in years! For my money, it's the best SFF work of 2024 thus far!

Here's the blurb:

Explore EXODUS, a new sci-fi action-adventure RPG coming soon from Archetype Entertainment featured in this epic novel from legendary author Peter F. Hamilton.

Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars.

Thousands of years later, the Centauri Cluster has flourished. The original settlers have evolved into advanced beings known as Celestials and divided themselves into powerful Dominions. One of the most influential is that of the Crown Celestials, an alliance of five great houses that controls vast areas of Centauri. As arkships continue to arrive, the remaining humans and their descendants must fight for survival against overwhelming odds or be forced into serving the Crown Dominion.

Among those yearning for a better life is Finn, for whom Earth is not a memory but merely a footnote from humanity’s ancient history. Born on one of the Crown Dominion worlds, Finn has known nothing but the repressive rule of the Celestials, though he dreams of the possibility of boundless space beyond his home.

When another arkship from Earth, previously thought lost, unexpectedly arrives, Finn sees his chance to embrace a greater destiny and become a Traveler—one of a group of brave heroes dedicated to ensuring humanity’s future by journeying into the vast unknown of distant space.

Like all previous series/novels by Peter F. Hamilton, the Archimedes Engine duology is vast in scope and vision. Covering more than 40,000 years, from the time the first arkships left Earth to the present day political intrigue within and withour the Centauri Cluster, the worldbuilding is extensive to say the least. Alas, some of the information the reader requires must needs be conveyed via info-dumps. Having said that, the author managed to avoid that particular pitfall for the most part and the majority of the details/revelations are shared in a more streamlined fashion. Such info-dumps, few and far between as they are, act like a necessary evil and can't truly be avoided entirely. Given its size, there is a lot to take in from the disparate storyines of Exodus. Especially at the beginning, and it does take about 200-250 pages for the players to be introduced and the plotlines to be set into motion. To say that this novel features a multilayered plot would be the understatement of the year. Thankfully, there is a timeline and a Dramatis Personae at the start of the book. I rarely say this, but this is a work that would have benefited from having a substantial glossary at the end. Still, overall Hamilton does a good job of keeping his readers apprised of what they need to know throughout.

As mentioned, there are several storylines and it does take a while for a somewhat cohesive whole to take form. The heart of the tale that is Exodus seems to revolve around the Crown Dominion, comprised of six adjacent star systems ruled by a different House. Centuries before, one of the Queens launched a subversive campaign to evolve the Imperial Celestials in a fashion that was anathema to the others, forcing her counterparts to united their forces and destroy her and her entire House. Since then, the five remaining Queens signed the Imperial Accord and each of them in turn will rule as Empress for sixty years. But cracks have appeared in this alliance and external factors have come into play to destabilize the entire Crown Dominion. Since the Remnant Era, which saw the violent rise and fall of interstellar civilizations through atrocious wars that saw countless worlds laid waste, armed conflicts have become extremely rare. Every Dominion has its Archons and their agents and this Cold War is waged through their proxies. This unwritten rule has defined intra- and extra-Dominion antagonism for millennia, yet someone appears to be fomenting chaos that could start a new war and various Archons are now trying to discover which Dominion could be the culprit. Finally, the relationship between humans and the various transhuman species that have evolved to become the Celestials is the third main story arc of Exodus. Some Celestials see them as little more than chattel, while others have given them lands and liberties. But for some, it's not enough. When the arkship Diligent arrives in the Kelowan system after a 40,000-year sojourn through space, Josias Aponi, a man who has walked on Old Earth, will not settle for a life of servitude under the woke of an oppressive regime. And Finn, who dreams of seeing the stars and living the exciting life of a Traveler, sees the arrival of the arkship as his ticket out of his boring existence. And behind all these contrasting and seemingly unconnected storylines, someone or something is manipulating events. To what end? This remains a mystery. . .

Given the number of plotlines, there are a multitude of perspectives that witness events throughout the novel. Some POVs are better and more interesting than others, yet I would say that all are probably important for the author to convey everything that needs to be shared. There is a lot going on all across the Centauri Cluster, so various eyes and ears are necessary to follow the action and make sure that it all makes sense in the end. I found Finn to be an annoying, entitled brat at the beginning. But he does grow on you as time goes by, especially after Ellie knocks a bit of sense into him. Which was Hamilton's plan all along, I'm sure. I found everything that has to do with the Queens of the Crown Dominion to be a bit irritating, to be honest. Though the Hunger Games-esque trials of the Congregant daughters were compelling, if a little overdone. Personally, it's the Archons and their espionage that I found the most captivating. Hence, my favorite character was probably officer Terence Wilson-Fletcher, a human detective who becomes an Archon's agent. The sections featuring him are more police procedural than space opera, but it's through his actions and discoveries that the plot becomes clearer and clearer. I'm still not sure how/why the fight for human rights angle was necessary. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

One would expect a 900+ pages doorstopper to suffer from certain pacing issues, yet you'd be wrong in this case. As mentioned above, it does take quite some time for the overall plot to take shape, and Hamilton needed more than 200 pages to lay the groundwork for everything that comes after, but I wouldn't say that the rhythm is ever an issue. True, some chapters move at a faster clip than others, but I never found the pace to be a problem. If anything, Exodus might be one of the fastest novels of its size that I've ever read. The author had me hook, bait, and sinker from the get-go, so I always wanted to learn more and more.

I won't lie, the cliffhanger ending was frustrating. And yet, Peter F. Hamilton came up with a thrilling endgame and a rousing finale that closed the show with panache. Seriously, the last 200 pages or so made for compulsive reading. After such a page-turning experience, I just wish I didn't have to wait till next year for the conclusion!

Exodus is space opera at its best!

The final verdict: 9/10

For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link.

For those interested in the Exodus action-adventure RPG, check out their website.