Title says it all. Every time on startup a window pops up then disappears asking whether I want to allow or deny incoming connections on...

tl; dr: there is a mutated strain of COVID that seems to spread a lot more
quickly.

Last Monday (Dec 14) the UK MP's were informed of a new strain of COVID-19,
named "VUI – 202012/01". This strain seems to spread more quickly than other
forms of COVID-19, and wikipedia claims that this might be related to the
mutated spike protein.

Two days ago (Dec 18) the NERVTAG (an expert panel advising the Chief Medical
Officer of the UK, who in turn advises the UK Department of Health and Social
Care) meet and release their meeting minutes, stating that:

* "Growth rate from genomic data: which suggest a growth rate of VUI-202012/01
  that that is 71% (95%CI: 67%-75%) higher than other variants." [sic]
* "Studies of correlation between R-values and detection of the variant: which
  suggest an absolute increase in the R-value of between 0.39 to 0.93."

amongst other information on this new strain (the meeting minutes are 3 pages
only so I encourage people to check them if interested).

Yesterday (Dec 19) Prime Minister…

Government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we attribute to the United Arab Emirates.

Осенью разработчики Let's Encrypt предупредили, что в 2021 году у пользователей устройств, работающих под управлением Android 7.1 (Nougat) и более старых версий ОС, могут возникнуть серьезные проблемы с сертификатами и доступом к сайтам. Теперь специалисты пишут, что решили данную проблему.

Welcome! In this post, we’ll be taking a character-by-character look at the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine.
I want to thank the large cast of people who spent time previewing this article for legibility and correctness. All mistakes remain mine though, but I would love to hear about them quickly at bert@hubertnet.nl or @PowerDNS_Bert
Now, these words may be somewhat jarring - the vaccine is a liquid that gets injected in your arm.