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🔗 So I tried…Celeste

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Celeste is also solid because it is infuriatingly hard, even just within its first level. This might be just because I am bad at platformers, but dying 40 times in a row because of one just out of reach ledge had me almost launching my controller at my wall.

🔗 German-made FinSpy spyware found in Egypt, and Mac and Linux versions revealed

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FinSpy is a commercial spyware suite produced by the Munich-based company FinFisher Gmbh. Since 2011 researchers have documented numerous cases of targeting of Human Rights Defenders (HRDs)  including activists, journalists, and dissidents with the use of FinSpy in many countries, including Bahrain, Ethiopia, UAE, and more. Because of this, Amnesty Internationals Security Lab tracks FinSpy usage and development as part of our continuous monitoring of digital threats to Human Rights Defenders.
Amnesty International published a report in March 2019 describing phishing attacks targeting Egyptian human rights defenders and media and civil society organizations staff carried out by an attacker group known as NilePhish. While continuing research into this groups activity, we discovered it has distributed samples of FinSpy for Microsoft Windows through a fake Adobe …

🔗 A hypothesis is a liability

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There is a hidden cost to having a hypothesis. It arises from the relationship between night science and day science, the two very distinct modes of activity in which scientific ideas are generated and tested, respectively [1, 2]. With a hypothesis in hand, the impressive strengths of day science are unleashed, guiding us in designing tests, estimating parameters, and throwing out the hypothesis if it fails the tests. But when we analyze the results of an experiment, our mental focus on a specific hypothesis can prevent us from exploring other aspects of the data, effectively blinding us to new ideas. A hypothesis then becomes a liability for any night science explorations. The corresponding limitations on our creativity, self-imposed in hypothesis-driven research, are of particular concern in the context …

🔗 Head of Egyptian rights group held in solitary confinement- lawyers

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CAIRO, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The director of a prominent Egyptian rights group was held in solitary confinement and inhumane conditions for three days after his arrest last week, his lawyers and the group’s founder said on Monday.

Gasser Abdel Razek is one of three staff from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) arrested last week in a case that has drawn public criticism from the United Nations and Western diplomats.

The interior ministry, which is responsible for prisons, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The arrests, on charges including joining a terrorist group and publishing false news, came after senior diplomats visited EIPR for a briefing on human rights on Nov. 3.

🔗 The medical model and its application in mental health

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This article provides a conceptual overview of the medical model and its application to psychiatry, understanding the medical model in psychiatry as a biopsychosocial model. The article discusses basic concepts relevant to the medical model (illness, disease, disorder, condition, etc.), the nature of medical knowledge and diagnostic construct, medical classifications in psychiatry, and the medical model within multidisciplinary practice. Salient criticisms of the medical model are discussed and addressed at relevant points. It is recognized that concepts such as disease and illness lack uncontested definitions and are not free from value judgements even in general medicine. Diagnostic constructs used in psychiatry are often descriptive heterogenous categories which can nonetheless offer clinical utility. The medical model co-exists with non-medical approaches and perspectives, and psychiatrists work in an interdisciplinary context …