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upstart writes:

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Hackers are now selling 'Raccoon' data-stealing malware as a $200 monthly service

A new kind of trojan malware is fast gaining currency among cybercriminals for its capability to steal sensitive information, such as credit card data, cryptocurrency wallets, and email credentials.

Dubbed Raccoon Stealer, the malware first emerged in April 2019 and has since infected hundreds of thousands of Windows devices around the world, Boston-based endpoint security solutions provider Cybereason said.

"Its popularity, even with a limited feature set, signals the continuation of a growing trend of the commoditization of malware as they follow a MaaS (Malware-as-a-Service) model and evolve their efforts," the researchers stated.

Costing $200 per month to use, Raccoon is suspected to be of Russian origin and has been found to be aggressively marketed in underground forums, offering prompt 24×7 customer support to community questions and comments on Telegram under the handle "glad0ff."

This "gladoff" actor has been linked previously to a variety of malware like the Decrux and Acrux cryptominers, the Mimosa RAT and the ProtonBot loader, Cybereason said.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Here's what the people who claimed Google's quantum supremacy have to say about it

SANTA BARBARA, California—Early this autumn, a paper leaked on a NASA site indicating Google engineers had built and tested hardware that achieved what's termed "quantum supremacy," completing calculations that would be impossible on a traditional computer. The paper was quickly pulled offline, and Google remained silent, leaving the rest of us to speculate about their plans for this device and any follow-ons the company might be preparing.

That speculation ended today, as Google released the final version of the paper that had leaked. But perhaps more significantly, the company invited the press to its quantum computing lab, talked about its plans, and gave us time to chat with the researchers behind the work.

"I'm not going to bother explaining the quantum supremacy paper—if you were invited to come here, you probably all read the leaked paper," quipped Hartmut Neven, the head of Google's Quantum AI lab. But he found it hard to resist the topic entirely, and the other people who talked with reporters were more than happy to expand on Neven's discussion.

Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5) (DX)

Previously: Google: We've achieved quantum supremacy! IBM: Nope. And stop using that word, please

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upstart writes:

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Disney Plus is stopping theaters screening Fox movies – and viewers will lose out

Disney Plus will no doubt be the talk of the town when it launches in November, with a host of films and franchises from across Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and even 21st Century Fox. But it seems that Disney’s acquisition of Fox – welcomed by many for the hit series and IP it brought to Disney’s streaming service – may have some unfavorable consequences for viewers.

Vulture has reported on various cinema owners and film festival programmers who are being refused the rights to show certain Fox movies, now under new ownership at Disney.

Titles such as The Omen, The Fly, Moulin Rouge, and various Alien films are now increasingly difficult to show, with Disney reportedly denying requests by establishments that had previously shown the films without trouble.

While Disney has yet to make a public declaration of its intention here, Vulture quotes a film distributor who says the restrictions won’t apply to not-for-profit businesses or public art institutions. 

What’s even more worrying is that the new law for Fox movies doesn’t seem to be enforced consistently, with different distributors finding they had rights to show certain films revoked for different reasons, without explanation, or even if they fit Disney’s criteria.

With Disney Plus set to launch in mid-November in its first few territories, a world of Disney is about to get opened wide – but at the same time, it looks like that world is getting a lot smaller.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Man kept getting drunk without drinking. Docs found brewer's yeast in his guts

After years of inexplicably getting drunk without drinking alcohol, having mood swings and bouts of aggression, landing a DWI charge on the way to work one morning, and suffering a head injury in a drunken fall, an otherwise healthy 46-year-old North Carolina man finally got confirmation of having alcohol-fermenting yeasts overrunning his innards, getting him sloshed any time he ate carbohydrate-laden meals.

Through the years, medical professionals and police officers refused to believe he hadn't been drinking. They assumed the man was lying to hide an alcohol problem. Meanwhile, he went to an untold number of psychiatrists, internists, neurologists, and gastroenterologists searching for answers.

Those answers only came after he sought help from a support group online and then contacted a group of researchers at Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, New York.

By then, it was September of 2017—more than seven years after his saga began. The New York researchers finally confirmed that he had a rarely diagnosed condition called "auto-brewery syndrome."

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

The Dark Mode craze may do more harm than good – this is why

The hot new topic in terms of smartphone and computer software right now is Dark Mode, an optional system look that flips the colors of an app or operating system to make it, well, dark. Instagram has a dark mode, as does Chrome, WhatsApp, Gmail, and iOS 13, and it seems apps and developers are tripping over themselves to create a new dark mode for their software.

There's just one problem which none of these hard-working people seem to have considered that makes their work redundant, and the attention they've taken from other projects will be in vain: all in all, dark mode looks totally awful.

That's not a dig at any dark mode in particular, and no developers have implemented it particularly poorly (well, apart from Android 10). But in the rush for developers to see if they could implement dark mode on their apps, no-one asked if they should - and taken stock of how it might be reworked better rather than just following the trend.

Beyond that, there are legitimate reasons why developers shouldn't be focusing on Dark Mode. Here's why the Dark Mode craze is just crazy.

So dear soylentils, do you use dark mode on your applications, and why or why not?

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

How a Harvard class project changed barbecue

"A hundred inches of snow that winter, it was really quite terrible."

There are several factors to overcome when trying to cook a 14-pound slab of brisket during the winter. Not only do you have to contend with freezing temperatures but you also have to keep your grill or smoker from getting too wet with moisture from the snow. On top of that, you have to keep the fire going for several hours, or you've just wasted a pricey cut of beef.

Desora co-founder and CTO, Yinka Ogunbiyi, knows first-hand the challenges of "low-and-slow" barbecue in the dead of winter. Along with CEO, Michel Maalouly, Ogunbiyi spent hours in the cold every weekend attempting to perfect a grill design as part of an engineering course at Harvard in 2015. The goal was to outperform what many consider to be the pinnacle of backyard grilling and smoking machinery: The Big Green Egg.

"We were amateurs, smoking a brisket every week in the cold Boston snow," Ogunbiyi said.

There was another wrinkle to the assignment, though. Professor Kevin "Kit" Parker had arranged for the class to have a real client, and it was a legit one: popular kitchen retailer Williams-Sonoma. This meant there was potential for the final designs to become an actual product if they could offer something better than the grills available at the time could muster.

"Boston's worst winter on record made quick work of showing the faults and shortcomings of existing products," Maalouly explained. "We had been using the industry-leading smokers at the time and found the cooking experience to be severely lacking." The pair needed a way to maximize heat coverage, accelerate the process and enhance flavor if they were going to beat the Egg.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Pentagon beams down $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft: Windows giant beats off Bezos

Microsoft has been awarded the $10bn decade-long US Department of Defense JEDI IT supply contract that will see the nation's military switch to the cloud.

The Redmond giant's Azure platform will play host to the US armed forces in an attempt to overhaul and streamline the Pentagon's IT infrastructure under a single umbrella – or single point of failure, to put it another way. Microsoft share price rose on the news in after-hours trading.

"The National Defense Strategy dictates that we must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform," Dept of Defense (DoD) Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said in announcing the award.

"The DoD Digital Modernization Strategy was created to support this imperative. This award is an important step in execution of the Digital Modernization Strategy."

The decision will no doubt come as a disappointment to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the presumed front-runner for the single-vendor deal since it was first announced.

Due to the massive requirements of the winner-takes-all contract, the security clearances required and the mandate that it go to a single provider, AWS and Microsoft were seen as the only two qualified candidates for the deal.

In awarding the contract to Microsoft, the Pentagon will avoid further allegations that it collaborated with AWS to stack the deck in its favor, a complaint which has dogged the process from its outset.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

New measurement of Hubble constant adds to cosmic mystery

New measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe, led by astronomers at the University of California, Davis, add to a growing mystery: Estimates of a fundamental constant made with different methods keep giving different results.

"There's a lot of excitement, a lot of mystification and from my point of view it's a lot of fun," said Chris Fassnacht, professor of physics at UC Davis and a member of the international SHARP/H0LICOW collaboration, which made the measurement using the W.M. Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

A paper about the work is published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Hubble constant describes the expansion of the universe, expressed in kilometers per second per megaparsec. It allows astronomers to figure out the size and age of the universe and the distances between objects.

Graduate student Geoff Chen, Fassnacht and colleagues looked at light from extremely distant galaxies that is distorted and split into multiple images by the lensing effect of galaxies (and their associated dark matter) between the source and Earth. By measuring the time delay for light to make its way by different routes through the foreground lens, the team could estimate the Hubble constant.

Using adaptive optics technology on the W.M. Keck telescopes in Hawaii, they arrived at an estimate of 76.8 kilometers per second per megaparsec. As a parsec is a bit over 30 trillion kilometers and a megaparsec is a million parsecs, that is an excruciatingly precise measurement. In 2017, the H0LICOW team published an estimate of 71.9, using the same method and data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Journal Reference:
Geoff C-F Chen, et. al. A SHARP view of H0LiCOW: H0 from three time-delay gravitational lens systems with adaptive optics imaging. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2019; 490 (2): 1743 DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz2547

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upstart writes for soylent_brown:

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard

All four major US carriers — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint — have each issued the same joint press release announcing the formation of "a joint venture" called the "Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative" (CCMI). It's designed to ensure that the carriers move forward together to replace SMS with a next-generation messaging standard — including a promise to launch a new texting app for Android phones that supports the standard by next year.

The Verge spoke with Doug Garland, general manager for the CCMI, to find out more about what this all means. RCS, if you don't know, is wickedly complicated on the backend from both a technical and (more importantly) a political perspective. But the CCMI's goal is to make all that go away for US consumers. Whether or not it can actually pull that off is more complicated.

First and foremost, CCMI intends to ship a new Android app next year that will likely be the new default messaging app for Android phones sold by those carriers. It will support all the usual RCS features like typing indicators, higher-resolution attachments, and better group chat. It should also be compatible with the global "Universal Profile" standard for RCS that has been adopted by other carriers around the world.

Garland says the CCMI will also work with other companies interested in RCS to make sure their clients are interoperable as well — notably Samsung and Google. That should mean that people who prefer Android Messages will be able to use that instead, but it sounds like there may be technical details to work out to make that happen.

Google is a fascinating and perhaps telling omission from the press release. Up until this point, the primary advocate for RCS has been Google, which bet on it as the only platform-level messaging service for Android. It was a bet that carriers haven't backed until now. Verizon isn't supporting RCS on the Pixel 4 after doing so on the Pixel 3, for example. Google recently stopped waiting for carriers in the UK and France and rolled out RCS support for Android phones using its own servers.

Google has been the world's biggest RCS advocate — and it was left out

[...] As for encryption, Garland wouldn't commit. He emphasizes that the CCMI intends to make sure that the chats are "private" and that the app it's making is "an experience [customers] can trust."

[...] There's reason for optimism but there's also reason to be worried. Carrier-made apps are notorious for being terrible, filled with ads and upsells. The CCMI says that "more details will be announced a later date." We'll be watching to see what the app situation will be, when exactly in 2020 it will launch, and whether Google (or even Apple) will have anything to say about it.

Rich Communication Services (RCS)

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Discord 'Spidey Bot' Malware Is Stealing Usernames, Passwords

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_green

Discord 'Spidey Bot' Malware Is Stealing Usernames, Passwords

Called "Spidey Bot" by its discoverers, the Windows malware injects itself into Discord's code and steals your username, email address, IP address, phone number and Discord user token.

The malware also copies the first 50 characters of your Windows clipboard, which might contain your password if you've copied and pasted it recently, and creates a "backdoor" so that more malware can be installed. Macs don't seem to be affected.

If you're not familiar with Discord, it's chat software often used by PC gamers that has also been picked up lately by people who've been kicked off Reddit and Twitter for particularly unsavory comments. 

It's not totally clear yet how the Discord malware gets on your machine. Malware researcher Vitali Kremez suspects it's being passed around in Discord chats as cheats for Roblox and other games. Kremez told Bleeping Computer two files names he'd seen were "Blueface Reward Claimer.exe" and "Synapse X.exe". 

Unfortunately, you won't be able to tell if your Discord application is infected. [UPDATE: It turns out you can -- see Discord Turned Into an Info-Stealing Backdoor by New Malware.][Reproduced in part below] Even if you do, you'll have to delete the Discord software and reinstall it to make sure you're clean. All you can do is make sure you're running the best antivirus software, which should block the malware.

takyon writes:

RED cancels Hydrogen phone project as founder Jim Jannard retires

RED's ambitious Hydrogen phone project is ending after the release of just a single device, the Hydrogen One, according to an announcement from Jim Jannard. The company's founder says that he is "shutting down the HYDROGEN project" as he retires due to "a few health issues."

The $1,295 RED Hydrogen One was the first smartphone from the high-end camera company; first announced in 2017, it promised bold new technologies like a "holographic display," a top-notch camera system, and modular attachments to expand the phone over time. After a series of delays, the phone was eventually released to a lackluster reception in October 2018.

[...] Jannard has been the face of RED and its high-end cameras since he founded the company back in 1999. According to Jannard, RED Digital Cinema will live on under the leadership of Jarred Land (RED's current president), Tommy Rios (RED's executive vice president) and Jamin Jannard (RED's president of marketing and creative).

That's enough of that.

Also at Wccftech.

Previously: RED Pitches a $1,200 Holographic Android Smartphone
$1,300 RED Hydrogen One Smartphone Fails to Impress Reviewers
RED Blames Chinese Manufacturer for "Hydrogen One" Issues, Confirms Second Smartphone

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Have you ever sat down to complete your morning crossword or Sudoku and wondered about what's happening in your brain? Somewhere in the activity of the billions of neurons in your brain lies the code that lets you remember a key word, or apply the logic required to complete the puzzle.

Given the brain's intricacy, you might assume that these patterns are incredibly complex and unique to each task. But recent research suggests things are actually more straightforward than that.

It turns out that many structures in your brain work together in precise ways to coordinate their activity, shaping their actions to the requirements of whatever it is that you're trying to achieve.

We call these coordinated patterns the "low-dimensional manifold," which you can think of as analogous to the major roadways that you use to commute to and from work. The majority of the traffic flows along these major highways, which represent an efficient and effective way to get from A to B.

We have found evidence that most brain activity follows these types of patterns. In very simple terms, this saves your brain from needing to work everything out from scratch when performing a task. If someone throws you a ball, for instance, the low-dimensional manifold allows your brain to swiftly coordinate the muscle movements needed to catch the ball, rather than your brain needing to learn how to catch a ball afresh each time.

In a study published today in the journal Neuron, my colleagues and I investigated these patterns further. Specifically, we wanted to find out whether they play a role in shaping brain activity during really challenging cognitive tasks that require lots of concentration.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Lotame unveils Cartographer, its new approach to tracking user identity – TechCrunch

Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.”

In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices.

We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device targeting technologies — and in fact, Lotame acquired one of them, AdMobius, in 2014. But Solomon said the landscape has become more challenging given privacy regulations and especially updated browsers that place new limits on the types of cookies that can be used to track users.

“There’s been an explosion of first-party cookies,” Solomon said, referring to cookies that are stored on the domain you’re actually visiting (as opposed to third-party cookies, which are increasingly blocked).

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat – TechCrunch

In a wide ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying the software giant saw his company as an existential threat.

The interview took place at the WSJ Tech Live event. When Butterfield was asked about a chart Microsoft released in July during the Slack quiet period, which showed Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users compared to 12 million for Slack, Butterfield appeared taken aback by the chart.

“The bigger point is that’s kind of crazy for Microsoft to do, especially during the quiet period. I had someone say it was unprecedented since the [Steve] Ballmer era. I think it’s more like unprecedented since the Gates’ 98-99 era. I think they feel like we’re an existential threat,” he told Dean.

It’s worth noting, that as Dean pointed out, you could flip that existential threat statement. Microsoft is a much bigger business with a trillion-dollar market cap versus Slack’s $400 million. It also has the benefit of linking Microsoft Teams to Office 365 subscriptions, but Butterfield says the smaller company with the better idea has often won in the past.

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Runaway1956 writes:

Google is currently rolling out a change to its core search algorithm that it says could change the rankings of results for as many as one in ten queries. It's based on cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) techniques developed by Google researchers and applied to its search product over the course of the past 10 months.

In essence, Google is claiming that it is improving results by having a better understanding of how words relate to each other in a sentence. In one example Google discussed at a briefing with journalists yesterday, its search algorithm was able to parse the meaning of the following phrase: "Can you get medicine for someone pharmacy?"

The old Google search algorithm treated that sentence as a "bag of words," according to Pandu Nayak, Google fellow and VP of search. So it looked at the important words, medicine and pharmacy, and simply returned local results. The new algorithm was able to understand the context of the words "for someone" to realize it was a question about whether you could pick up somebody else's prescription — and it returned the right results.

The tweaked algorithm is based on BERT, which stands for "Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers." Every word of that acronym is a term of art in NLP, but the gist is that instead of treating a sentence like a bag of words, BERT looks at all the words in the sentence as a whole. Doing so allows it to realize that the words "for someone" shouldn't be thrown away, but rather are essential to the meaning of the sentence.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931657/google-bert-search-context-algorithm-change-10-percent-langauge

I can't help wondering how this is handled in other languages. Chinese, for instance, where (I've read that) a word might have several meanings, but context defines the word.

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