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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Comet Neowise could be a 'great' one. Here's how to catch it throughout July:

Comet Neowise looks like it could be the real deal. After two other comets discovered in 2020 -- Swan and Atlas -- looked promising but then fizzled and faded away without ever putting on much of a show, Comet C/2020 F3 (aka Neowise) seems poised to deliver.

[...] According to NASA solar system ambassador Eddie Irizarry, it should remain visible just before and around the time of first light until July 11. The comet will then dip below the horizon as it transitions from being an early riser to a cocktail hour sensation, hopefully. It'll start to be visible again in the evening around July 15-16. It should be a little easier to see during the second half of July when it's a little higher in the sky. Until that point it'll be closer to the northeastern horizon.

[...] The comet's closest pass by Earth will be July 23, which might make for a particularly exciting viewing opportunity if the comet's brightness continues to hold where it is or even intensifies. It'll also rise a little higher in the sky on July 24 and 25 in case you miss the actual flyby date. Comets are notoriously fickle things that could always break up and burn out at any moment, so fingers crossed.

There's a possibility, for the most optimistic of us, that Neowise might brighten dramatically to become a so-called "great comet" that's easily visible and spectacular to see with the naked eye. While there's no strict definition of what a great comet is, it's generally agreed that we haven't seen one since Hale-Bopp in 1997.

See also: Anticipation Grows for Comets NEOWISE and Lemmon
Where is Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)?

Original Submission

RandomFactor submitted a story which inspired:

EurekAlert reports on a potential "Early Breakthrough with Cancer Vaccine":

Lead Researcher Associate Professor [The University of Queensland] Kristen Radford says the vaccine has the potential to treat a variety of blood cancers and malignancies and is a major breakthrough for cancer vaccinations.

"We are hoping this vaccine could be used to treat blood cancers, such as myeloid leukaemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and paediatric leukaemias, plus solid malignancies including breast, lung, renal, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers, and glioblastoma," she said.

"Our new vaccine is comprised of human antibodies fused with tumour-specific protein, and we are investigating its capacity to target human cells while activating the memory of the tumour cells."

According to Radford, the vaccine has significant advantages over the current entries in this space. Passing clinical trials is not a small hurdle however. An MIT study shows that 3.4% of investigational cancer treatments eventually receive FDA approval, although that has increased significantly in the past five years.

Journal Reference:
Frances E Pearson, Kirsteen M Tullett, Ingrid M Leal‐Rojas, et al. Human CLEC9A antibodiesdeliver Wilms' tumor 1 (WT1) antigen to CD141+ dendritic cells to activate naïve and memory WT1‐specific CD8+ T cells [open], Clinical & Translational Immunology (DOI: 10.1002/cti2.1141)

Original Submission

hendrikboom writes:

Linux reviews notes that

The popular Linux Mint operating system has decided to purge the snap package manager from its repositories and forbid installation of it. The motivation for this drastic move is that the upstream Ubuntu Linux distribution Linux Mint is based on will stealthily install snapd and use that to install Chromium from the Canonical-controlled SnapCraft instead of installing a regular Chromium package like most users expect.

The Linux Mint blog has this to say about Ubuntu's use of snap to use their chromium package to subvert apt:

You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.

Is Ubuntu turning evil?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

No more Genius Bar bottlenecks for you, Mr Customer? Apple exports independent repair provider program to Europe and Canada:

Europeans and Canadians with busted iPhones will soon be able to swerve the Genius Bar and associated lengthy waiting lists, as Apple expands its Independent Repair Provider (IRP) program to third party technicians.

The IRP scheme authorised independent businesses to perform out-of-warranty repairs on iPhones using genuine Apple components — such as displays and batteries.

Repair facilities will be able to use third-party components and set their own prices, but must inform customers when they're using genuine Apple parts - which would hit anyone trying to use aftermarket TouchID sensor replacements and the like. Any salvaged parts must be returned to Apple, where they'll either be refurbished or recycled.

Apple said it will also provide training, service guides, and other resources — although repair providers will be compelled to keep these confidential.

This comes a month after Norway's Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a local repair shop violated Apple's trademark by using an unauthorised screen to fit a customer's iPhone.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Among metadevices, the metalens has attracted widespread attention for practical applications in imaging and spectroscopy, as it provides multifunctional wavefront manipulations for improved focus.

Metalenses are plagued by failure to focus all colors to the same point, which is known as chromatic aberration. Overcoming chromatic aberration is a vital concern for improved resolution in full-color and hyperspectral imaging. On the contrary, for spectrographic analysis and tomographic applications, chromatic dispersion helps to separate focal spots for different frequencies to avoid crosstalk.

[...] A research team from Nanjing University recently demonstrated active manipulation of chromatic dispersion, achieving achromatic focusing within a designated broadband. As reported in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Advanced Photonics, the team integrated a photo-patterned liquid crystal into a dielectric metasurface. In their design, the metasurface generates a linear-resonant phase dispersion, which means that the phase front of the transmitted wave is delayed linearly by the dielectric metasurface. The liquid crystal (LC) is responsible for generating frequency-independent geometric phase modulation.

The team verified the chromatic aberration control of the combined lens and demonstrated a significant dynamic broadband imaging contrast effect. The design can be extended to other active metadevices; as an example, the team presented a beam deflector with controllable dispersion. "Combining the flexibility of metadevices with the broadband electro-optical characteristics of liquid crystals makes the design competent for wavefront control from the visible wavelengths to the THz and microwaves," remarked senior author Prof. Yanqing Lu, of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University.

Journal Reference:
Zhixiong Shen, Shenghang Zhou, Xinan Li, et al. Liquid crystal integrated metalens with tunable chromatic aberration [open], Advanced Photonics (DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.2.3.036002)

Original Submission

Millions Losing Access to Internet

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for GrandFireWizard:

Millions losing access to internet:

Millions of people look set to lose access to the free and open internet as China’s control over Hong Kong increases.

A new law was ushered in by Beijing last month that gave China sweeping powers over opposition against itself, both within its borders and outside of them, which could put people in jail for years if they commit vaguely defined political crimes.

The controversial national security law was used to make arrests within hours.

[...] Hong Kong police now have sweeping powers to order social media platforms and publishers to remove content, as well as ban the platforms altogether.

Undefined “exceptional circumstances” also give police the right to seize and search electronic devices.

A number of tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Zoom have said they’re pausing the review of law enforcement requests for data or stopping it altogether while they assess the impact of the new law.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Shock-dissipating fractal cubes could forge high-tech armor:

Tiny, 3-D printed cubes of plastic, with intricate fractal voids built into them, have proven to be effective at dissipating shockwaves, potentially leading to new types of lightweight armor and structural materials effective against explosions and impacts.

"The goal of the work is to manipulate the wave interactions resulting from a shockwave," said Dana Dattelbaum, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author on a paper to appear in the journal AIP Advances. "The guiding principles for how to do so have not been well defined, certainly less so compared to mechanical deformation of additively manufactured materials. We're defining those principles, due to advanced, mesoscale manufacturing and design."

Shockwave dispersing materials that take advantage of voids have been developed in the past, but they typically involved random distributions discovered through trial and error. Others have used layers to reverberate shock and release waves. Precisely controlling the location of holes in a material allows the researchers to design, model and test structures that perform as designed, in a reproducible way.

The researchers tested their fractal structures by firing an impactor into them at approximately 670 miles per hour. The structured cubes dissipated the shocks five times better than solid cubes of the same material.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

15 Billion Credentials Currently Up for Grabs on Hacker Forums:

Fifteen billion usernames and passwords for a range of internet services are currently for sale on underground forums – shedding light on the sheer scope of compromised credentials that are fueling account takeovers on the internet.

A report released Wednesday — "From Exposure to Takeover" by the Digital Shadows Photon Research Team — found that 100,000 separate data breaches over a two-year period have yielded a 300 percent increase in stolen credentials, leaving a veritable bonanza of account details on dark-web hacker forums up for grabs.

Most of the credentials are from consumers, and while many are sold on forums—for an average price of $15.43—many also are given away for free by hackers, researchers found.

[...] The credentials being flogged online vary in access and price, according to the report. They include usernames and passwords for everything from bank or financial accounts–which comprised 25 percent of the credentials analyzed–to video- and music-streaming services, to antivirus programs.

Unsurprisingly, credentials for bank and other financial accounts are also the most expensive to purchase, selling for an average of $70.91 a piece, researchers found. Indeed, data that puts potential financial gain on the table tends to be the most valuable to threat actors.

Data for accessing antivirus programs earned the second-highest price on hacker forums, at an average of $21.67. Threat actors apparently find access to media streaming, social media, file sharing, virtual private networks (VPNs) and adult-content sites far less valuable, with these credentials traded "for significantly under $1" on forums, according to the report.

While consumer credentials comprised the bulk of those researchers tracked, organizations are not immune to the risk of credential theft and potential reuse for nefarious purposes, particularly if financial gain is involved. The report uncovered 2 million accounting email addresses exposed online, with those referencing "invoice" or "invoices" the most commonly advertised on hacker forums, researchers said.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Free Tool Enables Recovery of Files Encrypted by ThiefQuest Mac Malware:

Researchers at endpoint security company SentinelOne have created a tool that enables users to recover files encrypted by the Mac malware named ThiefQuest, which poses as ransomware.

ThiefQuest, initially named EvilQuest, is designed to encrypt files on compromised systems, but also allows its operators to log keystrokes, steal files, and take full control of the infected device.

[...] ThiefQuest is delivered as trojanized installers for macOS applications such as the Ableton and Mixed in Key DJ apps and the Little Snitch firewall. Once the malware has been installed, it starts encrypting files found on the device, after which it informs victims, via text files and a modal window, that their files have been encrypted and a $50 ransom needs to be paid in bitcoin to recover them.

[...] Furthermore, Apple security expert Patrick Wardle noticed that the decryption routine is not called anywhere in the malware code, which indicates that it never gets executed. Malwarebytes researchers pointed out that the malware doesn't always encrypt files, even if it claims it has done so, which further indicates that the ransomware capabilities are just a distraction.

For Mac users whose files have been encrypted by the malware, SentinelOne has released a free decryption tool. The company's researchers analyzed ThiefQuest and noticed that its developer left the decryption function in the malware code. Once they were able to recover the key needed to decrypt the files, they used the malware's own decryption function to restore encrypted files.

[...] Wardle's analysis of the threat revealed that it also looks for executable files and adds malicious code to those files. This would allow it to spread like a virus, which is highly uncommon for Mac malware.

Previously:
(2020-07-05) New Mac Ransomware is Even More Sinister than it Appears

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

IT pros indicted after arranging credit card payments for weed startup:

On March 9, 2020, a German IT consultant named Ruben Weigand had a layover in Los Angeles as he traveled from Switzerland to Costa Rica. He never made it to his destination because US authorities arrested him as he was changing planes.

The feds say Weigand and a co-conspirator, Hamid "Ray" Akhavan, were the masterminds behind a multimillion-dollar bank-fraud scheme. The supposed fraud? Tricking US banks into processing more than $100 million in marijuana transactions that went contrary to the banks' rules. According to a March indictment, the pair disguised marijuana transactions as purchases of dog toys, carbonated drinks, diving gear, and other products unrelated to cannabis.

Lawyers for the two men say this is ludicrous because the alleged bank fraud had no victims. The customers knew exactly what they were paying for. The banks involved suffered no losses—in fact, they made money from transaction fees.

Moreover, marijuana is legal under state law in California and Oregon, where the transactions occurred. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but since 2014, a rule called the Rohrabacher Amendment has prohibited the feds from interfering with state medical marijuana laws. In a recent motion seeking dismissal of the case, Akhavan's lawyers portray the prosecution as an attempted end-run around this restriction.

Extraterritoriality in the Internet Age?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Spider silk made by photosynthetic bacteria:

The CSRS team focused on the marine photosynthetic bacterium Rhodovulum sulfidophilum. This bacterium is ideal for establishing a sustainable bio-factory because it grows in seawater, requires carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and uses solar energy, all of which are abundant and inexhaustible.

The researchers genetically engineered the bacterium to produce MaSp1 protein, the main component of the Nephila spider dragline which is thought to play an important role in the strength of the spider silk. Optimization of the gene sequence that they inserted into the bacterium's genome was able to maximize the amount of silk that could be produced. They also found that a simple recipe—artificial seawater, bicarbonate salt, nitrogen gas, yeast extract, and irradiation with near-infrared light—allows R. sulfidophilum to grow well and produce the silk protein efficiently. Further observations confirmed that the surface and internal structures of the fibers produced in the bacteria were very similar to those produced naturally by spiders.

Journal Reference:
Choon Pin Foong, Mieko Higuchi-Takeuchi, Ali D. Malay, et al. A marine photosynthetic microbial cell factory as a platform for spider silk production [open], Communications Biology (DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-1099-6)

Previous attempts to manufacture spider silk involved genetically engineering goats to produce it in their milk.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 865+: Breaking the 3GHz Threshold

Today Qualcomm is announcing an update to its extremely successful Snapdragon 865 SoC: the new Snapdragon 865+. The Snapdragon 865 had already seen tremendous success with over 140 different design wins, powering some of the best Android smartphone devices this year. We're past the hectic spring release cycle of devices, and much like last year with the S855+, for the summer and autumn release cycle, Qualcomm is providing vendors with the option for a higher-performance binned variant of the chip, the new S865+. As a bit of a[n] arbitrary, but also important characteristic of the new chip is that this is the first ever mobile silicon to finally pass the 3GHz frequency mark.

[...] Whilst in relative terms the new chipset's +10% clock improvement isn't all that earth-shattering, in absolute terms it finally allows the new Snapdragon 865+ to be the first mobile SoC to break past the 3GHz threshold, slightly exceeding that mark at a peak 3.1GHz frequency. Ever since the Cortex-A75 generation we've seen Arm make claims about their CPU microarchitectures achieving such high clock frequencies – however in all those years actual silicon products by vendors never really managed to quite get that close in commercial mass-production designs.

We've had a chat with Qualcomm's SVP and GM of mobile business Alex Katouzian, about how Qualcomm achieved this, and fundamentally it's a combination of aggressive physical design of the product as well as improving manufacturing yields during the product's lifecycle. Katouzian explained that they would have been able to achieve these frequencies on the vanilla Snapdragon 865 – but they would have had a lower quantity of products being able to meet this mark due to manufacturing variations. Yield improvements during the lifecycle of the Snapdragon 865 means that the company is able to offer this higher frequency variant now.

This feat should become more common with the arrival of Cortex-X1 ARM cores and the "5nm" and below process nodes.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

City builds open-access broadband network with Google Fiber as its first ISP:

The West Des Moines government's announcement said that "once the City installs conduit in the public right of way, broadband providers will pay a license fee to install their fiber in the City's conduit. Google Fiber will be the first tenant in the network." A conduit-license agreement "calls for Google Fiber to cover a portion of the construction cost to build conduit... through their monthly lease payments."

"On a monthly basis, Google Fiber would pay the city $2.25 for each household that connects to the network," according to the Des Moines Register. Google Fiber would pay the city a minimum of $4.5 million over 20 years.

Construction is expected to begin this fall and be completed in about two and a half years, the city said.

Related:
Google Fiber's biggest failure: ISP will turn service off in Louisville

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

FBI nabs Nigerian business scammer who allegedly cost victims millions:

The US government has gained custody of a Nigerian man who is accused of participating in a massive fraud and money laundering operation. The defendant, Ray "Hushpuppi" Abbas, has amassed 2.4 million followers on Instagram, where he flaunts his access to luxury cars, designer clothing, and private jets. The feds say that he gained this wealth by defrauding banks, law firms, and other businesses out of millions of dollars. He was arrested last month by authorities in the United Arab Emirates, where he had been living.

The FBI's criminal complaint details how the government obtained a wealth of information tying Abbas to his alleged crimes. Abbas was an avid user of American technology platforms, including Instagram, Gmail, iCloud, and Snapchat. Accounts on these platforms were all registered using a handful of common email addresses and phone numbers. Abbas's main email account—rayhushpuppi@gmail.com—included a copy of Abbas' lease at a luxury hotel in Dubai and scans of various government-issued photo IDs under Abbas' name.

Abbas is accused of participating in a number of "business email compromise" scams. By posing as trusted employees or customers of a target organization, Abbas and his fellow fraudsters allegedly tricked employees into sending large sums to bank accounts they controlled.

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

USA Today reports Trump has Officially Begun to Withdraw the US From the World Health Organization as Pandemic Spikes:

The Trump administration has officially begun to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grip the globe and infections spike in many states across the U.S.

Congress received formal notification of the decision on Tuesday, more than a month after President Donald Trump announced his intention to end the U.S. relationship with the WHO and blasted the multilateral institution as a tool of China. The White House said the withdrawal would take effect on July 6, 2021.

[...] The formal withdrawal comes as the United States nears 3 million reported coronavirus cases and more than 130,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Globally, there have been 11.6 million cases and almost 540,000 deaths.

Additional Coverage:
Trump administration moves to formally withdraw US from WHO
Trump administration begins formal withdrawal from World Health Organization
Trump Begins Process Of U.S. Withdrawal From World Health Organization

Previously:
(2020-05-20) Trump Threatens to Take US Out of WHO Entirely and Stop All US Funding
(2020-04-15) Trump to Halt Funding to WHO

Original Submission