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upstart writes:

RedLine malware shows why passwords shouldn't be saved in browsers:

The RedLine information-stealing malware targets popular web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera, demonstrating why storing your passwords in browsers is a bad idea.

This malware is a commodity information-stealer that can be purchased for roughly $200 on cyber-crime forums and be deployed without requiring much knowledge or effort.

However, a new report by AhnLab ASEC warns that the convenience of using the auto-login feature on web browsers is becoming a substantial security problem affecting both organizations and individuals.

[...] Using your web browser to store your login credentials is tempting and convenient, but doing so is risky even without malware infections.

By doing so, a local or remote actor with access to your machine could steal all your passwords in a matter of minutes.

Instead, it would be best to use a dedicated password manager that stores everything in an encrypted vault and requests the master password to unlock it.

Moreover, you should configure specific rules for sensitive websites such as e-banking portals or corporate asset webpages, requiring manual credential input.

Finally, activate multi-factor authentication wherever this is available, as this additional step can save you from account take-over incidents even if your credentials have been compromised.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Vikings may have fled Greenland to escape rising seas:

In 1721, a Norwegian missionary set sail for Greenland in the hopes of converting the Viking descendants living there to Protestantism. When he arrived, the only traces he found of the Nordic society were ruins of settlements that had been abandoned 300 years earlier.

There is no written record to explain why the Vikings left or died out. But a new simulation of Greenland's coastline reveals that as the ice sheet covering most of the island started to expand around that time, sea levels rose drastically, researchers report December 15 at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in New Orleans.

These shifting coastlines would have inundated grazing areas and farmland, and could have helped bring about the end of the Nordic way of life in Greenland, says Marisa Borreggine, a geophysicist at Harvard University.

Greenland was first colonized by Vikings in 985 by a group of settlers in 14 ships led by Erik the Red, who had been banished from neighboring Iceland for manslaughter. Erik and his followers settled across southern Greenland, where they and their descendants hunted for seals, grazed livestock, built churches and traded walrus ivory with European mainlanders.

The settlers arrived during what's known as the Medieval Warm Period, when conditions across Europe and Greenland were temperate for a handful of centuries (SN: 7/24/19). But by 1350, the climate had started taking a turn for the worse with the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a period of regional cooling that lasted well into the 19th century.

Researchers have long speculated that a rapidly changing climate could have dealt a blow to Greenland's Norse society. The island probably became much colder in the last 100 years of Norse occupation, says paleoclimatologist Boyang Zhao at Brown University in Providence, R.I, who was not involved in the new research. Lower temperatures could have made farming and raising livestock more difficult, he says.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

India unveils $10.2B plan to attract semiconductor makers:

India on Wednesday announced a $10.2 billion plan to try to attract global chipmakers to set up shop in the country and transform it into a production hub of semiconductors.

The plan unveiled by Information Technology and Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw comes amid a severe shortage of semiconductors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to global shortages of products that need them, including new cars.

India wants to lure countries with economic incentives, including manufacturers with operations in China that might be willing to shift to India because of the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China, Indian officials and business leaders have said.

He told reporters that incentives will attract companies involved in various parts of the semiconductor manufacturing process. India's government will provide fiscal support of up to 50% of project costs to eligible display and semiconductor fabricators, Vaishnaw said.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/first-dual-channel-ide/

The OS/2 Museum recently came into possession of what may be the first adapter with support for two IDE channels... sort of:

The adapter was made by Plus Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the disk maker Quantum. This particular specimen was manufactured in 1989, though its BIOS has a 1988 copyright.

The adapter is quite obscure for something made by a well known company. I could not find any information about it whatsoever. The only public reference to its existence is its FCC ID, EU95T8IMPULSE80-2 (note that Plus Impulse was a brand name under which some Quantum drives were sold). The FCC application is from March 17, 1989, and it mentions a "hard disk controller card for internal & external hard disk drives".

Original Submission

Rich writes:

The holiday season has brought us major releases of three lighthouse projects of the Free Software world:

Krita has reached version 5.0 on the 23rd: https://krita.org/en/item/krita-5-0-released/

Blender already got to version 3.0 on the 3rd: https://www.blender.org/press/blender-3-0-a-new-era-for-content-creation/

and KiCAD hit 6.0 on the 25th: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2021/12/KiCad-6.0.0-Release/

The upgrades are significant, and these three applications already rule their domains at the entry level. How much further will they go?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists draw inspiration from catchweed to create biodegradable Velcro:

Velcro is an ingenious hook-and-loop fastener inspired by nature—specifically, cockleburs. Now scientists at the Italian Institute of Technology are returning the favor. They have created the first biodegradable Velcro—inspired by climbing plants—and used it to build small devices to help monitor the health of crop plants and deliver pesticides and medicines as needed, according to a November paper published in the journal Communications Materials.

Velcro's creator was a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral, who combined his love of invention with a passion for the great outdoors. After finishing school, he took a job in the machine shop of a Swiss engineering company. In 1948, de Mestral took a two-week holiday from work to go game bird hunting. While out hiking with his Irish pointer in the Jura Mountains, he was plagued by cockleburs (burdock seeds), which clung relentlessly to both his clothing and his dog's fur.

It was so difficult to disentangle the tenacious seed pods that de Mestral became intrigued by how they were constructed and examined a few under a microscope. He noticed that the outside of each burr was covered with hundreds of tiny hooks that grabbed into loops of thread, or in the dog's case, fur. And it gave him an idea for a similar manmade fastener.

[...] Co-author Isabella Fiorello and her colleagues were interested in developing innovative new technologies for monitoring plants in situ to detect disease, as well as delivering various substances to plants. However, few such devices can be attached directly to plant leaves without damaging them. The best current options are sensors attached with chemical glues, or with clips. There are also micro-needle-based patches under development able to penetrate leaves for disease detection.

Fiorello et al. found inspiration in the common catchweed plant (Galium aparine). It can form dense, tangled mats on the ground, and while the plants can grow up to six feet, they can't stand on their own and instead must use other plants for support. For this purpose, catchweed plants rely on a "unique parasitic ratchet-like anchoring mechanism to climb over host plants, using microscopic hooks for mechanical interlocking to leaves," the authors wrote.

fliptop writes:

Lasers have been demonstrated to be capable of all kinds of attacks, from breaking into a smart home to non-line-of-sight imaging. Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Technical University of Braunschweig, and the Technical University of Berlin demonstrated that physically isolated (air-gapped) computer systems can be hacked using a directed laser:

The researchers found that hackers can communicate secretly with air-gapped computer systems over several meters of distance, using a directed laser to transmit data to the light-emitting diodes of traditional office devices without additional hardware at the attacked device. Their work was presented at ACSAC '21, the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference.

"The LaserShark project demonstrates how important it is to additionally protect critical IT systems optically next to conventional information and communication technology security measures," says KIT Professor Christian Wressnegger.

Full story at Kit.edu Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Journal Reference:
Niclas Kühnapfel, Stefan Preußler, Maximilian Noppel, et al. LaserShark: Establishing Fast, Bidirectional Communication into Air-Gapped Systems, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.04119)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny:

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do". "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," the smart speaker said.

She said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one." That's when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had "found on the web".

The dangerous activity, known as "the penny challenge", began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.

"I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms," Michael Clusker, station manager at Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire in 2020. "The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Coffee's health benefits aren't as straightforward as they seem:

You've probably heard it before: drinking coffee is good for your health. Studies have shown that drinking a moderate amount of coffee is associated with many health benefits, including a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But while these associations have been demonstrated many times, they don't actually prove that coffee reduces disease risk. In fact, proving that coffee is good for your health is complicated.

While it's suggested that consuming three to five cups of coffee a day will provide optimal health benefits, it's not quite that straightforward. Coffee is chemically complex, containing many components that can affect your health in different ways.

While caffeine is the most well-known compound in coffee, there is more to coffee than caffeine. Here are a few of the other compounds found in coffee that might affect your health.

I hope this reaches you after a safe and healthy holiday!

Where We're At:
In our last fundraising update on 2021-21-20 we stood at $1510.49 towards our goal of $3,500.00 for the second half of the year. I am happy to report that we have since collected additional net subscriptions totaling $279.72. Thank You! You Rock!

mysql> SELECT SUM(payment_gross) AS Gross, SUM(payment_net) AS Net, ts, max(spid) AS SPID FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts >= '2021-07-01' ;
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| Gross   | Net     | ts                  | SPID |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| 1908.06 | 1808.21 | 2021-07-01 00:41:45 | 1711 |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

There were a total of 81 (YAY!) subscriptions purchased in the second half of this year (click to see):

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql> SELECT ts, payment_gross, payment_net, method, submethod, payment_type FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts >= '2021-07-01' AND payment_gross > 0 ORDER BY ts ;
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
| ts                  | payment_gross | payment_net | method | submethod | payment_type |
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
| 2021-07-01 00:41:45 |         20.00 |       19.12 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-01 02:15:00 |         20.00 |       18.82 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-01 02:20:50 |         20.00 |       19.12 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-01 02:34:13 |         20.00 |       18.82 | paypal | NULL      | gift         |
| 2021-07-01 03:26:34 |         20.00 |       18.82 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-01 14:19:33 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-01 16:35:50 |         22.34 |       21.39 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-01 18:36:56 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-02 10:49:17 |         20.00 |       19.12 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-02 14:43:16 |         20.00 |       19.12 | paypal | NULL      | gift         |
| 2021-07-02 21:06:24 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-05 21:59:27 |         40.00 |       37.94 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-05 22:07:16 |        400.00 |      388.10 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-06 14:07:24 |          5.00 |        4.55 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-18 14:27:40 |          5.00 |        4.55 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-19 15:13:31 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-22 12:14:55 |          4.00 |        3.52 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-07-25 07:14:27 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-07-29 11:57:17 |         10.00 |        9.41 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-08-06 12:30:41 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-08-13 10:28:11 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-08-18 11:54:17 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-08-22 12:11:44 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-08-29 13:03:40 |         10.00 |        9.16 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-03 12:33:49 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-06 10:20:14 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-06 13:35:17 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-10 18:30:22 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-11 23:56:46 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | gift         |
| 2021-09-18 10:37:19 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-22 10:12:38 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-09-29 14:37:56 |         10.00 |        9.16 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-05 00:31:51 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-10-06 10:58:25 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-14 11:33:56 |         30.00 |       28.46 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-16 09:38:51 |         13.72 |       13.02 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-10-18 11:21:58 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-21 13:29:39 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-22 12:00:55 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-24 19:27:39 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-26 19:43:45 |         40.00 |       38.11 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-29 12:01:11 |         10.00 |        9.16 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-10-30 18:22:11 |         50.00 |       47.01 | paypal | NULL      | gift         |
| 2021-11-06 12:28:43 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-08 15:02:34 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-09 19:14:31 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-10 06:40:55 |         50.00 |       47.76 | paypal | NULL      | gift         |
| 2021-11-10 11:47:46 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-12 03:08:14 |         30.00 |       28.46 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-17 01:01:32 |         12.00 |       11.35 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-11-18 12:22:21 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-21 14:54:31 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-22 12:28:08 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-27 18:53:45 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-11-29 10:45:50 |         10.00 |        9.16 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-03 15:58:30 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | gift         |
| 2021-12-04 02:20:36 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-06 11:29:58 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-11 04:02:13 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-11 12:38:48 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-12 11:08:54 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-13 20:52:42 |         12.00 |       11.09 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-15 09:21:39 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-15 16:00:03 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-16 10:32:40 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-16 13:42:40 |        100.00 |       96.80 | stripe | CC        | gift         |
| 2021-12-18 10:16:24 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-18 10:52:56 |          5.00 |        4.34 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-20 23:21:01 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-21 02:21:21 |         40.00 |       38.11 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-21 05:25:20 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-21 17:14:58 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-21 21:00:59 |         50.00 |       48.25 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-22 10:26:01 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-22 10:45:00 |          4.00 |        3.31 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-23 05:17:16 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-23 18:26:06 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | gift         |
| 2021-12-23 20:05:03 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | gift         |
| 2021-12-25 12:02:11 |         40.00 |       38.11 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-26 01:32:21 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-28 13:01:56 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
81 rows in set (0.00 sec)

What's Next?

The sharp-eyed among you have already recognized something: that's not nearly enough:

We need to net an additional $1691.79 to reach our goal.

WE CAN DO THIS! 😃

Just click on Subscribe and follow the instructions! (Click the "*SPOILER* for more details.)

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upstart writes:

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021:

The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo continues to grow rapidly, with the company now averaging over 100 million daily search queries and growing by almost 47% in 2021.

Unlike other search engines, DuckDuckGo says they do not track your searches or your behavior on other sites. Instead of building user profiles used to display interest-based ads, DuckDuckGo search pages display contextual advertisements based on the searched keywords.

[...] Furthermore, to build their search index, the search engine uses the DuckDuckBot spider to crawl sites and receive data from partners, such as Wikipedia and Bing. However, they do not build their index using data from Google.

While Google remains the dominant search platform, DuckDuckGo has seen impressive year-over-year growth. In 2020, DuckDuckGo received 23,653,663,401 total search queries and achieved a daily average of 79 million search queries by the end of December. In 2021, DuckDuckGo received 34.6 million search queries and currently has an average of 100 million search queries per day, showing a 46.4% growth for the year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Riot Games agrees to pay $100 million in settlement of class-action gender discrimination suit:

"League of Legends" publisher Riot Games announced Monday that it is settling a 2018 gender-based discrimination class-action suit with California state agencies and current and former women employees for $100 million. The company will pay $80 million to members of the class-action suit and approximately $20 million toward plaintiffs' legal fees.

The Los Angeles lawsuit was filed in November 2018 by now-former employees Melanie McCracken and Jess Negrón, alleging gender discrimination as well as sexual harassment and misconduct at Riot Games. The suit was followed by two inquiries led by California state agencies. The suit came after gaming news site Kotaku published an exposé about a culture of sexism at Riot Games, where female employees were asked in job interviews to be "core gamers" and "League of Legends" players. In the article, women said they were turned away for insufficiently satisfying those criteria during the hiring process.

"This is a great day for the women of Riot Games — and for women at all video game and tech companies — who deserve a workplace that is free of harassment and discrimination," said the plaintiffs' counsel, the employment and sexual harassment lawyer Genie Harrison. "We appreciate Riot's introspection and work since 2018 toward becoming a more diverse and inclusive company."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies at 90

upstart writes:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu dies at 90:

In a statement confirming his death on Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his condolences to Tutu's family and friends, calling him "a patriot without equal."

"A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world," Ramaphosa said.

Tutu had been in ill health for years. In 2013, he underwent tests for a persistent infection, and he was admitted to hospital several times in following years.

For six decades, Tutu -- known affectionately as "the Arch" -- was one of the primary voices in exhorting the South African government to end apartheid, the country's official policy of racial segregation. After apartheid ended in the early '90s and the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela became president of the country, Tutu was named chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

upstart writes:

Black Holes of All Shapes and Sizes in Largest Catalog of Gravitational Wave Events Ever Assembled:

The largest catalog of gravitational wave events ever assembled has been released by an international collaboration that includes Penn State researchers. Gravitational waves are ripples in space time produced as aftershocks of huge astronomical events, such as the collision of two black holes. Using a global network of detectors, the research team identified 35 gravitational wave events, bringing the total number of observed events to 90 since detection efforts began in 2015.

The new gravitational wave events were observed between November 2019 and March 2020, using three international detectors: The two Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors in Louisiana and Washington state in the U.S. and the Advanced Virgo detector in Italy. Data from these three detectors were carefully analyzed by a team of scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration and the KAGRA Collaboration. The catalog of new events from the second half of LIGO's third observing run is described in a new paper.

"In the third observation run of LIGO and Virgo, we have begun to detect the more elusive types of gravitational wave events," said Debnandini Mukherjee, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State and a member of the LIGO collaboration. "This has included heavy mass black holes, more extreme mass ratio binaries and neutron star–black hole coalescences detected with higher confidence. We are in the exciting era where such observations have begun to question conventionally known astrophysics and have begun to contribute towards a clearer understanding of formations of such objects."

upstart writes:

CDC cuts isolation, quarantine time for health workers as omicron cases surge:

Doctors, nurses and other staff who test positive for covid-19 can more quickly return to work under recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, as short-staffed hospitals brace for a winter surge of cases.

According to the CDC's new guidance, health workers who contract the coronavirus but are asymptomatic can return to work after seven days with a negative test. "[T]hat isolation time can be cut further if there are staffing shortages," CDC wrote. Previously, the agency had recommended that infected health workers isolate for at least 10 days to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.

CDC shortens recommend quarantine duration, with restrictions:

On Monday, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowered the amount of time that Americans with COVID-19 need to spend in isolation, reducing guidance from 10 days to five, provided they aren't experiencing symptoms and stay masked around other people for an additional five days. The quarantine guidance for anyone exposed to the virus received the same revision.

[...] Booster shots of Pfizer and Moderna have been shown to be effective in protecting against the variant, with CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky saying that the organization was considering revising the definition of "fully vaccinated" to include booster shots.

The important distinction in the new guidance is that infected people are free of symptoms and remain masked around other people.

Original Submission