call_end

    • Ar chevron_right

      Two of the Kremlin’s most active hack groups are collaborating, ESET says

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September • 1 minute

    Two of the Kremlin’s most active hacking units recently were spotted collaborating in malware attacks that compromise high-value devices located in Ukraine, security researchers said Friday.

    One of the groups is Turla, which is easily one of the world’s most-sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threats (well-organized and well-funded hacking groups, many backed by nation states, that target specific adversaries for years at a time). Researchers from multiple security firms largely agree that Turla was behind breaches of the US Department of Defense in 2008 , and more recently the German Foreign Office and France's military. The group has also been known for unleashing stealthy Linux malware and using satellite-based Internet links to maintain the stealth of its operations . The group conducts narrowly-targetted attacks on high-value targets and keeps a low profile.

    Gamaredon, meanwhile, is a separate APT known for conducting much wider-scale operations, often targeting organizations in Ukraine. Whereas Turla takes pains to fly under the radar, Gamaredon doesn’t seem to care about being detected and linked to the Russian government. Its malware generally aims to collect as much information from targets as possible over a short period of time. Both Turla and Gamaredon are widely assessed to be units of Russia’s Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the country’s chief security agency and successor of the Soviet Union’s KGB.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Despite congressional threat, National Academies releases new climate report

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September • 1 minute

    Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was going to reject the work it had done back in 2009, when it first determined that greenhouse gas emissions posed a threat to the US public. While it laid out a number of reasons for revisiting its earlier work, one of those focused on the science: The EPA's original decision was over 15 years old, and it claimed our understanding of climate change had itself changed since then.

    The National Academies of Science (NAS) decided that at least one aspect of that was probably right: Our understanding of the climate has changed in the last 15 years. So, it asked a group of scientists to do a quick update of our understanding of greenhouse gases, completed before public comment was closed on the EPA's plan. That report is now out , and the NAS's conclusion is clear: The EPA was right in 2009, and everything we've learned since has only made it more right.

    The politics of emissions

    The EPA's endangerment finding already had a long history by the time it was completed during the Obama administration. In it, the EPA concluded that greenhouse gases pose a risk to the US and its citizens, both directly through health impacts and indirectly through economic damages. Under the Clean Air Act, that finding enabled regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and formed the foundation of plans to reduce those originating from transportation and electrical generation. All of those plans have been held up in court or abandoned before coming into effect.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      After getting Jimmy Kimmel suspended, FCC chair threatens ABC’s The View

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September

    After pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel , Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is setting his regulatory sights on ABC's The View and NBC late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.

    Carr appeared yesterday on the radio show hosted by Scott Jennings, who describes himself as "the last man standing athwart the liberal mob." Jennings asked Carr whether The View and other ABC programs violate FCC rules, and made a reference to President Trump calling on NBC to cancel Fallon and Meyers.

    "A lot of people think there are other shows on ABC that maybe run afoul of this more often than Jimmy Kimmel," Jennings said. "I'm thinking specifically of The View , and President Trump himself has mentioned Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers at NBC. Do you have comments on those shows, and are they doing what Kimmel did Monday night, and is it even worse on those programs in your opinion?"

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Steam will drop support for the last 32-bit Windows systems in January 2026

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September • 1 minute

    Valve's Steam client is pretty widely compatible with all kinds of newer and older operating systems—that's what you do when you want as many people as possible spending their money in your store. But nothing lasts forever, and Valve does eventually end support for old software when it's time to move on. The company announced in a support note today that it would be ending Steam client support for 32-bit versions of Windows on January 1, 2026.

    "Existing Steam Client installations will continue to function for the near term on Windows 10 32-bit but will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates," the support note reads. "Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions."

    When Steam drops support for an older operating system, it's often because support is also being ended in some other underlying piece of technology that Steam uses to function, like its Chromium-based built-in browser. Valve cited "system drivers and other libraries that are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows" as the reason for ending 32-bit Windows support.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September

    Summarizing complex scientific findings for a non-expert audience is one of the most important things a science journalist does from day to day. Generating summaries of complex writing has also been frequently mentioned as one of the best use cases for large language models (despite some prominent counterexamples ).

    With all that in mind, the team at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) ran an informal year-long study to determine whether ChatGPT could produce the kind of "news brief" paper summaries that its "SciPak" team routinely writes for the journal Science and services like EurekAlert . These SciPak articles are designed to follow a specific and simplified format that conveys crucial information, such as the study's premise, methods, and context, to other journalists who might want to write about it.

    Now, in a new blog post and white paper discussing their findings, the AAAS journalists have concluded that ChatGPT can "passably emulate the structure of a SciPak-style brief," but with prose that "tended to sacrifice accuracy for simplicity" and which "required rigorous fact-checking by SciPak writers."

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Your very own humane interface: Try Jef Raskin’s ideas at home

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September • 1 minute

    In our earlier article about Macintosh project creator Jef Raskin, we looked at his quest for the humane computer, one that was efficient, consistent, useful, and above all else, respectful and adaptable to the natural frailties of humans. From Raskin's early work on the Apple Macintosh to the Canon Cat and later his unique software implementations, you were guaranteed an interface you could sit down and interact with nearly instantly and—once you'd learned some basic keystrokes and rules—one you could be rapidly productive with.

    But no modern computer implements his designs directly, even though some are based on principles he either espoused or outright pioneered. Fortunately, with a little work and the magic of emulation, you can have your very own humane interface at home and see for yourself what computing might have been had we traveled a little further down Raskin's UI road.

    You don’t need to feed a virtual Cat

    Perhaps the most straightforward of Raskin's systems to emulate is the Canon Cat. Sold by Canon as an overgrown word processor (billed as a “work processor”), it purported to be a simple editor for office work but is actually a full Motorola 68000-based computer programmable through an intentional backdoor in its own dialect of Forth. It uses a single workspace saved en masse to floppy disk that can be subdivided into multiple “documents” and jumped to quickly with key combinations, and it includes facilities for simple spreadsheets and lists.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      “Yikes”: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September

    The Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster on Thursday, alleging that the companies tacitly worked with scalpers to profit from jacking up ticket prices on the secondary market.

    As the FTC alleged in a press release , Ticketmaster's years of turning a blind eye to scalpers violated the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, costing customers "billions in inflated prices and additional fees." Further, artists' efforts to keep event costs low were repeatedly frustrated by executives' greedy bid to drive Ticketmaster revenue by reaping as many additional fees as possible, the FTC alleged.

    Rather than blocking scalping, Ticketmaster allegedly provided tech support to help so-called brokers exceed "fake" ticket limits that seemingly only applied to genuine customers buying tickets to see events.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      If you own a Volvo EX90, you’re getting a free computer upgrade

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September

    If you own a 2025 Volvo EX90, here's some good news: you're getting a car computer upgrade. Even better news? It's free.

    The Swedish automaker says that owners of model year 2025 EX90s— like the one we tested earlier this summer —are eligible for an upgrade to the electric vehicle's core computer. Specifically, the cars will get a new dual Nvidia DRIVE AGX Orin setup, which Volvo says will improve performance and reduce battery drainage, as well as enabling some features that have been TBD so far.

    That will presumably be welcome news—the EX90 is a shining example of how the "minimal viable product" idea has infiltrated the auto industry from the tech sphere. That's because Volvo has had a heck of time with the EX90 development, having to delay the EV not once but twice in order to get a handle on the car's software.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine panel realizes it has no idea what it’s doing, skips vote

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 19 September • 1 minute

    The second day of a two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices—a panel currently made up of federal vaccine advisors hand-selected by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. —is off to a dramatic start, with the advisors seemingly realizing they have no idea what they're doing.

    The inexperienced, questionably qualified group that has espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric started its second day of deliberations by reversing a vote taken the previous day on federal coverage for the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine. Yesterday, the group voted to restrict access to MMRV, stripping recommendations for its use in children under age 4. While that decision was based on no new data, it passed with majority support of 8–3 (with one abstention). (For an explanation of that, see our coverage of yesterday's part of the meeting here ).

    But puzzlingly, they then voted to uphold access and coverage of MMRV vaccines for children under age 4 if they receive free vaccines through the federal Vaccines For Children program, which covers about half of American children, mostly low-income. The discrepancy projected the idea that the alleged safety concerns that led the panel to rescind the recommendation for MMRV generally, somehow did not apply to low-income, vulnerable children. The vote also created significant confusion for VFC coverage, which typically aligns with recommendations made by the panel.

    Read full article

    Comments