Posts made by mlnews

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South Korea law forces Google and Apple to open up app store payments

App store owners won't be able to lock developers into their 30 percent fees.
South Korea will soon pass a law banning Apple's and Google's app store payment requirements. An amendment to South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act will stop app store owners from requiring developers to use in-house payment systems. The law also bans app store owners from unreasonably delaying the approval of apps or deleting them from the marketplace, which the country fears is used as a method of retaliation. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the law has passed South Korea's National Assembly (the country's Congress equivalent), and President Moon Jae-in is expected to sign the bill into law.

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Hackers steal $29 million from crypto-platform Cream Finance

Hackers are estimated to have stolen more than $29 million in cryptocurrency assets from Cream Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that allows users to loan and speculate on cryptocurrency price variations.
The company confirmed the hack earlier today, half an hour after blockchain security firm PeckShield noticed signs of an ongoing attack. Cream Finance said the hacker used a “reentrancy attack” in its “flash loan” feature to steal 418,311,571 in AMP tokens (estimated at around $25.1 million at the time of the hack) and 1,308.09 in ETH coins (estimated at around $4.15 million). The term “flash loan” refers to a contract (script) that runs on the Etherium blockchain that allows Cream Finance users to take quick loans from the company’s funds and then return them at a later date.

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Hurricane Ida: One million people in Louisiana without power

A million people are without power in Louisiana from Hurricane Ida, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
Ida brought 150mph (240km/h) winds when it made landfall, leaving a trail of destruction through the state before passing into Mississippi. One person was killed when a tree fell on their home in Ascension Parish, in Louisiana's Baton Rouge area. However, the full scale of the destruction will only become clear as the day goes on, officials said. "Daylight will bring horrific images as the damage is assessed", tweeted Shauna Sanford, communications director for the Louisiana Governor. President Joe Biden had previously said Ida would be "life-threatening", with the National Hurricane Center warning that heavy rain could still cause flooding in parts of the state.

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New Fossil smartwatches are still stuck in the bad old days of Wear OS

Gen 6 watches are slower, costlier, and have older software than a Galaxy Watch 4.
Before Samsung showed up and took over the Wear OS ecosystem, the top Android smartwatch manufacturer was Fossil. Even after Samsung's arrival, Fossil is still going, and today the company announced the Fossil Gen 6 watches. The Gen 6 Fossil watches are the company's first to ship with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 4100+, a 12 nm, Cortex A53-based ARM chip. The "plus" at the end of that 4100 model number means there's a low-power co-process on the SoC now, which can handle things like health tracking without waking up the big cores. It looks like the new SoC is the only upgrade over the gen 5 watches. There's still a 1.28-inch OLED display, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. Fossil doesn't say how big the battery is, but it charges to 80 percent in 30 minutes. The watch has GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi, a PPG heart rate sensor, and is water-resistant.

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Covid: Vaccine complications dwarfed by virus risks

A major review of vaccines suggests the AstraZeneca jab does raise the risk of blood clots and another serious condition that can cause bleeding.
But the study found the risk of such problems following a coronavirus infection was still much higher. The University of Oxford-led team also found an increased risk of stroke after the Pfizer jab - but again at a much lower rate than after infection. The team said it once again showed the "substantial" benefit of vaccination. It comes after a coroner ruled on Thursday that BBC Radio Newcastle presenter Lisa Shaw died because of complications from the AstraZeneca jab. The 44-year-old died in May after developing headaches a week after getting her first dose. She suffered blood clots in the brain.

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Overwatch to change cowboy character McCree's name

Jesse McCree, a character in Blizzard's Overwatch game, will be renamed in the wake of fallout over sexual harassment allegations against the company.
The in-game McCree, a revolver-toting cowboy character, was named after a real-life Blizzard staff member. In August, he and two other executives left the company without explanation. In a statement, the Overwatch team said it was "necessary to change the name... to something that better represents what Overwatch stands for". "Going forward, in-game characters will no longer be named after real employees," it promised. But the Overwatch developers did not reveal what the character's new name would be.

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South Korea becomes first major Asian economy to raise interest rates

South Korea has become the first major Asian economy to raise interest rates since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The Bank of Korea increased its base rate of interest from a record low of 0.5% to 0.75%. The move is aimed at helping curb the country's household debt and home prices, which soared in recent months. Central banks around the world are trying to balance the impact of ongoing Covid-19 infections against economic risks such as high inflation. It is the first time the Bank of Korea has raised its main interest rate for almost three years. The decision comes as the central bank attempts to balance helping to support the country's economic recovery against the risks of surging debt and rising inflation. Policy makers for Asia's fourth largest economy had been signalling that they were ready to increase the cost of borrowing since May.

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Need to get root on a Windows box? Plug in a Razer gaming mouse

Razer's automatically downloaded installer exposes a SYSTEM shell to any user.
This weekend, security researcher jonhat disclosed a long-standing security bug in the Synapse software associated with Razer gaming mice. During software installation, the wizard produces a clickable link to the location where the software will be installed. Clicking that link opens a File Explorer window to the proposed location—but that File Explorer spawns with SYSTEM process ID, not with the user's. By itself, this vulnerability in Razer Synapse sounds like a minor issue—after all, in order to launch a software installer with SYSTEM privileges, a user would normally need to have Administrator privileges themselves. Unfortunately, Synapse is a part of the Windows Catalog—which means that an unprivileged user can just plug in a Razer mouse, and Windows Update will cheerfully download and run the exploitable installer automatically.

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Airbnb offers free accommodation for 20,000 Afghan refugees

Online accommodation platform Airbnb has said it will house 20,000 Afghan refugees at no charge to help them resettle across the world.
The company's boss said the move was in response to "one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time". He said the firm felt a responsibility to step up. Chief executive Brian Chesky added: "I hope this inspires other business leaders to do the same. There's no time to waste." "As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees resettle around the world, where they stay will be the first chapter in their new lives. For these 20,000 refugees, my hope is that the Airbnb community will provide them with not only a safe place to rest and start over, but also a warm welcome home." he said.

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Google Pay team reportedly in major upheaval after botched app revamp

"Dozens of employees and executives have left" the struggling payments division.
Google Pay is apparently just as much a disaster internally as the app transition has been externally. That's the big takeaway from a recent Business Insider article detailing an exodus of executives from Google's payment division, lower-than-expected app adoption, and employees frustrated with the slow movement of the division. Business Insider spoke with ex-employees and learned that "dozens of employees and executives have left" the Google Payments team in recent months, including "at least seven leaders on the team with roles of director or vice president." The most prominent departure, of payments chief Caesar Sengupta, kicked off the exodus in April, and now employees are worried about another reorganization and even slower progress. Many rank-and-file team members have reportedly departed, too, with the story saying, "One former employee estimated that half the people working on the business-development team for Google Pay—a group of about 40 people—have left the company in recent months."

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Pfizer becomes first Covid vaccine to gain full FDA approval

Pfizer's two-dose Covid-19 vaccine has received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - the first jab to be licensed in the nation.
The vaccine had initially been given emergency use authorisation. Its two jabs, three weeks apart, are now fully approved for those aged 16 and older. The approval is expected to set off more vaccine mandates by employers and organisations across the country. It comes amid lingering vaccine hesitancy among many Americans. In a statement, the FDA said its review for approval included data from approximately 44,000 people. The vaccine, which will now be marketed as Comirnaty, was found to be 91% effective in preventing Covid disease. Acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock said that the public "can be very confident" the vaccine meets high safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality standards.

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Homegrown app helping Kabul residents steer clear of danger

Ehtesab tracks turbulence on the ground and sends users alerts on which areas to avoid.
As Kabul fell on Sunday, 20 young Afghan tech workers tracked the Taliban’s advance, broadcasting real-time reports of gunfire, explosions, and traffic jams across the city through a new app. Called Ehtesab, the app relies on ground-level reports from a vetted team of users to a private WhatsApp group. The reports, which are then verified by the app’s fact checkers, range from security incidents, such as fires, gunshots and bombings, to road closures and traffic problems to electricity cuts. Sara Wahedi, the 26-year-old founder of the app, said the team tried to confirm the reports with the interior ministry, “when it used to exist.”

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Afghanistan: The desperate scramble to escape

"Get back, get back," screamed the British soldier at a crowd gathered in front of the secure compound where those being evacuated by the UK embassy are taken before flying out.
In front of him, many frantically waved their British passports in the air, hoping to be allowed through but a group of Afghan security guards wielding rubber hoses tried to push them back. Many in the crowd had not received any indication they would be evacuated, but had pitched up in any case, desperate for a route out of Afghanistan. Others, however, had received emails from the embassy telling them arrive here, and wait to be processed for a flight.

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Google is killing Android Auto for phones (if you even know what that is)

This app had an Android Auto-like interface, but for people without compatible cars.
Google is killing Android Auto. No, not that Android Auto. Google is shutting down "Android Auto for phone screens," which was an Android Auto offshoot for people who didn't have cars compatible with the service. 9to5Google confirmed the cancellation with Google, and XDA Developers spotted a shutdown message in the app pushing users to a newer Google car computing solution for phone screens: "Google Assistant driving mode." As usual, we have many similarly named Google projects to keep track of, so don't get confused!

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Nature: Rattlesnakes' sound 'trick' fools human ears

Rattlesnakes have evolved a clever method of convincing humans that danger is closer than they think, say scientists.
The sounds of their shaking tail get louder as a person approaches, but then suddenly switches to a much higher frequency. In tests, the rapid change in sound made participants believe the snake was much nearer than it was in reality. The researchers say the trait evolved to help snakes avoid being trampled on. The sibilant sound of the rattlesnake's tail has long been a movie cliché. The tell tale rattle is made by the rapid shaking together of hard rings of keratin at the tip of the reptiles' tails. Keratin is same protein that makes up our fingernails and hair.

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The once-doomed MS Paint gets its first redesign in over a decade

Windows 10's version of Paint has been mostly unchanged since 2009.
The latest Windows 11 app to get a coat of paint is Paint, everyone's favorite meme-making sketching and doodling app. It's not available for download for Windows Insiders yet, but Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay posted a brief video of the new design, showing off its updated look, a new dark mode, better text tools, updated brushes, and other tweaks that collectively serve to modernize the app a bit.

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US lab stands on threshold of key nuclear fusion goal

A US science institute is on the verge of achieving a longstanding goal in nuclear fusion research.
The National Ignition Facility uses a powerful laser to heat and compress hydrogen fuel, initiating fusion. An experiment suggests the goal of "ignition", where the energy released by fusion exceeds that delivered by the laser, is now within touching distance. Harnessing fusion, the process that powers the Sun, could provide a limitless, clean energy source. In a process called inertial confinement fusion, 192 beams from NIF's laser - the highest-energy example in the world - are directed towards a peppercorn-sized capsule containing deuterium and tritium, which are different forms of the element hydrogen.

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The little-known human stories behind emoji designs

You may not think much about the emoji you use to text every day but there are compelling human stories behind them.
"My father's music is message music, to uplift the world from its slumbering mentality," says reggae musician Andrew Tosh, speaking from his home in Kingston, Jamaica. His father, Peter Tosh, was one of the three founding members of the 1960s band The Wailers, along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. Peter Tosh's story doesn't end happily; he was murdered in a horrific attack in the 1980s, but he left both a musical and a political legacy. And if you open your emoji keyboard and search for "levitating", you will find a tiny picture of a man dressed in a dapper black suit, hat and shades. That is Peter Tosh.

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Haiti earthquake: Death toll climbs to 1,297 as storm nears

Rescue workers are rushing to locate survivors of the deadly earthquake that struck Haiti on Saturday as a tropical storm is heading towards the Caribbean nation.
At least 1,297 people are known to have died in the 7.2-magnitude quake and an unknown number are still missing. Tropical Depression Grace is expected to pass over the worst affected area later on Monday. It is feared heavy rain brought by Grace could trigger landslides. Roads already made impassable by the quake could be further damaged by the rains, so aid teams are racing to get essential provisions to the quake-hit region before Grace hits.

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Samsung has its own AI-designed chip. Soon, others will too

Semiconductor software-design maker Synopsys is adding AI to its arsenal.
Samsung is using artificial intelligence to automate the insanely complex and subtle process of designing cutting-edge computer chips. The South Korean giant is one of the first chipmakers to use AI to create its chips. Samsung is using AI features in new software from Synopsys, a leading chip design software firm used by many companies. “What you’re seeing here is the first of a real commercial processor design with AI,” says Aart de Geus, the chairman and co-CEO of Synopsys. Others, including Google and Nvidia, have talked about designing chips with AI. But Synopsys’ tool, called DSO.ai, may prove the most far-reaching because Synopsys works with dozens of companies. The tool has the potential to accelerate semiconductor development and unlock novel chip designs, according to industry watchers.