The fight to contain the coronavirus entered an alarming new phase on Thursday as caseloads soared in Europe and the Middle East, and health officials in the United States and Germany dealt with patients with no known connection to others with the infection. From a report: The German and American cases raised the possibility that the virus could have begun to spread locally, or that infected people had spread it to others sequentially, making it virtually impossible to trace and isolate the origins. Either way, the cases, thousands of miles apart, underscored how quickly the virus was making its way around the globe after emerging in China. Japan's government closed all schools through March in an effort to combat the outbreak. Iran canceled Friday Prayers in major cities, a cornerstone ritual of the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia barred pilgrims from visiting Mecca and Medina.

President Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would lead the American effort to combat the virus, but the administration continued to send mixed messages. Public health officials warned of potentially "major disruptions," while Mr. Trump blamed Democrats and cable news channels for overstating the threat. Financial markets continued their weeklong declines. In the Middle East, concerns built about the growing severity of the outbreak in Iran, the source of infections in many other countries. The government said on Thursday that 245 people had been infected and 26 had died, but experts say there are probably many more cases. Several countries registered new infections that illustrated the diverse ways the pathogen could cross borders.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Professor Andre Simpson had a problem. The University of Toronto's Scarborough campus was paying through the nose for a crucial material for its 3D printer. Few would have guessed McDonald's would come to the rescue. Simpson is director of the school's Environmental NMR Center dedicated to environmental research. Central to this research is an analytical tool called the NMR spectrometer. NMR stands for nuclear magnetic resonance and is technically similar to how an MRI works for medical diagnostics. Simpson had bought a 3D printer for the lab in 2017. He hoped to use it to build custom parts that kept organisms alive inside of the NMR spectrometer for his research. But the commercial resin he needed for high-quality light projection 3D printing (where light is used to form a solid) of those parts was expensive.

The dominant material for light projection printing is liquid plastic, which can cost upward of $500 a liter, according to Simpson. Simpson closely analyzed the resin and spotted a connection. The molecules making up the commercial plastic resin were similar to fats found in ordinary cooking oil. What came next was the hardest part of the two-year experiment for Simpson and his team of 10 students -- getting a large sample batch of used cooking oil. "We reached out to all of the fast-food restaurants around us. They all said no," said Simpson. Except for McDonald's. After filtering out chunks of food particles and experimenting with the oil for several months, the team was able to successfully print a high-quality butterfly with details as minute as 100 micrometers in size.

"The experiment yielded a commercially viable resin that Simpson estimates could be sourced as cheaply as 30 cents a liter of waste oil," reports CNN. Another bonus: it is biodegradable.

Simpson and his team published their research in December 2019 in industry publication ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Google is countering Facebook's Instant Games with its own bid to make web games more accessible. Its Area 120 experimental lab is introducing GameSnacks, HTML5-based casual games that are designed to load quickly and play well even on poor connections and basic smartphones. From a report: The combination of a lean initial web page, compressed media and just-in-time loading means you can start playing within just a few seconds, even on a phone with less than a 1Mbps connection (all too common in the world) and just 1GB of RAM. All titles work with both touch as well as a PC's mouse and keyboard, and are designed to run on virtually any platform and device. Like many casual games, they're designed to be playable with a minimum of instructions -- important when they're meant to reach people across many different languages. Some are not-so-subtle riffs on familiar titles like Puzzle Bobble and Tetris, but that's probably not a bad thing for gamers who otherwise couldn't play those games on their phones.

North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong-un, to evade a "maximum pressure" American sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government, according to a new study. From a report: The study concludes that since 2017 -- the year President Trump threatened "fire and fury like the world has never seen" against the country -- the North's use of the internet has surged about 300 percent. Nearly half of that traffic now flows through a new connection in Russia, avoiding the North's longtime dependency on a single digital pipeline through China. The surge has a clear purpose, according to the report released Sunday by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., group known for its deep examinations of how nations use digital weaponry: circumventing financial pressure and sanctions by the West. Over the past three years, the study concluded, North Korea has improved its ability to both steal and "mine" cryptocurrencies, hide its footprints in gaining technology for its nuclear program and cyberoperations, and use the internet for day-to-day control of its government.

"What this tells you is that our entire concept of how to control the North's financial engagement with the world is based on an image of the North that is fixed in the past," said Priscilla Moriuchi, a former National Security Agency analyst who directed the study and has long focused on North Korea and Iran. "They have succeeded at an easy-to-replicate model of how to move large amounts of money around the world, and do it in a way our sanctions do not touch. Our sanctions system needs a radical update," she concluded. The report helps solve the mystery of why the country's economy appears to have survived, and in some sectors actually grown, as the United States and its allies have talked about their success in choking off oil supplies and cracking down on North Korea's skillful production of counterfeit American currency.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft Teams went down this morning for nearly three hours after Microsoft forgot to renew a critical security certificate. Users of Microsoft's Slack competitor were met with error messages attempting to sign into the service on Monday morning, with the app noting it had failed to establish an HTTPS connection to Microsoft's servers. Microsoft confirmed the Teams service was down just after 9AM ET today, and then later revealed the source of the issue. "We've determined that an authentication certificate has expired causing users to have issues using the service," explains Microsoft's outage notification. Microsoft then started rolling the fix out at 11:20AM ET, and by 12PM ET the service was restored for most affected users.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: In late December 2019, fuel and convenience store chain Wawa said a nine-month-long breach of its payment card processing systems may have led to the theft of card data from customers who visited any of its 850 locations nationwide. Now, fraud experts say the first batch of card data stolen from Wawa customers is being sold at one of the underground's most popular crime shops, which claims to have 30 million records to peddle from a new nationwide breach.

On the evening of Monday, Jan. 27, a popular fraud bazaar known as Joker's Stash began selling card data from "a new huge nationwide breach" that purportedly includes more than 30 million card accounts issued by thousands of financial institutions across 40+ U.S. states. Two sources that work closely with financial institutions nationwide tell KrebsOnSecurity the new batch of cards that went on sale Monday evening -- dubbed "BIGBADABOOM-III" by Joker's Stash -- map squarely back to cardholder purchases at Wawa. A spokesperson for Wawa confirmed that the company today became aware of reports of criminal attempts to sell some customer payment card information potentially involved in the data security incident announced by Wawa on December 19, 2019. "We have alerted our payment card processor, payment card brands, and card issuers to heighten fraud monitoring activities to help further protect any customer information," Wawa said in a statement released to KrebsOnSecurity. "We continue to work closely with federal law enforcement in connection with their ongoing investigation to determine the scope of the disclosure of Wawa-specific customer payment card data."

"We continue to encourage our customers to remain vigilant in reviewing charges on their payment card statements and to promptly report any unauthorized use to the bank or financial institution that issued their payment card by calling the number on the back of the card," the statement continues. "Under federal law and card company rules, customers who notify their payment card issuer in a timely manner of fraudulent charges will not be responsible for those charges. In the unlikely event any individual customer who has promptly notified their card issuer of fraudulent charges related to this incident is not reimbursed, Wawa will work with them to reimburse them for those charges."

couchslug writes: Potential hardware damage alert. As reported by Notebookcheck and later posted to a Lenovo support page, the USB-C firmware issue affects more than a dozen ThinkPad models including the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (5th Gen to 7th Gen), X1 Yoga (2nd Gen to 4th Gen), and P-series ThinkPads. It turns out that a firmware update issued in August 2019 corrupted the software controlling the port. " couchslug adds: Anyone with more information on this expensive problem please post. It's already taken out many system boards. The problem affects enough models that class action suit may be appropriate because failures due to the defect have occurred outside the warranty window. Users on Reddit suggest the situation is even worse. The "critical firmware update" is only a mitigation for the hardware failure -- keeping the machine going until the warranty expires." CNET adds: If your laptop is one of the models affected, Lenovo recommends to immediately update your system with new driver and firmware packages that are designed to resolve any USB-C problem. If the updates don't work out, Lenovo urges ThinkPad owners to reach out to Technical Support.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook believes augmented reality, or technology that overlays virtual objects onto the real world, is "the next big thing" that is poised to "pervade our entire lives." From a report: Shanahan asked Cook about major developments in tech he expects in the next five to 10 years. "I'm excited about AR," said the Big Tech CEO, citing augmented reality as an emerging tech space to watch. "My view is it's the next big thing, and it will pervade our entire lives." [...] Cook also sees applications for AR helping with hands-on tasks. "You may be under the car changing the oil, and you're not sure exactly how to do it. You can use AR," he said. Interestingly, the tech CEO sees benefits for AR and connecting people, more than other available technologies. "I think it's something that doesn't isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I've always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies."

According to physicist Jason Steffen, letting slower passengers board airplanes first actually results in a more efficient process and less time before takeoff. An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica: Back in 2011, Jason Steffen, now a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, became intrigued by the problem and applied the same optimization routine used to solve the famous traveling salesman problem to airline boarding strategies. Steffen fully expected that boarding from the back to the front would be the most efficient strategy and was surprised when his results showed that strategy was actually the least efficient. The most efficient, aka the "Steffen method," has the passengers board in a series of waves. "Adjacent passengers in line will be seated two rows apart from each other," Steffen wrote at The Conversation in 2014. "The first wave of passengers would be, in order, 30A, 28A, 26A, 24A, and so on, starting from the back."

Field tests bore out the results, showing that Steffen's method was almost twice as fast as boarding back-to-front or rotating blocks of rows and 20-30 percent faster than random boarding. The key is parallelism, according to Steffen: the ideal scenario is having more than one person sitting down at the same time. "The more parallel you can make the boarding process, the faster it will go," he told Ars. "It's not about structuring things as much as it is about finding the best way to facilitate multiple people sitting down at the same time." Steffen used a standard agent-based model using particles to represent individual agents. This latest study takes a different approach, modeling the boarding process using Lorentzian geometry -- the mathematical foundation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Co-author Sveinung Erland of Western Norway University and colleagues from Latvia and Israel exploited the well-known connection between microscopic dynamics of interacting particles and macroscopic properties and applied it to the boarding process. In this case, the microscopic interacting particles are the passengers waiting in line to board, and the macroscopic property is how long it takes all the passengers to settle into their assigned seats. The paper has been published in the journal Physical Review E.

Most modern iPhones running iOS 13 can now be used as a built-in phone security key for Google apps. 9to5Google reports: A built-in phone security key differs from the Google Prompt, though both essentially share the same UI. The latter push-based approach is found in the Google Search app and Gmail, while today's announcement is more akin to a physical USB-C/Lightning key in terms of being resistant to phishing attempts and verifying who you are. Your phone security key needs to be physically near (within Bluetooth range) the device that wants to log-in. The login prompt is not just being sent over an internet connection.

With an update to the Google Smart Lock app on iOS this week, "you can now set up your phone's built-in security key." According to one Googler today, the company is leveraging the Secure Enclave found on Apple's A-Series chips. Storing Touch ID, Face ID, and other cryptographic data, it was first introduced on the iPhone 5s, though that particular device no longer supports iOS 13. Anytime users enter a Google Account username and password, they'll be prompted to open Smart Lock on their nearby iPhone to confirm a sign-in. There's also the option to cancel with "No, it's not me." This only works when signing-in to Google with Chrome, while Bluetooth on both the desktop computer and phone needs to be enabled as the devices are locally communicating the confirmation request and verification.

Last week, the internet went dark for Yemen and its 28 million citizens. It's still not fully back today. In fact, the entire Red Sea region has dealt with slow to nonexistent connectivity since the severing of a single submarine cable on Thursday. Wired reports: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia all felt major effects from last week's cut of the so-called Falcon cable, which even impacted countries as far away as Comoros and Tanzania. Most of them weren't totally knocked offline, though, because they were able to fall back on other lines of connectivity. In Yemen, though, that one cable cut led to an 80 percent drop in capacity. Though the country still had that last 20 percent, trying to route a water main of web traffic through a drinking straw resulted in near-total connectivity failure.

While internet blackouts have been used in regions like Iran and Kashmir as a political cudgel, there's no indication that the cut in Yemen's case was nefarious; it's more likely that an anchor unintentionally severed it. Fixing it, though, won't be so simple. Yemen has three submarine cable landings -- a Falcon connection in the east, another Falcon connection in the west, and a third landing in the port city of Aden, which connects to two other cables altogether. Due to an ongoing civil war, Aden is the temporary capital of Yemen, controlled by the Hadi government; Houthi-controlled territory geographically divides the country. By Saturday, one of Yemen's two main internet service providers -- YemenNet -- was able to restore some connectivity by working with Oman's major ISP, Omantel, to receive service from a different undersea cable. The Falcon cable has not yet been fixed, though, and countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, along with Yemen, are still dealing with lingering impacts of the cut. If providers don't have a backup means of communication, or have to reestablish service with a manual rerouting process, restoring connectivity can take days.

A team of four Danish security researchers has disclosed this week a security flaw that impacts cable modems that use Broadcom chips. From a report: The vulnerability, codenamed Cable Haunt, is believed to impact an estimated 200 million cable modems in Europe alone, the research team said today. The vulnerability impacts a standard component of Broadcom chips called a spectrum analyzer. This is a hardware and software component that protects the cable modem from signal surges and disturbances coming via the coax cable. The component is often used by internet service providers (ISPs) in debugging connection quality. On most cable modems, access to this component is limited for connections from the internal network. The research team says the Broadcom chip spectrum analyzer lacks protection against DNS rebinding attacks, uses default credentials, and also contains a programming error in its firmware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: New York City unveiled an ambitious plan Tuesday to bring universal internet access to its 8.5 million residents by partnering with private internet service providers, a move Mayor Bill de Blasio says will help close the digital divide. The Internet Master Plan would create partnerships between the city and ISPs to facilitate permitting processes and developing infrastructure, such as fiber optic cables.

The announcement doesn't mean New York will be creating its own internet service, which cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee, have done in order to attract young people and businesses. Instead, the mayor's office is hoping public-private partnerships will help address a problem that's dogging cities around the country. Market research shows almost a third of US households don't have broadband connections reaching even 25 megabits per second. Chattanooga's service, by contrast, is 40 times faster than that. More than a third of Bronx residents don't have broadband at home, and nearly half of all New Yorkers living in poverty lack home broadband access, the mayor's office said. What's more, 1.5 million New Yorkers have neither a home broadband connection nor a mobile connection on a phone or other device. That prevents residents from accessing job and employment opportunities, and holds back the economy, the mayor's office said.

New submitter jasonbuechler writes: Related to the Xiaomi post the other day, Google has entirely disabled Google Assistant/Home integration with Xiaomi devices pending further testing. Google issued the following statement:

Hi everyone,

Late night on January 1st, we were made aware of an issue where a Reddit user posted that their Nest Hub was able to access other people's Xiaomi camera feeds. We've been working with Xiaomi and we're comfortable that the issue was limited to their camera technology platform. While we worked on this issue with Xiaomi, we made the decision to disable all Xiaomi integrations on our devices. We understand this had a significant impact on users of Xiaomi devices but the security and privacy of our users is our priority and we felt this was the appropriate action.

We're re-enabling Xiaomi device integrations for everything but camera streaming after necessary testing has been completed. We will not reinstate camera functionality for Xiaomi devices until we are confident that the issue has been fully resolved. We'll keep you updated with information as more becomes available to share. UPDATE: Speaking to Engadget, Xiaomi says that the issue occurred due to a cache update, which made the stills pop up if a user had that camera and that display under poor network conditions. According to the company, only 1,044 users had this setup with a "few" experiencing the poor network connection that would make it appear, and they have fixed the issue on their end. The full statement is available on Engadget's report.

The internet's full power remains relatively unknown to many people on the tiny island nation Tuvalu (located halfway between Hawaii and Australia), but its evolution has made Tuvalu's .tv domain one of its most valuable resources. From a report: Thanks to the rise of livestreamed programming and competitive video gaming, Tuvalu earns about 1/12th of its annual gross national income (GNI) from licensing its domain to tech giants like Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch through the Virginia-based company Verisign. And in 2021, when Tuvalu's contract with Verisign expires, that percentage figures to push significantly higher. [...] Compulsory public education has brought the nation's adult literacy rate up to nearly 99 percent, and the World Bank classifies Tuvalu as an upper-middle-income economy, with its territorial fishing rights accounting for the biggest chunk of its GNI at an estimated $19 million in license fees in 2018. But another sizable portion stems directly from its licensing of its .tv URL suffix, thanks to the recent surge in streaming sites. As sites utilizing .tv grow in prominence, Tuvalu's domain on the web may eventually supersede that of its seas.

Few Tuvaluans are able to access the streaming services powered by .tv. The nation's Internet, though widely accessible, is limited to a satellite connection with reduced streaming capacity. However, with more than 140 million people around the world consuming content via Twitch.tv and other streaming platforms, the monetary benefits have helped Tuvalu in more tangible ways than entertainment. "[.tv] has provided a certain, sure income," said Seve Paeniu, Tuvalu's Minister of Finance. "It enables the government to provide essential services to its people through providing schooling and education for the kids, providing medical services to our people, and also in terms of improving the basic economic infrastructure and service delivery to our communities." To monetize .tv, the government of Tuvalu has negotiated a series of agreements allowing foreign companies to market the top-level domain for commercial use. Under the current deal, signed in 2011, Virginia-based network infrastructure firm Verisign pays Tuvalu around $5 million per year for the right to administer .tv. For a nation whose annual domestic revenues tend to hover around $60 million, this is a substantial benefit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The spectacle of Earth suspended in space was so overwhelming for Edgar Mitchell that the Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon wanted to grab politicians by the scruff of the neck and drag them into space to witness the view. Such drastic measures may not be necessary, however. Scientists are about to welcome the first participants on an unprecedented clinical trial that aims to reproduce the intense emotional experience, known as the "Overview effect," from the comfort of a health spa. If the trial goes well, what led Mitchell to develop "an instant global consciousness" and a profound connection to Earth and its people could be recreated with nothing more than a flotation tank, a half tonne of Epsom salts, and a waterproof virtual reality (VR) headset.

Pratscher will recruit about 100 volunteers who are willing to don the VR headset and clamber into a dark, salt-laden flotation tank at the city's Clarity Float spa. The silence and buoyancy will mimic the sensation of floating in space, while the VR headset plays high-definition, 360 degree immersive video recorded by the Silicon Valley startup, SpaceVR. The volunteers will be randomly assigned to have either the full flotation tank VR experience, to float without VR, or have VR while lying on a bed. Before and after their one-hour session, the participants will complete a series of questionnaires to assess whether they had any mystical experiences, felt more connected to others, or had what psychologists call an "emotional breakthrough" moment. The persistence of any effects will be assessed after one week and again a month later. Pratscher does not expect everyone who steps into the tank wearing a VR headset to emerge having experienced the Overview effect. But the experiment will reveal what, if anything, people do experience when their senses are fooled into believing they are looking down on Earth from space.