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Submission + - Moria creator Robert Koeneke passed away (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by neoRUR
neoRUR writes: At the dawn of the computer era there were some games that borrowed from Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons to create an experience like no other. It brought you into the world and you could be one of those characters, roam around, fight monsters, level up your characters. One of the more popular ones that would add to that was Moria (As in the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings) You quest was to kill the Balrog at the end. Today one of the creators, Robert Alan Koeneke, who wrote Moria because he wanted a Rogue like game to play while at school at the University of Oklahoma, passed away. It has inspired many games and RPG's since. I played Moria on the Amiga for hours and hours. His contributions to computer game history will always be remembered.

Submission + - How One Company Survived a Ransomware Attack Without Paying the Ransom (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: The first signs of the ransomware attack at data storage vendor Spectra Logic were reports from a number of IT staffers about little things going wrong at the beginning of the day. Matters steadily worsened within a very short time and signs of a breach became apparent. Screens then started to display a ransom demand, which said files had been encrypted by the NetWalker ransomware virus. The ransom demand was $3.6 million, to be paid in bitcoin within five days.

Tony Mendoza, Senior Director of Enterprise Business Solutions at Spectra Logic, laid out the details of the attack at the annual Fujifilm Recording Media USA Conference in San Diego late last month, as reported by eSecurity Planet.

“We unplugged systems, as the virus was spreading faster than we could investigate,” Mendoza told conference attendees. “As we didn’t have a comprehensive cybersecurity plan in place, the attack brought the entire business to its knees.”

To make matters worse, backups were also corrupted, but with the help of recovery specialist Ankura, uncorrupted snapshots and tape backups helped the company get back online in days, although full recovery took a month.

“We were able to restore everything and paid nothing,” said Mendoza. “Other than a few files, all data was recovered.”

The attack, which started from a successful phishing attempt, "took us almost a month to fully recover and get over the ransomware pain," said Mendoza.

Submission + - Judge Orders Twitter To Unmask FBI Impersonator Who Set Off Seth Rich Conspiracy (npr.org)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated an FBI document to spread a conspiracy theory about the killing of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who died in 2016.

The ruling could lead to the identification of the person behind the Twitter name @whyspertech. Through that account, the user allegedly provided forged FBI materials to Fox News. The documents falsely linked Rich's killing to the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic Party emails in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

While Twitter fought to keep the user's identity secret, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered on Tuesday that the tech company must turn over the information to attorneys representing Rich's family in a defamation suit by Oct. 20.

It is the latest twist in a years-long saga over a conspiracy theory that rocked Washington, caused a grieving family a great deal of pain and set off multiple legal battles.

Submission + - New Zealand PM Flags Four-Day Working Week To Boost Its Shuttered Economy (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says a four-day workweek could help rebuild the nation's economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Ardern floated the idea during a Facebook Live earlier this week. Speaking Tuesday from Rotorua, a tourist hub in New Zealand, Ardern brought up a flurry of suggestions that could help jumpstart the country's vital tourism industry, including the shorter workweek, which could encourage citizens to travel more.

"I hear lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day week," Ardern said. "Ultimately that really sits between employers and employees. But as I've said there's just so much we've learnt about COVID and that flexibility of people working from home, the productivity that can be driven out of that." "I'd really encourage people to think about that if you're an employer and in a position to do so to think about whether or not that is something that would work for your workplace because it certainly would help tourism all around the country," she added. Arden said domestic tourism makes up about 60% of the industry, but New Zealanders spend about $9 billion (NZD) on tourism internationally. "Think about exploring your backyard," she said.

Submission + - Mummy Speaks (apnews.com)

Submitted by vm
vm writes: You donâ(TM)t have to wait until next Halloween to get creeped out. Using 3D printing, medical scanners, and an electronic larynx, researchers have recreated the voice of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy. The tongue has deteriorated over three millennia and all they have so far is a vowel sound but itâ(TM)s a pretty clever way to raise the dead with science.

Submission + - Company Says It's Built a Marijuana Breathalyzer (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There's currently no field test equipment that detects marijuana impairment. A company in California thinks it has a solution. From San Francisco Chronicle: "By mid-2020, Hound Laboratories plans to begin selling what it says is the world’s first dual alcohol-marijuana breath analyzer, which founder Dr. Mike Lynn says can test whether a user has ingested THC of any kind in the past two to three hours. 'We’re allowed to have this in our bodies,' Lynn said of marijuana, which became legal to use recreationally in California in 2018. 'But the tools to differentiate somebody who’s impaired from somebody who’s not don’t exist.'"

We won't know if these claims are true until the testing equipment is deployed. And even then, we still won't know if the machines are accurate or the drivers they catch are actually impaired. Marijuana doesn't work like alcohol, so impairment levels vary from person to person. In addition, there's no baseline for impairment like there is for alcohol. That will have to be sorted out by state legislatures before officers can begin to claim someone is "impaired" just because the equipment has detected THC. At this point, the tech pitched by Hound Labs only provides a yes/no answer. There's a very good chance this new tech will go live before the important details — the ones safeguarding people's rights and freedoms — are worked out. The founder of Hound Labs is also a reserve deputy for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. And it's this agency that's been test driving the weedalyzer.

Submission + - SPAM: Retired USAF General Makes Eyebrow Raising Claims About Advanced Space Tech

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space. While military leadership rattling the space sabers is nothing new, Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever. Is this mere posturing or could we actually be on the verge of making science fiction a reality?

Around the 12:00 mark in the speech, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:

"The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists. This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour."


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