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Submission + - Telefonica Tells Employees to Shut Down PCs Amid Massive Ransomware Outbreak (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Telefonica, Spain's biggest ISP, has suffered a massive ransomware infection, with hundreds of PCs encrypted with a new ransomware strain that came out of the blue and made thousands of victims worldwide. According to reports, the situation is so bad that Telefonica's security team is telling employees to shut down their computers to prevent the ransomware from spreading.

El Mundo reports that hundreds of PCs were affected at Telefonica, but also at other Spanish companies such as Vodafona, Capgemini, Gas Natural, and Iberdrola. Bleeping Computer reports that Telefonica has sent several internal memos telling employees to disconnect from internal WiFi and VPN networks, and has even blasted alerts through the company's internal speakers to make sure all users are aware of the issue.

The ransomware responsible for these infections is a new strain called WCry (or WannaCry), and has not caused any problems before. According to security researchers, infections exploded out of the blue today, with victims all over the world, but especially Spain. It is unclear how this ransomware is spread at the moment.

Submission + - What a Trip: First Evidence for Higher State of Consciousness Found (neurosciencenews.com)

Submitted by baalcat
baalcat writes: Researchers observe a sustained increase in neural signal diversity in people under the influence of psychedelics.

Scientific evidence of a ‘higher’ state of consciousness has been found in a study led by the University of Sussex.

Neuroscientists observed a sustained increase in neural signal diversity – a measure of the complexity of brain activity – of people under the influence of psychedelic drugs, compared with when they were in a normal waking state.

The diversity of brain signals provides a mathematical index of the level of consciousness. For example, people who are awake have been shown to have more diverse neural activity using this scale than those who are asleep.

This, however, is the first study to show brain-signal diversity that is higher than baseline, that is higher than in someone who is simply ‘awake and aware’. Previous studies have tended to focus on lowered states of consciousness, such as sleep, anaesthesia, or the so-called ‘vegetative’ state.

Submission + - Physicists detect whiff of new particle at the Large Hadron Collider (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: For decades, particle physicists have yearned for physics beyond their tried-and-true standard model. Now, they are finding signs of something unexpected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest atom smasher at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The hints come not from the LHC’s two large detectors, which have yielded no new particles since they bagged the last missing piece of the standard model, the Higgs boson, in 2012, but from a smaller detector, called LHCb, that precisely measures the decays of familiar particles.

The latest signal involves deviations in the decays of particles called B mesons—weak evidence on its own. But together with other hints, it could point to new particles lying on the high-energy horizon. “This has never happened before, to observe a set of coherent deviations that could be explained in a very economical way with one single new physics contribution,” says Joaquim Matias, a theorist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

Submission + - DARPA building full-sized electric VTOL X-Plane following successful tests (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by drunkdrone
drunkdrone writes: The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has completed test flights of its prototype vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) X-Plane, an experimental, high-speed electric aircraft that can be deployed on missions without needing a runway.

The X-Plane, which is now officially recognised by the US military as the XV-24A, is powered by 24 fan propellers distributed across the wings and tail of the unmanned aircraft, which are driven by a 4,000 horsepower hybrid turboshaft engine.

The tests, which began in March 2016, involved a scaled-down version of the craft. Over the course of six flights, the demonstrator was used to test the X-Plane's flight systems, navigation, manoeuvrability, hovering, navigation and the craft's automatic take-off and landing capabilities.

Submission + - Why don't we eat each other for dinner? Too few calories, says cannibalism study (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A new, slightly morbid study based on the calorie counts of average humans suggests that man-eating was mostly ritualistic, not dietary, in nature among hominins including Homo erectus, H. antecessor, Neandertals, and early modern humans. On average, an adult male human contains 125,822 calories of fat and protein, enough to meet the 1-day dietary requirements of more than 60 people. The numbers represent a lower limit, as Neandertals and other extinct hominins likely had more muscle mass than modern humans. Still, when compared with other animals widely available to ancient man like mammoths (3,600,000 calories), wooly rhinoceroses (1,260,000 calories), and aurochs (979,200 calories), it hardly seems worthwhile to hunt hominins that are just as wily and dangerous as the hunters, the researchers conclude. Some instances of cannibalism from nine Paleolithic sites, which date from 936,000 to 14,700 years ago, might be chalked up to starvation or not wanting to waste a perfectly good body that died from natural causes.

Submission + - Wolves may be 're-domesticating' into dogs (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It happened thousands of years ago, and it may be happening again: Wolves in various parts of the world may have started on the path to becoming dogs. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which finds that the animals are increasingly dining on livestock and human garbage instead of their wild prey, inching closer and closer to the human world in some places. But given today’s industrialized societies, this closeness might also bring humans and wolves into more conflict, with disastrous consequences for both.

Submission + - SpaceX makes aerospace history with successful launch/landing of a used rocket (theverge.com)

Submitted by Eloking
Eloking writes: After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight,” he said.

Submission + - Your Save Data Is Not Safe On the Nintendo Switch (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a post-launch update to our initial Nintendo Switch review, we noted that there is no way to externally back up game save data stored on the system. A recent horror story from a fellow writer who lost dozens of hours of game progress thanks to a broken system highlights just how troublesome this missing feature can be. Over at GamesRadar, Anthony John Agnello recounts his experience with Nintendo support after his Switch turned into a useless brick for no discernible reason last week (full disclosure: I know Agnello personally and have served with him on some convention panels). After sending his (under warranty) system to Nintendo for repair, Agnello received a fixed system and the following distressing message from the company two days later: "We have inspected the Nintendo Switch system that was sent to us for repair and found that the issue has made some of the information on this system unreadable. As a result, the save data, settings, and links with any Nintendo Accounts on your system were unable to be preserved." Agnello says he lost 55 hours of progress on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as more progress on a few other downloadable games. While he was able to redownload the games that were deleted, he'd have to start from scratch on each one (if only all that progress was easily, instantly unlockable in some way...)

Submission + - Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying big brands (recode.net)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: From Recode, Last month, Walmart gathered some of America’s biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its “Everyday Low Price” guarantee. Walmart wants to have the lowest price on 80 percent of its sales, according to a presentation the company made at the summit, which Recode reviewed. this time around, Walmart’s renewed focus on its “Everyday Low Price” promise coincides with Amazon’s increased aggressiveness in its own pricing of the packaged goods that are found on supermarket shelves and are core to Walmart’s success, industry executives and consultants say. The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.

Submission + - Publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose 2

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: If you publish Georgia’s state laws, you’ll get sued for copyright and lose

Malamud thinks reading the law shouldn't cost anything. So a few years back, he scanned a copy of the state of Georgia's official laws, known as the Official Georgia Code Annotated, or OCGA. Malamud made USB drives with two copies on them, one scanned copy and another encoded in XML format. On May 30, 2013, Malamud sent the USB drives to the Georgia speaker of the House, David Ralson, and the state's legislative counsel, as well as other prominent Georgia lawyers and policymakers. ... ... Now, the case has concluded with US District Judge Richard Story having published an opinion (PDF) that sides with the state of Georgia. The judge disagreed with Malamud's argument that the OCGA can't be copyrighted and also said Malamud's copying of the laws is not fair use. "The Copyright Act itself specifically lists 'annotations' in the works entitled to copyright protection," writes Story. "Defendant admits that annotations in an unofficial code would be copyrightable."

It could have been worse, at least he was not criminally charged liked Aaron Schwartz.

Submission + - Yahoo Faces SEC Probe Over Data Breaches (wsj.com)

Submitted by Linorgese
Linorgese writes: U.S. authorities are investigating whether Yahoo Inc.’s two massive data breaches should have been reported sooner to investors, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could prove to be a major test in defining when a company is required to disclose a hack.

Submission + - Alcohol Switches The Brain Into Starvation Mode, Study Finds (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In tests on mice, alcohol activated the brain signals that tell the body to eat more food. The UK researchers, who report their findings in the journal Nature Communications, believe the same is probably true in humans. The mice were given generous doses of alcohol for three days — a dose being equivalent to around 18 units or a bottle-and-a-half of wine for a person. The alcohol caused increased activity in neurons called AGRP. These are the neurons that are fired when the body experiences starvation. The mice ate more than normal too. When the researchers repeated the experiment but blocked the neurons with a drug, the mice did not eat as much which, the researchers say, suggests that AGRP neurons are responsible for the alcohol-induced eating. The study authors, Denis Burdakov and colleagues, say understanding how alcohol changes the body and our behaviour could help with managing obesity. Around two-thirds of adults in the UK are overweight or obese.

Submission + - Why You Shouldn't Trust Geek Squad (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Orange County Weekly reports that Best Buy's "Geek Squad" repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants. This revelation came out in a court case, United States of America v. Mark A. Rettenmaier. Rettenmaier is a prominent Orange County physician and surgeon who took his laptop to the Mission Viejo Best Buy in November 2011 after he was unable to start it. According to court records, Geek Squad technician John "Trey" Westphal found an image of "a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck." Westphal notified his boss, who was also an FBI informant, who alerted another FBI informant — as well as the FBI itself. The FBI has pretty much guaranteed the case will be thrown out by its behavior, this illegal search aside. According to Rettenmaier's defense attorney, agents conducted two additional searches of the computer without obtaining necessary warrants, lied to trick a federal magistrate judge into authorizing a search warrant for his home, then tried to cover up their misdeeds by initially hiding records. Plus, the file was found in the unallocated "trash" space, meaning it could only be retrieved by "carving" with sophisticated forensics tools. Carving (or file carving) is defined as searching for files or other kinds of objects based on content, rather than on metadata. It's used to recover old files that have been deleted or damaged. To prove child pornography, you have to prove the possessor knew what he had was indeed child porn. There has been a court case where files found on unallocated space did not constitute knowing possession because it's impossible to determine who put the file there and how, since it's not accessible to the user under normal circumstances.

Submission + - HPE Acquires SGI For $275 Million (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced today that it has acquired SGI for $275 million in cash and debt. VentureBeat provides some backstory on the company that makes servers, storage, and software for high-end computers: "SGI (originally known as Silicon Graphics) was cofounded in 1981 by Jim Clark, who later cofounded Netscape with Marc Andreessen. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 after being de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. In 2009 it was acquired by Rackable Systems, which later adopted the SGI branding. SGI’s former campus in Mountain View, California, is now the site of the Googleplex. SGI, which is now based in Milpitas, California, brought in $533 million in revenue in its 2016 fiscal year and has 1,100 employees, according to the statement. HPE thinks buying SGI will be neutral in terms of its financial impact in the year after the deal is closed, which should happen in the first quarter of HPE’s 2017 fiscal year, and later a catalyst for growth."

Submission + - Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery for Some Mail

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: In a world moving to electronic communications, the snail mail traffic has seen a huge drop. Because of this, the mail delivery organization of Finland (Posti) will not be delivering letters and magazines on Tuesdays anymore. Tuesday was selected because it generally has the lowest volume of mail. For example, magazines and advertisements are targeted to the end of the week, so that people have more time for shopping dreams in the weekend. Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays.

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