Germany Fires Cybersecurity Chief ‘Over Russia Ties’

Germany’s cybersecurity chief has been fired after allegations of being excessively close to Russia through an association he helped set up. The BBC reports: Arne Schonbohm had led the Federal Cyber Security Authority (BSI) — charged with protecting government communications — since 2016. German media have accused him of having had links with people involved with Russian intelligence services. The interior ministry is investigating allegations made against him. But it confirmed he had been fired with immediate effect.

Mr Schonbohm had come under scrutiny after his potential links to a Russian company through a previous role were highlighted by Jan Bohmermann, the host of one of Germany’s most popular late-night TV shows. Before leading the BSI, Mr Schonbohm had helped set up and run the Cyber Security Council Germany, a private association which advises business and policymakers on cybersecurity issues. He is said to have maintained close ties to the association and attended their 10th anniversary celebrations in September. One of the association’s members was a cybersecurity company called Protelion, which was a subsidiary of a Russian firm reportedly established by a former member of the KGB honored by President Vladimir Putin. Protelion was ejected from the association last weekend, and Cyber Security Council Germany says the allegations of links to Russian intelligence are untrue.

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Visitors of Qatar World Cup Need To Install Spyware On Their Phone

“Everyone visiting Qatar for the World Cup needs to install spyware on their phone,” writes security researcher Bruce Schneier. His comments are in response to an article from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), reporting: Everyone traveling to Qatar during the football World Cup will be asked to download two apps called Ehteraz and Hayya. Briefly, Ehteraz is an covid-19 tracking app, while Hayya is an official World Cup app used to keep track of match tickets and to access the free Metro in Qatar. In particular, the covid-19 app Ehteraz asks for access to several rights on your mobile., like access to read, delete or change all content on the phone, as well as access to connect to WiFi and Bluetooth, override other apps and prevent the phone from switching off to sleep mode.

The Ehteraz app, which everyone over 18 coming to Qatar must download, also gets a number of other accesses such as an overview of your exact location, the ability to make direct calls via your phone and the ability to disable your screen lock. The Hayya app does not ask for as much, but also has a number of critical aspects. Among other things, the app asks for access to share your personal information with almost no restrictions. In addition, the Hayya app provides access to determine the phone’s exact location, prevent the device from going into sleep mode, and view the phone’s network connections. It remains to be seen whether Qatar will strictly enforce the installation of these apps. “I know people who visited Saudi Arabia when that country had a similarly sketchy app requirement,” says Schneier. “Some of them just didn’t bother downloading the apps, and were never asked about it at the border.”

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Fintech Giant ‘The Clearing House’ Joins Open-Source Patent Protection Powerhouse OIN

The Clearing House, a banking association and payments company owned by the largest commercial banks in the U.S., has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) — the world’s largest patent nonaggression consortium. ZDNet reports: The OIN has long protected Linux and Linux-related software from patent aggression by rival companies. With the increase in patent troll attacks, the OIN is also defending companies from these assaults. You may not think financial companies and banks are subject to such attacks. I mean, TCH’s roots go all the way back to 1853. Think again.

As Keith Bergelt, CEO of OIN, said in June, “The most sophisticated and compelling global banking and fintech companies have essentially become technology companies that employ open-source software to deliver their services at scale.” Further, patent trolls “appear to be targeting them for this reason, along with the fact that financial services companies have not historically been active patent filers.” That’s because, historically, they’ve purchased most of their tech from third-party vendors.

That was then. This is now. Today, financial institutions generate more tech in-house, so they’re more concerned about being granted patents, building patent portfolios, and related patent issues. Indeed, these days fintech businesses have their own Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial sector branch of the Linux Foundation. So, Bergelt said in a release Wednesday, “Advancements in financial services and fintech increasingly rely on open-source technologies. As the most experienced payment company in the US, and a keystone for the financial services industry, we are pleased that The Clearing House is committed to patent nonaggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source technologies.”

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Apple Bows To Pressure, Drops Plan To Buy Chinese Memory Chips

Following increased U.S. export controls against working with Chinese companies, Apple has halted plans to use YMTC chips in the iPhone. AppleInsider reports: According to Nikkei Asia, YMTC flash memory is at least 20% cheaper than that of rivals, and the company’s 128-layer 3D NAND chips are the most advanced by a Chinese company. They remain reportedly one or two generations behind the chips made by Micron and Samsung, both of which are known to be working with Apple. Nikkei Asia claims that Apple had completed is months-long testing and verification. Political pressure and criticism from US policymakers made it abandon the plan.

“The products have been verified, but they did not go into the production lines when mass production of the new iPhone began,” an unspecified source told Nikkei Asia. Reportedly, the intention had been to initially use YMTC chips only for iPhones being sold in China. Another unnamed source, though, claimed that Apple was considering ultimately buying 40% of all its worldwide iPhone NAND flash memory from the company. “YMTC is government-subsidized so they can really outprice competitors,” said another source.

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Linus Torvalds To Kernel Devs: Grow Up and Stop Pulling All-Nighters Just Before Deadline

Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate for version 6.1 of the project and added an appeal for developers to make his life easier by adding code earlier in the development cycle. The Register reports: “Let me just say that after I got my machine sorted out and caught up with the merge window, I was somewhat frustrated with various late pull requests. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s _really_ quite annoying to get quite a few pull requests in the last few days of the merge window.”

He then offered further guidance on how kernel devs can do it right. “Yes, the merge window is two weeks, but that’s very much to allow me time to look things over, not ‘two weeks to hurriedly put together a branch that you send Linus on Friday of the second week’,” he wrote. “The whole ‘do an all-nighter to get the paper in the day before the deadline’ is something that should have gone out the window after high school. Not for kernel development.” His next line was: “You know who you are.”

“Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve said this, I doubt it will be the last. But maybe more people could take it to heart, ok?” he added, before concluding his post with a slightly non-traditional call for testers to visit Linux’s git tree because “The merge window may not be the biggest ever, but it’s certainly big enough that the shortlog is much too big to post, and below is just my usual merge log.” “For all the gory details, please refer to the git tree.”

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How ‘Homestar Runner’ Re-Emerged After the End of Flash

Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as “a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music.” But after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon became a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017:

On the same day we received a demo of a song that John Linnell from They Might Be Giants recorded for a Strong Bad Email and a full-size working Tom Servo puppet from Jim Mallon from Mystery Science Theater 3000…. The Homestar references in the Buffy and Angel finales forever ago were huge. And there was this picture of Joss Whedon in a Strong Bad shirt from around that time that someone sent us that we couldn’t believe. Years later, a photo of Geddy Lee from Rush wearing a Strong Bad hat on stage circulated which similarly freaked us out. We have no idea if he knew what Strong Bad was, but our dumb animal character was on his head while he probably shredded ‘Working Man’ so I’ll take it!

After a mutli-year hiatus starting around 2009, the site has only been updating sporadically — and some worried that the end of Flash also meant the end of the Flash-based cartoon and its web site altogether. But on the day Flash Player was officially discontinued — December 31st, 2020 — a “post-Flash update” appeared at HomestarRunner.com:
What happened our website? Flash is finally dead-dead-dead so something drastic had to be done so people could still watch their favorite cartoons and sbemails with super-compressed mp3 audio and hidden clicky-clicky easter eggs…!

[O]nce you click “come on in,” you’ll find yourself in familiar territory thanks to the Ruffle Project. It emulates Flash in such a way that all browsers and devices can finally play our cartoons and even some games…. Your favorite easter eggs are still hidden and now you can even choose to watch a YouTube version if there is one.

Keep in mind, Ruffle is still in development so not everything works perfectly. Games made after, say 2007, will probably be pretty janky but Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting those too one day. And any cartoons with video elements in them (Puppet Jams, death metal) will just show you an empy box where the video should be. But hang in there and one day everything will be just like it was that summer when we got free cable somehow and Grandma still lived in the spare bedroom.

And since then, new content has quietly been appearing at HomestarRunner.com. (Most recently, Thursday the site added a teaser for an upcoming Halloween video.)

The Homestar Runner wiki is tracking this year’s new content, which includes:

Strong Bad livestreaming his play of a text adventure (titled “Disk 4 of 12 — Vampire’s Castle”) on September 19thStrong Sad streaming a demo of the expando deck for Trogdor!! The Board Game (July 2)A Twitch parody in which Strong Bad livestreams a speedrun on a horrific beef-themed game (titled “Strong-Play: Marzipan Beef Reverser”) on April 25thA new Strong Bad Email on April 1st

And past videos are now also being uploaded on the site’s official YouTube channel.

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Vaccines to Treat Cancer Possible by 2030, Say BioNTech Founders

Ugur Sahin and and Özlem Türeci. The BBC calls them “the husband and wife team behind one of the most successful Covid vaccines” — the couple who co-founded the German biotech company BioNTech in 2008, “exploring new technology involving messenger RNA to treat cancer.”

And though they partnered with Pfizer to ues the same approach for their Covid vaccine, “Now the doctors are hopeful it could lead to new treatments for melanoma, bowel cancer and other tumour types.”

BioNTech has several trials in progress, including one where patients are given a personalised vaccine, to prompt their immune system to attack their disease. The mRNA technology being used works by sending an instruction or blueprint to cells to produce an antigen or protein. In Covid this antigen is part of the spike protein of the virus. In cancer it would be a marker on the surface of tumour cells. This teaches the immune system to recognise and target affected cells for destruction.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Prof Tureci said: “mRNA acts as a blueprint and allows you to tell the body to produce the drug or the vaccine… and when you use mRNA as a vaccine, the mRNA is a blueprint for the ‘wanted poster’ of the enemy — in this case cancer antigens which distinguish cancer cells from normal cells.”

Harnessing the power of mRNA to produce vaccines was unproven until Covid. But the success of mRNA vaccines in the pandemic has encouraged scientists working with the technology in cancer.

The Guardian notes that the couple said cancer-targetting vaccines could be available “before 2030”, though Özlem Türeci warns that “As scientists we are always hesitant to say we will have a cure for cancer. We have a number of breakthroughs and we will continue to work on them.”

BioNTech was working on mRNA cancer vaccines before the pandemic struck but the firm pivoted to produce Covid vaccines in the face of the global emergency. The firm now has several cancer vaccines in clinical trials.

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HBO Max Picks ‘Homestar Runner’ Co-Creator to Direct Batman Spin-off Series ‘The Penguin’

From a report:
Filmmaker Craig Zobel has been tapped by HBO Max to direct the first two episodes of The Penguin, its much-awaited Batman spinoff. He will also serve as executive producer of the show, with Lauren LeFranc writing the script. Starring in The Penguin is Colin Farrell, who played the villainous Oswald Cobblepot in The Batman earlier this year. The Penguin will focus its attention on Cobblepot’s notorious past and trace his rise to power in Gotham.

Zobel is already part of the family, having previously directed The Mare of Easttown for HBO Max. The prolific director also applied his talents to episodes of Westworld, The Leftovers, and American Gods…

If all goes according to schedule, viewers could be enjoying The Penguin by the end of 2023.

The article also notes that Zobel also helped co-create Homestar Runner in its original incarnation as a parody children’s picture book.

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Honda and Sony To Build an EV That Entertains While It Takes the Wheel

“Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026,” reports TechCrunch. Details are scarce but the partnership appears to produce what the companies promise to be a wildly smart vehicle that’s heavily focused on keeping its passengers entertained. Slashdot reader SouthSeb shares the news with us, writing: Since cars are expected to fully drive themselves in a near future, how to maintain their occupants entertained seems to be the next big question. It makes one wonder if cars are going to radically change and become more and more like living rooms or office spaces on wheels. “The new EV, which will be initially manufactured at Honda’s North America factory, will be developed with Level 3 automated driving capabilities under limited conditions, and with Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems that can handle situations as complex as urban driving,” reports TechCrunch. “Sony will provide the sensors and tech for the autonomous capabilities, as well as all of the other software, from cloud-based services to entertainment, that drivers will hopefully be able to enjoy all the better for not having to actually drive the car all the time. The companies didn’t share too much about what the infotainment system would look like, but they did say the metaverse would be involved.”

“[Sony Honda Mobility] aims to evolve mobility space into entertainment and emotional space, by seamlessly integrating real and virtual worlds, and exploring new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse,” according to SHM.

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DeepMind Breaks 50-Year Math Record Using AI; New Record Falls a Week Later

Last week, DeepMind announced it discovered a more efficient way to perform matrix multiplication, conquering a 50-year-old record. This week, two Austrian researchers at Johannes Kepler University Linz claim they have bested that new record by one step. Ars Technica reports: In 1969, a German mathematician named Volker Strassen discovered the previous-best algorithm for multiplying 4×4 matrices, which reduces the number of steps necessary to perform a matrix calculation. For example, multiplying two 4×4 matrices together using a traditional schoolroom method would take 64 multiplications, while Strassen’s algorithm can perform the same feat in 49 multiplications. Using a neural network called AlphaTensor, DeepMind discovered a way to reduce that count to 47 multiplications, and its researchers published a paper about the achievement in Nature last week.

To discover more efficient matrix math algorithms, DeepMind set up the problem like a single-player game. The company wrote about the process in more detail in a blog post last week. DeepMind then trained AlphaTensor using reinforcement learning to play this fictional math game — similar to how AlphaGo learned to play Go — and it gradually improved over time. Eventually, it rediscovered Strassen’s work and those of other human mathematicians, then it surpassed them, according to DeepMind. In a more complicated example, AlphaTensor discovered a new way to perform 5×5 matrix multiplication in 96 steps (versus 98 for the older method).

This week, Manuel Kauers and Jakob Moosbauer of Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, published a paper claiming they have reduced that count by one, down to 95 multiplications. It’s no coincidence that this apparently record-breaking new algorithm came so quickly because it built off of DeepMind’s work. In their paper, Kauers and Moosbauer write, “This solution was obtained from the scheme of [DeepMind’s researchers] by applying a sequence of transformations leading to a scheme from which one multiplication could be eliminated.”

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