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Today — 18 May 2024Main stream

Emilia Perez review – Jacques Audiard’s gangster trans musical barrels along in style

18 May 2024 at 14:40

A thoroughly implausible yarn about a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer to arrange his transition, but is carried along by its cheesy Broadway energy

Anglo-progressives and US liberals might worry about whether or not certain stories are “theirs to tell”. But that’s not a scruple that worries French auteur Jacques Audiard who, with amazing boldness and sweep, launches into this slightly bizarre yet watchable musical melodrama of crime and gender, set in Mexico. It plays like a thriller by Amat Escalante with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and a touch of Almodovar.

Argentinian trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon plays Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a terrifyingly powerful and ruthless cartel leader in Mexico, married to Jessi (Selena Gomez), with two young children. Manitas is intrigued by a high-profile murder trial in which an obviously guilty defendant gets off due to his smart and industrious lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldana); she is nearing 40 and secretly wretched from devoting her life to protecting unrepentant slimeballs, who go on to get ever richer while she labours for pitiful fees. Manitas kidnaps Rita and makes her an offer she can’t refuse: a one-off job for an unimaginably vast amount of money on which she can retire.

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© Photograph: Shanna Besson

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© Photograph: Shanna Besson

Jeremy Hunt urged to honour pledge on infected blood compensation payouts

18 May 2024 at 14:00

As the inquiry publishes it final report, the chancellor is under pressure to find £10bn to put right a longstanding injustice

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will come under pressure to stay true to his word and sign off on immediate compensation payments totalling up to £10bn to victims of the contaminated blood scandal when the long-awaited final report on the affair is published on Monday.

The scandal is described as the worst treatment disaster in NHS history, with more than 3,000 people having died as a result of receiving contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. It is estimated that, even today, a person infected during the scandal dies every four days.

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© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

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© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Sex, rape, cannibals: what Yorgos Lanthimos did after Poor Things

18 May 2024 at 12:04

The maverick director and his trusted cast on making Kinds of Kindness, the ‘bonkers’ film causing a stir on the Croisette

Joe Alwyn, the British star of one of the most disturbing films to compete at the Cannes festival this year, has given his verdict on making the “bonkers” Kinds of Kindness, which features scenes of group sex, cannibalism and violence and in which Alwyn has to perform a drug rape on the character played by Oscar-winner Emma Stone. “You have to try not to unpack it all too much, or you get it stuck in your head,” he said on Saturday.

The 33-year-old, until now best known as a former partner of Taylor Swift, has been thrust into the glaring lights of Cannes this weekend, but has also had to survive entering the odd imagination of Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos. Alwyn said the best way to prepare himself for Lanthimos’s unsettling and explicit screen world had been to “trust him, trust him, trust him”. “It is bizarre and strange and bonkers and special,” Alwyn added, “but one of the reasons I love his films is because you feel it first, before you try to understand it all.”

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© Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

Caught by the Tides review – two-decade relationship tells story of China’s epic transformation

18 May 2024 at 10:51

The 20-year failed romance between a singer and a dodgy music promoter becomes the vehicle for director Jia Zhangke’s latest exploration of China’s momentous recent history

As so often in the past, Chinese film-maker Jia Zhangke swims down into an ocean of sadness and strangeness; his new film is a mysterious quest narrative with a dynamic, westernised musical score. It tells a human story of a failed romance spanning 20 years, and brings this into parallel with a larger panorama: the awe-inspiring scale of millennial change that has transformed China in the same period, a futurist fervour for quasi-capitalist innovation that has turned out to co-exist with some very old-fashioned state coercion.

Caught by the Tides reflects with a kind of numb astonishment at all the novelties that the country has been required to welcome, all the vast upheavals for which the people have had to make sacrifices. The film shows us the mobster-businessmen who have done well in modern China, the patriotic ecstasy of Beijing getting picked to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the creation of the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam which meant so much unacknowledged pain for the displaced communities. (This latter was the subject of Jia’s Venice Golden Lion winner Still Life in 2006.) And finally of course there is the misery of the Covid lockdown.

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© Photograph: X Stream Pictures

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© Photograph: X Stream Pictures

Cannes 2024 week one roundup – the jury’s out, the sun isn’t…

18 May 2024 at 07:00

The weather didn’t play ball, but Magnus von Horn’s fierce fairytale and Andrea Arnold’s kitchen-sink take on English mysticism should count among the first-week highlights for Greta Gerwig’s jury

The Cannes film festival opens just as the heavens do, too. It’s raining on the red carpet and on the black limousines and on the immaculate white pavilions that line up on the beach. The rain falls on the A-listers as they climb the stairs to the Palais, and on the stoic huddled masses who gather behind the police cordons. Everybody’s bedraggled and windswept; it feels as though the whole town’s been at sea. “My main wish is that we see some great films this year,” says Iris Knobloch, the festival’s president, casting an anxious eye at the sky. “But also I’m wishing for a little sunshine as well.”

If it’s raining in Cannes, it means there’s a glitch in the script. It’s one of the event’s in-built paradoxes that a festival which predominantly plays out in darkened rooms should be so dependent on good weather; so in thrall to its complementary circus of photocalls, yacht parties and open-air film screenings. All it takes is a downpour to trigger a disturbance in the force, a creeping sense of existential dread. The punters came expecting Technicolor. But the scene is all wrong: the world has gone monochrome.

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© Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

Fears of new Windrush as thousands of UK immigrants face ‘cliff edge’ visa change

18 May 2024 at 05:00

Campaigners say move to electronic permits by end of the year is a ‘recipe for disaster’ that could leave immigrants without proof of status

Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.

By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.

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© Photograph: mundissima/Alamy

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© Photograph: mundissima/Alamy

Books for a better world: as chosen by Lenny Henry, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Andrew O’Hagan and others

18 May 2024 at 04:00

Game-changing books that offer hope, as recommended by speakers at this year’s Hay festival, including Theresa May, Tom Holland, Helen Garner and Jon Ronson

chosen by Lenny Henry, actor and comedian

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© Illustration: Deena So'Oteh/The Guardian

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© Illustration: Deena So'Oteh/The Guardian

‘It really was magical’: infected blood scandal victims join forces to share stories

18 May 2024 at 02:00

The ‘blood friends’ swap stories and medical advice to help one another feel unburdened by their experiences

Victims of the infected blood inquiry are joining forces to share stories and support.

Sue Wathen, Joan Edgington and Nicola Leahey were diagnosed with hepatitis C after struggling through years of unexplained symptoms that were dismissed by doctors.

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© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Scénarios review – Jean-Luc Godard collage is his final love letter to cinema

18 May 2024 at 01:00

Cannes film festival
Completed just before his assisted death, the French New Wave master director talks through his ideas as illustrated in his hand-drawn scrapbook

Here is an intriguing footnote to Jean-Luc Godard’s extraordinary career - a docu-textual movie collage lasting just under an hour in two parts, or maybe two layers, completed just before his assisted death two years ago in Switzerland at the age of 91. His collaborator and cinematographer Fabrice Aragno calls it not the “last Godard” but a “new Godard”. In its way, this little double film shows us a very great deal about Godard’s working habits, and it’s a late example of Godard speaking intimately in his own person about his own creative process.

Scénarios appears to have grown out of thoughts generated by his last film, The Image Book, which emerged in 2018. Godard sketched out his storyboarded or scrapbooked ideas for a short piece, which would juxtapose images, quotations, musical cues and clips in his distinctive manner. Aragno edited and curated the film from this blueprint, then came back to see Godard and to shoot a brief sequence of the director reciting a text from Sartre to go at the end. This is the first short film we see.

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© Photograph: Ecran Noir productions

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© Photograph: Ecran Noir productions

Children in a rural New Zealand school sing about their community

By: unearthed
18 May 2024 at 00:56
The song Our Toanga by the Sea has been produced by the children and wider community of Hampden [map link], and it's simply a nice look at a rural New Zealand South Island coastal settlement (on Highway 1 just North of Dunedin). I think this has come out at the right time as (most of) the people of NZ are very worried about the new government. We need to remind ourselves of what we have so we can move forward again - this song I think will help. Toanga in the song name is Māori for treasure Aotearoa is the Māori name for New Zealand. The online Māori Dictionary is an extraordinary resource with a nice format, all about the words of our place.

SEC: Financial orgs have 30 days to send data breach notifications – Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com

sec:-financial-orgs-have-30-days-to-send-data-breach-notifications-–-source:-wwwbleepingcomputer.com

Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com – Author: Bill Toulas The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted amendments to Regulation S-P that require certain financial institutions to disclose data breach incidents to impacted individuals within 30 days of discovery. Regulation S-P was introduced in 2000 and controls how some financial entities must treat nonpublic personal information belonging to […]

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The Surfer review – beach bum Nic Cage surfs a high tide of toxic masculinity

17 May 2024 at 20:00

An office drone must suffer the machismo of an Australian coastal town in this barmy, low-budget thriller about a would-be wave-chaser

Here is a gloriously demented B-movie thriller about a middle-aged man who wants to ride a big wave and the grinning local bullies who regard the beach as home soil. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they shout at any luckless tourist who dares to visit picturesque Lunar Bay on Australia’s south-western coast, where the land is heavy with heat and colour. Tempers are fraying; it’s a hundred degrees in the shade. The picture crash-lands at the Cannes film festival like a wild-eyed, brawling drunk.

The middle-aged man is unnamed, so let’s call him Nic Cage. Lorcan Finnegan’s film, after all, is as much about Cage – his image, his career history, his acting pyrotechnics – as it is about surfing or the illusory concept of home. The Surfer sets the star up as a man on the edge – a sad-sack office drone who desperately wants to belong – and then shoves him unceremoniously clear over the cliff-edge. Before long, our hero is living out of his car in the parking lot near the dunes, drinking from puddles, foraging for food from bins, and scheming all the while to make his way down to the shore.

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© Photograph: Tea Shop Productions - Lovely Productions

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© Photograph: Tea Shop Productions - Lovely Productions

Yesterday — 17 May 2024Main stream

Make Anim(ation) Real

By: Rhaomi
17 May 2024 at 19:36
Over 15 years ago, Microsoft released Photosynth [previously], a nifty tool that could correlate dozens of photos of the same place from different angles in order to make a sort of virtual tour using photogrammetry, a technique that went on to influence Google Earth's 3D landscapes and virtual reality environments. But what if you tried the same thing with cartoons? Enter Toon3D, a novel approach to applying photogrammetry principles to hand-drawn animation. The results are imperfect due to the inherent inconsistency of drawn environments, but it's still rather impressive to see a virtual camera moving around glitched-out versions of the Krusty Krab, Bojack Horseman's living room, or the train car from Spirited Away. Interestingly, the same approach works about as well on paintings or even AI-generated video; see also the similar technique of neural radiance fields (NERFs) for creating realistic high-fidelity virtual recreations of real (and unreal) environments.

France Bans TikTok In New Caledonia

By: BeauHD
17 May 2024 at 17:20
In what's marked as an EU first, the French government has blocked TikTok in its territory of New Caledonia amid widespread pro-independence protests. Politico reports: A French draft law, passed Monday, would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years' residency in New Caledonia, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. The violent demonstrations that have ensued in the South Pacific island of 270,000 have killed at least five people and injured hundreds. In response to the protests, the government suspended the popular video-sharing app -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and favored by young people -- as part of state-of-emergency measures alongside the deployment of troops and an initial 12-day curfew. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal didn't detail the reasons for shutting down the platform. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on Wednesday. "It is regrettable that an administrative decision to suspend TikTok's service has been taken on the territory of New Caledonia, without any questions or requests to remove content from the New Caledonian authorities or the French government," a TikTok spokesperson said. "Our security teams are monitoring the situation very closely and ensuring that our platform remains safe for our users. We are ready to engage in discussions with the authorities." Digital rights NGO Quadrature du Net on Friday contested the TikTok suspension with France's top administrative court over a "particularly serious blow to freedom of expression online." A growing number of authoritarian regimes worldwide have resorted to internet shutdowns to stifle dissent. This unexpected -- and drastic -- decision by France's center-right government comes amid a rise in far-right activism in Europe and a regression on media freedom. "France's overreach establishes a dangerous precedent across the globe. It could reinforce the abuse of internet shutdowns, which includes arbitrary blocking of online platforms by governments around the world," said Eliska Pirkova, global freedom of expression lead at Access Now.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Black Basta Ransomware Struck More Than 500 Organizations Worldwide – Source: www.techrepublic.com

black-basta-ransomware-struck-more-than-500-organizations-worldwide-–-source:-wwwtechrepublic.com

Source: www.techrepublic.com – Author: Cedric Pernet A joint cybersecurity advisory from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Department of Health and Human services and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center was recently released to provide more information about the Black Basta ransomware. Black Basta affiliates have targeted organizations in the U.S., […]

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Kinds of Kindness review – sex, death and Emma Stone in Lanthimos’s disturbing triptych

17 May 2024 at 13:01

Cannes film festival
Yorgos Lanthimos reinforces how the universe keeps on doing the same awful things with a multistranded yarn starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons

Perhaps it’s just the one kind of unkindness: the same recurring kind of selfishness, delusion and despair. Yorgos Lanthimos’s unnerving and amusing new film arrives in Cannes less than a year after the release of his Oscar-winning Alasdair Gray adaptation Poor Things. It is a macabre, absurdist triptych: three stories or three narrative variations on a theme, set in and around modern-day New Orleans.

An office worker finally revolts against the intimate tyranny exerted over him by his overbearing boss. A police officer is disturbed when his marine-biologist wife returns home after months of being stranded on a desert island, and suspects she has been replaced by a double. Two cult members search for a young woman believed to have the power to raise the dead.

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© Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima

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© Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima

Think before you click – and three other ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint | Koren Helbig

17 May 2024 at 11:00

The invisible downside to our online lives is the data stored at giant energy-guzzling datacentres

It’s been called “the largest coal-powered machine on Earth” – and most of us use it countless times a day.

The internet and its associated digital industry are estimated to produce about the same emissions annually as aviation. But we barely think about pollution while snapping 16 duplicate photos of our pets, which are immediately uploaded to the cloud.

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Ex-Post Office boss did not believe there had been miscarriages of justice, inquiry hears

17 May 2024 at 10:15

Finance chief gives evidence on Paula Vennells and says company looked like ‘corporate bullies’ in how it dealt with branch operators

The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells did not believe there had been miscarriages of justice, the Horizon inquiry has heard, as the current finance boss said the company looked like “corporate bullies” in the way it dealt with branch operators.

Alisdair Cameron, the Post Office chief financial officer who joined the board in 2015, told the inquiry on Friday that Vennells had been “clear in her conviction” that nothing had gone wrong with Horizon.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Threat Actor USDoD Announces Creation of ‘Breach Nation’, Following BreachForums Take Down

By: Alan J
17 May 2024 at 07:22

USDoD Announces Creation Of BreachNation

While the recent takedown of BreachForums by the FBI, in collaboration with international law enforcement agencies, marked a significant victory against cybercrime. Less than 24 hours after this major blow, the renowned threat actor known as USDoD made an announcement stating his plans to resurrect the forum's community, demonstrating the relentless nature of the cyber underworld. BreachForums had long been a central marketplace for cybercriminals, facilitating the trade of stolen data and hacking tools. Its sudden removal from the dark web was a monumental achievement for law enforcement, akin to dismantling a major illicit market. However, the cybercriminal community's response was swift and defiant as demonstrated by the alleged claim by ShinyHunters, one of the leftover administrators just a day later that the site domain itself had been recovered. Alongside the possible domain recovery, USDoD also separately pledged to rebuild and improve upon BreachForums through a newer competitive forum, promising a new beginning for the infamous community.

USDoD Announces Creation of Breach Nation Forum

In a bold statement following the takedown, USDoD assured the community that he had already been working on rebuilding BreachForums, promising that the forum's legacy and user data would be preserved. He emphasized his dedication to creating a new community, presenting the takedown as not the end but an opportunity for a fresh start. [caption id="attachment_69063" align="alignnone" width="523"] Source: X.com (@EquationCorp)[/caption] His announcement also detailed the allocation of resources and infrastructure to support the new forum. The new domains, breachnation.io and databreached.io, are set to launch on July 4, 2024, symbolically coinciding with Independence Day. This new community, dubbed "Breach Nation," aims to offer enhanced features and security. [caption id="attachment_69064" align="alignnone" width="544"]USDoD Creation of BreachNation Source: X.com (@EquationCorp)[/caption] USDoD’s vision for BreachForums 3.0 includes robust infrastructure, with separate servers to ensure optimal performance and security. He has assured the community that he is not driven by profit and aims to offer an upgraded member rank to the first 200,000 users as a token of goodwill. He acknowledged the challenges ahead, including potential opposition from law enforcement as well as possible competition from the BreachForums administrator ShinyHunters. He also addressed concerns about compromise within the forum's administration, stating that he would initially manage it alone to ensure security and build trust.

USDoD's Earlier Activities

USDoD's bold promise to create the new Breach Nation forum highlights the persistence of the cybercriminal underworld. The threat actor is a notable figure in the cybercriminal community and was previously known as NetSec on RaidForums. USDoD is known to employ sophisticated social engineering and impersonation techniques to penetrate secure systems. His activities included exposing data related to several high-profile organizations such as InfraGard, Airbus, and several, the U.S. Army, NATO Cyber Center, and CEPOL. He also claimed responsibility for alleged data leaks from the defense contractor Thales as well the Communist Party of China. A newer CDN created by USDoD was first publicized around the same time as the alleged China data leak, this CDN is stated to be incorporated for the new domain's infrastructure and seemingly being reworked and shifted to a new domain. [caption id="attachment_69068" align="alignnone" width="566"]BreachForums Creation of BreachNation (4) Source: X.com (@EquationCorp)[/caption] While the potential impact of the new forum remains unclear, it may be a key development to watch in the ongoing struggle between law enforcement and cybercrime in the aftermath of the BreachForums domain seizure. Media Disclaimer: This report is based on internal and external research obtained through various means. The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.

Into Britain’s angry pulpit steps Rev Vennells, who ran the Post Office – to explain why it sent honest people to jail | Marina Hyde

17 May 2024 at 08:56

Her inquiry appearance has been long awaited. So far, no official has been held accountable for the ruining of so many lives

Strange to think the northern lights have been glimpsed in public more frequently over the past few years than the former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells. I didn’t see the northern lights last week, but I will see Vennells close up next week, when – at very, very long last – she presents herself before the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal.

Polite notice: if your attention has drifted slightly after the fireworks sparked by ITV’s sensational drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office earlier this year, next week is the time to return with laser-like focus to this story. Post Office is once again box office – and remember, NOT ONE PERSON has yet been held accountable for what happened. Alan Bates has just rejected his second “derisory” offer of government compensation.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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© Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

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© Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

The children of the contaminated blood scandal – podcast

It is the NHS’s worst treatment disaster – with 30,000 patients infected. Two survivors, Ade Goodyear and Andy Evans, explain why it took so long for it to be brought to light

Ade Goodyear was 15 when he was told he had contracted HIV. Like about 30,000 other NHS patients – including more than 300 children – who were given blood transfusions or commercial blood products before 2019, he was infected by contaminated blood. Some patients got HIV and hepatitis C from blood transfusions after childbirth or other medical procedures. Ade was infected with HIV at the medical centre of his school.

Pupils at his Treloar’s college, which had a specialist haemophilia unit, were among those given injections of a blood plasma product called factor VIII concentrate. Concerns had been raised a decade before by the World Health Organization because it was a commercial product that mixed plasma from tens of thousands of often high-risk donors. If one had an infection such as HIV, it could contaminate the whole batch.

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© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Before yesterdayMain stream

Reddit Reintroduces Its Awards System

By: BeauHD
16 May 2024 at 19:20
After shutting down its awards system last July, Reddit announced that it is bringing it back, with much of the same and some new features. There'll be "a new design for awards, a new award button under eligible posts and a leaderboard showing top awards earned for a comment or a post," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The company sunset its awards program last year along with the ability for users to purchase coins. At the same time, Reddit introduced "Golden Upvotes," which were purchased directly through cash. In a new post, the company said the system wasn't as expressive as awards. "While the golden upvote was certainly simpler in theory, in practice, it missed the mark. It wasn't as fun or expressive as legacy awards, and it was unclear how it benefited the recipient," the social network said. Users who want to give awards to posts and comments will need to buy "gold," which kind of replaces coins. On a support page, the company mentioned that, on average, awards cost anywhere between 15 to 50 gold. Gold packages in Reddit's mobile apps currently start at $1.99 for 100 gold. Users can buy as much as 2,750 gold for $49.99. The company is also adding some safeguards to the awards system, such as disabling awards in NSFW subreddits, trauma and addiction support subreddits, and subreddits with mature content. Additionally, users will be able to report awards to avoid them being used for moderator removals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another Billionaire Pushes a Bid For TikTok, But To Decentralize It

By: BeauHD
16 May 2024 at 18:02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt, written by Mike Masnick: If you're a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow. Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the app. There was former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with plans to buy it. Then there was "mean TV investor, who wants you to forget his sketchy history" Kevin O'Leary with his own TikTok buyout plans. I'm sure there have been other rich dudes as well, though strikingly few stories of actual companies interested in purchasing TikTok. But now there's another billionaire to add to the pile: billionaire real estate/property mogul Frank McCourt (who has had some scandals in his own history) has had an interesting second act over the last few years as a big believer in decentralized social media. He created and funded Project Liberty, which has become deeply involved in a number of efforts to create infrastructure for decentralized social media, including its own Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSTP). Over the past few years, I've had a few conversations with people involved in Project Liberty and related projects. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting to rethink the internet in a manner that empowers users over big companies, even if I don't always agree with their approach (he also frequently seems to surround himself with all sorts of tech haters, who have somewhat unrealistic visions of the world). Either way, McCourt and Project Liberty have now announced a plan to bid on TikTok. They plan to merge it into his decentralization plans. "Frank McCourt, Founder of Project Liberty and Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, today announced that Project Liberty is organizing a bid to acquire the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform's design and purpose," reads a press release from Project Liberty. "Working in consultation with Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners, and Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world's largest law firms, as well as world-renowned technologists, academics, community leaders, parents and engaged citizens, this bid for TikTok offers an innovative, alternative vision for the platform's infrastructure -- one that allows people to reclaim agency over their digital identities and data by proposing to migrate the platform to a new digital open-source protocol. In launching the bid, McCourt and his partners are seizing this opportunity to return control and value back into the hands of individuals and provide Americans with a meaningful voice, choice, and stake in the future of the web."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FCC Reveals 'Royal Tiger' Robocall Campaign – Source: www.darkreading.com

fcc-reveals-'royal-tiger'-robocall-campaign-–-source:-wwwdarkreading.com

Source: www.darkreading.com – Author: Kristina Beek, Associate Editor, Dark Reading Source: Ian Allenden via Alamy Stock Photo For the first time ever, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Enforcement Bureau has identified a specific threat group as being behind a spate of pernicious robocall campaigns. The group, dubbed “Royal Tiger,” has associates in India, the United […]

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The Fall of the National Vulnerability Database – Source: www.darkreading.com

the-fall-of-the-national-vulnerability-database-–-source:-wwwdarkreading.com

Source: www.darkreading.com – Author: Brian Fox Brian Fox, CTO & Co-Founder, Sonatype May 16, 2024 5 Min Read Source: Stu Gray via Alamy Stock Photo COMMENTARY In the realm of cybersecurity, understanding your biggest vulnerabilities is essential. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initially established the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) to provide a […]

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Heat Stress Is Hitting Caribbean Reefs Earlier Than Ever This Year

16 May 2024 at 16:27
Scientists in the United States are reporting “unprecedented patterns” of surface warming, an ominous sign for coral.

© Jorge Silva/Reuters

Bleached corals off Brazil this week. The world is currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

New Yorker on Lucy Letby: Did She Do It?

16 May 2024 at 13:13
The New Yorker takes on the dubious evidence that led to Letby's conviction and the bizarre UK media restrictions that governed coverage of the case. [CW: infanticide] Rachel Aviv's article paints a picture of a neonatal intensive care unit undergoing the same catastrophic deterioration as the rest of the National Health Service—a topic the magazine has covered recently—and how an especially competent and determined nurse might just end up at the scene of several patients' deaths because she was called in to help on virtually all difficult cases.

The case against her gathered force on the basis of a single diagram shared by the police, which circulated widely in the media. On the vertical axis were twenty-four "suspicious events," which included the deaths of the seven newborns and seventeen other instances of babies suddenly deteriorating. On the horizontal axis were the names of thirty-eight nurses who had worked on the unit during that time, with X's next to each suspicious event that occurred when they were on shift. Letby was the only nurse with an uninterrupted line of X's below her name. She was the "one common denominator," the "constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse," one of the prosecutors, Nick Johnson, told the jury in his opening statement. "If you look at the table overall the picture is, we suggest, self-evidently obvious. It's a process of elimination." But the chart didn't account for any other factors influencing the mortality rate on the unit. Letby had become the country's most reviled woman—"the unexpected face of evil," as the British magazine Prospect put it—largely because of that unbroken line. It gave an impression of mathematical clarity and coherence, distracting from another possibility: that there had never been any crimes at all. Vanity Fair recently published a piece coming from a more pro-guilt perspective, but retracted that article due to the same strange British press laws that somehow prevent any coverage which might doubt the efficacy of the court system or the quality of the prosecution but didn't prevent wall-to-wall coverage alleging Letby's guilt before and during the trial (the best I could do was a Google Drive link to scans of the article; if we can find a better version, I'd ask the mods to add it in here). Especially strange from the New Yorker piece were Letby's attorneys' decisions not to put the NHS on trial—Letby's most obvious trial defense—and instead to insist, along with the prosecution, that the service was getting along fine. Likewise, not to present a single defense medical expert after months of prosecution medical testimony that was...assailable: The prosecution's pathologist, Andreas Marnerides, who worked at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, wrote that the child had died of natural causes, most likely of pneumonia. "I have not identified any suspicious findings," he concluded. But, three years later, Marnerides testified that, after reading more reports from the courts' experts, he thought that the baby had died "with pneumonia," not "from pneumonia." The likely cause of death, he said, was administration of air into his stomach through a nasogastric tube. When Evans testified, he said the same thing. "What's the evidence?" Myers asked him. "Baby collapsed, died," Evans responded. "A baby may collapse for any number of reasons," Myers said. "What's the evidence that supports your assertion made today that it's because of air going down the NGT?" "The baby collapsed and died." "Do you rely upon one image of that?" Myers asked, referring to X-rays. "This baby collapsed and died." "What evidence is there that you can point to?" Evans replied that he'd ruled out all natural causes, so the only other viable explanation would be another method of murder, like air injected into one of the baby's veins. "A baby collapsing and where resuscitation was unsuccessful—you know, that's consistent with my interpretation of what happened," he said. When so many of us now work in deteriorating systems, doing two or three times our share of work while other people's lives or livelihoods depend how well we do it, it is especially terrifying, if the New Yorker's take is to be believed, to see a single individual scapegoated and sentenced to life imprisonment for the failures of the system she worked in. Or, if Vanity Fair (and, if Twitter replies are any indication, most of the British public) has the right of it, some justice may have been done.

Project to protect Hillman Marsh will begin this summer

A project led by the Essex Region Conservation Authority will protect close to 2,000 acres of wetland in Southwestern Ontario and also keep agricultural lands and homes from flooding. Read More

"I didn't realize how important it is not to tell the truth"

By: paduasoy
16 May 2024 at 02:57
The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson) has posted about finding art made by a woman, Laura Perea, who was in a psychiatric hospital from the 1940s. She describes what she has discovered about Laura Perea's life and family, and reproduces her art, in three posts: Help me solve a haunting art mystery?; Art mystery possibly solved?; Uncovering the mystery of L. Perea and trying to erase the stigma of mental illness. Content warning: death by suicide of one of Laura Perea's family members.

The San Antonio Express-News has some more information. Lawson is planning an exhibition of Laura Perea's art.

Tornado Cash cryptomixer dev gets 64 months for laundering $2 billion – Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com

tornado-cash-cryptomixer-dev-gets-64-months-for-laundering-$2-billion-–-source:-wwwbleepingcomputer.com

Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com – Author: Bill Toulas Alexey Pertsev, one of the main developers of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency tumbler has been sentenced to 64 months in prison for his part in helping launder more than $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency. The 31-year-old Russian national was arrested in Amsterdam in August 2022 for charges of hiding financial flows from criminal […]

La entrada Tornado Cash cryptomixer dev gets 64 months for laundering $2 billion – Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

He only visited the Playboy Mansion to support their journalism

15 May 2024 at 10:09
Perhaps Donald John Trump will have only one criminal trial this year. The prosecution's case in his state trial for using hush money to pay off a porn star to illegally influence his election is finishing with ex-fixer Michael Cohen testifying.

Also: A history of Donald Trump and his associations with the Playboy empire including his soft-porn film. A photo of Donald Trump, his wife, his daughter, Karen McDougal, and three other Playboy bunnies at the Playboy Mansion. He only attended Epstein parties for the scintillating conversation with underaged women.

Virtual Boy: The bizarre rise and quick fall of Nintendo’s enigmatic red console

15 May 2024 at 07:00
A young kid using a Virtual Boy on a swing.

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards)

Ars Technica AI Reporter and tech historian Benj Edwards has co-written a book on the Virtual Boy with Dr. Jose Zagal. In this exclusive excerpt, Benj and Jose take you back to Nintendo of the early '90s, where a unique 3D display technology captured the imagination of legendary designer Gunpei Yokoi and set the stage for a daring, if ultimately ill-fated, foray into the world of stereoscopic gaming.

Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy is now available for purchase in print and ebook formats.

A full list of references can be found in the book.

Nearly 30 years after the launch of the Virtual Boy, not much is publicly known about how, exactly, Nintendo came to be interested in developing what would ultimately become its ill-fated console. Was Nintendo committed to VR as a future for video games and looking for technological solutions that made business sense? Or was the Virtual Boy primarily the result of Nintendo going “off script” and seizing a unique, and possibly risky, opportunity that presented itself? The answer is probably a little bit of both.

As it turns out, the Virtual Boy was not an anomaly in Nintendo’s history with video game platforms. Rather, it was the result of a deliberate strategy that was consistent with Nintendo’s way of doing things and informed by its lead creator Gunpei Yokoi’s design philosophy.

Read 47 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Meet the Marine Biologist Who Works for a Hotel Chain

15 May 2024 at 05:00
Megan Morikawa of the Iberostar Group is applying science — and scale — to eliminate food waste, save coral and collaborate across the travel industry to cut carbon.

Black Basta ransomware group’s techniques evolve, as FBI issues new warning in wake of hospital attack – Source: www.exponential-e.com

black-basta-ransomware-group’s-techniques-evolve,-as-fbi-issues-new-warning-in-wake-of-hospital-attack-–-source:-wwwexponential-e.com

Source: www.exponential-e.com – Author: Graham Cluley Security agencies in the United States have issued a new warning about the Black Basta ransomware group, in the wake of a high-profile attack against the healthcare giant Ascension. The cyber attack last week forced the Ascension computer systems offline, and caused some hospital emergency departments to turn away […]

La entrada Black Basta ransomware group’s techniques evolve, as FBI issues new warning in wake of hospital attack – Source: www.exponential-e.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Visualize your critical cyber risks – Source: go.theregister.com

visualize-your-critical-cyber-risks-–-source:-gotheregister.com

Source: go.theregister.com – Author: Team Register Sponsored Post Defending against the cyber threats of today isn’t dissimilar to protecting a medieval castle from attack a thousand years ago. That’s the opinion of Chris Cheyne, SOC Director at SecurityHQ, a managed security services provider (MSSP), who claims that breaking risks down into their component parts and […]

La entrada Visualize your critical cyber risks – Source: go.theregister.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

NHS Digital hints at exploit sightings of Arcserve UDP vulnerabilities – Source: go.theregister.com

nhs-digital-hints-at-exploit-sightings-of-arcserve-udp-vulnerabilities-–-source:-gotheregister.com

Source: go.theregister.com – Author: Team Register The UK’s NHS is warning of the possibility that vulnerabilities in Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) software are being actively exploited. Originally disclosed in March, the three vulnerabilities all had proof of concept (PoC) exploit code released the day after disclosure by Tenable, which reported the bugs to Arcserve. […]

La entrada NHS Digital hints at exploit sightings of Arcserve UDP vulnerabilities – Source: go.theregister.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Seeing coal

By: sepviva
14 May 2024 at 11:53
Coal is more than a commodity. It is 300-million-year-old life matter transformed into carbon. It performs a vital function – storing carbon underground. It is rich with meaning and portent, and it deserves our attention. Human lives are ephemeral, yet our actions in the here-and-now shape an unseen future. Through its dynamic materiality, coal connects us to Deep Time and Nature. It reminds us of our own Earth origins and helps us re-vision how to live on a fragile and finite planet.

Critical Vulnerabilities in Cinterion Modems Exposed – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com

critical-vulnerabilities-in-cinterion-modems-exposed-–-source:-wwwinfosecurity-magazine.com

Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com – Author: 1 Critical vulnerabilities have been found within Cinterion cellular modems. Disclosed during a Kaspersky presentation at OffensiveCon in Berlin on May 11, these flaws could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code, posing a significant threat to the integrity of millions of industrial devices reliant on these modems. The identified vulnerabilities, including CVE-2023-47610, […]

La entrada Critical Vulnerabilities in Cinterion Modems Exposed – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Don't anthropomorphize the animals, they hate that!

By: hippybear
13 May 2024 at 10:40
I'm not quite sure what there is to say about Silverback is very happy to make up with his son.|Shabani Group [11m25s] other than there's a lot of behavior on display here that feels relatable, and also some that is really alien. I don't know how much others might engage with this, but I found it interesting enough to share.

Reddit Grows, Seeks More AI Deals, Plans 'Award' Shops, and Gets Sued

12 May 2024 at 17:34
Reddit reported its first results since going public in late March. Yahoo Finance reports: Daily active users increased 37% year over year to 82.7 million. Weekly active unique users rose 40% from the prior year. Total revenue improved 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling the growth rate from the prior quarter, due to strength in advertising. The company delivered adjusted operating profits of $10 million, versus a $50.2 million loss a year ago. [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman declined to say when the company would be profitable on a net income basis, noting it's a focus for the management team. Other areas of focus include rolling out a new user interface this year, introducing shopping capabilities, and searching for another artificial intelligence content licensing deal like the one with Google. Bloomberg notes that already Reddit "has signed licensing agreements worth $203 million in total, with terms ranging from two to three years. The company generated about $20 million from AI content deals last quarter, and expects to bring in more than $60 million by the end of the year." And elsewhere Bloomberg writes that Reddit "plans to expand its revenue streams outside of advertising into what Huffman calls the 'user economy' — users making money from others on the platform... " In the coming months Reddit plans to launch new versions of awards, which are digital gifts users can give to each other, along with other products... Reddit also plans to continue striking data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, expanding into international markets and evaluating potential acquisition targets in areas such as search, he said. Meanwhile, ZDNet notes that this week a Reddit announcement "introduced a new public content policy that lays out a framework for how partners and third parties can access user-posted content on its site." The post explains that more and more companies are using unsavory means to access user data in bulk, including Reddit posts. Once a company gets this data, there's no limit to what it can do with it. Reddit will continue to block "bad actors" that use unauthorized methods to get data, the company says, but it's taking additional steps to keep users safe from the site's partners.... Reddit still supports using its data for research: It's creating a new subreddit — r/reddit4researchers — to support these initiatives, and partnering with OpenMined to help improve research. Private data is, however, going to stay private. If a company wants to use Reddit data for commercial purposes, including advertising or training AI, it will have to pay. Reddit made this clear by saying, "If you're interested in using Reddit data to power, augment, or enhance your product or service for any commercial purposes, we require a contract." To be clear, Reddit is still selling users' data — it's just making sure that unscrupulous actors have a tougher time accessing that data for free and researchers have an easier time finding what they need. And finally, there's some court action, according to the Register. Reddit "was sued by an unhappy advertiser who claims that internet giga-forum sold ads but provided no way to verify that real people were responsible for clicking on them." The complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a U.S. federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform that relies on AI. It says the biz booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022... That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that LevelField's ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the like. But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract... LevelFields argues that Reddit is in a particularly good position to track click fraud because it's serving ads on its own site, as opposed to third-party properties where it may have less visibility into network traffic... Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses." "The plaintiffs aspire to have their claim certified as a class action," the article adds — along with an interesting statistic. "According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Herbert Pardes, Who Steered the Growth of a Giant Hospital, Dies at 89

9 May 2024 at 14:56
A psychiatrist, he ran New York-Presbyterian after a landmark merger, improving its patient care and finances and raising money to expand its footprint across the region.

© Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Dr. Herbert Pardes in 2003 as president and chief executive of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He ran its sprawling domain for 11 years.
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