Valencia might be famous for its sweet wines, but the lesser known bottles from the region are well worth a try

One of the best ways to learn about wine is to explore the local vino when you’re on holiday. That doesn’t always happen, of course: you find your favourite restaurant, and you eat the same dish and order the same bottle on repeat.

Valencian wine, for example, wasn’t on my radar when I went to language school in that city back in February, in an attempt to improve my Spanish, but it would have been a dereliction of my duty as a wine writer if I hadn’t done a bit of digging around. And in Valencia that was less easy than you might think – despite the region having some very interesting wines of its own, rioja and ribera del duero were those I found most often on the city’s wine lists.

For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com

Massive, assertive flavours in a hulking football pitch of a restaurant

Roe in Canary Wharf is an absolute beast of a venue: 500 covers, with a terrace, private dining, a capacious main area split into three defined areas, and a sit-up counter. Mind you, there is room for a restaurant to spread its legs in London E14. The newish Hawksmoor just along the wharf is also enormous, while the nearby Dishoom is another behemoth with added bacon naan.

Roe is the second incarnation of the much-loved Fallow in St James’, which is known for its peculiar, yet ultimately delicious nose-to-tail, cheek-to-bumhole, low-intervention-style menu. Fallow, at least to begin with, had about it a rather worthy, Greta Thunberg with a Leith’s diploma vibe that sent a certain type of foodie giddy with joy. Fallow’s signature dish is a cod’s head doused in sriracha butter, and its beady eye glowers at you while you eat your kombu fries. In fact, I’ve felt a bit like Hamlet in high heels every time I’ve eaten there. Alas, poor Coddy, I knew him.

Use of Open-Source Tools and Customized Malware

LilacSquid's Long-Term Access for Data Theft through Persistence

PurpleInk Implant of LilacSquid

"Although QuasarRAT has been available to threat actors since at least 2014, we observed PurpleInk being actively developed starting in 2021 and continuing to evolve its functionalities separate from its parent malware family."

Parallels with North Korean APT Groups

PurpleInk: 2eb9c6722139e821c2fe8314b356880be70f3d19d8d2ba530adc9f466ffc67d8

Network IOCs 

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Thursday, several major tech companies, including Google, Intel, Microsoft, Meta, AMD, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Cisco, and Broadcom, announced the formation of the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Promoter Group to develop a new interconnect standard for AI accelerator chips in data centers. The group aims to create an alternative to Nvidia's proprietary NVLink interconnect technology, which links together multiple servers that power today's AI applications like ChatGPT.

The beating heart of AI these days lies in GPUs, which can perform massive numbers of matrix multiplications—necessary for running neural network architecture—in parallel. But one GPU often isn't enough for complex AI systems. NVLink can connect multiple AI accelerator chips within a server or across multiple servers. These interconnects enable faster data transfer and communication between the accelerators, allowing them to work together more efficiently on complex tasks like training large AI models.

This linkage is a key part of any modern AI data center system, and whoever controls the link standard can effectively dictate which hardware the tech companies will use. Along those lines, the UALink group seeks to establish an open standard that allows multiple companies to contribute and develop AI hardware advancements instead of being locked into Nvidia's proprietary ecosystem. This approach is similar to other open standards, such as Compute Express Link (CXL)—created by Intel in 2019—which provides high-speed, high-capacity connections between CPUs and devices or memory in data centers.

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Fast, furious and fresh, Sri Lankan-style vegetable curries take mere minutes to cook

If you’ve ever had Sri Lankan “rice and curry” for lunch, you’ll know the term is a misnomer. It’s not just one curry, but at least three and up to five that are served for lunch every day. How, you might wonder, is it possible to cook so many things in time for lunch? One of the answers is that Sri Lankan vegetable curries are fast and furious. Ingredients hit thin, metal saucepans in quick succession and are brought up to a Vesuvius-level boil, only to come out tasting surprisingly heavenly and delicate about 15 minutes later. The courgette is the perfect vegetable for such treatment: it’s tender , fresh and in need of a little spicing up.

Discover Meera’s recipes and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Controversial, maybe, but these sandwich fillings dial up the taste factor and fit pretty well in a soft white roll

If I was forced to choose, I’d say I’m a butter, cheese and pickles man. I love mine open and I tend to go for sourdough, even if that does induce eye-rolls from many. I’m talking, of course, about sandwiches, a subject on which everyone has wonderfully strong opinions. What bread to use? Cut it on the diagonal or straight down the middle? Is it OK for anyone over the age of seven to cut off the crusts? And that’s before you even start discussing what’s going inside. Slices of tomato: sublime or soggy? A handful of crisps: critical or criminal? A lettuce leaf or two: lovely or limp? Fish finger sandwiches: right or wrong? Such seemingly innocent questions, yet ones that incite such firm feelings. (My reply to that last question, incidentally, is revealed by today’s first recipe, which takes the concept, dials it up and feels pretty strongly about the presence of a soft white roll.)

Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019. (credit: SpaceX / Flickr)

SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites five years ago this month. Since then, the company has been rapidly developing its constellation of broadband satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has now launched about 6,000 satellites with its Falcon 9 rocket and has delivered on its promise to provide fast Internet around the world. Today, the company is the largest satellite operator in the world by a factor of 10.

But is this massive enterprise to deliver Internet from space profitable?

According to a new report by Quilty Space, the answer is yes. Quilty built a model to assess Starlink's profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago. In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base of about 3 million, SpaceX has also managed to control costs. Based upon its model, therefore, Quilty estimates that Starlink's free cash flow from the business will be about $600 million this year.

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This south-east Asian favourite is fun to make, easy to adapt and healthy, so get rolling …

Though I enjoy a spring roll as much as the next fried-food fan, the freshness of the Vietnamese summer version has my heart, especially if I’m the one preparing it. Fun to make and easy to adapt to suit different tastes and diets, it’s fortunate they’re so healthy, because once I start rolling, I find it very hard to stop.

Prep 20 min, plus cooling time
Cook 25 min
Makes 8

Australian scientists have developed a method of brewing coffee by blasting ground beans with sound waves – and it produces a powerful cup

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I’m looking at a coffee that’s thick, cold and the deep brown colour of 90% dark chocolate. It tastes like coffee but, weirdly, without any bitterness. It is the only coffee I’ve had that was made by blasting ground coffee beans with sound. They call it ultrasonic coffee.

It wasn’t made by a barista but by two chemical engineers in a lab at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Dr Francisco Trujillo, a senior lecturer in the school of chemical engineering, and the PhD student Nikunj Naliyadhara explain the coffee they’re about to make is sonicated, or hit with ultrasonic waves. I have no idea what that means. But they grind coffee beans, pack them into a portafilter basket (the handled device you’ve probably seen your barista twist and untwist) and connect the portafilter to a Breville espresso machine. And just like your barista, they press some buttons. The machine makes soft whirring sounds.

Enlarge / Each of Precision's microelectrode arrays comprises 1,024 electrodes ranging in diameter from 50 to 380 microns, connected to a customized hardware interface. (credit: Precision)

Brain-computer interface company Precision Neuroscience says that it has set a new world record for the number of neuron-tapping electrodes placed on a living human's brain—4,096, surpassing the previous record of 2,048 set last year, according to an announcement from the company on Tuesday.

The high density of electrodes allows neuroscientists to map the activity of neurons at unprecedented resolution, which will ultimately help them to better decode thoughts into intended actions.

Precision, like many of its rivals, has the preliminary goal of using its brain-computer interface (BCI) to restore speech and movement in patients, particularly those who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury. But Precision stands out from its competitors due to a notable split from one of the most high-profile BCI companies, Neuralink, owned by controversial billionaire Elon Musk.

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A rich, succulent, de luxe pasta dish

Bring a large, deep pan of water to the boil and salt it generously. Drop in 200g of pappardelle or spaghetti and cook for the time suggested on the packet – this will be roughly 8-9 minutes.

While the pasta boils, drain 150g of bottled, roasted peppers from their brine and put them in a blender jug. Add either 2 roasted garlic cloves or 2 tsp of roasted garlic paste, about 10 medium-sized basil leaves and 2 tbsp of chopped flat-leaf parsley.

Little pouches of cheese, oregano and honey melted to stringy, gooey perfection

A few weeks ago, there was a cheese fair at the back of the old slaughterhouse here in Testaccio. Thirty cheesemakers set up stalls in two of the conference rooms that look out on to what was, from 1891 until 1975, Campo Boario, a 13-acre cattle market and trading area overlooked by a circular control tower. The cheese fair, on the other hand, was controlled from a long office table by a point-of-sale machine: €6 a ticket to taste cubes and slices of artisan cheese from all over Italy, with the option of buying them, too.

“Set out your stall” was one of my grandad’s favourite expressions, often used at night to remind us not only to lay out our school uniforms and pack our bags, but to get our thoughts ready for the next day. As a kid, I wished that laying out thoughts was as straightforward and satisfying as picking out socks and sharpening pencils. I still do. Maybe I should be running a market stall? Or maybe I should just admire and inhale the work of others. In the ex-slaughterhouse conference room, some cheesemakers had brought wooden cabinets, others crates, while many simply relied on stacking for height, the rounds and barrels of cheese like vertebrae on a spine. The ricotta-makers lined up their tubs side by side; the mozzarella-makers stood by tubs of bobbing balls; while caciocavallo-makers had poles, so their pot-bellied creations with tiny heads could hang like decorative teardrops.

Discover Rachel’s recipes and many more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

An art deco hotel, a restaurant with rooms and sea views aplenty … Our selection covers everywhere from the Highlands to the Isle of Wight

The Albion hotel, which can lay claim to some of the best sea views on the island, has been welcoming guests to Freshwater Bay since Victorian times. It is about to reopen under new ownership after a multimillion-pound refurbishment. The new-look Albion will have 40 rooms, 36 of them sea-facing, including two suites, seven dog-friendly rooms and two accessible rooms. Some have roll-top baths and balconies or terraces. The Rock is its new 100-seater restaurant, which sources more than 90% of ingredients from the island, including garlic, tomatoes, fish, lobster and meat. A free shuttle bus drops off and picks up guests from local bars and restaurants. The hotel is about a 10-minute drive from Yarmouth ferry port.
Opens in June, taking bookings for 19 June, doubles from £99 B&B (two‑night minimum), albionhotel.co.uk

Some days are best spent baking, just for the fun of it

An early summer afternoon in the kitchen and the sun is beaming through the skylights. An hour to two of gentle cooking without the ticking clock of making dinner. An afternoon in which I put together savoury biscuits as fragile as frost on a windowpane, and rolls of filo pastry so thin you could see their contents of asparagus and feta hiding within. This is cooking just for the joy of it.

The biscuits are mostly cheese and butter, held together with a little flour and egg, their filling lightly beaten cream cheese and soft-leaved herbs. They can carry a little warmth, too, in the form of ground Aleppo pepper or, should you prefer, smoked paprika. If you don’t want to sandwich them, custard-cream style, then the biscuits are good on their own, served with drinks.

What to do with a leftover barbecued sausage? Add broccoli and beans for a quick and easy midweek meal

Just one cooked sausage, left over from a barbecue, or indeed any meal, is enough to make this simple one-pot wonder inspired by the Italian classic orecchiette con salsiccia e cime di rapa. In the original, raw sausage is skinned, broken into pieces and fried with cime di rapa (turnip tops), then tossed with cooked orecchiette. Being a bean fiend, however, I’ve come up with an even speedier version using creamy butter beans instead of pasta. Turnips are mostly grown for their flavoursome green tops in Italy, rather than their crisp roots as in northern Europe, so if you’re lucky enough to find a bunch of cime di rapa or some turnips with their tops, use those here; otherwise, just about any combination of leafy green and/or brassica will do.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make every day cooking easier and more fun

Fluffy, moreish, teasingly sharp, crusty brown on top and bubbling at the edges …

Self-saucing puddings are magic, and we should all have a recipe up our sleeve. The transformation from a soggy batter (in which it is hard to see the potential) to a fluffy, moreish pudding is something to behold. I have made many iterations of them in my time – some with dates and ricotta, others with apple and toffee,chocolate fudge and beyond. This one, with elderflower and lemon, is for citrus fans. It is wonderfully sharp, and can be put together at a moment’s notice.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

The usual suspects from Provence, Rhône and Languedoc flex their muscles this year, as do tempranillos and bottles from Corsica and Greece. As ever, though, do look for a recent vintage …

So many people drink rosé year-round these days that it’s easy to forget that it was once regarded as faintly embarrassing. Clearly they’re still at that stage in deepest Umbria, where I recently heard a posh rosé described as “a woman’s wine” – and by a cool-looking young Italian in his 20s, not an unreconstructed 60-year-old with a hairy chest and a medallion, which somehow made it worse. The men in our group indignantly replied that they, too, drank rosé, as indeed most men do. The stuff isn’t even self-consciously referred to as “brosé” these days, either.

That said, modern rosé is almost invariably a pale baby pink, usually from Provence, which has cornered the market in the more-of-a-white-wine-than-a-pink sort of style. The best lookalikes, if you like drier rosés, tend to be from France, too, mostly from the southern Rhône and Languedoc, though they’re even drier up in the Loire than they used to be (Morrisons has a Touraine rosé in its The Best range at £8.50, which is not a bad price, but would be even more attractive on a multi-buy deal).

For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com

Very possibly Glasgow’s best restaurant

Glasgow is far chicer that it ever wants to admit. It is a burly, noisy, brown-stone city with a rep for piercing the bubble of anything that is up itself, but there has always been a sleek underbelly of glam to these streets. Only quietly, mind.

Brett, for example, on a corner of Great Western Road, sets out its stall as the polar opposite of a lofty, intimidating restaurant. It’s just a wine bar that happens to throw down a little beef fillet with jersey royals. Pop by for a birthday cocktail, the website seems to say, we’ll cook you a bit of pasta or fish, all while pointing at a menu that includes the likes of fresh linguine tossed in XO-infused mushroom sauce and caramelised leek, and topped with plump Cantabrian anchovies. This is not remotely pub grub and more, “We mean business here – bring a bib!” See also Brett’s gildas, based on that rough-and-ready northern Spanish pintxo bar snack of chilli, olive and anchovy shoved on a cocktail stick; here, however, the gilda is served on a luxurious plinth of chicken fat-encrusted crouton, and the olive and anchovy come with a nerdily engineered hot sauce.

Privacy FAIL: Apple location service returns far more data than it should, to people who have no business knowing it, without your permission.

The post Apple API Allows Wi-Fi AP Location Tracking appeared first on Security Boulevard.

This barbecue-style dish uses a tangy Trinidadian favourite, tamarind, in the marinade to add sweetness to the meat – cook in the oven or over coals, depending on the forecast

Barbecued meat isn’t exclusive to any ethnic group in the Caribbean. The term “barbecue”, however, originates with the (now dwindling) Amerindian people and is derived from the Taino word for the raised wooden structure used, among other things, to cure meat, barbecoa. A common misconception is that jerk chicken is popular throughout the Caribbean, when it is in fact only a chart-topper in Jamaica. From Cuba down to Guyana, you’ll find iterations of “BBQ chicken”, though, and this one uses that tangy Trinidadian favourite, tamarind.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Chopped salad offers a festival of textures and flavours all in the one mouthful

Not so long ago, I fell down a hole on the internet and landed on a page on Mob’s website entitled A Brief Investigation into Chopped Salads. This sentence, in particular, caught my attention: “According to Jeff Gordinier, food & drink writer for Esquire, ‘chopping intensifies the pleasure of a salad’ Perhaps it was just food clickbait, I thought – but perhaps it was also true? I tested out the theory (see today’s recipe) and can confirm first-hand that there is great pleasure to be had in both chopping ingredients to sling with abandon into a bowl, and in munching on a festival of textures and flavours all in the one mouthful.

The bestselling historical fiction writer, whose new book, Nero, is out today, urges visitors to the Eternal City to make time for the quieter pleasures on offer around its seven hills

I have loved Rome all my life. I went first when I was 10, to stay in a convent. The highlight then was slipping into a cage with two guard dogs, convinced I had a gift for soothing savage beasts. Reader, I survived.

The most recent was in April this year, which involved being pickpocketed at the Circo Massimo metro station. Honestly, it was a privilege to encounter such professionals. Fagin would have called them “good boys” – all right, good girls, if you want the truth. A large, blousy lady blocked the door to the train as I got on, demanding to know something. Two of her companions pushed on alongside, then visibly realised their “mistake”. All three raced to get off before the doors shut. I was jostled in the middle and never even felt the dip. Another passenger told me what had happened as our train pulled away. No violence, ladies and gentlemen. More like street theatre – though the ticket price was a little high.

Giving up booze doesn’t have to mean missing out, especially if you get creative with fruit, herbs and infusions. Here is how to enjoy all your favourite drinks without the hangover

There is nothing better on a summer’s evening than sipping a cocktail as the sun goes down. And, as the variety of non-alcoholic options increases, there is no need to miss out if you are teetotal or moderating your drinking. So, what are the best booze-free varieties going? Bartenders share their favourite recipes.

The rich and aromatic Jamaican coconut and fish stew in just a few easy steps

Such is the mystery surrounding this curiously named breakfast favourite that Caribbean chef Riaz Phillips claims that, were he visited by a culinary genie offering to grant three foodie wishes, he’d use one to “ask the lineage and origin of Caribbean rundown”. Citing a dictionary of Jamaican English that describes it as “a kind of sauce made by boiling coconut down til it becomes like custard”, Phillips’ book West Winds suggests an intriguing link with the similarly rich and coconut-based Indonesian rendang, while food writer Melissa Thompson notes parallels with the pepper pots made by Jamaica’s indigenous population.

Whatever the truth, rundown, of Jamaican origins but popular on other islands and in parts of Latin America, too, is beloved – “a rich and textured meal that is most often enjoyed on Sundays, when there is ample time to prepare it, as well as time to leisurely imbibe and digest,” as chefs Michelle and Suzanne Rousseau explain, while for Levi Roots it’s simply a classic. And if all that feels like too much of an effort first thing in the morning, be reassured by Phillips that, when it comes to rundown, “many people (including myself) have decided that being limited to the morning just isn’t long enough”.

The Basques work wonders with fresh peas: try them with fried cod, fino and jamón, pork belly with fried eggs, goat’s cheese toasts or in crab and pea rice

As with any proud Basque, peas have played a huge part in my culinary education – they even feature in one of my earliest kitchen memories, of five-year-old me podding peas with my mother. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that peas are one of the most important ingredients in our cooking tradition, and we happily eat them for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, as well as a raw snack. Every spring, we Basques turn into pea-obsessives, because that’s when guisantes lágrima come into season. They’re much smaller than regular peas, and much, much sweeter, and we cook them every which way, from roasting and frying to stews and salads – they’re so revered that we call them “green caviar”. Lágrima peas are next to impossible to get hold of in the UK, but that’s not to say you can’t use fresh British peas in similarly delicious and varied ways.

Image: Shutterstock.

Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally — including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems — and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops.

At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.

Both Apple and Google operate their own Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPS) that obtain certain hardware identifiers from all wireless access points that come within range of their mobile devices. Both record the Media Access Control (MAC) address that a Wi-FI access point uses, known as a Basic Service Set Identifier or BSSID.

Periodically, Apple and Google mobile devices will forward their locations — by querying GPS and/or by using cellular towers as landmarks — along with any nearby BSSIDs. This combination of data allows Apple and Google devices to figure out where they are within a few feet or meters, and it’s what allows your mobile phone to continue displaying your planned route even when the device can’t get a fix on GPS.

With Google’s WPS, a wireless device submits a list of nearby Wi-Fi access point BSSIDs and their signal strengths — via an application programming interface (API) request to Google — whose WPS responds with the device’s computed position. Google’s WPS requires at least two BSSIDs to calculate a device’s approximate position.

Apple’s WPS also accepts a list of nearby BSSIDs, but instead of computing the device’s location based off the set of observed access points and their received signal strengths and then reporting that result to the user, Apple’s API will return the geolocations of up to 400 hundred more BSSIDs that are nearby the one requested. It then uses approximately eight of those BSSIDs to work out the user’s location based on known landmarks.

In essence, Google’s WPS computes the user’s location and shares it with the device. Apple’s WPS gives its devices a large enough amount of data about the location of known access points in the area that the devices can do that estimation on their own.

That’s according to two researchers at the University of Maryland, who theorized they could use the verbosity of Apple’s API to map the movement of individual devices into and out of virtually any defined area of the world. The UMD pair said they spent a month early in their research continuously querying the API, asking it for the location of more than a billion BSSIDs generated at random.

They learned that while only about three million of those randomly generated BSSIDs were known to Apple’s Wi-Fi geolocation API, Apple also returned an additional 488 million BSSID locations already stored in its WPS from other lookups.

UMD Associate Professor David Levin and Ph.D student Erik Rye found they could mostly avoid requesting unallocated BSSIDs by consulting the list of BSSID ranges assigned to specific device manufacturers. That list is maintained by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which is also sponsoring the privacy and security conference where Rye is slated to present the UMD research later today.

Plotting the locations returned by Apple’s WPS between November 2022 and November 2023, Levin and Rye saw they had a near global view of the locations tied to more than two billion Wi-Fi access points. The map showed geolocated access points in nearly every corner of the globe, apart from almost the entirety of China, vast stretches of desert wilderness in central Australia and Africa, and deep in the rainforests of South America.

A “heatmap” of BSSIDs the UMD team said they discovered by guessing randomly at BSSIDs.

The researchers said that by zeroing in on or “geofencing” other smaller regions indexed by Apple’s location API, they could monitor how Wi-Fi access points moved over time. Why might that be a big deal? They found that by geofencing active conflict zones in Ukraine, they were able to determine the location and movement of Starlink devices used by both Ukrainian and Russian forces.

The reason they were able to do that is that each Starlink terminal — the dish and associated hardware that allows a Starlink customer to receive Internet service from a constellation of orbiting Starlink satellites — includes its own Wi-Fi access point, whose location is going to be automatically indexed by any nearby Apple devices that have location services enabled.

A heatmap of Starlink routers in Ukraine. Image: UMD.

The University of Maryland team geo-fenced various conflict zones in Ukraine, and identified at least 3,722 Starlink terminals geolocated in Ukraine.

“We find what appear to be personal devices being brought by military personnel into war zones, exposing pre-deployment sites and military positions,” the researchers wrote. “Our results also show individuals who have left Ukraine to a wide range of countries, validating public reports of where Ukrainian refugees have resettled.”

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, the UMD team said they found that in addition to exposing Russian troop pre-deployment sites, the location data made it easy to see where devices in contested regions originated from.

“This includes residential addresses throughout the world,” Levin said. “We even believe we can identify people who have joined the Ukraine Foreign Legion.”

A simplified map of where BSSIDs that enter the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine originate. Image: UMD.

Levin and Rye said they shared their findings with Starlink in March 2024, and that Starlink told them the company began shipping software updates in 2023 that force Starlink access points to randomize their BSSIDs.

Starlink’s parent SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. But the researchers shared a graphic they said was created from their Starlink BSSID monitoring data, which shows that just in the past month there was a substantial drop in the number of Starlink devices that were geo-locatable using Apple’s API.

UMD researchers shared this graphic, which shows their ability to monitor the location and movement of Starlink devices by BSSID dropped precipitously in the past month.

They also shared a written statement they received from Starlink, which acknowledged that Starlink User Terminal routers originally used a static BSSID/MAC:

“In early 2023 a software update was released that randomized the main router BSSID. Subsequent software releases have included randomization of the BSSID of WiFi repeaters associated with the main router. Software updates that include the repeater randomization functionality are currently being deployed fleet-wide on a region-by-region basis. We believe the data outlined in your paper is based on Starlink main routers and or repeaters that were queried prior to receiving these randomization updates.”

The researchers also focused their geofencing on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were able to track the migration and disappearance of devices throughout the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces cut power to the country and bombing campaigns knocked out key infrastructure.

“As time progressed, the number of Gazan BSSIDs that are geolocatable continued to decline,” they wrote. “By the end of the month, only 28% of the original BSSIDs were still found in the Apple WPS.”

In late March 2024, Apple quietly updated its website to note that anyone can opt out of having the location of their wireless access points collected and shared by Apple — by appending “_nomap” to the end of the Wi-Fi access point’s name (SSID). Adding “_nomap” to your Wi-Fi network name also blocks Google from indexing its location.

Apple updated its privacy and location services policy in March 2024 to allow people to opt out of having their Wi-Fi access point indexed by its service, by appending “_nomap” to the network’s name.

Asked about the changes, Apple said they have respected the “_nomap” flag on SSIDs for some time, but that this was only called out in a support article earlier this year.

Rye said Apple’s response addressed the most depressing aspect of their research: That there was previously no way for anyone to opt out of this data collection.

“You may not have Apple products, but if you have an access point and someone near you owns an Apple device, your BSSID will be in [Apple’s] database,” he said. “What’s important to note here is that every access point is being tracked, without opting in, whether they run an Apple device or not. Only after we disclosed this to Apple have they added the ability for people to opt out.”

The researchers said they hope Apple will consider additional safeguards, such as proactive ways to limit abuses of its location API.

“It’s a good first step,” Levin said of Apple’s privacy update in March. “But this data represents a really serious privacy vulnerability. I would hope Apple would put further restrictions on the use of its API, like rate-limiting these queries to keep people from accumulating massive amounts of data like we did.”

The UMD researchers said they omitted certain details from their study to protect the users they were able to track, noting that the methods they used could present risks for those fleeing abusive relationships or stalkers.

“We observe routers move between cities and countries, potentially representing their owner’s relocation or a business transaction between an old and new owner,” they wrote. “While there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between Wi-Fi routers and users, home routers typically only have several. If these users are vulnerable populations, such as those fleeing intimate partner violence or a stalker, their router simply being online can disclose their new location.”

The researchers said Wi-Fi access points that can be created using a mobile device’s built-in cellular modem do not create a location privacy risk for their users because mobile phone hotspots will choose a random BSSID when activated.

“Modern Android and iOS devices will choose a random BSSID when you go into hotspot mode,” he said. “Hotspots are already implementing the strongest recommendations for privacy protections. It’s other types of devices that don’t do that.”

For example, they discovered that certain commonly used travel routers compound the potential privacy risks.

“Because travel routers are frequently used on campers or boats, we see a significant number of them move between campgrounds, RV parks, and marinas,” the UMD duo wrote. “They are used by vacationers who move between residential dwellings and hotels. We have evidence of their use by military members as they deploy from their homes and bases to war zones.”

A copy of the UMD research is available here (PDF).

Update, May 22, 4:54 p.m. ET: Added response from Apple.

Marinate it first, then steam, grill or fry it any way you like, our panel says

What’s the best way to cook tempeh?
“People think of tempeh as a modern meat alternative, but it has ancient Javanese beginnings, where it was eaten as a source of protein when people couldn’t afford meat,” says Rahel Stephanie, founder of Spoons, an Indonesian supper club in London. And this nutty, umami-packed fermented soya bean cake is so much more than just a substitute ingredient: “It’s gorgeous,” Stephanie adds. “When people say they don’t like it, it’s because they aren’t cooking it right, the traditional Indonesian way.”

Happily, you can do just that in a multitude of ways, be it deep- or pan-fried, steamed, simmered, grilled, in a stir-fry or battered. “The more surface area that’s fried, the more umami and crunch you’ll get, which is what makes it so moreish,” says Lara Lee, author of A Splash of Soy. That’s why she’s so partial to tempeh rocks, a riff on an idea from Dutch-Indonesian food writer Vanja van der Leeden. Crumble tempeh into small pebbles, then fry in hot oil until browned, says Lee: “You can then add them to salads, rice bowls or congee, or use as a garnish for curries and soups.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

What am I doing with my one wild and precious life? Struggling to follow fast, frantic cookery instructions and developing a whole new swearing habit

I have been following the rise of the bao bun very keenly – the pallid little puffballs are enjoying a boom in Britain’s snack sector – on account of the fact that I learned to make them myself. It took me a long time and made me question a lot of things, including my soundness of mind. For anyone without teenagers in their house, there is a new frontier in knowledge exchange, which is the TikTok recipe. It’s like a regular recipe, except with a twist: it’s also like the world’s hardest IQ test.

The posters are mainly American and the dishes are mainly Korean (or air-fryer-based). The TikTokkers will tell you in broad terms what the ingredients are, but incredibly fast and often with swearing. Think of the craft segments on Blue Peter – painstakingly described, with one they made earlier – then make it 150 times faster and much bluer.

Enlarge / A Neuralink implant. (credit: Neuralink)

Only about 15 percent of the electrode-bearing threads implanted in the brain of Neuralink's first human brain-chip patient continue to work properly, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The remaining 85 percent of the threads became displaced, and many of the threads that were left receiving little to no signals have been shut off.

In a May 8 blog post, Neuralink had disclosed that "a number" of the chip's 64 thinner-than-hair threads had retracted. Each thread carries multiple electrodes, totaling 1,024 across the threads, which are surgically implanted near neurons of interest to record signals that can be decoded into intended actions.

Neuralink was quick to note that it was able to adjust the algorithm used for decoding those neuronal signals to compensate for the lost electrode data. The adjustments were effective enough to regain and then exceed performance on at least one metric—the bits-per-second (BPS) rate used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.

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Whether it’s for breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea, these cake and bake recipes will see you through the whole day

I could bake all day. A cake for tea, a nut-freckled meringue for dessert or something soft and fruit-laden for a mid-morning break. And, if guests are around, even for breakfast. Of course, I don’t need to, but there is something deeply civilised about stopping around 10.30am for coffee and a slice of something sweet; making a big savoury flatbread for lunch, its floury surface under a pile of sweet, golden onions and cheese.

And then there is the old-fashioned – almost forgotten – treat that is afternoon tea. No matter how simple, it always feels like a special occasion. I suppose the whole notion of tea at 4pm feels like something from a slower, less frantic era. Indulgent whatever you have on your plate. In my house it is rarely more than a single slice of cake, but this is also my favourite time to entertain, to pass around plates of classic baking for all-comers. For a birthday or a visit from much loved friends I will make a fancy-schmancy cake, by which I mean something that has taken an hour or two of my time.

These small, soft balls make for a speedy supper – serve them with a generous grating of parmesan and a well-dressed green salad

The combination of ricotta, wilted chopped spinach, grated parmesan or pecorino, egg and a good grating of nutmeg is a familiar and typical filling for ravioli. In today’s dish, though, there is no pasta covering, hence the nudità (nudity) of the little lumps (gnocchi simply means “little lumps”), which is neatly captured by the Tuscan dialect word gnudi. They have other names, too. In Casentino, in the province of Arezzo, for example, they are possessive and call them gnocchi di Casentino, as well as gnocchi di ricotta, while in the provinces of Siena and Grosseto gnudi are known as malfatti (“badly shaped”), which is a reassuring name, as well as a charming one.

That said, my gnudi are well formed, ever since I learned an entertaining and satisfying technique (I wish I could remember who to thank for this): you put a walnut-sized lump of the spinach-speckled gnudi mixture into a small bowl along with a little semolina (or plain) flour and move the bowl in a circle, so the cheese mixture rolls around like a ball bearing in a slot machine and eventually turns into a satisfying oval. Another way of shaping is simply by rolling the balls between floured hands, or the two-teaspoon method, which involves turning and smoothing each side until it forms a neat lump, then dusting it in flour.

Even the English Breakfast Society has welcomed the ‘baozi’ as supermarket chains feed off interest in world food

The origin of bao buns, or baozi, goes back as far as third-century China. The legend goes that a military strategist used the wheat buns instead of human heads as a peace offering to a god for safe passage. The deity fell in love with the steamed buns so much that he parted the rough waters of the river to allow crossing.

It seems Britons have also fallen for the Asian treat. The English Breakfast Society, devoted to promoting the traditional English breakfast, this month encouraged the introduction of bao buns as part of a morning fry-up.

The Dublin-born chef talks about realising the culinary value of Irish food, plus six recipes from her new cookbook, Cooking with Anna

When Anna Haugh decided to write a cookbook after more than two decades in professional kitchens, pitching her recipes at the right skill level was a challenge. “Trying to simplify and reduce was an interesting learning curve,” says the Dublin-born chef, who opened her restaurant Myrtle in London’s Chelsea five years ago. “Even when I was doing the photoshoot [for the book] I would think, ‘No, that’s a bit too much,’ and I’d remove an element.”

The result is accessible enough for even the most hesitant cooks. It begins, irresistibly, with a section on 20-minute dinners, featuring potato cakes, speedy pasta dishes and a sea bream bake “for which you need zero cooking ability”. But Haugh, who has appeared as a judge on MasterChef, believes that sometimes a little extra effort at the stove can yield outsized rewards. “There are some dishes that might look complicated, but then you do it and realise, I’ve just injected loads of flavour and it wasn’t that hard. There weren’t 15 pots in the sink, a broken marriage and somebody weeping on the floor, questioning their life decisions.”

In the coastal city of Essaouira, our writer masters the ceremonial art of tea-pouring and learns how to make flaky chicken pastilla and gazelle horns with almond paste and orange blossom water

It is early morning on the edge of Essaouira’s medina and the famous Atlantic winds are picking up. The sea looks tawny and wild, the sky is darkening by the minute. It begins to rain, heavily. Even the windsurfers who flock here all year round seem to have vanished. Market traders huddle and the place seems deserted. What better time to stay inside and learn about the ancient and warming Moroccan art of making tea?

We are at L’Atelier Madada, a kitchen studio offering cookery classes in what used to be an old almond warehouse. Now it is all exposed brickwork, concrete floors and steelwork surfaces along with a kitchen shop and café known for its great coffee. Classes here are about a lot more than tajines and couscous, although they cover those, too. You can master pastillas (traditional flaky pastry chicken pies) and gazelle horns (crescent-shaped pastries filled with almond paste and orange blossom water). And, of course, there is mint tea, a symbol of tradition, hospitality and friendship, served all day long and after every meal.

It’s the season of salads, so a good dressing is a must

The dressing I make most often is a simple vinaigrette with vinegar, olive oil, a dash of smooth mustard and salt and pepper. I give it only the faintest breath of garlic, the clove left to steep in the vinegar for 10 minutes to take out its sting. I use a workaday olive oil rather than something more peppery or fruity, shaking everything up in a tightly sealed jar. I could make it in my sleep.

Sometimes, a slightly more aromatic dressing is called for: one with shredded basil and sherry vinegar for tomatoes; or with the merest hint of honey for bitter leaves, such as watercress or chicory or with mint and tarragon to marry with roasted aubergines or courgettes. A dressing to flatter the fresh ingredients, not mask them. A light, uplifting lotion to tease out the flavours of the ingredients rather than one that smothers. A dressing to bring harmony and balance. It is what makes a few, well-chosen leaves special enough to eat as a single course.

Make up a big batch of tahini sauce with herbs, quick preserved lemons, experiment with all sorts of pestos, or try zhoug and shatta, two punchy Levantine chilli condiments

I love the green tahini sauce with the roast cauliflower in your book Simple – it livens up even the most joyless of midweek meals. What other easy sauces should I have in my repertoire to give plain dishes a bit of zhoosh?
Joe, Liverpool
I’m so pleased you’ve asked this question, Joe, because sauces and pastes are one of the secrets to exciting home cooking. They’re little flavour bombs, sitting ready in the fridge, to drizzle over or stir into all sorts.

Tahini sauce, green or otherwise, is one of my favourites. If I don’t have herbs at home, or if I just fancy a change, I’ll often mix in some miso or soy for a deep, savoury hit. Or, if I want some chilli heat, I’ll add chilli flakes, harissa or similar chilli pastes such as doubanjiang and gochujang; just remember to add plenty of lemon or lime juice to balance things out.

There was more business than usual and some bemused regulars after El Califa de León was rewarded for its ‘exceptional’ offering

El Califa de León, an unassuming taco joint in Mexico City, measures just 3 metres by 3 metres and has space for only about six people to stand at a squeeze. Locals usually wait for 5 minutes between ordering and picking up their food.

All that changed on Wednesday, however, when it became the first Mexican taco stand ever to win a Michelin star, putting it in the exalted company of fine dining restaurants around the world, and drawing crowds like it has never seen.

CISA has added two vulnerabilities in discontinued D-Link products to its KEV catalog, including a decade-old flaw.

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