tardigrada

Archived version

For more than a decade, connected cars have won over new car buyers with their streamlined, smartphone-like software updates and convenience features. But this convenience comes at a price: What happens when connected cars become disconnected cars? Like that scene at the end of The Phantom Menace, they’re losing function en masse as the Chinese auto industry consolidates, leaving many connected cars unsupported. And if we’re not careful, the same thing could easily happen to American car owners, too.

The phenomenon was chronicled in Rest of World, which spoke to multiple owners of EVs produced by financially troubled Chinese automakers. China kickstarted its EV industry with aggressive subsidies that lured dozens, if not hundreds of companies to produce cars. When those subsidies ceased, an automotive extinction event unfolded, with a reported 20-plus brands calling it quits. As you can imagine, that poses an enormous problem for people who bought connected cars from said brands.

[...]

WM Motor [...] reportedly sold around 100,000 cars between 2019 and 2022. It filed for bankruptcy in October 2023, and in doing so ceased offering software support for customers’ cars. With company servers offline, widespread failures were reported, affecting cars’ stereos, charging status indicators, odometers, and app-controlled remote functions such as air conditioning and locking.

[...]

Its app also remains unavailable on smartphone app stores, locking potential buyers of used WM Motors vehicles out of some features. It

[...]

In the United States, we’ve seen similar situations unfold like with Tesla’s 2021 outage, which locked some owners out of their cars and disabled charging. More recently, the bankruptcy of Fisker left owners of its Ocean SUV with abundant software issues and no certainty that they’d be fixed. It’s a far larger problem in China, where tech is a major selling point for cars, and where there are more brands at risk. But it’s better we heed this warning than kick the can down the road—an ounce of preventative versus a pound of cure, and all that jazz.

The University of Pennsylvania in tbe U.S. announced $10 million in funding dedicated to its new Center for Media, Technology, and Democracy. The Center will be housed in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering) and will operate in partnership with five other schools at Penn.

The Center will benefit from a five-year, $5 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as well as an additional $5 million in combined resources from Penn Engineering, Penn Arts & Sciences, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Wharton School, Penn Carey Law, and the School of Social Policy & Practice.

[...]

The Center will propel research involving media, technology, and democracy within Penn. Once established, however, the hope is for the Center to become a global hub for researchers, private sector leaders, and for policymakers—by sharing research findings and creating near real-time dashboards that provide a clear view of the current media landscape, informed by empirical research. Over the long term, the Center also aims to serve as a central repository for data sharing with the broader research community.

Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike - Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 "snatch thefts" in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months. The prosecution rate for this offence is very low - the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot "arrest their way out of the problem". They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

[...]

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again - his prized possession was now on the other side of the world - in Shenzhen, China.

[..]

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen - where if devices can't be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

[...]

In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did. A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the U.S. don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines and accounts.

"As we demonstrated with our own Red Flag Machine, however, this software flags and blocks websites for spurious reasons and often disproportionately targets disadvantaged, minority and LGBTQ youth," the Electronic Software Foundation (EFF) says.

The companies making the software claim it’s all done for the sake of student safety: preventing self-harm, suicide, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. While a noble goal, given that suicide is the second highest cause of death among American youth 10-14 years old, no comprehensive or independent studies have shown an increase in student safety linked to the usage of this software. Quite to the contrary: a recent comprehensive RAND research study shows that such AI monitoring software may cause more harm than good.

Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. He says Donald Trump once told him to abandon William, saying, “He doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” After a meeting in the Oval Office about dedicating more resources to people with disabilities, Fred Trump says his uncle said, “Those people, the costs. They should just die.”

“How could one human being say that about any other human being, least of all your grandnephew?” says Fred Trump, who calls on the next president to support disabled Americans. “The Harris campaign and her positions are ones that I believe. Now, that being said, I have yet to hear anything regarding disability actions … and I will put their feet to the fire on this.”

Archived version

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued two of the state’s largest counties to block efforts to register voters ahead of the November general election, drawing claims of voter suppression from state Democrats.

Paxton announced Friday a lawsuit to block Travis County, which includes the state capital of Austin, from using taxpayer money to hire a third-party vendor to identify and contact eligible but unregistered voters to try to get them registered before the Oct. 7 deadline.

That followed a lawsuit earlier in the week against Bexar County, which includes San Antonio; that county hired the same company for a similar registration effort. Paxton has also threatened legal action against Houston’s Harris County if it engages in a similar voter registration effort.

Paxton’s lawsuits are the latest round in an ongoing fight between Texas Republicans, who have long dominated state government and insist they are taking measures to bolster election integrity, and Democrats, who have strongholds in Texas’s largest urban areas and complain the GOP-led efforts amount to voter suppression, particularly of Latinos.

In the lawsuits, Paxton claimed the contracts went to a partisan vendor and argued they go beyond the local government’s legal authority. Paxton said Texas law does not explicitly allow counties to mail out unsolicited registration forms.

The extreme right-wing blueprints of Project 2025 [by the Heritage Foundation] and Agenda 47 [by Donald Trump campaign team] call for radical changes to gun control laws-- making it harder to track illegal weapons, overturning state restrictions on deadly firearms, and even arming teachers.

These proposals check off the gun lobby’s wish list at the expense of public safety, despite most Americans supporting sound gun control measures, according to Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence.

Together, Agenda 47 and Project 2025 aim "to sell as many guns to as many people as possible, and to remove every public safety measure to allow that to happen-- it's profit-seeking," Brown says, adding that Trump and the gun lobby "could care less" that gun violence is now the leading killer of American youth.

[Edit typo.]

Archived version

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services seeks to overturn a regulation that was finalized in April. In the suit filed Wednesday in Lubbock, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the federal government of attempting to “undermine” the state’s law enforcement capabilities. It appears to be the first legal challenge from a state with an abortion ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nationwide right to abortion.

The rule essentially prohibits state or local officials from gathering medical records related to reproductive health care for a civil, criminal or administrative investigation from providers or health insurers in a state where abortion remains legal. It is intended to protect women who live in states where abortion is illegal.

In a statement, HHS declined comment on the lawsuit but said the rule “stands on its own.”

Georgia Tech is ending its research and educational partnerships in the Chinese cities of Tianjin and Shenzhen, the US university said on Friday (Sep 6), following scrutiny from Congress over its collaboration with entities allegedly linked to China's military.

In May, the House of Representatives' select committee on China wrote a letter to Georgia Tech asking for details on its research with China's northeastern Tianjin University on cutting-edge semiconductor technologies.

The Chinese school and its affiliates were added in 2020 to the US Commerce Department's export restrictions list for actions contrary to US national security, including trade secret theft and research collaboration to advance China's military.

Spokesperson Abbigail Tumpey told Reuters in an email that Georgia Tech has been assessing its posture in China since Tianjin University was added to the entity list.

"Tianjin University has had ample time to correct the situation. To date, Tianjin University remains on the Entity List, making Georgia Tech's participation with Tianjin University, and subsequently Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute (GTSI), no longer tenable," Tumpey said.

[...]

US agencies and Congress have stepped up scrutiny of China's state-sponsored influence and technology transfers at American colleges and universities, concerned that Beijing uses open and federally funded research environments in the US to circumvent export controls and other national security laws.

The US Justice Department under President Joe Biden's administration ended a programme from former president Donald Trump's administration called the China Initiative intended to combat Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft. Critics had said that the programme spurred racial profiling against Asian Americans and chilled scientific research.

Alexey Soldatov, known as the “father of the Russian Internet,” was sentenced in July to two years in prison by a Moscow court for alleged “misuse” of IP addresses.

In 1990, Soldatov led the Relcom computer network that made the first Soviet connection to the global internet. He also served as Russia’s Deputy Minister of Communications from 2008 to 2010.

Soldatov was convicted on charges related to an alleged deal to transfer IP addresses to a foreign organization. He and his lawyers have denied the accusations. His family, many supporters, and Netzpolitik suggest that the accusations are politically motivated. Soldatov’s former business partner, Yevgeny Antipov, was also sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Here is the study: http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0344

A deadly pandemic has decimated bats in North America — and that has ultimately had harmful effects on humans, including higher rates of infant mortality, according to a new study.

The research is part of growing evidence that humans rely on the animal and plant species around them, and are harmed when those species decline or go extinct.

White-nose syndrome is a deadly fungal disease that kills an average of 70 per cent of bats it infects, and has been spreading to new areas since it was first reported on the continent in 2006.

[...]

Ecologists know that bats play a crucial role in eating up and controlling insect pests.

Because of that, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, decided to look at what happened when white-nose syndrome spread into new counties in the eastern U.S., decimating bat populations.

He found that farmers responded to the resulting insect outbreaks by increasing their pesticide use 31 per cent. Pesticides are toxic, and often associated with human health impacts such as increases in infant deaths.

Frank found that infant mortality went up eight per cent after the arrival of white-nose syndrome in a county, according to his study published today in the journal Science.

[...]

The study shows how interactions between species such as bats and insects stabilize the ecosystems that other species rely on, including humans, who can be harmed when those species disappear, Frank said.

"These ecosystems are very complex systems with many interactions between species, and we do not fully understand what to expect or what will happen when we allow one species to fall below some viable population level or to go extinct," said Frank, who had previously linked the deaths of half a million people in India to the collapse of local vulture populations due to accidental poisoning.

Archived version

Unit 42 researchers recently found that Stately Taurus abused the popular Visual Studio Code software in espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. Stately Taurus is a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group that carries out cyberespionage attacks.

This threat actor used Visual Studio Code’s embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target networks. This is a relatively new technique that a security researcher discovered in 2023. According to our telemetry, this is the first time a threat actor used it in the wild.

We assess that this campaign is a direct continuation of a previously reported campaign that we attributed with moderate-high confidence to Stately Taurus. We come to this conclusion based on consideration of the TTPs, timeline and victimology targeting government entities in Southeast Asia.

We will also discuss a connection between the Stately Taurus activity and a second cluster of activity occurring simultaneously in the same targeted environment that leveraged the ShadowPad backdoor.

Palo Alto Networks customers receive better protection against threats discussed in this article through the following products and services, which we detail further in the Conclusion section:

• Advanced WildFire
• Advanced URL Filtering
• Advanced DNS Security
• Cortex XDR
• Cortex XSIAM
• Prisma Cloud Compute