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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

During a recent internal meeting, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI Group Scott Guthrie promised that the company does not plan to follow Amazon's lead in mandating workers back to the office five days per week. However, two vetted Microsoft employees who attended the meeting told Business Insider under conditions of anonymity that the vow comes with the condition that productivity doesn't decline.

It would seem a bit hypocritical if the Redmond giant eliminated remote work, considering it literally makes Teams – a software suite that enables and encourages companies to allow employees to work from home. However, the question of productivity is a big one that no one has answered satisfactorily.

On the one hand, companies generally don't make wide-sweeping changes unless the government mandates it (lockdowns) or the beancounters find the changes save or make the firm more money (productivity). On the other hand, you have employees saying they "feel" more productive at home, which seems weak as an argument but is one that resistant work-from-homes cite time after time.

Microsoft's senior director of IT, Keith Boyd, says remote work can be sustainable as long as it's done right.

"If you make the time to do it right, your employees will be more engaged, more productive, and more connected, even when they're miles away," Boyd wrote in an August blog post. "And they'll be far less likely to leave for a competitor who has a more sophisticated and flexible model than you do."

The remote model has advantages from both the employee's and employer's perspectives. For example, a company that covers daycare costs can save money with a remote work program, while the employee can reap the benefits of not having to commute daily.

Unfortunately, the risks and disadvantages of remote employees primarily lie on the company's shoulders. Loss of productivity due to workers taking care of personal business or even napping is a genuine concern. It's not surprising to learn that there are actual products that circumvent monitoring measures employers frequently use to be sure their employees are working while on the clock.

Meanwhile, there are not many disadvantages for the remote employee, which is probably the most contributing factor to workers fighting tooth and nail to stay out of the office. Protests and unionizing efforts are more prevalent post-pandemic, and much of the bellyaching relates to employers reversing stay-at-home mandates.

That said, Microsoft thinks it has the remote work dynamic figured out. We'll have to see if its reassurances about continuing with the model help keep its workers in line without direct supervision.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, writes that it supported a new series of actions against LockBit members, leading to the four arrests and seizures of servers critical for the group's infrastructure.

Ransomware criminals in Russia are often safe from arrest as the local authorities tend to ignore their actions as long as they don't attack organizations within the country. But one of those arrested, a LockBit developer, had gone on vacation in August to a territory that has an extradition agreement with France. The French Gendarmerie were alerted, leading to his arrest. The individual and the country where he was apprehended have not been revealed.

August also saw two more people arrested in connection to the operation, both in the UK. One is reported to be associated with a LockBit affiliate, and the other is suspected of money laundering. Britain's National Crime Agency identified them using data seized during the massive takedown of LockBit operations in February.

The final arrest was made at Madrid airport, where Spain's Guardia Civil arrested an administrator of a Bulletproof hosting service used by the ransomware group. Bulletproof hosting companies provide hosting services that are deliberately designed to be resistant or immune to takedown requests, law enforcement, or other forms of interference. They are often linked to criminal activities because they allow or tolerate hosting illegal content.

Spanish officers also seized nine servers, part of the ransomware's infrastructure.

In addition, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States implemented sanctions against an actor identified as a prolific affiliate of LockBit and strongly linked to ransomware group Evil Corp.

16 members of Evil Corp, once believed to be the most significant cybercrime threat in the world have been sanctioned in the UK with their links to the Russian state and other ransomware groups, including LockBit, exposed. Sanctions have also been imposed by Australia and the US

The LockBit ransomware-as-a-service has been behind over 1,700 attacks on organizations in the United States from virtually every sector, from government and financial to transport, healthcare, and education.

This year's multinational Operation Cronos saw LockBit's website seized and operations disrupted. Investigators also seized 34 servers containing over 2,500 decryption keys and used the data gathered from those servers to develop a free file decryption tool for the LockBit 3.0 Black Ransomware.

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owl writes:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-radio-invented

Imagine if your boss called a meeting in May to announce that he's committing 10 percent of the company's revenue to the development of a brand-new mass-market consumer product, made with a not-yet-ready-for-mass-production component. Oh, and he wants it on store shelves in less than six months, in time for the holiday shopping season. Ambitious, yes. Kind of nuts, also yes.

But that's pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The result was the Regency TR-1, the world's first commercial transistor radio, which debuted 70 years ago this month. The engineers delivered on Haggerty's audacious goal, and I certainly hope they received a substantial year-end bonus.

[...] TI was still a small company, with not much in the way of R&D capacity. But Haggerty and the other founders wanted it to become a big and profitable company. And so they established research labs to focus on semiconductor materials and a project-engineering group to develop marketable products.

Haggerty made a good investment when he hired Gordon Teal, a 22-year veteran of Bell Labs. Although Teal wasn't part of the team that invented the germanium transistor, he recognized that it could be improved by using a single grown crystal, such as silicon. Haggerty was familiar with Teal's work from a 1951 Bell Labs symposium on transistor technology. Teal happened to be homesick for his native Texas, so when TI advertised for a research director in the New York Times, he applied, and Haggerty offered him the job of assistant vice president instead. Teal started at TI on 1 January 1953.

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Anonyspouse writes:

Comcast confirms 237K affected in feisty breach notification: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/04/comcast_fcbs_ransomware_theft/

Between February 14 and February 26, 2024, FBCS [Financial Business and Consumer Solutions] experienced a cyberattack where someone unauthorized got into their computer network and took some data. Comcast told customers about this in a letter, saying that customer information might have been taken during this time. Another company, CF Medical, also had a similar situation where customer data was accessed by a cybercriminal in July and they notified their customers too.

However, that changed in July, when the collections outfit got in touch again to say that, actually, the Comcast subscriber data it held had been pilfered.

Among the data types stolen were names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and the Comcast account numbers and ID numbers used internally at FBCS. The data pertains to those registered as customers at "around 2021." Comcast stopped using FBCS for debt collection services in 2020.

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Submitted by an Anonymous Coward:

https://www.wired.com/story/license-plate-readers-political-signs-bumper-stickers/

AI-powered cameras on cars and trucks have been used to capture images of political signs, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers. The data, reviewed by WIRED, shows how a tool originally designed for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring 'speech' protected by the US Constitution.

[...] Another image taken on a different day by a different vehicle shows a "Steelworkers for Harris-Walz" sign stuck in the lawn in front of someone's home. A construction worker, with his face unblurred, is pictured near another Harris sign. Other photos show Trump and Biden (including "Fuck Biden") bumper stickers on the back of trucks and cars across America. One photo, taken in November 2023, shows a partially torn bumper sticker supporting the Obama-Biden lineup.

These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations.

The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies. However, files shared with WIRED by artist Julia Weist show that those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates. The research also reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America, and how people's personal political views and homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.

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canopic jug writes:

A lot of security myths have acquired lives of their own and taken as facts. Dr. Andy Farnell over at the Cyber Show's blog has posted an item about where passwords can still fit in as a part of general authentication despite what fleets of salesmen selling authentication gimmicks tell us.

Security models: password or tracker?

Indeed people do not discriminate two vastly different security models that should really be obvious with a moments thought. The question is, "who is the security for?"

Security schemes that ask that you carry around a device which is connected permanently to a network and uses a mechanism that is entirely opaque to you is a different kind of security. It is more than a mere access control. It is not security for you.

It may pass for "something you have" but also has a function to act as a location or close proximity biometric remote sensor for an observer elsewhere. It's a tracking device.

[...] Partly it's because we've been using passwords wrong for about the past 40 years. The new NIST document partially puts that right. It's also because there's a massive "security industry" that sells things - and you can't sell people the ability to think up a new password in their own head. Where's the profit in that?

Instead they'll tell you that you need a fangled security system of gadgets and retina scans, and that you're too stupid to be trusted with your own security. They are wrong. In most cases passwords are just fine if not better than alternatives, and in this post we're going to explain why.

Thus another theme of this essay is personal responsibility and the crux of the argument is that all security solutions which are not passwords solve problems that are not yours.

Like self-service checkouts at the supermarket that make customers into employees, they are a way of passing blame, liability, and work onto you in order to solve someone elses security problem. As Prof. Ross Anderson bluntly puts it;

"If Alice guards a system but Bob pays the cost of failure, you can expect trouble."

Cybersecurity has become more harmful than helpful in many cases and biometrics are more of a user name than a password despite the constant misuse as the latter.

Previously:
(2024) NIST Proposes Barring Some of the Most Nonsensical Password Rules
(2024) VISA and Biometric Authentication
(2023) A Fifth of Passwords Used by Federal Agency Cracked in Security Audit
(2020) Here's Yet Another Reason Why You Really Should Start Using Better Passwords

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Institute For Local Self Reliance (disclosure: I have done writing and research for them) has released an updated interactive map of every community-owned and operated broadband network in the U.S.

All told, there’s now 400 community-owned broadband networks serving more than 700 U.S. towns and cities nationwide, and the pace of growth shows no sign of slowing down.

Some of these networks are directly owned by a municipality. Some are freshly-built cooperatives. Some are extensions of the existing city-owned electrical utility. All of them are an organic, popular, grass-roots community-driven reaction to telecom market failure and expensive, patchy access.

[...] Data routinely notes that community-owned broadband networks provide faster, cheaper, better service than their larger private-sector counterparts. Staffed by locals, they’re also more directly accountable and responsive to the needs of locals. They’re also just hugely popular across the partisan spectrum; routinely winning awards for service.

[...] That’s not to suggest community-owned broadband networks are some mystical panacea; they require smart leadership, strategic planning, and intelligent financing. But if done well, they not only drive significant fiber improvements directly to local markets, they incentivize lumbering regional private sector monopolies — long pampered by federal government corruption and muted competition — to actually try.

Widespread frustration with substandard U.S. broadband drove a big boost in such networks during COVID lockdowns. Since January 1, 2021, more than 47 new networks have come online, with dozens in the planning or pre-construction phases. Many are seeing a big financial boost thanks to 2021 COVID relief (ARPA) and infrastructure bill (IIJA) legislation funding (the latter of which hasn’t even arrived yet).

In response to this popular grass roots movement, giant ISPs have worked tirelessly to outlaw such efforts, regardless of voter intent. 16 states still have protectionist state laws, usually ghost written by giant telecom monopolies, prohibiting the construction or expansion of community broadband. House Republicans went so far as to try and ban all community broadband during a pandemic.

Lumbering regional monopolies like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter could have responded to this movement by lowering prices and improving service. Instead in many cases they found it cheaper to lobby politicians, sue fledgling networks, or create fake “consumer groups” tasked with spreading lies about the perils of community-owned broadband networks among local communities.

But based on the growth rate of such networks, these efforts have backfired, and locally-owned and operated broadband networks appear to be more popular than ever.

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Recently published in Nature, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52766-9 LG Chem has developed a thin membrane said to greatly reduce the chance of fire in Li-Ion batteries. From the abstract,

Integrating safety features to cut off excessive current during accidental internal short circuits in Li-ion batteries (LIBs) can reduce the risk of thermal runaway. However, making this concept practical requires overcoming challenges in both material development and scalable manufacturing. Here, we demonstrate the roll-to-roll production of a safety reinforced layer (SRL) on current collectors at a rate of 5 km per day. The SRL, made of molecularly engineered polythiophene (PTh) and carbon additives, interrupts current flow during voltage drops or overheating without adversely affecting battery performance. Impact testing on 3.4-Ah pouch cells shows that the SRL reduces battery explosions from 63% to 10%.

The full paper is available, no paywall.

Also covered in more popular language in Motor Trend, https://www.motortrend.com/news/lg-chem-runaway-ev-battery-fire-suppresion-technology/

... The only catch, now, is that testing has only truly begun. Scaling up to larger capacity battery packs—ones used in EVs, as highlighted by the study—are to begin in 2025. It seems that the CTO of LG Chem, Lee Jong-gu, believes this safety feature will come sooner rather than later: "This is a tangible research achievement that can be applied to mass production in a short period of time. We will enhance safety technology to ensure customers can use electric vehicles with confidence and contribute to strengthening our competitiveness in the battery market." We're sure that many firefighters and motorsports events are probably begging LG Chem to make this technology a top priority.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Two out of five mobile phone subscribers are unwilling to pay any extra for direct-to-cell satellite services, which may give operators pause for thought as they continue to pump cash into scaling the infrastructure.

Much has been written about the race to enable satellite connectivity for mobile phones, typically to provide coverage in places such as rural or remote areas of the US where there may be no cell networks nearby.

The GSM Association (GSMA), an industry body representing the interests of mobile network operators worldwide, asked 1,000 respondents in ten countries how much additional spend they'd consider adding to their mobile tariff if satellite connectivity was included.

Some 40 percent said they wouldn't pay more for this capability. Of the remainder, 32 percent would only be willing to pay up to 5 percent extra; 17 percent said they'd be willing to pay up to 10 percent extra, and only 4 percent were prepared to add 20 percent to their tariff.

The GSMA put a positive spin on this, saying the figures indicate that 60 percent of people, on average, are willing to pay more on top of their existing bills.

Even 5 percent extra on tariffs would be a meaningful boost to the average revenue per user, the trade body claimed, "when spread across the applicable customer base of the mobile operators most likely to take satellite, whether in an existing tariff or as a separate offer."

It added: "in short, if it's built, they are likely to come."

The GSMA also noted that inclination to pay is "part science and part art," and consumer attitudes must be "taken with a grain of salt, compared to actual purchases."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Eyebrow-raising revelations come to light as hearings into Titan sub's loss wrap up

The tragic tale of OceanGate's Titan submersible took on a few added twists today as the U.S. Coast Guard concluded two weeks of public hearings into last year's catastrophic loss of the sub and its crew.

[...] OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, the sub's pilot, was among the five who died as Titan made its last descent to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The others were veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet; British aviation executive and citizen explorer Hamish Harding; and Pakistani-born business magnate Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

Rush's determination to dive to the Titanic, despite the warnings he received from OceanGate employees and outside engineers, emerged as a major theme during this month's hearings in South Carolina. Matthew McCoy, a Coast Guard veteran who worked as an operations technician at OceanGate for five months in 2017, reinforced that theme today.

McCoy said that when he started the job, OceanGate "seemed to be pretty well-run," but then he learned that the company was breaking off its ties with Boeing and the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory.

He was even more distressed when he found out that OceanGate's business model depended on taking paying clients on deep-ocean dives as "mission specialists." That didn't square with what he knew about Coast Guard regulations relating to passengers for hire. He discussed his qualms during a lunch with Rush and Scott Griffith, who was then OceanGate's director of quality assurance.

When McCoy brought up OceanGate's lack of Coast Guard clearances for its subs, he said Rush replied that regulations were "stifling the ingenuity" in the submersible industry. "He tried to explain the 'mission specialist' aspect to it. I talked about the 'receiving any sort of compensation' aspect," McCoy said. "He said that they were going to flag the Titan in the Bahamas and launch out of Canada, so that they wouldn't fall under U.S. jurisdiction."

McCoy said he continued to talk about how U.S. regulations could spoil Rush's plans. But he said Rush told him "if the Coast Guard became a problem, that he would buy himself a congressman and make it go away."

"I was aghast," McCoy said. "Basically after that, I resigned from the company. I couldn't work there anymore."

upstart writes:

Scientists map fruit fly brain in neurobiological milestone:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

During the summer US Mobile announced it is now a “super carrier”, offering the ability to connect to all three major US cellular networks. There’s been a lot of confusion about this new change and how it works. I’ve spent a few months with the carrier getting to know it for that very reason. In this short guide, we explain US Mobile carrier switching and how it works, as well as if it’s as good as it sounds on paper and who it’s best suited for.

[...] This process is basically like fully transferring to another network. Though it’s possible to physically swap SIMs for the transfer, an e-SIM is essential if you want this experience to be as simple and painless as possible. Even then, it’s not exactly an instant procedure.

[...] It’s a bit both, frankly. While it’s true that US Mobile on paper might sound like it can seamlessly switch between carriers anytime you need better coverage, the reality is more mundane, tedious, and restricted than users might assume initially. The answer to whether it is worth it really depends on your needs. If you travel outside of your home region at least once or twice a month on average and have run into carrier issues, then yes this is a great deal. It’s also nice having the piece of mind to be able to switch anytime there’s extra congestion or a network outage, like the big Verizon outage that recently was in the news.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Zooming through the outer reaches of the solar system, A NASA spacecraft just clocked a distance 60 times farther from the sun than Earth.

The extraordinary benchmark announced this week means the New Horizons probe has doubled its 2015 distance, when it was snapping pictures of Pluto and its moons. 

Perhaps more surprising than this intangible deep-space milestone is the one this intrepid spacecraft hasn't reached yet: the outer edge of the solar system's Kuiper Belt, a disk beyond Neptune of countless comets and thousands of tiny ice worlds. The far-flung region is littered with leftover rubble from the time when primitive planets were forming. 

Scientists had expected the spacecraft to arrive at the proverbial edge about 1 billion miles ago. 

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The “no-fly” list has many problems. Pretty much any fed can “nominate” someone for the list. Pretty much everyone on the list has almost zero chance of getting off it other than by filing a lawsuit. And even though the government has been forced by court decisions to offer a venue for challenges, the federal government is still under no obligation to tell people why they’ve been placed on the list, much less promise to never put them back on it again.

When people have been removed (almost exclusively following lawsuits), they’re simply told they’ve been removed. The only way to find out if they’ve been reinstated is to buy a ticket to ride only to have it denied after they’ve already spent their money and arrived at the airport.

Then there’s the cross-pollination of federal law enforcement databases, which turns people on the “no fly” list into suspected terrorists, even if there’s nothing in the database that supports this implication or any cop’s corresponding inference.

As unjust as this all is, at least there are some limits. Well, maybe one. And maybe one that only applies to this specific incident. But, there’s at least one limit and it’s spelled out by this decision [PDF] handed down by the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court. And that limitation is this: you can’t stop someone from driving just because they’re not allowed to board a plane. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Here’s how this all went down in Georgia, leading to this federal lawsuit:

The Harvard Business Review ran a piece back in July 2024 on the future of computer security,
https://hbr.org/2024/07/when-cyberattacks-are-inevitable-focus-on-cyber-resilience

Well written (imo) in straightforward language, the gist is:

What is cyber resiliency? And why is it different than cyber protection?
A prevention mindset means doing all you can to keep the bad guys out. A resilience mindset adds a layer: while you do all you can to prevent an attack, you also work with the expectation that they still might break through your defenses and invest heavily preparing to respond and recover when the worst happens. Resilient organizations specifically devote significant resources to drawing up plans for what they will do if an attack happens, designing processes to execute them when the time comes, and practicing how to put these plans into action. Prevention is critical — but it's not enough.
[...]
Yet in my work as a researcher in conversation with chief information security officers and other cyber experts, I have noticed that many leaders focus most, if not all, of their security resources on prevention and leave recovery to business continuity plans that aren't usually designed with cyber incidents in mind. Instead, leaders need to embrace a mindset of cyber-resilience.

The HBR readership is (I believe) tilted toward C-class executives, so this may well filter down into IT departments. Anyone here seen any signs of a push toward "resilience" recently?

Paywalled? Try https://archive.is/CSFA3

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