An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amid a national shortage of a critical medicine, US hospitals are hoarding vials, delaying surgeries, and turning away patients, The New York Times reports. The medicine in short supply: solutions of sodium bicarbonate -- aka, baking soda. The simple drug is used in all sorts of treatments, from chemotherapies to those for organ failure. It can help correct the pH of blood and ease the pain of stitches. It is used in open-heart surgery, can help reverse poisonings, and is kept on emergency crash carts. But, however basic and life-saving, the drug has been in short supply since around February. The country's two suppliers, Pfizer and Amphastar, ran low following an issue with one of Pfizer's suppliers -- the issue was undisclosed due to confidentiality agreements. Amphastar's supplies took a hit with a spike in demand from desperate Pfizer customers. Both companies told the NYT that they don't know when exactly supplies will be restored. They speculate that it will be no earlier than June or August. With the shortage of sodium bicarbonate, hospitals are postponing surgeries and chemotherapy treatments. A hospital in Mobile, Alabama, for example, postponed seven open-heart surgeries and sent one critically ill patient to another hospital due to the shortage.

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One protester is killed after a national guard vehicle ran him over and at least 50 others injured in south Tunisia.

One protester is killed after a national guard vehicle ran him over and at least 50 others injured in south Tunisia.

The full impact of self-driving cars on society is several decades away -- but when it hits, the job losses will be substantial for American truck drivers, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. From a report: When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research. Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today's employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.

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Amazon has transformed businesses including retailing, filmmaking and data storage. But no one anticipated the bananas. It started with a brainstorm from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon should offer everyone near its headquarters -- not just employees -- healthy, eco-friendly snacks as a public service. After considering oranges, Amazon picked bananas, and opened its first Community Banana Stand in late 2015. However, not everyone is pleased with the ecommerce giant's effort. From a report: Although there is no money in Amazon's community banana stands -- where the company has been offering free fruit to both workers and locals in Seattle since 2015 -- the tech giant's largesse is changing the banana landscape for some nearby businesses. [...] Thus far, the company says it's handed out more than 1.7 million free banana, reports The Wall Street Journal. But while many folks are fans of the free bananas, others say it's changing banana consumption in the community: Some workers say it's harder to find bananas at local grocery stores, while nearby eateries have also stopped selling as many banana as they used to.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The full impact of self-driving cars on society is several decades away -- but when it hits, the job losses will be substantial for American truck drivers, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. From a report: When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research. Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today's employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has transformed businesses including retailing, filmmaking and data storage. But no one anticipated the bananas. It started with a brainstorm from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon should offer everyone near its headquarters -- not just employees -- healthy, eco-friendly snacks as a public service. After considering oranges, Amazon picked bananas, and opened its first Community Banana Stand in late 2015. However, not everyone is pleased with the ecommerce giant's effort. From a report: Although there is no money in Amazon's community banana stands -- where the company has been offering free fruit to both workers and locals in Seattle since 2015 -- the tech giant's largesse is changing the banana landscape for some nearby businesses. [...] Thus far, the company says it's handed out more than 1.7 million free banana, reports The Wall Street Journal. But while many folks are fans of the free bananas, others say it's changing banana consumption in the community: Some workers say it's harder to find bananas at local grocery stores, while nearby eateries have also stopped selling as many banana as they used to.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A reader sent us an interesting find of a phishing site that is going after Uber credentials. Uber credentials are often stolen and resold to obtain free rides. One method the credentials are stolen is phishing. The latest example is using convincing looking Uber receipt emails. These emails feature a prominent link to uberdisputes.com.

Uberdisputes.com then requests the users Uber credentials to log in. Overall, the site uses the expected Uber layout. But more: The site uses a valid SSL certificate.

Turns out that the site was hosted behind a Cloudflare proxy. Cloudflare does issue free SSL certificates, and just like most certificate authorities, it only requires proof of domain ownership to obtain this service. This does make it more difficult to distinguish a fake site from the real thing.

Now by the time I started to investigate this, the original site was already taken down. But there was still some evidence left to see what happened. First of all, passive DNS databases did record the IP address of the site, which pointed to Cloudflare. Secondly, when searching certificate transparency logs, it was clear that a certificate for this site was issued to Cloudflare. Like for all Cloudflare certificates, the certificate was valid for a long list of hostnames hosted by Cloudflare. Sadly, it looks like whois history sites like Domaintools have no record of the site, so we do not know when it was exactly registered, but likely just before the domain started to get used.

---
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D. , Dean of Research, SANS Technology Institute
STI|Twitter|

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

A reader sent us an interesting find of a phishing site that is going after Uber credentials. Uber credentials are often stolen and resold to obtain free rides. One method the credentials are stolen is phishing. The latest example is using convincing looking Uber receipt emails. These emails feature a prominent link to uberdisputes.com.

Uberdisputes.com then requests the users Uber credentials to log in. Overall, the site uses the expected Uber layout. But more: The site uses a valid SSL certificate.

Turns out that the site was hosted behind a Cloudflare proxy. Cloudflare does issue free SSL certificates, and just like most certificate authorities, it only requires proof of domain ownership to obtain this service. This does make it more difficult to distinguish a fake site from the real thing.

Now by the time I started to investigate this, the original site was already taken down. But there was still some evidence left to see what happened. First of all, passive DNS databases did record the IP address of the site, which pointed to Cloudflare. Secondly, when searching certificate transparency logs, it was clear that a certificate for this site was issued to Cloudflare. Like for all Cloudflare certificates, the certificate was valid for a long list of hostnames hosted by Cloudflare. Sadly, it looks like whois history sites like Domaintools have no record of the site, so we do not know when it was exactly registered, but likely just before the domain started to get used.

---
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D. , Dean of Research, SANS Technology Institute
STI|Twitter|

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Yahya Jammeh stole the money from state coffers before leaving for exile in Equatorial Guinea, justice minister says.

Yahya Jammeh stole the money from state coffers before leaving for exile in Equatorial Guinea, justice minister says.

At its Google I/O conference last week, the Mountain View tech giant again unleashed a torrent of product and service announcements. These, as usual, had more than a little relevance for Apple users.

 

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Reader mirandakatz writes: Typography is having a bit of a moment: Suddenly, tons of people who don't work in design have all sorts of opinions about it, and are taking every opportunity to point out poor font choices and smaller design elements. But they're missing the bigger picture. As Medium designer Ben Hersh writes at Backchannel, typography isn't just catchy visuals: It can also be dangerous. As Hersh writes, 'Typography can silently influence: It can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.' Don't believe him? He's got ample visual examples to prove it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.