Black squirrels evolved when greys and fox squirrels historically bred, Cambridge researchers find.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Kotaku reports that Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf was streaming a Fortnite game late Sunday when he abruptly left his desk and abandoned the game with the livestream still running. The cause? His father coming to tell him that armed police were at the front door. Fortunately, Bugha returned unharmed to the stream several minutes later. "That was definitely a new one," he can be heard saying on a recording of the stream. "I got swatted." The comparatively quick and peaceful resolution of the issue was in part due to sheer good luck. "I was lucky because the one officer, yeah, he lives in our neighborhood," Bugha explained on the stream. Bugha won $3 million for his first-place finish in the first-ever Fortnite World Cup in July and even appeared on The Tonight Show to talk about his win with host Jimmy Fallon. He is also all of 16 years old, and so a threat against him also involved his parents, whose personal information may have been easy to find. "Swatting" occurs when someone places a hoax emergency call to a police department, hoping to mobilize an emergency response (i.e., a SWAT team) to the victim's home. Bugha was lucky in that the officers who responded to his address were of a mood to ask questions first. Not all swatting victims are so lucky. In 2017, a Kansas man named Andrew Finch was killed during a swatting event even though he was not the intended target. The man behind the hoax call was sentenced to 20 years in prison earlier this year for his role in Finch's death.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CTF, a little-known Microsoft protocol used by all Windows operating system versions since Windows XP, is insecure and can be exploited with ease. From a report: According to Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher with Google's Project Zero elite security team and the one who discovered the buggy protocol, hackers or malware that already have a foothold on a user's computer can use the protocol to take over any app, high-privileged applications, or the entire OS, as a whole. Currently, there are no patches for these bugs, and a quick fix isn't expected, as the vulnerabilities are deeply ingrained in the protocol and its design. What CTF stands is currently unknown. Even Ormandy, a well-known security researcher, wasn't able to find what it means in all of Microsoft documentation. What Ormandy found out was that CTF is part of of the Windows Text Services Framework (TSF), the system that manages the text shown inside Windows and Windows applications. When users start an app, Windows also starts a CTF client for that app. The CTF client receives instructions from a CTF server about the OS system language and the keyboard input methods. It is unclear how Microsoft will patch the CTF problem.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Family says Loujain al-Hathloul has rejected proposal to deny she was tortured in custody in exchange for release.

Sit-ins cause shut down of one of Asia's busiest airports as Hong Kong crisis deepens.

Facebook has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the work. From the report: The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained -- only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They're hearing Facebook users' conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said. Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users' audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. "Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago," the company said Tuesday. The company said the users who were affected chose the option in Facebook's Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. The contractors were checking whether Facebook's artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages, which were anonymized. [...] The social networking giant, which just completed a $5 billion settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after a probe of its privacy practices, has long denied that it collects audio from users to inform ads or help determine what people see in their news feeds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waking up with bedbug bites can be a nightmare. It's also a costly and traumatic problem for Airbnb guests and hosts. CNET: CNET spoke to eight people who dealt with bedbugs in Airbnb rentals within the last three years. All of them said Airbnb, which was founded in 2008, doesn't seem to have a systematic procedure in place for handling outbreaks. And most said that while they eventually received some form of compensation from Airbnb, the company failed to provide adequate support. "This is my first real issue with Airbnb," says Dariele Blain, whose weekend away with friends went awry after she says the critters emerged at her Airbnb rental in Philadelphia. "But it's such an egregious one that I don't know if I'll book with them again." Like other Silicon Valley unicorns -- private companies with a high valuation -- Airbnb is known for "disruption," the idea of changing a service or product with technology to make it better. It's turned the lodging industry on its head by getting regular people to use its platform to rent out rooms or entire homes to travelers. Airbnb's service is now operating in almost every country on Earth and it has over 6 million listings for rent. That's more rooms than the top five hotel chains combined. For each rental, Airbnb typically gets a cut of between 14% and 20%. The company, which may go public this year, is currently valued at $31 billion. Airbnb proponents say these short-term rentals help hosts make ends meet, while also bringing more visitors to cities where people can't afford high-cost hotels. But its business model has also triggered unintended consequences. The company has been blamed for rising rent and reduced rental stock in many cities, including its hometown of San Francisco. And in the case of bedbugs, Airbnb's use of millions of independent hosts means that trying to keep a lid on the pest epidemic can be hard to do, experts say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The populist League leader Matteo Salvini had sought an immediate vote of no confidence in the government.

Viacom and CBS have struck a deal for a merger on Tuesday with an agreement to recombine in the latest entertainment industry mega-deal. From a report: As expected, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish will lead the combined company as CEO, while CBS acting CEO Joe Ianniello will also remain in a top executive position that will have him oversee CBS-branded assets. CBS CFO Christina Spade will serve as CFO of the merged firm. Shari Redstone, vice chair of both companies, will serve as chair of the combined company. The companies had previously agreed on the management setup and the composition of the board of the merged company, with the stock exchange ratio for the deal being the final haggling point that was finally resolved early in the week. The boards of both companies have approved the deal. Consolidation to gain more scale amid competition from streaming video and technology giants has been a key focus for the entertainment sector in recent years. The CBS-Viacom deal agreement comes after Walt Disney's $71.3 billion acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox and AT&T's $85 billion takeover of Time Warner. CBS is also understood to have offered Lionsgate $5 billion to buy its premium TV unit Starz.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration on Tuesday delayed imposing a 10% import tariff on laptops, cell phones, video game consoles and a wide range of other products made in China, in an abrupt pull-back from a hardline stance on Chinese trade. From a report: The U.S. Trade Representative's Office action was published just minutes after China's Ministry of Commerce said Vice Premier Liu He conducted a phone call with U.S. trade officials. The delay in the tariffs that had been scheduled to start next month provides some relief to retailers. Although most stores would have stocked their holiday merchandise before the earlier September deadline, some might have faced the tariffs for fill-in orders late in the holiday shopping season. "We're doing this for the Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers," President Donald Trump told reporters as he prepared to depart from New Jersey for an event in Pittsburgh.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini vows to prevent two vessels from entering Italian ports.

YouTube is experimenting with making video thumbnails much larger on its homepage, according to several screenshots that appeared on Twitter and Reddit this morning. From a report: The new homepage design changes quite a bit about the current setup. Videos are no longer grouped by categories, fewer videos appear in a line for people to scroll through, and, yes, the thumbnails are noticeably larger. It's unclear just how many people have been served the new layout. So far, it's not going over well with users. People are complaining that the bigger thumbnails make the homepage more difficult to scroll through.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This year, 364,808 measles cases have been reported compared with 129,239 cases in the first 7 months of 2018.

This year, 364,808 measles cases have been reported compared with 129,239 cases in the first 7 months of 2018.

This year, 364,808 measles cases have been reported compared with 129,239 cases in the first 7 months of 2018.