"Fraudsters redirected email and web traffic destined for several cryptocurrency trading platforms over the past week," reports security researcher Brian Krebs: The attacks were facilitated by scams targeting employees at GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, KrebsOnSecurity has learned... This latest campaign appears to have begun on or around Nov. 13, with an attack on cryptocurrency trading platform liquid.com. "A domain hosting provider 'GoDaddy' that manages one of our core domain names incorrectly transferred control of the account and domain to a malicious actor," Liquid CEO Kayamori said in a blog post. "This gave the actor the ability to change DNS records and in turn, take control of a number of internal email accounts. In due course, the malicious actor was able to partially compromise our infrastructure, and gain access to document storage." In the early morning hours of Nov. 18 Central European Time (CET), cyptocurrency mining service NiceHash disclosed that some of the settings for its domain registration records at GoDaddy were changed without authorization, briefly redirecting email and web traffic for the site. NiceHash froze all customer funds for roughly 24 hours until it was able to verify that its domain settings had been changed back to their original settings. "At this moment in time, it looks like no emails, passwords, or any personal data were accessed, but we do suggest resetting your password and activate 2FA security," the company wrote in a blog post. NiceHash founder Matjaz Skorjanc said the unauthorized changes were made from an Internet address at GoDaddy, and that the attackers tried to use their access to its incoming NiceHash emails to perform password resets on various third-party services, including Slack and Github. But he said GoDaddy was impossible to reach at the time because it was undergoing a widespread system outage in which phone and email systems were unresponsive. "We detected this almost immediately [and] started to mitigate [the] attack," Skorjanc said in an email to this author. "Luckily, we fought them off well and they did not gain access to any important service. Nothing was stolen...." [S]everal other cryptocurrency platforms also may have been targeted by the same group, including Bibox.com, Celcius.network, and Wirex.app. None of these companies responded to requests for comment. In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, GoDaddy acknowledged that "a small number" of customer domain names had been modified after a "limited" number of GoDaddy employees fell for a social engineering scam.

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This year Amazon followed up its cylindrical Echo (and its hockey puck-shaped Echo Dot) with a cloth-wrapped sphere-shaped Echo device. And Fast Company reports that one significant change was to the light pipe, "that glowing ring on top of the Echo that signals it's talking or thinking. "For the fourth generation, that light pipe has been moved to the bottom of the device, to reflect off tables or countertops, and provide a more ambient lighting experience that blends into one's environment — with a catch." Once you hit the privacy button on your Echo, deafening it from hearing your speech, the ring glows a DEFCON 2 red until you unmute it. (Note: Google uses an orange to convey mute for its Assistant, as does Sony's new PS5 controller that has a mic built in.) It's not just overt; it's borderline warlike, adding a Red October glow to your space. Echos have always glowed red when muted. Now your environment does, too. When I mention this design decision, which seems to punish consumers who prefer privacy, Miriam Daniel, vice president of Echo and Alexa devices at Amazon, acknowledges, but brushes off, the criticism. "[Red] makes for a strong [statement]. There's always a tradeoff. Is it too bright? Annoying? Too in your face?" she muses. But she argues that the greater benefit is that "it gives people a sense of comfort knowing the mic isn't working." The article notes that in 2019, Amazon announced it had already sold 100 million Alexa-powered devices.

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"In a historic test, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warhead aimed at a patch of ocean off the Hawaiian Islands," reports Popular Mechanics: Once the missile launched, a network of sensors picked it up. The data was then handed off to the guided missile destroyer USS John Finn, which launched a SM-3 Block IIA interceptor. Just as the ICBM released a [simulated] nuclear warhead, the SM-3 released an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) designed to smash itself into the incoming warhead. Infrared cameras recorded a visible explosion as the EKV took out the simulated nuclear warhead. Most types of ballistic missiles are basically small payload space rockets designed to boost nuclear warheads into low-Earth orbit. Once in space, the warhead coasts through orbit at several thousand miles per hour — the so-called midcourse phase when the warhead is midway between its launch point and target. The warhead then de-orbits into a trajectory that sends it plunging toward its target. Meanwhile, space-based infrared sensors pick up the hot launch plume of the ballistic missile. A launch alert is passed on to ground-based long range radars, which search the skies for the incoming threat. As the missile falls away and the warhead continues on to its target, missile defense radars track the target, plot its trajectory, and alert any "shooters" in the flight path capable of shooting down the warhead. The shooter then launches an interceptor, and the EKV steers itself into the warhead path... The article includes video of the test, and concludes that the ability to shoot down missiles is "terrible news for China" — while adding this "could very well cause Beijing to increase its nuclear arsenal."

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"Education scholars say that math homework as it's currently assigned reinforces class divides in society and needs to change for good," according to Motherboard — citing a new working paper from education scholars: Status-reinforcing processes, or ones that fortify pre-existing divides, are a dime a dozen in education. Standardized testing, creating honors and AP tracks, and grouping students based on perceived ability all serve to disadvantage students who lack the support structures and parental engagement associated with affluence. Looking specifically at math homework, the authors of the new working paper wanted to see if homework was yet another status-reinforcing process. As it turns out, it was, and researchers say that the traditional solutions offered up to fix the homework gap won't work. "Here, teachers knew that students were getting unequal support with homework," said Jessica Calarco, the first author of the paper and an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University. "And yet, because of these standard, taken-for-granted policies that treated homework as students' individual responsibilities, it erased those unequal contexts of support and led teachers to interpret and respond to homework in these status-reinforcing ways...." The teachers interviewed for the paper acknowledged the unequal contexts affecting whether students could complete their math homework fully and correctly, Calarco said. However, that did not stop the same teachers from using homework as a way to measure students' abilities. "The most shocking and troubling part to me was hearing teachers write off students because they didn't get their homework done," Calarco said.... Part of the reason why homework can serve as a status-reinforcing process is that formal school policies and grading schemes treat it as a measure of a student's individual effort and responsibility, when many other factors affect completion, Calarco said.... "I'm not sure I want to completely come out and say that we need to ban homework entirely, but I think we need to really seriously reconsider when and how we assign it."

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FCTRY action figure collection.

On October 23rd GitHub initially complied with a takedown request for the open-source project youtube-dl — and then after 24 days, reinstated it. "If there's a silver lining to the episode, it's that GitHub is implementing new policies to avoid a repeat of a repeat situation moving forward," reports Engadget: First, it says a team of both technical and legal experts will manually evaluate every single section 1201 claim. In instances where there's any ambiguity to a claim, the company says it will err on the side of developers and leave their repository online. If the company's technical and legal teams ultimately find any issues with a project, GitHub will give its owners the chance to address those problems before it takes down their work. Following a takedown, it will continue to give people the chance to recover their data — provided it doesn't include any offending code. GitHub is also establishing a $1 million defense fund to provide legal aid to developers against suspect section 1201 claims, as well as doubling down on its lobbying work to amend the DMCA and other similar copyright laws across the world.

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Here's the deal on when we'll get back to "normal." If you or someone you love gets the virus, probably never. Because no one knows what the lingering effects of the virus are. We know some people are devastated by the symptoms. And we don't know if people who appeared to have been symptomless really were, or people who appear to have recovered really are. This is a new disease. Not much is known about it. It's weird and different. If you roll the dice, the cost of a losing bet is unknown. One Thanksgiving dinner of apparent normalcy isn't worth risking the rest of your life being cripped, disabled or being in pain, or seeing someone you care about similarly affected.

While tonight will see SpaceX's 16th launch of its broadband satellites, that launch will also make history, reports CNET: The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is set to make its seventh flight, which would be a record for rocket recycling for the company. The booster previously flew on four Starlink missions and a pair of larger telecom satellite launches. SpaceX will likely attempt to land the booster on a droneship in the Atlantic shortly after launch and may also try to catch the two halves of the nose cone or fairing with another pair of ships. This all happens just about 10 hours after SpaceX is scheduled to perform another big launch on the other side of the country. On Saturday morning [in just one half hour], another Falcon 9 will blast off from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California carrying the new NASA/European Space Agency Sentinel 6 Michael Freilich satellite designed to monitor global sea level rise and improve weather forecasting... You can watch the whole thing right here. SpaceX has also begun tweeting photos taken last weekend during its Crew Dragon capsule's flight from earth— and its arrival at the International Space Station.

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I'd like more randomness to the NBA rosters. Each year, after the draft: 1. Create a deck of cards with the images of each NBA player. 2. Throw away 2/3 of the deck at random. 3. Arrange the teams around a table. 4. Deal the cards out as if it were a card game.

"I think the overwhelming body of evidence suggests that masks are effective," the lead author of a study recently cited by America's Center for Disease Control told the Washington Post. They were responding to another (very controversial) outlier study whose findings "conflict with those from a number of other studies," according to the New York Times, citing numerous experts. "Critics were quick to note [that] study's limitations, among them that the design depended heavily on participants reporting their own test results and behavior, at a time when both mask-wearing and infection were rare in Denmark." The Washington Post reports: In the large, randomized study published Wednesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers observed more than 6,000 people in Denmark from April to June when mask-wearing was not required in the country. Fewer people in the group that was advised to wear masks contracted the virus — or about a 14 percent reduced risk because of mask-wearing — but the difference was not statistically significant, indicating that the medical masks issued were not particularly effective at preventing the wearers from being infected. Other experts, however, argue that the study was conducted when there was relatively less community spread of the virus and that testing the participants' antibodies cannot reliably measure whether they had the virus during the time of the study. "We think you should wear a face mask at least to protect yourself, but you should also use it to protect others," lead author Henning Bundgaard told The Washington Post. "We consider that the conclusion is we should wear face masks." Bundgaard said even the small risk reduction masks offer "is very important, considering it is a life-threatening disease..." "Because the issue has become so politicized, there's a real risk — and it's already being used in this way — that studies like this will be sort of cherry-picked and presented as conclusive evidence that masks are completely ineffective," Columbia University virologist Angela Rasmussen said... In letters and blog posts, public health experts express concern about the design of the study and warn that policymakers could misinterpret the research to mean that masks are ineffective. "However, the more accurate translation is that this study is uninformative regarding the benefits (or lack thereof) of wearing masks outside of the healthcare setting," one letter states. "As such, we caution decision-makers and the media from interpreting the results of this trial as being anything other than artifacts of weak design." Even the Denmark study itself acknowledged its own limitations, citing "Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others." And it also acknowledges large gaps in adherence to proper mask usage among its participants: "Based on the lowest adherence reported in the mask group during follow-up, 46% of participants wore the mask as recommended, 47% predominantly as recommended, and 7% not as recommended." The Post notes that America's Center for Disease Control reiterated that people do benefit from wearing a mask that can filter out virus-carrying droplets, and last week "cited multiple studies evaluating mechanical evidence that concluded masks can block certain respiratory particles, depending on the material of the mask..."

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I've watched Maddow the last two nights. It's great that she's back. In quarantine because her partner, Susan, got Covid and Maddow was exposed. So she did an incredible job of setting up a studio at home, by herself, yet she was so apologetic for the lack of makeup and the homeyness of the surroundings. I wanted to ask her to stop. We don't tune in her show for the makeup or the studio.

She should take care of herself, because she's as essential to our sanity (speaking mostly for myself) as her partner is to her (as she explained on Thursday night so eloquently). She doesn't know it apparently, but a lot of us rely in her continued presence as a signal that we're still ourselves, no matter what we're asked to accept.

I've been hearing from readers of my nightly email that sounds a lot like what I just said about Maddow. It's kind of a heartbeat. Not so important whether we agree or not, just the continued presence of the email that arrives in the minute after midnight Eastern time, every day, as long as my heart is beating. That means something to people, and that means a lot to me.

My new desk

I've been planning on re-arranging my office for the last few weeks, bought a new office chair, cleared a larger space than I was using previously -- re-purposing the old desk I used for writing, at the one-bedroom Manhattan apartment for most of the 2010's. It has enough room for two monitors. And now I'm using it. It feels weird. Like I'm writing from a foreign country. Maybe as Maddow feels, being separated from her team, trying to pretend her home office was just as powerful as the one in Manhattan.

My new desktop, like hers, is in the country. Funny thing is, I always assumed Maddow was coming, during the pandemic, from her home in the Berkshires. I guess she was still commuting to the city to do her show? These days you just don't know, and that's fine with me.

We have limits

Anyway, after watching last night's Maddow, the overwhelming thought is that we've way gone too far in tolerating the Republicans. It isn't enough to replace them in the White House, there has to be punishment for what they're doing. If Biden won't do it, we must do it.

The humiliation that this country is suffering at Republican hands is unacceptable. Where is American pride? We, the people, elected a new president. It's a fact. Yet a minority party, with no honor, no sense of American pride, not an molecule of humility, stands in the way of our president starting to do our work, the work we chose him to do. Nothing trivial, just saving our fucking lives. For crying out loud.

A dream and a plan

I dream that at some moment the Repubs will snap to their senses and realize the awful thing they're doing to this country that treated them so well and ask what they can do.

For that eventuality I have prepared a plan.

1. An instant impeachment. One article. He tried to subvert the will of the people expressed in an election. Attach a few news articles about his meeting with Michigan legislators to try to bribe them.
2. A two-hour trial in the Senate followed by a unanimous vote to remove him from office with instructions to the Secret Service to arrest him immediately.
3. Mike Pence takes the oath of office.
4. The transition to the Biden Administration begins, with full cooperation from the Pence Administration. The GSA head, Emily Murphy, writes the letter. If she won't, she's fired immediatley, and if her replacement won't write the letter, she will be fired until someone in the GSA chain of command will legally authorize the transition.
5. Mitch McConnell is censured and removed from Congress. The governor of Kentucky appoints someone to finish his term. Don't miss that the Repubs in Congress have been complicit in Trump's attempt to subvert the election. McConnell is getting off easy. He gets to go home and count his money and ponder how lucky he is he wasn't tried and punished for his crimes.
6. Trump is held, no bail, until charges can be brought by the incoming Attorney General. (I love the idea of Merrick Garland being the new AG. It has symmetry.)
7. Pence, we hope, will follow the advice of scientists to the letter during the transition, and stop the growth of the virus now. Have you seen the video of the airport in Phoenix? That must be happening all over the country. The air travel system must be shut down now, as it was in the aftermath of 9/11. It's carrying something much more lethal than terrorists. We need to care for the sick, and stop creating more sickness, and get ready for distribution of the vaccine.
8. If the Trump supporters take to the streets with guns, then they will be arrested and jailed pending trial. We simply can't tolerate people using force to make the majority do what they want.
9. We are the United States of America, no one pushes us around.

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Scientific American: Permafrost covers 24 percent of the Earth's land surface, and the soil constituents vary with local geology. Arctic lands offer unexplored microbial biodiversity and microbial feedbacks, including the release of carbon to the atmosphere. In some locations, hundreds of millions of years' worth of carbon is buried. The layers may still contain ancient frozen microbes, Pleistocene megafauna and even buried smallpox victims. As the permafrost thaws with increasing rapidity, scientists' emerging challenge is to discover and identify the microbes, bacteria and viruses that may be stirring. Some of these microbes are known to scientists. Methanogenic Archaea, for example metabolize soil carbon to release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Other permafrost microbes (methanotrophs) consume methane. The balance between these microbes plays a critical role in determining future climate warming. Others are known but have unpredictable behavior after release... It is clear that the warmer we make the Arctic, the weirder it will get, as temperatures at the surface become more extreme and thawing deepens. With the coalescence of microbes reawakening from the deep and surface conditions unprecedented in human history, it is challenging to assess risks accurately without improved Arctic microbial datasets. We should pay attention to both known unknowns, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and unknown unknowns, including the potential risks from the resurrection of ancient and poorly described viral genomes from Arctic ice by synthetic biologists. For all of these reasons, we must come up with guidelines for future Arctic research. As travel through the region increases, the likelihood of pathogen export and import rises as well. The planetary protection guidelines that space agencies follow to prevent interplanetary contamination can provide a framework for how microbial investigation can safely continue. Biosurveillance measures must be put into place to protect communities in the Arctic and beyond. As the Arctic continues to transform, one thing is clear: as climate change warms this microbial repository during the 21st century, the full range of consequences is yet to be told.

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T-Mobile has added support for the 988 emergency mental health services number more than a year and a half ahead of the Federal Communications Commission's deadline, the company announced on Friday. The Verge reports: T-Mobile customers who dial 988 will be connected to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) and its network of crisis centers across the US. T-Mobile says it is the first carrier in the US to make 988 available to its customers. T-Mobile chief technology officer Abdul Saad said in a statement that making the shorter emergency number available to customers was "a matter of urgency for us, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and the holiday season approaches." People in need of mental health support can still contact the NSPL by calling 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK) or by using online chats.

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Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.