Bleeping Computer reports: Microsoft has now confirmed signing a malicious driver being distributed within gaming environments. This driver, called "Netfilter," is in fact a rootkit that was observed communicating with Chinese command-and-control IPs. G Data malware analyst Karsten Hahn first took notice of this event last week and was joined by the wider infosec community in tracing and analyzing the malicious drivers bearing the seal of Microsoft... This incident has once again exposed threats to software supply-chain security, except this time it stemmed from a weakness in Microsoft's code-signing process. G Data writes: We forwarded our findings to Microsoft who promptly added malware signatures to Windows Defender and are now conducting an internal investigation. At the time of writing it is still unknown how the driver could pass the signing process. In a Friday blog post, Microsoft said it was contacting other antivirus software vendors "so they can proactively deploy detections," but also emphasized the attack's limited scope: The actor's activity is limited to the gaming sector specifically in China and does not appear to target enterprise environments. We are not attributing this to a nation-state actor at this time. The actor's goal is to use the driver to spoof their geo-location to cheat the system and play from anywhere. The malware enables them to gain an advantage in games and possibly exploit other players by compromising their accounts through common tools like keyloggers. It's important to understand that the techniques used in this attack occur post exploitation, meaning an attacker must either have already gained administrative privileges in order to be able to run the installer to update the registry and install the malicious driver the next time the system boots or convince the user to do it on their behalf. We will be sharing an update on how we are refining our partner access policies, validation and the signing process to further enhance our protections. There are no actions customers should take other than follow security best practices and deploy Antivirus software such as Windows Defender for Endpoint.

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Writing on CNN, an American historian looks at the Supreme Court's recent 8-1 ruling in favor of the free-speech rights of Brandi Levy, who as a 14-year-old cheerleader had posted a photo to Snapchat cursing out her school and its cheerleading program. But the historian also suggests where this ruling came up short: In recent decades the Court has sought to widen public schools' parental and paternalist reach, shrinking the sphere of students' free speech rights... In Levy's case, she was using social media off-campus, outside of school hours, to express a criticism of an extracurricular activity. If her school could control that speech, then there would be very little space left for Levy to express herself. Yet the Court took too modest an approach to students' rights. The Mahanoy decision was much narrower than the lower court's. The Third Circuit had ruled that the school had no right to interfere with off-campus speech, a decision that would have significantly expanded students' rights. In Mahanoy, the Court ruled that schools may still regulate student speech off-campus, depending on the circumstances (though did not lay out a framework for those circumstances, leaving that to future court decisions)... [P]ublic schools are more properly (if less creatively) understood as, well, the schools of democracy, where students are taught and guided and given an opportunity to test out the rights of citizenship. Social media have become an integral part of students' public identity — indeed, of many adults' public identity. Students should be taught about the inevitable permanence of ephemeral speech. A Snapchat snap, an Instagram story, a Twitter fleet, all designed to disappear, can easily be made permanent. Levy thought she was making a relatively private, fleeting statement, only to find it memorialized in Supreme Court jurisprudence. But students should also have more speech protections, be allowed to criticize the institutions in which they spend so much of their time — and be largely free of their school's oversight when they are beyond the schoolhouse gates.

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Remember when ProPublica said they'd obtained the tax returns of some of America's richest people? Now they're reporting that Peter Thiel turned a small retirement account — the kind meant to help middle class investors — "into a $5 billion tax-free piggy bank." Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has publicly condemned "confiscatory taxes." He's been a major funder of one of the most prominent anti-tax political action committees in the country. And he's bankrolled a group that promotes building floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. But Thiel doesn't need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes. He has something just as effective: a Roth individual retirement account. Over the last 20 years, Thiel has quietly turned his Roth IRA — a humdrum retirement vehicle intended to spur Americans to save for their golden years — into a gargantuan tax-exempt piggy bank, confidential Internal Revenue Service data shows. Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall. To put that into perspective, here's how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108... What's more, as long as Thiel waits to withdraw his money until April 2027, when he is six months shy of his 60th birthday, he will never have to pay a penny of tax on those billions.... While most Americans are dutifully paying taxes — chipping in their part to fund the military, highways and safety-net programs — the country's richest citizens are finding ways to sidestep the tax system. One of the most surprising of these techniques involves the Roth IRA, which limits most people to contributing just $6,000 each year... Yet, from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs, like Thiel, made an end run around the rules: Open a Roth with $2,000 or less. Get a sweetheart deal to buy a stake in a startup that has a good chance of one day exploding in value. Pay just fractions of a penny per share, a price low enough to buy huge numbers of shares. Watch as all the gains on that stock — no matter how giant — are shielded from taxes forever, as long as the IRA remains untouched until age 59 and a half. Then use the proceeds, still inside the Roth, to make other investments. Propublica argues Thiel's move alone "deprived the U.S. government of untold millions in tax revenue. Perhaps billions." But he's not the only multi-millionaire they found who's stashing vast sums into untaxed accounts: Ted Weschler, a deputy of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway had $264.4 million at the end of 2018. Hedge fund manager Randall Smith, whose Alden Global Capital has gutted newspapers around the country, had $252.6 million in his. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world and a vocal supporter of higher taxes on the rich: $20.2 million Former Renaissance Technologies hedge fund manager Robert Mercer: $31.5 million

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Slashdot reader thegarbz writes: While a lot of focus has been on the TPM requirements for Windows 11, Microsoft has since updated its documentation to provide a complete list of supported processors. At present the list includes only Intel 8th Generation Core processors or newer, and AMD Ryzen Zen+ processors or newer, effectively limiting Windows 11 to PC less than 4-5 years old. Notably absent from the list is the Intel Core i7-7820HQ, the processor used in Microsoft's current flagship $3500+ Surface Studio 2. This has prompted many threads on Reddit from users angry that their (in some cases very new) Surface PC is failing the Windows 11 upgrade check. The Verge confirms: Windows 11 will only support 8th Gen and newer Intel Core processors, alongside [Intel's 2016-era] Apollo Lake and newer Pentium and Celeron processors. That immediately rules out millions of existing Windows 10 devices from upgrading to Windows 11... Windows 11 will also only support AMD Ryzen 2000 and newer processors, and 2nd Gen or newer [AMD] EPYC chips. You can find the full list of supported processors on Microsoft's site... Originally, Microsoft noted that CPU generation requirements are a "soft floor" limit for the Windows 11 installer, which should have allowed some older CPUs to be able to install Windows 11 with a warning, but hours after we published this story, the company updated that page to explicitly require the list of chips above. Many Windows 10 users have been downloading Microsoft's PC Health App (available here) to see whether Windows 11 works on their systems, only to find it fails the check... This is the first significant shift in Windows hardware requirements since the release of Windows 8 back in 2012, and the CPU changes are understandably catching people by surprise. Microsoft is also requiring a front-facing camera for all Windows 11 devices except desktop PCs from January 2023 onwards. "In order to run Windows 11, devices must meet the hardware specifications," explains Microsoft's official compatibility page for Windows 11. "Devices that do not meet the hardware requirements cannot be upgraded to Windows 11."

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NASA has released a new video explaining the complicated, hour-long process required for the Mars rover to take a selfie (which was actually a composite of 62 separate images stitched together). And meanwhile, CNN reports that its Ingenuity helicopter completed its eighth flight this week, "and even got a software update to fix an annoying issue that impacted some of its previous outings." On its latest outing, Ingenuity flew 525 feet (160 meters) to the south and southeast to a new airfield. This was the copter's third flight of the operations demo phase, in which Ingenuity is proving its usefulness as an aerial scout without interfering with the Perseverance rover's science mission — searching for evidence of ancient life on Mars... Ingenuity continues to do well, and the team is planning for more flights that will push its capabilities. And the helicopter is doing even better now that its troublesome "watchdog" software issue has been fixed. That was deployed before the eighth flight... Ingenuity is also due for a navigation computer software update that will fix the issue that occurred during the chopper's sixth flight. Images captured by the navigation camera, which feed into the helicopter's navigation computer, had timing delays. Those images help Ingenuity to track its location, among other critical factors during flight. When the incorrect times and images were associated, it caused the chopper to wobble in the air. Ingenuity was able to land safely, but the team wants to prevent the issue from happening again so the chopper doesn't spiral out of control. It's also why the helicopter didn't capture any color images during its last two flights.

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I have another idea for the NYT if they like the way this turns out. Let readers pay to move an article outside the paywall permanently. Something like an NFT. For example we collectively give the Times $1 million, to make this article available to everyone for free forever. I wrote this idea up a few years ago, have to find a link.

Screen shot of the user interface for gifting a NYT article.

This NYT article about last night's game between the Bucks and the Hawks is an excellent example. And it's also a demo of the NYT's new sharing technology. The link is a gift, which means I am giving it to you, as a NYT subscriber, I can make 10 articles a month free this way. I love that they had the guts to try this. Trae Young, the devil that beat the Knicks in round 1, got his ass kicked last night. And I love that he's taking it the right way. He has heart. “That’s all on me,” Young said. “I’ve got to be better at taking care of the ball and just do a better job of at least getting us a shot. Nine turnovers. I’ve got to do better, and I will do better next game.”

RadioLab: "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."

Over the years I've had lots of friends, people I otherwise respect, who won't listen to sports stories. But sports is good thing to talk about, for the same reason they dismiss it -- sports is of no consequence. It isn't real. It's a human-created pseudo-reality. It doesn't matter. Basketball, to me, is like watching a great chess tournament, with athletic performance and chance playing a bigger role. If you see any meaning in a random event, you've found god. I loved talking with my uncle about this. His Church of the Non-Functional Probabilities. Like an earthquake during a World Series game in in 1989. "The gods made a deal. the Baseball God said to the Earthquake God: 'we gotta stop this!'" These gods aren't gods of war, or punishment of individuals, they are charged with keeping things mostly in balance. There are rules to baseball and earthquakes. When chance seems to be making a moral statement, that's god. Just a choice of terminology. You could call it anything really. God is the box we put all our imagined reasons for the weirdest coincidences.

Slashdot reader Thelasko quotes the BBC: A project to preserve endangered Tasmanian devils on a small island has backfired after the predators killed seabirds in large numbers, a conservation group says. A small number of devils were shipped to Maria Island east of Tasmania, Australia, in 2012. The move aimed to protect the mammals from a deadly facial cancer that had driven them towards extinction. The devils have recovered since, but the island project has come at a cost... Citing a government survey, BirdLife Tasmania said a population of little penguins that numbered 3,000 breeding pairs in 2012 had disappeared from the island. "Losing 3,000 pairs of penguins from an island that is a national park that should be a refuge for this species basically is a major blow," said Dr Eric Woehler, a researcher for the group.

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Ran Balicer leads an expert Covid-19 advisory panel for the Israeli government. Friday he shared some troubling news with the Wall Street Journal: "The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission dynamics," said Prof. Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer for Israel's largest health-management organization, Clalit. About half of adults infected in the outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated. These so-called breakthrough cases — defined as positive Covid-19 test results received at least two weeks after patients receive their final vaccine dose — are broadly expected as the Pfizer vaccine is highly effective but not 100% foolproof, according to Mr. Balicer. Israeli health officials are optimistic that even if the variant does spread, evidence from countries such as the U.K. indicate the vaccine will prevent a large increase in severe illness and hospitalizations that plagued the country's health system in previous outbreaks. Israel has recorded only five severe cases in the past 10 days, Prof. Balicer said, but whether more will emerge is too early to tell.... Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said the worrisome variant is now present in 85 countries. Several countries appear concerned that fully vaccinated people could still spread the Delta variant. Israel's government just reimposed safety measures (including an indoor-mask requirement), according to the Journal. And Sydney, Australia (the country's largest city, housing more than 5 million people) "will enter a hard two-week lockdown on Saturday night..." reports CNN, "as authorities try to contain a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta coronavirus variant." More than a million people in downtown Sydney and the city's eastern suburbs were already under lockdown due to the outbreak, but health authorities said they needed to expand that after more Covid-19 cases were recorded, with exposure sites increasing beyond the initial areas of concern. Meanwhile, CNBC reports: The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe. "People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves," Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency's Geneva headquarters. "Vaccine alone won't stop community transmission," Simao added. "People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene ... the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you're vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing." CNN reports that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also "warned that there is a small chance a fully vaccinated person could still get infected if they're exposed." "Current data suggest that COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States offer protection against most variants currently spreading in the United States. However, some variants might cause illness in some people even after they are fully vaccinated," CDC spokesperson Jade Fulce told CNN in an email on Friday. While Covid-19 vaccines are effective, Fulce said no vaccine is "100% effective at preventing illness." And with millions of people getting vaccinated against the virus, some who are fully vaccinated "will still get sick if they are exposed," Fulce said. "However, people with breakthrough infections may get less severely ill or have a shorter illness than they would have if they had not been vaccinated."

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The New York Times notes that "record numbers of shareholder votes" are "pressing major, publicly traded petroleum companies to prepare for a zero-carbon world." And then they tell the story of two activist investors who attempted to pack Exxon Mobil's board of directors with a slate of climate-friendly nominees at its annual shareholder's meeting: It had been a bruising year for the industry, with oil prices trading negative last spring and record numbers of shareholder votes pressing major, publicly traded petroleum companies to prepare for a zero-carbon world. Just that morning, as the meeting was starting, the news broke that a Dutch court had declared that Shell must accelerate its emissions-reduction efforts. As Exxon Mobil's meeting was underway, so was Chevron's, and shareholders there voted in favor of a proposal to reduce the emissions generated by the company's product, which would call for a re-evaluation of the core business... [T]he core of [activist investor Charlie Penner's] argument rested on mobilizing shareholders with classic activist tactics: focusing on the company's financials, underscoring its flagging profitability and setting out an argument for how to raise the value of the company's stock by making smarter expenditures. He didn't aim to undercut the core business necessarily; rather than urging Exxon Mobil to give up all oil and gas, he wanted the company to practice what finance people like to call "capital discipline," which basically just means not spending prodigiously. He also reasoned that, given mounting pressure from society and governments to decarbonize the global economy, it would be strategically smarter for Exxon Mobil to be part of an energy transition, rather than letting itself be outstripped by other companies innovating to meet demand for low-carbon power... With plans to increase oil-and-gas production by 25 percent over the next five years, the company seemed out of step with the market. Profitability had already been slipping for a decade. Exxon Mobil earned the largest annual profit in U.S. history in 2008 and nearly eclipsed that record in 2012; last year it lost $22 billion. In part, the loss was due to a historic $19 billion write-down on the value of its assets. That assessment may still be too rosy; a whistle-blower reportedly told the Securities Exchange Commission in January that Exxon Mobil had overvalued its assets by at least $56 billion, in part by pressuring employees to inflate expectations about the drilling timelines in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, which remains the company's U.S. cash cow. (Exxon Mobil called the claims "demonstrably false....") Penner already sensed that Exxon Mobil was an industry outlier, more reluctant than others to recognize that if the world enacted the emissions reductions that its governments had committed to, there would be no viable business for a publicly traded oil company in 30 years... [Exxon Mobile] spent more than $35 million blanketing shareholders with appeals to reject the activists and stick with management... Just days before the proxy votes would be tallied, Exxon Mobil announced that it would add two more yet-unnamed directors, one with "climate experience" and one with experience in the energy industry. But the company's efforts at placating the activists fell short, and a week after the annual meeting, it became clear by how much; the company announced that Andy Karsner, the energy entrepreneur, had also been elected to the board, giving Engine No. 1's candidates a quarter of the seats. The small activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 holds just 0.02 percent of ExxonMobilâ(TM)s stock, points out the Washington Post, "but marshaled commanding support from investment managers, pensions funds and individual shareholders." The Times called their victory "shocking," and dubbed them "the little hedge fund taking down big oil."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Researchers have found evidence that a coronavirus epidemic swept East Asia some 20,000 years ago and was devastating enough to leave an evolutionary imprint on the DNA of people alive today. The new study suggests that an ancient coronavirus plagued the region for many years, researchers say. The finding could have dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it's not brought under control soon through vaccination. "It should make us worry," said David Enard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. "What is going on right now might be going on for generations and generations." Over generations, viruses drive enormous amounts of change in the human genome. A mutation that protects against a viral infection may well mean the difference between life and death, and it will be passed down to offspring. A lifesaving mutation, for example, might allow people to chop apart a virus's proteins. But viruses can evolve, too. Their proteins can change shape to overcome a host's defenses. And those changes might spur the host to evolve even more counteroffensives, leading to more mutations. When a random new mutation happens to provide resistance to a virus, it can swiftly become more common from one generation to the next. And other versions of that gene, in turn, become rarer. So if one version of a gene dominates all others in large groups of people, scientists know that is most likely a signature of rapid evolution in the past. In recent years, Dr. Enard and his colleagues have searched the human genome for these patterns of genetic variation in order to reconstruct the history of an array of viruses. When the pandemic struck, he wondered whether ancient coronaviruses had left a distinctive mark of their own. He and his colleagues compared the DNA of thousands of people across 26 different populations around the world, looking at a combination of genes known to be crucial for coronaviruses but not other kinds of pathogens. In East Asian populations, the scientists found that 42 of these genes had a dominant version. That was a strong signal that people in East Asia had adapted to an ancient coronavirus. But whatever happened in East Asia seemed to have been limited to that region. The scientists then tried to estimate how long ago East Asians had adapted to a coronavirus. They took advantage of the fact that once a dominant version of a gene starts being passed down through the generations, it can gain harmless random mutations. As more time passes, more of those mutations accumulate. Dr. Enard and his colleagues found that the 42 genes all had about the same number of mutations. That meant that they had all rapidly evolved at about the same time. "This is a signal we should absolutely not expect by chance," Dr. Enard said. They estimated that all of those genes evolved their antiviral mutations sometime between 20,000 and 25,000 years ago, most likely over the course of a few centuries. It's a surprising finding, since East Asians at the time were not living in dense communities but instead formed small bands of hunter-gatherers.

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