"The giant ransomware attack against Kaseya might have been entirely avoidable," writes Engadget: Former staff talking to Bloomberg claim they warned executives of "critical" security flaws in Kaseya's products several times between 2017 and 2020, but that the company didn't truly address them... Employees reportedly complained that Kaseya was using old code, implemented poor encryption and even failed to routinely patch software. The company's Virtual System Administrator, the remote maintenance tool that fell prey to ransomware, was supposedly rife with enough problems that workers wanted the software replaced. One employee claimed he was fired two weeks after sending executives a 40-page briefing on security problems. Others simply left in frustration with a seeming focus on new features and releases instead of fixing basic issues. Kaseya also laid off some employees in 2018 in favor of outsourcing work to Belarus, which some staff considered a security risk given local leaders' partnerships with the Russian government. Kaseya has declined to comment... The company's software was reportedly used to launch ransomware at least twice between 2018 and 2019, and it didn't significantly rethink its security strategy. Engadget adds the Kaseya's software "was reportedly used to launch ransomware at least twice between 2018 and 2019, and it didn't significantly rethink its security strategy."

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From the Washington Post: When we are young, our skills tend to improve with age and experience. But once we are well into adulthood, it may start to feel as if it's all downhill. With every advancing year, we become slightly more forgetful, somewhat slower to respond, a little less energetic. Yet there is at least one important exception: In the emotional realm, older people rule supreme. For the past 20 years, Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, has been monitoring the shifting moods, the sense of satisfaction, the moments of contemplation and the occasional outbursts of anger, sadness and despair of people of all ages — with a special interest in how we handle and experience emotions as we grow older. She and her colleagues have found that, on average, older people have fewer but more satisfying social contacts and report higher emotional well-being.... "I took a class from Laura Carstensen at Stanford, and she was the first to say that there was more development after age 18. She was finding that unlike physical fitness or cognition, where you may see slowing or declines, emotional regulation and experience are often as good, if not better, as we age... Some neuroscientists believe that because we're processing information a little slower with age, that makes us think before we act. We do see a decline with age in overall mass of the brain's frontal lobe, the part that is responsible for emotion regulation, complex reasoning and speed of processing. But researchers also find that older adults often exhibit greater prefrontal cortex activity than younger adults when processing emotions. "A lot of work has found that older people have a positive bias, even without realizing they're doing this. Their default mode is 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Older people more often let go of a situation they experience as negative, especially with friends and family. So it is picking their battles that we think older adults are better at..." Q: Centenarians report overall high levels of emotional well-being. Some may wonder whether it might just be that people who have more positive attitudes, or encounter less adversity, live longer. "It is true that people with satisfying relationships and positive emotions live longer. Researchers have looked at what could explain this, and they find that psychological well-being is related to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and better cardiovascular health." Asked for suggestions, the researcher proposes an inner strategy that "takes you away from focusing on the future and reminds you that the present moment is the most important."

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Slashdot reader tinkers writes: A new study has found that older job seekers on LinkedIn receive fewer job offers than younger ones. But using a profile photo with a younger appearance reduces this effect... The study's authors say these results reconfirm why photographs are usually absent from traditional resumes or CVs. As such, they suggest that removing photos from LinkedIn might make job-seeking fairer. The lack of photos might cause recruiters to focus more on information that is more relevant to the job.

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Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares new from SciTechDaily: For the first time, University of Basel researchers have equipped an ultrathin semiconductor with superconducting contacts. These extremely thin materials with novel electronic and optical properties could pave the way for previously unimagined applications. Combined with superconductors, they are expected to give rise to new quantum phenomena and find use in quantum technology.... With a view to future applications in electronics and quantum technology, researchers are focusing on the development of new components that consist of a single layer (monolayer) of a semiconducting material. Some naturally occurring materials with semiconducting properties feature monolayers of this kind, stacked to form a three-dimensional crystal. In the laboratory, researchers can separate these layers — which are no thicker than a single molecule — and use them to build electronic components. These ultrathin semiconductors promise to deliver unique characteristics that are otherwise very difficult to control, such as the use of electric fields to influence the magnetic moments of the electrons. In addition, complex quantum mechanical phenomena take place in these semiconducting monolayers that may have applications in quantum technology... A team of physicists, led by Dr. Andreas Baumgartner in the research group of Professor Christian Schönenberger at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the Department of Physics of the University of Basel, has now fitted a monolayer of the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide with superconducting contacts for the first time... "In a superconductor, the electrons arrange themselves into pairs, like partners in a dance — with weird and wonderful consequences, such as the flow of the electrical current without a resistance," explains Baumgartner, the project manager of the study. "In the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide, on the other hand, the electrons perform a completely different dance, a strange solo routine that also incorporates their magnetic moments. Now we would like to find out which new and exotic dances the electrons agree upon if we combine these materials." Mehdi Ramezani, lead author of the study, says that "In principle, the vertical contacts we've developed for the semiconductor layers can be applied to a large number of semiconductors."

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CoinDesk reports that "A project is in the works to make the Tor Client more adaptable and easier for third parties to use, with some help from Zcash Open Major Grants (ZOMG)." ZOMG announced on Tuesday that it is awarding the privacy-focused Tor Project a $670,000 grant to continue to develop Arti, a Rust coding language implementation of the Tor Client... Arti should make it simpler for third parties to embed and customize the Tor Client than the current implementation in the C coding language... "Arti is a project to make an improved version of Tor that will be more reliable, more secure, and easier for other software to use," said Nick Mathewson, chief network architect and co-founder of the Tor Project. "We hope that within the next several years, Arti will become the preferred implementation of the Tor protocols...." "Onion routing has just had its 25th anniversary in May, and although Tor is a great set of privacy tools, the C program 'tor' itself (note the lowercase t) is beginning to show its age," Mathewson said. "We've found over the recent years that the complexity of the existing C code, and the fragility of the C language, make it unnecessarily difficult to improve the code while maintaining our security and privacy guarantees.... "Roughly half of Tor's security issues since 2016 would have been impossible in Rust, and many of the other issues would have been much less likely, based on our informal audit," he said... The funding will go toward developer salaries as they develop Arti. Mathewson said the goal with this round of funding is to advance Arti to the point where it is ready for general use, testing and embedding.

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When we're successful with #toolsforthought, you will be able to write beautiful rendering software, and have it work with *every* notetaking tool. Much as an RSS feed isn't for any specific news reader, they can all read every feed. We will do the same for idea processing tools.

The UK businessman realises a lifetime's ambition by riding a rocket plane high into the sky.

Mark Graham who works at archive.org reports that they've fixed a playback issue with their rendering of Scripting News. I wrote about this previously. That's great news. Thanks for persevering!

Adam's house, 1928.

UPDATE: Branson's done it. "In a live broadcast during the vehicle's descent, Branson called the trip, 'an experience of a lifetime,'" reports NBC News: Branson's flight took off Sunday morning at around 10:30 a.m. ET, although the launch time was delayed by around 90 minutes because of overnight weather conditions at Spaceport America... Branson was joined on his flight by pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci and three mission specialists, all of whom are employees of Virgin Galactic: Chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and government affairs vice president Sirisha Bandla. Virgin Galactic is expected to conduct several additional test flights before beginning commercial operations with private customers next year. The company has said the suborbital joyrides will likely cost more than $250,000 each, but final pricing has not yet been announced... "It's taken 17 years to get to this flight, and of course a lot of personal wealth has been poured into it, but it also shows that this takes tenacity," said Greg Autry, a space policy expert at Arizona State University. Earlier in the day, Virgin Galactic's Twitter feed shared a nice clip of the astronauts arriving on the launch site. CBS News streamed their own live coverage at the top of this web page (as well as in their CBSN app), but also reported on the other options: With typical Branson fanfare, Sunday's flight will be broadcast live across Virgin Galactic's social media platforms, featuring appearances by Stephen Colbert and retired Canadian space station astronaut Chris Hadfield, along with the performance of a new song by singer-songwriter Khalid. Even SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to be watching. "Will see you there to wish you the best," he tweeted Saturday. And what did Jeff Bezos have to say before Branson launched his history-making flight? "Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!" Saturday CBS News offered this description of Branson's hopes: Richard Branson, the globe-trotting media mogul and founder of Virgin Galactic, plans to rocket into space Sunday morning on a flight that would make him the first owner of a private space company to launch aboard one of his own spacecraft. If all goes well, he will beat rival Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, who is set to launch on July 20. Branson, two company pilots and three Virgin Galactic crewmates are launching from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on what's expected to be at least an hour-long flight, reaching altitudes a little over 50 miles above the Earth.

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"Death Valley, California, recorded high temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday and 129.4 degrees on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service..." reports NPR. "Experts need to verify the 130-degree records from this year and last year, but if correct they would be the hottest temperatures reliably recorded on Earth." "Interestingly, it could happen again Sunday, and perhaps even Monday as well," adds CNN. But they also report that nearly a tenth of all Americans are now facing a hot weekend: More than 30 million people in the West are under excessive heat alerts. The heat alerts stretch from northern Washington state down to the Arizona/Mexico border. Grand Junction, Colorado, set a new all-time temperature record of 107 on Friday. Las Vegas tied its all-time temperature record of 117 degrees on Saturday. Fresno, California, could also near its all-time temperature record of 115 degrees on Sunday. But none of these quite compares to the staggering 130 in Death Valley — 13 degrees above normal.

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Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the BBC: Giant pandas are no longer classified as endangered but are still vulnerable, Chinese officials say. The classification was downgraded as their number in the wild has reached 1,800. Experts say that the country managed to save its iconic animal through its long-term conservation efforts, including the expansion of habitats. China considers pandas a national treasure, but have also loaned them to other countries as diplomatic tools. The latest classification upgrade "reflects their improved living conditions and China's efforts in keeping their habitats integrated", said Cui Shuhong, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment's Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation at a news conference. The new classification comes years after the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had already removed the animal from its endangered species list and re-labelled it as "vulnerable" in 2016.

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Happening soon (at 7:30 PST/10:30 EDT): ongoing coverage of Richard Branson's first historic flight attempt to the edge of outer space. CBS News will be streaming their own live coverage at the top of this web page (as well as in their CBSN app), but also reports there's other options: With typical Branson fanfare, Sunday's flight will be broadcast live across Virgin Galactic's social media platforms, featuring appearances by Stephen Colbert and retired Canadian space station astronaut Chris Hadfield, along with the performance of a new song by singer-songwriter Khalid. Even SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to be watching. "Will see you there to wish you the best," he tweeted Saturday. And what did Jeff Bezos have to say before Branson launched his history-making flight? "Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!" Yesterday CBS News offered this description of Branson's hopes: Richard Branson, the globe-trotting media mogul and founder of Virgin Galactic, plans to rocket into space Sunday morning on a flight that would make him the first owner of a private space company to launch aboard one of his own spacecraft. If all goes well, he will beat rival Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, who is set to launch on July 20. Branson, two company pilots and three Virgin Galactic crewmates are launching from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on what's expected to be at least an hour-long flight, reaching altitudes a little over 50 miles above the Earth. Joining Branson aboard the VSS Unity spaceplane are company pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, operations engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, Virgin's vice president for government affairs and research operations.

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Happening now: ongoing coverage of Richard Branson's first historic flight attempt to the edge of outer space. CBS News is streaming their own live coverage at the top of this web page (as well as in their CBSN app), but also reports there's other options: With typical Branson fanfare, Sunday's flight will be broadcast live across Virgin Galactic's social media platforms, featuring appearances by Stephen Colbert and retired Canadian space station astronaut Chris Hadfield, along with the performance of a new song by singer-songwriter Khalid. Even SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to be watching. "Will see you there to wish you the best," he tweeted Saturday. And what did Jeff Bezos have to say before Branson launched his history-making flight? "Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!" Yesterday CBS News offered this description of Branson's hopes: Richard Branson, the globe-trotting media mogul and founder of Virgin Galactic, plans to rocket into space Sunday morning on a flight that would make him the first owner of a private space company to launch aboard one of his own spacecraft. If all goes well, he will beat rival Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, who is set to launch on July 20. Branson, two company pilots and three Virgin Galactic crewmates are launching from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on what's expected to be at least an hour-long flight, reaching altitudes a little over 50 miles above the Earth. Joining Branson aboard the VSS Unity spaceplane are company pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, operations engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, Virgin's vice president for government affairs and research operations.

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In two hours, Richard Branson (and five other Virgin Galactic employees) will attempt a historic flight to the edge of outer space. Bloomberg points out it will be followed 9 days later by Jeff Bezos's rocket trip with Blue Origin on July 20. "Yeah, there's a little bit of competition in the who's going first or when things are happening," Virgin President Mike Moses, a former space shuttle manager at NASA, told CBS News. "But it's really not a race. It's not a competition. I know that sounds maybe a little shallow or disingenuous, but it's not. "It's a small community. I know dozens of people who work at Blue Origin, I know dozens and dozens of people at SpaceX, and we all used to work together at NASA. And I wish every single one of them the best.... Because all of us together is what's going to get humans into space and our culture to recognize that space travel is the foundation for the future for everyone..." "This has been a long journey for him," Mike Moses said of Branson. "He's like a kid in a candy store here in training this week. He's bouncing around, he's happy, excited. ... But that excitement is really infectious. And so the whole crew is feeling it." CNN points out that Branson has "narrowly avoided being killed numerous times in his nearly 71 years," including dangerous stunts like bunjee jumping that left him bloody and injured, as well as accidents during long-distance balloon flights while attempting to set records. Here's how Branson describes some of them in his second autobiography, "Finding My Virginity," which includes an appendix called "75 Close Shaves": 1972: Survived a fishing boat sinking on honeymoon with my first wife, Kristen, off Mexico. We decided to jump off the boat and swim for shore, while the others stayed put -- we were the only survivors. 1976: Flew a microlight aircraft by mistake. It was the first time I'd sat in it, I had no idea how to fly it and accidentally took off. I was pulling wires out desperately. I cut the engine and managed to crash-land into a field. My instructor died in an accident the next day... 1986: On my first time skydiving, there was one cord that opened the parachute and one that got rid of it. I pulled the wrong cord by mistake. I was falling through the air before an instructor managed to yank my spare ripcord... 1989: I decided to make an entrance to my wedding with Joan, dangling from a helicopter in an all-white suit. I dropped into the shallow end of the pool by mistake, smashed my legs, and spent the whole wedding hobbling.

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