The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published today technical guidance on properly securing VPN servers used by organizations to allow employees remote access to internal networks. From a report: The NSA said it put together the nine-page guide [PDF] after "multiple nation-state advanced persistent threat (APT) actors" weaponized vulnerabilities in common VPN servers as a way to breach organizations. "Exploitation of these CVEs [vulnerabilities] can enable a malicious actor to steal credentials, remotely execute code, weaken encrypted traffic's cryptography, hijack encrypted traffic sessions, and read sensitive data from the device," the NSA said today in a press release announcing the guide's publication. "If successful, these effects usually lead to further malicious access and could result in a large-scale compromise to the corporate network," the agency added.

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GW Ori is a star system 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. It is surrounded by a huge disk of dust and gas, a common feature of young star systems that are forming planets. But fascinatingly, it is a system with not one star, but three. From a report: As if that were not intriguing enough, GW Ori's disk is split in two, almost like Saturn's rings if they had a massive gap in between. And to make it even more bizarre, the outer ring is tilted at about 38 degrees. Scientists have been trying to explain what is going on there. Some hypothesized that the gap in the disk could be the result of one or more planets forming in the system. If so, this would be the first known planet that orbits three stars at once, also known as a circumtriple planet. Now the GW Ori system has been modeled in greater detail, and researchers say a planet -- a gassy world as massive as Jupiter -- is the best explanation for the gap in the dust cloud. Although the planet itself cannot be seen, astronomers may be witnessing it carve out its orbit in its first million years of its existence. A paper on the finding was published in September in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The scientists say it disproves an alternative explanation -- that the gravitational torque of the stars cleared the space in the disk. Their paper suggests there is not enough turbulence in the disk, known as its viscosity, for this explanation to suffice The finding also highlights how much more there is to learn about the unexpected ways in which planets can form.

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Amazon has been successful in nearly every industry it has entered, from books and grocery shopping to cloud computing and movie streaming. So it has been puzzling to many that success in the lucrative video game business has eluded the tech giant. On Tuesday, Amazon gave producing its own video games another try. From a report: After more than a year of delays, it released New World, an online multiplayer game in which players join factions, fight monsters, fight one another and colonize a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The $40 computer game, which received generally positive reviews as players tested early versions over the past few months, arrives at a crucial time for the tech giant's disappointing gaming efforts. After spending by some estimates hundreds of millions of dollars, neither of the other two big-budget games that Amazon announced it was producing in 2016 alongside New World exists today. Some of its top gaming hires have departed over the years without putting out any notable titles. Last year, the company also removed another game from storefronts after a poor reception. New World "has to be our breakthrough game -- there's no doubt about it," said Christoph Hartmann, the vice president of Amazon Games. "Just for morale of people, at some point you want to see some success." Amazon's biggest accomplishment in the gaming industry so far has been the acquisition of Twitch, the livestreaming video site, which the company bought in 2014 for about $1 billion. Amazon has also forged ahead with a new gaming subscription service, Luna, and recently announced a new development studio in Montreal.

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Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows. From a report: The analysis, which combines the results of multiple scientific studies, is the first to calculate the total global burden of outdoor and indoor air pollution combined. Indoor pollution, mostly from cooking stoves burning solid fuel such as coal or wood, made up almost two-thirds of the total pollution burden on pregnancies in 2019, according to the latest findings. This is especially true in developing areas, such as in some parts of south-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. "At an individual level, indoor air pollution exposure appears to carry a much higher burden compared to outdoor levels," said Rakesh Ghosh, an epidemiologist at University of California, San Francisco and lead researcher on the paper, published in the journal Plos Medicine. "So, minimising household pollution exposure, to the extent possible, should be part of the message during prenatal care, especially where household pollution is prevalent." Air pollution is usually measured according to exposure to particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns: once inhaled, the minuscule size of these particles allows them to be absorbed deep into the bloodstream, potentially causing far-reaching health problems.

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To slow the speed at which high temperatures and warm waters bleach the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists are spraying droplets of ocean water into the sky to form clouds to protect the environmental treasure. From a report: Researchers working on the so-called Cloud Brightening project said they use a turbine to spray microscopic sea particles to thicken existing clouds and reduce sunlight on the world's largest coral reef ecosystem located off Australia's northeast coast. The water droplets evaporate leaving only tiny salt crystals which float up into the atmosphere allowing water vapour to condense around them, forming clouds, said Daniel Harrison, a senior lecturer at Southern Cross University, who runs the project. "If we do it over an extended period of time for a few weeks to a couple of months when the corals are experiencing a marine heatwave we can actually start to lower the water temperature over the Reef," said Harrison. The project had its second trial in March, the end of the Southern Hemisphere summer when the Reef off Australia's northeast is at its hottest, gathering valuable data on the atmosphere when corals are at most risk of bleaching. A combination of light and warm water causes coral bleaching. By cutting light over the reef by 6% in summer, "bleaching stress" would be cut by 50% to 60% on the undersea ecosystem, Harrison said.

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Amazon announced its long-rumored $999 Astro home robot on Tuesday. CNBC: I had a chance to check it out in a demo with Amazon last week and wanted to share a few thoughts on what Astro is, what it can and can't do and why Amazon decided to build a home robot. Astro seems like a strange gadget for Amazon to launch. The company is best known as an online store. And most of its operating profit comes from its AWS cloud business. Notably, Astro is a "Day 1 Edition" product, which means it won't be sold to everyone at first. [...] Astro is about the size of a small dog. It roams around your house on three wheels, including two big ones that prevent it from getting stuck and a smaller one for rotating. It has a camera that rises up on a 42-inch arm that can keep an eye on your home as Astro patrols while you're away. It can follow you around and play music or display TV shows on its 10-inch touchscreen. It can recognize faces (if you want it to) so you can load up two sodas in the back storage compartment and tell Astro to go to someone in the living room. Astro is like a combo of lots of Amazon's other gadgets placed on wheels. The cameras can be used for home security or for video chat, sort of combining Amazon's Ring cameras with its Echo Show smart screens. The cameras are also used to create a map of your house when you set Astro up for the first time. You can talk to Astro much like you'd talk to an Echo or Alexa (you can change the name to Alexa if you want) to get sports scores or the weather. And you can play movies or TV shows like you would on an Amazon tablet or Fire TV.

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A computerized neural network has spoken: central banker Elvira Nabiullina needs to use simpler language if she wants more Russians to believe she can really reduce inflation. From a report: A study conducted by a pair of the Bank of Russia's own researchers came to the perhaps less-than-shocking conclusion that figuring out central bank statements takes a degree in economics. "All the main communication on monetary policy is accessible to only a professional audience right now," Alina Evstigneeva and Mark Sidorovsky, researchers at the bank's monetary-policy department wrote in an article published on a bank-sponsored website. "The potential for qualitative improvement in the language of communication is vast." The communications breakdown has important real-world implications, they argued. Ordinary Russians continue to be deeply skeptical of the central bank's commitment to keep inflation to its 4% target, with polls showing most expect price growth over the next year to be about triple that. That doubt helps keep inflation high, according to the central bank. Market professionals, who presumably have the economics education needed to understand the bank's words, are much more likely to expect inflation to be closer to target.

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Microsoft is opening up its own app store in Windows even further today, inviting third-party app stores to integrate into the Microsoft Store. It's a significant change that will see both Amazon and Epic Games Store discoverable in the Microsoft Store in the coming months. From a report: "Just like any other app, third-party storefront apps will have a product detail page -- which can be found via search or by browsing -- so that users can easily find and install it with the same confidence as any other app in the Microsoft Store on Windows," explains Giorgio Sardo, general manager of the Microsoft Store. "Today, we are sharing that Amazon and Epic Games will bring their storefront apps to the Microsoft Store over the next few months, and we look forward to welcoming other stores as well in the future." The news comes months after Microsoft announced some major changes to the Microsoft Store. Not only is the store being overhauled for Windows 11 and eventually Windows 10, but Microsoft will also let developers keep 100 percent of the revenue from apps if they use alternative payment platforms. The only exception is that this doesn't apply to games.

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Greta Thunberg, the climate activist, uses a speech to mock world leaders, including UK PM Boris Johnson.

What made me think of getting a landline? All of a sudden the phone app on my Pixel 4a refuses to connect over wifi, a requirement since there's no cell service here. Not having a reliable way to make a phone call, that's not okay. And the way I used to make calls on my computer with Google Hangouts, that doesn't work anymore either. They said use Google Chat now. OK, but where in Google Chat, on my desktop (which they have) can I make a phone call? Every one of these companies is missing part of the plan for how to build reliable service around the still relatively new (I guess) open network. They all still want to completely control you and soak you for services you don't want, and change things around so you never get to feel confident in using their software.

Twitter appears to be down, at least through the web.

1Password is launching a new feature to let users create unique email aliases for logins, much like Apple's iCloud Plus Hide My Email function. From a report: 1Password is partnering with Fastmail to bring its masked email feature to the password manager, giving all users the option of hiding their email addresses from apps and services. "Your email address is your online identity," explains Bron Gondwana, CEO of Fastmail. "If your credentials are compromised in a data breach, having a randomly generated email address adds a second line of defense because it can't be associated with your primary email address, and therefore, your identity." This new masked email feature will be ideal for registering accounts for temporary purposes, like a free Wi-Fi network. But they can also be used to hide your personal email address from any app or service as the aliases donâ(TM)t expire unless a 1Password user manually deletes them.

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I was thinking of adding a landline feature to my cable service. $12.99 a month sounds okay. But then I saw the fine print. Oy. I remember how hard it was to get rid of a feature last time around. I swear if only they'd stop scamming. I'm paying $8.99 a month to rent an Apple TV, even though I already had an Apple TV. Them's the rules they said. Can't get TV without paying the set top box tax Oy oy. An Apple TV costs $169 on Amazon.

Hmmmmmm writes: A growing power supply crunch in China is triggering blackouts for households and forcing factories to cut production, threatening to slow the country's vast economy and place even more strain on global supply chains. Companies in the country's industrial heartlands have been told to limit their energy consumption in order to reduce demand for power, state media has reported. And supply has been cut to some homes, reportedly even trapping people in elevators. An "unexpected and unprecedented" power cut hit three northeastern provinces on Monday, according to the Global Times, a state-run tabloid. The newspaper reported Tuesday that power rationing in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces has "resulted in major disruptions to the daily lives of people and business operations." Power shortages have also hit the southern province of Guangdong, a major industrial and shipping hub. Local officials said Monday that many firms are trying to reduce demand by working two or three days per week. China's State Grid Corporation said Monday that it would "go all out to fight the tough battle of power supply," making every effort to secure residential consumption. China was hit by a similar power crunch in June, but the situation is getting worse because of a perfect storm. Its industries are facing huge pressure from soaring energy prices, and from Beijing to tackle carbon emissions. The world's biggest polluter is trying to meet a pledge that its carbon emissions will peak before 2030. That requires its provinces to use less fossil fuel for each unit of economic output, for example by burning less coal to generate power. At the same time, demand for Chinese-made goods has surged as the global economy emerges from the pandemic. The result: not enough power to go round. The shock is even prompting economists to cut growth expectations this year for the world's second largest economy.

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The Wall Street Journal: More than 130 federal judges have violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which they or their family owned stock. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that judges have improperly failed to disqualify themselves from 685 court cases around the nation since 2010. The jurists were appointed by nearly every president from Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump. About two-thirds of federal district judges disclosed holdings of individual stocks, and nearly one of every five who did heard at least one case involving those stocks. Alerted to the violations by the Journal, 56 of the judges have directed court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges might be assigned, potentially upending rulings. When judges participated in such cases, about two-thirds of their rulings on motions that were contested came down in favor of their or their family's financial interests.

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