Apple Is Going To Make It Harder to Hack iPhones With Zero-Click Attacks

Apple is going to make one of the most powerful types of attacks on iPhones much harder to pull off in an upcoming update of iOS. From a report: The company quietly made a new change in the way it secures the code running in its mobile operating system. The change is in the beta version of the next iOS version,…

Images of shadows cast by jet contrails

Jet contrail shadows may appear to be cast by a low-altitude bright light shining upwards. In fact, this shadow is normally cast on clouds below the jet and its contrail. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/jet-contrail-casts-a-shadow…

Linux Is Now on Mars, Thanks to NASA’s Perseverance Rover

“When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars this week, it also brought the Linux operating system to the Red Planet,” reports PC Magazine: The tidbit was mentioned in an interview NASA software engineer Tim Canham gave to IEEE Spectrum. The helicopter-like drone on board the Perseverance rover uses a Linux-powered software framework the space agency open-sourced a few years ago. “This…

Uber Loses Gig Workers Rights Challenge in UK Supreme Court

Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK’s Supreme Court — with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant’s appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber’s business model (and other gig economy platforms) in…

Silicon Valley-backed Groups Sue Maryland To Kill Country’s First-Ever Online Advertising Tax

Top lobbying groups backed by Amazon, Facebook, Google and other technology giants sued Maryland on Thursday, seeking to scuttle a new state tax on their massive online-advertising revenue — and stop other local governments from following its lead. From a report: The legal challenge contends that Maryland’s first-in-the-nation tax is unfair, unconstitutional and incompatible with federal laws that prohibit state policymakers…

What is the Milky Way?

When someone says “Milky Way,” do you think of the starry pathway across our sky, or of the great pinwheel-shaped galaxy in space? Both are correct! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-the-milky-way-galaxy…

An Inside Look at Cuba’s Constant Struggle for Clean Water

A significant portion of Cuba’s available drinking water is lost through its leaky and antiquated pipelines — more than 50 percent, by some estimates. From a report: In recent years, infrastructure problems have been compounded by droughts and rising temperatures. For much of the population, running water is available only sporadically — in some cases, for one or two hours a…

France Says Russian State Hackers Targeted IT Monitoring Firm Centreon’s Servers in Years-Long Campaign

France’s cyber-security agency said that a group of Russian military hackers, known as the Sandworm group, have been behind a three-years-long operation during which they breached the internal networks of several French entities running the Centreon IT monitoring software. From a report: The attacks were detailed in a technical report released today by Agence Nationale de la Securite des Systemes d’Information,…

‘We Need to Inflict Pain’: Mark Zuckerberg’s War on Apple

When Tim Cook told an interviewer that Apple wouldn’t get in a Facebook-style data-collection controversy, “Mr. Zuckerberg shot back that Mr. Cook’s comments were ‘extremely glib’ and ‘not at all aligned with the truth,'” reports the Wall Street Journal. But “In private, Mr. Zuckerberg was even harsher. ‘We need to inflict pain,’ he told his team, for treating the company so…