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A mysterious hacker sed a cyber-attack to force-open the doors of 2,732 package delivery lockers across Moscow. ZDNet reports: The attack, which took place on Friday afternoon, December 4, targeted the network of PickPoint, a local delivery service that maintains a network of more than 8,000 package lockers across Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russians can order products online and choose to have any of their orders delivered to a PickPoint locker instead of their home address. Once the package arrives, users receive an email or mobile notification, and they can show up and pick up their orders using the PickPoint app. However, the same system that allows users to open lockers and retrieve their packages was attacked on Friday. Using a yet-to-be-identified exploit, a mysterious hacker forced open the doors for a third of PickPoint's lockers, leaving thousands of packages exposed to theft across Moscow. The reason for the attack has yet to be discovered, but in press releases over the weekend, PickPoint said it notified authorities. The Russian company said it is currently working to restore its network, which has been damaged during the attack. It also remains unclear if packages were stolen from lockers. As the company highlighted in a press release on Saturday, this appears to be "the world's first targeted cyberattack against a post-gateway network."

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California is partnering with Apple and Google on an app to let people use their phones to track potential exposure to COVID-19. CNET reports: The digital system uses Bluetooth signals from people's phones to alert them if they've been in contact with someone who's tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The project takes advantage of two of the world's most popular operating systems -- Apple's iOS and Google's Android -- to potentially reach billions of people. To use the features, people can download the app, called CA Notify, starting Thursday. On iPhones, people can turn on the alerts in their phone settings. The companies said they intend to shut down the tools after they are no longer needed to fight the pandemic.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal Communications Commission to provide Starlink broadband to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The satellite provider was one of the biggest winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the results of which were released today. Funding is distributed over 10 years, so SpaceX's haul will amount to a little over $88.5 million per year. Charter Communications, the second-largest US cable company after Comcast, did even better. Charter is set to receive $1.22 billion over 10 years to bring service to 1.06 million homes and businesses in 24 states. FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on the type of broadband service. Cable companies like Charter and other wireline providers generally use the money to expand their networks into new areas that don't already have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could theoretically provide service to all of rural America once it has launched enough satellites, even without FCC funding. One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money to lower prices in the 642,925 funded locations, but the FCC announcement didn't say whether that's what SpaceX will do. Starlink is in beta and costs $99 per month, plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The 35 states where SpaceX won FCC funding are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

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Uber's self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), is being acquired by its start-up competitor Aurora Innovation, the companies announced Monday. From a report: The deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2021, values ATG at approximately $4 billion. The unit was valued at $7.25 billion in Apr. 2019 when Softbank, Denso and Toyota took a stake. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join the company's board, and the ride-sharing giant will invest $400 million into the company. Overall, Uber and ATG investors and employees are expected to own a 40% stake in Aurora, according to a regulatory filing accompanying the deal; Uber alone will hold a 26% stake. The start-up is being valued at $10 billion in the transaction, according to a person familiar with the terms of the deal.

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LG said on Monday it had reorganised its mobile phone division to increase outsourcing of its low to mid-end smartphones, which analysts said represented an attempt to cut costs and compete with Chinese rivals. From a report: LG's mobile communications business, which has reported an operating loss for 22 consecutive quarters, has created a new management title for original design manufacture (ODM), a spokeswoman for the South Korean company said. This refers to the outsourcing of design and manufacture of smartphones, with LG putting its label on the product. It has also abolished some research and production positions and reshuffled others, the spokeswoman said, as part of an effort to focus its in-house R&D and production on premium smartphones, with low and mid-end ones to be produced by ODM.

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Carbon capture can make money for oil giants, and scientists say we need it. Is the industry willing to invest enough? From a report: Elk and pronghorn antelope migrate each fall through southern Wyoming, where the sparsely vegetated landscape slowly gives way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Interrupting this serene vista is a dense web of steel pipes, tanks, and pumps owned by Exxon. The industrial complex provides a clue about what lies beneath: an ancient sea of coral and marine life, petrified by time and pressure into a thick layer of rock. Known as the Madison formation, this geologic structure is miles wide and reaches more than 10 Empire State Buildings below the ground. It contains natural gas, helium, and carbon dioxide. Two of these gases are consistently valuable to Exxon's business. The third is not -- and that's a problem for everyone on the planet. For three decades, the American oil titan has been pumping up these gases, separating them, selling some, and dumping the remainder into the atmosphere. Exxon produces more CO2 than it can sell or use, so the company lets a lot float away -- as much as 300,000 cars' worth of emissions a year. Exxon was set to embark on a project to do the reverse: pump the unwanted gas back down where it came from. The plan was technically and strategically straightforward. By capturing CO2, transporting it to an injection site, and burying it, Exxon would have locked away enough of the planet-warming gas to almost eliminate the climate harm caused by the facility. The captured carbon may not have made much money for Exxon on its own, but a recent change to the U.S. tax code would help overcome that hurdle with lucrative credits for safe storage. The company put the total cost of construction at about $260 million, 1% of its capital budget for 2020. LaBarge, as the gas operation is known, would have become one of the world's foremost examples of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology most climate-modeling experts view as essential to slowing down global warming and, eventually, reversing it. The project would also help Exxon clean up its image as one of the foremost corporate climate polluters. Construction was set to begin over the summer. But in April, Exxon told Wyoming officials that the project would be delayed indefinitely, because of fallout from Covid-19. The company's share price at one point during the pandemic dropped to an 18-year low, as oil prices cratered, throwing many plans across the industry for this year and beyond into turmoil.

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When the heads of state of 14 nations sat down together in late 2018 to discuss the grim condition of the world's oceans, there was no certainty that anything consequential would result. The leaders planned 14 gatherings, but met only twice before the pandemic upended their talks. So when the group announced this week the world's most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health, it signalled rather more than a noteworthy achievement in a complicated time. From a report: The agreement, negotiated via the nuance-free tool of video conferencing, also offered hope of a renewed era of global accord on climate, where issues grounded in science might finally trump political posturing. Overall, the 14 leaders agreed to sustainably manage 100 percent of the oceans under their national jurisdictions by 2025 -- an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa. Additionally, they vowed to set aside 30 percent of the seas as marine protected areas by 2030, in keeping with the United Nations' campaign known as "30 by 30." Both of those large commitments, the leaders say, will help end overfishing and illegal fishing, rebuild declining fish stocks, halt the flow of plastic waste into the seas, and clean up "dead zones" created by runoff from farm waste. "What I find really interesting is that 14 nations spent the last two years talking to each other in an experiment you'd like to see more of in the future," says Nancy Knowlton, a marine scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, who was not involved in the project. "They are working together as a team. Starting with countries on the same page provides a mechanism for actually achieving success." The group of 14 looks nothing like the usual assemblage of international leaders recruited for global initiatives. France, with its vast array of overseas territories that gives it one of the planet's largest ocean footprints, was not invited. Nor were the powerhouse players of Russia, China, or the United States.

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Ever since astronomers reached a consensus in the 1980s that most of the mass in the universe is invisible -- that "dark matter" must glue galaxies together and gravitationally sculpt the cosmos as a whole -- experimentalists have hunted for the nonluminous particles. From a report: They first set out in pursuit of a heavy, sluggish form of dark matter called a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP -- the early favorite candidate for the cosmos's missing matter because it could solve another, unrelated puzzle in particle physics. Over the decades, teams of physicists set up ever larger targets, in the form of huge crystals and multi-ton vats of exotic liquids, hoping to catch the rare jiggle of an atom when a WIMP banged into it. But these detectors have stayed quiet, and physicists are increasingly contemplating a broader spectrum of possibilities. On the heavy end, they say the universe's invisible matter could clump into black holes as heavy as stars. At the other extreme, dark matter could spread out in a fine mist of particles thousands of trillions of trillions of times lighter than electrons. With new hypotheses come new detection methods. Kathryn Zurek, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, said that if current WIMP experiments don't see anything, "then I think there's going to be a substantial part of the field that's going to shift into these new kinds of experiments." Already, the work has begun.

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At the end of a record-setting year of news consumption, Amazon Fire TV said local TV stations in 12 U.S. cities will be added to Amazon's news app, with another 90 on deck for 2021. From a report: The initial dozen stations are in New York, LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. The roster includes CBSN Chicago, ABC7/WABC-TV New York, KIRO7 Seattle, and News 12 New York. In a year marked by Covid-19, a presidential election and racial unrest, overall news consumption has surged 48%, according to Nielsen. Amazon's news app offers free live and on-demand news from ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters, Cheddar and other providers. The ad-supported app is built into Fire TV streaming media players and smart TVs in the U.S. Local broadcast stations have faced major challenges during the streaming boom, as the pay-TV bundle shrinks and viewership and ad revenues continue to decline. Due to a number of technological and industry-relations issues, most large station groups have not put station signals online in a coordinated fashion, though they stream select content on social media or their own websites.

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Internet firms such as Google, Amazon.com and travel websites should explain how they rank search results on their platforms, according to European Union guidelines published Monday that could help businesses to increase their online visibility. From a report: The guidelines "set the standard for algorithmic ranking transparency," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's digital chief, said in a statement on the European Commission website. Online platforms should identify what factors their algorithms use when they decide to prioritize some results and declare when a prominent listing is paid for, according to the guidelines.

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How tall is Mount Everest? Until now, it depended on whom you asked. China said it was 29,017 feet. Nepal said it was a little taller, at 29,028 feet. The countries have closed that 11-foot gap and reached an agreement. From a report: The world's tallest peak this week will get a new, unified official height from the two nations it straddles. After yearslong surveys, China and Nepal will announce the peak's stature Tuesday, Susheel Dangol, the man in charge of Nepal's Everest-measurement project, said Sunday. "The challenge for us was to prove we could do it," he said. Measuring Everest has always been a challenge, taxing the latest surveying technology since the 1800s. And it created a disagreement between the mountain's two homelands. The difference was over rock versus snow. China's official height for Chomolungma -- its Tibetan name for Everest -- was 29,017 feet, from a 2005 survey. China used "rock height," estimating where the peak lay under the snow. Nepal has used a "snow height" of 29,028 feet for the peak it calls Sagarmatha, from a 1954 survey India did. That's where people stand, atop the snow, and the measure is standard practice in most countries. One of the first official measurements of Everest unveiled globally was in 1855 (29,002 feet). Until a 1975 official measurement by China (29,029 feet), the surveys were by foreigners.

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The U.S. air pollution monitoring network has fallen into disrepair after years of budget cuts and neglect, leaving tens of millions of Americans vulnerable to undetected bad air quality from events like wildfires to industrial pollution, according to a report by the investigative arm of Congress. Reuters: The conclusions from a 2-1/2-year audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirm key findings in a Reuters special report published last week that detailed broad failures in the air-pollution monitoring system, whose data guides U.S. regulatory policy and informs the public about health risks. Federal funding for the air monitoring network, which is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and operated and maintained by state and local environmental agencies, has declined by about 20% since 2004, after adjusting for inflation, leaving it in poor condition, according to the GAO report viewed by Reuters. The GAO report said some agencies have reported termite damage and leaky roofs at shelters housing sensitive but aging pollution monitoring equipment, and one state agency resorted to shopping on eBay to find used monitor parts because the manufacturer had stopped making them.

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Copyright lawyer Richard Liebowitz has been repeatedly sanctioned by federal courts. The controversial attorney has a long track record of disregarding court orders. To protect the public from future missteps, the grievance committee of the Southern District of New York has decided to suspend Liebowitz until further order.

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Patterns of missing credit card and loan payments could be an early indicator of dementia years before diagnosis, a new study says. From a report: The study, published Monday in the medical journal JAMA, looked at Medicare patients living alone across the United States and analyzed their credit data and payments over time. Researchers found that patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia were more likely to miss payments up to six years before getting diagnosed, the study said. And, those poor financial actions led them to subprime credit scores two and a half years before diagnosis, as opposed to the patients without dementia. "I think we were a little surprised that it was so common that we could really see it in the data," lead author Lauren Hersch Nicholas told CNN. "Doctors colloquially say that you should look for dementia in the checkbook, but I don't think we had any sense of for how many years in advance these effects could be happening." Nicholas is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors led the study. Alzheimer's dementia affects about 5.8 million Americans who are 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The number of Americans with the disease is projected to hit 13.8 million by 2050, the non-profit said.

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Apple is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel's fastest. From a report: Chip engineers at the Cupertino, California-based technology giant are working on several successors to the M1 custom chip, Apple's first Mac main processor that debuted in November. If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren't yet public. Apple's M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company's next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said. [...] The current M1 chip inherits a mobile-centric design built around four high-performance processing cores to accelerate tasks like video editing and four power-saving cores that can handle less intensive jobs like web browsing. For its next generation chip targeting MacBook Pro and iMac models, Apple is working on designs with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores, the people said. While that component is in development, Apple could choose to first release variations with only eight or 12 of the high-performance cores enabled depending on production, they said. Chipmakers are often forced to offer some models with lower specifications than they originally intended because of problems that emerge during fabrication. For higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.

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Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most highly anticipated video games of the past decade, has already been delayed three times. Employees at CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the game, have reportedly been required to work long hours, including six-day weeks, for more than a year. The practice is called "crunch" in the video game industry, and it is sadly all too common. From a report: It's also something that the leadership at CD Projekt Red said wasn't going to happen to the people making Cyberpunk 2077. Video game developers rarely speak openly with the press about their labor practices, but that's just what CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski did in May 2019. In a conversation with Kotaku, he said that his company thought of itself as more humane than its competitors. While long hours would be permitted for those interested in working them, crunch would not be made "mandatory." He called it a "non-obligatory crunch policy" and said it was something to be proud of. [...] Shortly thereafter, signs began to emerge that the Cyberpunk 2077 project was in trouble. In January 2020, CD Projekt announced the game's first delay. The release date was moved from April to September. The multiplayer component was also pushed into at least 2022. "We need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing," said IwiÅski and head of studio Adam Badowski. That same day, during a public call with investors, CD Projekt revealed that crunch would ultimately be needed to get the game done on time. It would also be mandatory for at least some employees. "Is the development team required to put in crunch hours?" asked an investor, to which CD Projekt CEO Adam KiciÅski answered, "To some degree, yes, to be honest." [...] In September, Bloomberg reiterated what CD Projekt's leaders said to investors months before. A leaked email mandated six-day work weeks. Crunch had become a requirement, and according to anonymous employees, some developers had been working nights and weekends "for more than a year." In other words, delays do not mean relief for workers. Oftentimes, it simply means working at the same exhausting pace for additional weeks or months.

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"NASA's twin Voyager probes keep making discoveries in interstellar space," reports Space.com The Voyager mission has detected a new type of "electron burst," which will provide insights into the mechanisms of flaring stars, a new study reports. The bursts occur when cosmic ray electrons — fast-moving particles from far beyond the solar system — are pushed by shock waves generated by solar eruptions. The electrons then accelerate further along cosmic magnetic field lines to incredible speed, study team members said. "The idea that shock waves accelerate particles is not new," corresponding author Don Gurnett, professor emeritus in physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, said in a statement. "[But] we detected it in a new realm: the interstellar medium, which is much different than in the solar wind, where similar processes have been observed...." Eventually, the magnetic field lines propel the cosmic rays to almost the speed of light — nearly 670 times faster than the solar shock waves that first pushed them. (The shock waves move at roughly 1 million mph, or 1.6 million kph, study team members said.) The article marvels at the fact that the spacecraft are still sending back data regularly from 14 billion miles away, beyond the edge of our solar system, more than 43 years after they left earth. They even detected the original solar shock wave which caused the electron burst "up to a year after the event occurred. "The wait time happened because the spacecraft are so far from the sun."

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Writing for TechRepublic, open source advocate Jack Wallen predicts 2021 will be a year where open source technology dominates the world of big data even more than 2021 (with a big role predicted for SUSE). But he also sees businesses cutting costs by switching to open source solutions — including a big move to Linux on enterprise desktops, thanks to enterprise-ready options now available from System76, Lenovo, and Dell: This will have the added benefit of even more companies jumping into the mix and offering more and more desktops and laptops, all powered by Linux and open source technology. One added bonus for this movement is that System76 will finally gain the recognition they've deserved for so many years. Linux on the desktop would not be where it is today, had it not been for their stalwart support for open source technology. Year after year, System76 has proved that high-quality, business-class systems, powered by Linux, can be produced at a level befitting the enterprise. That success within the realm of business will start trickling down to consumers. As more and more people start using Linux at their place of business, they'll begin seeing the benefits of the open source operating system and desire to adopt it for their home computers. I suspect that by the end of 2021, we'll see Linux desktop market share to finally break the 10% bubble. It may not sound like much, but given how Linux has hovered around 2% and maxed out at 5%, that 10% figure is like a dream come true. That's only the tip of the iceberg. Although Linux will max out at around 10% by the end of the year, it will lead to continued growth over the coming years.

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ZDNet reports: Under the guise of a "cybersecurity exercise," the Kazakhstan government is forcing citizens in its capital of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) to install a digital certificate on their devices if they want to access foreign internet services. Once installed, the certificate would allow the government to intercept all HTTPS traffic made from users' devices via a technique called MitM (Man-in-the-Middle). Starting today, December 6, 2020, Kazakh internet service providers (ISPs) such as Beeline, Tele2, and Kcell are redirecting Nur-Sultan-based users to web pages showing instructions on how to install the government's certificate. Earlier this morning, Nur-Sultan residents also received SMS messages informing them of the new rules. Kazakhstan users have told ZDNet today that they are not able to access sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix without installing the government's root certificate. This is the Kazakh government's third attempt at forcing citizens to install root certificates on their devices after a first attempt in December 2015 and a second attempt in July 2019. Both previous attempts failed after browser makers blacklisted the government's certificates.

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The Verge writes: Maybe you're feeling nostalgic for a classic James Bond film following Sean Connery's death in late October. Or perhaps you're simply feeling a gap given that the next film, No Time to Die, got pushed back to April 2021 or beyond. Either way, you can now binge a sizable selection of the James Bond collection completely for free (with ads) from YouTube, Peacock (with its free subscription), and PlutoTV... You can also find most of the films on Hulu and Amazon Prime this month, though you'd have to pay for those subscriptions, and Netflix has Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and three Pierce Brosnan flicks including GoldenEye — newly relevant now that the famed Arecibo Observatory, which gets destroyed in the film, has also collapsed in real life.

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