Month: September 2021

Enlarge (credit: Tom Roberts)

Hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have obtained gigabytes of data from Epik, which provides domain name, hosting, and DNS services for a variety of clients. These include the Texas GOP, Gab, Parler, and 8chan, among other right-wing sites. The stolen data has been released as a torrent. The hacktivist collective says that the data set, which is over 180GB in size, contains a "decade's worth of data from the company."

Anonymous says the data set is "all that's needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet that has eluded researchers, activists, and, well, just about everybody." If this information is correct, Epik's customers' data and identities could now fall into the hands of activists, researchers, and just about anyone curious enough to take a peek.

Decades of Epik stuff, now in a torrent near you

Epik is a domain registrar and web services provider known to serve right-wing clients, some of which have been turned down by more mainstream IT providers due to the objectionable and sometimes illicit content hosted by the clients.

Enlarge / Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes collects her belongings after going through security at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021, in San Jose, California. (credit: Ethan Swope | Getty Images)

Around the time that Theranos was losing nearly $2 million per week, investors in the blood-testing startup were being told that the company would soon be bringing in almost $1 billion per year.

It’s not uncommon for startups to lose money in their early years, and it’s not entirely unusual for the fastest burn rate to happen right before things turn around. Instead, Theranos continued to produce mounting losses. But that’s not what the company was telling investors, according to new documents shared during the jury trial of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes.

In court yesterday, jurors heard testimony from the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Danise Yam, who also goes by So Han Spivey. Yam said that Theranos lost $16.2 million in 2010, $27.2 million in 2011, $57 million in 2012, and $92 million in 2013. In 2013, things had “started to get a bit tight,” Yam said. There were weeks where the company was burning through around $2 million per week, and there wasn’t any revenue to help ameliorate the losses. In 2012 and 2013, Yam didn’t even bother adding a line for revenue—there was none.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Microsoft has been working to make passwordless sign-in for Windows and Microsoft accounts a reality for years now, and today those efforts come to fruition: The Verge reports that starting today, users can completely remove their passwords from their Microsoft accounts and opt to rely on Microsoft Authenticator or some other form of verification to sign in on new devices. Microsoft added passwordless login support for work and school accounts back in March, but this is the first time the feature has been offered for regular, old individual Microsoft accounts.

Passwordless accounts improve security by taking passwords out of the equation entirely, making it impossible to get any kind of access to your full account information without access to whatever you use to verify your identity for two-factor authentication. Even if you protect your Microsoft account with two-factor authentication, an attacker who knows your Microsoft account password could still try that password on other sites to see if you've reused it anywhere. And some forms of two-factor authentication, particularly SMS-based 2FA, have security problems of their own.

The warning message you'll see when you turn on the passwordless account feature. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft has offered passwordless authentication for Windows 10 and Microsoft accounts for a while now, and if you're already taking advantage of those features, nothing about how you sign in to your devices has to change. You just need to visit the Microsoft Account site, go to the Security tab, select "Advanced security options," and turn on the passwordless account feature to remove your password entirely.

Enlarge / Back in 2017, the first season of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why sparked controversy about suicide contagion. Four years later, a new UCLA study offers guidance for Hollywood on how to best handle such topics going forward. (credit: Netflix)

When 13 Reasons Why debuted on Netflix on March 31, 2017, it was initially met with mostly rave reviews from critics and viewers alike. Viewers appreciated the show's frank and sensitive handling of such complex topics as suicide, bullying, rape, and depression. Within weeks, however, mental health professionals began voicing strong objections to the YA-targeted show's treatment of suicide in particular—these professionals believed the depiction could trigger suicidal thoughts or actions in vulnerable teens.

It's well known that high-profile suicides can sometimes influence copycats, but the issue is less clear when it comes to fictional stories. Throughout the last four years, multiple, often contradictory studies on that very topic have since appeared. Some of the studies show negative impacts, while others show beneficial effects in young people who watched 13 Reasons Why.

The series aired its fourth and final season last year, but 13 Reasons Why continues to inspire research on the potential impact (positive or negative) of fictional stories on teen mental health. A new study available today from researchers affiliated with UCLA's Center for Scholars and Storytellers focuses specifically on the show's third season, and it shows that series like 13 Reasons Why can have a positive impact on teen mental health as long as the issues are depicted accurately and with empathy.

Enlarge / The Crew Dragon spacecraft separates from the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. (credit: SpaceX)

8:30pm ET Wednesday update: As the Sun set over the Florida launch site on Wednesday evening, a Falcon 9 rocket soared into the darkening sky carrying four private citizens into space. About 12 minutes later the spacecraft separated from its second stage, and the Crew Dragon spacecraft began the first of nearly four dozen orbits around planet Earth. The Inspiration4 mission had a flawless start.

So opened the new age of space commercialization, with SpaceX now capable of flying orbital commercial human spaceflights, and Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin selling commercial suborbital flights. Before this summer, more than 95 percent of all people who went to space were professional astronauts. After this summer, 95 percent of all people who go to space will likely be private citizens.

Original post: There has been a minor kerfuffle in the space community over the last few weeks about what to call the Inspiration4 mission that is set to launch this evening from Florida on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.