Month: October 2022

Enlarge / Is knowing how to build a molecule like this out of simple materials really needed for someone to practice medicine? (credit: Theasis)

Over the weekend, news broke that a well-regarded professor who taught chemistry at New York University had been fired after students complained about their grades, his teaching, and the support they received during the pandemic. The story has garnered wide attention because it seems to have a little something for everyone—students taking over the education system, the chaos of our not-quite-post-COVID world, and more.

Largely left out of the discussion is the role of the subject matter of the course at issue: organic chemistry, which has an almost mythical status as one of the most difficult classes in undergraduate science education. For those willing to wade past all the other issues raised, the events raise awkward questions about what we expect from science education and how best to deliver it.

But to get to those questions, we'll first have to wade through all the additional issues raised by the firing.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Over the past 15 years, Microsoft has made huge progress fortifying the Windows kernel, the core of the OS that hackers must control to successfully take control of a computer. A cornerstone of that progress was the enactment of strict new restrictions on the loading of system drivers that could run in kernel mode. These drivers are crucial for computers to work with printers and other peripherals, but they're also a convenient inroad that hackers can take to allow their malware to gain unfettered access to the most sensitive parts of Windows. With the advent of Windows Vista, all such drivers could only be loaded after they'd been approved in advance by Microsoft and then digitally signed to verify they were safe.

Last week, researchers from security firm ESET revealed that about a year ago, Lazarus, a hacking group backed by the North Korean government, exploited a mile-wide loophole last year that existed in Microsoft's driver signature enforcement (DSE) from the start. The malicious documents Lazarus was able to trick targets into opening were able to gain administrative control of the target's computer, but Windows' modern kernel protections presented a formidable obstacle for Lazarus to achieve its objective of storming the kernel.

Path of least resistance

So Lazarus chose one of the oldest moves in the Windows exploitation playbook—a technique known as BYOVD, short for bring your own vulnerable driver. Instead of finding and cultivating some exotic zero-day to pierce Windows kernel protections, Lazarus members simply used the admin access they already had to install a driver that had been digitally signed by Dell prior to the discovery last year of a critical vulnerability that could be exploited to gain kernel privileges.

I'm a sucker for what might be termed "anti-holiday" films, whether it's action classics like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon or foreign fare like Dial Code: Santa Claus, Elves, and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. We're getting a new entry in this growing niche genre: Violent Night, in which David Harbour's Santa Claus must save a young girl and her wealthy family from a band of invading mercenaries. Judging by the trailer, it's like The Ref meets Mel Gibson's Fat Man, with a side of John Wick for good measure.

There's not yet much public information about the film. Universal acquired the screenplay in March 2020, and Tommy Wirkola signed on to direct. The Norwegian-born Wirkola is best known for 2013's English language film Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, but he's also behind the 2009 Norwegian horror comedy Dead Snow (and its 2014 sequel) about students battling zombie Nazis during Easter vacation in the mountains. So he's well-versed in comic-horror-infused mythology.

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  Santa Claus (David Harbour) samples a Christmas cookie during his holiday rounds. [credit: YouTube/Universal Pictures ]

Per the official description:

Still from "A teddy bear washing dishes," as generated by Google Imagen Video. (credit: Google)

Today, Google announced the development of Imagen Video, a text-to-video AI mode capable of producing 1280×768 videos at 24 frames per second from a written prompt. Currently, it's in a research phase, but its appearance five months after Google Imagen points to the rapid development of video synthesis models.

Only six months after the launch of OpenAI's DALLE-2 text-to-image generator, progress in the field of AI diffusion models has been heating up rapidly. Google's Imagen Video announcement comes less than a week after Meta unveiled its text-to-video AI tool, Make-A-Video.

According to Google's research paper, Imagen Video includes several notable stylistic abilities, such as generating videos based on the work of famous painters (the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, for example), generating 3D rotating objects while preserving object structure, and rendering text in a variety of animation styles. Google is hopeful that general-purpose video synthesis models can "significantly decrease the difficulty of high-quality content generation."

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

When seven of the biggest banks in America saw that their customers liked using apps to send instant peer-to-peer payments, they rolled out Zelle through a jointly owned company called Early Warning Services in 2017 and quickly began processing billions in payments annually. By 2021, Zelle was processing nearly twice the number of payments as Venmo, but as the volume of Zelle payments increased, so did rumors about increased fraud. Scammed Zelle users complained to the New York Times that Zelle did not always reimburse customers who reported stolen money.

Suspicious after mounting anecdotal reports, one of the toughest policymakers on banks, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), launched an investigation. She demanded data from all seven of the big banks: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bank, PNC, Capital One, Bank of America, and Truist. Only four banks complied. However, Warren’s report released this week shows that even half the data she sought was enough to show that “fraud is growing” on Zelle and that “the banks are not refunding the vast majority of defrauded consumers, breaking their promises to their customers and potentially violating federal law.”

According to Warren’s analysis of data shared by US Bank, PNC, Bank of America, and Truist, these four banks alone are “on pace to receive scam and fraud claims in excess of $255 million in 2022,” a dramatic spike compared to $90 million in 2020.

Enlarge (credit: Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach)

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is a little unusual in that it recognizes three things: a conceptual approach to building complicated molecules, a chemical reaction that exemplifies that concept, and an application of the concept to biological systems. As a result, it's a three-person award, with K. Barry Sharpless winning for the concept (his second Nobel in chemistry), Morten Meldal for the reaction, and Carolyn Bertozzi for the implementation.

The concept is called "click chemistry," and it was a bit of a rebellion against the way chemistry often progresses. Much of the chemistry literature is filled with papers that describe specialized reactions that handle very specific circumstances—adding a methyl group to a complex chemical that already has internal nitrogens and an alcohol group, for example. The focus of click chemistry is on finding a small number of reactions that work consistently and with high efficiency, allowing complex molecules to be built by "clicking" new modules into place.

A few good reactions

The concept is perhaps best illustrated by the organic chemistry textbook I used as an undergrad (Streitwieser and Heathcock, 3rd edition, for the curious). Most chapters focused on specific types of reactions, like linking two hydrocarbons by a nitrogen. Pages were filled with examples, each requiring a distinct combination of catalysts, solvents, and temperatures—and only working in specific circumstances, such as when one of the two hydrocarbons has an oxygen present as an alcohol. An entirely different set of conditions would be needed if the oxygen was present as a ketone. Change the oxygen to a sulfur, and the conditions change yet again.