Month: February 2023

Enlarge (credit: Celestino Arce/Getty Images)

Amidst the tragic toll of Russia's brutal and catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, the effects of the Kremlin's long-running campaign of destructive cyberattacks against its neighbor have often—rightfully—been treated as an afterthought. But after a year of war, it's becoming clear that the cyberwar Ukraine has endured for the past year represents, by some measures, the most active digital conflict in history. Nowhere on the planet has ever been targeted with more specimens of data-destroying code in a single year.

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion, cybersecurity researchers at Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET, network security firm Fortinet, and Google-owned incident-response firm Mandiant have all independently found that in 2022, Ukraine saw far more specimens of “wiper” malware than in any previous year of Russia's long-running cyberwar targeting Ukraine—or, for that matter, any other year, anywhere. That doesn't necessarily mean Ukraine has been harder hit by Russian cyberattacks than in past years; in 2017 Russia's military intelligence hackers known as Sandworm released the massively destructive NotPetya worm. But the growing volume of destructive code hints at a new kind of cyberwar that has accompanied Russia's physical invasion of Ukraine, with a pace and diversity of cyberattacks that's unprecedented.

Enlarge / Containers of plant-based milk. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)

Back in the simpler times of 2018—before the US Food and Drug Administration had to grapple with emergency authorizations in a deadly pandemic, before it scrambled to address a scandalous baby formula shortage, and before it largely bungled oversight of vaping products—the regulator dove into a sour struggle over dairy labeling.

At the time, the dairy industry was curdling as it watched the cold aisles of grocery stores fill with plant-based imposters—soy "milk" and almond "milk," rice and coconut "milks." In 2010, a fifth of US households were buying such non-moo juices. But by 2016, it was up to a third of households, with the defrauding dairy products slurping up $1.5 billion in annual sales. (And the trend went on; in 2020, sales hit $2.4 billion.)

With the issue simmering in 2018, the FDA stepped in to extract some truths and skim the fat. In a particularly clarifying statement, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb noted that the FDA, in fact, has a definition for the "standard of identity" of milk—and it appears to exclude liquids squeezed from plants.

Enlarge / The new E-Class' dashboard can be ordered with the Superscreen. Smaller screens will also be available. (credit: Mercedes-Benz)

Software is hard. Automakers have been delving into zeros and ones with various levels of success for decades. For every (excellent) Mercedes MBUX Hyperscreen, there’s a Volkswagen ICAS infotainment system that even the automaker admitted—out of the gate—was a disappointment.

Mercedes has so far hit on a winning strategy with its MBUX infotainment system and, more importantly, its adoption of a robust voice assistant. Yet, everything needs an upgrade, and the German automaker is giving not just MBUX a bit of a boost but also laying out a software roadmap that gives the automaker an impressive amount of control over its vehicles.

First, we’ll get a next-generation 2024 E-Class that will ship with an updated version of MBUX called MBUX Entertainment Plus, because everything is a plus these days. Mercedes says the system will have quicker hardware and a faster 5G network connection.