Month: March 2023

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Hackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in a widely used WordPress plugin that gives them the ability to take complete control of millions of sites, researchers said.

The vulnerability, which carries a severity rating of 8.8 out of a possible 10, is present in Elementor Pro, a premium plugin running on more than 12 million sites powered by the WordPress content management system. Elementor Pro allows users to create high-quality websites using a wide range of tools, one of which is WooCommerce, a separate WordPress plugin. When those conditions are met, anyone with an account on the site—say a subscriber or customer—can create new accounts that have full administrator privileges.

The vulnerability was discovered by Jerome Bruandet, a researcher with security firm NinTechNet. Last week, Elementor, the developer of the Elementor Pro plugin, released version 3.11.7, which patched the flaw. In a post published on Tuesday, Bruandet wrote:

Enlarge / Twitter has posted what it states is the code used by its algorithm to recommend tweets to its users.

Twitter has made good on one of CEO Elon Musk's many promises, posting on a Friday afternoon what it claims is the code for its tweet recommendation algorithm on GitHub.

The code, posted under a GNU Affero General Public License v3.0, contains numerous insights as to what factors make a tweet more or less likely to show up in users' timelines.

In a blog post accompanying the code release, Twitter's engineering team (under no particular byline) notes that the system for determining which "top Tweets that ultimately show up on your device's For You timeline" is "composed of many interconnected services and jobs." Each time a Twitter home screen is refreshed, Twitter pulls "the best 1,500 Tweets from a pool of hundreds of millions," the post states.

Enlarge / Use your freedom of choice. (credit: Apple)

A long while back, Toyota told me it didn't want to give up interior real estate to Apple’s CarPlay. The automaker felt that losing that space to the tech company would be a huge mistake. Fast forward a few years, and after what I assume were some internal struggles, it caved and now you can get CarPlay and Android Auto on your fancy new Highlander, Prius, Tacoma, or Camry. It seemed like a silly decision had been reversed. Now it’s GM’s turn to go down the same path.

Today, news dropped that GM would be phasing out CarPlay support in future EVs. In its partnership with Google, it hopes that all the features you get from mirroring your iPhone can be replaced with an Android Automotive feature. GM, like Toyota before it, wants to control the digital real estate in its vehicles. It’s a revenue-based and walled-garden (ironically against Apple) decision that will cost them.

Software-driven vehicles should be about choice. Instead, GM is making a short-sighted decision based on a trickle of revenue under the guise of better integration. Owning all the data that a vehicle generates while driving around could be a great source of cash. The problem is potential customers have become accustomed to choosing which device they use to navigate, chat, text, and rock out within their vehicle. They’ve grown weary of being mined for data at the expense of their choice and they’re really not all that keen on in-car subscription services.

Enlarge (credit: Sean Gallup | Getty Images)

Google Bard is getting a little smarter today with the addition of math and logic capabilities. Google employee Jack Krawczyk announced the change on Twitter, saying, "Now Bard will better understand and respond to your prompts for multi-step word and math problems, with coding coming soon."

Logic questions were a big flaw when Bard arrived tens of days ago, and some answers made Bard seem particularly dumb to early testers. In one example from last week, Bard repeatedly asserted that one plus two equaled four. Today, Google's state-of-the-art AI chatbot models can now correctly say that the answer is three. So there has been at least some change. It can also correctly list the months in a year instead of making up names like "Maruary."

Bard still gets tripped up by really basic logic questions, though. HowToGeek's Chris Hoffman posed the question to Bard on day one, "What's heavier, five pounds of feathers or a one pound dumbbell?" Google Bard responded with the ridiculous claim that "There's no such thing as 5 pounds of feathers." In the replies, ChatGPT didn't do any better, saying that five pounds of feathers and a one pound dumbbells "weigh the same amount, which is five pounds."

Enlarge / This micrograph shows the presence of the fungal agent Blastomyces dermatitidis, 1978. (credit: Getty | CDC/Dr. Libero Ajello)

Toxic fungal spores wafting around a Wisconsin neighborhood—possibly spread by recent construction in the area—sparked an outbreak of rare infections that left one person dead, state health officials reported Friday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In all, the outbreak cluster included five pet dogs and four people, with the onset of symptoms spanning from October 2021 to February 2022. While two of the cases in people were mild, the other two required hospitalization, including the fatal case. The five dogs were reported to have mild to moderate cases.

The outbreak was caused by the poorly understood fungus Blastomyces (B. dermatitidis and B. gilchristii), which lurks in moist soil and decomposing organic matter, such as wood and leaves, often near water. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the fungus could exist throughout the eastern US, but its distribution is uneven. It's often found around the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys and the Great Lakes. Parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota are considered hotspots.

Enlarge / Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez star as Elgin (a bard) and Holga (a barbarian) in D&D: Honor Among Thieves. (credit: Paramount Pictures)

Of all the films due for release this spring, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was one of my most anticipated premieres, solely on the strength of those killer trailers. The film does not disappoint. It's a fresh, good-humored, energetic, and vastly entertaining fantasy/action/comedy, boasting a stellar cast and solid emotional core that serves as a worthy homage to the famous RPG that inspired it.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Honor Among Thieves is set in the hugely popular Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The film's official premise is short and sweet: "A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people."

Enlarge / Deployment of LSPM junction box 1. (credit: IN2P3/CNRS)

In 1962, one of the world's first underwater research laboratories and human habitats was established off the coast of Marseilles, France, at a depth of 10 meters. The Conshelf 1 project consisted of a steel structure that hosted two men for a week.

Now, more than 60 years later, another underwater laboratory is being set up not far from Marseilles, this time to study both the sea and sky. Unlike the Conshelf habitat, the Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée (LSPM) won't be manned by humans. Located 40 km off the coast of Toulon at a depth of 2,450 meters, it is Europe’s first remotely operated underwater laboratory.

Physics under the sea

Currently, three junction boxes capable of powering several instruments and retrieving data are at the heart of LSPM. The boxes, each measuring 6 meters long and 2 meters high, are connected to a power system on land via a 42-kilometer-long electro-optical cable. The optical portion of this cable is used to collect data from the junction boxes.

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Like in other parts of the world, Canada is working out what the right to repair means for its people. The federal government said in its 2023 budget released Tuesday that it will bring the right to repair to Canada. At the same time, it's considering a universal charging port mandate like the European Union (EU) is implementing with USB-C.

The Canadian federal government's 2023 budget introduces the right to repair under the chapter entitled “Making Life More Affordable and Supporting the Middle Class." It says that the "government will work to implement a right to repair, with the aim of introducing a targeted framework for home appliances and electronics in 2024." The government plans to hold consultations on the matter and claimed it will "work closely with provinces and territories" to implement the right to repair in Canada:

When it comes to broken appliances or devices, high repair fees and a lack of access to specific parts often mean Canadians are pushed to buy new products rather than repairing the ones they have. This is expensive for people and creates harmful waste.

Devices and appliances should be easy to repair, spare parts should be readily accessible, and companies should not be able to prevent repairs with complex programming or hard-to-obtain bespoke parts. By cutting down on the number of devices and appliances that are thrown out, we will be able to make life more affordable for Canadians and protect our environment.

The budget also insinuates that right-to-repair legislation can make third-party repairs cheaper than getting a phone, for example, repaired by the manufacturer, where it could cost "far more than it should.”