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A commercial malware scanner used by businesses has recently detected an outbreak of malware that came preinstalled on more than three dozen Android devices.

An assortment of malware was found on 38 Android devices belonging to two unidentified companies. This is according to a blog post published Friday by Check Point Software Technologies, maker of a mobile threat prevention app. The malicious apps weren't part of the official ROM firmware supplied by the phone manufacturers but were added later somewhere along the supply chain. In six of the cases, the malware was installed to the ROM using system privileges, a technique that requires the firmware to be completely reinstalled for the phone to be disinfected.

"This finding proves that, even if a user is extremely careful, never clicks a malicious link, or downloads a fishy app, he can still be infected by malware without even knowing it," Check Point Mobile Threat Researcher Daniel Padon told Ars. "This should be a concern for all mobile users."

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It's no secret that ISPs can make more money from network upgrades in wealthy neighborhoods than low-income ones, and a new analysis of Cleveland, Ohio, by broadband advocacy groups appears to show that AT&T is following that strategy. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and a Cleveland-based group called Connect Your Community alleged in their report today that "AT&T has systematically discriminated against lower-income Cleveland neighborhoods in its deployment of home Internet and video technologies over the past decade."

Last year, the NDIA brought attention to AT&T's refusal to provide $5-per-month Internet service to poor people in areas where the company hasn't upgraded its network. When the Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T's purchase of DirecTV in 2015, the FCC required AT&T to provide discount broadband to poor people as condition of the merger. But the condition apparently allowed AT&T to charge full price in areas where maximum download speeds were less than 3Mbps. After the NDIA spoke out, AT&T announced it would stop exploiting the loophole and instead provide discount Internet to poor people in all parts of its network.

Today's followup report from the NDIA and Connect Your Community analyzes FCC data on AT&T Internet deployments in Cleveland, where many residents were initially declared ineligible for the discount broadband service.

Enlarge / John Carmack, CTO of Oculus VR, as seen in 2016. (credit: GABRIELLE LURIE/AFP/Getty Images)

John Carmack, the CTO of Oculus, has sued his former employer, ZeniMax Media, for alleged breach of contract.

In the lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, Carmack claims that he is owed over $22.5 million as part of the 2009 deal in which ZeniMax Media bought id Software. Carmack co-founded id Software in 1991, which created Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and a number of other legendary video game titles. He left id Software in 2013 and quickly joined Oculus.

Carmack, Oculus, and ZeniMax Media have been entangled in an ongoing legal battle for years over questions surrounding the development of the Oculus VR headset. ZeniMax sued Oculus in 2014 over misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, and breach of contract, among other accusations. The civil lawsuit went to trial earlier this year and resulted in a jury finding that Oculus was liable for $300 million. Carmack, who was accused of stealing code and destroying evidence, was found not to be personally liable for any damages. ZeniMax had sought damages of $6 billion in the case. Oculus, which vowed to appeal, has not done so yet.

Enlarge / A collection of Powerpacks at the storage facility next to the Mira Loma substation in Southern California. (credit: Megan Geuss)

On Thursday morning, the Australian Financial Review published a story saying that Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice president for energy products, promised the company could deliver 100-300 MWh of storage to South Australia within 100 days of signing a contract.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, the billionaire behind software company Atlassian, saw the story and tweeted a link saying “Holy s#%t." Cannon-Brookes then tweeted at Tesla CEO Elon Musk “How serious are you about this bet? If I can make the $ happen (& politics), can you guarantee the 100MW in 100 days?”

Musk responded in a tweet, “Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?”

(credit: MIT News)

Exposure to high levels of airborne pollutants is an ongoing problem, as is exposure to extreme temperatures. If these two overlap, then it's possible that the health impacts will be greater. A recent paper published in PNAS uses 15 years of climate observations in the US and Canada to show that the two problems do indeed cluster together and occur in overlapping, large-scale episodes. The largest of these episodes has the hottest temperatures and the highest level of pollution.

The authors used both surface station and meteorological data from the years of 1999 to 2013. They divided this data into one-degree squares. Then they carefully gridded daily Earth surface values for ozone, particulate matter (as a proxy for air quality), and temperature, and they identified climatologically extreme events.

In this analysis, they saw that extreme weather and pollution events clustered into multi-day episodes that tended to be spatially connected. This means that the episodes typically affected grid squares that were adjacent to each other or contiguous. The researchers saw that the weather tended to drive several types of extreme events at once, with problems often coinciding or happening adjacent to each other in either space or time.