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Hard-boiled mercenary Takeshi Kovacs is back on a new case back and in a new body (or "sleeve") in the trailer for season two of Altered Carbon, the Netflix adaptation of Richard K. Morgan's 2002 cyberpunk novel of the same name.

(Some spoilers for S1 below.)

Like the novel, the series is set in a world more than 360 years in the future, where a person's memories and consciousness can be uploaded into a device—based on alien technology—known as a cortical stack. The stack can be implanted at the back of the neck of any human body (known as a "sleeve"), whether natural or synthetic, so an individual consciousness can be transferred between bodies. Income equality still exists, however, so only the very rich can afford true immortality, storing their consciousness in remote backups and maintaining a steady supply of clones. Those people are called "Meths" (a reference to the biblical Methuselah, who supposedly lived for 969 years).

Enlarge (credit: Huawei)

US officials say they have evidence that Huawei has backdoor access to mobile-phone networks around the world, according to a Wall Street Journal article published today.

"We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world," US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told the Journal.

The United States has long claimed that Huawei can secretly access networks through the networking gear it sells to telcos, but the goverment previously argued that it doesn't need to show any proof. US officials still are not providing such evidence publicly but have begun sharing their intelligence with other countries, the Journal report said.

Enlarge (credit: Marco Verch / Flickr)

Over the past half decade, the Emotet malware has emerged as a top Internet threat that pillages people’s bank accounts and installs other types of malware. The sophistication of its code base and its regularly evolving methods for tricking targets into clicking on malicious links—in September, for instance, it began a spam run that addresses recipients by name and quotes past emails they sent or received—has allowed it to spread widely. Now, Emotet is adopting yet another way to spread: using already compromised devices to infect devices connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks.

Last month, Emotet operators were caught using an updated version that uses infected devices to enumerate all nearby Wi-Fi networks. It uses a programming interface called wlanAPI to profile the SSID, signal strength, and use of WPA or other encryption methods for password-protecting access. Then, the malware uses one of two password lists to guess commonly used default username and password combinations.

After successfully gaining access to a new Wi-Fi network, the infected device enumerates all non-hidden devices that are connected to it. Using a second password list, the malware then tries to guess credentials for each user connected to the drive. In the event no connected users are infected, the malware tries to guess the password for the administrator of the shared resource.

Enlarge (credit: onurdongel / Getty Images)

Last week, ICANN announced that Verisign, the private company that administers the .com domain, will be allowed to raise prices by more than 70 percent over the next decade. Domain registrars—companies that help the public register domains and must pass along these escalating fees—aren't happy about it.

"ICANN and Verisign made these changes in secret, without consulting or incorporating feedback from the ICANN community or Internet users," registrar Namecheap wrote in a blog post. "Namecheap will continue to lead the fight against price increases that will harm our customers and the Internet as a whole."

On Sunday, my Ars Technica colleague Kate Cox got a notification from her registrar, Dynadot, warning that "price increases on the registry level unfortunately result in price increases at Dynadot."

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump speaks during a Governor's White House Business Session in Washington, DC, on Monday, Feb. 10, 2020. Trump's budget anticipates the gross federal debt would top $30 trillion over the next decade despite deep proposed cuts to social programs. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Amid an explosive outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China that has killed over 1,000 and sickened over 43,000 worldwide, US President Donald Trump proposed a nearly 19 percent budget cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the agency primarily tasked with preparing for and responding to such outbreaks and other serious health threats.

In the president’s proposed 2021 federal budget released Monday, the administration says that the changes to the CDC’s funding are intended to “re-focus CDC’s core mission on preventing and controlling infectious diseases and other emerging public health issues, such as opioids.”

The proposal reduces and consolidates CDC funding for programs under the “chronic disease prevention and health promotion” category. That includes programs addressing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, tobacco use, stroke, nutrition, physical activity, and arthritis.

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump speaks during a Governor's White House Business Session in Washington, DC, on Monday, Feb. 10, 2020. Trump's budget anticipates the gross federal debt would top $30 trillion over the next decade despite deep proposed cuts to social programs. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Amid an explosive outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China that has killed over 1,000 and sickened over 43,000 worldwide, US President Donald Trump proposed a nearly 19 percent budget cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the agency primarily tasked with preparing for and responding to such outbreaks and other serious health threats.

In the president’s proposed 2021 federal budget released Monday, the administration says that the changes to the CDC’s funding are intended to “re-focus CDC’s core mission on preventing and controlling infectious diseases and other emerging public health issues, such as opioids.”

The proposal reduces and consolidates CDC funding for programs under the “chronic disease prevention and health promotion” category. That includes programs addressing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, tobacco use, stroke, nutrition, physical activity, and arthritis.

The long-pending dream of a new sequel in the storied System Shock series may be well and truly dead, according to a new report from Video Games Chronicle.

The fate of the new sequel—the first in the series since 1999—started to look questionable last February, when struggling publisher Starbreeze was forced to sell the rights to the game back to developer OtherSide Entertainment to recoup costs. In the wake of that move, though, OtherSide managed to put together a GDC demo and was optimistic about potential publishing options, including self-publishing. OtherSide also put out a new "pre-alpha" gameplay trailer as recently as November, suggesting things were moving along predictably.

The development seems to have taken a turn for the worse in recent months, though, with former community manager Sam Luangkhot confirming in December that a number of high-profile members of the OtherSide team had been laid off. That list of departures included the game's writer & director, senior designer, lead programmer, QA lead, and senior environment artist, according to publicly available LinkedIn profiles posted by those affected.