Sam Machkovech writes via Ars Technica: Our "Facebookening of Oculus" series continues today with the announcement of the Facebook Connect conference as a free, live-streamed event on September 16. You may remember years of "Oculus Connect" conferences, which focused on the company's efforts in virtual reality and other "mixed reality" mediums. That conference is dead. It's Facebook Connect now. In a Tuesday announcement, Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth cited the company's broader product portfolio as a reason to expand its conference's definition beyond Oculus. To back that claim up, however, he only cited two Facebook products: Spark AR, the camera-software toolset used to identify faces and add silly effects and filters, and Portal, the company's webcam-chat hardware platform. Having attended many Oculus Connect conferences, I can safely say neither of those product lines received much focus (and attending VR-interested developers didn't express interest in it either).

What's more, Facebook used the Tuesday announcement as an opportunity to rename its entire Oculus VR division: Facebook Reality Labs. That name may sound familiar, since it was given to a number of skunkworks teams working on experimental VR-like features and hardware (including years of focus on 3D spatial audio at its Seattle-area office). Facebook isn't shy about explaining why it is renaming everything: to collate and combine its disparate entities in order to "build the next computing platform to help people feel more present with each other, even when we're apart." That sure sounds like a bold admission of the so-called "Facebook operating system" that I keep hearing rumors about, with VR, mixed reality, and smartphone cameras at its core. Facebook has spent months hinting at mixed computing systems being combined in the workplace, which the company has conveniently summarized in a new Facebook Reality Labs post from today.

"Much like Facebook's recent corporate rebranding, our emphasis is on clarity -- visually identifying us as a part of Facebook while looking toward the future of the next computing platform that puts people at the center," Bosworth writes in today's announcement. But I would argue that this smushing of seemingly unrelated products -- VR headsets, webcam chat platforms, funny-face filters, and the smorgasbord of social media content that is an average Facebook feed -- only serves to obfuscate what Facebook is trying to sell to consumers. Previously, you could expect to purchase an Oculus headset, then buy, download, and install preferred VR software (or even attach it to more open sales platforms like SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality). As we've recently learned, that kind of "whatever software you want" freedom may not be in the cards for Oculus hardware much longer, since Facebook will soon start mandating Facebook logins for all brand-new hardware -- and I've previously predicted that new hardware will be a centerpiece of the company's next major VR event (which we now know is happening on September 16).

It took five decades, but the Democratic Party has finally changed its stance on nuclear energy. In its recently released party platform, the Democrats say they favor a "technology-neutral" approach that includes "all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage." Robert Bryce writes via Forbes: That statement marks the first time since 1972 that the Democratic Party has said anything positive in its platform about nuclear energy. The change in policy is good -- and long overdue -- news for the American nuclear-energy sector and for everyone concerned about climate change. The Democrats' new position means that for the first time since Richard Nixon was in the White House, both the Republican and Democratic parties are officially on record in support of nuclear energy. That's the good news.

About a decade ago, a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy told me that a big problem with nuclear energy is that it needs bipartisan support in Congress. That wasn't happening, he said, because "Democrats are pro-government and anti-nuclear. Republicans are pro-nuclear and anti-government." That partisan divide is apparent in the polling data. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 65 percent of Republicans strongly favored nuclear energy but only 42 percent of Democrats did so. The last time the Democratic Party's platform contained a positive statement about nuclear energy was in 1972, when the party said it supported "greater research and development" into "unconventional energy sources" including solar, geothermal, and "a variety of nuclear power possibilities to design clean breeder fission and fusion techniques."

Since then, the Democratic Party has either ignored or professed outright opposition to nuclear energy. In 2016, the party's platform said climate change "poses a real and urgent threat to our economy, our national security, and our children's health and futures." The platform contained 31 uses of the word "nuclear" including "nuclear proliferation," "nuclear weapon," and "nuclear annihilation." It did not contain a single mention of "nuclear energy." That stance reflected the orthodoxy of the climate activists and environmental groups who have dominated the Democratic Party's discussion on energy for decades. What changed the Democrats' stance on nuclear? I cannot claim any special knowledge about the drafting of the platform, but it appears that science and basic math finally won out. While vying for their party's nomination, two prominent Democratic presidential hopefuls -- Cory Booker and Andrew Yang -- both endorsed nuclear energy. In addition, Joe Biden's energy plan included a shout-out to nuclear.

Nicolas Rougier, a computational neuroscientist and programmer at INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology in Bordeaux, writes: I organized with [Konrad Hinsen, a theoretical biophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Orleans] the "Ten Years Reproducibility Challenge," whose goal was to check if researchers would be able to run their own code that has been published at least ten years ago (i.e. before 2010). Most participants managed to run it, but it was not without pain. Today, Nature published an article summarizing the different problems we encountered. I myself tried to re-run an Apple II program I wrote 32 years ago on a vintage Apple IIe. This was quite instructive, especially regarding modern software system with the dependencies hell.

According to a report from the New York Post, Amazon may bring the cashierless tech at its Go convenience stores to Whole Foods as early as next year. The Verge reports: Amazon may start implementing the tech in Whole Foods sometime during the second quarter of 2021, according to the New York Post's source. This technology, which is currently available in more than 20 Amazon Go convenience store locations, uses cameras, sensors, and computer vision to let customers walk out the store with groceries in hand and avoid cashier checkout lines. The New York Post's source claims the rollout of the new technology into Whole Foods is one of two final projects that Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon's worldwide consumer division, is focusing on before he retires early next year.

Nintendo has targeted the developer of an open-source Switch payload injector with a cease and desist notice (PDF). Faced with copyright infringement threats, the DragonInjector developer decided to shut the project down. While he doesn't agree with the allegations, an expensive legal battle is not an option. TorrentFreak reports: DragonInjector is a small piece of hardware that fits in the Switch game card slot. It allows users to install and load custom firmware on their console. While it's not advertised as a pirate tool, with third-party code it can be used to play pirated games on older Switch models. A few days ago, DragonInjector's developer formally announced the end of the project. In a message on Discord, a Nintendo cease-and-desist order is cited as the main reason. MatinatorX doesn't agree with the gaming company's copyright infringement claims but he doesn't want to fight them either.

"While I don't believe the project was or is unlawful in any way, I do not have the resources to go to court to prove that for a hobby, especially considering the project netted a loss of a few thousand dollars overall," he writes. The cease-and-desist notice was sent by Nintendo's Canadian lawyers a few weeks ago. It accuses the developer of copyright infringement by advertising and selling the DragonInjector. According to the notice, this breaks the Switch's technical protection measures. "Your unlawful manufacture, advertisement, distribution, offering for sale and sale of the DragonInjector via the Dragon Injector Website infringes our client's rights," the lawyers write.

The developer was urged to immediately stop any infringing activities. If not, Nintendo reserves the right to take further action, the notice warns, adding that the company previously won $12 million CAD in damages in a 'similar' case. The threat comes with a list of additional requests. Among other things, MatinatorX must hand over all related accounting, including the number of devices sold as well as any profits that were made. The report notes that while Dragoninjector.com is gone, the developer registered Draconicmods.com to sell a custom Switch kickstand and other legitimate accessories.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Taiwan-based electronics manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron are among companies eyeing new factories in Mexico, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the U.S.-China trade war and coronavirus pandemic prompt firms to reexamine global supply chains. The plans could usher in billions of dollars in badly needed fresh investments over the next few years for Latin America's second-largest economy, which is primed for its worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression.

According to two of the sources, Foxconn has plans to use the factory to make Apple iPhones. However, one of the sources said, there had been no sign of Apple's direct involvement in the plan yet. Foxconn is likely to make a final decision on a new factory later this year, and work will commence after that, the two people said, adding there was no certainty the company would stick to the plan. Pegatron is also in early discussions with lenders about an additional facility in Mexico mainly to assemble chips and other electronic components, said the people, who declined to be identified as the talks are confidential. Pegatron declined to comment. Foxconn has five factories in Mexico mainly making televisions and servers. Its possible expansion would underscore a broader and gradual shift of global supply chains away from China amid a Sino-U.S. trade war and the coronavirus crisis.

Last month Intel's stock lost $50 billion in valuation — while the valuation for Taiwan-based TSMC jumped by over 50%.

The former chief of staff to Intel CEO Andrew Grove (and later general manager of Intel China) explains why this moment was 15 years in the making: Learning curve theory says that the cost of manufacturing a product declines as the volume increases. Manufacturing chips for the whole computer industry gave Intel huge advantages of scale over any other semiconductor manufacturer and resulted in the company becoming the world's largest chip manufacturer with enviable profit margins.

Chaos theory says that a small change in one state of a system can cause a large change in a later stage. In Intel's case, this was not getting selected by Apple for its iPhones. Each successive era of computing was 10x the size of the previous era, so while Intel produced hundreds of millions of microprocessors per year, the mobile phone industry sells billions of units per year. Apple's decision in 2005 to use the ARM architecture instead of Intel's gave Taiwan-based TSMC, the foundry chosen to manufacture the processor chips for the iPhone, the learning curve advantage which over time enabled it to pull ahead of Intel in manufacturing process technology.

Intel's integrated model, its competitive advantage for decades, became its vulnerability. TSMC and ARM created a tectonic shift in the semiconductor industry by enabling a large number of "fabless" chip companies such as Apple, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name a few. These fabless companies began to out-design Intel in the mobile phone industry and accelerated TSMC's lead over Intel in high volume manufacturing of the most advanced chips. Samsung, which also operates a foundry business, has been another beneficiary of this trend.

"Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives — and right now, most of the world doesn't have a plan for dealing with that," reports Wired. (Alternate URL here.) But we'll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don't cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen.

"If we don't mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill," said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao, who recently authored a review paper on recycling silicon solar panels, which comprise 95 percent of the solar market... And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.

Bacteria in mud samples have been transformed into microbial fuel cells generating enough electricity to power a toy car — just part of a larger phenomenon that one chemical engineer had originally dismissed as "complete nonsense."

Science magazine remembers how Lars Peter Nielsen's 2009 experiment at Denmark's Aarhus University changed the way the world viewed bacteria: At the start of the experiment, the muck was saturated with hydrogen sulfide — the source of the sediment's stink and color. But 30 days later, one band of mud had become paler, suggesting some hydrogen sulphide had gone missing. Eventually, the microsensors indicated that all of the compound had disappeared....

The first explanation, he says, was that the sensors were wrong. But the cause turned out to be far stranger: bacteria that join cells end to end to build electrical cables able to carry current up to 5 centimeters through mud. The adaptation, never seen before in a microbe, allows these so-called cable bacteria to overcome a major challenge facing many organisms that live in mud: a lack of oxygen. Its absence would normally keep bacteria from metabolizing compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, as food. But the cables, by linking the microbes to sediments richer in oxygen, allow them to carry out the reaction long distance.
Slashdot reader sciencehabit calls it one of the discoveries "forcing researchers to rewrite textbooks; rethink the role that mud bacteria play in recycling key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous; and reconsider how they influence aquatic ecosystems and climate change. Scientists are also pursuing practical applications, exploring the potential of cable and nanowire bacteria to battle pollution and power electronic devices."

"I hope AVX512 dies a painful death," Linus Torvalds said last month, "and that Intel starts fixing real problems instead of trying to create magic instructions to then create benchmarks that they can look good on."

Friday PC World published some reactions from Intel: Torvalds wasn't the only person to kick AVX-512 in the shins either. Former Intel engineer Francois Piednoel also said the special instruction simply didn't belong in laptops, as the power and die space area trade-offs just aren't worth it.
But Intel Chief Architect Raja Koduri says their community loves it because they're seeing a huge performance boost: "AVX-512 is a great feature. Our HPC community, AI community, love it," Koduri said, responding to a question from PCWorld about the AVX-512 kerfuffle during Intel's Architecture Day on August 11. "Our customers on the data center side really, really, really love it." Koduri said Intel has been able to help customers achieve a 285X increase in performance in "our good old CPU socket" just by taking advantage of the extension...

Koduri acknowledged some validity to Torvald's heat, too. "Linus' criticism from one angle that 'hey, are there client applications that leverage this vector bit yet?' may be valid," he said. Koduri explained further that Intel has to maintain a hardware software contract all the way from servers to laptops, because that's been the magic of the ecosystem. "(That's) the great thing about the x86 ecosystem, you could write a piece of software for your notebook and it could also run on the cloud," Kodori said. "That's been the power of the x86 ecosystem..."

And no, hate on AVX-512 and special instructions all you want, Intel isn't going to change direction. Koduri said it will continue to lean on AVX-512 as well as other instructions. "We understand Linus' concerns, we understand some of the issues with first generation AVX-512 that had impact on the frequencies etc, etc," he said "and we are making it much much better with every generation."
They also summarize some performance testing by blogger Travis Downs, saying it found AVX-512 "doesn't appear to enforce much of a penalty at all on a laptops. Downs' testing found the clock speed only dropped 100MHz when using one active core under AVX-512.

"At least, it means we need to adjust our mental model of the frequency related cost of AVX-512 instructions," Downs concluded. "Rather than 'generally causing significant downclocking,' on this Ice Lake chip we can say that AVX-512 causes insignificant or zero licence-based downclocking and I expect this to be true on other Ice Lake client chips as well."

The site of a Scottish nuclear power facility should be available for other uses in 313 years' time, according to a new report. The BBC reports: Dounreay, near Thurso, was the UK site for the development of fast reactor research from 1955 to 1994. The facility on the north Caithness coast is in the process of being closed down, demolished and cleaned up. However, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said it would be 2333 before the 148-acre site is safe for reuse. The date forms part of the authority's newly-published draft strategy.

They said "credible options" for the site in future will be developed over the next two years. Buildings to be demolished include the distinctive dome-shaped Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR). Important stages in the removal of radioactive material from the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) are expected to be competed over the next three years. A target date has also been set for the clean-up of a highly contaminated area called the Shaft. Waste is to be removed from the Shaft by 2029, according to the NDA report.

Electric trucks have the potential to displace enough oil to make a "significant dent" in transportation sector CO2 emissions, per a Rhodium Group analysis. Axios reports: There's lots of buzz -- and a lot of money -- around electric trucks these days. It estimates the long-term effects of a recent 15-state nonbinding pact (PDF) to bolster the use of zero-emissions heavy trucks and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. California, one of the states, also recently approved mandatory regulations on greatly increasing zero-emissions truck sales between 2024 and 2045. The study also explores the impact if these state efforts were transformed into a nationwide mandate, which would mean more than half the U.S. medium- and heavy-duty fleet would be electric by 2045.

"If the [15-state] MOU were expanded nationally, the impact would increase six-fold. By 2035, cumulative oil demand would fall by 806 to 843 million barrels, expanding to 4.6 to 4.9 billion barrels by 2045," Rhodium finds. "The long-term effect of expanding California's approach nationally would reduce oil consumption in 2045 by 16 to 17%," the Aug. 13 analysis notes.

Synology today added a new NAS to its lineup: "DiskStation DS1520+," with five bays. It also has two NVMe PCIe SSD slots for cache. From a report: "Featuring the Intel Celeron Processor J4125, DS1520+ provides a performance boost that sees a 126 percent increase in website responsiveness and a 19.8 percent increase in compute-tasks. The DS1520+ provides dual M.2 2280 NVMe SSD cache slots, along with four 1GbE network ports. DS1520+ comes equipped with five bays that support HDDs and SSDs of up to 16TB. If the need for storage grows, users can expand their DS1520+ using Synology expansion units (purchased separately), giving users a maximum raw capacity of 240TB," says Synology. It's priced at $700, but BetaNews, which has listed the full specs and other details, says Amazon is already selling it at $650.

An anonymous reader shares a report from IEEE Spectrum, written by Mark Crittenden, head of battery development and integration at Oxis Energy: Electric aircraft are all the rage, with prototypes in development in every size from delivery drones to passenger aircraft. But the technology has yet to take off, and for one reason: lack of a suitable battery. For a large passenger aircraft to take off, cruise, and land hundreds of kilometers away would take batteries that weigh thousands of kilograms -- far too heavy for the plane to be able to get into the air in the first place. Even for relatively small aircraft, such as two-seat trainers, the sheer weight of batteries limits the plane's payload, curtails its range, and thus constrains where the aircraft can fly. Reducing battery weight would be an advantage not only for aviation, but for other electric vehicles, such as cars, trucks, buses, and boats, all of whose performance is also directly tied to the energy-to-weight ratio of their batteries. For such applications, today's battery of choice is lithium ion. It reached maturity years ago, with each new incremental improvement smaller than the last. We need a new chemistry.

Since 2004 my company, Oxis Energy, in Oxfordshire, England, has been working on one of the leading contenders -- lithium sulfur. Our battery technology is extremely lightweight: Our most recent models are achieving more than twice the energy density typical of lithium-ion batteries. Lithium sulfur is also capable of providing the required levels of power and durability needed for aviation, and, most important, it is safe enough. After all, a plane can't handle a sudden fire or some other calamity by simply pulling to the side of the road. The new technology has been a long time coming, but the wait is now over. The first set of flight trials have already been completed.
[...]
Three factors will determine whether lithium-sulfur batteries ultimately succeed or fail. First is the successful integration of the batteries into multiple aircraft types, to prove the principle. Second is the continued refinement of the cell chemistry. Third is the continued reduction in the unit cost. A plus here is that sulfur is about as cheap as materials get, so there's reason to hope that with volume manufacturing, the unit cost will fall below that of the lithium-ion design, as would be required for commercial success. Oxis has already produced tens of thousands of cells, and it is currently scaling up two new projects. Right now, it is establishing a manufacturing plant for the production of both the electrolyte and the cathode active material in Port Talbot, Wales. Later, the actual mass production of lithium-sulfur cells will begin on a site that belongs to Mercedes-Benz Brazil, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This state-of-the-art plant should be commissioned and operating by 2023. If the economies of scale prove out, and if the demand for electric aircraft rises as we expect, then lithium-sulfur batteries could begin to supplant lithium-ion batteries in this field. And what works in the air ought to work on the ground, as well.

Bodhammer shares a report from the University of Michigan: In a step closer to skyscrapers that serve as power sources, a team led by University of Michigan researchers has set a new efficiency record for color-neutral, transparent solar cells. The team achieved 8.1% efficiency and 43.3% transparency with an organic, or carbon-based, design rather than conventional silicon. While the cells have a slight green tint, they are much more like the gray of sunglasses and automobile windows.

The new material is a combination of organic molecules engineered to be transparent in the visible and absorbing in the near infrared, an invisible part of the spectrum that accounts for much of the energy in sunlight. In addition, the researchers developed optical coatings to boost both power generated from infrared light and transparency in the visible range -- two qualities that are usually in competition with one another. The color-neutral version of the device was made with an indium tin oxide electrode. A silver electrode improved the efficiency to 10.8%, with 45.8% transparency. However, that version's slightly greenish tint may not be acceptable in some window applications.

Both versions can be manufactured at large scale, using materials that are less toxic than other transparent solar cells. The transparent organic solar cells can also be customized for local latitudes, taking advantage of the fact that they are most efficient when the sun's rays are hitting them at a perpendicular angle. They can be placed in between the panes of double-glazed windows. [The team is] working on several improvements to the technology, with the next goal being to reach a light utilization efficiency of 7% and extending the cell lifetime to about 10 years. They are also investigating the economics of installing transparent solar cell windows into new and existing buildings. The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Energy experts are bewildered as to why the manager of California's electric grid called on utilities to cut power to hundreds of thousands of customers over the weekend. "They said that the utilities had plenty of power available and that the blackouts weren't necessary," writes Ivan Penn via The New York Times. From the report: "They set it up like this is a historic event," said Bill Powers, a San Diego engineer who provides expert testimony on utility matters before the state's regulators. "This should not have triggered blackouts." The California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit entity that controls the flow of electricity for 80 percent of California, said it acted after three power plants shut down and wind power production dropped. It also cited a lack of access to electricity from out-of-state sources.

The energy experts noted that the peak electricity use over the weekend fell below peaks in other years, when utilities were able to handle the demand. They also said the operating reserves of power available to the utilities were higher than the 3 percent level where California ISO has traditionally ordered a reduction in electricity use. "It's just misleading to say that it was because it was a hot day," said [David Marcus, an energy consultant and former adviser at the California Energy Commission]. "I think they were being overly cautious." Saturday's peak demand, according to Mr. Marcus, reached 44,947 megawatts, much lower than the 46,797 he saw on Friday. But both of those amounts fell below the peak year for electricity use, 2006, when demand reached 50,270 megawatts, followed by 2017 with 50,116, according to data from California ISO. [...] What happens in the days ahead will continue to test Californians and the electric grid as California ISO forecast electricity demand Monday at near all-time peak levels.

"During the Cold War, the CIA considered building a bird-sized drone designed to spy on the communist bloc," reports Popular Mechanics. "The drone would carry 'black box' spy packages into Russia and China, as well as take secret photographs — all while hiding in plain sight disguised as a bird..." The project envisioned a fleet of 12 bird-shaped drones, powered by nuclear energy, that could stay aloft for up to a month. The drone, which was supposed to act as a robotic spy plane and courier for secret payloads, was never completed... "Aquiline" was a small drone, meant to be kept as close to bird-like size as possible — five feet long, 7.5 feet wide, and a takeoff weight of 83 pounds — under the constraints of the technology of the time. A silent 3.5-horsepower, four-cycle engine would give the drone a speed of 47 to 80 knots and an endurance of 50 hours and 1,200 miles. Aquiline's maximum altitude was estimated at 20,000 feet.

Nuclear power promised to give Aquiline even greater range. The CIA proposed to install a radioisotope propulsion system on the flying drone, one that would convert waste heat from decaying isotopes (like plutonium) into electricity. Such an engine, developed primarily for deep space probes, would boost the drone's endurance to an astonishing 30 days or 36,000 miles.

Aquiline was designed to carry both photographic and intelligence payloads. It could take overhead photographs of sensitive sites while flying much lower than the U-2 spy plane, and would scoop up electronic signals of radios, radar, and other devices for later analysis. Unlike manned planes, Aquiline could fly much closer to its targets, producing high resolution photographs and recording stronger electromagnetic signals. The drone could also secretly drop off payloads of specially developed sensors near sites the CIA wanted to closely monitor...

Radars and human sentries at sensitive sites would mistake Aquiline for a bird and pay little attention to it.
The drone was to have been designed by McDonnell Douglas — and developed Area 51, according to the article.

And since data storage at the time was limited to cumbersome things like punch cards and tapes, the drone would instead beam all of its data to a nearby reconnaissance plane.

At the Black Hat security conference, researchers from the Taiwanese cybersecurity firm CyCraft revealed at least seven Taiwanese chip firms have been breached over the past two years, reports Wired: The series of deep intrusions — called Operation Skeleton Key due to the attackers' use of a "skeleton key injector" technique — appeared aimed at stealing as much intellectual property as possible, including source code, software development kits, and chip designs. And while CyCraft has previously given this group of hackers the name Chimera, the company's new findings include evidence that ties them to mainland China and loosely links them to the notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacker group Winnti, also sometimes known as Barium, or Axiom. "This is very much a state-based attack trying to manipulate Taiwan's standing and power," says Chad Duffy, one of the CyCraft researchers who worked on the company's long-running investigation...

The researchers found that, in at least some cases, the hackers appeared to gain initial access to victim networks by compromising virtual private networks, though it wasn't clear if they obtained credentials for that VPN access or if they directly exploited vulnerabilities in the VPN servers. The hackers then typically used a customized version of the penetration testing tool Cobalt Strike, disguising the malware they planted by giving it the same name as a Google Chrome update file. They also used a command-and-control server hosted on Google's or Microsoft's cloud services, making its communications harder to detect as anomalous....

Perhaps the most remarkable of those new clues came from essentially hacking the hackers. CyCraft researchers observed the Chimera group exfiltrating data from a victim's network and were able to intercept an authentication token from their communications to a command-and-control server. Using that same token, CyCraft's analysts were able browse the contents of the cloud server, which included what they describe as a "cheat sheet" for the hackers, outlining their standard operating procedure for typical intrusions. That document was notably written in simplified Chinese characters, used in mainland China but not Taiwan...
"It's possible that what they're seeing is just a small fragment of a larger picture," says the director of Kaspersky's Global Research & Analysis Team, who tells Wired the group has also attacked telecoms, tech firms, and a broad range of other Taiwanese companies.

But in the same article one of CyCraft's researchers argues the group could be looking for even more exploits. "If you have a really deep understanding of these chips at a schematic level, you can run all sorts of simulated attacks on them and find vulnerabilities before they even get released."

Intel on Thursday disclosed a new method for making transistors on semiconductors that its chief architect said could boost the performance Intel's next round of processors by as much as 20%. From a report: The Santa Clara, California-based company is one of the few remaining in the world that both designs and manufactures its own chips. But its manufacturing operations have become a concern among investors after Intel last month said that its next-generation chip-making process, called its 7-nanometer process node, would be delayed. Analysts believe the delays could cement the lead that rivals such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co have gained in making smaller, more power efficient chips. Intel's shares have fallen nearly 20% since the delays were disclosed. On Thursday, Intel sought to buck the notion that the single-number names given to each generation of chip process node tell the entire story by disclosing improvements on its existing 10-nanonmeter process node. It announced a new way of making what it now calls "SuperFin" transistors, which, along with a new material being used to improve the capacitors on chips, is expected to boost the performance of Intel's forthcoming processors, despite their still being made on 10-nanometer manufacturing lines.

Bricks are about as basic as architectural materials can get, yet these simple building blocks have hidden powers that can be leveraged to provide electricity, according to a new study. From a report: Scientists modified a common red brick -- the same kind you'll find on sale for under a dollar at your local hardware store -- so that it could power a green LED light. This proof-of-concept for a "smart brick" reveals that brick technology, which dates back thousands of years, can be tweaked to have futuristic applications, including electrical conductivity and sensing capabilities. The results were published on Tuesday in Nature Communications. "We have created a new brick that can be incorporated into your house that has the functionality of storing electrical energy," said study co-author Julio D'Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, in a call. "We are thinking that sensing applications is a low-hanging fruit for these bricks," he added.