Coldfusion

Progress towards ‘cold fusion,’ where nuclear fusion can occur at close to room temperatures, has now been at a standstill for decades. However, an increasing number of studies are now proposing that the reaction could be triggered more easily through a mechanism involving muons – elementary particles with the same charge as electrons, but with around 200 times their mass. Through a study published in EPJ D, researchers led by Francisco Caruso at the Brazilian Centre for Physical Research have shown theoretically how this process would unfold within 2D systems, without any need for approximations. The team’s results could lead to long-awaited advances in the field of cold fusion – which has been proposed as an efficient, sustainable way to harvest vast amounts of energy. Since muons… Source link

No piece of software is perfect. No coder writes software that is 100 percent free from errors. Time and budget constraints exacerbate the problem, with developers often racing against the clock to get software finished to an anticipated release date that would be too costly to change. Particularly in an age of over-the-air updates, oftentimes companies will elect to release an initial version of a piece of software and then release security updates or “patches” to plug the gaps at a later date. At a certain point, when software has outlived its financial or other usefulness, developers will stop supporting it altogether — meaning that patches… Source link

Don Gale: Climate change gives us a world on thin ice We used to ice skate in April. Now we play golf in December Courtesy | Utah State Historical Society Ice skating at the Liberty Park pond in 1917. By Don Gale | Special to The Tribune   | Dec. 14, 2020, 1:00 p.m. It was long ago … or only yesterday, depending on how many winters you remember. In the 1940s, we rushed home from school, picked up clamp-on ice skates and headed for Liberty Park. The lake froze in November and remained frozen through March and even into April. We played steal the flag, ran races, had jumping contests and showed off limited skating maneuvers. At sunset, parks department personnel turned on floodlights and opened the turntable — 78 rpm records, one song per side. Teenagers built a fire in the pit on the… Source link

Question: First, your column is first on my Saturday reading list, and one of the reasons we still have a newspaper subscription. Second, I’m usually able to figure out the problems on our computers, being self-taught. ‘Nuf of that. The main reason for this is that a disturbing notification happened yesterday. It appeared quick and disappeared and I’m unable to confirm it. The note was “Adobe will be removed and not be supporting any Windows 10 computers on Dec. 31, 2020.” We have used Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player since their origination, and it seems we still get something that… Source link

By the CyberWire staff Russia’s SVR suspected in FireEye breach. Security firm FireEye disclosed on Tuesday that a “highly sophisticated state-sponsored adversary” had stolen the company’s proprietary red-teaming tools: “The stolen tools range from simple scripts used for automating reconnaissance to entire frameworks that are similar to publicly available technologies such as CobaltStrike and Metasploit. Many of the Red Team tools have already been released to the community and are already distributed in our open-source virtual machine, CommandoVM. Some of the tools are publicly available tools modified to evade basic security detection mechanisms. Other tools and frameworks were developed in-house for our Red Team. “The Red Team tools stolen by the attacker did not contain zero-day… Source link

This week’s admission by FireEye that a suspected nation-state made off with so-called red team test tools it uses to probe customers’ networks for vulnerabilities has made some infosec pros uneasy. On the one hand, as many experts quickly noted, this wasn’t like the 2017 Shadow Brokers hack of the NSA which publicly revealed secret software exploits the U.S. intelligence agency used to break into targets. FireEye describes the stolen goods as ranging from “simple scripts used for automating reconnaissance to entire frameworks that are similar to publicly available technologies such as CobaltStrike and Metasploit.” Many of the tools have already been released to the infosec community, it added. FireEye quickly released what it says are hundreds of countermeasures and signatures… Source link

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Energy companies from 10 countries spanning four continents tonight received honors for leadership, innovation and exemplary performance at the 22nd annual S&P Global Platts Global Energy Awards, often described as the “Oscars” of energy. Actor-comedian-director Jason Alexander of cinema and television fame hosted the virtual event, which bestowed 22 awards upon companies and individuals.  Martin Fraenkel, president of S&P Global Platts: “In a year that was so tumultuous, it was particularly impressive and heartening to see how this year’s group of winners re-organized around obstacles, forged ahead on ground-breaking technology, completed… Source link

Windows inserted itself between game programs and the computer hardware in a way that slowed down graphics and animation. Game developers vastly preferred the DOS operating system, which didn’t gum up their special effects. That created an opportunity for three Microsoft misfits—Eric Engstrom, Alex St. John and Craig Eisler. Also read: The pandemic push to the silver economy Mr. Engstrom, who died Dec. 1 at the age of 55, and his pals formed one of several factions within Microsoft trying to solve the game problem. Openly contemptuous of colleagues who didn’t share their ideas, they were so obnoxious that Brad Silverberg, who ran the Windows business, dubbed them the Beastie Boys. He had to fend off frequent demands for their dismissal. Yet the solution they… Source link

FireEye is urging organizations to take precautions after suspected nation-state hackers breached the security vendor and stole its red team tools. The massive cyber attack, which FireEye disclosed Tuesday, was perpetrated by “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities,” CEO Kevin Mandia wrote in a blog post. As part of the cyber attack, FireEye’s red team tools were stolen, which, as a second post released Tuesday evening explained, are tools used in red teaming exercises to demonstrate the “impacts of successful attacks” for clients. “The stolen tools range from simple scripts used for automating reconnaissance to entire frameworks that are similar to publicly available technologies such as CobaltStrike and Metasploit. Many of the Red Team tools have already been released to… Source link

In the early 1990s, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system was dominant for office applications but a loser in the world of computer games. Windows inserted itself between game programs and the computer hardware in a way that slowed down graphics and animation. Game developers vastly preferred the DOS operating system, which didn’t gum up their special effects. That created an opportunity for three Microsoft misfits— Eric Engstrom, Alex St. John and Craig Eisler. Mr. Engstrom, who died Dec. 1 at the age of 55, and his pals formed one of several factions within Microsoft trying to solve the game problem. Openly contemptuous of colleagues who didn’t share their… Source link