Astrud Gilberto passed yesterday. She was 83 year old. She became famous, almost overnight, in 1964 for singing “The Girl from Ipanema,” on a bossa nova album of her husband’s, Joao Gilberto, and jazz saxophonist Stan Getz. It’s become a classic worldwide.
Rest in Peace, and thanks for the voice.
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This song will forever remind me of Paris. In December of 2021, during the holiday season, my new wife and I, went to Paris for our honeymoon. We stumbled on to an old jazz club called Rue 38, in the Marais district. It was a hip underground cavern with world class players from around the globe. This song was played and it was incredible. Forever left in the caverns of my mind. Iconic song indeed.
Did You Know?
“Whelm” is a verb that means to bury, cover, engulf, or submerge, but it is rarely used outside of its derivatives, overwhelm and underwhelm.
Why not teach humans how to use water bladders rather than their water bottles for use on Mars. Rather than a rigid plastic container that sloshes around as they move, they could carry a flexible sac with components that shapeshift as they dry, holding water in place.
Facebook may owe you money as part of a major privacy lawsuit. Here’s how to find out
If you used Facebook in the United States from 2007 through 2022, you can probably file a claim to collect.
Facebook may owe you money as part of a major privacy lawsuit. Here’s how to find out
Meta Platforms, Inc., owner of Facebook, has agreed to enter into a $725 million settlement covering numerous lawsuits, which alleged that Facebook improperly shared user data without users’ knowledge. Nearly every Facebook user in America is able to claim part of this $725 million. Here’s what you need to know:
What’s happened? Facebook had numerous lawsuits filed against it over various privacy allegations. These lawsuits alleged that Facebook shared user data without the user’s permission, shared a user’s friend’s data without their permission, or did not properly monitor how third parties were using shared user data. Because of the number of suits against Facebook, most were rolled into one and became a class-action suit against the company. Facebook has now agreed to settle the class-action suit by paying out a total of $725 million to affected users.
Has Facebook admitted wrongdoing? No, Facebook denies any wrongdoing and liability for the allegations. But that’s normal when a company agrees to settle a class action.
Who can get part of the $725 million? With a few exceptions, nearly every Facebook user in the United States between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022 can make a claim for part of the settlement.
Will all of the $725 million go to those affected? No. Some of it will go to cover the costs of administration and legal fees.
How much will I get as part of the settlement? That depends upon how many users submit a claim to be included in the settlement.
Do I need to take action to get paid? Yes. In order to receive a payment from the settlement, you need to submit a claim. You must submit a claim by August 25, 2023. You can also choose to opt out of the settlement if you want to sue Facebook yourself, or you can object to the settlement. You must do either of those things by July 26, 2023.
How will I get paid? You can choose how you want to receive your settlement. Options include a pre-paid MasterCard, a direct deposit to your bank account, via PayPal or Venmo, and more.
What if I do nothing? You won’t get any payment from the settlement and you’ll give up your right to sue Facebook over allegations covered in this settlement.
Where can I learn more about the settlement and my options? The official settlement website has a detailed FAQ here.
How do I make a claim? You can make a claim on the official settlement website here.
Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad has made a remarkable comeback. In recent days, Syria has been readmitted to the Arab League, a major regional body from which it was suspended in 2011, and held direct talks with longtime rival Turkey. And on Tuesday the United Arab Emirates invited Assad to this year’s COP28 climate summit, potentially putting Assad at a venue with world leaders who spent years trying to oust him from power.
“Assad won the war,” Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria now at the Middle East Institute, told The Messenger. “We may like that or not, but that’s the reality.”
Twelve years after it began, there’s still a low-grade war being waged in Syria. Rebels hold territory in the north, and some 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria, officially to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), unofficially to counter Iran’s proxies in the country. Outside powers including Russia, Turkey, and Israel have recently launched air strikes inside Syria, and more than 6.8 million Syrians remain outside the country—the world’s largest refugee population.
President Barack Obama once declared that the Syrian dictator must “step aside.” But he is still there – having vanquished most of his domestic enemies, and been welcomed by regional governments that spent more than a decade trying to oust him from power.
It’s hard to draw a direct line between global warming and wildfires. But recent advances in “attribution science,” the field that identifies climate change’s role in heat waves, droughts, rising seas, and other phenomena, have made it possible to quantify its effect on fires. The new study relies on a key risk factor called the “vapor pressure deficit,” a measure of how “thirsty” the atmosphere is. Hotter temperatures cause moisture to be pulled out of vegetation, turning forests into tinderboxes just waiting for a spark.
Photo of dead trees in an ashy landscape
Wildfires tore through western Alberta, Canada, leaving a burned landscape, May 10, 2023. Megan Albu / AFP via Getty Images
To figure out how companies’ emissions contributed to fire-danger conditions in the West, researchers built on a previous study that linked emissions from 88 big fossil fuel producers to rising temperatures. Then they compared two models of how dry forests would be under different climate scenarios — one modeled on the real world, and the other excluding the emissions associated with the 88 companies.
“The major contribution of this study is to connect all of the dots between specific sources of human-related carbon emissions and recent increases in forest fire activity,” said Philip Higuera, a professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana who was not involved in the study. “Most of the links have been well known for a long time, but this is the first study to connect the dots, quantitatively.”
Exxon and BP did not respond to Grist’s request to comment in time for publication.
Jessica Wentz, a fellow at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, thought the findings could be used to support existing lawsuits, or provide the impetus for other local governments to file their own. Wentz said the research might be relevant to a case in Colorado, where the city and county of Boulder, along with San Miguel County, sued Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil, seeking millions of dollars to update their infrastructure to withstand climate change. “That’s the one lawsuit where wildfire-related damages are forefront and central,” Wentz said.
Translating the research to a specific court case could prove thorny, though. The study looked at a large region, the whole North American West, and the aggregate of 88 companies’ emissions. It’s possible that attorneys could use the new research to calculate wildfire risk over a smaller area — say, Boulder County — but it would require some extrapolation. For calculating damages, a court might want to see a more fine-grained analysis, Wentz said. “It’s really a totally open question of how courts will look at the evidence, and just how granular will plaintiffs need to be in terms of providing scientific data to support their claims. We just don’t know yet.”
In a way, the long delays in these climate court cases have actually given some ammunition to cities and states looking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable. The extra time has allowed the science of climate attribution to mature, so that if these cases end up going to trials, cities and states have more evidence to support their case. “It’s sort of a weird silver lining,” Wentz said.
A company named SquareX has just raised $6 million to develop an extension that would create virtual sandboxes within your web browser. Any time you’re tempted to open a file or click a link that comes from an unknown sender or could potentially pose a threat, SquareX’s extension would step in and let you open it in a kind of disposable browser.
Hackers are using a devious new trick to infect your devices
Hackers have long used lookalike domain names to trick people into visiting malicious websites, but now the threat posed by this tactic could be about to ramp up significantly. That’s because two new domain name extensions have been approved which could lead to an epidemic of phishing attempts.
The two new top-level domains (TLDs) that are causing such consternation are the .zip and .mov extensions. They’ve just been introduced by Google alongside the .dad, .esq, .prof, .phd, .nexus, .foo names.
But the reason why .zip and .mov have generated such controversy is that they impersonate popular file extensions used on Windows and macOS computers. That makes them ripe for malevolent trickery.
“The risk of confusion between domain names and file names is not a new one. For example, 3M’s Command products use the domain name command.com, which is also an important program on MS DOS and early versions of Windows. Applications have mitigations for this (such as Google Safe Browsing), and these mitigations will hold true for TLD’s such as .zip. At the same time, new namespaces provide expanded opportunities for naming such as community.zip and url.zip. Google takes phishing and malware seriously and Google Registry has existing mechanisms to suspend or remove malicious domains across all of our TLDs, including .zip. We will continue to monitor the usage of .zip and other TLDs and if new threats emerge we will take appropriate action to protect users.”
Many messaging apps and social media websites automatically convert a word ending in a TLD to a website link, meaning that simply telling a friend about a file you want to send them could transform your words into a clickable URL. If a hacker has already registered that URL and is using it for nefarious purposes, your friend could be sent to a harmful website.
Bleeping Computer demonstrated the problem with an example message that read, “First extract the test.zip file and then look for test.mov. Once you have the test.mov file, double-click on it to watch the video.” If a hacker has registered the test.zip and test.mov domains, the message recipient could visit the link in the message and find themselves at risk of downloading an infected file. After all, they might naturally expect that the URL they visit will contain the file they’ve been told to download.
Already being abused
The risk isn’t just theoretical. In fact, cybersecurity firm Silent Push Labs has already seen this kind of sleight of hand out in the wild, with phishing websites being created at microsoft-office.zip and microsoft-office365.zip, which likely attempt to steal user login credentials by impersonating the official Microsoft website. Needless to say, you shouldn’t visit these websites due to the threat they pose.
While there are plenty of legitimate uses for the .zip and .mov domains, such as for file compression apps or video-streaming platforms, there also appears to be potential for abuse — something that hackers are apparently already taking advantage of.
If you see a link that ends in .zip or .mov and it appears to be linked to a large company, first research that the domain actually belongs to that company before clicking on the link. In fact, you shouldn’t visit any website or download any file sent by someone you do not trust, regardless of whether the .zip or .mov TLDs are involved. Using an antivirus app and a healthy dose of skepticism should go a long way to mitigating the myriad threats online — including from hackers making use of these new domains.
Microsoft found that a Chinese government group had installed malicious code in U.S. telecommunications systems.
The code, which hit systems in Guam, set off alarms because the island would be a centerpiece of any U.S. military response to a move against Taiwan.
Those of you knocking Russian elite forces should be aware of this:
Overzealous instructors, drug use and poor command and medical oversight turned a tough course into a dangerous ordeal, investigators found.
A highly critical Navy report details how “a near perfect storm” of problems at the selection course for the service’s elite SEAL teams sent graduation rates plunging, left many candidates injured and led to one sailor’s death.
View in browser | nytimes.com
The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS
The S.E.C. charged Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with mishandling customer funds and lying to regulators.
The Wall Street regulator said Binance had been mixing “billions of dollars” in customer funds and secretly sending them to a separate company controlled by Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao.
Overzealous instructors, drug use and poor command and medical oversight turned a tough course into a dangerous ordeal, investigators found.
A highly critical Navy report details how “a near perfect storm” of problems at the selection course for the service’s elite SEAL teams sent graduation rates plunging, left many candidates injured and led to one sailor’s death.
How come lots of Aliens live with us and they can’t tell anyone they are an Aliens?
For example if someone tell me I’m an Alien and don’t tell anybody I will keep it secret.