Friday, October 9, 2020
Twitter tightens rules to thwart election threats
Amazon has canceled Crucible, its free-to-play multiplayer shooter game, after putting it back in closed beta in July amid negative reviews (Jay Peters/The Verge)
Amazon has canceled Crucible, its free-to-play multiplayer shooter game, after putting it back in closed beta in July amid negative reviews — The game was put back into closed beta in July — Amazon has officially canceled Crucible, its free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
FBI/DHS: Government election systems face threat from active Zerologon exploits
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
The FBI and the cybersecurity arm of the Department of Homeland Security said they have detected hackers exploiting a critical Windows vulnerability against state and local governments and that in some cases the attacks are being used to breach networks used to support elections.
Members of unspecific APTs—the abbreviation for advanced persistent threats—are exploiting the Windows vulnerability dubbed Zerologon. It gives attackers who already have a toehold on a vulnerable network access to the all-powerful domain controllers that administrators use to allocate new accounts and manage existing ones.
To gain initial access, the attackers are exploiting separate vulnerabilities in firewalls, VPNs, and other products from companies including Juniper, Pulse Secure, Citrix NetScaler, and Palo Alto Networks. All of the vulnerabilities—Zerologon included—have received patches, but as evidenced by Friday’s warning from the DHS and FBI, not everyone has installed them. The inaction is putting governments and elections systems at all levels at risk.
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RIP to Crucible, Amazon Games’ first PC shooter: 2020-2020
Enlarge / We've previously put these Amazon Games mascots behind prison bars; now, they're in flames. RIP, Crucible. We hardly knew ye. (credit: Amazon Games / Aurich Lawson)
As it turns out, Amazon's idea of a Crucible couldn't handle the intense heat and pressure of the games industry.
After launching in May of this year, Crucible, Amazon Games' first large-scale shooter title for PC, will stop receiving updates and matchmaking support on November 9, the studio announced on Friday (at the exact end-of-week hour that bad game-news stories are typically sent to pasture). The company is taking the extreme measure of offering a "full refund" for any purchases made during the free-to-play game's lifespan, and it's directing customers to make refund requests through either Steam Support or Amazon's own contact form, depending on where purchases were originally made.
This followed the game's formal delisting from Steam in July, which followed painfully low concurrent player counts (as low as 200) that made it difficult for players to successfully matchmake with each other. Though the game launched with considerable attention, including a promotional blitz on the Amazon-owned game-streaming platform Twitch, it only briefly maintained a player population exceeding 10,000 users.
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Alibaba's stock jumped 42% this year, giving it a market value above $800B, as the pandemic accelerates China's rapid embrace of online commerce (Chong Koh Ping/Wall Street Journal)
Alibaba's stock jumped 42% this year, giving it a market value above $800B, as the pandemic accelerates China's rapid embrace of online commerce — Recent rally cements company's position as one of the world's most valuable technology companies — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. 's stock …
TikTok suffers another blow, this time in Pakistan
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Xiaomi Redmi 9A and Redmi 9 Prime to go on sale today via Amazon at 12pm
Nykaa says new fashion category to top sales of Rs 500 crore
PharmEasy in investment talks with Naspers, TPG
Waymo Opens Robo-Taxi Service to the Public in US City of Phoenix
The future of the Belt has begun in first trailer for The Expanse S5
The fifth season of the sci-fi series The Expanse will begin streaming on Amazon Prime on December 16, 2020.
Amazon Prime debuted the first trailer (embedded above) for the upcoming fifth season of The Expanse during the series panel at the New York Comic Con's Metaverse today. And the stakes are high. According to the official premise, "The future of The Belt has begun as Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) wages Armageddon against the Inners for a lifetime of oppression and injustice."
(Some spoilers for prior seasons below.)
As we previously reported, The Expanse is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), exploring interplanetary tensions that are breaking out all over a Solar System long since colonized by humans—mostly between Earthers, Martians, and "Belters." Part mystery, part political thriller, part classic space opera, The Expanse has earned almost nothing but praise from critics and its devoted fans alike, not just for its gripping storytelling, but also its excellent use of accurate physics. The third and fourth seasons earned a rare 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (seasons one and two earned 76 percent and 96 percent, respectively).
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Google Play Store's Indian alternatives get a boost
A look at Chinese hackers' attacks on US infrastructure and telecoms; sources: Charter, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream networks were also breached (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal : A look at Chinese hackers' attacks on US infrastructure and telecoms; sources: Charter, Consolidated Communicat...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Lorena O'Neil / Rolling Stone : A look at the years of warnings about AI from researchers, including several women of color, who say ...
