Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

For more than a decade, the Internet has remained vulnerable to a class of attacks that uses browsers as a beachhead for accessing routers and other sensitive devices on a targeted network. Now, Google is finally doing something about it.

Starting in Chrome version 98, the browser will begin relaying requests when public websites want to access endpoints inside the private network of the person visiting the site. For the time being, requests that fail won’t prevent the connections from happening. Instead, they’ll only be logged. Somewhere around Chrome 101—assuming the results of this trial run don’t indicate major parts of the Internet will be broken—it will be mandatory for public sites to have explicit permission before they can access endpoints behind the browser.

The planned deprecation of this access comes as Google enables a new specification known as private network access, which permits public websites to access internal network resources only after the sites have explicitly requested it and the browser grants the request. PNA communications are sent using the CORS, or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, protocol. Under the scheme, the public site sends a preflight request in the form of the new header Access-Control-Request-Private-Network: true. For the request to be granted, the browser must respond with the corresponding header Access-Control-Allow-Private-Network: true.

A Kailh Box Black mechanical keyboard switch. (credit: Scharon Harding)

Ever have a microwave with buttons that don’t work properly? If you hit the keys at the right angle, maybe the microwave will respond. Or perhaps, no matter how you push them, the microwave stays silent. What if you could fix the issue without calling a repair company—and simultaneously make pressing the microwave’s keypad more enjoyable?

Kailh, which makes mechanical keyboard switches, shared a tweet on Tuesday highlighting a use for its switches that the company had never seen before. A Reddit user employed some Kailh Box Blacks to make his microwave usable again.

A few switches, wire, cardboard, and adhesive go a long way. (credit: gregschlom/Reddit)

The Reddit user, who goes by gregschlom, wrote that his 9-year-old microwave started malfunctioning, and instead of settling for cold leftovers and unpopped popcorn kernels until repairs could be done, he hardwired the device to Box Black switches. Based on the shared image, the new switches can be used to add 30 seconds, add a minute, cancel the operation, and access the settings menu.

Enlarge / This photomicrograph depicts leukemia cells that contain Epstein Barr virus using an FA staining technique, 1972. Epstein-Barr virus, EBV, is a member of the Herpesvirus family and is one of the most common human viruses. (credit: Getty | CDC)

Evidence is mounting that a garden-variety virus that sometimes causes mono in teens is the underlying cause of multiple sclerosis, a rare neurological disease in which the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord, stripping away protective insulation around nerve cells, called myelin.

It’s still unclear how exactly the virus—the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)—may trigger MS and why MS develops in a tiny fraction of people. About 95 percent of adults have been infected with EBV, which often strikes in childhood. MS, meanwhile, often develops between the ages of 20 and 40 and is estimated to affect around one million people in the US. Yet, years of evidence have consistently pointed to links between the childhood virus and the chronic demyelinating disease later in life.

With a study published today in Science, the link is stronger than ever, and outside experts say the new findings offer further “compelling” evidence that EBV isn’t just connected to MS; it’s an essential trigger for the disease. The study found, among other things, that people had a 32-fold increase in risk of developing MS following an EBV infection in early adulthood.

(credit: Getty Images)

The Biden administration has made vaccine mandates central to its attempts to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or at least it has tried to; various states and other organizations have used the courts to challenge the federal government’s authority to impose these mandates. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding two of the most significant mandates: one for all hospital workers issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and a second for all employees of large companies issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

By the time the cases were argued before the Supreme Court, the HHS rule was already blocked by a stay issued by a lower court. By contrast, the OSHA rules had seen a lower court lift earlier stays, leaving it on the verge of enforcement.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued expedited rules that reflected the tone of the questioning the week before. The OSHA rule is now subject to a stay that blocks its implementation, a decision that saw the court’s three liberal justices issue a dissent. The stay against the HHS rules was lifted, but only by a close 5-4 ruling.

Enlarge (credit: NOAA)

We are still in the midst of running a dangerous experiment on Earth’s climate system, and we get to periodically check in on the results—like laboratory rats peering at the graphs on a whiteboard across the room. And it’s that time again.

Every year, global temperature can be compared to the predictions born of the physics of greenhouse gases. A number of groups around the world maintain global surface temperature datasets. Because of their slightly differing methods for calculating the global average and slightly differing sets of temperature measurements fed into that calculation, these datasets don’t always arrive at exactly the same answer. Lean in close enough and you’ll see differences in the data points, which can translate into differences in their respective rankings of the warmest years. The big picture, on the other hand, looks exactly the same across them.

NASA, NOAA, and the Berkeley Earth group each released their end-of-year data for 2021 today, while the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) numbers were already out. They all came up with similar rankings this year. All but ECMWF placed it as the sixth warmest year on record, while ECMWF ranked it in fifth place. It was very close to 2015 and 2018, so fifth through seventh are roughly tied. What is true for all of the datasets is that the last seven years are the warmest seven years on record.

Enlarge / A vessel from the Wari site of Conchopata features the tree and its tell-tale seed pods sprouting from the head of the Staff God. (credit: J. Ochatoma Paravicino/M.E. Biwer et al., 2022)

Lacing the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens may have helped an ancient Peruvian people known as the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire, according to a new paper published in the journal Antiquity. Recent excavations at a remote Wari outpost called Quilcapampa unearthed seeds from the vilca tree that can be used to produce a potent hallucinogenic drug. The authors think the Wari held one big final blowout before the site was abandoned.

“This is, to my knowledge, the first finding of vilca at a Wari site where we can get a glimpse of its use,” co-author Matthew Biwer, an archaeobotanist at Dickinson College, told Gizmodo. “Vilca seeds or residue has been found in burial tombs before, but we could only assume how it was used. These findings point to a more nuanced understanding of Wari feasting and politics and how vilca was implicated in these practices.”

The Wari empire lasted from around 500 CE to 1100 CE in the central highlands of Peru. There is some debate among scholars as to whether the network of roadways linking various provincial cities constituted a bona fide empire as opposed to a loose economic network. But the Wari’s construction of complex, distinctive architecture and the 2013 discovery of an imperial royal tomb lend credence to the Wari’s empire status. The culture began to decline around 800 CE, largely due to drought. Many central buildings were blocked up, suggesting people thought they might return if the rains did, and there is archaeological evidence of possible warfare and raiding in the empire’s final days as the local infrastructure collapsed and supply chains failed.