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Aug 11, 2024
Weapons startup Anduril hits $14-billion valuation, plans huge new facility
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: finance, government, robotics/AI, transportation
Defense technology startup Anduril Industries Inc. has raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round and plans to spend hundreds of millions on a new facility to manufacture its rockets, underwater vehicles and other autonomous weapons systems at greater scale and speed.
The deal, which values Anduril at $14 billion, is one of the largest venture capital financings of the year so far, and reflects the company’s success getting government contracts, as well as rising investor enthusiasm for defense technology companies.
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Sands Capital co-led the Series F funding round, which has been in the works for more than a month. The deal nearly doubles the startup’s valuation from its previous funding round in 2022, which raised $1.48 billion.
Aug 11, 2024
Teens invent incredible device while searching for way to tackle one of the world’s most challenging sources of pollution: ‘Current solutions aren’t really effective’
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: materials
Two teenagers won $50,000 for creating an ultrasonic microplastics filter, offering hope in the fight against plastic pollution.
Aug 11, 2024
210-million-year-old fish — that breathed air — discovered as new species in Zimbabwe
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: futurism
The species has remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, earning the nickname “living fossil,” researchers said.
Aug 11, 2024
New AMD SinkClose flaw helps install nearly undetectable malware
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: cybercrime/malcode
AMD is warning about a high-severity CPU vulnerability named SinkClose that impacts multiple generations of its EPYC, Ryzen, and Threadripper processors. The vulnerability allows attackers with Kernel-level (Ring 0) privileges to gain Ring-2 privileges and install malware that becomes nearly undetectable.
Ring-2 is one of the highest privilege levels on a computer, running above Ring-1 (used for hypervisors and CPU virtualization) and Ring 0, which is the privilege level used by an operating system’s Kernel.
The Ring-2 privilege level is associated with modern CPUs’ System Management Mode (SMM) feature. SMM handles power management, hardware control, security, and other low-level operations required for system stability.
Aug 11, 2024
2001: A Space Odyssey — Gayane Ballet Suite
Posted by Dan Breeden in category: media & arts
Aug 10, 2024
Sci-fi writer and WordStar lover re-releases the cult DOS app for free
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: futurism
Aug 10, 2024
Exploring the evolution of social norms with a supercomputer
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: evolution, supercomputing
Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Germany) have published new findings on how social norms evolve over time. They simulated how norms promote different social behavior, and how the norms themselves come and go. Because of the enormous number of possible norms, these simulations were run on RIKEN’s Fugaku, one of the fastest supercomputers worldwide.
Aug 10, 2024
Researchers Uncover 10 Flaws in Google’s File Transfer Tool Quick Share
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: security
Researchers uncover 10 security flaws in Google’s Quick Share, potentially allowing remote code execution on Windows. Update to version 1.0.1724.0 or.
Aug 10, 2024
New Malware Hits 300,000 Users with Rogue Chrome and Edge Extensions
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: cybercrime/malcode
An ongoing, widespread malware campaign has been observed installing rogue Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extensions via a trojan distributed via fake websites masquerading as popular software.
“The trojan malware contains different deliverables ranging from simple adware extensions that hijack searches to more sophisticated malicious scripts that deliver local extensions to steal private data and execute various commands,” the ReasonLabs research team said in an analysis.
“This trojan malware, existing since 2021, originates from imitations of download websites with add-ons to online games and videos.”