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Category: government – Page 67

The “most advanced piece of malware” that China-linked hackers have ever been known to use was revealed today. Dubbed Daxin, the stealthy back door was used in espionage operations against governments around the world for a decade before it was caught.

But the newly discovered malware is no one-off. It’s yet another sign that a decade-long quest to become a cyber superpower is paying off for China. While Beijing’s hackers were once known for simple smash-and-grab operations, the country is now among the best in the world thanks to a strategy of tightened control, big spending, and an infrastructure for feeding hacking tools to the government that is unlike anything else in the world.

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China’s government took U.S. intelligence provided to convince Beijing to join American-led efforts to head off a military attack on Ukraine and shared it with Russia, according to a person familiar with the activity.

Intelligence-sharing with a major U.S. adversary is unusual but was part of repeated diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration to gain support from China in dissuading Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.

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A silicon wasteland.

In a sign that the United States government’s export restrictions on semiconductor sales to Russia due to its war against Ukraine have been enacted swiftly, multiple reports have emerged today that both Intel and AMD have suspended chip sales to Russia. In addition, reports have also emerged that TSMC’s decision to participate in the sanctions will thwart Russia’s supply of homegrown chips. We have reached out to Intel, AMD, and Nvidia for comment.

The Russian media outlets also claim that the suspensions have been confirmed by the Association of Russian Developers and Electronics Manufacturers (ARPE). Additionally, Chinese IT companies are said to have been notified by Intel that sales to Russia have been banned.

The extent of the halted sales is currently unclear. The new export restrictions are primarily aimed at chips for military purposes or dual-use chips that could be used for both civilian and military purposes. That means sales of most consumer-focused chips, like AMD’s Ryzen and Intel’s Core chips, likely won’t be impacted. However, it is widely expected that there will be a temporary halt for all semiconductor sales to Russia as companies work to decide which products are impacted. Additionally, the US DoC has added 49 Russian companies to the Entity List, and those companies aren’t eligible to purchase any type of chip.

Continue reading “Intel and AMD Halt Chip Sales to Russia: Reports” | >

Tesla’s well-established Supercharger network would be a willing participant in the Infrastructure Bill’s US$7.5 billion effort to build 500,000 EV charging stations nationwide. In comments sent to the FHA, however, Tesla notes that it’d like its exclusive Supercharger stations to get the same grant treatment as any public stations it builds where non-Tesla cars can be charged.

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Elon Musk’s back at it again, folks — and this time, his attorney is accusing the federal government of leaking.

Following up on his claim that the Securities and Exchange Commission was trying to harass him into silence, Musk’s attorney accused the commission of “leaking certain information” in an ongoing retaliation campaign against the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

This alleged campaign supposedly began back in 2018, when the SEC investigated Musk for tweeting about selling Tesla stock at $420 a share and taking the company private, eventually charging him with misleading investors. Though that case was settled in 2018 after Musk and Tesla paid $20 million each in fines, new reporting about the commission subpoenaing the CEO in recent months has reignited the debacle.

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Building a better supercomputer is something many tech companies, research outfits, and government agencies have been trying to do over the decades. There’s one physical constraint they’ve been unable to avoid, though: conducting electricity for supercomputing is expensive.

Not in an economic sense—although, yes, in an economic sense, too—but in terms of energy. The more electricity you conduct, the more resistance you create (electricians and physics majors, forgive me), which means more wasted energy in the form of heat and vibration. And you can’t let things get too hot, so you have to expend more energy to cool down your circuits.

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In addition to securities fraud and obstruction of justice, James Velissaris has been charged with wire fraud and lying to auditors.

The founder and manager of a $1.7 billion mutual fund that collapsed last year has been charged by federal prosecutors with securities fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly inflating fund asset values to keep investor money flowing, then falsifying records to conceal the improprieties.

The Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund halted investor redemptions in February 2021, roughly seven years after it was co-founded by James Velissaris, 37, its chief investment officer. A government inquiry began, Velissaris stepped down and the mutual fund and a parallel hedge fund he oversaw began liquidating.

It was a rare example of a big mutual fund failure amid a roaring bull market. And the collapse ensnared billionaire investor David Bonderman, co-founder of TPG, a huge private-equity firm that went public this year. The Bonderman Family was a major investor in Infinity Q Capital Management, the investment company overseen by Velissaris, regulatory documents show. Velissaris had worked for the Bonderman family before he co-founded Infinity Q Capital Management.

Continue reading “Founder of collapsed

In addition to securities fraud and obstruction of justice, James Velissaris has been charged with wire fraud and lying to auditors.

The founder and manager of a $1.7 billion mutual fund that collapsed last year has been charged by federal prosecutors with securities fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly inflating fund asset values to keep investor money flowing, then falsifying records to conceal the improprieties.

The Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund halted investor redemptions in February 2021, roughly seven years after it was co-founded by James Velissaris, 37, its chief investment officer. A government inquiry began, Velissaris stepped down and the mutual fund and a parallel hedge fund he oversaw began liquidating.

It was a rare example of a big mutual fund failure amid a roaring bull market. And the collapse ensnared billionaire investor David Bonderman, co-founder of TPG, a huge private-equity firm that went public this year. The Bonderman Family was a major investor in Infinity Q Capital Management, the investment company overseen by Velissaris, regulatory documents show. Velissaris had worked for the Bonderman family before he co-founded Infinity Q Capital Management..7 billion mutual fund charged with fraud” | >

TOKYO, Feb 15 (Reuters) — Japan’s economy rebounded in the final three months of 2021 as falling coronavirus cases helped prop up consumption, though rising raw material costs and a spike in new Omicron variant infections cloud the outlook.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda also highlighted escalating tensions in Ukraine as a fresh risk to the central bank’s forecast for a moderate economic recovery.

The world’s third-largest economy expanded an annualised 5.4% in October-December after contracting a revised 2.7% in the previous quarter, government data showed on Tuesday, falling short of a median market forecast for a 5.8% gain.

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Improving Lives Curing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) — Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, Ph.D. — Chief Scientific Officer, JDRF

Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at JDRF International (https://www.jdrf.org/) a nonprofit organization that funds Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) research, provides a broad array of community and activist services to the T1D population, and actively advocates for regulation favorable to medical research and approval of new and improved treatment modalities.

Dr. Dutta oversees all of JDRF’s efforts to cure Type 1 Diabetes and improve the lives of those living with it, which includes beta cell therapies, immunotherapies, glucose control and related disease complications. He is also responsible for international partnerships with world-leading government, non-government, foundation and commercial organizations. Dr. Dutta joined JDRF in 2009.

Continue reading “Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, Ph.D. — CSO, JDRF International — Improving Lives Curing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D)” | >

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) — A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack government officials and dissidents around the world.

It all started with a software glitch on her iPhone.

An unusual error in NSO’s spyware allowed Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul and privacy researchers to discover a trove of evidence suggesting the Israeli spyware maker had helped hack her iPhone, according to six people involved in the incident. A mysterious fake image file within her phone, mistakenly left behind by the spyware, tipped off security researchers.

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