Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft has released a security patch for a dangerous vulnerability affecting hundreds of millions of computers running Windows 10.

The vulnerability is found in a decades-old Windows cryptographic component, known as CryptoAPI. The component has a range of functions, one of which allows developers to digitally sign their software, proving that the software has not been tampered with. But the bug may allow attackers to spoof legitimate software, potentially making it easier to run malicious software — like ransomware — on a vulnerable computer.

“The user would have no way of knowing the file was malicious, because the digital signature would appear to be from a trusted provider,” Microsoft said.

Amazon temporarily suspended third-party sellers’ access to FedEx ground delivery services last month.

In “A World Without Work,” the economist Daniel Susskind argues that, unlike during past technological shifts, machines really are becoming smart enough to take over our jobs.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=54YezX7HeSI

Scientists sank three alligator corpses into the Gulf of Mexico to see whether bottom-dwelling sea creatures could eat them. They did — handily.

Space launch startup Orbex has secured a customer for its forthcoming Prime space launch vehicle: TriSept, a provider of launch integration services for both commercial and government customers. TriSept has booked the full capacity of a rideshare mission aboard an Orbex Prime rocket to take off sometime in 2022, which should work schedule-wise, provided Orbex meets its target of flying its initial missions starting next year.

Orbex is leaning on 3D printing to expedite its launch vehicle production process, while also keeping costs low. The U.K.-based company is also in the process of working on final approvals and construction of a new spaceport in Sutherland, located in the Scottish highlands, which, when complete, will be the first mainland space launch facility in Europe.

TriSept, which provides launch management and brokerage services in addition to integration for payloads loaded into the launch vehicle, has been operating in the U.S. space market for years now, and it’ll also be setting up a full-time presence in the U.K. ahead of the Sutherland spaceport’s opening later this year, at Harwell Space Campus in Oxford.

We are all aware of the health benefits of regular exercise, but what if we could reap the rewards of a good workout without any of the effort? Michigan Medicine researchers have found that a conserved class of proteins known as Sestrins can mimic many of the beneficial effects of exercise on metabolism in flies and mice, and boost their physical endurance. The findings could eventually help scientists to devise strategies that combat muscle wasting due to aging or disease. “These results indicate that Sestrin is a key integrating factor that drives the benefits of chronic exercise to metabolism and physical endurance … Sestrin may serve as a promising therapeutic molecule for obtaining exercise-like benefits such as improving mobility and metabolism,” commented the researchers, headed by Myungjin Kim, PhD, a research assistant professor in the department of molecular & integrative physiology, and first author of the team’s published paper in Nature Communications, which is titled, “Sestrins are evolutionarily conserved mediators of exercise benefits.”

As the percentage of older members in the population continues to increase, so do concerns about keeping an aging population healthy and mobile. In fact, elderly people put mobility as their biggest age-related concern, the authors stated. “Mobility is important both for direct health reasons (e.g., preventing falls, retaining access to relatives and health care providers) and for psychological reasons, as it is highly correlated with retained morale personal satisfaction and morale.”

One promising therapeutic intervention that can help to hold back age-related functional decline is endurance exercise, they noted. But endurance exercise isn’t suitable for everyone. While evidence in humans and other animals suggests that endurance exercise has substantially protective effects on measures of healthspan, not everyone can train to the level needed to achieve the resulting health benefits, perhaps due to age, injury, or illness. “Therefore, generation of therapeutic mimetics to induce the benefits of exercise could provide broad ranging benefits to the medical community,” the researchers suggested.

Google announced today that it is buying AppSheet, an eight-year-old no-code mobile-application-building platform. The company had raised more than $17 million on a $60 million valuation, according to PitchBook data. The companies did not share the purchase price.

With AppSheet, Google gets a simple way for companies to build mobile apps without having to write a line of code. It works by pulling data from a spreadsheet, database or form, and using the field or column names as the basis for building an app.

It is integrated with Google Cloud already integrating with Google Sheets and Google Forms, but also works with other tools, including AWS DynamoDB, Salesforce, Office 365, Box and others. Google says it will continue to support these other platforms, even after the deal closes.

Holly Jean Buck is a fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. This is an adapted excerpt from her upcoming book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (September 2019, Verso Books).

“These are novel living machines,” says Joshua Bongard, the University of Vermont expert who co-led the new research. “They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”