science-fiction – Tech Today w/ Ken May

San Diego Comic-Con Wins Trademark Suit Against ‘Salt Lake Comic Con’

The Deseret News reports: A jury has found that Salt Lake Comic Con founders Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg, along with their company, violated a trademark when they named their fan convention a “comic con.” However, the jury decided that the trademark was not willfully violated, and only awarded $20, 000 of the $12 million that San Diego Comic-Con had asked for in damages. The decision came at the end of an eight-day jury trial and three years of legal maneuvering… And with an estimated 140 other fan conventions across the country calling themselves comic cons, the impact of the decision could be felt nationwide… The Salt Lake group also has an ongoing action with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking to invalidate San Diego’s “comic-con” trademark… San Diego Comic-Con, which has been holding events since 1970, has a trademark on “comic-con” with a hyphen, but was unsuccessful in its 1995 bid to trademark “comic con, ” with a space. The unhyphenated name “Comic Con International, ” as well as the event’s iconic “eye logo, ” are also protected by trademark. The event maintains that its trademarks cover the term “comic con” in all its forms… San Diego Comic-Con wanted more than $12 million in damages from Salt Lake, including over $9 million for a three-month “corrective advertising campaign” to dispel confusion… In his closing arguments, Michael Katz, an attorney for Salt Lake Comic Con, questioned the amount San Diego was seeking, noting that San Diego authorities said during trial the organization generally spends between $20, 000 and $30, 000 for a month of advertising. Slashdot reader AlanBDee writes: When I attended the Salt Lake City Comic Con I did assume it was the same organization that put on San Diego Comic-Con… But now I have to wonder how that will affect other Comic Cons around the nation? What should these comic based fan conventions be called if not Comic Con? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John Scalzi’s ‘Old Man’s War’ sci-fi series is headed to Netflix

Award-winning science fiction author John Scalzi famously chose military SF for his Old Man’s War series because it was a marketable sub-genre . Lucky for us that he did, as the eventual six-book series has been a critical and commercial success. According to a report from Deadline , Netflix has just acquired the first novel with intentions to make it into a film. In the Old Man’s War universe, set hundreds of years from now, older people are given a loaded choice. Either age and die on Earth or get healthy young bodies that are conscripted into the military to fight space aliens. Protagonist John Perry makes the obvious choice and becomes a high-octane space marine who ends up being pretty good at leading troops into battle. Of course, all is not as it seems, and Perry begins to piece together what’s really going on. The engaging story will likely make a good movie, provided it’s done right (looking at you, Ender’s Game ). The film is being produced by John Shestak Productions ( Air Force One , Dan in Real Life ) and Madhouse Entertainment . Source: Deadline

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John Scalzi’s ‘Old Man’s War’ sci-fi series is headed to Netflix

Returning to Second Life

Seriously, this once happened. A decade ago, dozens of media outlets and technologists discovered “The Next Internet.” An original cyberspace science fiction fantasy had finally come to fruition as the world gained a second digitized reality. In a short period of time, countries established embassies , media companies opened bureaus , one of Earth’s biggest rock bands played a concert , political campaigns took to its streets, and people became real-world millionaires plying their skills in this new arena. That much hyped “Next Internet?” You may remember it better by its official name—Second Life. For many modern Internet users, the platform has likely faded far, far from memory. But there’s no denying the cultural impact Second Life had during the brief height of its popularity. Explaining Second Life today as a MMORG or a social media platform undersells things for the unfamiliar; Second Life became an entirely alternative online world for its users. And it wasn’t just the likes of Reuters and U2 and Sweden embracing this platform. Second Life boasted 1.1 million active users at its peak roughly a decade ago. Even cultural behemoth Facebook only boasted 20 million at the time. Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Returning to Second Life

Half the Universe’s Missing Matter Has Just Been Finally Found

An anonymous reader shares a report: The missing links between galaxies have finally been found. This is the first detection of the roughly half of the normal matter in our universe — protons, neutrons and electrons — unaccounted for by previous observations of stars, galaxies and other bright objects in space. You have probably heard about the hunt for dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to permeate the universe, the effects of which we can see through its gravitational pull. But our models of the universe also say there should be about twice as much ordinary matter out there, compared with what we have observed so far. Two separate teams found the missing matter — made of particles called baryons rather than dark matter — linking galaxies together through filaments of hot, diffuse gas. “The missing baryon problem is solved, ” says Hideki Tanimura at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, leader of one of the groups. The other team was led by Anna de Graaff at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Because the gas is so tenuous and not quite hot enough for X-ray telescopes to pick up, nobody had been able to see it before. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Malicous code written into DNA infects the computer that reads it

In a mind-boggling world first, a team of biologists and security researchers have successfully infected a computer with a into a strand of DNA. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s very real — although you probably don’t have to worry about this particular threat vector any time soon. That said, the possibilities suggested by this project are equally fascinating and… Read More

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Malicous code written into DNA infects the computer that reads it

New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

An anonymous reader writes: The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed “Jaff”. Jaff spreads in a similar way to the infamous file-encrypting malware Locky and even uses the same payment site template, but is nonetheless a different monster. Attached to dangerous emails is an infectious PDF containing an embedded DOCM file with a malicious macro script. This script will then download and execute the Jaff ransomware. Locky — like Jaff — also used the Necurs botnet and a booby-trapped PDF, security firm Malwarebytes notes. “This is where the comparison ends, since the code base is different as well as the ransom itself, ” said Jerome Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes. “Jaff asks for an astounding 2 BTC, which is about $3, 700 at the time of writing.” Proofpoint reckons Jaff may be the work of the same cybercriminals behind Locky, Dridex and Bart (other nasty malware) but this remains unconfirmed. And Forcepoint Security Labs reports that malicious emails carrying Jaff are being cranked out at a rate of 5 million an hour on Thursday, or 13 million in total at the time it wrote up a blog post about the new threat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

An anonymous reader writes: The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed “Jaff”. Jaff spreads in a similar way to the infamous file-encrypting malware Locky and even uses the same payment site template, but is nonetheless a different monster. Attached to dangerous emails is an infectious PDF containing an embedded DOCM file with a malicious macro script. This script will then download and execute the Jaff ransomware. Locky — like Jaff — also used the Necurs botnet and a booby-trapped PDF, security firm Malwarebytes notes. “This is where the comparison ends, since the code base is different as well as the ransom itself, ” said Jerome Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes. “Jaff asks for an astounding 2 BTC, which is about $3, 700 at the time of writing.” Proofpoint reckons Jaff may be the work of the same cybercriminals behind Locky, Dridex and Bart (other nasty malware) but this remains unconfirmed. And Forcepoint Security Labs reports that malicious emails carrying Jaff are being cranked out at a rate of 5 million an hour on Thursday, or 13 million in total at the time it wrote up a blog post about the new threat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

An anonymous reader writes: The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed “Jaff”. Jaff spreads in a similar way to the infamous file-encrypting malware Locky and even uses the same payment site template, but is nonetheless a different monster. Attached to dangerous emails is an infectious PDF containing an embedded DOCM file with a malicious macro script. This script will then download and execute the Jaff ransomware. Locky — like Jaff — also used the Necurs botnet and a booby-trapped PDF, security firm Malwarebytes notes. “This is where the comparison ends, since the code base is different as well as the ransom itself, ” said Jerome Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes. “Jaff asks for an astounding 2 BTC, which is about $3, 700 at the time of writing.” Proofpoint reckons Jaff may be the work of the same cybercriminals behind Locky, Dridex and Bart (other nasty malware) but this remains unconfirmed. And Forcepoint Security Labs reports that malicious emails carrying Jaff are being cranked out at a rate of 5 million an hour on Thursday, or 13 million in total at the time it wrote up a blog post about the new threat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

An anonymous reader writes: The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed “Jaff”. Jaff spreads in a similar way to the infamous file-encrypting malware Locky and even uses the same payment site template, but is nonetheless a different monster. Attached to dangerous emails is an infectious PDF containing an embedded DOCM file with a malicious macro script. This script will then download and execute the Jaff ransomware. Locky — like Jaff — also used the Necurs botnet and a booby-trapped PDF, security firm Malwarebytes notes. “This is where the comparison ends, since the code base is different as well as the ransom itself, ” said Jerome Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes. “Jaff asks for an astounding 2 BTC, which is about $3, 700 at the time of writing.” Proofpoint reckons Jaff may be the work of the same cybercriminals behind Locky, Dridex and Bart (other nasty malware) but this remains unconfirmed. And Forcepoint Security Labs reports that malicious emails carrying Jaff are being cranked out at a rate of 5 million an hour on Thursday, or 13 million in total at the time it wrote up a blog post about the new threat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It

An anonymous reader writes: The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed “Jaff”. Jaff spreads in a similar way to the infamous file-encrypting malware Locky and even uses the same payment site template, but is nonetheless a different monster. Attached to dangerous emails is an infectious PDF containing an embedded DOCM file with a malicious macro script. This script will then download and execute the Jaff ransomware. Locky — like Jaff — also used the Necurs botnet and a booby-trapped PDF, security firm Malwarebytes notes. “This is where the comparison ends, since the code base is different as well as the ransom itself, ” said Jerome Segura, a security researcher at Malwarebytes. “Jaff asks for an astounding 2 BTC, which is about $3, 700 at the time of writing.” Proofpoint reckons Jaff may be the work of the same cybercriminals behind Locky, Dridex and Bart (other nasty malware) but this remains unconfirmed. And Forcepoint Security Labs reports that malicious emails carrying Jaff are being cranked out at a rate of 5 million an hour on Thursday, or 13 million in total at the time it wrote up a blog post about the new threat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
New Ransomware ‘Jaff’ Spotted; Malware Groups Pushing 5M Emails Per Hour To Circulate It