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How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last

How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last
CANCUN, Mexico — In 2009, one or more prestigious researchers received a CD by mail that contained pictures and other materials from a recent scientific conference they attended in Houston. The scientists didn't know it then, but the disc also delivered a malicious payload developed by a highly advanced hacking operation that had been active since at least 2001. The CD, it seems, was tampered with on its way through the mail. It wasn't the first time the operators—dubbed the "Equation Group" by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab—had secretly intercepted a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination. Kaspersky researchers have documented 500 infections by Equation Group in at least 42 countries, with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Syria, and Mali topping the list. A long list of almost superhuman technical feats illustrate Equation Group's extraordinary skill, painstaking work, and unlimited resources. Related:  Stuff 2

Uno Short Story Six years of jail. Six years of anger. Of pain. You were in solitary when they told you. Your name is Furio Moroni. In reality, you discover there's one other thing that's left. Almost without realizing it, you end up getting back together with Irene. At a motorway café, thieves steal your car with Uno inside. You could ignore it all. And at any rate, beyond this consideration, you just can't accept that when something is taken away from you, you don't react. You have good intuition, and through that you can mobilize your old acquaintances. Maybe he's already there. You arrive in Ljubljana braving the harsh winter cold, your disease, the fear that all this is a waste of time. Ana dumps you. You discover ditches filled with dog corpses immersed in lime. You begin a desperate race against time. When you wake up, you're in the hospital. You take off again. Somehow you manage to enter. They follow you through the forest. You start off again. You cry and smile at the same time.

WOLF TOTEM by Jean-Jacques Annaud shot in 3D by Jean-Marie Dreujou AFC Adapted from Jiang Rong’s best-seller in China, the next Jean-Jacques Annaud movie, Wolf Totem, will be released in cinemas on February 19 in China, February 25 in France... This long feature has been shot in 3D by the french director of photography Jean-Marie Dreujou (AFC). He talked about his experience during the shooting... Jean-Marie Dreujou : Wolf Totem is my second chinese movie experience: I shot in 2001 «Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise »(“Xiao ai feng “/” Balzac and the little chinese Seamstress”) of Dai Sijie. What about the mixing of the teams ? What are the equipment you use on the shooting? What are your feelings concerning Angénieux lenses ? Regarding cameras, what do you use ? According to you, to what does this Angenieux distinctiveness come from ? How do you make your technical choices according to the constraints ? The second difficulty remains in following the evolution of a small wolf (one character of the movie) from its birth in April until the beginning of fall.

Have a Cigar: Cringe at the insanely misogynist radio ads of the Women’s Lib era Last Saturday was a typical Saturday for me, crate digging in the local thrift shops. One of my hard-and-fast rules of vinyl thrifting is always buy any never-before-seen oddball platter if it’s a dollar or less. You simply never know when you’re going to stumble across that undiscovered “break” that some hotshot DJ will fork over major-league cash for, or in this case, something so truly bizarre and wrongheaded that it warrants sharing with the rest of the world. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the album unearthed this past Saturday: a sealed copy of 20 of the World’s Best Advertisements. Procured for a mere 50 cents, this record was released in 1967 by the Chuck Blore Creative Services ad agency. Ostensibly the album is a promotional tool for the agency, collecting the “world’s best” ads from the time of Mad Men; but as I learned from needle dropping the first three tracks, the men who produced these ads were really (really) mad.

Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. I cannot pretend I am without fear.

Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot No. 5: I "Love" 'Sniper,' "Just Can't Do It Again" With Streep Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures 'American Sniper' This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation with an Academy member who is not associated with any of this year's nominees about his ballot. A conversation with a different member will post each day leading up to the Oscars ceremony on Feb. 22. Needless to say, their views are not necessarily endorsed by Scott Feinberg or THR. VOTER PROFILE: A member of the Academy's 428-member sound branch who has been nominated for an Oscar. Selma was a really well-made film and very emotional for me. American Sniper? Oh, boy, I didn't care for Birdman. Boyhood was genuine and heartfelt. The Grand Budapest Hotel was really clever and I think it deserves more than it will get. The Imitation Game was powerful. I thought The Theory of Everything was absolutely brilliant and one of my favorite films of the year. Whiplash, to me, is about a performance. MY VOTE: Richard Linklater (Boyhood) Read more Oscars: Who Will Win, Who Should Win Mr.

HIV & AIDS Information :: HIV is increasing in gay men in London because of lack of testing, comparative study finds London and San Francisco lend themselves to a comparison of HIV rates because they both have good surveillance data. In London, the annual rate of new diagnoses of HIV in (all) men stayed static at about 580 cases per 100,000 men (one case per 172 men per year) between 2006 and 2012: the number of new diagnoses increased from 1200 to 1400, but this was due to more testing. In San Francisco, the rate of new diagnoses per 100,000 men fell from about 690 in 2006 to about 520 in 2011; preliminary figures from 2013 suggest a sharp fall to 435 cases per 100,000 (one case per 230 men per year). The annual number of diagnoses in San Francisco, a smaller city than London, has fallen from 420 a year to 300. True incidence – the actual rate of new infections – is always more difficult to establish than diagnoses because it is confounded by changes in testing rates, but one indicator is what proportion of diagnosed infections are recent (less than six months old). Why?

9 Historical Murder Mysteries Solved More Than A Century Later Though generally assumed by everyone that Richard III pulled a Lannister on the Princes Edward and Richard,the truth of their death remains an open case since there is no conclusive forensic evidence. This case is likely to remain unsolved,at least in material evidence. Flagged Looks as if the dog just discovered a clue behind the bed.

Shutterbug Parents and Overexposed Lives Photo In “The Entire History of You,” the third episode of the dystopian British series “Black Mirror,” humans have developed implanted memory “grains” that record everything they see and hear. When users “redo” a memory by playing it back, the recreation even surpasses the original; they can zoom in on details or activate a lip-reading function to decipher unheard speech. I thought of the episode when a friend showed me some pictures and videos of his two young children. There is more visual documentation of his kids from the last couple of months than of my entire childhood in the ’80s and ’90s. I have, certainly, a wealth of memories from preadolescence. Are shutterbug parents wiping away their mental databases of experiences with their offspring while bulking up their digital ones? One recent study does suggest there is a “photo-taking-impairment effect” on memory. “In general, we remember the photographs,” Dr. Dr. Lucinda Blumenfeld, another subject, went even further.

5 Creativity Myths you Need to Stop Believing There’s a letter from an 1815 issue of General Music Journal where Mozart describes his creative process as instantaneous: no struggle or writer’s block. The muse simply showed up and he was ready. The problem? The letter is a fraud. Much like many other myths about creativity, the mystical method described in the letter only serves to accentuate what we already mistakenly feel about creativity: that it is some sort of magical ability that certain people have and others don’t. Today, with creativity becoming a commodity that so many people trade on, it’s more important than ever to have ideas constantly flowing. Not at all. We’ve built up an image of what creativity is that is completely wrong. How often have you heard someone say that creativity is ‘something you’re born with?’ Either you’ve got it or you don’t. But still the myth persists. “But I’m a right-brain thinker! Creativity comes in small steps. Afraid of putting in a little hard work? Harvard researcher and psychologist Shelly H.

Exclusive: Monica Lewinsky on the Culture of Humiliation | Vanity Fair She tried public appearances. She tried being reclusive. She tried leaving the country, and she tried finding a job. But the epic humiliation of 1998, when her affair with Bill Clinton became an all-consuming story, has followed Monica Lewinsky every day. ‘How does it feel to be America’s premier blow-job queen?” It was early 2001. Hundreds of people in the audience, mostly students, were staring at me, many with their mouths agape, wondering if I would dare to answer this question. The main reason I had agreed to participate in the program was not to rehash or revise the story line of Interngate but to try to shift the focus to meaningful issues. How naïve I was. There were gasps and sputters from the audience. “It’s hurtful and it’s insulting,” I said, attempting to gather my wits. The audience laughed. I looked straight at the smirking guy who had asked the question. True, this wasn’t the first time I’d been stigmatized for my affair with Bill Clinton. Yes, we’re all connected now.

Orion Magazine | Deep Intellect ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from New Hampshire to the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England Aquarium, hoping to touch an alternate reality. I came to meet Athena, the aquarium’s forty-pound, five-foot-long, two-and-a-half-year-old giant Pacific octopus. For me, it was a momentous occasion. Many times I have stood mesmerized by an aquarium tank, wondering, as I stared into the horizontal pupils of an octopus’s large, prominent eyes, if she was staring back at me — and if so, what was she thinking? Not long ago, a question like this would have seemed foolish, if not crazy. Only recently have scientists accorded chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of having a mind. I had always longed to meet an octopus. The moment the lid was off, we reached for each other. When I stroked her soft head with my fingertips, she changed color beneath my touch, her ruby-flecked skin going white and smooth. Why such sorrow?

Why People "Fly from Facts" “There was a scientific study that showed vaccines cause autism.” “Actually, the researcher in that study lost his medical license, and overwhelming research since then has shown no link between vaccines and autism.” “Well, regardless, it’s still my personal right as a parent to make decisions for my child.” Does that exchange sound familiar: a debate that starts with testable factual statements, but then, when the truth becomes inconvenient, the person takes a flight from facts. As public debate rages about issues like immunization, Obamacare, and same-sex marriage, many people try to use science to bolster their arguments. Our new research, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs. We presented 174 American participants who supported or opposed same-sex marriage with (supposed) scientific facts that supported or disputed their position.

Living the dream: teach yourself how to dream lucidly In this mini documentary by Top Shelf, Katie Drummond goes in search of teaching yourself the skill of lucid dreaming, and shows you the way to becoming an ace at the ultimate virtual reality from the comfort of your own bed! Did you know that one of our very own science heroes practiced (and wrote about) lucid dreaming? We’re talking about none other than the physicist Richard Feynman! When I first picked up his book “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” one of the many entertaining and inspiring adventures that Feynman relates to his readers is the chapter that he devotes to his experiences with lucid dreaming. “I noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected.

The Second Psychedelic Revolution, Part Six: A New Earth? Part 1 proposed that a new, ‘2nd Psychedelic Revolution’ utilizing different entheogens (both natural and synthetic), electronic music, and the World Wide Web, has emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of the original 1960’s LSD-and-Rock Revolution. Parts 2,3, and 4 examined the contributions of contemporary psychedelic culture’s principal architects; the chemist Alexander Shulgin (1925-2014), the mycologist Terence McKenna (1946-2000), and the visionary artist Alex Grey (1956- ). Part 5 proposed that rather than a 2nd Psychedelic Revolution, with the synthesis and creation of new psychedelic compounds at the beginning of the 20th Century, western culture has in fact entered into the 6th great entheogenic era in human history. In this, the final installment of the series, I ask ‘Why?’ (Find Parts 1-5 here.) UnMask, by Jennifer Espenscheid Psychedelics and the Self ‘You are the World, and your relationship with another is Society’. Entheon Hall, by Alex Grey Alpha Centauri, by Luke Brown –E.

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