Now I'm scared the bookie-man is going to get me.

Powering spacecraft with solar energy may not seem like a challenge, given how intense the Sun’s light can feel on Earth. Spacecraft near the Earth use large solar panels to harness the Sun for the electricity needed to run their communications systems and science instruments.

However, the farther into space you go, the weaker the Sun’s light becomes and the less useful it is for powering systems with solar panels. Even in the inner solar system, spacecraft such as lunar or Mars rovers need alternative power sources.

Trend Micro uncovered an eight-year-long spying campaign exploiting a Windows vulnerability involving malicious .LNK shortcut files, which attackers padded with whitespace to conceal commands. Despite being reported to Microsoft in 2023, the company considers it a UI issue rather than a security risk and has not prioritized a fix. The Register reports:

The attack method is low-tech but effective, relying on malicious .LNK shortcut files rigged with commands to download malware. While appearing to point to legitimate files or executables, these shortcuts quietly include extra instructions to fetch or unpack and attempt to run malicious payloads. Ordinarily, the shortcut's target and command-line arguments would be clearly visible in Windows, making suspicious commands easy to spot. But Trend's Zero Day Initiative said it observed North Korea-backed crews padding out the command-line arguments with megabytes of whitespace, burying the actual commands deep out of sight in the user interface.

Trend reported this to Microsoft in September last year and estimates that it has been used since 2017. It said it had found nearly 1,000 tampered .LNK files in circulation but estimates the actual number of attacks could have been higher. "This is one of many bugs that the attackers are using, but this is one that is not patched and that's why we reported it as a zero day," Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at the Zero Day Initiative, told The Register. "We told Microsoft but they consider it a UI issue, not a security issue. So it doesn't meet their bar for servicing as a security update, but it might be fixed in a later OS version, or something along those lines."

After poring over malicious .LNK samples, the security shop said it found the vast majority of these files were from state-sponsored attackers (around 70 percent), used for espionage or information theft, with another 20 percent going after financial gain. Among the state-sponsored crews, 46 percent of attacks came from North Korea, while Russia, Iran, and China each accounted for around 18 percent of the activity.

File this under "Fuck this!". I am all about supporting local journalism, but I would cancel my subscription immediately if my local paper tried something like this. I'd also write-in letting them know exactly why I was canceling.

Italian newspaper Il Foglio claims to have published the world's first entirely AI-generated edition as part of a month-long experiment to explore AI's impact on journalism. The special four-page supplement, available in print and online, features AI-written articles, headlines, and reader letters. The only thing the human journalists provided were prompts. The Guardian reports:

The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the "paradox of Italian Trumpians" and how they rail against "cancel culture" yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, "celebrate" when "their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic." The front page also features a column headlined "Putin, the 10 betrayals," with the article highlighting "20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed" by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

In a rare upbeat story about the Italian economy, another article points to the latest report from Istat, the national statistics agency, on the redistribution of income, which shows the country "is changing, and not for the worse" with salary increases for about 750,000 workers being among the positive effects of income tax reforms. On page 2 is a story about "situationships" and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings.

The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans "useless" in the future. "AI is a great innovation, but it doesn't yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong," reads the AI-generated response.

I hate myself for making this, now you have to hate me too.

1.4.32

Note: Noticed a bug on mobile for the updated private message changes. Had to re-release and re-run the build actions. Give it about 15 minutes from the time of this edit.

This is purely a hotfix release to add some security/privacy in the face of the "Nicole" spam wave; attempting to address de-anonymization concerns related to inline media in private messages.

Instance admins on 0.19.6 and above can now manage the blocked URL list in the admin panel.

Changes

• Updated JS client to 0.19.9 version to add support for newer API features.

Bugfixes

• Disable reply button in Inbox if creator is banned

Admin Panel

• Renamed "Slur Filters" section to "Filters"
• [0.19.6+] Can now edit blocked URLs in the Admin->Filters section.

Private Messages

Inline images are now disabled by default in private messages. If an embed media item (image, video, or audio) is detected in the DM content, a toggle action will appear above the message where you can opt to load the inline media if you trust the source of the DM (similar to how Thunderbird and other email clients treat inline images if you have them disabled).

Docker Tags

• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:1.4.32
• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:v1.4.32
• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:latest

Granted, it was just a little off the top each time as I'm trying to encourage growth, but I usually don't do my first mow until a bit into April. Bonus is that I shouldn't have to bag the first mow this year.