Epidemiology breakthroughs aren’t our usual subject matter here at TNW, but the opportunity to finally publish some actual good news about the COVID-19 pandemic was just too much for us to pass up. The team, which included researchers from Oxford, and the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, developed the vaccine, called chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), by genetically-engineering a different virus known to cause the common cold in chimpanzees. While ChAdOx1nCoV-19 isn’t the first or only COVID-19 vaccine in clinical trials (there’s actually about 140 in various stages of research right now), it might be the most promising....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. Zoom is having a security reckoning. Let’s face it. Zoom is everywhere. The video conferencing software has skyrocketed in use in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, growing to more than 200 million daily active users in just a span of three months. The latest is that one of Zoom’s shareholders is filing a class-action suit against the company for “overstating its privacy standards and failing to disclose that its service was not end-to-end encrypted....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. COVID-19 accelerated the use of Zoom for video calling. But so did the security problems and revelations that it didn’t actually support end-to-end encryption (E2EE), misleading users about the security of the platform. In the aftermath, it promised to invest in E2EE on its platform, and acquired encrypted chat service Keybase in an attempt to secure its communications....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. Google Project Zero‘s elite team of bug hunters needs no introduction. The white-hat hackers have been adept at finding flaws in Android and iOS, but this impressive new disclosure from Ian Beer beats everything that came before it. Beer spent six months of his lockdown single-handedly devising a method to remotely hijack iPhones, showing that with just a Raspberry Pi, off-the-shelf Wi-Fi adaptors that cost a total of $100, and a few lines of code, it’s possible for a remote attacker to gain complete control of any iPhone in the vicinity....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. We’re starting off with some good news for a change! California’s landmark Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is now in effect — although, it won’t actually kick in for another six months. CCPA is somewhat similar to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU. What the law effectively means is that it allows anyone in California to now ask that companies don’t sell their data, and also request a copy of the data that companies have on them and hopefully even delete them....

That’s the kind of forward thinking knowledge a qualified IT networking pro needs as well. Whether you’re new to networking or a seasoned pro looking for a refresher, The Ultimate Cisco Networking Expert Certification Training Bundle can turn you into a Cisco master for just $31, over 90 percent off the regular price from TNW Deals. The eight-course collection introduces basic networking concepts, the specifics of working with Cisco hardware and networking software as well as how to care for and successfully maintain a Cisco-driven network, regardless of size....

Today’s businesses are all about cutting costs and boosting efficiency, and while it might sound simple on paper, doing so is much trickier. That’s why startups and Fortune 500s alike employ project managers to do the heavy lifting for them—and fork out top-dollar salaries as a result. Unlike other jobs pulling in top-tier salaries, you don’t need to spend years in school to join the in-demand ranks of project managers, you just need to hunker down and master the appropriate tools of the trade....

Thanks to the convergence of several trends and changes across different markets and industries, automation is becoming a critical factor in the success of businesses and products. Advances in artificial intelligence, in parallel with the accelerating digitization of all aspects of business, are creating plenty of opportunities to automate operations, reduce waste, and increase efficiency. From managing your Information Technology (IT) bill to finding bottlenecks in your business processes and taking control of your own network operations, here are three areas where companies can gain from applying automation....

The company said it’s working with the government to bring the game back to India, once it’s compliant with local laws. In a statement, PUBG Corp. said that it is taking away the PUBG MOBILE franchise from Tencent in the country: The government banned PUBG MOBILE Nordic Map: Livik and PUBG MOBILE Lite over privacy and security concerns — similar to what TikTok, Helo, and 57 other apps faced in July....

The Snapdragon 888 is the company’s current flagship. It was announced in December and will be the processor found in most top-performing Android phones this year, such as the Galaxy S21. It has 25% faster CPU performance and 35% faster GPU performance than last year’s Snapdragon 865 (and bit less over the marginally improved 865 Plus). It’s the company’s biggest performance boost year-over-year since 2017’s 835. Normally, the company has a slew of mid-tier and budget processors to occupy the rest of its lineup....

We can study these extinct animals from their bones – but also from the preserved footprints they left in mud. But these footprints are often hard to find – and while they can tell us about the presence of an animal, they don’t always tell us much about the animal itself, like how it walked, for instance. The giant ground sloth was unusual in that it walked on the outside of its feet....

In case you missed it, the never-released prototype console was sold at Heritage Auctions this month. With a winning bid of $300,000 ($360,000 with the buyer’s premium), the Nintendo PlayStation is now one of the most expensive gaming items ever sold — possibly the most expensive, though there’s no definitive list anywhere. For comparison, the only item of comparable value I can think of was a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros that sold last year for $100,150....

What can I say, I’m a cool guy. I’m so cool I spent the entire Friday pompously bragging to my colleagues I’m reviewing a yet-to-be-launched headset over the weekend. “What kind of a headset,” nobody asked. “I’m really sorry, I signed an NDA, I can’t talk about it. No, I really can’t.” But now that the cat’s out of the bag, I no longer have to keep mum about it — and I’ve got lots to say....

The product is called Reddit Talk, and it lets you voice chat with other folks on your subreddit in real-time. However, it’s currently in the test phase and you have to register your interest through a waitlist if you want to try it out. The functionality of the feature is akin to Clubhouse in terms of creating rooms and joining them with Twitter Spaces-inspired emoji reactions thrown in. Reddit’s product manager, Peter Yang, noted that this product is different because the platform’s pseudo-anonymous nature allows users to have more authentic conversations....

A new report from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via MacRumors) suggests Apple is planning a big leap in image quality with some of its devices next year, although it still won’t adopt OLED on the iPad and MacBook. Instead, Kuo says the company is opting for Mini LED on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and 16-inch Macbook Pro. This technology that brings some of the benefits of OLED to LCD panels without the prohibitive cost or potential burn-in associated with the former....

There’s a rising tide of gamers who both know about and disapprove of formerly-accepted industry practices. For example, “crunch” — or the practice of overworking game developers in the final weeks of development time in order to get the game out by the deadline — has been a part of game development for years, but only recently became the widespread controversy it currently is. Rockstar was the center of a massive labor controversy last year, shortly before the release of Red Dead Redemption II....

Although first proposed in the 1960s, the serotonin theory of depression started to be widely promoted by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s in association with its efforts to market a new range of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. The idea was also endorsed by official institutions such as the American Psychiatric Association, which still tells the public that “differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression”....

Up front: Remember when you learned that you could use lemon juice and water to write invisible messages on paper? Well, this is a lot like that. The researchers then take the invisible ink and use it to write a code that only an AI can break. Per the team’s paper: Background: Technology holds the promise of ‘unbreakable’ encryption in the form of quantum communications or some other non-reproducible form of data carriage....

Researchers from security firm F-Secure have figured out how to use AI to trick Microsoft Outlook’s text-based CAPTCHA into thinking a human solved it. In a blog post, the security experts explained the biggest challenge wasn’t correctly labelling the text, but mimicking the keystrokes a human would make when submitting the answer. Considering their past experience in cracking text-based CAPTCHAs, the researchers were confident the mechanism protecting Microsoft’s Outlook Web App portal wouldn’t stand a chance....

The Mario Maker series does what it says on the box: it lets you create and share Mario levels, and play those that other people made and shared. You use most of the objects and items from the classic platform games, and you can switch between the Mario 1, 3, World, and New tilesets (or styles as Nintendo calls them) on the fly. Super Mario Maker 2 adds the tileset from Super Mario 3D World, which comes with its own sets of objects and power-ups....