The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the remote testing company Proctorio on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson. The Verge reports: The lawsuit is intended to "quash a campaign of harassment designed to undermine important concerns" about the company's remote test-proctoring software, according to the EFF. The lawsuit intends to address the company's behavior toward Johnson in September of last year. After Johnson found out that he'd need to use the software for two of his classes, Johnson dug into the source code of Proctorio's Chrome extension and made a lengthy Twitter thread criticizing its practices -- including links to excerpts of the source code, which he'd posted on Pastebin. Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen sent Johnson a direct message on Twitter requesting that he remove the code from Pastebin, according to screenshots viewed by The Verge. After Johnson refused, Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice, and three of the tweets were removed. (They were reinstated after TechCrunch reported on the controversy.)

In its lawsuit, the EFF is arguing that Johnson made fair use of Proctorio's code and that the company's takedown "interfered with Johnson's First Amendment right." "Copyright holders should be held liable when they falsely accuse their critics of copyright infringement, especially when the goal is plainly to intimidate and undermine them," said EFF Staff Attorney Cara Gagliano in a statement. "I'm doing this to stand up against student surveillance, as well as abuses of copyright law," Johnson told The Verge. "This isn't the first, and won't be the last time a company abuses copyright law to try and make criticism more difficult. If nobody calls out this abuse of power now, it'll just keep happening."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: A fascinating new study from a team of US researchers has used machine learning techniques to develop algorithms that can analyze naturalistic driving data and detect mild cognitive impairment and dementia in a driver. The work is still in the preliminary stages, however, the researchers claim it could be possible in the future to detect early signs of dementia using either a smartphone app or devices incorporated into car software systems. The research utilized data from a novel long-term study called LongROAD (The Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers), which tracked nearly 3,000 older drivers for up to four years, offering a large longitudinal dataset.

Over the course of the LongROAD study, 33 subjects were diagnosed with MCI and 31 with dementia. A series of machine learning models were trained on the LongROAD data, tasked with detecting MCI and dementia from driving behaviors. "Based on variables derived from the naturalistic driving data and basic demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity and education level, we could predict mild cognitive impairment and dementia with 88 percent accuracy," says Sharon Di, lead author on the new study. Although age was the number one factor for detecting MCI or dementia, a number of driving variables closely followed. These include, "the percentage of trips traveled within 15 miles (24 km) of home ... the length of trips starting and ending at home, minutes per trip, and number of hard braking events with deceleration rates 0.35 g." Using driving variables alone, the models could still predict those MCI or dementia drivers with 66 percent accuracy. The new study was published in the journal Geriatrics.

Japan is opening its first gym for esports in Tokyo, a space for both amateur and experienced gamers to train and get professional coaching, according to Japan Today. From a report: The competitive gaming space, which is set to open on May 19 and will be known as "Esports Gym," will include a lounge and gaming PCs outfitted with some of Japan's most popular games, including Valorant and League of Legends. Gamers can book a three-hour time slot at one of the PCs for about $13 or opt for a monthly membership starting at $50, which allows daily access to the gaming PCs as well as optional coaching sessions that can be added on for about $25 an hour. Esports Gym, which is jointly operated by private transit company Tokyo Metro and esports education company Gecipe, will welcome experienced gamers as well as those who are new to gaming PCs or don't understand the game rules, according to the website.

The Boston Globe published some thoughts from a professor of political science at Fordham University: A bipartisan group of senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, are backing a bill called the College Transparency Act. It would require public and private colleges around the country to report how many students enroll, transfer, drop out, and complete various programs. Then that information would be combined with inputs from other federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, so that the "labor market outcomes" of former students could be tracked.

In other words, the act would create a system that publicizes how much money students make, on average, after going through particular colleges, programs, and majors. According to Senator Whitehouse, "Choosing a college is a big decision, and yet too often families can't get the information to make apples-to-apples comparisons of the costs and benefits of attending different schools." The purpose of the College Transparency Act is to allow people to make these comparisons. Its other sponsors are Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Unfortunately, the College Transparency Act could reshape how students, families, policymakers, and the public view the purposes of higher education.

To be sure, privileged students will still be able to pursue their academic passions, but many students will be channeled into paths with a higher payoff upon graduation. Many students who might want to explore geography, philosophy, or the fine arts will be advised to stay away from such majors that do not appear lucrative... The system would publicize only some outputs of college — especially how much money students make — and not, for instance, surveys of graduates' satisfaction. This would have the effect of nudging students and families into viewing college as being primarily about making money...

If students learn to read complex texts and write research papers, practice public speaking, find a mentor, and make friends, then they often do well after college regardless of major.

Boris Johnson's personal mobile phone number has been freely available on the internet for the past 15 years, it has been revealed. The BBC reports: It was published in a think tank press release in 2006, but never deleted -- and appears to be the one the PM uses. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was "a serious situation [that] carries a security risk." But Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that, as far as he was aware, "all security protocols have been followed." It appears the number has been switched off but Downing Street still has not confirmed if the number will now be changed.

The think tank press release with the PM's number on it was related to Mr Johnson's then-job as a shadow higher education minister - and MP for Henley - and invited journalists to contact him for further comment. Two years later, he successfully stood to become mayor of London. Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts warned hostile states with "sophisticated cyber capabilities" or criminal gangs could now have access to Mr Johnson's digits. The crossbench peer also told BBC Radio 4's Today program that he would have thought changing your mobile number when becoming PM would be an "elementary security precaution these days."

Trade groups representing AT&T, Verizon and other telecom companies are opening fire on a new law requiring them to provide discounted internet service to low-income households in New York. From a report: New York's first-in-the-nation law could be adopted by other states at a time when the White House has signaled it wants to reduce broadband prices for all Americans. Driving the news: Trade associations USTelecom, CTIA, the New York State Telecommunications Association and others representing smaller companies filed a lawsuit Friday against New York's new law requiring providers in the state to offer broadband service for $15 a month to low-income households. New York estimates that 7 million people in 2.7 million households will qualify for the discounted service. "This program -- the first of its kind in the nation -- will ensure that no New Yorker will have to forego having reliable home internet service and no child's education will have to suffer due to their economic situation," Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement when he signed the legislation in April.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: "More major corporations are abandoning the requirement of a four-year degree. At Apple, half of their employees don't have college degrees," reports NBC News. They also note that JP Morgan is "actively recruiting" people without a college degree for programs that train them for careers in areas like operations or consumer banking (showing one woman who ultimately got a $70,000-a-year position in Human Resources).

NBC warns that "this path is untested. Many jobs still require a Bachelor's degree, and on average, a college graduate makes 67% more than a high school graduate." But they add that "as the cost of college rises, some say the returns aren't keeping pace" — cutting to their interview with Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff. "To make a lot of money, you just need to get the skills. You don't need to go to college!" he tells them enthusiastically. "You can do it all online!"

NBC provides the example of an immigrant from Colombia who went through free online training with Salesforce that led to a job. And earlier in the segment Benioff admits that "I only went to college because my parents made me go to college...!

"Everybody thinks that if you don't have a college degree you can't be successful in the United States, and it's not true... You can create incredible value for the world without a college degree."

theodp writes: Code.org on Wednesday announced that dozens of industry, education, and state leaders are supporting a new Code.org AP CS A Java-focused curriculum for high school students, which will be available at no charge to all schools starting in the 2022-23 school year. "We are proud to have the following companies on our Industry Advisory Panel: Adobe, Amazon, Atlassian, Disney, Epic Games, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Instagram, Microsoft, Riot Games, Roblox, Snapchat, Spotify, Tesla, Unity, Vista Equity," Code.org tweeted. "A big thank you to the following colleges and universities on our Education Advisory Panel: @BowieState @UBuffalo @CarnegieMellon @Harvard @montgomerycoll @NCWIT @thisisUIC @Illinois_Alma @unlv @UNOmaha @SpelmanCollege @UT_Dallas @UW @westminsterpa." In an accompanying Medium post, Code.org explained: "This work is all made possible through a generous [$15 million] gift from Amazon Future Engineer."

Despite having the support of some of the world's richest corporations and individuals whose goals the nonprofit helps advance, recently-released SBA records show that Code.org applied for and was approved for its second forgivable Federal Paycheck Protection Program loan in the amount of $1.9 million dollars on March 25, a month after Amazon and Code.org issued a joint press release announcing their $15 million plan to work on a new AP CS A curriculum and other initiatives. Amazon certainly has ambitious plans for influencing K-12 CS education. Last week, the company announced a 2021 goal to "reach 1.6 million underrepresented students globally through Amazon Future Engineer with real world-inspired virtual and hands-on computer science project learning." And an Amazon Future Engineer job listing for a U.S. Country Senior Manager notes the job will require working "with national and local educational non-profits and governmental entities such as BootUp, Project STEM, Code.org, and the US and State Departments of Education," as well as positioning Amazon "as subject matter experts on US computer science education, as well as the local education systems of our headquarter regions."

The New York Times reports: Whether college admissions have changed for the long haul remains unclear. But early data suggests that many elite universities have admitted a higher proportion of traditionally underrepresented students this year — Black, Hispanic and those who were from lower-income communities or were the first generation in their families to go to college, or some combination — than ever before... The easing of the reliance on standardized tests, which critics say often work to the advantage of more educated and affluent families who can afford tutors and test prep, was most likely the most important factor in encouraging minority applicants.

Only 46 percent of applications this year came from students who reported a test score, down from 77 percent last year, according to Common App, the not-for-profit organization that offers the application used by more than 900 schools...

Schools had been dropping the testing requirement for years, but during the pandemic a wave of 650 schools joined in. In most cases, a student with good scores could still submit them and have them considered; a student who had good grades and recommendations but fell short on test scores could leave them out. Most schools have announced that they will continue the test-optional experiment next year, as the normal rhythm of the school year is still roiled by the pandemic.

It is unclear whether the shift foretells a permanent change in how students are selected.

This week Bloomberg profiled "one of the most spectacular failures in modern financial history: No individual has lost so much money so quickly."

Meet Bill Hwang, founder of Archegos Capital Management: Starting in 2013, he parlayed more than $200 million left over from his shuttered hedge fund into a mind-boggling fortune by betting on stocks. Had he folded his hand in early March and cashed in, Hwang, 57, would have stood out among the world's billionaires... At its peak, Hwang's wealth briefly eclipsed $30 billion...

Hwang used swaps, a type of derivative that gives an investor exposure to the gains or losses in an underlying asset without owning it directly. This concealed both his identity and the size of his positions. Even the firms that financed his investments couldn't see the big picture. That's why on Friday, March 26, when investors around the world learned that a company called Archegos had defaulted on loans used to build a staggering $100 billion portfolio, the first question was, "Who on earth is Bill Hwang?"

Because he was using borrowed money and levering up his bets fivefold, Hwang's collapse left a trail of destruction. Banks dumped his holdings, savaging stock prices. Credit Suisse Group AG, one of Hwang's lenders, lost $4.7 billion; several top executives, including the head of investment banking, have been forced out. Nomura Holdings Inc. faces a loss of about $2 billion... On March 25, when Hwang's financiers were finally able to compare notes, it became clear that his trading strategy was strikingly simple. Archegos appears to have plowed most of the money it borrowed into a handful of stocks — ViacomCBS, GSX Techedu, and Shopify among them. This was no arbitrage on collateralized bundles of obscure financial contracts. Hwang invested the Tiger way, using deep fundamental analysis to find promising stocks, and he built a highly concentrated portfolio. The denizens of Reddit's WallStreetBets day trading on Robinhood can do almost the same thing, riding such popular themes as cord cutting, virtual education, and online shopping. Only no brokerage will extend them anywhere near the amount of leverage billionaires get...

People familiar with Archegos say the firm steadily ramped up its leverage. Initially that meant about "2x," or $1 million borrowed for every $1 million of capital. By late March the leverage was 5x or more. Raising money to invest in streaming made sense. Or so it seemed in the ViacomCBS C-suite. Instead, the stock tanked 9% on Tuesday and 23% on Wednesday. Hwang's bets suddenly went haywire, jeopardizing his swap agreements...

Hwang, say people with swaps experience, likely had borrowed roughly $85 million for every $20 million, investing $100 and setting aside $5 to post margin as needed. But the massive portfolio had cratered so quickly that its losses blew through that small buffer as well as his capital.
"The best thing anyone can say about the Archegos collapse is that it didn't spark a market meltdown," the article concludes. "The worst thing is that it was an entirely preventable disaster made possible by Hwang's lenders..."

"Regulators are to blame, too. As Congress was told at hearings following the GameStop Corp. debacle in January, there's not enough transparency in the stock market."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The New York Times tells the story of Hungarian-born Dr. Kariko, whose father was a butcher and who growing up had never met a scientist — but knew they wanted to be one. Despite earning a Ph.D. at Hungary's University of Szeged and working as a postdoctoral fellow at its Biological Research Center, Kariko never found a permanent position after moving to the U.S., "instead clinging to the fringes of academia."

Now 66 years old, Dr. Kariko is suddenly being hailed as "one of the heroes of Covid-19 vaccine development," after spending an entire career focused on mRNA, "convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines."
From the article: For many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year... She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded. "When your idea is against the conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is very hard to break out," said Dr. David Langer, a neurosurgeon who has worked with Dr. Kariko... Kariko's husband, Bela Francia, manager of an apartment complex, once calculated that her endless workdays meant she was earning about a dollar an hour.
The Times also describes a formative experience in 1989 with cardiologist Elliot Barnathan: One fateful day, the two scientists hovered over a dot-matrix printer in a narrow room at the end of a long hall. A gamma counter, needed to track the radioactive molecule, was attached to a printer. It began to spew data.

Their detector had found new proteins produced by cells that were never supposed to make them — suggesting that mRNA could be used to direct any cell to make any protein, at will.

"I felt like a god," Dr. Kariko recalled.
Yet Kariko was eventually left without a lab or funds for research, until a chance meeting at a photocopying machine led to a partnership with Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania: "We both started writing grants," Dr. Weissman said. "We didn't get most of them. People were not interested in mRNA. The people who reviewed the grants said mRNA will not be a good therapeutic, so don't bother.'" Leading scientific journals rejected their work. When the research finally was published, in Immunity, it got little attention... "We talked to pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists. No one cared," Dr. Weissman said. "We were screaming a lot, but no one would listen."

Eventually, though, two biotech companies took notice of the work: Moderna, in the United States, and BioNTech, in Germany. Pfizer partnered with BioNTech, and the two now help fund Dr. Weissman's lab.

NBC News reports: Facebook said Wednesday that hackers based in China used the social media platform as part of a campaign to hack and spy on diasporas of Uyghurs, the minority group the country has been accused of putting in "re-education" camps. The hackers used Facebook to identify, track and send malicious links to Uyghur activists, dissidents and journalists living in the U.S., Australia, Canada and Turkey, among other countries, Facebook said.

Facebook stopped short of directly blaming the Chinese government for sponsoring the campaign. "We can see geographic attribution based on the activity, but we can't actually prove who's behind the operation," the company's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a phone call with journalists. But Facebook did say the hackers are part of the same operation that the cybersecurity company Volexity cited in 2019 as being affiliated with the Chinese government. It published research that revealed that the country's hackers had gone to extreme measures to hack and spy on Uyghurs. They used sophisticated, previously unknown tools to load malicious code into multiple Uyghur news sites so that they would hack and spy on nearly any smartphone that visited.

"Who else would have the resources, the time and effort to go after these people? If you told me it was Iceland I'd be pretty surprised," Volexity CEO Steven Adair said in a phone call Wednesday...

Facebook's head of cyberespionage, Mike Dvilyanski, said on the call that while it had found and removed fewer than 500 accounts that sent malicious links to Uyghurs, it was "an extremely targeted operation... We were seeing them create personas on Facebook that are designed to look like journalists that focus on issues critical to the Uyghur community, that are designed to look like activists that might be standing up for the Uyghur community, designed to look like members of the community," Dvilyanski said. "Then use that as a way to trick them into clicking into these links to expose their devices."
The article also cites "multiple investigative reports" showing China "maintains re-education camps that detain an estimated 1 million Uyghurs...

"With omnipresent cameras, face recognition technology and intense collection of residents' data, it's one of the most heavily surveilled areas in the world."

CNBC wrote recently, "Artificial intelligence will create so much wealth that every adult in the United States could be paid $13,500 per year from its windfall as soon as 10 years from now. So says Sam Altman, co-founder and president of San Francisco-headquartered, artificial intelligence-focused nonprofit OpenAI..." [I]f the government collects and redistributes the wealth that AI will generate, AI's exponential productivity gains could "make the society of the future much less divisive and enable everyone to participate in its gains," Altman says.... As the pace of development accelerates, AI "will create phenomenal wealth" but at the same time the price of labor "will fall towards zero," Altman said. "It sounds utopian, but it's something technology can deliver (and in some cases already has). Imagine a world where, for decades, everything — housing, education, food, clothing, etc. — became half as expensive every two years."

In this future, where wealth will come from companies and land, governments should tax capital, not labor, and those taxes should be distributed to citizens, Altman said. In his post, Altman proposed an American Equity Fund that taxes sufficiently large companies 2.5% of their market value in the form of company shares, and 2.5% of the value of all land in the form of dollars... All citizens over 18 would receive payment in both dollars and company shares.... "As people's individual assets rise in tandem with the country's, they have a literal stake in seeing their country do well," Altman said. With this system in mind, in 10 years, the 250 million adults living in America would get $13,500 per year, Altman said... "That dividend could be much higher if AI accelerates growth, but even if it's not, $13,500 will have much greater purchasing power than it does now because technology will have greatly reduced the cost of goods and services," Altman wrote. "And that effective purchasing power will go up dramatically every year."

Elon Musk has hinted at a similar future. "There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," Musk told CNBC in 2016. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen." Musk is also a co-founder of OpenAI but left the board in 2018 citing the fact that Tesla was becoming an AI company as it developed self-driving capabilities. Such a system is "both pro-business and pro-people," Altman said, and would therefore bring together "a remarkably broad constituency."

"The changes coming are unstoppable," Altman said. "If we embrace them and plan for them, we can use them to create a much fairer, happier, and more prosperous society. The future can be almost unimaginably great."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Newshub: Victoria University of Wellington has accidentally deleted all files stored on its desktop computers affecting a "significant" number of staff members -- as well as some students. A spokesperson for the University confirmed to Newshub on Thursday that an unexpected issue wiped all files saved on the desktops. "The University's Digital Solutions team continues to work with all affected staff and students to recover access to files and in many cases the issues have been resolved," they said. "There are however, some affected staff and students who have not been able to recover access to files."

The aim of the data wipe was to clear inactive users' data by getting rid of profiles of students who no longer studied, reports student magazine Critic. Critic spoke to one Masters student who had heard of PHD students losing an entire year's worth of data. The university spokesperson said they apologized for the inconvenience caused and is investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Police have warned students in the UK against using the Sci-Hub website, which they say lets users "illegally access" millions of scientific research papers. Specifically, the police say the website could "pose a threat to their personal information and data." The BBC reports: The police are concerned that users of the "Russia-based website" could have information taken and misused online. The Sci-Hub says its website "removes all barriers" to science. It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be "knowledge to all." It describes itself as "the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers."

But Max Bruce, the City of London Police's cyber protection officer, has urged universities to block the website on their network because of the "threat posed by Sci-Hub to both the university and its students." "If you're tricked into revealing your log-in credentials, whether it's through the use of fake emails or malware, we know that Sci-Hub will then use those details to compromise your university's computer network in order to steal research papers," he said. "Students should be aware that accessing such websites is illegal, as it hosts stolen intellectual property," said Det Insp Kevin Ives. He warned that visitors to the website, whose Twitter account has been suspended, are "very vulnerable to having their credentials stolen."

Startups hope there's no turning back for online learning, even as more students return to the classroom. From a report: After a tough year of toggling between remote and in-person schooling, many students, teachers and their families feel burned out from pandemic learning. But companies that market digital learning tools to schools are enjoying a coronavirus windfall. Venture and equity financing for education technology start-ups has more than doubled, surging to $12.58 billion worldwide last year from $4.81 billion in 2019, according to a report from CB Insights, a firm that tracks start-ups and venture capital. During the same period, the number of laptops and tablets shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States nearly doubled to 26.7 million, from 14 million, according to data from Futuresource Consulting, a market research company in Britain. "We've seen a real explosion in demand," said Michael Boreham, a senior market analyst at Futuresource. "It's been a massive, massive sea change out of necessity."

But as more districts reopen for in-person instruction, the billions of dollars that schools and venture capitalists have sunk into education technology are about to get tested. Some remote learning services, like videoconferencing, may see their student audiences plummet. "There's definitely going to be a shakeout over the next year," said Matthew Gross, the chief executive of Newsela, a popular reading lesson app for schools. "I've been calling it 'The Great Ed Tech Crunch.'" Yet even if the ed-tech market contracts, industry executives say there is no turning back. The pandemic has accelerated the spread of laptops and learning apps in schools, they say, normalizing digital education tools for millions of teachers, students and their families. "This has sped the adoption of technology in education by easily five to 10 years," said Michael Chasen, a veteran ed-tech entrepreneur who in 1997 co-founded Blackboard, now one of the largest learning management systems for schools and colleges. "You can't train hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students in online education and not expect there to be profound effects."

Too many young people around the world are excluded from accessing the web, and getting them online should be a priority for the post-Covid era, Tim Berners-Lee has said. From a report: In a letter published to mark the 32nd birthday of the web, its founder says the opportunity "to reimagine our world and create something better" in the aftermath of Covid-19 must be channelled to getting internet access to the third of people aged between 15 and 24 who are offline. "The influence of young people is felt across their communities and online networks," Berners-Lee writes. "But today we're seeing just a fraction of what's possible. Because while we talk about a generation of 'digital natives,' far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas.

"A third of young people have no internet access at all. Many more lack the data, devices and reliable connection they need to make the most of the web. In fact, only the top third of under-25s have a home internet connection, according to Unicef, leaving 2.2 billion young people without the stable access they need to learn online, which has helped so many others continue their education during the pandemic." Even though young people are more likely than the typical global citizen to have internet access -- roughly half the world is online, but the figure rises to 70% of people aged between 15 and 25 -- Berners-Lee argues that aiming to connect every young person in the world to the web would reap dividends. He also says doing so would be relatively cheap compared with the cost of many government programmes launched over the last 12 months. He estimates that an investment of $428bn over the next decade would provide everyone with a quality broadband connection.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: At least 30,000 organizations across the United States -- including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments -- have over the past few days been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit that's focused on stealing email from victim organizations, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The espionage group is exploiting four newly-discovered flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server email software, and has seeded hundreds of thousands of victim organizations worldwide with tools that give the attackers total, remote control over affected systems.

In each incident, the intruders have left behind a "web shell," an easy-to-use, password-protected hacking tool that can be accessed over the Internet from any browser that gives the attackers administrative access to the victim's computer servers. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two cybersecurity experts who've briefed U.S. national security advisors on the attack told KrebsOnSecurity the Chinese hacking group thought to be responsible has seized control over "hundreds of thousands" of Microsoft Exchange Servers worldwide -- with each victim system representing approximately one organization that uses Exchange to process email. Microsoft said the Exchange flaws are being targeted by a previously unidentified Chinese hacking crew it dubbed "Hafnium," and said the group had been conducting targeted attacks on email systems used by a range of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs. Microsoft's initial advisory about the Exchange flaws credited Reston, Va. based Volexity for reporting the vulnerabilities. "We've worked on dozens of cases so far where web shells were put on the victim system back on Feb. 28 [before Microsoft announced its patches], all the way up to today," Volexity President Steven Adair said. "Even if you patched the same day Microsoft published its patches, there's still a high chance there is a web shell on your server. The truth is, if you're running Exchange and you haven't patched this yet, there's a very high chance that your organization is already compromised."

A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement: "The best protection is to apply updates as soon as possible across all impacted systems. We continue to help customers by providing additional investigation and mitigation guidance. Impacted customers should contact our support teams for additional help and resources."

Students are using HDMI cables and hidden phones to cheat on exams administered through invasive proctoring software like Proctorio. From a report: "I've taken online exams cheating and not cheating and they are just about as stressful anyways so fuck it, am I right?" That's what one French student who had cheated on multiple remote exams administered through the popular digital proctoring software Proctorio told Motherboard in a voice message. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to rage around the globe and no quick end to remote learning in sight, many students have found themselves taking exams under the watch of proctoring software like Proctorio, which surveils students through algorithmic systems that, among other things, detect eye movements, track keyboard strokes, and monitor audio inputs. Universities sometimes shell out thousands of dollars per exam for Proctorio, which helps at least give the impression that academic integrity is being maintained during remote learning. But for some students using Proctorio and other online proctoring services is invasive and anxiety-inducing, subjecting them and their surroundings to unwarranted surveillance that is difficult to refuse without their studies being negatively affected.

Yet, despite the fact that popular online proctoring platforms like Proctorio claim that they use "state-of-the-art technology" and "ensure the total learning integrity of every assessment, every time," students are cheating on their exams anyway. Motherboard spoke to 10 university students from various countries who claimed to have cheated on exams where Proctorio was in place. While their motivations and techniques varied, there was one common denominator: none of them got caught. The relative ease with which the students cheated, and the fact that each student could point to multiple peers who had done the same (one American student estimated that 90 percent of her class had cheated), raises the question of how effective online proctoring software like Proctorio actually is -- and whether it is worth the hefty price tag or the invasion of privacy. "With Proctorio obviously you need to show yourself and your room with the computer's webcam," one Dutch student who had helped a friend cheat on a multiple choice exam told Motherboard. "My friend put a phone on a stand on his keyboard so it couldn't be seen during the room and desk sweep. Then we FaceTimed with me at the other end," she continued. "The phone was at a slant so he could see me and I could see the exam. Then I would just hold up a flashcard with a, b, c, or d." Another French student used a 10-meter HDMI cable that ran from his laptop to a TV screen in another room that mirrored his screen. His friend would then look up the exam answers and send it via WhatsApp to his phone, which was also on the keyboard and out of sight of the webcam. "Worked perfectly and got a good grade," he said.

France's ranks of amateur astronomers have been urged to help find an apricot-size meteorite that fell to Earth last weekend in the south-west of the country. From a report: The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux. The site is part of the Vigie-Ciel (Sky Watch) project of around 100 cameras in the Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network (FRIPON), which aims to detect and collect the 10 or so meteorites that fall on France each year.

"Meteorites are relics of the solar system's creation, with the benefit of never being exposed to the elements," said Mickael Wilmart of the A Ciel Ouvert (Open Sky) astronomy education association that operates the Mauraux observatory. "A fresh meteorite like this, which fell just a few days ago, hasn't been altered by the Earth's environment and therefore contains very precious information for scientists," he said.