Meanwhile in space: moon activity and satellites watching satellite launches . An artist's rendering of what the first stars might have looked like in the Universe. N.R.Fuller, National Science Foundation A cold start When we look through telescopes, we can see into the past.
Techbros may find themselves in tax hell after the IRS prevailed in a fight with the largest US cryptocurrency exchange in a fight over user data, Coindesk reports. The revenuers had initially sought a database of all users, but ended up settling for data on about 13,000 who have made more than $20,000 in exchanges during any year between 2013 and 2015. The court order means data from those years will now be handed over to the IRS, which could then audit individuals who didn't report income hidden in cryptocurrency.
"If you have concerns about this, we encourage you to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly," Coinbase wrote in an email sent to affected customers.
According to court filings, the IRS started pushing after three people who were targeted in investigations "ultimately confessed to using digital currency in a bid to avoid scrutiny." At least one of them was a man who had used offshore accounts previously, and thought that cryptocurrencies would be safe.
Customers who say they paid their taxes include Bitcoin evangelist Andreas M. Antonopoulos, who says he saw it coming.
Though it's not a household name, Coinbase is huge. In fact, it now has more clients than Charles Schwab.
The Republican's regressive new tax law eliminated a potential loophole in crypto capital gains, meaning Bitcoin investors will have to pay taxes going forward. And if they don't, the IRS seems poised to find out about it.
This could have a huge effect. As The Verge reported: "Coinbase boasts nearly 6 million customers, but according to a government filing, fewer than 1,000 US citizens have reported cryptocurrency holdings on their taxes."
You can self-report that "mistake" on your taxes here.
Facebook pulled a virtual reality gun game from a major US conservative political gathering Friday, saying the demo was a mistake given the recent deadly school shooting in Florida.
"We removed the demo and regret failing to do so at the start," Facebook virtual reality vice president Hugo Barra said in a tweet sent from his verified account.
"We got this wrong."
Facebook-owned Oculus shows off virtual reality games routinely at conferences, and the shooting content was among standard offerings, including action games with violence, according to Barra.
"These shouldn't have been present, especially in light of recent events and out of respect for the victims and their families," Barra said in the tweet.
The Facebook booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington gave attendees opportunities to try Oculus experiences. A video snippet of virtual, first-person gun wielding was posted on Twitter.
Outrage erupted, with people questioning the California-based social network's morals and whether money mattered more than morals to the platform.
Thousands of Republicans converged on CPAC, where they gather each year to celebrate their causes -- and, in 2018, the populist movement that swept Trump into office one year ago.
But it was impossible to ignore the ever-present tragedy of rampaging gun violence, which has roiled American political discourse and put gun rights advocates and opponents under a hot spotlight.
Florida's governor meanwhile announced that a police officer will be stationed at every public school in the state as part of a plan to improve security following last week's deadly high school shooting.
And President Donald Trump repeated his call for arming some of America's teachers and claimed the controversial proposal was increasingly drawing support.
Marat Mindiyarov was a 21st-century Russian sleeper agent that is realistically nothing more than a troll with an American accent.
A report from The Washington Post, detailed a classified NSA report as well as a profile of the Internet Research Agency Russian troll factory that was recently indicted by the U.S. Justice Department. When he was hired, part of the job requirements were that they had to "seamlessly insinuate themselves into the American political conversation." But he had written about Hillary Clinton, saying she had a strong chance of winning. He was told he didn't pass the test, though it wasn't clear if that was due to his Clinton story or his English.
So, instead of becoming a professional troll, he was relegated to commenting on articles posted by fake news sites. He quit after just three months, saying it was like something out of George Orwell's 1984.
“Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line,” Mindiyarov said.
A classified NSA report given to The Post on the Internet Research Agency named Russian President Vladimir Putin's "chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin as the one leading the effort. It alleged that Putin's top aides had to approve, if not oversee, the entire operation. At least 80 employees worked with Trump supporters to organize events and discredit Clinton both personally and politically. They also actively attempted to suppress turnout among key Democratic demographics like African Americans, special counsel Robert Mueller included in the indictment.
The trolls worked diligently to sound like Americans and generate propaganda that sounded as if it was coming from like-minded people.
“The first order of business was not to be unmasked,” said former employee Lyudmila Savchu. “Their top specialty was to slip political ideas inside a wrapping that was as human as possible.”
Prosecutors have said that the operation dates back to May 2014, prior to Clinton and Trump declaring their candidacies. The time allowed the Russians to master the art of being an American. They were told to pay attention to what issues were drawing more ire among Americans following politics. Trolls were also provided with a list of American holidays, according to prosecutors, and the content posted was to emulate what an American would say on or around those days.
The campaign was run like a normal political organization with data analysis, design teams and a budget for staff, ads and other tools. They were given a guide for how to create graphics or use video to generate maximum impact, The Post said.
The classified report said the Internet Research Agency “clearly sought to identify topics resting on the fault lines of American politics — such as the Second Amendment, same-sex marriage, and the economy — as well as issues often characterized as sensitive or contentious — such as racism and religion — almost certainly to drive a wedge between segments of the U.S. population.”
The "Agency" sorted social media content into major categories such as "govnostrana," which was translated to mean "crap country" or things about the U.S. Other content was "precision strike," surrounding events and "spam."
Mindiyarov was paid $700 a month for a 12-hour shift from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. They would work for two days and then have two days off. They were required to hit specific quotas with comments supplementing Russian-language news. On occasions, the group of staffers would work together for a "group troll," where they'd stage an argument publicly online and someone would pretend to be persuaded by the other.
“Those are the kinds of plays we had to act out,” he said.
While the workers were visiting the United States in 2014, a grassroots activist in Texas told them to concentrate on "purple states" like Colorado, Virginia and Florida. The Russians used ads on social media to generate rallies in New York City in June and July in 2016, but by August they were focusing on those battleground swing states.
They used the Facebook group "Being Patriotic" to get Americans to organize small pro-Trump rallies that gave the illusion that Trump had volunteers all over the state.
Americans that were duped by the Russians argued that the trolls were convincing. "They did not ask the Americans to do or say anything they were not already doing, a sign of how effectively the Russian effort learned to echo Trump’s own campaign themes," The Post explained.
“I was supporting Donald Trump anyway. I didn’t need persuading,” lawyer Max Christiansen said. He volunteered to host an event posted by "Being Patriotic."
The same was true for Sherrie Hyer, who was approached about hosting her own event. She'd been politically active for years in tea party circles and had helped organize a pro-Trump march at her retirement community. She called a number she was given for the organizing group. She wondered if the man helping organize it with her would even attend, but he apologized and said he couldn't. She noted he didn't have an accent at all.
Hyer got 35-40 friends to come out and wave signs for the small rally. They didn't give her contacts or suggest any messaging, Hyer did all the work, including an orange jumpsuit that said "Clinton" on the back. Prosecutors allege that Russians bought similar costumes and paid Americans to wear them at events, but Hyer said she bought her own at Goodwill and wore it to Trump events.
“There was no Russians at my rally. I knew everyone there,” she said. “I would have done it for Trump anyway. There was still a lot of excitement and Russians had no part of that. This wasn’t a trick for me.”
A team of six Israeli researchers on Sunday ended a four-day Mars habitat experiment in Israel's Negev desert where they simulated living conditions on the Red Planet, Israel's Science and Technology Ministry said.
The experiment was held near the isolated Israeli township of Mitzpe Ramon, whose surroundings resemble the Martian environment in its geology, aridity, appearance and desolation, the ministry said.
The participants were investigating various fields relevant to a future Mars mission, including satellite communications, the psychological affects of isolation, radiation measurements and searching for life signs in soil.
Participant Guy Ron, a nuclear physics professor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the project was not only intended to look for new approaches in designing a future mission to the Red Planet but to increase public interest.
"D-Mars is half about the research, and the other half is about the outreach. A major part of this project is getting public interest and getting students interested in space," he said.
The "D-Mars" project was being held in Israel for the first time in cooperation with the Israel Space Agency. It is one of a number of Mars simulation projects taking place worldwide.
(Reporting by Rami Amichay; Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Edmund Blair)
Facebook Inc will start using postcards sent by U.S. mail later this year to verify the identities and location of people who want to purchase U.S. election-related advertising on its site, a senior company executive said on Saturday.
The postcard verification is Facebook's latest effort to respond to criticism from lawmakers, security experts and election integrity watchdog groups that it and other social media companies failed to detect and later responded slowly to Russia's use of their platforms to spread divisive political content, including disinformation, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Facebook revealed the plans a day after U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller unsealed an indictment accusing 13 Russians and three Russian companies of conducting a criminal and espionage conspiracy using social media to interfere in the election by boosting Republican Donald Trump and denigrating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The process of using postcards containing a specific code will be required for advertising that mentions a specific candidate running for a federal office, Katie Harbath, Facebook's global director of policy programs, said. The requirement will not apply to issue-based political ads, she said.
"If you run an ad mentioning a candidate, we are going to mail you a postcard and you will have to use that code to prove you are in the United States," Harbath said at a weekend conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State, where executives from Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google also spoke.
"It won't solve everything," Harbath said in a brief interview with Reuters following her remarks.
But sending codes through old-fashioned mail was the most effective method the tech company could come up with to prevent Russians and other bad actors from purchasing ads while posing as someone else, Harbath said.
Foreign nationals are prohibited under U.S. law from contributing or donating money or anything else of value or making any expenditure in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States.
The indictment released on Friday laid out in specific detail how prosecutors believe Russians adopted false online personas to push divisive political content, including ads. The Russians also allegedly posed as Americans to stage political rallies in the United States and persuade real Americans to engage in pro-Trump activities.
Harbath did not say when Facebook would begin relying on postcard codes, but said they would be in use before this year's mid-term congressional elections in November.
A Facebook spokesman declined to provide further details on the plan, but referred to a company blog post from last October announcing plans to roll out more robust identification verification measures for political advertisers.
That blog post did not specify what the verification process would entail.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Damon Darlin and Leslie Adler)
Previously undetected malware directed at users of the desktop version of the messaging app Telegram has been discovered by the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, Kaspersky said on Tuesday.
The malicious software has been used to target Russian users since March 2017, Kaspersky said in a statement. It was designed to trick users of Telegram's desktop computer software into enlisting their machines to mine cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash.
Telegram ranks as the world's ninth most popular mobile messaging app and expects to hit 200 million users during the first quarter of 2018, according to a recent white paper by the company. Only its desktop computer version was targeted.
The malware exploited a feature that allows its messaging software to recognize Arabic and Hebrew language text, which is read right to left.
By using a hidden character in the feature that reversed the order of the characters, the attackers could rename a file, triggering the installation of the malware. Examples of the malicious software were only found in Russia, Kaspersky said.
Kaspersky Lab said clues found in the code indicate connections to Russian cybercriminals. It said such messaging app vulnerabilities are not unique to Telegram, noting that last month it had found a way for hackers to steal WhatsApp messages.
Kaspersky said it had reported the vulnerability to Telegram in October and the issue appears to have been fixed.
In a statement posted on an a Telegram technical channel, the company said the attack was a form of social engineering that only worked if a user was tricked into downloading an image file. It was fixed by Telegram in November, the post said.
"This is not a real vulnerability on Telegram Desktop, no one can remotely take control of your computer or Telegram unless you open a (malicious) file," Telegram said.
Telegram is preparing the biggest initial coin offering, in a private sale of tokens, which could be traded as an alternative currency, similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum, an investment proposal seen by Reuters showed. The offering could raise up to $2 billion, according to media reports.
(Reporting by Eric Auchard; Writing by Eric Auchard and Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Larry King)
Thousands of websites, including ones run by U.S. and UK government agencies, were infected for several hours on Sunday with code that causes web browsers to secretly mine digital currencies, technology news site The Register reported.
More than 4,200 sites were infected with a malicious version of a widely used tool known as Browsealoud from British software maker Texthelp, which reads out webpages for people with vision problems, according to The Register.
The news comes amid a surge in cyber attacks using software that forces infected computers to mine crypto currencies on behalf of hackers. The prevalence of these schemes has increased in recent months as the volume of trading in bitcoin and other crypto currencies has surged.
The tainted version of Browsealoud caused inserted software for mining the digital currency Monero to run on computers that visited infected sites, generating money for the hackers behind the attack, The Register said.
Representatives of the U.S. and British law enforcement agencies and Texthelp could not immediately be reached for comment.
Texthelp told The Register that it had shut down the operation by disabling Browsealoud while its engineering team investigated.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Pyeongchang Olympics organizers were looking into a disruption of non-critical systems on the day of the opening ceremony but could not yet confirm if it was a cyberattack, Games spokesman Sung Baik-you said on Saturday.
The Winter Olympics opened with a spectacular ceremony on Friday, attended by several heads of state who witnessed the joint march of North and South Korean athletes, as Games systems played up.
The ceremony was also attended by North Korean ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, as well as U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
Some local media reported system problems, including the Games website and some television sets, were due to a cyberattack but Sung said it was still too early to determine whether hackers had attempted to damage them.
"There were some issues that affected some of our non-critical systems last night for a few hours," Sung told reporters, without detailing what the issues specifically were.
"We apologize for the inconvenience caused. It has not disrupted any event or had any effect on safety and security for athletes or spectators."
Sung said security experts were currently investigating the incident.
"Experts are watching to ensure and maintain any systems at expected service levels. We are currently investigating the cause of the issue. At this time we cannot confirm (a cyberattack)," he added.
"We are investigating the cause and we will share more information. All competitions are running as planned."
It was also not clear whether failure to deploy drones as part of the programme during the two-hour opening ceremony was in any way related to the system problems.
The International Olympic Committee said pre-recorded footage of the drones was used instead.
"Due to impromptu logistical changes it (drone deployment) did not proceed," the IOC spokesman said with elaborating further.
The Winter Games, staged only 80km (50 miles) from the North Korean border, saw the two Koreas, who are technically still at war since a 1953 armistice, march together at the opening ceremony for the first time since 2006.
South Korea has been using the Pyeongchang Games to break the ice with the reclusive North, which has been trading nuclear threats with the United States recently.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
President Donald Trump's national security team is looking at options to counter China that include the U.S. government building a super-fast 5G wireless network, a senior administration official said on Sunday.
The official, confirming the gist of a report from Axios.com, said the option was being debated at a low level in the administration and was six to eight months away from being considered by the president himself.
The 5G network concept is aimed at addressing what officials see as China's threat to U.S. cyber security and economic security.
"We want to build a network so the Chinese can’t listen to your calls," the senior official told Reuters. "We have to have a secure network that doesn’t allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don't take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business."
Government development of a wireless network would likely raise alarms in the private telecommunications industry. Another option includes having a 5G network built by a consortium or wireless carriers, the official said.
"We want to build a secure 5G network and we have to work with industry to figure out the best way to do it," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Axios published documents that it said were from a presentation from a National Security Council official about the 5G issue. If the government built the 5G network, it would rent access to carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile , Axios said.
A looming concern laid out in the presentation is China's growing presence in the manufacture and operation of wireless networks. A concerted government push could help the U.S. compete on that front, according to the presentation.
A 5G network is expected to offer significantly faster speeds, more capacity and shorter response times, which could be utilized for new technologies ranging from self-driving cars to remote surgeries. Telecom companies and their suppliers consider it to be a multibillion-dollar revenue opportunity.
Tensions over China's role in wireless networks have already reached Capitol Hill.
U.S. lawmakers are urging AT&T, the No. 2 wireless carrier, to cut commercial ties to Chinese phone maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] and oppose plans by telecom operator China Mobile Ltd <0941.HK> to enter the U.S. market because of national security concerns, two congressional aides told Reuters earlier this month.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Pete Schroeder; Editing by Peter Cooney and Cynthia Osterman)
New York's chief prosecutor will investigate a company that, according to a New York Times article published on Saturday, sold millions of fake followers on social media accounts to celebrities and others wanting to goose their online presence.
Eric Schneiderman, the state's attorney general, said the company, Devumi, would be undermining the internet's use as a tool for transparency and democracy if, as the Times reported, it was selling so-called bots using identities stolen from real social media users.
"Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," Schneiderman wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "The growing prevalence of bots means that real voices are too often drowned out in our public conversation. Those who can pay the most for followers can buy their way to apparent influence."
Devumi advertises itself on its website as selling online followers for various social media platforms, including Pinterest and YouTube. It promises Twitter users they can buy up to 500,000 additional followers from the company, which describes itself as "committed to the goal of increasing your social media presence and credibility with guaranteed results."
The company, which did not respond to questions on Saturday, told the Times it did not sell fake users or steal real people's identities.
The Times reported that it bought followers from Devumi and said many of them were evidently fake. It interviewed some of the real social media users whose profile pictures and biographical details had apparently been stolen.
The Times said famous actors, television presenters and entrepreneurs were among those who bought Devumi followers.
Twitter is working to stop Devumi and similar companies, it said in a statement on Saturday. "The tactics used by Devumi on our platform and others as described by today's NYT article violate our policies and are unacceptable to us," the statement said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen)
Transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning, jailed for leaking classified information, is seeking election in the US state of Maryland, a document seen on Saturday says. The Federal Election ...
A former mobile phone industry executive was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday after he was found guilty of defrauding cellphone customers by charging them millions of dollars for unwanted text messages.
Fraser Thompson, 36, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan, prosecutors announced. A lawyer for Thompson, a former senior vice president at text message marketing company Mobile Messenger, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thompson was convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering in September, according to court filings.
Prosecutors said Thompson engaged in a scheme to sign up hundreds of thousands of cellphone customers for paid text messaging services without their consent. The customers were subsequently forced to pay more than $100 million for unsolicited text messages that included trivia, horoscopes and celebrity gossip, according to the prosecutors.
They said the scheme was headed by Darcy Wedd, Mobile Messenger's former chief executive, who was found guilty by a jury in December but has not yet been sentenced. [L1N1OF2AH]
"They ripped off everyday cellphone users, $10 a month, netting over $100 million in illegal profits, of which Thompson personally received over $1.5 million," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.
In addition to his prison term, Thompson was ordered to forfeit $1.5 million in fraud proceeds.
Seven other people charged in the scheme have pleaded guilty, according to prosecutors. One of them, Mobile Messenger employee Francis Assifuah, was sentenced to 33 months in prison in September.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson; Editing by Tom Brown)
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