Cybercriminals are dropping DarkGate malware via AnyDesk, researchers reveal.

The campaign, which targeted 20,000 Microsoft Azure accounts, has been disrupted.

Robert Smithson createdSpiral Jetty on Utah's Great Salt Lake in 1970. Dia Art Foundation / Nancy Holt / Holt/Smithson FoundationJutting from the shoreline of Utahs Great Salt Lake is an unusually long, curling limb of land. Titled Spiral Jetty, the large-scale swirl was constructed in 1970 by artist Robert Smithson, who was known for manipulating earth into abstract shapes. Now, the land artwork has been added to the National Park ServicesNational Register of Historic Places.We are delighted that Spiral Jetty has received this important recognition, which will help us spread awareness of the iconic artwork and advocate for its long-term preservation, saysJessica Morgan, a director of Dia Art Foundation, which owns Spiral Jetty, in astatement. In the 54 years that Spiral Jetty has existed, it has been both submerged by the Great Salt Lake and stood far from the lakefront, bearing witness to the changing landscape around it.Dia acquired Spiral Jetty in 1999, when Smithsons widow, Nancy Holt, donated the artwork. Over the years, the foundation has collaborated with theGreat Salt Lake Institute, theHolt/Smithson Foundation and theUtah Museum of Fine Arts to care for it. The Land art is made of black basalt rock. Holt/Smithson FoundationSpiral Jetty is one of the worlds most famous works ofland art: art thats created directly in and from a landscape, either by sculpting earth or building with natural materials. The medium became popular during the 1960s and 70s within theconceptual art movement, which prioritized artists ideas, plans and intentions over the artworks themselves.Smithson, born in New Jersey in 1938, rose up in the global art scene during the 1950s, making paintings, drawings and sculptures that often referenced science fiction, poetry and pop culture. He was also inspired by physical spacesespecially those in his home state. In the 1970s, Smithson began making earthworks, the art pieces that would define his career. Per theHolt/Smithson Foundation, he was committed to sculpture that would collaborate with entropyembracing the chaos of a natural space.I was always interested in origins and primordial beginningsyou know, the archetypal nature of things, Smithson once said, per the foundation. As an artist, it is sort of interesting to take on the persona of a geological agent, where man actually becomes part of that process rather than overcoming it. Robert Smithson (1938-1973) createdSpiral Jettynear the end of his life. Holt/Smithson FoundationIn 1970, Smithson traveled to the Great Salt Lakes Rozel Point peninsula, northwest of Salt Lake City, and arranged 6,000 tons of local black basalt rock into a 1,500-foot-long, protruding line, which reaches into the lake and curls counterclockwise into a spiral.I think it was just unimaginable to so many artists that had been working in their studios and creating works that you hang on a wall, or smaller sculptures, Kelly Kivland, a former Dia curator, told the Deseret News Court Mann in 2020.Smithson created other significant pieces of land art in the years that followed. In 1971, he builtBroken Circle/Spiral Hill: a rounded jetty and canal on the edge of a sand quarry in the Netherlands. In 1973, he startedAmarillo Ramp, a sloping semi-circle of raised earth in Texas, but he died in a plane crash before finishing it. Smithsons widow and two other artists completed it for him. Smithson'sBroken Circle/Spiral Hill is located at a sand quarry in Emmen, the Netherlands. Gerardus / Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsSpiral Jetty remains Smithsons best-known work. Over the years, it has drawn attention to the Great Salt Lakes natural features, like its otherworldly pinkcolor and ever-shifting water level. In 2017, Spiral Jetty was named the state of Utahsofficial artwork.As Dia curator Jordan Carter tellsArtnets Vittoria Benzine, the artworks new designation as a nationally registered historic place will not come with any physical signage or plaques. We hope the enhanced recognition will dissuade other interventions in the landscape that negatively impact the environment and the lakes ecology, he says.Beloved in Utah and far beyond, this artwork has come to mean many things to many people, says Morgan in the statement. We are proud to continue our work caring and advocating for Spiral Jetty to preserve it for generations to come.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: American History, Art, Art History, Artists, Arts, Cultural Preservation, Nature, Outdoor Travel, Painters, Travel, Water

The wasp species known as the "velvet ant" has a pattern of white and ultra-black coloration. shrike2 via iNaturalist under CC BY-NC 4.0The Caatinga is a stark, dry shrubland in northeastern Brazil. In Tupi, an Indigenous language, its name means white forest, describing the arid grasses, thorny trees and pale, stony soil that dominate the landscape.But scurrying across this land of extreme whiteness is, paradoxically, one of the darkest animals on Earth: a species of velvet ant known as Traumatomutilla bifurca.With its furry exterior and distinct black and white markings, the insect looks like magic, Vinicius Lopez, an entomologist at the Federal University of Tringulo Mineiro in Brazil, tells Katrina Miller of the New York Times.As it happens, velvet ants, known colloquially to Brazilians as sorcerer ants, are actually a type of wasp, but the females, which are wingless, give the creatures their name. And, according to a study led by Lopez and published earlier this month in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, velvet ants have another claim to fame: The black parts of females possess a rare coloration known as ultra-black, so dark that it absorbs nearly all visible light.We have never seen this kind of color in the dragonflies or bees or beetles we have analyzed, Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira, another entomologist at the Federal University of Tringulo Mineiro who collaborated with Lopez on the paper, explains to the New York Times.Unlike melanin, which makes animals like crows and black panthers appear dark, the researchers note that ultra-black is not just a matter of pigmentation. Instead, they write in the paper, these colors are formed in nature by a sophisticated arrangement of microstructures alongside dark pigments.In the female velvet ant, these microstructures include overlapping stacks of lamellae, or layers of tissue, beneath dense, hair-like setae. Combined with a black pigment, these features in the insects exoskeleton minimize reflectance and enhance light absorption, the researchers write. Visible and ultraviolet light gets trapped in the layers, and less than 1 percent is able to escape.Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, lauds the researchers use of multiple electron microscopy techniques to try to see what the whole story was, according to the New York Times. The mating display of a male superb bird of paradise shows off its ultra-black feathers. (A) Edwin Scholes / (B) Tim Laman via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0This type of research is cutting-edge, because ultra-black coloration is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Traumatomutilla bifurca is the first known ultra-black member of the Hymenoptera order, which includes more than 150,000 species of ants, wasps, sawflies and bees. Along with some butterflies, it is one of the only ultra-black insects.Though this trait is rare, the advantages for animals that do possess it are wide-ranging. For peacock spiders and birds of paradise, the profound darkness may accentuate their vivid other colors and help them stand out to potential mates, according to a 2019 study. For deep-sea fish like the fangtooth, ultra-black serves as an evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak, Courtney Sexton wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2020. And for vipers, a 2013 study suggests the intense coloration can help the snakes regulate their temperature.In the case of female velvet ants, the little available evidence on their species mating preferences suggests the ultra-black hue doesnt have to do with attracting males. And while it might play a role in protecting the wasps from ultraviolet light, the team couldnt prove that.Instead, the researchers propose that the wasps ultra-black is related to protection from predators. Velvet ants are already known as indestructible insects because of their painful stings, venom and hard exoskeletons, according to the paper. Their dark color could serve as a warning to would-be predators.Some researchers see these natural advantages of ultra-black in animals as a blueprint for man-made materials. Ultra-black butterfly wings, for instance, hint at the possibility of extremely lightweight and absorptive material that could be used to harness solar energy, hone precision telescopes to detect the faintest light traveling across space or produce a camouflage coating for military vessels.The blackest black should be a constantly improving number, Brian Wardle, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, told Natalie Angier of the New York Times in 2019.What makes ultra-black butterflies so black?Watch on Scientists are also on the hunt for the counterpart of ultra-black:ultra-white, a color that reflects up to 97.9 percent of sunlight. As climate change elevates temperatures across the globe, engineered ultra-white paint could help cool airplanes, cars and spacecraft without relying on air conditioning.Still, many questions remain for researchers about how and why these extreme patterns of coloration occur in the wild. For instance, why do male velvet ants not have ultra-black pigmentation and instead reflect light at a much higher rate than females? What environmental pressures are responsible for dividing velvet ant evolution along these lines?But, as Guillermo-Ferreira points out to the New York Times, these waspy denizens of the Caatinga are rich with research potential. Every time we study velvet ants, they give us some new, interesting result.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Biology, biomimicry, Engineering, Innovations, Insects, Inventions, Nature, Technology, Wasps, Weird Animals

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Moon Beast Productions secures $4.5m in seed fundingThe studio says the funding round marks "a critical moment"Image credit: Moon Beast Productions News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 19, 2024 Moon Beast Productions has secured $4.5m in seed funding.The independent game studio - founded by Phil Shenk, Peter Hu, and Erich Schaefer - was supported by "a network of notable angel investors" that includes Gaingels, Cohh Carnage, and Mark Pincus. 1AM Gaming led the round, joined by 1UP Ventures, The Mini Fund, Overwolf, and Versus Ventures.The studio said the funding round marked "a critical moment," enabling it to expand whilst "maintaining the lean, focused approach that has defined it since inception." It will also support Moon Beast's development of an action RPG that "challenges conventional design paradigms.""In today's challenging funding environment, we're incredibly fortunate to have investors who understand our vision," said Peter Hu, president and co-founder. "Our approach has always been about working smarter, not just harder. We're building reusable, data-driven systems that allow us to iterate rapidly and create more with less.""We've never been content to follow the crowd," added Phil Shenk, CEO and co-founder. "Throughout our careers, we've always pushed to redefine genres. We were there at the start, helping to invent ARPGs with Diablo and Diablo II. In the years following, from Hellgate: London to Torchlight, and Marvel Heroes Online, we've consistently sought to expand what players expect from the genre."Moon Beast expects to share more about its upcoming project in "early 2025."

Activision confirms it has replaced Call of Duty Black Ops 6 voice actors during SAG-AFTRA strike"We respect the personal choice of these performers," Activision saidImage credit: Treyarch / Activision News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Dec. 19, 2024 Activision has recast some of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's voice actors amid the SAG-AFTRA strike.After players noted characters William Peck and Samantha Maxis sounded a little different, voice actor Zeke Alton acknowledged that his performance of Peck in the Zombies mode appears to have been replaced. He has also been removed from the game's credits.Unlike film and TV actors, who can strike even if a project is in-production, a clause known as Side Letter Six permits work on interactive media to continue. And whilst members on daily contracts may choose to strike in solidarity, given Black Ops 6 was in development before July 2024 Activision is permitted to replace striking actors."To the best of my knowledge, that performance is not [mine]," Alton told Game Developer. "It's their character, and they can do with it what they please."My only concern is for my brand as a performer. Fans of the game have reached out to me because the lack of crediting [of the replacement actor] implies that it may still be me, which unfairly represents my abilities as a performer."I have no issue with Activision's actions with a character and IP that they own," Alton added. "I absolutely adore the creative team and the opportunity I've had to collaborate with them in the past. I sincerely hope to collaborate in the future once all performers are protected against generative AI abuse."In a statement to press, Activision said: "We respect the personal choice of these performers. Out of respect for all parties, we won't add new commentary about the ongoing negotiations with SAG-AFTRA. We look forward to a mutually beneficial outcome as soon as possible."Whilst the strike goes on for some, SAG-AFTRA announced a new agreement for video game localisation mid-November. The Independent Interactive Localisation Agreement will cover localisation of projects scripted and released in a foreign language and then dubbed into English. As part of the agreement, performers will receive AI protections and employment opportunities.

Image: HBO The first season of Dune: Prophecy is about to wrap up but theres more on the way. Ahead of the finale on December 22nd, HBO has confirmed than the prequel series has been renewed for a second season.The show premiered in November, and takes place 10,000 years before the events of the Dune movies from Denis Villeneuve. It stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as two Harkonnen sisters who form the galaxy-defining sect known as the Bene Gesserit.If you just know the Harkonnens from the movies, theyre these monstrous villains who are very clearly the bad guys, showrunner Alison Schapker told The Verge about the series. But thats not where they started off, and this kind of story gave us a chance to complicate that understanding and dig into what made them that way.Theres no word on when to expect season 2, but its also not the only Dune project on the way: Dune 3 is in the works, as is a survival game set on Arrakkis.