Bots Now Dominate the Web, and Thats a ProblemBy John P. Mello Jr.February 4, 2025 5:00 AM PT ADVERTISEMENTQuality Leads That Turn Into DealsFull-service marketing programs from TechNewsWorld deliver sales-ready leads. Segment by geography, industry, company size, job title, and more. Get Started Now. Nearly half the traffic on the internet is generated by automated entities called bots, and a large portion of them pose threats to consumers and businesses on the web.[B]ots can help in creating phishing scams by gaining users trust and exploiting it for scammers. These scams can have serious implications for the victim, some of which include financial loss, identity theft, and the spread of malware, Christoph C. Cemper, founder of AIPRM, an AI prompt engineering and management company, in Wilmington, Del., said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld.Unfortunately, this is not the only security threat posed by bots, he continued. They can also damage brand reputations, especially for brands and businesses with popular social media profiles and high engagement rates. By associating a brand with fraudulent and unethical practices, bots can tarnish a brands reputation and reduce consumer loyalty.According to the Imperva 2024 Bad Bot Report, bad bot traffic levels have risen for the fifth consecutive year, indicating an alarming trend. It noted the increase is partly driven by the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) and large learning models (LLMs).In 2023, bad bots accounted for 32% of all internet traffic a 1.8% increase from 2022, the report explained. The portion of good bot traffic also increased, albeit slightly less significantly, from 17.3% of all internet traffic in 2022 to 17.6% in 2023. Combined, 49.6% of all internet traffic in 2023 wasnt human, as human traffic levels decreased to 50.4% of all traffic.Good bots help index the web for search engines, automate cybersecurity monitoring, and assist customer service through chatbots, explained James McQuiggan, a security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, a security awareness training provider in Clearwater, Fla.They assist with detecting vulnerabilities, improving IT workflows, and streamlining procedures online, he told TechNewsWorld. The trick is knowing whats valuable automation and whats nefarious activity.Ticket Scalping at ScaleAutomation and success are driving the growth trends for botnet traffic, explained Thomas Richards, network and red team practice director at Black Duck Software, an applications security company in Burlington, Mass.Being able to scale up allows malicious actors to achieve their goals, he told TechNewsWorld. AI is having an impact by allowing these malicious actors to act more human and automate coding and other tasks. Google, for example, has revealed that Gemini has been used to create malicious things.We see this in other everyday experiences as well, he continued, like the struggle in recent years to get concert tickets to popular events. Scalpers find ways to create users or use compromised accounts to buy tickets faster than a human ever could. They make money by reselling the tickets at a much higher price.Its easy and profitable to deploy automated attacks, added Stephen Kowski, field CTO at SlashNext, a computer and network security company in Pleasanton, Calif. Criminals are using sophisticated tools to bypass traditional security measures, he told TechNewsWorld. AI-powered systems make bots more convincing and harder to detect, enabling them to mimic human behavior better and adapt to defensive measures.The combination of readily available AI tools and the increasing value of stolen data creates perfect conditions for even more advanced bot attacks in the future, he said.Why Bad Bots Are a Serious ThreatDavid Brauchler, technical director and head of AI and ML security at the NCC Group, a global cybersecurity consultancy, expects non-human internet traffic to continue to grow.As more devices become internet-connected, SaaS platforms add interconnected functionality, and new vulnerable devices enter the scene, bot-related traffic has had the opportunity to continue increasing its share of network bandwidth, he told TechNewsWorld.Brauchler added that bad bots are capable of causing great harm. Bots have been used to trigger mass outages by overwhelming network resources to deny access to systems and services, he said.With the advent of generative AI, bots can also be used to impersonate realistic user activity on online platforms, increasing spam risk and fraud, he explained. They can also scan for and exploit security vulnerabilities in computer systems.He contended that the biggest risk from AI is the proliferation of spam. Theres no strong technical solution to identifying and blocking this type of content online, he explained. Users have taken to calling this phenomenon AI slop, and it risks drowning out the signal of legitimate online interactions in the noise of artificial content.He cautioned, however, that the industry should be very careful when it considers the best solution to this problem. Many potential remedies can create more harm, especially those that risk attacking online privacy, he said.How to Identify Malicious BotsBrauchler acknowledged that it can be difficult for humans to detect a malicious bot. The overwhelming majority of bots dont operate in any fashion that humans can detect, he said. They contact internet-exposed systems directly, querying for data or interacting with services.The category of bot that most humans are concerned with are autonomous AI agents that can masquerade as humans in an attempt to defraud people online, he continued. Many AI chatbots use predictable speech patterns that users can learn to recognize by interacting with AI text generators online. Similarly, AI-generated imagery has a number of tells that users can learn to look for, including broken patterns, such as hands and clocks being misaligned, edges of objects melting into other objects, and muddled backgrounds, he said.AI voices also have unusual inflections and expressions of tone that users can learn to pick up on, he added.Malicious bots are often used on social media platforms to gain trusted access to individuals or groups. Watch for telltale signs like unusual patterns in friend requests, generic or stolen profile pictures, and accounts that post at inhuman speeds or frequencies, Kowski cautioned.He also advised to be wary of profiles with limited personal information, suspicious engagement patterns, or pushing specific agendas through automated responses.In the enterprise, he continued, real-time behavioral analysis can spot automated actions that dont match natural human patterns, such as impossibly fast clicks or form fills.Threat to BusinessesMalicious bots can be a significant threat to enterprises, noted Ken Dunham, director of the threat research unit at Qualys, a provider of cloud-based IT, security, and compliance solutions in Foster City, Calif.Once amassed by a threat actor, they can be weaponized, he told TechNewsWorld. Bots have incredible resources and capabilities to perform anonymous, distributed, asynchronous attacks against targets of choice, such as brute force credential attacks, distributed denial of service attacks, vulnerability scans, attempted exploitation, and more.Malicious bots can also target login portals, API endpoints, and public-facing systems, which creates risks for organizations as the bad actors probe for weaknesses to find a way to gain access to the internal infrastructure and data, added McQuiggan.Without bot mitigation strategies, companies can be vulnerable to automated threats, he said.To mitigate threats from bad bots, he recommended deploying multi-factor authentication, technological bot detection solutions, and monitoring traffic for anomalies.He also recommended blocking old user agents, utilizing Captchas, and limiting interactions, where possible, to reduce success rates.Through security awareness education and human risk management, an employees knowledge of bot-driven phishing and fraud attempts can ensure a healthy security culture and reduce the risk of a successful bot attack, he advised.John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John.Leave a CommentClick here to cancel reply. Please sign in to post or reply to a comment. New users create a free account.More by John P. Mello Jr.view allMore in Cybersecurity

A Southern Darwin's frog after changing from a tadpole to a froglet. ZSL/Benjamin TapleyShareFollowing a 7,000-mile-long rescue mission for conservation, 33 tiny Southern Darwins frogs (Rhinoderma darwinii) were born at London Zoo. This species is particularly susceptible to the deadly chytrid fungus, currently impacting their native habitat in the forests and glades of Argentina and Chile. Get the Popular Science newsletter Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.In October 2024, conservationists from the Zoological Society of London traveled to a remote part of an island off the coast of Chile. Their mission was to retrieve healthy frogs for safeguarding at the London Zoo. Populations of this species found in the Parque Tantauco forests in southern Chile faced devastation in 2023 with the arrival of chytrid fungus. About 90 percent of monitored populations died within a year due to amphibian chytridiomycosis. This fungal disease affects at least 500 amphibian species and is considered among the most devastating infectious diseases. According to the University of California, Riverside Center for Invasive Species Research, it infects amphibians by latching onto the keratin in the mouthparts of tadpoles and skin of adults.The growth of the fungus eventually causes the skin to slough off and amphibians to lose weight, become lethargic and die. Outbreaks have been reported in parts of Australia, Central and North America, Europe, and Asia since it was first documented in the late 1990s.Infected amphibians lose weight, become lethargic, and die. CREDIT: University of California, Riverside. By working with partners in Chile, were able to safeguard these frogs in their new home at London Zoo, ensuring that this unique species has a fighting chance of recovery, Andres Valenzuela-Sanchez, ZSLs Institute of Zoology research fellow, said in a statement. These frogs are not only vital for the future of their species but also help us better understand how we can combat chytrid fungus and safeguard other amphibians globally.Naturalist Charles Darwin described this tiny, green frog species in 1834, during his voyage on the HMS Beagle. As adults, they weigh less than an ounce and are only about an inch long. They primarily survive on insects and small arthropods. Southern Darwins frogs are known for a unique brooding strategy to protect and rear their tiny tadpoles. The males carry the tadpoles in vocal sacs. Along with seahorses, the frogs are among the few living vertebrates in which dads carry babies in special sacks that make them appear pregnant.The species was described in 1834 by Charles Dawrin. CREDIT: ZSL/Joe Capon. The 33 new froglets were carried and brooded by 11 rescued male frogs. The adult frogs were transported 7,000 miles from Chile to England, while protecting their precious tadpoles until they metamorphosed into froglets.The team hopes that these new froglets will help the population of Southern Darwins frogs grow. The groups efforts are also chronicled in a documentary by wildlife filmmaker Paul Glynn called A Leap of Hope.[ Related: Fungus-infected zombie spiders discovered in Northern Ireland. ]Documenting this journey and the discovery of these incredible frogs has been such a rewarding experience, Ranita de Darwin NGO conservationist Bastin Santana said in a statement. The film captures not only the urgency of conservation workacting quickly to save the worlds most vulnerable speciesbut its a crucial tool to raise awareness of threats amphibians currently face in the wild. Its a story of action and resilience that we hope will inspire others to support amphibian conservation.You can watch A Leap of Hope on YouTube.

A giant impact 3.8 billion years ago sent a curtain of rock flying away from a point near the moons south pole. When that curtain fell, its rocks plunged up to 3.5 kilometers into the lunar surface with energies 130 times greater than the global inventory of nuclear weapons, new calculations show.And thats how a hailstorm of boulders carved out two gargantuan canyons on the moon in less than 10 minutes.They landed in a staccato fashion, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, says planetary geologist David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, who reports the finding February 4 in Nature Communications.The two channels, Vallis Schrdinger and Vallis Planck, extend in straight lines from the 320-kilometer-wide Schrdinger basin marking the initial impact. Until now, the circumstances of the canyons formation have been a mystery. The canyons are 270 and 280 kilometers long and up to 2.7 and 3.5 kilometers deep, respectively.The landscape of the south polar region of the moon is so dramatic, Kring says. If it occurred on Earth, it would be a national or international park. The Grand Canyon, for example winds for a sinuous 446 kilometers and is only 1.9 kilometers deep at its deepest point.A tale of two canyonsA comparison of the width and depth of the Grand Canyon along the Bright Angel hiking trail (top) and Vallis Planck on the moons south pole (bottom). The colors each represent 500 meters of elevation.David A. Kring, Danielle P. Kallenborn, and Gareth S. Collins.The south pole also contains some of the oldest rocks on the moon, perhaps dating back to its formation about 4 billion years ago. Collecting samples from there would allow scientists to test some of the biggest mysteries about the moons history.But theres a potential problem. The rim of the Schrdinger basin is about 125 kilometers from the anticipated landing site of NASAs Artemis astronauts. If the impact that formed the basin splashed rock in all directions, those tantalizing older rocks could have been buried.So Kring, together with geologists Danielle Kallenborn and Gareth Collins of Imperial College London, analyzed spacecraft images of the Schrdinger basin and its canyons to deduce the physics of their formations. In addition to finding that the canyons origin was swift and explosive, the team found that the straight lines converge toward the southern edge of Schrdinger basin, not the middle. That convergence suggests the impacting object came in toward the moon at an angle, and splashed material preferentially northward, away from the Artemis exploration zone.That means that very little of the Schrdinger material is going to be burying this very old terrain, Kring says. We have an opportunity to peer deeper into lunar history and better understand the earliest epoch of the Earth-moon system.

Even as firefighters douse the deadly LA wildfires, a more insidious danger remains. Chemicals from the ashy residue of thousands of burned homes and cars, scorched plastic pipes and even lifesaving fire retardants have blanketed parts of the region.And that may jeopardize the immediate health of people living near burn zones for months to come. Long-term health consequences are also possible.Theres a general misperception that after the flames go out the hazard has gone away, says Joseph Allen, who directs the Harvard Healthy Buildings Program. Wildfires aftermath may expose people to toxic chemicals and harmful particles in the air and water both outside and inside their homes, Allen and other experts warn.The impact from the LA wildfires is still being assessed. But lessons learned from previous wildfires and from lab experiments can point to ways to return air and water supplies back to prefire safety.Hazards linger after wildfiresAsh, soot and other pollutants that settle out of smoke may get stirred up and resuspended by wind and as people move about, Allen says. These emissions are not necessarily captured by the regional air quality monitoring, he says. So even if your citys air looks good or healthy or green, that doesnt necessarily indicate that the air quality is good around your home. Thats especially a problem for those living close to burned areas but may be an issue kilometers away, too.Exactly what may be in the air depends on the fuels that fed the fire. Smoke from burning vegetation is full of fine particles and chemicals, including ozone, sulfur dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other volatile compounds that can be hazardous to health.Increasingly, urban areas are burning too, especially as development snuggles up next to wildlands. So heavy metals are another health worry.Urban wildfires represent a unique challenge because of the types of pollutants that are generated, Allen says.When buildings and automobiles burn, heavy metals, such as lead and copper, get dispersed. Older homes may release asbestos fibers. Plastics and electronics give off noxious chemicals and metals. All of that can contaminate air, soil and water. Ash collected after the Lahaina, Hawaii, fire in 2023 contained high levels of arsenic, lead, antimony, copper and cobalt.Some worry that the chemicals used to fight the fire pose a risk, too. Among the many iconic images of the LA fires were low-flying planes dumping fire retardants that painted neighborhoods red.Fire retardant sprayed over parts of Los Angeles helped protect homes from the flames, but heavy metal contaminants found in some fire retardants might pose health risks. Mario Tama/Getty Images; VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty ImagesThe main component of fire retardant is ammonium phosphate, which is basically just fertilizer, says Daniel McCurry, a water quality scientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The red color comes from iron oxide, which is more or less rust. Gum or other thickeners may be added. Those are not so harmful, he says.Even ammonium phosphate itself is not too concerning from a human health perspective, McCurry says. But he and colleagues found high levels of heavy metals like chromium and cadmium in some commercial fire retardants, including an earlier formulation of the product used in LA, the team reported in October in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.Sponsor MessageBreathing in or coming in contact with large amounts of the form of chromium called chromium six,can cause health problems including skin irritation and damage, and irritation of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Prolonged or repeated exposure may raise the risk of cancer. Short exposure to high levels of cadmium can cause flulike symptoms, including fever, chills and muscle pain, and may damage the lungs. Low levels of exposure over time can lead to kidney, bone and lung diseases.The metals found in the fire retardant McCurry tested may be contaminants from the mine where the company, Perimeter Solution, gets its phosphate, he says. The U.S. Forest Service now uses a newer version of the product that, in standard safety tests, is less toxic to fish. McCurry has not tested the new formulation for heavy metals.Post-wildfire outdoor safety tipsPeople returning to survey damage to their homes should wear heavy boots, sturdy gloves, long pants and long-sleeve shirts, says environmental engineer Andrew Whelton. And they should remove any contaminated clothing before leaving, to prevent spreading ash and chemicals in vehicles and to vulnerable people outside the danger zones, he says.N-95 masks that help shield against respiratory illnesses are good for filtering out particles but wont capture harmful gases that could make people sick. Joseph Allen of Harvard University recommends wearing a P100 respirator with filters that catch organic vapors. A respirator also may protect against inhaling any leftover fire retardant.Lawns and gardens may also need scrutiny. I would probably not grow any edible crops in soil that had [fire retardant] dumped on it, at least until I had a soil test done to make sure that heavy metal levels are below safe thresholds, says water quality scientist Daniel McCurry. Residents in areas in which ash contains heavy metal contaminants from other sources may also want to check for soil safety.The U.S. Forest Service advises washing skin, pets and vegetation that have come in contact with fire retardant. Homes may be stained by the rust in the product dropped from planes, but no clean-up is usually needed for colorless fire retardant applied to the ground or directly to homes, says Jeff Emery, President of Global Fire Safety at Perimeter Solutions, the company that makes the fire retardant.Water can be contaminated after wildfiresDrinking water and water pipes and tanks may be unsafe after a fire, says Andrew Whelton, an environmental engineer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. He has advised many communities about protecting their water supplies after wildfires.Wildfires may contaminate water with noxious chemicals that make it unsafe for drinking and other uses. Boiling just releases chemicals into the air and doesnt make the water safe to drink.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesChemicals may be introduced to drinking water when plastic pipes or other plumbing components burn or get too hot, or when smoke is sucked into the system. Low water pressure and breaks in pipes may also allow microbes to get into the water. Some cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, released when plastics burn, can seep into plastic pipes and gaskets and leach out slowly, making water unsafe for a long time.Levels of chemicals in the water determine whether it is safe for drinking, bathing, laundry or doing dishes. With low levels of contamination in water, we can bathe in it, but we cant drink it, Whelton says. But if its highly polluted, then just having it touch our skin or [smelling it] can make us sick.Water safety precautionsLocal utilities often create water advisory areas and warn residents against drinking, bathing or using the water to do dishes, as have many water districts in the Los Angeles area. If youre outside the advisory areas, I would not worry about the safety of your drinking water. If youre inside the advisory areas, pay attention to what officials say, the testing data, and ask a lot of questions, environmental engineer Andrew Whelton says.Once authorities have lifted water advisories, residents should have their water tested for contaminants by reputable companies. Dont waste time and money testing before then, Whelton says. If water does contain harmful levels chemicals, boiling will not help and can even make things worse. Thats because many of the chemicals in wildfire smoke are volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. And by their design, by their nature, they dont like to be in water, Whelton says. Boiling helps release such chemicals. People can inhale them and get sick. People get dizzy. They get nauseous, sometimes they vomit. They get vertigo, and thats because theyre just overwhelmed by the odor.Wildfires create indoor contaminationRecently scientists have learned that wildfire smoke isnt just a problem for outdoor air quality. It pollutes indoor air and surfaces, too.Some still-standing homes close to or within a burn zone may no longer be habitable, because of a build-up of toxic chemicals, Whelton says. What Ive seen is those homes have to be stripped down their studs and then rebuilt.Thats because homes act like a trap when theyre exposed to a lot of smoke, says Joost de Gouw, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. A lot of ash stays behind inside homes, and also a lot of odors linger for weeks.Take what happened after the Marshall fire on December 30, 2021, in Boulders suburbs. Hurricane-force winds whipped two small grass fires into an inferno that destroyed 1,084 homes and some commercial buildings, including a hotel. It forced the evacuation of more than 50,000 residents and killed two people as it consumed the towns of Louisville and Superior.About 11 hours after the fire started, a snowstorm quenched it and scrubbed the outdoor air clean, says Colleen Reid, a health geographer at the University of Colorado in Boulder. As a result, Reid, de Gouw and colleagues could study how smoke permeated homes near the burn zone without continued contamination from outside air.In a survey about six months after the fire, residents reported that when they returned to their homes, many found that ash had creeped in through doors, windows, and stove and dryer vents. Ash deposited on countertops and tables, beds, furniture, carpets, walls, in vents and was even found in boxes stored in closets in one case.The Marshall Fire burned more than 1,000 homes near Boulder, Colo., in 2021. Neighbors found soot and ash had seeped in around doors, windows and vents.W. D. Dresser, et al./ACS ES&T Air 2025The ash came with health concerns. People who reported that they found ash in their home after the fire were more likely to have headaches, Reid says. And people who lived closer to more burnt structures were more likely to report a strange taste in their mouth and headaches.More than 60 percent of survey respondents said their homes smelled differently a week after the fire, likening the smell to ashtrays, campfires or chemical fires, the researchers reported in ACS ES&T Air in December.People who said their home smelled different when they returned were more likely to report headaches, sore throat, dry cough, itchy or watery eyes and strange taste in their mouths, than people who said that their homes did not have that smell change, Reid says. Those symptoms may be due to volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, but the researchers cant make that link because they couldnt measure the compounds in all the homes, she says.In companion studies, Colorado researchers measured particles and VOCs in homes close to the burn zone, including a heavily smoke-affected home in Superior. The team put a large instrument in that home and measured the chemicals for about a month.VOCs, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, furan, furfural and guaiacol were high 10 days after the fire when the researchers began measuring. Levels of benzene and toluene inside the home rivaled those seen in Los Angeles in the 1990s a period of especially bad air pollution when more than half of the days each year had unhealthy or hazardous air quality.In Colorado, during the fire, these homes were exposed to very high smoke levels, and they acted like a sponge, de Gouw says. They soaked up a lot of these smoke compounds into different materials inside the home. Drywall, furniture, carpeting and other materials were permeated with high levels of VOCs and slowly released the chemicals over time.Concentrations of the VOCs dropped rapidly in the first five days of the study and then declined steadily, returning to outside levels by about five weeks after the fire, the team reported.In other places where fires burn longer and that dont get snow or rain to wash ash and smoke out of the air, it may take longer for indoor and outdoor air quality to return to healthy levels. And not all chemicals dissipate at the same rate, says Delphine Farmer, an indoor and atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. There are some VOCs that clear out within a few days. There are others that are going to be more on the order of months. So just waiting five weeks isnt going to be enough, she says.Air cleaners can help speed recovery, but only while theyre running, tests on fire-impacted houses in Colorado found.The researchers built a Corsi-Rosenthal style box with four pleated air filters coated with activated carbon to catch both particles and VOCs. Within an hour after turning the cleaner on, levels of benzene and toluene in the house dropped close to those measured outside. When the device was turned off, levels rebounded almost to those recorded before the test.Opening windows also helped temporarily drop VOC levels, but thats not likely to work in places where outdoor air quality is bad.The best method for getting rid of harmful smoke chemicals is cleaning, Farmer and colleagues found. Vacuuming, mopping and wiping down horizontal surfaces in a test house reduced smoke VOCs better than air cleaners and kept the air cleaner longer than opening windows, the researchers reported in Science Advances in 2023.But to be effective, cleaning probably needs to be even more extensive. Chemicals from smoke attach to surfaces of all kinds, walls and ceilings included. These gases dont care what room theyre in, she says. And they dont care whether the surface is horizontal or vertical or upside down.Indoor cleaning tipsTrue home cleaning after wildfires requires washing all surfaces, including walls and ceilings, inside closets, and vacuuming or removing soft furniture, such as couches. If mattresses are covered, the smoke may not have penetrated through sheets and blankets. Washing the bedding may be enough to get rid of harmful compounds on the bed, indoor and atmospheric chemist Delphine Farmer says.Vacuuming and sweeping can kick up dust and ash, so people should wear masks or respirators while cleaning. Misting surfaces with water can also help keep down particles. Dont use chemical cleaners, including bleach, ozone and peroxide, Farmer says. They can react with VOCs and make some more toxic.

Nature, Published online: 04 February 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00318-6Romance and relationships are research topics for some scientists in academia and the private sector. Nature asked them for their insights.

Nature, Published online: 04 February 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00283-0If the 193 remaining member nations want the WHO to succeed, they must find a way to pay for it.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has discovered a giant volcanic hot spot on the surface of Jupiter's hellish moon Io. The eruptions in this area are chucking out six times the energy being produced by all Earth's power stations, researchers say.

A new artificial neuron that spikes like human brain cells could be used to process data at ultrafast speeds.

I know it sounds crazy, but this is an important truth every beginner should understand. Instead of focusing on Blender modeling, learn topology. Instead of studying Blender lighting, master the fundamentals of 3D lighting. Instead of diving into Blender materials, understand PBR principles and apply them later in Blender. If you dont take this approach, youll be stuck in tutorial hell indefinitely, and your progress will be painfully slow. submitted by /u/Nightcomer [link] [comments]

Not too long ago, a talented high school student known as Ading2210 managed to create a port of DOOM that runs inside a PDF file, playable right in your browser. Turns out, thats just the beginning of what the popular format can do. Ading2210 took it even further by packing a pretty much functional Linux distribution inside the PDF.This is Linux running inside a PDF file via a RISC-V emulator, which is based on TinyEMU. Working ina very similar way to the DoomPDF project, LinuxPDF can be launched in any browser on the Chromium engine with support for the PDFium library. A virtual keyboard is used to enter console commands. Both 64- and 32-bit versions are possible for the root file system. You can try LinuxPDF here and lean more about it on GitHub.As Ading2210 explained, you might expect PDF files to only consist of static documents. Surprisingly, the PDF file format supports Javascript with its own separate standard library. Modern browsers (Chromium, Firefox) implement this as part of their PDF engines. However, the APIs available in the browser are much more limited. This allows us to do any sort of computation inside the PDF, just with some very limited IO.C code can be compiled to run within a PDF using an old version of Emscripten that targets asm.js instead of WebAssembly. With this, the developer could compile a modified version of the TinyEMU RISC-V emulator to asm.js, which can be run within the PDF. For the input and output, they reused the same display code used for DoomPDF. It works by using a separate text field for each row of pixels on the screen, whose contents are set to various ASCII characters.Over the years, programmers have turned some seriously unexpected objects into DOOM machines, from pregnancy tests and LEGO bricks to Windows Notepad and Blenders Geometry Nodes. Its also been run on hacking conference badges, quantum computers, and even a Microsoft Word file. Dont miss whats next from these skilled hands and join our 80 Level Talent platformand ournew Discord server, follow us on Instagram,Twitter,LinkedIn,Telegram,TikTok, andThreads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.Source link The post You Can Now Run Linux Inside A PDF File appeared first on CG SHARES.