here's what's coming up in the category
5 tv newsroom
a major release of the is on its
way and you can preview it now
work is beginning on what is thought to
be the world's first major plan to store
energy in the form of liquid air
hyperloop has carried its first set of
passengers
microsoft teams users are under active
attack
and tim berners-lee hopes to improve the
privacy of the internet with his new
company
stick around the full details and this
week's crypto corner are coming up
this is the category 5 tv newsroom
covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight
linux bias
from the newsroom i'm becca ferguson
a new development version of the gnu
image manipulation program is available
for testing and get ready
it's a game changer 2.99.2 may be
considered unstable
but it's a huge step towards the
long-anticipated 3.0 release
which promises to be the most
significant release of the free image
editing tool to date
3.0 will be based on the gtk 3ui
toolkit
which will bring many improvements over
the current gtk 2 that currently
uses
3.0 and the 2.99.2 preview for that
matter include multi-layer selection and
support for applying changes
to multiple layers at a time it also
promises to deliver a faster more
responsive user experience
leveraging render caching within the
interface
2.99.2 is an unstable release
that means it's intended for developers
bug hunters and enthusiasts only
and is not recommended for production
use some of the features on the roadmap
are a work in progress so there are
bound to be many bugs throughout
that said you can download 2.99
too now if you'd like to take it for a
spin
windows users can get it on the
developer download page and linux users
can grab it through a flat pack
on flat hub's better channel there's
also a continuous
build app image on the official
github repository
sorry mac users it's not ready for
testing on mac os
just yet there isn't a firm release date
for 3.0 but the devs hope to have
it ready for release sometime in 2021
work is beginning on what is thought to
be the world's first major plant to
store energy in the form of liquid air
it will use surplus electricity from
wind farms at night to compress air so
hard that it becomes a liquid
at -196 celsius
then when there is a peak in demand in a
day or a month the liquid air will be
warmed so it expands
the resulting rush of air will drive a
turbine to make electricity
which can be sold back to the grid
the system was devised by peter dearman
a self-taught backyard inventor from
herbertshire
and it has been taken to commercials to
commercial scale
with a 10 million pound grant from the
uk government
dr dearman said his inv or mr dearman
said his
invention was 60 to 70 efficient
depending on how it is used
that is less efficient than batteries
but he said the advantage of liquid air
is the low cost of the storage tanks
so it can be easily scaled up also
unlike batteries liquid air storage does
not create a demand for minerals which
may become
increasingly scarce as the world moves
towards power systems based on variable
renewable
electricity batteries are really great
for short-term storage mr dearman said
but they are too expensive to do
long-term energy storage
that's where liquid air comes in mr
dearman had been developing a car run on
similar principles with liquid hydrogen
when he saw the potential for applying
the technology
to electricity storage he is now a
passive shareholder in high view one of
the firms building the 50 megawatt plant
the 50 megawatt facility near manchester
will store enough energy to power around
50 000 homes for up to five hours
that is really amazing just to think
that a few thousand years ago we were
taking buckets of water
up a hill to store them and then use
that water as energy
we were i remember oh yeah i know just
back in the day right it's just getting
my coffees and everything
no but it's it's remarkable in the sense
that we're able to use this
natural thing that we breathe every day
yeah and use that to store energy i
think that's absolutely fantastic
talking about a green energy source what
a clever idea but
like how much pressure is this thing
under more than me whenever i had work
but still
oh boy um no but it's it's a remarkable
idea and
i really like how they really focused on
the idea of green energy because again
unlike batteries where you have to have
all these minerals everything else dug
up
you're able to use this it's just air
it's it's under compression and it's
able to store energy
yes and thinking of batteries not only
do you have to obtain
the resources but when those are
depleted when they're no longer able to
hold
exactly the waste everything else yeah
yeah
that's exactly right one less thing to
worry about and it it's just amazing
these technologies and i'm curious to
see what they think of next
i love the idea of an energy source that
is able to kind of recycle itself
yes and that's kind of what this reminds
me of i've thought about
and i know it's not practical and i know
that it's probably not even possible but
um putting like uh you know you know in
a water source something that can pump
the water because
and and generate electricity at the same
time there's so many neat ideas out
there
this is something that's actually coming
to pass well that this is the number one
thing because
with in respect to green technology the
big the largest thing that's been
lagging behind
is definitely being able to store that
energy because again we do have these
advances in solar power wind power
but the issue is where do you store all
that where do you put it yeah so this
can definitely be one of those solutions
that can help us
help turn our economy our world into a
more greener place
cool down the road so this this is a
really really cool to hear i can't wait
to see what comes of it
yeah or here's a bit or smells of it i'm
trying to think of air puns but it's not
working
so we tried
virgin hyperloop has trialled its first
ever journey with passengers in the
desert of nevada
the futuristic transport concept
involves pods inside vacuum tubes
carrying passengers at high speeds
in the trial two passengers both company
staff traveled the length of a 500 meter
test track
in 15 seconds reaching 172 kilometers an
hour
you may recall from our past coverage as
far as 2018
that the top speed for the hyperloop is
said to be a thousand kilometers an hour
and while this is only a fraction of
that ambition it's a big step toward
hyperloop transportation becoming a
reality
virgin hyperloop is not the only firm
developing the concept but nobody has
carried passengers before
sarah lucian director of customer
experience was one of the two on board
and described the experience as
exhilarating both psychologically and
physically she and chief technology
officer
josh geigel wore normal clothing rather
than flight suits for the event
which took place on sunday afternoon
outside of las vegas
miss lucian said the journey was smooth
and not at all like a roller coaster
although the acceleration was zippier
than it would be with a longer track
neither of them felt sick she added she
said that their speed was hampered by
the length of the track and acceleration
required
the concept which has spent years in
development builds on a proposal by
tesla founder elon musk
some critics have described it as
science fiction
it is based on the world's fastest
magnetic levitation trains then made
faster by placing the train
inside vacuum tubes the world record
speed for a maglev train was set in 2015
when a japanese train reached 374 miles
per hour
in a test run near mount fuji the
hyperloop has already exceeded that
speed but never with passengers
critics have pointed out that hyperloop
travel systems would involve the
considerable undertaking of both getting
planning permission
and then constructing vast networks of
tubes for every travel path
miss lucian acknowledges the potential
difficulties saying
of course there's a lot of
infrastructure to be built but i think
we've mitigated a lot of risk that
people didn't think was possible
in speaking about the infrastructure
challenges she pointed out
that while governments can continue
building up yesterday's transport
systems
people are looking for new solutions the
transportation of the future
microsoft teams users are under active
attack and tim berners-lee
hopes to improve the privacy of the
internet at large with his new company
becca has these stories coming up plus
robert is here with the crypto corner so
don't go anywhere
[Music]
welcome back to the world of cryptos and
welcome back to the crypto corner
today we're going to spend some time in
ethereum 2.0 i'm going to explain to you
in a very simple way
what ethereum 2.0 is all about and to
start
we're going to look at the fees so the
fees that you pay
when you do a transaction on the
ethereum blockchain and this year
is 2018. in 2018
the fees were fairly low and then
suddenly a project was started called
cryptokitties everybody complained about
it because the fees went up
through the roof now that was 2018 how
does that same picture look today
if i expand this here to today
then here this is the little blip with
cryptokitties the fees
that we had to pay because of d5 not so
long ago
were significantly higher and if you
consider that we are how many people are
we using the ethereum blockchain
let's say 100 000 200 000 it won't be
much more than that
so if 200 000 can already
bring the blockchain uh in regards to
fees to a halt
how would that look like if we have got
certainly 20 million people using this
chain
it will not be feasible any longer and
that's why
including also some other reasons a long
time ago the idea of your theorem 2.0
was started
and it taking it's it's taking its time
and why
because coding and programming is not
simple yeah if you have got a company
like
apple or google where everything is
under one roof everything is coordinated
in a different way
you can have a different type of
transparency and
and also objectives but if you have got
a team of 400 people that are
coordinated
through something like github yeah so
this github is where
everything happens in regards to
ethereum
then it looks very it's very complex and
so everything has to be done very
meticulously
because we're talking about money here
in this case
money transfer so big mistakes will cost
a lot of money as we've seen
in defile and we've got over in the
ethereum current
blockchain we've got over 244
repositories
over 500 people programming
so you can imagine how complex this
whole thing is yeah there are many
hundred thousand lines of code
that need to be coordinated that's why
this thing takes
so long now looking at the road map
um this is the roadmap of
the of eth 2.0
so this is the current chain here so
this is 1.0
that's the theorem you and i know and
soon we will have the beacon chain
which is the start of ethereum 2.0
and this here is like the current chain
without proof of work so proof of stake
and you will not have any smart
contracts in this
phase zero from there we will start with
the fa
with this smart contracts but we'll have
shards and charts i like
just imagine a very simple way like sub
blockchain so you'll have a chain for
let's say
uh defy you'll have a chain that's that
needs to be secured in a special way
then you've got a new chain for uh
gamers
so when something happens like with
cryptokitties where suddenly
the chain was blocked it will be only
that chain that will be blocked at that
time
and the fees will not go through the
roof so there are
lots of little improvements coming also
along
with this 2.0 and the roadmap in detail
just the ones that we hear today and we
will start soon
phase zero uh phase zero means uh
moving away from proof of work to proof
of stake and that's done
by having a deposit contract because you
need to secure the network not through
miners so people
that are mining you need to secure it
through value
and that for that the deposit contract
was now
created and the time is running now
until the
7th of december where then the beacon
chain will be started
from there we will then go over to phase
0 and then much later phase 2
and phase three and at this stage you
there will be also no more proof of work
so the current
blockchain that you know is point zero
will be more or less switched off that's
not possible i know but
it it will not continue everything will
happen in the new
uh ethereum 2.0
and um for the transition from the
current status to ethernet
uh phase zero they created a very good
website launchpad.ethereum.org
where when you want to become a
validator you can get started here and
they'll run you through
some questions and so on and they
explain to you what that really means
um you will get some money so for every
theme that you
stake so in other words you put up with
security
you'll get some money as a reward at the
beginning it will be of course higher
because we're starting
but and over the time it will go down
and
here this is the status of how far
people have committed already to this
new uh chain where at 10
i guess that around the first of
december this thing
should be filled more or less because
all the big whales will be coming in
um into staking because they're get
the rewards are not bad at the beginning
so
this is um ethereum 1.0 explained
2.0 sorry explained in a very simple way
and i hope you liked it and i hope you
enjoyed it and i thank you very much for
watching
and i'm looking forward to see you next
week again so thank you very much
bye-bye thank you robert just a reminder
that we're not providing financial
advice but only sharing what's happening
in the cryptocurrency market
always remember that the cryptocurrency
market is always changing and always
volatile so only invest what you can
afford to lose
and now here's becca thank you robbie
microsoft teams users are under active
attack in a fake updates malware
campaign
attackers are using ads for fake
microsoft teams updates to deploy back
doors
which use cobalt strike to infect
companies networks with malware
microsoft is warning the customers about
the so-called fake updates campaigns in
a non-public security advisory revealed
by bleeping computer
the campaign is targeting various types
of companies with recent targets in the
k-12 education sector
where organizations are currently
dependent on using apps like teams
for video conferencing due to covet 19
restrictions
cobalt strike is a commodity attack
simulation tool that's used by attackers
to spread malware
particularly ransomware recently threat
actors were seen using cobalt strike in
attacks exploiting zero logon
a privileged elevation flaw that allows
attackers to access a domain controller
and completely compromise all active
directory identitive
identity services in the advisory
microsoft said it's seen attackers in
the latest fake updates
campaign using search engine ads to push
top results for team software to a
domain controlled by the attackers
and used for nefarious activity if
victims click on the link it downloads a
payload that executes a power shell
script
which loads malicious content cobalt
strike beacons are among the payloads
also being distributed by the campaign
which give threat actors the capability
to move laterally across a network
beyond the initial system of infection
the link also installs a valid copy of
microsoft teams
on the system to appear legitimate and
avoid alerting victims to the
to the attack malware being distributed
by the campaign
include predator the thief infostealer
which pilfers sensitive data such as
credentials
browser and payment data microsoft also
has seen a backdoor and zed loader
stealer being distributed by the latest
campaigns
microsoft is recommending that people
use web browsers that can filter and
block malicious websites
and ensure that local admin passwords
are strong and can't easily be guessed
admin privileges also should be limited
to essential users and avoid domain wine
service domain-wide service accounts
that have the same permissions
as an administrator according to the
report
they advise organizations to limit their
attack surface to keep attackers at bay
by blocking executable files that do not
meet specific criteria
or blocking javascript and vbscript code
from downloading
executable content well microsoft teams
it takes a team to be hacked
yeah it's uh you can get independently
hacked very easily yeah well no it's
it's it's a scary thing really because
with it
being seen so much not just
organizations but if you're an educator
if you're a teacher student et cetera um
and
it isn't well think you're talking about
teachers and stuff i'm thinking about
how
these folks have been thrown into having
to use microsoft teams with no
experience this is
something totally new and then all of a
sudden you get a little
little window that says hey you need to
update it's okay
right save and you think oh this this is
what i'm using for my classroom so i
better get that update
oh no it's like children make sure you
install this update
well like we're just talking before the
show it really is a form of social
engineering
absolutely because it's it's so easy to
fall into the trap
this is where phishing scams have like
we think oh well i would never fall for
a phishing scam because you know i don't
use that service or this service or
whatever but
it's a it's a like a if i
throw enough phishing scams out there
that pretend to be
the royal bank of canada yeah i will
inevitably land in the inbox
of some people who bank at the royal
bank of canada so
if i buy ads that are pretending to be
updates for
microsoft teams even though i personally
robbie ferguson don't use
teams somebody out there you might yeah
somebody else might and
and social engineering they they trick
those folks
into installing this malware and we're
talking ransomware
so ransomware is the one that encrypts
your
files and goes out on the network that
you're connected to
and encrypts all the files that it can
gain access to and as we know
from zero logon that is every file
on the entire network if you're like
like a school network you think oh well
we're locked down
it's safe no zero login
zero logon allows them to have
administrator credentials
just like just like your it admin so
like these are serious exploits
and social engineering they're using
that to get into these systems that
could be a back door into the network
well exactly i'm also scared for small
businesses right
yeah so again everyone's working from
home now so again if you have
employees who aren't aztec literate or
but henry
who would target me i'm just uh i'm just
a work from home
you know person who no nobody would
always target me see
yeah false send secure security right
yeah we become
complacent absolutely the fact is is
that these are
non-targeted attacks these tools
are built to find susceptible systems
and attack them yeah just a wide net
that's all it takes like you said
one email spam it out yeah so maybe
a pie hole which is an ad blocking dns
server
suddenly becomes not just something to
block your advertising but also
something to
like your ad blocker becomes something
that's going to prevent
malware yeah they bought ads on google
i mean like come on i've seen it happen
on facebook i've been on facebook yeah
and
a java i think it was a flash virus at
the time tried to install through an ad
well they have like a hundred dollar
free like ad credit thing if you sign up
for google ads now so
they got a real good deal i'm not just
kidding that's not sponsored so be
really careful when you click on folks
be very very
careful and almost to the point of
skeptical
all right it really does show how the
world is developing away from ads though
like i know this is going to be kind of
a little bit off topic now but it just
adds being so intrusive hence why you
have other platforms like patreon and
stuff that you can support sure yes and
things like that right because
whenever i'm on youtube i'm like yeah i
have an ad locker i i rely on ad revenue
in order to
survive as a as a broadcaster on youtube
exactly but it's just like it's a
balance now right because it's like
is this ad gonna try to sell me or try
to affect my try to trick you into
getting an infection of ransomware
yeah so just like i want to support
small businesses and channels and stuff
but how do i balance that with safety
now
it's it's such a hard thing to talk
about it's a very good question i don't
know that there's an
answer immediately sitting there ready
to be given
so it's really just down to be very
cautious be
skeptical when you're clicking on stuff
online and know that even in
somewhere like google maybe the ads
contain malware so
watch out and be careful
inventor of the world wide web tim
berners-lee is having another crack at
fixing the internet's biggest problems
with the launch of a new enterprise
server
the inrupt enterprise solid server is
the first product from a company the
inventor started two years ago
in response to the problem of personal
data online
where tech giants like facebook and
google build vast databases on users
profiles
and sell them to advertisers to make
massive profits
inrupt has worked on a series of new
standards that allow individuals to
store their personal information
in pods whose access they control
the decentralized approach allows for
the free and fast sharing of data
but with control in the hands of its
owners the project is called solid and
after two years of work at mit
the team behind it has released an
enterprise service
the goal being to move the whole idea
from concept to reality
the enterprise server will allow
organizations to build applications
using others data pods
that can do useful things like draw
comparisons across users
or build greater context around user
data while keeping the user in control
of their data for many businesses it
will be a chicken and egg conundrum
where
it won't be worth investing in the solid
system
until there is sufficient data and users
of the system
and users won't bother providing their
data until there are sufficient
companies and applications
with new regulations like gdpr and
california's privacy law
a system like solid would make it
significantly easier
easier for companies to gather and use
data without having the weight of
administering it at all
and being responsible for constantly
updated permissions
in a blog post monday berners-lee
announced the numbers of big name
partners that will run pilots
including the bbc nat west bank the
national health service
and flanders government the pilots are
small and the intent is to spark greater
awareness of the technology and grow
adoption big thanks to roy w nash and
our community of viewers for submitting
stories to us
this week thanks for watching the
category 5
tv newsroom don't forget to like and
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slight linux bias
and if you appreciate what we do become
a patron at patreon.com
category 5. from the category 5 tv
newsroom i'm becca ferguson
[Applause]
[Music]
you