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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says Americans need to make work / life ‘tradeoffs’ to compete with China.


#USA
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

Or, counterpoint, maybe we should handle rich people's money more efficiently to stimulate economic growth instead of hampering it.
in reply to Tenderizer78

Also, why should the average American care about competing with China in the first place?


What happened to those always on AI glasses that recorded everything and doxed anyone you met?


If those became popular it would be a privacy nightmare, specially if the company share all gathered data with the government and other companies.
in reply to CoderSupreme

Not sure if that’s even possible. Even a GoPro barely lasts about 2-3 hours while running no AI and having a bigger battery than whatever you can fit in glasses.
in reply to CoderSupreme

We are already living in a privacy nightmare. Whether you film and then doxx folks with a smartphone, a camera you've hidden in your clothing, or one built into the frame of some spectacles really doesn't move the needle much any more. We're in the red already. The nightmarish data collection and then sharing is already baked into our internet experience.

And the people at large sit in a chair in a burning room that is this nightmare we're in, uttering "It's fine." It's been years since the Google glasshole debacle. People are so used now to other people just filming shit all the time. I think these glasses will end up just being tolerated. There won't be thousands around in your daily life, like smartphones. Society will acquiesce even in occasional perverts and intentional doxxers. The digital Overton window will move on.

What I can foresee is a more enforced no filming ban in certain areas, like restrooms and changing rooms. There could even be a technical solution that garbles recordings whether they are attempted or not.




Revisiting bsdiff as a tool for digital preservation


by @beet_keeper

I introduced bsdiff in a blog in 2014. bsdiff compares the differences between two files, e.g. broken_file_a and corrected_file_b and creates a patch that can be applied to broken_file_a to generate a byte-for-byte match for corrected_file_b.

On the face of it, in an archive, we probably only care about corrected_file_2 and so why would we care about a technology that patches a broken file?

In all of the use-cases we can imagine the primary reasons are cost savings and removing redundancy in file storage or transmission of digital information. In one very special case we can record the difference between broken_file_a and corrected_file_b and give users a totally objective method of recreating corrected_file_b from broken_file_a providing 100% verifiable proof of the migration pathway taken between the two files.

Loading

#ac3 #Archives #audio #audiovisual #Audit #authenticity #av #Bash #bsdiff #checksums #Code4Lib #corruption #corruptionIndex #digipres #DigitalArchiving #DigitalForensics #digitalLiteracy #DigitalPreservation #DigitalStorage #diplomatics #FileFormats #flac #glitch #glitchAudio #GlitchArt #integrity #mp3 #PreservationAnalysis #PreservationMetadata #provenance #sensitivityIndex #Storage #wav



Patrick Baab: Europe Prepares the Public for War with Russia







An American nurse in Gaza City films a hospital's collapse as Israeli forces surround it


cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/36812418

By ABDEL KAREEM HANNA, SAMY MAGDY and SARAH EL DEEB
Updated 2:30 PM EDT, September 27, 2025
Al-Quds once had capacity for 120 patients. Now, roughly 20 remain, including two babies in intensive care. About 60 doctors, nurses and patients’ families are sheltering there.

Vaughan is from Seattle and volunteered through the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association since July. She kept a video diary of her time at al-Quds, occasionally posting on social media.

She shared dozens of videos with The Associated Press, which verified them. Volunteers in Gaza like her have become a vital source of information, as Israel has forbidden foreign media.




An American nurse in Gaza City films a hospital's collapse as Israeli forces surround it


By ABDEL KAREEM HANNA, SAMY MAGDY and SARAH EL DEEB
Updated 2:30 PM EDT, September 27, 2025

Al-Quds once had capacity for 120 patients. Now, roughly 20 remain, including two babies in intensive care. About 60 doctors, nurses and patients’ families are sheltering there.

Vaughan is from Seattle and volunteered through the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association since July. She kept a video diary of her time at al-Quds, occasionally posting on social media.

She shared dozens of videos with The Associated Press, which verified them. Volunteers in Gaza like her have become a vital source of information, as Israel has forbidden foreign media.



https://apnews.com/article/gaza-city-hospitals-health-care-israel-war-82b20da1d6308fc1b530bf1816288ea2



An American nurse in Gaza City films a hospital's collapse as Israeli forces surround it


By ABDEL KAREEM HANNA, SAMY MAGDY and SARAH EL DEEB
Updated 2:30 PM EDT, September 27, 2025

Al-Quds once had capacity for 120 patients. Now, roughly 20 remain, including two babies in intensive care. About 60 doctors, nurses and patients’ families are sheltering there.

Vaughan is from Seattle and volunteered through the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association since July. She kept a video diary of her time at al-Quds, occasionally posting on social media.

She shared dozens of videos with The Associated Press, which verified them. Volunteers in Gaza like her have become a vital source of information, as Israel has forbidden foreign media.

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-city-hospitals-health-care-israel-war-82b20da1d6308fc1b530bf1816288ea2




Israel’s ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn’t live here | George Monbiot


cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6274710

A landless people and a peopleless land: these, it appears, are the aims of the Israeli government in Gaza. There are two means by which they are achieved. The first is the mass killing and expulsion of the Palestinians. The second is rendering the land uninhabitable. Alongside the crime of genocide, another great horror unfolds: ecocide.

While the destruction of buildings and infrastructure in Gaza is visible in every video we see, less visible is the parallel destruction of ecosystems and means of subsistence. Before the 7 October atrocity that triggered the current assault on Gaza, about 40% of its land was farmed. Despite its extreme population density, Gaza was mostly self-sufficient in vegetables and poultry, and met much of the population’s demand for olives, fruit and milk. But last month the UN reported that just 1.5% of its agricultural land now remains both accessible and undamaged. That’s roughly 200 hectares – the only remaining area directly available to feed more than 2 million people.

Part of the reason is the systematic destruction of farmland by the Israeli military. Ground troops have demolished greenhouses; bulldozers have toppled orchards, ploughed out crops and crushed the soil; and planes have sprayed herbicides over the fields.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) justify these attacks by claiming that “Hamas often operates from within orchards, fields, and agricultural land.” And apparently from hospitals, schools, universities, industrial estates and any other resources on which the Palestinians depend. All the IDF needs to do in order to rationalise destruction is to suggest that Hamas has operated or might operate from the thing it wants to destroy. And if there’s no evidence – sorry, too late.

The IDF is steadily expanding the “buffer zone” along Gaza’s eastern border, which happens to contain much of the Strip’s agricultural land. As the human rights specialist Hamza Hamouchene points out, rather than “making the desert bloom” – a mainstay of Israeli state propaganda – it is turning fertile and productive land into desert.

The Israeli government has been felling Palestinians’ ancient olive trees for decades to deprive them of subsistence, demoralise them and break their connection with the land. Olives are both materially crucial, accounting for 14% of the Palestinian economy, and symbolically powerful: if there are no olive trees, there can be no olive branch. Israel’s scorched-earth policy, in conjunction with its blockade of food supplies, guarantees famine.

Full Article



When Palestinians Die in Israeli Captivity, US Media Almost Never Take Note


#Palestine #Prisoners
#InstitutionalisedRacism

"There are currently some 3,613 Palestinians under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, according to the July 2025 CDA report, and more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody (not including those held in military camps) in total"
Not a word by the US corporate media when any of them die "while the fates of Israelis held captive by Hamas regularly make front-page news"l


in reply to silence7

The existence of the United States of America has been a disaster for humanity.


How a major US DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change


The Trump administration recruited five marginalized researchers to challenge the international consensus on global warming. Here’s how it went wrong.


Well known among those who follow the topic, but haven't seen other outlets try to tell the whole story.


in reply to sabreW4K3

Just for the uninformed, i.e. me, what is the advantage of reclaiming these domain names? I would assume that they can somewhat be considered tainted in terms of the piracy world now anyways, and getting new domain names should be fairly easy as well, shouldn't it?
in reply to Siru

Brand recognition. Existing web links and references to it.

While the site swiftly moved to new domains, the old ones were pointing to a seizure banner.

Streameast ‘Reclaims’ Streameast.xyz


Their name is still the same as before. So it makes sense to reclaim it.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)



Trump’s Golden Dome: Costly, Wasteful, With Contracts for Palantir


Largely freed of competition, Golden Dome task orders can go to favored Trump contractors, including high-tech billionaires who are his close allies.

The evidence accumulates that Golden Dome is going to be an enormously costly and extremely wasteful system. And, the contracting for high-tech work seems sure to go to Palantir. Palantir’s board chairman, the extremely well connected billionaire Peter Thiel, longtime Trump-backer and mentor of Vice President J.D. Vance.

In July, a letter by Senator Edward J. Markey and nine other Senators said:

“President Trump has said that Golden Dome would cost $175 billion and be ‘fully operational’ by 2029. But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that it could cost as much as $542 billion to deploy a constellation of space-based interceptors (SBIs) designed to defeat one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles launched in a limited attack, such as by North Korea. Countering a possible Russian or Chinese attack involving hundreds of warheads would require a much larger, more technologically advanced, and more costly system. . . . Despite what could amount to a trillion dollar investment, Golden Dome would be all-too-easy to defeat.”

Earlier in September, the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), more cheerleader than critic of Trump’s, issued a report that the cost of Golden Dome could range as high as $3.6 trillion. AEI gave a range of possibilities, from that high figure for a system doing what President Trump asserts he wants Golden Dome to do, down to lower figures that while still far above Trump’s $175 billion, would have much more limited capabilities what he claims.

So now that the Administration is launched on procuring Golden Dome, the natural question is, who benefits? Some of the contracting may go to traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. But, the new hallmark of the Trump administration has been the mutually beneficial cultivating of Silicon Valley billionaires. The beauty of Golden Dome is that it involves not just hardware from traditional contractors, but tech products from the Trump Administration’s closest new friends.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2025/09/26/trumps-golden-dome-costly-and-wasteful--tied-to-billionaire-thiel/




Eric Adams drops out of New York City mayoral race




Big Brother is watching Switzerland!


Biggest threat for our privacy is real in Switzerland !

#EID #Switzerland #Privacy

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)
in reply to harfang

It's limited by law to official services anyway. Your online shopping platform can't ask you for E-ID verification.

E-ID is one thing we got right this (the second) time, imo.

If you're pro-privacy, better fight against the inconstitutional VDS (complaint in EGMR still pending for years now).
Digitale Gesellschaft needs donations to launch the initiative to replace it with Quick Freeze.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)
in reply to MonkderVierte

It's limited by law to official services anyway


Do you think this may change in the future? Because, change in such law is what potentially makes this predatory.

Such limit to this law is the best case scenario. And definitely something I'll support, but the chance it might extend further is what holds me and others away from this.

in reply to sleen

Unlikely. This country takes it's health data sensibility very seriously for tens of years now. Deterioration of such things would be seen as an abuse of trust by the people and the political allies. That's one thing that still mostly works here.
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)
in reply to MonkderVierte

First, one piece: the means; Next, the second piece: the law
in reply to harfang

Some important context here is that Switzerland already has a national ID card system, this is an extension allowing people to use a digital version if they prefer.

I'm not saying that isn't going to be without its privacy concerns, but them narrowly voting that in is a far cry from, oh I don't know, the UK government forcing an entirely new scheme on people without a referendum.



Title generation and quote posts


renchap@oisaur.com 044f specifies the use of a link to the quoted post as fallback, hidden behind .quote-inline.

Right now Mastodon puts this top of post, and this interferes with title generation logic on NodeBB. Essentially the URL becomes the title, which is not ideal.

Any chance the class name could be upgraded to a MUST so I can code against it? Potentially other implementors could use different class names.

in reply to Renaud Chaput

I didn't want to make it a MUST in the FEP because there are lots of reasons you may want to do the fallback differently (and we only include it if it's not already in the post: the URL could conceivably be part of the message)

as for Mastodon, there are technical reasons why we decided to put it on top, but Mastodon-inserted fallback will always use quote-inline. This is also consistent with what another implementation did (can't remember which one off the top of my head)




Title generation and quote posts


renchap@oisaur.com 044f specifies the use of a link to the quoted post as fallback, hidden behind .quote-inline.

Right now Mastodon puts this top of post, and this interferes with title generation logic on NodeBB. Essentially the URL becomes the title, which is not ideal.

Any chance the class name could be upgraded to a MUST so I can code against it? Potentially other implementors could use different class names.



Should Salesforce's Tableau Be Granted a Patent On 'Visualizing Hierarchical Data'?


America's Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent to Tableau (Salesforce's visual analytics platform) — for a patent covering "Data Processing For Visualizing Hierarchical Data^___^
in reply to technocrit

Uh, unless you want to make tableau basically an effective monopoly on the... idea of graphs...

Then no, no, this is a very bad idea.

in reply to technocrit

I found the patent: patents.google.com/patent/US20…


Should Salesforce's Tableau Be Granted a Patent On 'Visualizing Hierarchical Data'?


America's Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent to Tableau (Salesforce's visual analytics platform) — for a patent covering "Data Processing For Visualizing Hierarchical Data


Zelensky condemns 'vile' Russian strikes lasting 12 hours


A Russian aerial bombardment that lasted more than 12 hours has killed at least four people and injured at least 70 others in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deaths all occurred in the capital, Kyiv, where many of the projectiles were aimed, and the victims included a 12-year-old girl.

The barrage - involving nearly 600 drones and several dozen missiles aimed at seven regions of Ukraine - is one of the heaviest in recent months.

Zelensky warned that Ukraine would retaliate and said the "vile" attack showed Moscow "wants to continue fighting and killing". Russia said it struck military facilities and industrial enterprises supporting Ukraine's armed forces.




A 160-year-old campaign against civil rights heads to the supreme court


What did Reconstruction do for us, anyway?

Because the executive and legislature branches seem to have jumped the constitutional shark, some people continue to hold out hope that the judicial branch, with the supreme court at its apex, will offer a way out of this mess. That would be a mistake: like Congress, the Republican majority on the supreme court has lined up behind most of the president’s sweeping assertions of novel powers. The supreme court has blocked lower federal court rulings that had reined in the president’s authority to withhold federal medical research grants for ideological reasons. It has allowed the executive branch to deploy roving immigration patrols to engage in racial profiling; to expel noncitizens to countries on the brink of civil wars where they could face torture, trafficking or death; to fire non-regime friendly officials (in violation of federal law); to dismantle entire departments and more.

But one specific case on the court’s docket for this term illustrates its role in a more far-reaching rightwing project that goes back all the way to the end of the civil war.

Louisiana v Callais is a major challenge to what remains of the Voting Rights of Act of 1965, and could radically rework the structure of political representation in the United States. A successful challenge to the VRA would allow the Republican party to further cheat democracy by engaging in even more partisan gerrymandering and erasing several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities.


Remember to call your rep... oh, right.



TP Link Router wants to share client info with third parties


My router (TP Link) said it had a firmware update. I'm a responsible adult, so I update my firmware. When I log back in, I get this popup that they'd like to share my clients info.

cool...

in reply to artyom

It's the rapist mentality, they won't accept "no" as an answer.


aggregocttica moria senza soluzioni più spumose (l’Aggregoctt è morto e a fatica trovo alternative)


Settimane fa, o qualcosa del genere, mi era passato di mente il dover segnalare che l’Aggregoctt è fallito. Nel senso, funziona ancora — abbastanza a magia tra l’altro, devo dire, perché è assurdo che non si sia ancora rotto… cioè, in realtà è successo già tipo 2 volte, ma ogni volta ho potuto aggiustarlo senza […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…


aggregocttica moria senza soluzioni più spumose (l’Aggregoctt è morto e a fatica trovo alternative)


Settimane fa, o qualcosa del genere, mi era passato di mente il dover segnalare che l’Aggregoctt è fallito. Nel senso, funziona ancoraabbastanza a magia tra l’altro, devo dire, perché è assurdo che non si sia ancora rotto… cioè, in realtà è successo già tipo 2 volte, ma ogni volta ho potuto aggiustarlo senza fare cambiamenti radicali, il che è sorprendente — ma il problema è che, per come l’ho fatto, con questa roba del sito statico che deve compilarsi a partire da infiniti file HTML (ormai credo diverse centinaia di migliaia, al punto che GitHub si rifiuta di indicizzare la repo), prima o poi raggiungerà per forza un tetto pratico… e a quel punto fallirà davvero. 🥴

Certo, potrei implementare la purga periodica di post vecchi, ma io che sono un’accumulatrice seriale mi sentirei proprio male… e poi, questa non è l’unica rogna. Infatti, per giunta, per quanto sia figo che funzioni interamente senza un server di hosting dinamico, aggiornandosi in automatico solo grazie alla CI gratuita di GitHub, un bel problemino che ho visto è che certi feed non si aggiornano lì sopra, perché il sito sfigato di turno sarà stato settato a minchia, con una protezione bot che blocca gli IP non-domestici pure per le richieste del feed… quindi, quella manciata di siti particolari non si aggiorna mai. 💔

Temo allora che la mia paura iniziale, cioè che l’Aggregoctt fatto con Jekyll e uno script Python vibe-codato rischiasse di essere solo un ripiego, si è confermata. In realtà, per chi è a posto con queste limitazioni, il template costruito fino ad ora rimane alquanto valido, e ancora consiglierei di forkarlo a chiunque vorrebbe farsi il proprio sito aggregatore (inserendo i propri URL nel file della lista) senza un server e senza grossi smanettamenti (anche se forse, per evitare che qualcuno si trovi in sorprendenti difficoltà, farei bene ad implementare quella maledetta purga, oltre a maggiori ottimizzazioni per il caricamento dei dati)… però io, avendo il serverino, potrei permettermi di più. 🙄

Problema: non c’è niente di ideale già fatto (altrimenti non avrei certamente speso tempo a creare l’Aggregoctt, avrei direttamente preso quel qualcosa e tanti saluti)… quindi dovrò vedere di fare io qualcosa e bla bla bla, mannaggia al mio tempo che scompare. Però, giusto per non cadere nella più totale disperazione (e in parte anche per assimilare passivamente idee di design simili alle mie ma lievemente diverse, per questo specifico tipo di applicazione), da qualche giorno sto provando un aggregatore trovato cercando nelle liste più improbabili di top aggregatori di feed selfhostabili: RSS. Si, il creatore — che stranamente non è uno scappato di casa, bensì è lo stesso che ha creato BookStack — lo ha veramente chiamato solo “RSS”, con la scusa che è un progetto a bassa manutenzione e creato principalmente per uso personale… vergognoso, ma lasciamo stare. 😕
Schermata del sito, Aggregoctt-v2
Oh, sembrava bellino, e dopo averlo provato devo confermare che effettivamente lo è… ma allo stesso tempo ho percepito una puzza, quindi per ora l’ho messo sul mio classico dominio usa-e-ricicla di ; non si merita (per ora?) un dominio permanente. È simpatico, perché non ha login o permessi, e quindi replica bene la filosofia del primo Aggregoctt per cui il lettore personale funge anche da blogroll (cioè, una cosa del decennio scorso attraverso cui chi segue me può scoprire altre persone da seguire, potendo banalmente vedere una lista di chi seguo io… o, in certi casi non “seguo“, bensì “tengo d’occhio“, lieve differenza), e l’interfaccia è pulita e funzionale. Purtroppo è anche antipatico, visto che per funzionare richiede JavaScript moderno (zio pera, è una maledizione con tutti ‘sti cosi web), e quindi non si può usare sul Kindle (o anche, in generale dispositivi utili da riciclare per leggere, che però hanno browser web antichi); ma non ha neanche la modalità di lettura integrata, quindi comunque su Kindle e compagnia sarebbe un incubo da usare. (Ah e, edit: ho dimenticato di dirlo, la gestione di errori in questo coso è inesistente, e alcuni feed misteriosamente non caricano.) 😴

Vabbè, alla fine il bilancio netto è comunque positivo, perché ora nel mondo esistono tecnicamente ben 2 Aggregoctti, e se non riesco a fare pace con tutto ciò prima o poi ne dovrà uscirà pure un terzo (e speriamo non di più, perché sennò veramente sarebbe la fine… cioè, la tragedia della mancanza di una fine, l’eterno ritorno dell’Aggregoctt)… Il fatto è che, a parte funzionalità improbabili che ora nemmeno vorrei ri-descrivere ma che sarebbe figo implementare, di piccole cose da poter fare per avere un’esperienza davvero epica ce ne sono a bizzeffe… come un’ottimizzazione per i feed dei social in modo che i post si vedano meglio rispetto agli articoli di blog classici, o un’ottimizzazione per i feed di YouTube per cui viene mostrato automaticamente l’embed per i video… ed è tutta roba semplice, ma, avendo il primo Aggregoctt le difficoltà che ho detto, più che spendere tempo a metterle lì farei bene a creare questa v3. (Aiutatemi!!!) 😽

#aggregator #Aggregoctt #feed #RSS




what are these books?


This group of formally dressed men at a cafe each had a book, two of them are pictured here. Any idea what books they are?
in reply to FRYD

That must be it! Perhaps the other one is a Bible
in reply to OctopoesDeKater

Yeah assuming it’s a Dutch bible, my American brain won’t be able to recognize the words from their pixelated silhouette.
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)


How do you get yourself to do anything?


Like... How do you do things that are good for you and necessary?
#ADHD
in reply to WhatGodIsMadeOf

It helps to have someone to talk to. If I keep telling my friend “Man, I gotta go to the eye dr and get new glasses.” eventually I get embarrassed about saying it so much that I actually do it instead of telling them.



US set for largest mass resignation in history as Trump continues deep cuts


Federal workers say they have little choice but to depart, with 100,000 leaving under deferred resignation program


Archived version: archive.is/20250928120037/theg…


Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.





Ukraine's Foreign Ministry responds to Hungarian official suggesting Ukraine give up territory for peace


Georgii Tykhyi, spokesperson for Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has said Ukraine does not need advice from Hungarian officials on exchanging territory or sovereignty.


Archived version: archive.is/newest/pravda.com.u…


Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.



Spotify Mod


Guys, now that Spotify's Premium mod has been down for about two months, and since Xmanager and Revanced have received a copyright notice, it's hard for me to believe that there could be a functional mod version, at least on the visible part of the internet. Does anyone know of a version that works for free and is malware-free?"
in reply to unknowing8343

Until Youtube also starts knocking down every third party client one by one, I think the best option is to download music...
in reply to Albjav12345

There's an interesting one called "Spotifuck" for Android that's a wrapper around the web player. Somewhat janky at times but it works!
Questa voce è stata modificata (1 mese fa)


Tardozzi stucchevole su Bagnaia: "Ha ritrovato la felicità negli occhi"


Ai microfoni di Sky, Tardozzi ha evidenziato soprattutto l’atteggiamento del pilota: “Quello che fa più piacere è vedere la confidenza che ha trovato e la felicità negli occhi”.

quotidianomotori.com/motogp/ba…



'Can you imagine the disdain?' Ex-GOP insider says Pete Hegseth setting stage for a 'coup'



in reply to FundMECFS

I love being one of only a few people seeding something. I just wish my internet connection was better so my upload speeds were faster.
in reply to FundMECFS

Try to understand it's not about reaching some arbitrary upload goal.

It's about speeding up the P2P network.



China-Linked PlugX and Bookworm Malware Attacks Target Asian Telecom and ASEAN Networks


Cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43105573

Archived

Telecommunications and manufacturing sectors in Central and South Asian countries have emerged as the target of an ongoing campaign distributing a new variant of a known malware called PlugX (aka Korplug or SOGU).

"The new variant's features overlap with both the RainyDay and Turian backdoors, including abuse of the same legitimate applications for DLL side-loading, the XOR-RC4-RtlDecompressBuffer algorithm used to encrypt/decrypt payloads and the RC4 keys used," Cisco Talos researchers Joey Chen and Takahiro Takeda said in an analysis published this week.

The cybersecurity company noted that the configuration associated with the PlugX variant diverges significantly from the usual PlugX configuration format, instead adopting the same structure used in RainyDay, a backdoor associated with a China-linked threat actor known as Lotus Panda (aka Naikon APT). It's also likely tracked by Kaspersky as FoundCore and attributed to a Chinese-speaking threat group it calls Cycldek.

[...]