Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are back in Hulu’s reboot of the classic Animaniacs cartoon.

Readers of a certain age will have fond childhood memories of weekday afternoons spent in the company of the Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, the central figures of the hugely popular, Emmy-award winning animated series, Animaniacs. Now a whole new generation can appreciate their comic genius with Hulu's revival of the show, slated to debut next month.

The premise of the original Animaniacs was that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot were characters from the 1930s who were locked way in a water tower on the Warner Bros. lot until they escaped in the 1990s. Now they exist to wreak havoc and have fun. The format borrowed heavily from sketch comedy, with each episode typically featuring three short mini-episodes centered on different characters, connected by bridging segments. Other regular characters included two genetically altered lab mice, Pinky and the Brain, who are always trying to take over the world; Ralph the Security Guard; Slappy Squirrel and her nephew, Skippy; Chicken Boo; Flavio and Marita, aka the Hip Hippos; studio psychiatrist Dr. Otto Scratchansniff and Hello Nurse (also a common catchphrase); and a trio of pigeons known as The Goodfeathers.

As appealing to adults as to kids, the show was smart, funny, irreverent, and even educational, especially with its playful songs listing the nations of the world, for instance, or all the US states and their capitals—set to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw"—or all the presidents set to the "William Tell Overture." (My personal favorite was "The Solar System Song," complete with the obligatory joke about Uranus.) The writers were masters of parody, so much so that it became something of a badge of honor to be so featured. Honorees included A Hard Day's Night, Seinfeld, Friends, Bambi, Power Rangers, Rugrats, and The Lion King, as well as the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore. And of course, the Goodfeathers segments invariably parodied characters from both The Godfather and Goodfellas.

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Enlarge / Computer hacker character stealing money online. Vector flat cartoon illustration (credit: GettyImages)

If you’re in the market for a new mobile phone plan, it’s best to avoid turning to Boom! Mobile. That is, unless you don’t mind your sensitive payment card data being sent to criminals in an attack that remained ongoing in the last few hours.

According to researchers from security firm Malwarebytes, Boom! Mobile’s boom.us website is infected with a malicious script that skims payment card data and sends it to a server under the control of a criminal group researchers have dubbed Fullz House. The malicious script is called by a single line that comprises mostly nonsense characters when viewed with the human eye.

(credit: Malwarebytes)

When decoded from Base64 format, the line translates to: paypal-debit[.]com/cdn/ga.js. The JavaScript code ga.js masquerades as a Google Analytics script at one of the many fraudulent domains operated by Fullz House members.

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Enlarge / The company pitches the Air Force as part of its Global Space Transport and Delivery Challenge. (credit: Astra)

This week, the US Air Force convened an event during which American companies were invited to pitch ideas for how they could help the military further its ambitions in space. In turn, the Air Force offered entrepreneurs the potential to connect with government buyers.

More than 800 teams submitted solutions to four different challenges under the AFWERX program, which seeks to foster innovative ideas. These teams include everyone from prime government contractors (such as Lockheed Martin and SpaceX) all the way down to less mainstream groups offering UFO-propulsion-type ideas. Eventually, about 175 teams were invited to present at the EngageSpace event on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

One of those teams was Astra, the California-based launch company seeking to build an ultralow-cost rocket capable of delivering about 25kg to Sun-synchronous orbit. As part of the event, most of the teams did a 10-minute private pitch to a handful of Air Force and Space Force personnel about their solution to a particular problem.

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Tom Austen and Sydney Lemmon star as siblings Daimon and Ana Helstrom in Helstrom, a 10-episode horror series that hits Hulu next month.

An ethics professor and secret demon hunter reunites with his estranged sister to take on a powerful demonic entity in the trailer for Helstrom, an upcoming horror series based on Marvel Comics characters. The 10-episode series debuts on Hulu next month

Helstrom has a complicated back story. As we reported in 2019, Hulu announced the development of two new Marvel-centric series, Ghost Rider (with Gabriel Luna reprising his role from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Helstrom. The shows were intended to kick off a standalone "Adventure into Fear" franchise that would bring a chilling horror element to the Marvel formula. Ghost Rider soon fell by the wayside, and by December 2019, Marvel Television was shut down. That makes Helstrom the sole survivor of the planned fear-based franchise. Shooting finished in March, right before the coronavirus pandemic caused most Hollywood productions to grind to a halt. Showrunner Paul Zbyszewski's contract was terminated in April—also due to the pandemic—but he stayed on for postproduction.

The series focuses on two characters from Marvel Comics. First: Daimon Helstrom, the son of Satan, introduced in Ghost Rider #1 (1973). He eventually became a recurring character in The Defenders. The other protagonist is his sister, Satana (Ana in the TV adaptation), who embraces the occult and her paternal heritage while Daimon chooses to defend humanity. Per the official premise: "The world isn’t ready for a Helstrom family reunion. As the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer, Helstrom follows Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon), and their complicated dynamic, as they track down the worst of humanity—each with their own attitude and skills."

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Enlarge (credit: Cisco)

Until Wednesday, a single text message sent through Cisco’s Jabber collaboration application was all it took to touch off a self-replicating attack that would spread malware from one Windows user to another, researchers who developed the exploit said.

The wormable attack was the result of several flaws, which Cisco patched on Wednesday, in the Chromium Embedded Framework that forms the foundation of the Jabber client. A filter that’s designed to block potentially malicious content in incoming messages failed to scrutinize code that invoked a programming interface known as “onanimationstart.”

Jumping through hoops

But even then, the filter still blocked content that contained <style>, an HTML tag that had to be included in a malicious payload. To bypass that protection, the researchers used code that was tailored to a built-in animation component called spinner-grow. With that, the researchers were able to achieve a cross-site scripting exploit that injected a malicious payload directly into the internals of the browser built into Jabber.

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  Falcon 9 B1060 and 60 Starlink satellites standing on LC-39A in preparation for launch at 9:29an EDT on September 1, 2020. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

SpaceX launched three missions in August—two carrying its own Starlink satellite payloads, and the SAOCOM 1B mission for Argentina. Now, beginning as early as Thursday morning, SpaceX may go for three more launches this month to continue building out its Starlink satellite-Internet constellation.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off at 8:46am EDT (12:46 UTC) Thursday from Kennedy Space Center while carrying a payload of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. This will be the 12th launch of a large batch of Starlink satellites, although the first 60 satellites launched in May 2019 were, to some extent, a test bed for future iterations. After this mission, the company will have placed more than 700 of its satellites into orbit to provide broadband service.

The need to build out a constellation of thousands of satellites, with the eventual goal of providing broadband Internet across the globe, has allowed SpaceX to fly its Falcon 9 rocket frequently this year. So far in 2020, the company has launched 15 missions, including the suborbital Crew Dragon in-flight abort test on January 19. Of those, nine have been Starlink missions.

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Enlarge / Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, reportedly objected to the FDA's decision to grant an Emergency Use Authorization to plasma treatments. (credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images)

Last week, the FDA announced that it was issuing an emergency use authorization for the treatment of COVID-19: the blood plasma of people who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection. But controversy quickly engulfed that announcement after it became clear that the head of the FDA had exaggerated the effectiveness of the treatment when explaining why it was being approved.

The FDA's salesmanship of blood plasma—which is a treatment of unknown efficacy—was taken as evidence that the emergency use authorization was the product of political pressure exerted by a Trump administration anxious to have some good news to promote its reelection campaign. Additionally, health experts at the National Institute of Health (NIH) didn't agree with the decision and had tried to block it a week ago. Now, the NIH may be striking back, releasing a document that basically says it's looked at the evidence and is not convinced.

Not so fast

While the CDC and FDA have led some aspects of the coronavirus response, the NIH is the employer of Anthony Fauci and the largest biomedical research organization in the world. So it certainly has things to say about how to handle the pandemic, and it maintains a COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel. This, as its name implies, maintains guidelines on different aspects of care for the disease. So, given that the FDA has just given an Emergency Use Authorization to a treatment, it essentially forced the NIH to respond in some way.

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  Plenty of clouds remained Sunday when SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

As a strengthening low pressure system crossed the Florida peninsula on Sunday, weather conditions at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station were poor all day. There were intermittent showers and plenty of lightning.

By mid-morning, SpaceX had already canceled one launch from Florida, a mission carrying five dozen Starlink satellites. But the company held out hope for getting the second flight of a planned doubleheader off on Sunday evening, and by the time the clock ticked down on the SAOCOM-1B mission, weather conditions began to marginally improve.

At 7:18 pm ET (23:18 UTC) launch-site weather had only just turned green, so a thrice-used Falcon 9 first stage took off on its fourth flight. And a historic one it was as SpaceX launched a rocket for the 100th time, and flew a rare polar corridor mission from Florida for Argentina's space agency.

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Robert Pattinson is the latest actor to don the iconic mask and cape in The Batman.

Capping off a long day of sneak peeks, panels, and teaser trailers at DC FanDome this past weekend, Warner Bros. dropped the first teaser for The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson (of High Life and the Twilight franchise) in the title role. It's directed by Matt Reeves (War for the Planet of the Apes), and—surprise, surprise—it's another dark, gritty take on the classic superhero—this time with more of a film noir/detective story vibe.

There is a long and tangled backstory to this latest incarnation of the classic comic book superhero. We all know that Ben Affleck was cast as Batman for a three-film trilogy in the DCEU: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), and Justice League (2017), which had its own well-publicized production woes. Warner Bros. announced plans for a standalone Batman film in the fall of 2014, with Affleck set to reprise the role, as well as directing and co-writing the screenplay.

The original plan was to set the film within the DCEU, after the events of Justice League. But as Warner Bros. was rethinking the shared-universe model for its superhero films in favor of standalone films and franchises, Affleck announced he was stepping down as director, and the studio replaced him with Reeves. Affleck would eventually withdraw from the project altogether, following his divorce from Jennifer Garner and a stint in rehab for alcohol abuse.

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Enlarge / The Battletoads are back. We wish that were better news. (credit: Dlala Studios / Rare, Ltd. / Xbox Game Studios)

When Battletoads arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System in June 1991, it rode on a wave of limited-time momentum in the West. Ninja Turtles fever was still a thing. The NES ruled the charts, even though Sega's own attitude-filled mascot was about to emerge. And Nintendo's official US magazine devoted page after page to a new, weirdly named toad trio: Zitz, Rash, and Pimple.

As an early '90s pre-teen, I was convinced that Battletoads was absolutely massive. I later realized that wasn't the case; a lot of people hated how hard the first game was, while subsequent games flopped. But I'll always be fond of the original game's graphical tricks, over-the-top combat, and wacky mix of genres.

Nothing—not even this week's inspired-yet-messy series rebirth—can take that away from me. For all of its good moments, this year's 10GB version of Battletoads is somehow less diverse and exciting than the 256KB original.

The Looney Tunes-caliber stuff

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  When three players are battling simultaneously, the results can be a mess to keep track of. [credit: Dlala Studios ]

The new game, simply titled Battletoads, sees the series' corporate handlers at Rare Ltd. hand their web-toed fighters to Dlala Studios, an English developer with an eye for hand-drawn 2D art. You can tell why they got the job after playing the first two levels. The game's best bits are a delight to play, either solo or with friends.

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Enlarge (credit: Suse)

The FBI and NSA have issued a joint report warning that Russian state hackers are using a previously unknown piece of Linux malware to stealthily infiltrate sensitive networks, steal confidential information, and execute malicious commands.

In a report that’s unusual for the depth of technical detail from a government agency, officials said the Drovorub malware is a full-featured tool kit that was has gone undetected until recently. The malware connects to command and control servers operated by a hacking group that works for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency that has been tied to more than a decade of brazen and advanced campaigns, many of which have inflicted serious damage to national security.

“Information in this Cybersecurity Advisory is being disclosed publicly to assist National Security System owners and the public to counter the capabilities of the GRU, an organization which continues to threaten the United States and U.S. allies as part of its rogue behavior, including their interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election as described in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017),” officials from the agencies wrote.

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