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Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, researchers have linked the WannaCry ransomware to Chinese-speaking developers, Japan is reportedly taking steps to bring in autonomous drone and vehicle deliveries, sources indicate that Nintendo has ordered the production of millions of extra Switch consoles and more.
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Security researchers at Flashpoint have highlighted evidence that could link the WannaCry ransomware attack to Chinese malware creators (BBC). The Flashpoint team examined the language used in the ransom note produced after the software had encrypted data on affected systems and noted that only the English and Chinese text appeared to have been written by humans, with all other languages appearing to be machine translated. However, while the English versions of the ransomware notice included odd sentences such as "But you have not so enough time", the Chinese version exhibited proper use of punctuation and grammar that indicates a "native or at least fluent" Chinese-speaker. While the evidence is intriguing, this remains just one of several – potentially related – theories as to the malware's origins, which others have linked to the North Korean Lazarus group.
Japan has reportedly set June 9 as the date by which it intends to finalise new legislation that will see drone package deliveries become a commercial reality by 2020, to be followed by self-driving trucks in 2022 (VentureBeat). The new proposals would also make it easier for companies to test their autonomous technologies. The government plans, seen by Reuters sources, follow news earlier this year that Yamato Holdings Co, Japan's biggest parcel delivery firm, had to increase prices and cut deliveries due to a lack of available workers - a scenario that's only set to become more common in light of the country's ageing population. The government also reportedly plans to encourage greater use of AI and big data in medicine, as well as promoting new financial technologies.
The Financial Times reports that, following strong launch sales, Nintendo hopes to manufacture as many as 18 million Switch consoles by next March (Polygon). The company's stated sales goal for the Switch's first year is 10 million – which it's sticking to – but demand remains high for Nintendo's fastest-ever selling console. However, reports also indicate that a lack of LCD screens in the supply chain could stymie the company's enhanced production efforts. Meanwhile, news of a forthcoming Switch version of Monster Hunter XX has pushed Nintendo's stock price to a nine-year high.
Richard Branson has encouraged UK startups not to fear leaving the European Union, as he called for more companies to offer suggestions on how technology can be used to improve the country's trains (WIRED). "If a dreadful decision gets made for a country, we can't all just give up," Branson told WIRED while speaking about Virgin's Platform-X accelerator. "We've got to get out there and work our butts off to make sure the pain on the British public is lessened as much as possible". Branson continued to say he believes startups will "be the companies that create the most jobs" in the coming years. The business tycoon's comments come as he called for entries to Virgin Trains' startup accelerator. The Platform-X scheme, which was first launched at the start of May, is asking for people to propose ideas that can use Virgin Train's £25 million innovation fund.
New research has found that increasing temperatures around the world are set to result in millions of hours of missed sleep (Science). Working with US sleep survey data gathered between 2002 and 2011, which asked 765,000 people about how often they experienced insufficient sleep, the team correlated those responses with weather data for the date and location of survey participants. They found that nighttime temperatures just 1 degree Celsius above the monthly average caused around three extra nights of inadequate sleep. A 1 degree temperature increase is an extremely likely result of climate change by 2050, making lost sleep almost inevitable. Based on their US data alone, the researchers estimate that people in the USA will get an extra 110 million sleep-deprived nights every year, with the elderly and low earners most likely to be affected.
WIRED Security 2017 returns to London on September 28 to highlight the latest innovations, trends and threats in enterprise cyber defence, security intelligence and cybersecurity.
The CEOs of 12 tech firms, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai of Google, have sent a letter protesting a proposed Texas law designed to discriminate against transgender students (The Verge). The letter is addressed to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who wants to pass the bill by the end of May, forcing students in the US state to use public toilet facilities that match their birth certificate, regardless of their actual gender. The CEOs write that "As large employers in the state, we are gravely concerned that any such legislation would deeply tarnish Texas' reputation as open and friendly to businesses and families. Our ability to attract, recruit and retain top talent, encourage new business relocations, expansions and investment, and maintain our economic competitiveness would all be negatively affected", and affirm their position that "discrimination is wrong and it has no place in Texas or anywhere in our country".
ARM has revealed its new range of mobile CPUs at Computex, including the new Cortex-A75 core, which is designed to give mobile devices more power for machine learning, as well as what the company describes as laptop-level performance (Engadget). The processor goes along with a mobile industry that is developing operating systems and software that increasingly use machine learning to optimise device performance. The Japanese-owned firm also announced a new mid-range A55 CPU which, like the A75, manufacturers will be able to team up with a range of different ARM cores – of varying power and specifications – depending on their product's requirements. Finally, there's a new Mali-G72 graphics core, built to handle both VR graphics and the kind of hardcore data crunching called upon by machine learning apps. The new hardware should start making its way into phones by 2018.
A new exhibition has opened at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan, dedicated to the anime studio's mouth-watering depictions of food in films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle (Kotaku). Named Delicious! Animating Memorable Meals, the exhibition shows not only movie stills and the painstaking development drawings and notes on how the food should look, but also model replicas. Kotaku has kindly assembled a tasty gallery from visitors' photographs around the web.
Llamasoft's highly regarded psychedelic shooter Polybius will be making the jump from PlayStation VR to PCs, veteran British developer Jeff Minter has announced (Rock, Paper, Shotgun). The hypnotic psytrance backed shoot'em up is currently being developed on an Oculus Rift, with HTC Vive support also anticipated. It'll also work without a VR headset, with a look and feel slightly reminiscent of Minter's Tempest 2000. Polybius is inspired by an urban legend about an arcade game that drove its players mad.
District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp has released a trailer for a new series of experimental short films named Oats: Volume 1 (The Verge). Produced under the auspices of Blomkamp's new Oats Studios, the trailer exposits a dark near future in which reptilian aliens have come to exterminate humanity. Oats Studios' first release and its assets are expected to come to online streaming platforms such as YouTube and Steam in the near future.
We may live in a digitised world where distance doesn't matter, but moving objects from one continent to another still requires a lot of effort. These planes help us to get things around the world.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
