Technology

Enlarge (credit: Lisa Brewster / Flickr)

Microsoft on Tuesday patched two Windows vulnerabilities that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild to install malicious apps on the computers of unwitting users.

The first vulnerability resides in the VBScript Engine included in all currently supported versions of Windows. A so-called use-after-free flaw involving the way the engine handles computer memory allows attackers to execute code of their choice that runs with the same system privileges chosen by the logged-in user. When targeted users are logged in with administrative rights, attackers who exploit the bug can take complete control of the system. In the event users are logged in with more limited rights, attackers may still be able to escalate privileges by exploiting a separate vulnerability.

CVE-2018-8174, as the flaw is formally indexed, is being actively exploited by attackers, Microsoft officials said. The vulnerability was discovered by antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab, which then reported it to Microsoft. In the exploits observed by Kaspersky Lab:

(credit: Comcast)

Comcast has lined up $60 billion in financing in order to make a hostile bid for the 21st Century Fox media assets that Disney is attempting to buy, according to news reports.

Comcast is waiting to find out whether AT-T will be allowed to buy Time Warner Inc. before moving forward with the bid for Fox assets, reports say. "Comcast is getting the pieces in place to make a hostile bid for 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets should it choose to do so," a Wall Street Journal article said.

The Walt Disney Company already struck a $52.4 billion all-stock deal to buy various 21st Century Fox properties. That includes Fox's stake in Hulu, the popular video streaming service. Comcast would try to buy the same assets that Disney is attempting to acquire.Disney, Fox, and Comcast each own 30 percent of Hulu; Time Warner owns the other 10 percent.The Disney/Fox purchase announcement in December noted that Disney would gain a "controlling interest" in Hulu by purchasing Fox assets. Comcast would receive the same controlling interest in Hulu if it can pry the Fox assets away from Disney.

Enlarge / Two spaces are better. Well, at least to me. (credit: Nora Karol Photography/Getty Images)

In what may be one of the most controversial studies of the year, researchers at Skidmore College—clearly triggered by a change in the American Psychological Association (APA) style book—sought to quantify the benefits of two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. After conducting an eye-tracking experiment with 60 Skidmore students, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay L. Schmitt found that two spaces at the end of a period slightly improved the processing of text during reading. The research was trumpeted by some press outlets as a vindication of two-spacers' superiority.

For anyone who learned their keyboarding skills on a typewriter rather than a computer—and for the many who developed their keyboard muscle memory using software packages such as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing—the double-space after the period is a deeply ingrained truth. While modern style, based on the fallacy that computer typography makes such double-spaces redundant and Paleolithic, has demanded the deprecation of the second tap of the space bar after a punctuation full-stop, many have openly resisted this heresy, believing that the extra space is a courtesy to the reader and enhances the legibility of the text.

Previous cognitive science research has been divided on the issue. Some research has suggested closer spacing of the beginning of a new sentence may allow a reader to capture more characters in their parafoveal vision—the area of the retina just outside the area of focus, or fovea—and thus start processing the information sooner (though experimental evidence of that was not very strong). Other prior research has inferred that an extra space prevents lateral interference in processing text, making it easier for the reader to identify the word in focus. But no prior research found by Johnson, Bui, and Schmitt actually measured reader performance with each typographic scheme.