“This Android virus won't let you delete it - Komando” plus 4 more

This Android virus won't let you delete it - Komando
Apple TV+: A guide to its shows, movies, price and launch date - Los Angeles Times
Triad researchers helping develop 'universal,' more effective flu shot that could provide multi-year protection - WXII12 Winston-Salem
Apple TV+: Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard say new show See will create more roles for blind actors - Sky News
Business School Apps Are Dropping … and So Is the Gender Gap - OZY

This Android virus won't let you delete it - Komando

Posted: 31 Oct 2019 01:06 PM PDT

Barely a week goes by without the news mentioning an Android malware epidemic. Not only is the problem deeply entrenched in Google's ecosystem, but security researchers keep finding malicious software before Google has a chance to! Click or tap to see how millions of users managed to install malware from the Google Play store.

But unlike recently reported malware, the latest threat against Android isn't letting users off easy. Once this software installs itself on your phone, it goes to great lengths to hide itself, changes your settings and makes itself almost impossible to delete.

If you've spent any time in sketchy parts of the web, or downloaded new software for your Android phone, here's what you need to check to ensure you're not infected.

Xhelper Trojan is a virus in the worst possible way

Much like a real life virus, there's no known cure for Xhelper — a Trojan that has rapidly infected more than 45,000 phones in the past 6 months.

According to security researchers at Symantec, this Android-centric malware is primarily targeting users located in India, Russia and the United States with invasive pop-up ads that refuse to disappear. This will continue happening, even if the user erases and restores their phone to factory settings.

Xhelper works by changing settings in your device so it's harder to detect. It deletes its own app icon, embeds itself deep into settings menus and runs quietly in the background. Most users don't even know they're infected until they experience an increase in annoying advertisements at inopportune moments.

Currently, anti-malware programs for Android detect and remove Xhelper, but what makes this virus so scary is it hides code in your system that automatically re-downloads the malware if you mange to delete it. Regardless of whether you're clearing out apps via settings or completely erasing the phone, Xhelper somehow manages to come back again and again.

As of now, there's no known method to remove the code that re-downloads the virus. Once Xhelper's on your phone, you're stuck with it.

How can I fight back against this virus? Is it too late for my phone?

Unlike nearly every other Android malware we've discussed, Xhelper isn't found in the Google Play store. Instead, it usually comes attached to third-party apps from non-Google sources. Shady game websites and unauthorized app repositories are known lurking grounds for Xhelper and a slew of other nasty phone viruses.

To keep your phone safe from Xhelper, avoid downloading apps from any source you're not familiar with. Stick to the safer parts of the web when browsing, and avoid downloading any strange attachments from emails or text messages. By sticking with websites and apps you're familiar with, you'll be much safer.

If Xhelper is already on your phone, there isn't much you can do for now. Users have managed to kill Xhelper by updating to a new version of Android, but not everyone is behind on their updates. This method may be successful, but only for those who haven't updated to the latest operating system. Everyone else will have to wait until the next update.

Other than updating, running an antivirus like Kaspersky for Android or Malwarebytes can help you delete the malware when you boot up your phone. It will re-download itself, so be prepared to do this every single time you start up.

Of course, there's also the nuclear option: buying a new phone altogether. For our guide to the best smartphones in 2019, click or tap here.

To compare models for yourself, click or tap here to visit our flagship smartphone comparison chart.

Sneaky malware spreading through Android apps with millions of downloads

Yet another group of applications was discovered on the Google Play Store to be hosting malware. Once it's activated, it uses the power of your phone to generate ad revenue for cybercriminals, all without the user's permission. If you frequently download apps to your Android device, you'll want to know about this strange trojan that's been infecting phones the world over. It's already been installed on millions of devices.

Click or tap to see what this trojan can do with your phone.

Apple TV+: A guide to its shows, movies, price and launch date - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 31 Oct 2019 07:00 AM PDT

Additional Apple TV+ originals will be added to the Apple TV app each month. Upcoming titles include:

"Servant": A psychological thriller from M. Night Shyamalan about a mourning Philadelphia couple whose home attracts a mysterious force following a tragedy.

"Truth Be Told": A series based on the novel by Kathleen Barber exploring America's obsession with true crime podcasts. Octavia Spencer stars as a journalist and podcaster opposite Aaron Paul, who will portray a convicted murderer.

"Little America": A series inspired by the funny, romantic, heartfelt and surprising true stories of immigrants in America featured in Epic Magazine.

Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Mackie in 'The Banker'

"The Banker": A film based on the real-life story of two black businessmen who found a way to work around the racist establishment of 1960s America and provide housing loans to members of the African American community in Jim Crow-era Texas. Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson star as Bernard Garrett and Joe Morris, respectively, with Nia Long and Nicholas Hoult also among the cast.

"Hala": A film following high-school senior Hala, who finds her growing feelings for a classmate at odds with her traditional Muslim upbringing.

"Little Voice": A series about finding your true voice in your early 20s — and the courage to use it — with original music from Sara Bareilles.

"Mythic Quest": "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" vets Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day are behind this half-hour comedy set inside a video-game development studio — and produced by video-game developer Ubisoft.

"Amazing Stories": A revival of the director's own 1985 anthology series, Steven Spielberg and his Amblin Entertainment shingle pay homage yet again to the classic science-fiction magazine from which it takes its name.

Triad researchers helping develop 'universal,' more effective flu shot that could provide multi-year protection - WXII12 Winston-Salem

Posted: 25 Oct 2019 01:26 PM PDT

North Carolina has already seen its first flu-related death this season, making it time for another reminder from experts that now is the perfect time to get your flu shot. Although it will not be ready this season, researchers are working on a new type of influenza vaccine that they hope will change the future of flu prevention.Wake Forest Baptist Health infectious disease expert Dr. Christopher Ohl said it will be called the universal flu shot. "We have actually some promising news on the front that maybe in five or six years, we'll have a new type of influenza vaccine that we call a universal flu shot and you won't have to go back every year to do that. It'll probably last several years and cover all of the different types of strains that come out," Ohl said.Ohl said it would be a game changer when it comes to flu season and prevention. "It'd be huge. We wouldn't have to come back and get the shot every year, and hopefully it'll be more effective. The current shot, depending on the year, is somewhere between 70% and 80% effective. And preventing severe influenza is only about 60% at preventing it totally,so we're hoping the newer shot would actually be more effective," Ohl said.Many researchers, including some in the Piedmont Triad, are working on the new invention. "It's nationwide," Ohl said. "Some of our virology researchers have contributed, but the big push is the National Institute of Health out of Washington and large virology institutes."Ohl said it is a challenging process that he hopes will be successful. "It's difficult and very expensive work to do. You have to be very good at tearing apart the little flu virus and seeing how our immune system responds to it and make a vaccine that'll do it," Ohl said. "We'll have to keep our eye on that and our fingers crossed a little bit, but there is some promise on the horizon."As for this year's flu season, Ohl said it is still early right now for the flu. "There's a little bit of influenza going around right now, not a lot actually. We keep track of these numbers through our emergency departments and clinics," Ohl said. But Ohl said that does not mean you should wait to get your flu shot. "This time of year, if you get it, then the immunity lasts a little bit longer," Ohl said. While they have not seen much of the flu yet, Ohl said they are seeing other viruses spreading around. "Snort, sniffle, sneeze infections going around, colds and such. If you're sick, particularly if you're sick with a fever, be a good citizen, stay home from school or work. Wash your hands regularly," Ohl said. Wake Forest Baptist Health has an app that can help you stay informed of what doctors are seeing in your area. The app is called The Sneez App. "What it does is it takes the diagnoses and things that we're seeing in our health system and puts it all together so you can kind of keep track of what kind of crud might be going around between colds and the vomiting illness, norovirus so on and so forth, and you can actually use the app to make an appointment," Ohl said. To download The Sneez App, head to the App Store or Google Play.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. —

North Carolina has already seen its first flu-related death this season, making it time for another reminder from experts that now is the perfect time to get your flu shot.

Although it will not be ready this season, researchers are working on a new type of influenza vaccine that they hope will change the future of flu prevention.

Wake Forest Baptist Health infectious disease expert Dr. Christopher Ohl said it will be called the universal flu shot.

"We have actually some promising news on the front that maybe in five or six years, we'll have a new type of influenza vaccine that we call a universal flu shot and you won't have to go back every year to do that. It'll probably last several years and cover all of the different types of strains that come out," Ohl said.

Ohl said it would be a game changer when it comes to flu season and prevention.

"It'd be huge. We wouldn't have to come back and get the shot every year, and hopefully it'll be more effective. The current shot, depending on the year, is somewhere between 70% and 80% effective. And preventing severe influenza is only about 60% at preventing it totally,so we're hoping the newer shot would actually be more effective," Ohl said.

Many researchers, including some in the Piedmont Triad, are working on the new invention.

"It's nationwide," Ohl said. "Some of our virology researchers have contributed, but the big push is the National Institute of Health out of Washington and large virology institutes."

Ohl said it is a challenging process that he hopes will be successful.

"It's difficult and very expensive work to do. You have to be very good at tearing apart the little flu virus and seeing how our immune system responds to it and make a vaccine that'll do it," Ohl said. "We'll have to keep our eye on that and our fingers crossed a little bit, but there is some promise on the horizon."

As for this year's flu season, Ohl said it is still early right now for the flu.

"There's a little bit of influenza going around right now, not a lot actually. We keep track of these numbers through our emergency departments and clinics," Ohl said.

But Ohl said that does not mean you should wait to get your flu shot.

"This time of year, if you get it, then the immunity lasts a little bit longer," Ohl said.

While they have not seen much of the flu yet, Ohl said they are seeing other viruses spreading around.

"Snort, sniffle, sneeze infections going around, colds and such. If you're sick, particularly if you're sick with a fever, be a good citizen, stay home from school or work. Wash your hands regularly," Ohl said.

Wake Forest Baptist Health has an app that can help you stay informed of what doctors are seeing in your area. The app is called The Sneez App.

"What it does is it takes the diagnoses and things that we're seeing in our health system and puts it all together so you can kind of keep track of what kind of crud might be going around between colds and the vomiting illness, norovirus so on and so forth, and you can actually use the app to make an appointment," Ohl said.

To download The Sneez App, head to the App Store or Google Play.

Apple TV+: Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard say new show See will create more roles for blind actors - Sky News

Posted: 30 Oct 2019 09:30 PM PDT

Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard have told Sky News they believe their new series See will pave the way for more roles for blind actors on screen.

The drama is set hundreds of years in the future, after a deadly virus has decimated Earth and left those who survived without sight - until Baba Voss, played by Momoa, becomes the father of twins who can see.

While Game Of Thrones and Aquaman star Momoa and mooted 2020 Oscar contender Woodard lead the cast, the ensemble also features several actors who are visually impaired.

Due for release on Friday as one of the flagship shows for the launch of Apple's new TV+ streaming service, the show has already opened up the conversation about representation for people with disabilities in TV and film.

Actress Marilee Talkington, who is legally blind and stars in the show alongside Momoa and Woodard, praised Apple for its inclusion of visually impaired actors at the series' premiere in Los Angeles but said that full representation "across the board" is "long overdue".

Addressing the issue to Sky News, Momoa said the show is at the "forefront" when it comes to representation on screen.

Woodard, who plays "priest, midwife and kind of spiritual philosopher" Paris, said she understood there were more visually impaired or blind people involved in See "than there have ever been on a production".

"Hopefully this will create opportunities for blind actors to come on board," she said. "They need the training, they need the exposure. See is a place that if we stick and we do some seasons, certainly they will be coming more and more into the primary characters, so we're sort of seeding the ground for that to happen.

"I think something for the world to see is a whole group of people - even though we're very young in the language of blindness - that blind people are people, they are capable of anything anybody else is capable of, except being able to focus their eyes on something and depend on their eyes.

"So you get to see evil queens be blind and you get to see courageous warriors - and you get to see human beings."

Both Momoa and Woodard, as well as the other sighted stars, received extensive training with the help of Joe Strechay, a visually impaired blindness consultant who works on entertainment projects.

"For a solid month all we did was do blindness training, not just the primary cast, but all the stunt people, all the background actors," said Woodard. "We all had to learn the language of how to navigate the world without sight.

"Joe became a very dear friend as well as our blindness coach. There was nothing we couldn't ask him, because basically you're a toddler and you're saying, teach me the language.

"For a month [we had] all kinds of exercises: how to use how to use a stick, how to echolocate, how to use your other senses - smell, taste and touch. To figure your way around a room or a situation that normally you would depend on your eyes to do, and then we had to translate just the glimpse of that new language into how we incorporate it into our acting style."

Momoa said the show's stars all learned from the blind and visually impaired actors and advisers on set.

"Absolutely. I mean, we're actors, so it's kind of great because we get to study them... I would definitely study Joe all the time. And Joe's so good that you have to go further because he doesn't look like he's blind... I constantly went to him and other cast members. It was great."

Momoa, who played Dothraki chief Khal Drogo in the first series of Game Of Thrones, says his role in See is his greatest and most challenging yet.

Ahead of its release, comparisons are already being made, but the star is quick to play them down.

"Nothing compares to Game of Thrones," he says. "To me, it's one of the greatest shows of recent history. You know, this is first season. There's so many different worlds… this doesn't really compare. But personally? This is better for me.

"Drogo really doesn't say much. He falls in love for a second, then he dies. A lot of people connected with that, it was a great role, but that series is its own realm. This is not that. It's its own world and it's beautiful.

"I don't like comparing the two, the only thing they have in common is I'm in both. But personally, I can do a lot of great... I get to talk, I get to speak English - it's pretty fun. I get to smile and fall in love, and it lasts more than eight episodes. So I'm pretty excited."

:: Listen to the Backstage podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

As one of the flagship Apple TV+ launch shows, See premieres on Friday alongside the much-hyped The Morning Show, starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.

Are TV series and streaming the future for Hollywood?

"I think so," says Woodard. "I'll go wherever the story is good. It's like, you give me a good story, I follow. I think the writer is queen or king, but there's no putting this genie back in the bottle. So, you know, I think it actually is stepping up TV's game.

"This will last as long as it lasts before the next innovation happens... Who knows how fast it's going to go? But for now, this is the going currency."

See is out on Apple TV+ on Friday

Business School Apps Are Dropping … and So Is the Gender Gap - OZY

Posted: 06 Oct 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Silicon Valley's connections to the global tech industry made Stanford Graduate School of Business attractive to Kimberley Manning.

Yet the software engineer, whose family had moved to Australia from Zimbabwe, halted her application.

"I perceive the U.S. to be increasingly hostile to immigrants and people from other cultures," Manning says.

The U.S. is the birthplace of the MBA, and home to 51 of the top 100 business schools in the Financial Times' global ranking list. But the market is five years into a downward spiral in demand, which has been spreading in recent years to even the most well-regarded institutions, including Stanford, Harvard Business School and Wharton.

But according to Elissa Sangster, CEO of the Forté Foundation, which campaigns to raise the proportion of women in business education, there is a "slow but steady" rise in female enrollment in MBA courses globally.

One-third of 52 member schools had 40 percent or more women enrolled for last year's intake, up from just three schools in 2014.

"We have seen a more intense focus on enhancing gender diversity in the last five years," Sangster says.

While Manning may have decided against applying, Stanford Graduate School of Business this year has its most gender-balanced MBA intake, with women making up 47 percent of the cohort, up 6 percentage points from 2018.

That's the result of several years of expanding efforts to encourage female applicants, such as outreach events to groups of women outside the U.S. and scholarship support for women, according to Kirsten Moss, assistant dean of MBA admissions and financial aid. "Diversity, equity and inclusion is a key priority for the GSB," she says.

Financial aid proved important for Manning, who has been helped with her MBA costs at Insead with a 20,000-euro Forté Fellowship grant. "The MBA makes sense to me because I want to get an international experience, hopefully to do something in the future to help my home country, Zimbabwe," she says.

This year, applications are down at all but one of the 10 highest-ranked schools in the Financial Times' analysis. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business was the exception, with applications up 3.4 percent this year. But its numbers are still down from two years ago, as the school suffered an 8.2 percent drop in 2018.

The tightening of visa rules for overseas students and hostility to immigration under Donald Trump's administration are seen as the biggest problems for MBA admissions teams.

Manning, who has worked in Brisbane-based fintech startups since she graduated from the University of Queensland five years ago, will be heading to France this January to start her MBA at Insead's Fontainebleau campus. "I actually don't feel individually targeted and would be eligible for a privileged work visa," she says. "But I don't want to move to a country with such openly hostile policies."

She is not alone in making such a decision. Stanford Graduate School of Business has suffered a 6 percent fall in MBA applications and cites immigration worries and the current U.S. trade battle with China as reasons behind it.

Most business school aspirants I've encountered have lukewarm motivations at best.

Gorick Ng, research associate, Harvard Business School

A buoyant jobs market has also raised the opportunity cost for would-be applicants of leaving employment and going to business school full time — a situation not helped by above-inflation rises in tuition fees.

However, there is also a growing perception that MBAs are no longer the most cost-effective way to get on in a career, and that other avenues now exist to gain what used to be the exclusive benefits of a business education.

Gorick Ng is a research associate at Harvard Business School, where he completed his MBA last year, and he's also a vocational counselor for Harvard undergraduate students. One of the biggest challenges to the MBA he sees are the "unclear benefits" of the qualification to those who are considering taking one: These possible MBA students are precisely the kind of people who could build a network and find a job through other routes.

"I am not saying that a business school is worthless," Ng says. "I am grateful for the education, mentors and lifelong friends I made at HBS. But by and large, most business school aspirants I've encountered have lukewarm motivations at best, and question whether they made the right decision long after they graduate."

The most common reasons Harvard students give for taking an MBA include fear of missing out on what friends have done, the desire to leave a job they hate, the chance to find a husband or wife — and simply because they can, having taken the Graduate Management Admission Test exam and scored highly, according to Ng.

But, he cautions, these reasons are not sufficient when measured against the cost of studying for an MBA, which can run to $250,000 at schools like Harvard, and the two years of full-time study required to complete the degree.

"Like a spork, an ugly hybrid that is not pointy enough to be a fork or round enough to be a spoon, business school is so many things to so many people that it ends up being not much of anything to anyone," he says.

The decline in MBA applications in the U.S. is a concern, but far from being an existential crisis for the highest-ranked schools. This year, for example, Stanford received 7,342 applications, down from 7,797 in 2018, for only 417 places.

Lawrence Linker, a Singapore-based admissions consultant at MBA Link, which offers advice to potential students, sees the declining number of applications as an opportunity because they increase the odds of acceptance into top schools. "For those with the right test scores and the funds available, there has never been a better time to apply to business school," he says.

By Jonathan Moules

OZY partners with the U.K.'s Financial Times to bring you premium analysis and features. © The Financial Times Limited 2019.

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