ASOS says hackers gained unauthorized access to third-party platforms it uses and sent an "ASOS HACKED" push notification directly to customers, apparently as part of an extortion attempt. The clothing and beauty store says some basic personal information may have been accessed but does not believe payment-card data or passwords were affected. The BBC reports: In an email to customers on Tuesday night, the company apologized and urged customers not to engage with the notification. And it said the website and app are "operating as usual" promising customers they can "shop with confidence" while it investigates the incident. The company has not as of yet informed the UK's data watchdog, the Information Commission's Office (ICO), about any breach.

Exactly how many Asos customers received the notification on Tuesday remains unclear, but Google's Play store says the ASOS app has been downloaded to android devices more than 10 million times. The British retailer has a substantial global footprint -- serving around 17 million customers each year across more than 150 markets. Some Asos app users in Australia, France, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland had also received the notification, according to local reports on Tuesday.

[...] Users of the Asos app appeared to have received the alarming notification at around 10:00 BST on Tuesday. Headlined "ASOS HACKED" and addressed to the company's data protection officer and IT teams, it said: "We have fully compromised the Snowflake instance." "Engage with us, or we will leak it," it added, before linking to a Telegram channel. The message left many ASOS customers confused. [...] Meanwhile Snowflake -- whose tools are used by dozens of firms to collect, analyze and store data -- told the BBC its investigation was ongoing, but it had so far found "no compromise" of its platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM and Red Hat say their AI-powered Lightwell initiative has identified and helped remediate more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across widely used Java libraries. Phoronix reports: They announced this feat today as part of their promoting Lightwell Clearinghouse to GA, which is an enterprise service for their customers to submit open-source software dependencies for priority review and remediation.
From today's announcement: "The milestone addresses a growing business risk. As autonomous AI agents become capable of combining several lower-risk software weaknesses into a more serious attack, companies need to do more than identify vulnerabilities. They need a practical way to develop, test and deploy fixes in the software that supports critical applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AegirPhotography has added a photo to the pool:

Afternoon storm drifting over Cockatoo Island on Sydney harbour. Shot from Cammeraygal country.

rajbhoy has added a photo to the pool:

Pincushion Protea, Leucospermum. At the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden in Mount Tomah, NSW Australia.

John from Brisbane has added a photo to the pool:

Poor old "Chinook" seems to have been blown up by the elements onto the beach on the Brisbane River at Colmslie. This shot taken below the Colmslie Park looks downstream under the Gateway (or dual Sir Leo Hielscher) bridges that carry 12 lanes north/south as part of the Bruce/Pacific/Hume highways that connect Cairns in North Queensland with Melbourne, Victoria.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

BertvB posted a photo:

A brilliant and vibrant botanical portrait of a coral-red Cactus Dahlia captured in full summer bloom. Shot at 256mm with f/5.6, the close-up showcases the dense, starburst arrangement of its slender, pointed petals. The warm sunlight brings out the fiery red and salmon tones, perfectly isolated against a creamy, out-of-focus green background.

Beldina Odenyo was on the verge of stardom when she took her own life in 2021. In this beautiful documentary, her grief-stricken sister Leah attempts to finish her album – and her journey will make you cry again and again

In 2021, the Kenyan-Scottish singer-songwriter Beldina Odenyo was on the brink of major stardom. That October, aged 31, she headlined a gig at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, delivering an instantly legendary performance; barefoot, cloaked and bone-shaking in its intensity. Everyone in that concert hall knew they were witnessing something extraordinary that night. Two weeks later, Odenyo took her own life.

This tender and grief-stricken documentary, which opens a year after her death, is directed with remarkable care by Louise Lockwood. What emerges is a sensitively drawn portrait of a visionary artist haunted by trauma, formed through her teenage video diaries, the words of those who loved her, the handful of exquisite songs she left behind – kept in a folder on her hard drive named “passable demos” – and the determination of her older sister, Leah McAleer, to keep her astonishing voice alive. A deeply painful venture that she understands is itself a product of her insurmountable grief.

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Justice department detained James Codey Bryant and allege he offered ‘technical advice’ to primary suspect

A surprise suspected accomplice has been arrested in connection with a mass school shooting in Canada that was made notorious after an 18-year-old allegedly killed six children after discussing it with the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The US Department of Justice said Tuesday it had detained James Codey Bryant, 30, a resident of western Washington state, on a charge of conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country.

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• Farewell match kicks off at 7pm ET

• Messi has completed football

• Email Pablo your analysis, jokes and more

I could populate the entirety of this pre-match coverage with milestones and statistics from Messi’s illustrious career – his international career alone is a statistician’s dream, especially in the past two World Cup cycles, which saw him solidify his status as an immortal.

Our own Ryan Benson unpacks the statistical absurdity of it all, arguing that Messi has at this point “completed football.” It’s hard to disagree:

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Her glacial poise in North By Northwest made her a cinematic icon, but films including On the Waterfront and Loving revealed great subtlety alongside the glamour

• Eva Marie Saint dies aged 102

• Her best films – ranked

• Her life in pictures

‘I’m Eve Kendall. I’m 26 and unmarried. Now you know everything.”

Not quite everything. That is the famously succinct introduction given in a swaying dining car in a voice creamy with insinuation. Eve is speaking to Cary Grant’s fugitive ad man Roger Thornhill, wrongly accused of murder and hiding out from the cops on a train from New York to Chicago in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North By Northwest. Eve is going to hide him in her compartment because she wants to have sex with him, and much later that train of theirs is to symbolically enter a tunnel. But is that the whole story? Eve’s amazingly beautiful, enigmatic face encodes a secret.

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The actor, who has died at the age of 102, was best known for her Oscar-winning performance in On The Waterfront as well as for starring in Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. Her career spanned eight decades – here we look back at her life and work

• Her best films – ranked

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Landmark roles were in 50s classics directed by Elia Kazan and Alfred Hitchcock, before going on to play Superman’s adoptive mother in later life

• Eva Marie Saint – a life in pictures

• Her best films – ranked

Eva Marie Saint, one of the last survivors of Hollywood’s golden age of the 1940s and 50s, has died aged 102. Her screen work spanned six decades: Saint made her screen debut opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s celebrated thriller North by Northwest, and in one of her last screen appearances played Superman’s adoptive mother Martha Kent in the 2006 superhero film Superman Returns.

A family spokesman said on Tuesday that Saint had died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles.

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We’ve looked at the betting markets to predict the most likely drivers to win at Marina Bay.

In playful, anthropomorphized sculptures, Hannah Lim takes inspiration from historical ceramics, classical Chinese literature, and her British-Singaporean heritage. For several years, the London-based artist has been interested in the 17th- and 18th-century design phenomenon known as Chinoiserie, in which European producers mimicked Chinese and other Asian motifs, appropriating a variety of regional aesthetics that catered to a Western market. “In my own work, I attempt to reclaim and re-imagine this practice in a more conscientious way,” Lim says in a statement. “My sculptures often draw inspiration from specific cultural styles or processes.”

Snuff bottles represent a consumer trend that emerged in China in the 17th century. Its namesake substance, which originated in the Americas, is a kind of powdered, scented tobacco that’s scooped with a tiny spoon and inhaled directly into the nose. As in Europe, its popularity spread especially among the affluent. When Lim observed several examples in museum collections around the U.K., she was fascinated by their ornate designs and variation and began experimenting with sculpting similar motifs. Then, she began to scale up.

A typical snuff bottle is diminutive and jewel-like, typically just a couple of inches in diameter so that it could be both portable and easily tucked away. Lim’s are several inches tall and usually need to be held with both hands. “Initially, my own snuff bottle works were designed in a way to highlight certain personal aspects of my heritage. Over time, they’ve come to reflect different points in my research,” Lim tells Colossal. “Each of my own snuff bottles also has a hanging charm hidden within its lid. The hanging charm references the tiny spoon attached to the lid of traditional snuff bottles.”

For the structure, Lim uses a combination of polymer clay and Jesmonite, a casting material made by blending a mineral powder with liquid acrylic polymer. She also applies chalk, acrylic paint, and a layer of gloss to give each piece its finishing touches, including small painted or relief portraits of animals and imaginary creatures.

Inspiration comes from a wide range of mythological writings, particularly an ancient Chinese tome called The Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is a mostly fantastical account of more than 550 mountains and 300 waterways. “I’ve been attempting to interpret the text through my work, using the enchanting alchemic descriptions of these creatures as inspiration for my most recent series of sculptures and paintings,” the artist says.

Lim is continuing to experiment with scale and materials, especially through the use of metal, and recent sculptures like “Orchid Table” incorporate laser-cut elements. She’s also frequently making bespoke frames that serve as extensions of her paintings, and she plans to incorporate motifs onto the frames themselves.

If you’re in the U.K., see Lim’s solo exhibition Reimaginings through November 14 at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath. She’ll also have some works on view later this month with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in Paris, and later this year, she’ll unveil a new public artwork in Paddington, London. See more and follow updates on the artist’s Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Hannah Lim Draws on Her British-Singaporean Heritage in Sculptural Snuff Bottles appeared first on Colossal.

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of “Japanese Water Iris and Garden” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max during a visit to Amami no Sato in Kagoshima, Japan. I love the spring-fed, mirror-like waters reflecting the surrounding greenery and sky, the bright purple Japanese water irises, the meticulously trimmed green bushes, the natural boulders, and the traditional stone elements arranged in a classic Zen layout…

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of a “Victorian-style glass gazebo and bougainvillea plants” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max during my visit to Amami no Sato in Kagoshima, Japan. I love the Victorian glasshouse, or garden gazebo, and the vibrant magenta and pink potted bougainvillea plants…