Ransom

Jon Ransom is a Cambridge-based, Norfolk-raised writer whose masterly debut The Whale Tattoo last year earned him the Polari first book prize. A raw and gritty novel of gay love, grief and resilience, it focused on Joe Gunner, a working-class young man stalked by visions, revenants and enemies. The narrative flitted between past and present, cut with periodic interludes where a river speaks to Joe, sometimes teasingly, sometimes pugnaciously. The novel swarmed with enigmas but eschewed easy answers: “Way we put meaning on…

A Chinese exchange student who fell victim to a "cyber kidnapping" scam in which his parents were extorted for $80,000, was found alive but "cold and scared" in a tent in the Utah wilderness, police said. Kai Zhuang, age 17, was reported missing on Thursday after his parents in China told officials at his host high school in Riverdale, Utah that he appeared to have been kidnapped and a ransom had been requested.What is "cyber kidnapping" scamThe case followed a typical pattern for cyber kidnapping, in which "kidnappers"…

Hackers who stole information from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 developer Insomniac Games have released much of that data into the wild, reportedly after Sony refused to pay a ransom for the return of those files. The group--Rhysida --demanded a payment of 50 BitCoin (around $2 million) within seven days, and after the deadline passed, the hackers followed up on their threat by releasing 1.67 terabytes of information related to upcoming Insomniac projects.According to Cyber Daily, 98% of the stolen data has been…

Julia Armfield and Jon Ransom have won this year’s Polari prizes for books that explore LGBTQ+ experiences – both with novels that look at water and the sea.Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.Ransom won the £1,000 Polari first book prize for The Whale Tattoo, while Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea was named winner of the overall prize, which comes with a cash award of £2,000.Ransom and Armfield were announced as the winners at a ceremony at the British Library on Friday evening. “In their different ways, both of…

A number of Southern California churches whose congregations disagree with the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church’s inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community into its leadership want to leave the organization but say they’re being held for ransom.There are 22 churches in the region attempting to cut ties with the denomination in a process called “disaffiliation.” Two Orange County churches, Surf City in Huntington Beach and the Fount in Fountain Valley, are among them. The small congregation of the…

Image via Universal It speaks volumes about the video game genre as a whole that until The Super Mario Bros. Movie came along and raced past a billion dollars at the box office, the highest-grossing console-to-screen blockbuster ever made didn’t even turn a single penny of profit in theaters. Even 1994’s Street Fighter managed to do that, and it was awful. While the 1994 fantasy actioner does hold a special place in the heart of many on account of its unrepentant cheese factor – not to mention Raul Julia’s…

Ransom-seeking hackers have increasingly turned a greedy eye toward the world of managed file transfer (MFT) software, plundering the sensitive data being exchanged between organizations and their partners in a bid to win big payouts.Governments and companies globally are scrambling to deal with the consequences of a mass compromise made public on Thursday that was tied to Progress Software Corp's MOVEit Transfer product. In 2021 Accellion Inc's File Transfer Appliance was exploited by hackers and earlier this year…

The US Department of Energy got ransom requests from the Russia-linked extortion group Cl0p at both its nuclear waste facility and scientific education facility that were recently hit in a global hacking campaign, a spokesperson said on Friday.The DOE contractor Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the New Mexico-based facility for disposal of defense-related radioactive nuclear waste, were hit in the attack, which was first reported on Thursday.Data was "compromised" at the two DOE…

Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETOver the past six months, engagement with my Twitter followers has plummeted. Roughly speaking, this crash in interaction levels has corresponded with Elon Musk's acquisition and subsequent meddling with the proven Twitter formula. Also: 60% of U.S. Twitter users took breaks from it in the past yearI have long relied on my Twitter account as a way to interact with my readers and viewers. I have gotten excellent feedback on articles, ideas for new articles, and the occasional…

Best-selling author Jim Butcher’s most famous series is the Dresden Files, but here’s a treat for fans beyond that ongoing contemporary fantasy: The Olympian Affair, the second entry in his Cinder Spires steampunk series, is arriving in November—eight years after it began with The Aeronaut’s Windlass.Twitter Is Shifting Right | Future Techio9 is excited to share a first look at the cover, along with an excerpt, from The Olympian Affair. Here’s a summary of the plot for some context: For centuries the Cinder Spires have…