This purple and black deck of cards is absolutely lovely. I like to tell myself that decks with lovely and unexpected art work distract people from mistakes as I’m performing sleight of hand. Mostly, I just like fancy decks of cards. Limited Edition Karnival Midnight Purple Deck Playing Cards by Bicycle via Amazon
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Limited edition Bicycle Karnival Midnight deck of playing cards
Enlarge (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser ) We’ve now developed a healthy-sized catalog of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of distant stars. But we don’t have the slightest idea whether any of them are actually habitable. That’s largely because, at these distances, it’s extremely difficult to get any sense of what the planets are made of and what their atmospheres are like. And the greenhouse potential of the atmosphere can make the difference between a frozen world like Mars and an out-of-control hothouse like Venus. But at least in the case of one nearby star, scientists are slowly narrowing down the options. TRAPPIST-1 has at least seven planets , all small enough to be Earth-like, with several inside the star’s habitable zone. In two papers released this week, teams of scientists have narrowed down what their atmospheres might look like and provided a greater sense of their composition. The results suggest that at least one planet has the potential to be a watery world. In the air The first study, which appears in Nature Astronomy , looks at the atmospheres of several of the planets, but not directly. Instead, it relies on the Hubble to observe the star’s light as a planet passes in front of it. A tiny fraction of the photons will have passed through the planet’s atmosphere on their way to Earth. Any colors of light that are absorbed or scattered by the gases in the atmosphere will be missing from that fraction, making it possible to infer the atmosphere’s composition. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Planets of TRAPPIST-1: Complex atmospheres, probably lots of water
Enlarge / Charter’s gigabit service is available in these eight markets and will spread across the ISP’s 41-state footprint this year. (credit: Charter ) Charter’s cable network extends to about 50 million homes and businesses across the US, and nearly all of them should have the opportunity to buy gigabit-speed cable Internet by the end of 2018. So far, prices for the service range from $105 to $125. “By year-end, we’ll offer gigabit services in virtually everywhere we serve at all 50 million passings,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told investors in an earnings call Friday. The number of residential units among those 40 million locations is somewhere above 40 million. An earnings call transcript by Seeking Alpha is available here , and Rutledge’s remarks were pointed out by news site Stop the Cap . Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Charter promises gigabit Internet to “virtually” all customers this year
If you were excited for Rian Johnson’s upcoming trilogy of Star Wars films, there’s even nerdier news incoming. Another film series in a galaxy far, far away has just been announced — and they will be written and produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners of HBO’s Game of Thrones . The only thing we know about the new series is that it will be from both the main Skywalker saga and Johnson’s trilogy. Otherwise, nothing has been announced regarding their focus or release dates, though Weiss and Benioff noted they won’t start work on the films until Game of Thrones ‘ final season wraps. But at least this suggests a broader Star Wars universe beyond the stories we grew up watching. “David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today, ” Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said in a statement according to Variety . “Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.” “In the summer of 1977 we traveled to a galaxy far, far away, and we’ve been dreaming of it ever since, ” Benioff and Weiss said in a joint statement. “We are honored by the opportunity, a little terrified by the responsibility, and so excited to get started as soon as the final season of Game of Thrones is complete.” Source: Variety
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‘Game of Thrones’ showrunners will write a new ‘Star Wars’ series
While Sci-Hub is praised by thousands of researchers and academics around the world, copyright holders are doing everything in their power to wipe the site from the web. From a report: Last weekend another problem appeared for Sci-Hub. This time American Chemical Society (ACS) went after CDN provider Cloudflare, which informed the site that a court order requires the company to disconnect several domain names. “Cloudflare has received the attached court order, Case 1:17-cv-OO726-LMB-JFA, ” the company writes. “Cloudflare will terminate your service for the following domains sci-hub.la, sci-hub.tv, and sci-hub.tw by disabling our authoritative DNS in 24 hours.” According to Sci-Hub’s operator, losing access to Cloudflare is not “critical, ” but it may “cause a short pause in website operation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Cloudflare Terminates Service To Sci-Hub Domain Names
Enlarge (credit: Google ) A fast-moving botnet that appeared over the weekend has already infected thousands of Android devices with potentially destructive malware that mines digital coins on behalf of the unknown attackers, researchers said. The previously unseen malware driving the botnet has worm-like capabilities that allow it to spread with little or no user interaction required, researchers with Chinese security firm Netlab wrote in a blog post published Sunday . Once infected, Android phones and TV boxes scan networks for other devices that have Internet port 5555 open. Port 5555 is normally closed, but a developer tool known as the Android Debug Bridge opens the port to perform a series of diagnostic tests. Netlab’s laboratory was scanned by infected devices from 2,750 unique IPs in the first 24 hours the botnet became active, a figure that led researchers to conclude that the malware is extremely fast moving. “Overall, we think there is a new and active worm targeting Android systems’ ADB debug interface spreading, and this worm has probably infected more than 5,000 devices in just 24 hours,” Netlab researchers wrote. “Those infected devices are actively trying to spread malicious code.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Out of nowhere, currency-mining botnet infects 5,000 Android devices
Conan the Barbarian is getting new TV treatment. As part of Amazon’s push into the fantasy genre, the company is developing drama series Conan , based on the books by Robert E. Howard. This literary retelling of the classic 1932 tale will see our unlikely hero searching civilisation to find a place and purpose in a world that rejects him as a savage. There are already a host of respected TV names attached to the project, including Ryan Condal from Colony, Miguel Sapochnik from Game of Thrones, and Warren Littlefield from Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s no word yet on when it’s likely to hit our screens, nor who will take the role of the iconic character. He’s most famously been played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, so whoever it is will have some big furs to fill. Source: Deadline
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Amazon is developing a new ‘Conan the Barbarian’ series