Author: kenmay

Reflective Camouflage: The Mirror Spider is Covered in Controllable Reflective Patches

In Australia there’s a spider known as Thwaitesia argentiopunctata , a/k/a the Mirror Spider. Apparently they have cousins in Southeast Asia as well, as photographer Nicky Bay has been shooting them in his home city-state of Singapore. Writes Bay: For several years, I have been observing the odd behavior of the Mirror Spider ( Thwaitesia sp. ) where the “silver-plates” on the abdomen seem to shrink when the spider is agitated (or perhaps threatened), revealing the actual abdomen. At rest, the silver plates expand and the spaces between the plates close up to become an almost uniform reflective surface. You can see more shots of this supremely creepy bug—which, if you ask me, should really be called the Disco Ball Spider— here . Via Colossal

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Reflective Camouflage: The Mirror Spider is Covered in Controllable Reflective Patches

Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images) An Alabama man who worked as a Verizon Wireless technician has agreed to plead guilty to a federal hacking charge in connection to his illegal use of the company’s computers to acquire customer calling and location data. The man, Daniel Eugene Traeger, faces a maximum five years in prison next month. He admitted Thursday that he sold customer data—from 2009 to 2014—to a private investigator whom the authorities have not named. According to the man’s signed plea deal  (PDF): At some point in 2009, the Defendant met a private investigator (“the PI”) who wanted to buy Verizon customer information from the Defendant. The Defendant accepted the PI’s offer. The defendant used Verizon computer systems and facilities to access customer call records and customer location data that he knew he was not authorized to access, and provided that information to the PI even though the Defendant knew that he was not authorized to provide it to a third party. The Defendant accessed customer call records by logging into Verizon’s MARS system. The Defendant then compiled the data in spreadsheets, which the Defendant provided to the PI, including by e-mail. The Defendant accessed customer location data using a Verizon system called Real Time Tool. Using RTT, the Defendant “pinged” cellular telephones on Verizon’s network and provided location data for those telephones to the PI. The plea agreement said that Traeger began making $50 monthly in 2009, when he sold two records a month. By mid-2013, he was earning $750 each month by selling 10 to 15 records. In all, the plea deal says he made more than $10,000 over a five-year period. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars

Apple logs your iMessage contacts and could share them with police

Apple’s iMessage had a few security holes in March and April that potentially leaked photos and contacts, respectively. Though quickly patched, they are a reminder that the company faces a never-ending arms race to shore up its security to keep malicious hackers and government agencies out. But that doesn’t mean they will always be able to keep it private. A report from The Intercept states that iMessage conversation metadata gets logged in Apple’s servers, which the company could be compelled to turn over to law enforcement by court order. While the content of those messages remains encrypted and out of the police’s hands, these records list time, date, frequency of contact and limited location information. When an iOS user types in a phone number to begin a text conversation, their device pings servers to determine whether the new contact uses iMessage. If not, texts are sent over SMS and appear in green bubbles, while Apple’s proprietary data messages appear in blue ones. Allegedly, they log all of these unseen network requests. But those also include time and date stamps along with the user’s IP address, identifying your location to some degree, according to The Intercept . Like the phone logs of yore, investigators could legally request these records and Apple would be obliged to comply. While the company insisted that iMessage was end-to-end encrypted in 2013, securing user messages even if law enforcement got access, Apple said nothing about metadata. Apple confirmed to The Intercept that it does comply with subpoenas and other legal requests for these exact logs, but maintained that message content is still kept private. Their commitment to user security isn’t really undermined by these illuminations — phone companies have been giving this information to law enforcement for decades — but it does illustrate what they can and cannot protect. While they resisted FBI requests for backdoor iPhone access earlier this year and then introduced a wholly redesigned file system with a built-in unified encryption method on every device, they can’t keep authorities from knowing when and where you text people. Source: The Intercept

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Apple logs your iMessage contacts and could share them with police

A Vicious 50-Year Storm Just Blacked Out an Entire Australian State

South Australia, a state with a population of about 1.7 million, was hit by a massive storm system on Wednesday. The entire region went without power for much of the day as a result. Read more…

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A Vicious 50-Year Storm Just Blacked Out an Entire Australian State

IEEE Sets New Ethernet Standard That Brings 5X the Speed Without Cable Ripping

Reader coondoggie writes: As expected the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification — IEEE P802.3bz — that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling. The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks. Indeed, the wireless component may be the most significant implication of the standard as 2.5G and 5G Ethernet will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IEEE Sets New Ethernet Standard That Brings 5X the Speed Without Cable Ripping

Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Mars vehicle — the spaceship his company plans to build to transport the first colonists to Mars. It will have a diameter of 17 meters. The plan is to send about 100 people per trip, though Musk wants to ultimately take 200 or more per flight to make the cost cheaper per person. The trip can take as little as 80 days or as many as 150 depending on the year. The hope is that the transport time will be only 30 days “in the more distant future.” The rocket booster will have a diameter of 12 meters and the stack height will be 122 meters. The spaceship should hold a cargo of up to 450 tons depending on how many refills can be done with the tanker. As rumored, the Mars vehicle will be reusable and the spaceship will refuel in orbit. The trip will work like this: First, the spaceship will launch out of Pad 39A, which is under development right now at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At liftoff, the booster will have 127, 800 kilonewtons of thrust, or 28, 730, 000 pounds of thrust. Then, the spaceship and booster separate. The spaceship heads to orbit, while the booster heads back to Earth, coming back within about 20 minutes. Back on Earth, the booster lands on a launch mount and a propellant tanker is loaded onto the booster. The entire unit — now filled with fuel — lifts off again. It joins with the spaceship, which is then refueled in orbit. The propellant tankers will go up anywhere from three to five times to fill the tanks of the spaceship. The spaceship finally departs for Mars. To make the trip more attractive for its crew members, Musk promises that it’ll be “really fun” with zero-G games, movies, cabins, games, a restaurant. Once it reaches Mars, the vehicle will land on the surface, using its rocket engines to lower itself gently down to the ground. The spaceship’s passengers will use the vehicle, as well as cargo and hardware that’s already been shipped over to Mars, to set up a long-term colony. At the rate of 20 to 50 total Mars trips, it will take anywhere from 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization with one million people on Mars, says Musk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days

Sad BlackBerry Will Stop Making Phones

It’s the end of an era. BlackBerry, a name once synonymous with high-end smartphones, will no longer make mobile devices. Along with a dismal financial report, the company announced on Wednesday it “plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners.” Read more…

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Sad BlackBerry Will Stop Making Phones

How a Pythagoras Cup works

The legendary cup, designed to punish greedy drinkers, explained masterfully by Salad Fingers’ dad Sir Martyn Poliakoff. His YouTube channel is packed with similarly excellent videos wherein lab assistant Neil is persuaded to execute unnerving experiments . ( previously .) (more…)

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How a Pythagoras Cup works