The pace of High Energy Laser (HEL) technology has become a sprint with nations and defense firms alike racing to develop more and more powerful systems. Nowhere is this breakneck pace clearer than at Rheinmetall’s Ochsenboden Proving Ground, especially during a recent test of the company’s shiny, new, 500-percent improved HEL anti-artillery platform. More »
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This Laser Weapon Got Five Times More Powerful in Just One Year
sciencehabit writes “Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun’s. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life (paper).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Possible Habitable Planet Just 12 Light Years Away
In his largest donation to date, the social network’s CEO donates nearly $500 million to a local foundation to focus on projects in health and education. [Read more]
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Facebook’s Zuckerberg gives a boatload of cash to charity
The social network is rumored to be amping up its video ads by adding in autoplay, audience targeting, and video expansion. [Read more]
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Facebook said to launch autoplay video ads in news feed
Bookmark and Read Later apps like Pocket, Instapaper, and Readability are awesome ways to store and catch up on the interesting articles you find online, but if you use Google Reader, saving those articles is a multi-step process. Here’s an IFTTT recipe that will send articles to your favorite service in one keystroke. More »
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Automatically Send Starred Google Reader Articles to Pocket or Instapaper
It wasn’t very long ago that Google Music landed in Europe — to the delight of local music lovers, we’re sure. On its trip across the pond, the service gained a unique new feature called scan and match, wherein Google scans your local music library and makes the songs it matches instantly available in the cloud — no upload required. Until now the feature, which is similar to iTunes Match , was only available in Europe, but it’s coming to the US starting today. From now on, any US Google Play users who upload their music collection will benefit from this new feature. Over time, the company will also upgrade users with existing cloud libraries. It’s a free service and it’s automatic — you’re unlikely to notice that it’s even happening. The upside is that entire collections will be uploaded faster. We’re not aware of any downsides yet — matched songs will be available for streaming at 320Kbps like regular Google Play purchases, while re-downloaded music will be available at or close to the bitrate of the original file. Update: Google confirmed that any VBR files matched by the service will be re-downloaded as CBR files with a bitrate that’s slightly higher than the average bitrate of the original song. This is obviously a drawback if you’re currently relying on the service to backup your music collection. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile , Google Comments Source: Google Play (Google+)
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Google Music gains scan and match feature in the US
Lucas123 writes “After dropping 20% in the second quarter of 2012 alone, SSD prices fell another 10% in the second half of the year. The better deals for SSDs are now around 80- to 90-cents-per-gigabyte of capacity, though some sale prices have been even lower, according IHS and other research firms. For some models, the prices have dropped 300% over the past three years. At the same time, hard disk drive prices have remained “inflated” — about 47% higher than they were prior to the 2011 Thai floods, according to DRAMeXchange.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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SSD Prices Continue 3-Year Plunge
Social engineering scams involve a mix of technical skills and psychological manipulation. Chris Cardinal discovered someone running such a scam on Amazon using his account: the scammer contacted Amazon pretending to be Chris, supplying his billing address (this is often easy to guess by digging into things like public phone books, credit reports, or domain registration records). Then the scammer secured the order numbers of items Chris recently bought on Amazon. In a separate transaction, the scammer reported that the items were never delivered and requested replacement items to be sent to a remailer/freight forwarder in Portland. The scam hinged on the fact that Gmail addresses are “dot-blind” (foo@gmail.com is the same as f.oo@gmail.com), but Amazon treats them as separate addresses. This let the scammer run support chats and other Amazon transactions that weren’t immediately apparent to Chris. Others have reported on this scam, but word hasn’t gotten around at Amazon yet, and when Chris talked to Amazon reps to alert them to the con, they kept insisting that his computer or email had been hacked, not understanding that the con artist was attacking a vulnerability in Amazon’s own systems. A little bit of sniffing finds this thread where users at a social engineering forum are offering to buy order numbers. Why? Because as it turns out, once you have the order number, everything else is apparently simple. If you’ve used Amazon.com at all, you’ll notice something very quickly: they require your password. For pretty much anything. Want to change an address? Password. Add a billing method? Password. Check your order history? Password. Amazon is essentially very secure as a web property. But as you can see from my chat transcript above, the CSR team falls like dominoes with just a few simple data points and a little bit of authoritative prying. Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement Order Scam ( via Hacker News )
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Amazon Replacement Order Scam: anatomy of a social engineering con in action
Archaeologists digging in a 1,000-year-old pre-Hispanic cemetery in Mexico’s South Sonora have uncovered a series of skeletons featuring signs of cranial deformation. The practice, which is well documented among Mesoamerican peoples, has never been seen this far north before — a strong indication that their cultural influence was far more prominent than previously assumed. More »
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Deformed skulls discovered in 1,000-year-old Mexican cemetery
The ever-booming social network and venue for the “pulse of the planet” delivered the news in a tweet, of course. [Read more]
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Twitter surpasses 200M active monthly users