And now, a pangolin cavorting in the mud

Did you all know yesterday was World Pangolin Day ? Somehow we overlooked it, and we’re kind of ashamed about that. Because look at this thing. It’s an armor-plated mammal, for crying out loud. To make up for the oversight, here’s a video of a pangolin wallowing merrily in a pool of mud. Read more…        

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And now, a pangolin cavorting in the mud

200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks Are Now Normal

An anonymous reader writes “Brian Krebs has a followup to this week’s 400 Gbps DDoS attack using NTP amplification. Krebs, as a computer security writer, has often been the target of DDoS attacks. He was also hit by a 200Gbps attack this week (apparently, from a 15-year-old in Illinois). That kind of volume would have been record-breaking only a couple of years ago, but now it’s just normal. Arbor Networks says we’ve entered the ‘hockey stick’ era of DDoS attacks, as a graph of attack volume spikes sharply over the past year. CloudFlare’s CEO wrote, ‘Monday’s DDoS proved these attacks aren’t just theoretical. To generate approximately 400Gbps of traffic, the attacker used 4, 529 NTP servers running on 1, 298 different networks. On average, each of these servers sent 87Mbps of traffic to the intended victim on CloudFlare’s network. Remarkably, it is possible that the attacker used only a single server running on a network that allowed source IP address spoofing to initiate the requests. An attacker with a 1 Gbps connection can theoretically generate more than 200Gbps of DDoS traffic.’ In a statement to Krebs, he added, ‘We have an attack of over 100 Gbps almost every hour of every day.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks Are Now Normal

Learn how Hollywood screwed over the VFX industry in Life After Pi

In 2011-12, the VFX company Rhythm & Hues created the astounding effects for Ang Lee’s gorgeous movie The Life of Pi . Then they went bankrupt, fired their staff, and went out of business. Two weeks later they won an Oscar. The new documentary Life After Pi shows how this insanity was made possible. Read more…        

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Learn how Hollywood screwed over the VFX industry in Life After Pi

Under Armour’s Suits May Actually Be Slowing U.S. Speedskaters Down

Heralded as “the world’s fastest speed skating suit, ” Under Armour’s all-in-one was hoped to give U.S. athletes the edge in Sochi. Now, though, it appears it could in fact be slowing them down . Read more…        

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Under Armour’s Suits May Actually Be Slowing U.S. Speedskaters Down

First Concept Art of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: Episode VII?

We still know almost nothing about the first live-action Star Wars movie in a decade, but now we may have gotten a glimpse at one of the movie’s big special-effects sequences. A redesigned Lucasfilm website includes a photo of a production meeting, where you can glimpse some concept art. Read more…        

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First Concept Art of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: Episode VII?

Google Earth’s New Satellites

Rambo Tribble writes “The BBC provides some insights into the next generation satellites being built for Google by contractor DigitalGlobe in Colorado. The resolution of these satellites’ cameras is sufficient to resolve objects that are only 25cm wide. Unfortunately, the public will be allowed only half that image quality, the best being reserved for the U.S. military. ‘The light comes in through a barrel structure, pointed at the Earth, and is bounced around by a series of mirrors, before being focused onto a CCD sensor. The big difference – apart from the size – between this and a typical handheld digital camera, is that the spacecraft will not just take snapshots but continuous images along thin strips of land or sea.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Earth’s New Satellites

Toyota Is Recalling Millions of Prius Hybrids to Fix a Software Bug

Toyota is recalling 1.9 million Prius hybrids to fix a serious bug in the engine control unit which can cause transistors to overheat—and potentially cause the hybrid system to shut down while driving. Read more…        

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Toyota Is Recalling Millions of Prius Hybrids to Fix a Software Bug

Blogger Fined €3,000 for ‘Publicizing’ Files Found Through Google Search

mpicpp points out an article detailing the case of French blogger Olivier Laurelli, who had the misfortune to click links from search results. Laurelli stumbled upon a public link leading to documents from the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor. He downloaded them — over 7 Gb worth — and looked through them, eventually publishing a few slides to his website. When one of France’s intelligence agencies found out, they took Laurelli into custody and indicted him, referring to him as a ‘hacker.’ In their own investigation, they said, “we then found that it was sufficient to have the full URL to access to the resource on the extranet in order to bypass the authentication rules on this server.” The first court acquitted Laurelli of the charges against him. An appeals court affirmed part of the decision, but convicted him of “theft of documents and fraudulent retention of information.” He was fined €3, 000 (about $4, 000). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Blogger Fined €3,000 for ‘Publicizing’ Files Found Through Google Search

Humans go through moult and grow new pelts

People who live with pets notice that some animals moult in the spring and fall. Losing feathers or fur is unattractive, but it leads to a beautiful new coat in which to survive the winter or to attract a mate. It turns out humans also moult and grow attractive new coats of hair. Read more…        

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Humans go through moult and grow new pelts