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ESA’s Gaia mission set to survey the galaxy with biggest camera in space

An artist’s rendering of what Gaia will look like when deployed in space. ESA After its successful launch in December, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia has now taken up its position in orbit and is ready to survey the skies. With the help of two onboard telescopes focused onto the largest-ever camera sent to space, the space observatory is expected to catalog nearly one billion stars throughout its 5-year mission. ESA’s Gaia will map stars in the Milky Way. It will do this by measuring the brightest billion objects and determining their three-dimensional distribution and velocities. It also has the ability to measure the temperature, mass, and chemical composition of each of the objects. The brightest objects won’t necessarily need to be very bright in order to be included in the catalog. Gaia will be able to discern objects up to 400,000 times dimmer than those visible to the naked eye. And the positional accuracy of its measurements are akin to measuring the width of a human hair at a distance of 500 km. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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ESA’s Gaia mission set to survey the galaxy with biggest camera in space

Exoplanet discovery rate goes from a trickle to a flood

The Kepler spacecraft NASA Today, NASA’s Kepler team has announced that it has developed a new technique to verify the existence of many of the planetary candidates in its back catalog. The technique, which relies on the presence of multiple planets in the system, has led to the single largest announcement of new planets in history: 715 of them, orbiting a total of 305 stars. Most of these are small, between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, and are tightly packed in the inner regions of the systems in which they reside, but four appear to be in the habitable zone. If you visit Kepler’s home page , you’ll see a count of confirmed planets in the upper right (it’s currently at 961). Hover over it, and you’ll see there are over 3,800 unconfirmed planetary candidates. Those candidates come from the method that Kepler uses to discover planets: watching for a mini-eclipse that causes a slight dimming of their host star’s light. A similar pattern can be caused by a dim star orbiting in the system (a configuration called an eclipsing binary system), which raises the prospect of false positives. In the past, this has generally involved multiple follow-up observations with a large telescope, which has held back the announcement of confirmed planets to a relative trickle. However, there have been a number of discoveries that have been based on Kepler data alone. These discoveries have come from multi-planet systems, where the planets gravitationally interacted, speeding up or slowing each other down. This activity creates regular variations in the timing and duration of the eclipses as the exoplanets transit between their host star and Earth. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Exoplanet discovery rate goes from a trickle to a flood

Twitter restores $50,000 @N username to its owner

In January, Naoki Hiroshima lost his Twitter handle, @N, to the hands of a hacker who used social engineering and extortion to wrest the username from Hiroshima’s hands. But today Twitter restored it to him after more than a month of the username being suspended. After @N was stolen, Hiroshima wrote a post explaining how the theft happened. Ars published the story (which originally appeared on Medium ), as well as an account of a man whose more valuable @jb handle was almost hijacked using the same methods. In Hiroshima’s case, a hacker was able to obtain some credit card information from his PayPal account and used that to reset the login credentials on his GoDaddy account. Then, the thief modified several details pertaining to Hiroshima’s domain so that he was unable to access his own site’s information. When the thief couldn’t reset the password for @N, he turned to extortion, contacting Hiroshima and demanding he reset the password to his Twitter account or suffer the destruction of his website’s domains. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Twitter restores $50,000 @N username to its owner

Everything you wanted to know about the security-focused Blackphone

BARCELONA, SPAIN—Here at Mobile World Congress, Silent Circle and Geeksphone have just announced more details on the Blackphone , a phone focused on security and privacy. “Blackphone” seems to be both a product and a company, as in the company Blackphone will provide updates and support for the product Blackphone. Having been cofounded by Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP e-mail encryption, the company has tons of security talent. Blackphone was announced about a month ago, but this is the first time we’re getting details on just what the Blackphone is and how it works. First to be announced were the specs of the Blackphone. The hardware is being built by Geeksphone , and the current specs are a 2GHz quad-core SoC, a 4.7-inch “HD” IPS screen, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 8MP rear and 1.3MP front cameras, and HSPA+ and LTE connectivity. Blackphone notes that “certain specifications are subject to change” but the Geeksphone CEO said that any change would be “better,” and that the goal is to offer a premium phone. At $629 for a contract-free, unlocked phone, the cost is certainly in line with that goal. Blackphone notes that it “does not use proprietary hardware in any way,” which will allow it to release source code for “as much of the Blackphone code base as possible.” While Geeksphone is handling the hardware, Silent Circle is handling the software. The Blackphone runs a Google-less version of Android called “PrivatOS.” Besides removing the user-tracking Google parts, most of the Blackphone’s security and privacy advantages seem to come from the integration of Silent Circle apps. The suite of apps mentioned at the event were the existing Silent Phone and Silent Text apps, and a new product called “Silent Contacts.” Silent Phone and Silent Text encrypt your phone calls, text messages, and file transfers to other users of the apps. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Everything you wanted to know about the security-focused Blackphone

Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, shuts down

Mt. Gox As of late Monday evening, the embattled Bitcoin site Mt. Gox appears to have pulled the plug entirely in the wake of sustained DDOS attacks and the “transaction malleability” problem that has plagued other websites. The site is gone and the company’s Twitter account appears to have been erased entirely. Ars’ requests to Mt. Gox for comment were not immediately returned. Bitcoin’s trading price has been steadily declining since the beginning of 2014, and as of this writing is hovering around $470 and falling . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Watch Benedict Cumberbatch on all fours in his mo-cap suit as Smaug

Benedict Cumberbatch has said that he felt like a “boobie” in his motion capture suit for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , but how did he actually look? This video shows us how Weta translated Cumberbatch’s performance into the CG-animated Smaug. Read more…

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Watch Benedict Cumberbatch on all fours in his mo-cap suit as Smaug

Next-generation Broadwell NUCs coming late 2014, says leaked roadmap

Ivy Bridge NUC on top, Haswell NUC on the bottom. What will the next one look like? Andrew Cunningham Intel’s “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) mini desktops are apparently one of the few segments in the PC industry actually seeing some growth, and a new roadmap leaked by FanlessTech shows that Intel is already planning the next versions. According to the roadmap, Intel is planning three new NUC models based on next-generation Broadwell chips, all scheduled to launch toward the end of 2014. FanlessTech [ars_story_side post_id=”397297″][/ars_story_sidebar]Two of the new NUC models are targeted at consumers, and will use next-generation Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs codenamed “Rock Canyon.” Like the current Haswell NUCs, they will include USB 3.0, mini HDMI, and mini DisplayPort outputs. The mini DisplayPort outlets can power either a 4K display or three lower-resolution displays simultaneously. The mSATA slot that current NUCs use for their SSDs will be replaced by an M.2 slot , which can provide faster storage speeds via the PCI Express bus. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an IR sensor will both be built in, as will a bay for a standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The most interesting departure from current NUCs will be swappable lids, which can add either NFC or wireless charging capabilities to the NUCs. The idea of using a desktop as a wireless charging pad isn’t entirely new—we saw a desktop or two that offered this capability at this year’s CES—but a NUC-sized box could serve as a nice wireless charging pad for smartphones and tablets. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple releases iOS 7.0.6 and 6.1.6 to patch an SSL problem

Andrew Cunningham Apple has just released iOS 7.0.6, the sixth minor update to iOS 7 . Both it and the new iOS 6.1.6 update “provide a fix for SSL connection verification,” their only documented addition. Unlike iOS 7.0.5 , which applied only to a few international iPhone 5S and 5C models, the version 7.0.6 update applies to all devices that can run iOS 7. iOS 6.1.6 applies to the iPhone 3GS and fourth-generation iPod touch. The update to iOS 6 is marginally more interesting than the iOS 7 update, just because Apple has so rarely patched old iOS versions after they’ve been replaced. The company also released version 6.1.5 for the fourth-generation iPod touch to correct a FaceTime connectivity issue. It’s possible that Apple is trying to provide critical security updates to older devices dropped by newer iOS updates, something it also does for older OS X versions for a while after they’re superseded by newer software. The next major iOS 7 update is iOS 7.1, currently in its fifth developer beta. Current rumors suggest it will be released to the public in early or mid-March, and it should include more significant fixes than the six minor updates we’ve seen since September. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Apple releases iOS 7.0.6 and 6.1.6 to patch an SSL problem

Facebook buys WhatsApp for $16 billion

According to an early report from Bloomberg News reporter Sarah Frier, Facebook is set to buy WhatsApp for $16 billion. An SEC filing confirms the acquisition for $4 billion in cash to WhatsApp’s security holders, along with $12 billion in Facebook stock and an additional $3 billion in Facebook stock that will vest over four years. WhatsApp has been one of a handful of booming messaging apps that has grown especially large in the last year (GroupMe, WeChat, Kik, and Line are others). In December, the app was reported to have over 400 million monthly users, and Facebook now reports that the service has 450 million. Meanwhile, Facebook maintains roughly 1.2 billion as of last October. Facebook has yet to release usage numbers for either its messaging feature on the whole or its dedicated Messenger app. The Verge noted in December that it was “telling” that few other messaging apps release their usage numbers like WhatsApp does, which suggests its user base dwarfs its competitors. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Windows 8.x reaches 200 million licenses sold

Microsoft marketing chief Tami Reller announced that the company has sold 200 million Windows 8 licenses in the 15 or so months that it has been on the market. This number includes only OEM and retail copies of the operating system and excludes volume licenses. The company previously announced that Windows 8 had reached 100 million copies sold in May of last year, a rate of sales that matched Windows 7. That operating system, however, reached 240 million sales within the first 12 months, demonstrating that Windows 8 is clearly not selling as fast. Still, in a PC market that’s shrinking—and which started shrinking even before the release of Windows 8—200 million copies is perhaps not too shabby. PCs as a whole are not selling as fast as they were during Windows 7’s heyday, and both Windows and Office are suffering as a result. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 8.x reaches 200 million licenses sold

Ken May

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