Stop the presses! Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have made a new measurement of Planck’s constant to a highly accurate degree. It’s the latest step toward improving the official definition of the kilogram, the unit of mass that underpins our entire international system of weights and measures. Read more…
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Scientists Are Redefining the Kilogram
Oh no. This is it. It’s the end. We had a good run everyone, but Google Calendar is down. Read more…
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Google Calendar Is Down, Life As We Know It Ceases to Exist [Update: It’s Back]
What do you do if you get busted for pirating a terrible Adam Sandler movie? Deny it. That seems to be the lesson of a recently dismissed federal case, which raises the burden of proof that copyright owner must meet in order to hold you accountable for infringement. Read more…
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Judge Says IP Address Doesn’t Prove Anything in Piracy Case
This $170 Chromebook has a super-thin design, 13 hours of battery life, and 4GB of RAM, all solid specs. But most importantly, it will support Android apps via Google Play in the coming months, which should dramatically expand its capabilities. If you’re in the market for a travel-friendly portable, you could do a whole lot worse for the price. Read more…
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This $170 Chromebook Runs For 13 Hours, and Will Support Android Apps
An anonymous reader writes from a report via ScienceAlert: Physicists have confirmed the existence of pear-shaped nuclei, which challenges the fundamental theories of physics that explain our Universe. “We’ve found these nuclei literally point towards a direction in space. This relates to a direction in time, providing there’s a well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to present, ” Marcus Scheck from the University of the West of Scotland told Kenneth MacDonald at BBC News. Until recently, it was generally accepted that nuclei of atoms could only be one of three shapes: spherical, discus, or rugby ball. The first discovery of a pear-shaped nucleus was back in 2013, when physicists at CERN discovered isotope Radium-224. Now, that find has been confirmed by a second study, which shows that the nucleus of the isotope Barium-144 is also asymmetrical and pear-shaped. In regard to time travel, Scheck says that this uneven distribution of mass and charge caused Barium-144’s nucleus to “point” in a certain direction in spacetime, and this bias could explain why time seems to only want to go from past to present, and not backwards, even if the laws of physics don’t care which way it goes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Physicists Confirm a Pear-Shaped Nucleus, and It Could Ruin Time Travel Forever
An anonymous reader writes:Whoever said crime doesn’t pay didn’t know about the booming ransomware market. A case in point, the latest version of the scourge known as CryptXXX, which raked in more than $45, 000 in less than three weeks. Over the past few months, CryptXXX developers have gone back and forth with security researchers. The whitehats from Kaspersky Lab provided a free tool that allowed victims to decrypt their precious data without paying the ransom, which typically reaches $500 or more. Then, CryptXXX developers would tweak their code to defeat the get-out-of-jail decryptor. The researchers would regain the upper hand by exploiting another weakness and so on. Earlier this month, the developers released a new CryptXXX variant that to date still has no decryptor available. Between June 4 and June 21, according to a blog post published Monday by security firm SentinelOne, the Bitcoin address associated with the new version had received 70 bitcoins, which at current prices is valued at around $45, 228. The figure doesn’t include revenue generated from previous campaigns. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New and Improved CryptXXX Ransomware Rakes In $45,000 In 3 Weeks
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is the latest high-profile victim of a hacking group called OurMine. Earlier today, the group managed to get hold of Pichai’s Quota account, which in turn, gave them access to his Twitter feed as well. In a statement to The Next Web, the group said that their intention is to just test people’s security, and that they never change the victim’s passwords. Looking at the comments they left after hacking Pichai’s account, it is also clear that OurMine is promoting its security services. The same group recently also hacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Quora Account Hacked
An anonymous reader quotes this report from Motherboard: The months leading up to this year’s phenomenal reboot of Doom were stuffed with all kinds of fun developments surrounding the original series, whether it was mods that let you play as Duke Nukem or whole new levels from famed designer John Romero. There’s now a new Quake game in the works, and already it appears to be enjoying a similar renaissance. Yesterday MachineGames, the studio behind Wolfenstein: The New Order, released an entirely new episode for the original Quake in celebration of its 20-year anniversary, and you can play it entirely for free. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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A New ‘Quake’ Episode Appears 20 Years Later
A seed-funded company named Axiom wants to build a private-sector outpost in orbit by launching a new module for the International Space Station, according to an article on Space News. Once on the station, Axiom Space would use it for commercial purposes, ranging from research to tourism. [Former space station manager] Suffredini said that it would also be available for use by NASA when the company is not using it, helping the process of transitioning research done on the International Space Station to future private stations. Research hardware elsewhere in the station could eventually be moved to this module to allow its continued use after the station’s retirement. Slashdot reader MarkWhittington shares an article from Blasting News: In the meantime, Nanoracks, a company that is already handling some of the logistics for the ISS, is proposing a commercial airlock for the ISS. The development of commercial space stations, as well as commercial spacecraft such as the SpaceX Dragon and the Boeing Starliner, constitutes NASA’s long-term strategy of handing off low-Earth orbit to the private sector while it concentrates on deep space exploration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Axiom Plans A New Private-Sector Outpost in Space
Two surprising studies reveal new information about what genes do after death. Slashdot reader gurps_npc writes: You think your body stops after death, but up to two days later certain genes may turn on and start doing stuff for another two days before they give up the ghost. We are all zombies for up to four days after death. Gizmodo reports that in fact “hundreds” of genes apparently spring back to life. “[P]revious work on human cadavers demonstrated that some genes remain active after death, but we had no idea as to the extent of this strange phenomenon.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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After Death, Hundreds of Genes Spring Back to Life