https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=hL3gA8IMO-w Researchers from Context Security have identified a vulnerability in Samsung Galaxy phones: by embedding commands in the obsolete, 17-year-old WAP proptocol in an SMS message, attackers can put them into endless reboot loops, or encrypt their storage and charge the phone’s owners for a decryption key. (more…)
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You can install ransomware on a Samsung Galaxy by sending it an SMS
YouTuber and photographer Timmy Joe saw spectacular light pillars on an arctic January night from his northern Ontario home. He thought they were northern lights until he went to investigate. It’s a totally different phenomenon, as he helpfully explains. (more…)
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Weather phenomenon of light pillars vs. northern lights
From Geopolitical Futures via Joshua Landis . Seems rough on details. If Islamic State gets wee satellites down in Yemen, you’d think the Sinai Insurgents would at least get some diagonal shading! (more…)
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Map shows Middle East based on who actually holds territory
In the village of Antia on Greece’s Evia island, shepherds use whistling to communicate over long distances. This isn’t a code but rather a real language. “Whistles let shepherds communicate between distant hillsides because a whistled sound wave travels farther than spoken words.” ( Scientific American )
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The amazing whistling language of Greek shepherds
https://youtu.be/ukug2h1kS4Q Electric eels are incredible animals. Besides being able to shock animals, it uses radar to locate prey. This 1950s film features a happy scientist and his beloved pet eel, Joe, who happily shocks five people in the office with his superpower.
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How electric eels work
In Eastern Europe, organized crime and the government are the same thing, so the US is having a tough time stopping the ransomware attacks emanating from those countries. The LA Times has a story about a recent attack on a community college in Los Angeles: Phil Lieberman, a cybersecurity expert, said attacks such as the one at Los Angeles Valley College are common among companies and government agencies that use the Internet. “The attacks generally come out of Eastern Europe and cannot be stopped because the United States does not have pacts with the countries where the attacks are launched,” he said. Ransomware is usually delivered via email or through an infected website and immediately locks a computer system, Lieberman said. After a payment is received, hackers provide an “unlock code.” Finding the hackers isn’t the hard part, he said. The problem, according to Lieberman, is that “the U.S. government has no way to stop them, since the governments of the countries that launch this are uncooperative and in fact benefit from the criminal activity going on within their borders.” Here are 27 screenshots of ransomware . Most of them look like computer screens from bad 1990s hacker movies.
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Los Angeles Valley College pays $28,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers
m0nster0 posted this 3mm-thick slice of a Seymchan pallasite meteorite to Reddit. He says its “one of my favorite bits of space rock.” I can’t argue with that! He bought it on eBay from this guy , who sells some stunning specimens.
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Beautiful Seymchan pallasite meteorite
Tofugu (where my wife Carla is exec editor) has a great article about the 20 best anime movies not made by Studio Ghibli ( Totoro, Spirited Away ). https://youtu.be/xGOneMdjpw4 19. REDLINE Often times, “anime” is defined by its lack of motion . Redline punches this “limited animation” concept in its motionless face. It’s easily the busiest, most overstimulating animated film we’ve ever seen. A daredevil speedster named JP enters the Redline, a high-stakes, weaponized space race that nearly took his life. But first, he’s gotta get back into racing shape to challenge the best in the universe with pure speed and guts. Along his comeback trail, JP meets Cherry-Boy Hunter, a young female competitor who unearths old memories. Can JP return to form in time for the Redline? Is Cherry-Boy Hunter friend or foe? Can JP survive the intergalactic conspiracy that saturates the race? Sure, Redline’s plot plays like a giant stone soup of anime tropes: space, vehicles, aliens, and giant pompadours. Check, check, and check. The film took seven years and 100,000 hand drawings to create, all that hard work paid off. Down to its pop-art presentation, Redline is anime pulp fiction at its best. What it lacks in depth, it makes up for with an adrenaline-fueled circus of speed and action.
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The 20 best anime movies not made by Studio Ghibli
After N2SUB posted a thoughtful, negative review of Ham Radio Deluxe, the company responded to his open trouble ticket with instructions that tricked him into bricking his software, in the guise of fixing his problem, then told him they’d done it on purpose, and wouldn’t let him use their software anymore unless he deleted his review, and threatened to sue him. (more…)
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Company retaliates for negative review by tricking customer into bricking his copy of their software
As someone who’s struggled with his weight all his life (and who comes from a family with similar problems), I’ve long been fascinated with the science of weight and obesity; many years ago I listened to a Quirks & Quarks segment detailing the theory that the modern obesity epidemic was the result of a bird flu that affected our gut flora and changed our metabolisms to make us hungrier and more susceptible to convert the food we ate to fat. (more…)
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A virus first found in chickens is implicated in human obesity