wired – Page 49 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Black holes cheat on the Eddington limit to export extra energy

The shocked gasses of the micro quasar are structured in the same way as those of this actual quasar. NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Black holes got their name because they have such intense gravity that, once inside their event horizons, not even light can escape. Somewhat ironically, they’re also some of the brightest objects in the Universe. That’s entirely because of things that happen outside of the event horizon. There, the hole’s intense gravity draws matter into a disk and raises it to very high energies. The disk emits lots of light on its own and sends out jets of high energy particles that emit even more as they interact with the surrounding interstellar material. But this process has a limit—literally called the Eddington limit. At some point, the radiation emitted by the black hole starts driving off the surrounding matter, effectively cutting off its own food supply. You can view the Eddington limit as the point where matter intake is optimal; below it, the hole can swallow more than the environment’s feeding it, while above, matter is being driven off before it can be eaten. Now, thanks to new observations of a black hole in the Southern Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 83), researchers have found that the Eddington limit isn’t an absolute cap on the amount of energy a black hole can emit out into its surroundings. Their observations suggest that this particular black hole sends out almost as much energy in the form of accelerated particles. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The day the Mario Kart died: Nintendo’s kill switch and the future of online consoles

flickr user: Andrew Huff Nintendo fans, mark your calendars for May 20, 2014. As Nintendo announced yesterday , that’s the last day you’ll be able to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to play hundreds of online games on the Wii and Nintendo DS. Single-player modes for those games will still work, of course, but any parts of the games that require an Internet connection will be completely non-functional in a matter of months. The shutdown will affect some of both systems’ most popular games, some of the best-selling games of all time. Suddenly, over 34 million copies of Mario Kart Wii and 23 million copies of Mario Kart DS will be severely diminished. The tens of millions of people who own the DS Pokemon games will no longer be able to trade their beasts or battle online. Animal Crossing: Wild World and Super Smash Bros. Brawl will be less functional for over 11 million players each. Sure, as a practical matter, relatively few of these tens of millions of players are still making regular use of online servers for games that are sometimes pushing nine years old. If they were, Nintendo would probably have more interest in continuing to maintain those servers on the theory that it would lead to some more very-long-tail sales for its online-enabled games. On the other hand, Nintendo could be more interested in trying to force more players off its “legacy systems” and on to the Wii U and 3DS, which of course still have active online support. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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

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

World of Warcraft’s $60 level-boosts reflect important economic reality

That’s only 67 cents per level. ORDER NOW! WoW Insider In games, as in life, the only truly nonrenewable resource is time. Thus, anything that saves a player time in getting something they want will have some important real-world value. World of Warcraft seems to finally be acknowledging this basic economic fact of life, letting players pay $60 to instantly level any character all the way up to level 90 in its upcoming expansion. Blizzard announced back at Blizzcon 2013 in November that players who purchased the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion would be able to instantly level a single character up to level 90 as a free bonus, thereby gaining the ability to take part in new content that’s balanced for characters from level 90 to the new level cap of 100. Then, in January, the company said it was also “testing out a feature that gives you the option to purchase a character upgrade directly,” allowing players with multiple characters to get the instant boost without, say, buying multiple copies of the expansion (which isn’t yet available for preorder). Last week, WoW Insider noticed a “Level 90 character boost” item briefly listed in the in-game shop during server maintenance before being quickly removed. The asking price on the listing: $60. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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World of Warcraft’s $60 level-boosts reflect important economic reality

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

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

Who needs sunlight? In Arizona, solar power never sleeps

Solana is currently the largest parabolic trough plant in the world, covering more than 1,900 acres in southern Arizona. 4 more images in gallery GILA BEND, ARIZONA—Every afternoon during the summer, millions of people across the American Southwest come home from work and switch on their air conditioners, straining the power grid in states like Arizona. Traditional solar power—although perfectly suited to the sunny climes of this region—can’t meet this demand since the surge in use peaks just as the day’s sun is disappearing. That’s why most power suppliers diversify, using electricity from different sources to meet local needs. Solar power is abundant in the middle of sunny, clear days, but energy from other sources—coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power for example—is necessary at night or when the weather is bad. But increasingly efficient technology is allowing solar plants to contribute for a longer period of time each day and produce energy even in cloudy conditions. The key is a design that allows them to store the sun’s energy to be used later. And new facilities, such as the Solana power plant that recently came online in Gila Bend, Arizona, are increasing solar energy’s niche by producing electricity several hours after the sun sets. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Who needs sunlight? In Arizona, solar power never sleeps

Feds seek contractor to build new federal license plate reader database

According to a new job advertisement posted this week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently seeking a contractor to build and operate a national license plate reader database. While license plate readers are on the rise by federal and local law enforcement agencies, they typically are not linked together into a one-stop shop beyond federally-funded “fusion centers,” which depend on local data. Apparently that is not enough for the feds anymore. The DHS further posted a 29-page document (PDF) outlining its requirements, including “featuring Smartphone technology based application for at least one Smartphone type, i.e. Android/iPhone/BlackBerry etc. currently in use by [Department of Homeland Security / Immigration and Customs Enforcement] allowing for license plate pictures to be taken and uploaded. Any positive matches shall return to the Smartphone an alert notification indicating to the User a positive match.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds seek contractor to build new federal license plate reader database