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Submission + - TV Game Show Contestants Sue Over Trick Computer Password Question

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Eriq Gardner writes that on the premiere episode of Fox's Million Dollar Money Drop — which ran for 12 episodes from December 2010 to February 2011 — contestants Andrew and Patricia Murray were asked what is the most common computer password: "Password," "123456," or "I Love You." They opted for "Password" and bet all $580,000 they had remaining from the $1 million they started with. The Murrays guessed wrong losing everything. Or did they? After losing the money, the plaintiffs apparently researched the question further and discovered that data-security firm Imperva who provided the answer did not conduct its own, objective survey of computer users. Instead, the assertion that "123456" is the most common password was based on an analysis of a hacking incident involving a website, Rockyou.com. The Murrays say the question should have read, "According to a hacking incident involving the inadvertent leak of user passwords on the website Rockyou.com..." The Murrays still face formidable obstacles in court including a 13-page, take-it-or-leave-it "Contestant Release Agreement" plus a 16-page Million Dollar Money Drop Official Rules. "We have a feeling that 'What's the most common way to beat an iron-clad waiver' will make it onto a law school exam one day," writes Gardner. "According to John Roberts at Ball & Roberts, who is representing the Murrays, the answer is intentional and negligent misrepresentation, breach of written and oral contract, negligence and fraud.""
Space

Submission + - Black Hole Behemoth Shreds Baby Star System (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "A new analysis of recent observations finds evidence for a protoplanetary disk around a red dwarf star plunging in the direction of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Ruth Murray-Clay and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did the theoretical work. Stefan Gillessen of the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics made the observations using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The red dwarf star will make its closest approach in the summer of 2013, hurtling only 270 billion miles from black hole. (Or roughly 54 solar system diameters, as measured from the furthest edge of the Kuiper belt.) It won't get sucked into the black hole, but it will be flung back along its elliptical orbit out to a distance of a little more than 1/10 light-years."
Space

Submission + - Spectacular fireball lights up UK sky 1

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "An extremely bright meteor burned up over Ireland and the northern UK around 22:00 UTC on Friday night, and was apparently witnessed by thousands of people. It traveled east to west, and was moving relatively slowly. It may have been an actual rock, or it may have been some human-made space debris — a satellite or rocket booster — burning up. Space junk tends to move more slowly, so that's a potential suspect, though orbiting debris usually moves in the opposite direction. I'm collecting pictures and images on my Bad Astronomy blog."
Hardware

Submission + - Open Hardware Spectrometer Kit (publiclaboratory.org)

Submitted by mybluevan
mybluevan writes: The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science is putting together an open hardware spectrometer kit on Kickstarter. The kits are built using an HD webcam, discarded DVD, and a couple other odd bits. They've also put together a kit for your smart phone and open-source software for desktop, Android, and iOS. Need to analyze the contents of your coffee, the output of your new grow lights, or a distant star on a budget? Just build your own spectrometer, or pick up the limited edition steampunk version.
NASA

Submission + - Space scientists looking to crowd-fund planetary exploration

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "The White House budget for NASA in 2013 is bleak, with big cuts in many areas. None is worse hit than planetary exploration, which got slammed with a 20% reduction. Several top-notch space scientists have taken matters into their own hands, looking to create a privately-funded alternative for space exploration. Called Uwingu — Swahili for "sky" — they're hoping to get seed money to create a program which can generate millions in donations to explore our solar system. Astronomer Pamela Gay has more info at her blog, Star Stryder."
The Military

Submission + - Today is the 50th anniversary of the Starfish Prime nuclear weapon test

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "50 years ago today, the US detonated a nuclear weapon 240 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Called Starfish Prime, it was supposed to help US scientists and the military understand how the Soviets might try to stop incoming nuclear missiles. What it actually did was blow out hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii 900 miles away, damage a half dozen satellites, and create artificial aurorae and intense radiation zones above the Earth. It taught the world what an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) was, and what the effects might be from a powerful solar flare, a nearby supernova, or a gamma-ray burst."
Science

Submission + - Nobel Laureate Wiped from Pakistan's Textbooks as Heretic

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Alexander Abad-Santos writes that in any other country, the late Dr. Abdus Salam would be a national hero: he's the Nobel laureate in physics who laid the groundwork for the biggest physics discovery in the past 30 years--the Higgs boson. But that isn't the case in Pakistan, where Salam has been wiped from textbooks and history for not being fundamentalist enough. "He belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants who view its members as heretics," says Sebastian Abbot. "His grand unification theory of strong, weak and electromagnetic fields opened the gateway for the discovery of bosons and laid down the basis for this quantum electrodynamics project," writes Anam Khalid Alvi for Pakistan's Express Tribune. But Pakistan can't celebrate his achievements, since Ahmadis like Salam are and were prevented from "posing as Muslims," and can be punished with prison and even death. By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero. Khan is a Muslim."
Science

Submission + - Higgs 1

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Scientists at CERN announced today the discovery of a new fundamental subatomic particle that is almost certainly the Higgs boson — a particle that is crucial in giving other particles mass.

The new particle has a mass of about 125 — 126 GeV (roughly 125 times the mass of a proton) which is just what the Higgs mass is predicted to be by the Standard Model of particle physics. A signal was seen in preliminary results from 2011, but observations since then have raised the confidence level hugely: the strength of the signal indicates it is real to the 5 sigma level — that is, with 99.9999% confidence. In physics, that qualifies as a "discovery". This is a monumental step in particle physics, and toward our understanding of one of the most fundamental and mysterious properties of matter in the Universe: mass."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - Charles Carreon drops case against The Oatmeal (eff.org)

Submitted by
Dynamoo
Dynamoo writes: "Charles Carreon has reportedly dropped his lawsuit against the creator of The Oatmeal, Matthew Inman. This bizarre lawsuit (dubbed a SLAPP suit by the EFF) kicked off after a dispute between Inman and FunnyJunk.com which span rapidly out of control. Perhaps Carreon has seen sense, but it turns out that there might be an even more bizarre twist in this tale"
Space

Submission + - Two space missions planned to look for killer asteroids

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Today, the B612 Foundation announced it's seeking private funds to build Sentinel, a space mission to find Earth-threatening asteroids. Placed in a Venus-like orbit, it should find a large fraction of these potentially hazardous rocks.

At the same time, the NEOCam (Near Earth Object camera) website went live today. This is a separate, publicly-funded space mission also designed to look for these asteroids. While Sentinel will concentrate on finding them and getting accurate positions and orbits, NEOCam will focus more on getting their physical characteristics. While not strictly competing with each other, they are more complementary; with both missions flying (in the 2017 time range) we will learn a huge amount about the asteroid threat from space."
Space

Submission + - There's an Ocean Inside Titan (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Saturn’s large moon Titan, already Earth-like with its thick atmosphere and rich organic stew, also harbors a liquid water ocean beneath its crust, new findings from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show. Gravity maps painstakingly pieced together from data collected over five years revealed Titan’s shape changes by about 10 meters (about 33 feet) due to Saturn's gravitational tugs, a squishiness that is best explained by a liquid body of water relatively close to the surface."
Space

Submission + - Stellar blast boils away some of a planet's atmosphere (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Using a combination of Hubble and Swift observations, astronomers have apparently witnessed some of a planet's atmosphere being peeled away by a powerful stellar blast. HD 189733b orbits its star just 4 million km from the surface, and a few hours after Swift detected a big X-ray flare from the star, Hubble data revealed a big jump in hydrogen absorption as the planet transited the star. This indicates the planet's atmosphere was blasted off by the flare to the tune of a thousand tons of hydrogen per second. The planet is so hot it probably already loses a substantial amount of air to space all the time, but this spike is the first time a change in an exoplanet's atmosphere has been detected."
Education

Submission + - Texas GOP Educational Platform Opposes Critical Thinking Skills (amazonaws.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Texas Republican delegates met earlier this month to put together their 2012 platform. Much of this focused on the educational system. Alarmingly, they openly state that they oppose schools teaching critical thinking, on the grounds that it may challenge "student's fixed beliefs" and undermine "parental authority."

http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012-Platform-Final.pdf (page 12 for the tidbit)
Space

Submission + - Andromeda and the Milky Way are due to collide in four billion years

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "It's been known for a while that the Andromeda Galaxy was probably going to collide with the Milky Way, but now we know: using Hubble observations, astronomers have determined Andromeda has almost no "sideways" motion, and is therefore headed right at us. In four billion years we'll smash into each other head-on, and in two billion more years merge into one single, bigger galaxy."
Space

Submission + - Everything you need to know about the June 5/6 Venus Transit

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Next week, on June 5/6, there will be the last Venus transit across the face of the Sun until the year 2117. There are dozens of sites issuing press releases about it — online resources, watching live, viewing advice — so I've collected them into a single blog post with tons of links and my own advice on how to observe this (most likely) last-in-a-lifetime event. This complements the previous article on Slashdot from a few weeks ago."

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