cristiroma - Slashdot User

Submission + - Torrent Giant YTS Returns to .LT Domain After .MX "Vanishes" (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by cristiroma on Saturday November 29, 2025 @03:23PM

cristiroma writes: After five years of operating in relatively stable waters, popular torrent site YTS is on the move again. The site’s Mexican domain name, YTS.mx, suddenly stopped resolving yesterday and has effectively vanished. While the official reason remains unclear, the YTS operators decided to return to one of their previous homes, YTS.lt.

With millions of regular users, YTS is arguably the most visited torrent site on the internet today.

The current operators ‘unofficially’ took over the YTS brand in 2015 after the original group threw in the towel. Since then, it has amassed a rather impressive user base.

After adopting one of the most iconic piracy brands, YTS faced its fair share of legal troubles. In 2019, the popular torrent site and its operator were accused of mass copyright infringement in multiple lawsuits filed by filmmakers in the United States. Surprisingly, YTS managed to settle these lawsuits to live another day, although that came at a price.

YTS also dealt with various domain name challenges. When the site first entered the scene, it was operating from the YTS.ag domain name, which it traded in for YTS.am a few years later. In 2019, the torrent site moved to YTS.lt, which it swapped for the YTS.mx domain in 2020.

Legal Pressure?
While it is apparent that the .MX domain name issues are serious, it is not immediately clear what caused them. TorrentFreak asked Registry .MX for a comment on the situation, but the organization did not immediately respond.

Submission + - Nanoparticles turn houseplants into night lights (newatlas.com)

Submitted by cristiroma on Thursday August 28, 2025 @02:46PM

cristiroma writes: Wouldn't it be great if the plants in your home could do more than just sit there looking pretty? Researchers at South China Agricultural University in the city of Guangzhou have found a way to upgrade them into soft glowing night lights in a range of hues, with the use of nanoparticles.

The team developed a light-emitting phosphor compound that enabled succulents with fleshy leaves to charge in sunlight or indoor LED light in just a couple of minutes, and then emit a soft uniform glow that lasts up to two hours.

The afterglow phosphor compound – which is similar to those found in glow-in-the-dark toys – is inexpensive, biocompatible, and negates the need for more complex methods of infusing bioluminescence in plants, like genetic modification. It simply gets injected into the leaves.

This isn't the first time plants have been modified to glow. A team at MIT used enzymes seen in fireflies to achieve this back in 2017, and there was also a collaborative effort in 2020 that saw DNA from bioluminescent mushrooms injected into tobacco plants to make them light up. A 2021 MIT project featured a similar approach to this latest work out of China, but saw plants like watercress, tobacco, basil, and daisies glow for only half as long.

Beyond modifying a commercial compound for this project, the team also had to figure out the right size for the phosphor particles so they'd work as intended inside plants. Shuting Liu, first author on the study that appeared in Matter this week, noted, "Smaller, nano-sized particles move easily within the plant but are dimmer. Larger particles glowed brighter but couldn’t travel far inside the plant.”

Submission + - How to watch: Launch of the first private spacewalk mission (newatlas.com)

Submitted by cristiroma on Monday August 26, 2024 @02:12AM

cristiroma writes: SpaceX's Polaris Dawn, the first private space mission to include a spacewalk, is scheduled to lift off on Tuesday, August 27 at 3:38 am EDT from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Here's how to watch.

Polaris Dawn is a multi-day Earth orbital mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Though it's a private mission rather than a government one, it's more than just a tourist jaunt. It will not only include the first private spacewalk, it will conduct 38 science experiments to study the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health. It will also be the first mission since the Apollo program to penetrate the radioactive Van Allen Belt, though only briefly for safety reasons.

The crew includes Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Pilot Scott Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon. If the launch is delayed, SpaceX says that there will be two more opportunities on Tuesday at 5:23 am EDT and 7:09 am EDT. There are also three opportunities on August 28.

If you can't get to Cape Canaveral in time, the live webcast from SpaceX is available here or on X @SpaceX. The stream begins 3.5 hours prior to launch.

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