172002015
submission
SonicSpike writes:
The odds are low that in any given year a storm big enough to cause effects this widespread will happen. And the severity of those impacts will depend on many factors, including the state of our planet’s magnetic field on that day. But it’s a near certainty that some form of this catastrophe will happen someday, says Ian Cohen, a chief scientist who studies heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
To get ahead of this threat, a loose federation of U.S. and international government agencies, and hundreds of scientists affiliated with those bodies, have begun working on how to make predictions about what our Sun might do. And a small but growing cadre of scientists argue that artificial intelligence will be an essential component of efforts to give us advance notice of such a storm.
The most dangerous of these solar storms is known as a coronal mass ejection, when a gargantuan blob of charged particles is catapulted from the Sun’s atmosphere by rapidly shifting magnetic fields, at speeds in excess of 8,000 times that of sound. These happen often, but we’re rarely aware of them because they only affect us when they happen to strike earth.
What makes these huge blasts of particles so dangerous to our power grid and electronics is that, when they collide with Earth, the interaction of the sun’s magnetic field with our own can induce large currents in power lines on Earth. If you’ve ever moved a magnet back and forth across a copper wire to illuminate a lightbulb in science class, this is the same effect–but on a global scale. A solar storm can induce currents in power lines that are strong enough to trip safety mechanisms–or even seriously damage parts of our power-distribution infrastructure.
And while the undersea fiber-optic cables for internet data don’t carry electricity, they do have electrical signal-repeaters within them. These repeaters boost the optical signal as it travels the length of the cable. If they’re disabled, the cable ceases to function.
Solar storms can also pose a threat for satellites in higher orbits around earth–such as the ones that make up our GPS system–by bringing a spike in so-called killer electrons that can damage and, in extreme cases, disable the satellites. Closer to Earth, solar storms can heat the atmosphere, causing it to expand in a way that increases drag, which can cause some satellites in lower orbits to crash to the surface. This happened in February 2022, leading to the destruction of 40 Starlink satellites.
Solar storms have already struck again and again. In 1859, a now-legendary storm known as the Carrington Event hit, well before we built a civilization dependent on electronic devices that it could wreck. It caused auroras as far south as the Caribbean, made telegraph lines spark, caused fires at some telegraph stations, and shut down parts of the telegraphy network in the northern hemisphere.
171908295
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Hackers backed by the Chinese government are planting malware into routers that provides long-lasting and undetectable backdoor access to the networks of multinational companies in the US and Japan, governments in both countries said Wednesday. The hacking group, tracked under names including BlackTech, Palmerworm, Temp.Overboard, Circuit Panda, and Radio Panda, has been operating since at least 2010, a joint advisory published by government entities in the US and Japan reported. The group has a history of targeting public organizations and private companies in the US and East Asia. The threat actor is somehow gaining administrator credentials to network devices used by subsidiaries and using that control to install malicious firmware that can be triggered with “magic packets” to perform specific tasks.
The hackers then use control of those devices to infiltrate networks of companies that have trusted relationships with the breached subsidiaries. “Specifically, upon gaining an initial foothold into a target network and gaining administrator access to network edge devices, BlackTech cyber actors often modify the firmware to hide their activity across the edge devices to further maintain persistence in the network,” officials wrote in Wednesday’s advisory. “To extend their foothold across an organization, BlackTech actors target branch routers—typically smaller appliances used at remote branch offices to connect to a corporate headquarters—and then abuse the trusted relationship of the branch routers within the corporate network being targeted. BlackTech actors then use the compromised public-facing branch routers as part of their infrastructure for proxying traffic, blending in with corporate network traffic, and pivoting to other victims on the same corporate network.”
Most of Wednesday's advisory referred to routers sold by Cisco. In an advisory of its own, Cisco said the threat actors are compromising the devices after acquiring administrative credentials and that there’s no indication they are exploiting vulnerabilities. Cisco also said that the hacker’s ability to install malicious firmware exists only for older company products. Newer ones are equipped with secure boot capabilities that prevent them from running unauthorized firmware, the company said.
57725559
submission
hcs_$reboot writes:
In a lengthy interview from Rolling Stone, Bill Gates, among many other subjects, is asked: "Do you consider [Snowden] a hero or a traitor?". The Microsoft founder answers: "I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero (...) You won't find much admiration from me".
What about Government Surveillance? "The government has such ability to do these things. (...) But the specific techniques they use become unavailable if they're discussed in detail"
Rolling Stone retorts that Privacy can be an issue, "We want safety, but we also want privacy" says the journalist. Bill Gates's tells his main priority focuses on stopping the bad guys: "let's say you knew nothing was going on. How would you feel? I mean, seriously. I would be very worried. Technology arms the bad guys with orders of magnitude more [power]. Not just bad guys. Crazy guys."
51232781
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Just as the Internet fundamentally altered the way games are distributed from publishers to players, crowdfunding has upended the traditional models of raising money for gaming development, and some of the most storied people in the industry are taking notice. Chris Roberts, who created the well-known Wing Commander series in 1990, managed to raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter last fall for his upcoming Star Citizen, eventually collecting so much money from individual backers that he could return the budget he'd taken from "formal" investment firms. “Even nice investors, they want a return at some point. They have a slightly diff agenda than I do,” Roberts told Slashdot. “My agenda is to build the coolest game possible." He's not the only famed developer getting into the crowdfunding game: Wasteland director Brian Fargo spent years wanting to make a sequel to his popular role-playing game, eventually accomplishing that goal via Kickstarter. And for every famous game creator who uses the power of crowds to produce a new masterwork, dozens of talented amateurs are also financing their first games via Kickstarter and similar services. But that doesn't mean there are occasional high-profile implosions, like CLANG.
46841297
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Medical students face an uphill battle when it comes to eliminating biases against obese individuals, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
39579091
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Apple today posted its second Samsung apology to its UK website, complying with requests by the UK Court of Appeal to say its original apology was inaccurate and link to a new statement. As users on Hacker News and Reddit point out, however, Apple modified its website recently to ensure the message is never displayed without visitors having to scroll down to the bottom first.
36648335
submission
tomhath writes:
Ice core study concludes that climate change and associated melting of ice in Antarctica is more the norm than the exception, including rapid warming cycles as we appear to be in today.
Study concludes: Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia. The connection shown here between past temperature and ice-shelf stability suggests that warming for several centuries rendered ice shelves on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula vulnerable to collapse.
33509559
submission
Attila Dimedici writes:
The House Appropriations Committee is considering a draft report that would forbid the Library of Congress to allow bulk downloads of bills pending before Congress. The Library of Congress currently has an online database called THOMAS (for Thomas Jefferson) that allows people to look up bills pending before Congress. The problem is that THOMAS is somewhat clunky and it is difficult to extract data from it. This draft report would forbid the Library of Congress from modernizing THOMAS until a task force reports back. I am sorry that I cannot write a better summary of these articles, but I think this is an important issue about improving the ability of people to understand what Congress is doing. I am pretty sure that the majority of people on slashdot agree that being able to better understand how the various bills being considered by Congress interact would be good for this country.
19738836
submission
Stoobalou writes:
The only way to stop piracy is to cut prices. That's the vedict of a major new academic study that reckons copyright theft won't be halted by 'three strikes' broadband disconnections, increasing censorship or draconian new laws brought in under the anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA.
The Media Piracy Project, published last week by the Social Science Research Council, reports that illegal copying of movies, music, video games and software is "better described as a global pricing problem" — and the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares.
18725032
story
An anonymous reader writes
"The announcement that the new series of Red Dwarf is likely to be shot in front of a studio audience, which hasn't happened for the show since 1998, has made one of the show's actors wary of the practicality of it. Commenting on his blog, Robert Llewellyn, who plays servile robot Kryten in the hit British SF comedy show notes: 'The fear among the producers now is that it's impossible to imagine an audience of around 400 people at the recording of a TV show like Red Dwarf, where nobody does a bit of a hint on Twitter, or sneaks a picture on Facebook or posts a bit of badly shot video on YouTube.'"
18452774
story
RFSSystems writes
"I thought this was an amazing and rather rare phenomenon and wanted to share. 'The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north pole.' It appears that the shifting poles have begun to affect air travel in a somewhat modest way. Could this also be the explanation for the falling/dead birds this week?" I hope the gradualists are right, but scenarios for
rapid magnetic pole shift are fun to think about.
18443894
story
Charliemopps writes
"An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was 'no doubt' Wakefield was responsible."
