Why hackers still love your email
Email still beats texts…for hackers phishing for your data. Business email getting compromised “is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and super effective,” says Sam Small, the chief security officer for ZeroFOX, a firm that helps enterprises with security protection. For more, check out this USA Today story.
A double star system with an alter ego
It’s sort of like a cosmic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers found that this binary star system switches between two alter egos every few years. For more, check out this NBC News story.
PCIe 6.0 Specification, Version 0.5
Version 0.5 of PCIe 6.0 is now available to members. They hope to release the final version next year. PCIe 6.0 Specification Features Overview Data rate of 64 GT/s speeds, doubling the 32GT/s data rate of the PCIe 5.0 specification PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) encoding Low-latency Forward Error Correction (FEC) with additional…
Tape Tricks Semi-Autonomous Tesla
Oops…a simple piece of tape tricked a semi-autonomous Tesla into speeding. Technicians at McAfee Inc. placed the piece of tape horizontally across the middle of the “3” on a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit sign. The change caused the vehicle to read the limit as 85 miles per hour, and its cruise control system automatically accelerated,…
Two giant icebergs broke off Antarctica
What does it mean for the continent’s health? For years, scientists have tracked as chunks of the glacier have broken off, an awe-inspiring event known as “calving” that happens naturally. But it’s happening more often at the Pine Island Glacier, also known as PIG, and it’s got glaciologists worried that climate change is to blame….
SpaceX to Launch 4 Tourists Into Super High Orbit
Got millions burning a hole in your pocket? For this trip, paying customers will skip the space station and instead orbit two to three times higher, or roughly 500 miles to 750 miles (800 kilometers to 1,200 kilometers) above Earth. For more, check out this IEN story.
Addicted to your phone?
I think this problem is getting worse, not better. There are people who rarely look up from their phones. At the rehab center I go to, there are people who sit on the machines absent-mindlessly going through their reps, all the while never glancing up from their phones. It’s an epidemic. Our brains are wired…
A massive iceberg just broke off a glacier in Antarctica
Scientists reported that an iceberg that’s twice the size of Washington, D.C., just broke off of the Pine Island glacier in Antarctica. The Pine Island glacier “is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica,” according to NASA. Along with the nearby Thwaites glacier, the two glaciers contain “enough vulnerable ice to raise global sea level…
Hard Drive Stats for 2019
As of December 31, 2019, Backblaze had 124,956 spinning hard drives. They take a look at the failure rates of those drives. The total AFR for 2019 rose significantly in 2019. About 75% of the different drive models experienced a rise in AFR from 2018 to 2019. There are two primary drivers behind this rise….
Scientists detect an unexplainable radio signal from outer space
For the first time, scientists have detected a radio signal from outer space that repeats at regular intervals. The series of “fast radio bursts” – short-lived pulses of radio waves that come from across the universe – were detected about once an hour for four days and then stopped, only to start up again 12 days…