November 27, 2017 – Peter's Quasi-Daily Blah-g

November 27, 2017

Watch Out: If Someone Blocks You on Twitter, You Lose Your DM History With Them

The Twitter block is a powerful tool. Whereas muting is a subtle cleansing of your timelineâ€”the person you mute never knows, though you have to wonder, how many people might have muted you??â€”blocking is Twitterâ€™s carpet bomb.

When you block someone:

They cannot see your tweets. You cannot see theirs.
You unfollow each other.
If they try to see your profile, they will see that youâ€™ve blocked them.
They cannot DM you.

For the full repercussions, hereâ€™s Twitterâ€™s guide. Right now, I want to focus on the DMs issue. Because this was recently brought to my attention:

Blocks happen for all sorts of reasons. Maybe someone was being abusive. Maybe muting wasnâ€™t strong enough, and you wanted to fully protect your timeline from someoneâ€™s presence. Or maybe you got in a Twitter fightâ€”in public or in DMsâ€”and one of you gets fed up and pulls the trigger. If that happens, itâ€™s useful to know that any DM history from before the blocking will be erased. Be safe: take screenshots, keep your receipts.

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November 27, 2017

Imgur Was Hacked in 2014 Exposing 1.7 million User Accounts

Posted by

Shane McGlaun |

Mon, Nov 27, 2017 – 9:00 AM

Back in 2014 Imgur was hacked and one of the scariest parts of this hack was that it had no idea the breach had occurred until this month. The hack resulted in the usernames and passwords of 1.7 million accounts being stolen. Another troubling thing about the hacks is Imgur has no idea how exactly the hackers gained access.

Imgur wrote, â€œWe are still investigating how the account information was compromised. We have always encrypted your password in our database, but it may have been cracked with brute force due to an older hashing algorithm (SHA-256) that was used at the time. We updated our algorithm to the new bcrypt algorithm last year.â€

Imgur says that it asks for no personally identifiable information to open an account. The users affected by the branch have been contacted on the email addresses that they used when registering. Those users are being required to change their passwords.

The security researcher who discovered the breach is Troy Hunt and he was given a list of the stolen account details by an unnamed source reports PCMag. Hunt told ZDNet, â€œI disclosed this incident to Imgur late in the day in the midst of the US Thanksgiving holidays. That they could pick this up immediately, protect impacted accounts, notify individuals and prepare public statements in less than 24 hours is absolutely exemplary.â€

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November 27, 2017

Catching lightning in a volcanic bottle

What do you get when you marry two of Earth’s most dramatic natural events, lightning and volcanoes? The answer is a "dirty storm," an infernal melange of lightning, magmatic fire and ash that surpasses even the wildest Hollywood disaster movie effects. If the volcano has enough energy, dozens of bolts — which blast upwards, rather than downwards — can spawn in the ash. At at the VolcÃ¡n Calbuco in Chile, photographer Francisco Negroni captured a stunning example of the phenomenon, winning second prize at this year’s Epson Pano awards.

If you think I’m exaggerating about how dramatic these storms can look, a quick Google image search of "dirty storm" will change your mind. All suggest that some kind of impending apocalypse/horsemen scenario is about to take place.

Many of the best ones were taken by Negroni himself, but even he admits that the image above is special. "The photograph with which I obtained second place in the Pano Awards was taken during the violent eruption of the VolcÃ¡n Calbuco, located in the south of Chile," he told Engadget via email. "The technique was simple: long exposure, tripod and a 80-200mm lens. Approximately 10 minutes to achieve that incredible image that, without a doubt, is my best photograph of an eruption and I think the best taken in the world."

How does this happen? In a regular thunderstorm cloud, lightning is created when rising air makes ice crystals and water droplets bump together, forming static electricity. Once the charges build up enough to surpass the atmosphere’s natural insulating tendency, lightning discharges either from one cloud to another or to the ground.

Volcanic lightning works on the same principle, but via different actions. Recently, researchers studying one of the world’s most active volcanoes, Japan’s Mount Sakurajima (above), learned more about how it forms. Using high-speed cameras, they discovered that charge created by churning magma builds around the rim, electrifying the ash just above it.

That creates an electrostatic potential in the lower portion of the ash that eventually causes lightning to discharge into the cloud or air, often in the opposite direction of regular lightning. As such, lightning formation is usually limited to the bottom part of the ash plume, and depends strongly on how the plume develops.

Chile is located on the Pacific "Rim of Fire," and has 90 active volcanoes, the second most in the world after Indonesia. Negroni has photographed volcanoes like Llaima in the Araucania region, the 2011 eruption of Puyehue-Cordon Caulle, and in 2015, the Villarrica Volcano and Calbuco pictured here. Volcanologists and seismologists have become extremely adept at detecting eruptions ahead of time, so endangered inhabitants were evacuated well ahead of time.

Though volcano science has improved dramatically, getting near active ones that produce lightning isn’t for the faint of heart. "Photographing volcanoes is very dangerous and I do not recommend it to anyone," Negroni said. "But if you have the opportunity to do it from a very safe place, it will be an incredible show that nature gives us."

Via: Kottke

Source: Francisco Negroni

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November 27, 2017

Formula 1 e-sports now more exciting than the real thingâ€”and thatâ€™s a problem

On Sunday, the 2017 Formula 1 season drew to a close with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It was a deathly boring end to a season that started with so much promise back in March. The series had a new owner, Liberty Media, which promised to stop ignoring things like the Internet and 21st century. The cars were wider and had more grip than seasons past. And there was the threat of actual competition between Mercedes-AMG and Ferrari as opposed to starting each race weekend knowing that a win by the three-pointed star was a foregone conclusion.

But repeated missteps by Ferrari after the summer break saw Lewis Hamilton clinch his fourth championship weeks ago, and the sad fact remains that technical rules changes meant to improve the racing didn’t deliver anything of the sort. Indeed, so boring was the final race of the season (and to be honest, the two that preceded it) that the biggest story from Abu Dhabi was about the series’ underwhelming new logo. But the weekend did actually deliver a rather thrilling race on the Yas Marina circuit; it’s just that it happened the night before the main event and took place within F1 2017. Yes, it was the final race of F1’s inaugural e-sports series.

As I’ve noted on a few occasions now, e-sports is finally getting some legitimacy from the motorsports world. At the end of last year, Formula E held a big-money rFactor 2 race in Las Vegas, pitching professional drivers against some of the world’s best sim racers. A decade after Nissan and Sony started using Gran Turismo to find new racing talent, the FIA (which organizes global motorsport) officially sanctioned the latest version of that game. Just last week, the McLaren F1 team concluded a massive online competition to find its new simulator test driver. And then there was the F1 e-sports series, which was open to anyone with a copy of Codemasters’ F1 gameâ€”in total 63,827 players took part in the online qualifying races earlier this year.

Twenty gamers battled it out across three races. For the first two races (18 laps at Montreal and 11 laps at Spa-Francorchamps) only the top 10 positions earned any points, but the finale upped the stakes, with 45 for the win (instead of 25) and points all the way through to last place. Between Twitch and YouTube, almost half a million people tuned in to watch the finale, an exciting 14 lap battle at a virtual Yas Marina circuit.

VIDEO

At the front of the pack, the race was a marvelous three-way fight between Brendon Leigh, Fabrizio Donoso, and Sven Zurner for the win. All three drivers were in contention for the championship, and Donoso looked set to take the win before an audacious move by Leigh on the final lap saw the 18-year old Englishman beat him to the finish line and the first ever F1 eSeries championship.

Enlarge /

L-R: Fabrizio Denoso, Brendon Leigh, and Sven Zurner on the podium at Yas Marina race track in Abu Dhabi.

Octane | Getty Images

By contrast, the actual F1 race that took place the following day seemed faintly pathetic. Romain Grosjean and Lance Stroll managed to entertain us for two or three laps as they fought over 13th place, but the rest of the event was more like a parade than a sporting competition. Hopes are pinned on new, softer tires from Pirelli for 2018, but without tackling the real problemâ€”an over-reliance on aerodynamic grip and cars that cannot follow each other closely in the turnsâ€”I’m not optimistic.

But hey, at least there’s the next F1 eSeries to look forward to.

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November 27, 2017

Thanks to the Play Store, Microsoft Office arrives on Chromebooks

Thanks to the Play Store, Microsoft Office arrives on Chromebooks | Ars Technica

Word on an Android tablet. Pay for Office 365, and you’ll get this version on a Chromebook.

Microsoft
Excel.

Microsoft
Powerpoint.

Microsoft

Through the magic of the Play Store, the official Microsoft Office apps have arrived on Chromebooks. It has been a long journey to get here, with random individual Chromebook models gaining and losing Office support for the past year, but now, according to a report from Chrome Unboxed, the office suite is live on all Chromebooks. You need an Office 365 subscription to actually save and edit a document, but if you’re paying the $7-per-month fee, you can now fire up the apps on a Chromebook.

The Play Store on Chromebooks brings Android apps to the formerly “web only” platform. For Microsoft Office, this means Chromebook users get the Android tablet version of Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint. Unlike nearly every other Android tablet app in existence, Microsoft’s tablet apps are actually great! They offer a big-screen optimized interface that looks a lot like the Windows apps, but with a smaller feature set. The Office apps are actually way better than Google’s own Drive apps on a tablet, which are just stretched-out phone apps (although on Chromebooks, you’d use the Drive website.)

While most people are probably buying Chromebooks to use Google’s suite of online services, having a fully-offline capable copy of Office is a handy thing to have in the tool chest. If youÂ really need to open a Word or Excel document without using Google Drive’s conversion features, now you can.

It’s interesting to see Microsoft offer Office support on Chromebooks, which have been threatening Windows desktop dominance for some time. Microsoft is responding to the Chromebook threat with Windows 10 S, a version of Windows that is locked down to the Windows Store. Windows Store appsâ€”especially the new-school Universal Windows Platform appsâ€”are more constrained than the usual Windows applications, allowing for a more managed, “app store” like experience.

With the collapse of Windows Phone, Microsoft has been more open to bringing its apps to other platforms. The company has loaded up Android with Microsoft apps, to the point that it even started selling “Microsoft Edition” Android phones in its stores.Â While we’re sure Microsoft would rather you go the Windows 10 S route, if you’re on a Chromebook, the company now has a way to reach you with Office.

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November 27, 2017

Closer to a Cure: Combating Alzheimerâ€™s With New Compute Technology

The human brain remains a complex mystery. But, if we dare to dream bigâ€”and have the proper tools and data to fuel those ambitionsâ€”we may one day discover cures for diseases as devastating as Alzheimerâ€™s. At the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), more than 1,000 neuroscientists are using the latest technology to identify biomarkers that can predict the onset of Alzheimerâ€™s. Using HPE Memory-Driven Computing architecture, researchers have the ability to identify patterns within vast collections of data 100x faster than ever before, accelerating progress towards finding a cure.

[Great Big Story]

The post Closer to a Cure: Combating Alzheimerâ€™s With New Compute Technology appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

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November 27, 2017

Bitcoin Soars Toward Another Benchmark: $10,000

Bitcoin Soars Toward Another Benchmark: $10,000 : The Two-Way : NPR

Bitcoin prices have spiked since October â€” and the cryptocurrency is now closing in on $10,000, leading the way for digital currencies that have seen huge gains in 2017.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Bitcoin prices have spiked since October â€” and the cryptocurrency is now closing in on $10,000, leading the way for digital currencies that have seen huge gains in 2017.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Bitcoin’s price has already spiked more than 1,000-percent in the past 12 months. Now it’s flirting with another landmark: a $10,000 price for a single unit of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin’s rise has been both meteoric and volatile, with surges in valuation often being driven by positive reports about its status. Earlier this year, for instance, Japan recognized bitcoin as an official method of payment. It has also continued to attract interest from investors.

In early October, a single bitcoin cost less than $5,000 on currency exchange sites. A year ago, one could be had for around $730. But it crossed as of 7 a.m. ET on Monday, the price for a bitcoin was $9,770, according to data from the Coinbase currency exchange.

The digital currency slipped below $9,700 after reaching that mark; the analyst site Coindesk (which is affiliated with Coinbase) says it expects bitcoin to pass “the psychological milestone of $10,000 today,” citing recent momentum. The price roared past $9,000 over the weekend.

“Bitcoin’s price has been helped in recent months by the announcement that the world’s biggest derivatives exchange operator CME Group would start offering bitcoin futures,” Reuters says. “The company said last week the futures would launch by the end of the year though no precise date had been set.”

Another factor has been the move to split the original bitcoin segment into two currencies â€” bitcoin classic and bitcoin cash. That change, which became official in August, has allowed large trades in the currency to occur more frequently, while also promising to bolster its infrastructure.

When bitcoin surpassed $4,300 in August, the CryptoCoins News site declared a “flippening” was taking place, as bitcoin, with a market size of more than $70 billion, had gained “a greater total valuation than payment-processing behemoth PayPal.”

Citing the current rise, CryptoCoins says the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies â€” led by bitcoin and its rivals, ethereum and Ripple â€” has now topped $300 billion for the first time, making them more valuable than Bank of America, which has a market cap of around $280 billion.

Investment analysts have often split on the issue of cryptocurrencies, citing their status as a both an emerging technology and an emerging form of exchange and investment.

CNBC quotes Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management, saying, “I confess it’s an area of that to me feels speculative, but you might call me old or old-fashioned. It’s been an amazing run, has it not?”

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