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https://gizmodo.com/texas-man-dies-after-vape-pen-explosion-severs-artery-t-1832355840
A 24-year-old man in Fort Worth, Texas has died after a vape pen he was using exploded in his face and severed an artery to his brain, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner. The incident adds to a growing number of devastating vape explosions.
via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com
February 5, 2019 at 10:36AM
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=31560
(Inside Science) — Researchers from Japan have come up with a way to encourage materials to grow stronger over time, like the muscles in our body. The new technique could allow engineers to design adaptable and healable materials for a wide range of applications.
When we lift weights in the gym, the mechanical stress causes our muscle fibers to rip and tear, but this damaging action actually allows the fibers to regrow stronger afterwards. In contrast, nonliving materials such as rubber
via Discover Main Feed http://bit.ly/1dqgCKa
February 5, 2019 at 11:23AM
Chinese experts say the country’s economic, social and political environment played a major role in shaping He Jiankui, the scientist who led controversial research altering the DNA of human embryos.
(Image credit: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)
via NPR Topics: News https://n.pr/2m0CM10
February 5, 2019 at 12:12PM
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-xbox-live-coming-to-nintendo-switch-isnt-surpr/1100-6464821/
Yes, you read that right. Microsoft has announced plans to bring Xbox Live to Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android, with more details coming in a GDC talk next month. The company says bringing the network to more consoles will "enable game developers to connect players between iOS, Android, and Switch in addition to Xbox and any game in the Microsoft Store on Windows PCs."
Until the publisher reveals more at GDC, we’re not entirely sure what the move will involve, precisely. What we do know is Microsoft wants us to take our Xbox profile, including our Achievement history, friends list, clubs we’re in, and more, to every screen–even rival consoles.
That ties into a wider recent Microsoft strategy to get its services on as many devices as possible. Gone are the days when it only wanted you to buy an Xbox One to be your "all-in-one" entertainment solution; now the company wants you to buy a Switch and play with your Xbox friends on it. Trying to pressure everyone into buying a Windows Phone didn’t work–and was costly, thanks to the $6.2 billion (£4.7bn) acquisition of Nokia. Now, Microsoft Office runs on iOS, with a subscription fee for professional use. Instances like ex-CEO Steve Ballmer calling open-source OS Linux a "cancer" are in the past; instead, current chief executive Satya Nadella declares the company’s "love" for Linux. It only makes sense for this platform-agnostic approach for Microsoft as a whole to involve Xbox. Sure enough, it’s possible to play a huge selection of Xbox games on PC with Play Anywhere, and taking Xbox Live to other platforms seems a natural next step.
"I think if you get so focused just on hardware sales at this point, as gamers, we lose sight of what’s going on around the console business," Xbox boss Phil Spencer told GameSpot in 2017. "Console’s important. I love the console space, but it’s part of the gaming business, it’s not total.
"I look at those in aggregate, and so it’s not actually about how many Xbox One Xs do I sell, or how many Ss do I sell, or even how many of one individual game that I sell. I look at, are we growing the number of people who have a relationship with Xbox in some way? [It] could be an Android customer in China playing Minecraft, but that’s a person who’s connected to our platform who’s able to use Mixer, who’s able to connect to Xbox Live, meet their friends online. That’s really the metric for growth right now."
Ultimately, the real metric for growth is money. Microsoft’s latest financial report states the company’s revenue has increased 12%. Profit has increased by 18%. The company’s share prices have tripled in the five years since Nadalla took over and began implementing this collaborative strategy.
In that sense, it seems an obvious move to bring Xbox Live to other consoles and to mobiles: it gets the Xbox brand to, potentially, an additional 2 billion devices by Microsoft’s calculations. Nintendo in particular are the gateway to gaming for millions of children around the world–Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida once said the games industry "needs Nintendo to be very successful" for this very reason. Those children will soon possess not only a gateway, but a direct pathway to the Xbox ecosystem.
Children will soon possess not only a gateway, but a direct pathway to the Xbox ecosystem
But there’s an elephant in the room: Sony is, thus far, not mentioned anywhere in Microsoft’s plans for Xbox Live expansion. Whether that’s because the PlayStation-maker wasn’t asked, or because it didn’t agree with Microsoft’s collaborative strategy, isn’t clear. What is clear is that the Japanese company has been less willing when it comes to joining forces than its competitors: it resisted the temptation of cross-play, for example, for many years, saying the PS4 was the best place to play and that’s the end of it. It finally succumbed to the pressure, but only in Fortnite at first, and only in beta form.
What’s odd is that Sony was once the frontrunner in this space: Portal 2 on PS3 allowed cross-play with PC players through Steam. More PlayStation games have allowed limited cross-play functionality since then, but only Fortnite and Rocket League allow full cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One. At least that’s some sign of progress, though, and if Xbox Live on Switch is a success, more pressure will mount on Sony to follow suit and allow Microsoft’s service on to PS4.
When I was growing up, the thought of playing Call of Duty or FIFA with my other-console-owning friends was a mere dream. With Microsoft’s plans to bring Xbox Live to competitors’ consoles, that dream is a step closer to becoming reality.
"When you look at Twitch and you look at Steam, look at PUBG, look at Minecraft," says Spencer. "People on Minecraft on Switch are playing with people on an iPhone. They don’t own a Windows machine or an Xbox, but they own our game, and they’re using Xbox Live across multiple devices. That’s what gaming in the future’s about, right?"
via GameSpot’s PC Reviews http://bit.ly/2mVXxXH
February 5, 2019 at 01:16PM
https://www.space.com/43218-spacex-raptor-rocket-engine-test-video.html
SpaceX just took another step toward Mars.
The company has test-fired the flight version of its new Raptor rocket engine for the first time, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced yesterday (Feb. 3).
“First firing of Starship Raptor flight engine! So proud of great work by @SpaceX team!!” Musk said via Twitter. [Images: SpaceX’s Giant Spaceship for Mars Colony & Beyond]
The billionaire entrepreneur also tweeted out several videos of the 3-second test, which took place at the company’s development facility in McGregor, Texas.
SpaceX conducts its first Raptor rocket engine test at the company’s McGregor, Texas proving ground in this video released by CEO Elon Musk on Feb. 3, 2019.
Credit: Elon Musk via Twitter/SpaceX
Starship is the 100-passenger stainless-steel vehicle SpaceX is building to take people and cargo to Mars and other distant destinations. Starship will launch atop a giant rocket SpaceX calls Super Heavy.
Both of these vehicles will be reusable and Raptor-powered. Starship will sport seven of the new engines, and Super Heavy will use 31 Raptors to get off the ground.
A “hopper” prototype that SpaceX will use to test the Starship design on short flights within Earth’s atmosphere will have three Raptor engines. This hopper will debut soon, Musk has said — perhaps within the next month or so, if everything goes according to plan.
The first launches of the full-scale Starship-Super Heavy duo could follow in relatively short order. SpaceX is targeting 2023 for a passenger-toting mission around the moon and the mid-2020s for its first Mars flights, Musk has said.
The recent test wasn’t the first firing of any kind of Raptor. SpaceX tested a development version of the Raptor in September 2016, also at the McGregor site.
The Raptor engine is quite a bit different than the Merlin, which powers SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Merlins use kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, for example, whereas Raptors use liquid methane and LOX. And the flight Raptor will boast about twice the thrust of the Merlin version that powers the Falcon 9.
Speaking of the Falcon 9 — the rocket has some big milestones of its own coming up. A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the Israeli organization SpaceIL’s moon lander, along with the PSN 6 communications satellite, on Feb. 18.
And another Falcon 9 will loft SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on its first orbital mission as soon as Feb. 23. This uncrewed test flight will send Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. If all goes well, Crew Dragon will carry NASA astronauts to the orbiting lab for the first time this summer.
Mike Wall’s book about the search for alien life, “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcomor Facebook. Originally published on Space.com.
via Space.com https://www.space.com
February 4, 2019 at 12:07PM
https://gizmodo.com/firefox-will-soon-free-you-from-autoplay-hell-1832334542
Few things are more annoying when surfing the internet than some random video autoplaying in one of your 10,000 open tabs. Thankfully, Firefox users will finally be able to automatically disable autoplay starting next month.
via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com
February 4, 2019 at 02:54PM
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1451379
With lists of billions of compromised credentials floating around on underground forums and in text-paste pages across the Internet, it’s difficult for anyone to keep up with the potential threat from breached passwords. That’s why, as part of its security efforts during Safer Internet Week, Google has released a new add-on for the Chrome browser that automatically and securely checks website credentials against known password breaches.
The Chrome browser extension, called Password Checkup, is available today. It securely checks credentials used to log in to websites—whether they’re manually entered or stored in Chrome’s password manager—against hashed credentials stored in an encrypted database of billions of compromised accounts maintained by Google. Elie Bursztein, head of Google’s anti-abuse research, told Ars that the protocol behind the service is being presented as a standard for securely checking account security and that the interface may be offered as an open application interface in the future.
Checking for password breaches is a sensitive operation. Google’s security team has been offering password checks for G Suite users for some time, but doing the same thing for the rest of users’ credentials is a much more delicate privacy dance. Users don’t want to just hand over their passwords and accounts to Google openly, and “Google has a data set we don’t want to publicly share,” said Kurt Thomas, staff research scientist at Google. So Password Checkup uses a combination of anonymization and cryptography to protect the exchange, using a technique called “blinding” to create a secret search index. Credentials are anonymized with an Argon2 hash function to create a search key for Google’s database and encrypted with Elliptic Curve cryptography.
“On your end, you get an index that only you know,” said Thomas. And that index is both hashed and only a partial encoding of the information—it can’t be used to recreate a complete version of login credentials.
The backend database contains data culled from password dumps on underground marketplaces. Currently, it contains terabytes of data on over 20 billion compromised credentials and is constantly being updated by Google’s threat research team, Bursztein said. The database and the API to access it could be applied to a number of future capabilities, and Bursztein said that his team is open to suggestions on how to best use it. Potentially, the database could be a valuable resource to companies’ internal threat-hunting teams seeking hints of compromise of critical accounts on third-party services. But for now, Bursztein said, the goal is to reach Internet users in a way that’s transparent and easy to use, regardless of whether they have a security team to back them up.
via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com
February 5, 2019 at 08:57AM
