Microsoft’s Naggy Windows 10 Upgrade Prompt Interrupts Meteorologist’s Weathercast

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However, at least for one meteorologist, the Windows 10 upgrade prompt came during an inopportune time — right in the middle of a live weathercast. Metinka Slater, a meteorologist with Des Moines CBS affiliate KCCI 8, was going about her business, giving viewers a rundown of the 12-hour rainfall totals in the area when a nagging Windows 10 upgrade screen popped up, just like it has for thousands (if not millions) of everyday Windows users.

Source: Microsoft’s Naggy Windows 10 Upgrade Prompt Interrupts Meteorologist’s Weathercast

How I Hacked Facebook, and Found Someone’s Backdoor Script

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Here I’d like to explain some common security problems found in large corporations during pentesting by giving an example.

Source: How I Hacked Facebook, and Found Someone’s Backdoor Script | DEVCORE 戴夫寇爾

A brief summary, the hacker created a proxy on the credential page to log the credentials of Facebook employees. These logged passwords were stored under web directory for the hacker to use WGET every once in a while

The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster

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The conceptual problems arise with momentum. The system’s total momentum increases as it begins to move. But where does this momentum come from? Shawyer had no convincing explanation, and critics said this was an obvious violation of the law of conservation of momentum.

Source: The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster

McCulloch says there is observational evidence for this in the form of the famous fly by anomalies. These are the strange jumps in momentum observed in some spacecraft as they fly past Earth toward other planets. That’s exactly what his theory predicts.

Americans abandoning wired home Internet, study shows

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In plain English, they’re abandoning their wired Internet for a mobile-data-only diet — and if the trend continues, it could reflect a huge shift in the way we experience the Web.

Source: Americans abandoning wired home Internet, study shows | The Seattle Times

Seventeen percent of households making between $75,000 and $100,000 are mobile-only now, compared with 8 percent two years ago. And 15 percent of households earning more than $100,000 are mobile-only, versus 6 percent in 2013.

Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses

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We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records. Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.

Source: Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses – Microsoft on the Issues

We believe these actions violate two of the fundamental rights that have been part of this country since its founding. These lengthy and even permanent secrecy orders violate the Fourth Amendment, which gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. They also violate the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to talk to customers about how government action is affecting their data.

Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode

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The last regular contact with the spacecraft was on April. 4.  The spacecraft was in good health and operating as expected.

Kepler completed its prime mission in 2012, detecting nearly 5,000 exoplanets, of which, more than 1,000 have been confirmed. In 2014 the Kepler spacecraft began a new mission called K2. In this extended mission, K2 continues the search for exoplanets while introducing new research opportunities to study young stars, supernovae, and many other astronomical objects.

Source: Mission Manager Update: Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode | NASA

Also From: Kepler Reaction Wheel Failure Cripples Spacecraft, but Mission Thrives

To save on bandwidth, Kepler only downlinks data from the pixels associated with 156,000 target stars out of the millions of stars in the Kepler field.  Data from an “aperture” of pixels around each target star are downlinked to Earth, and computer programs on Earth measure the brightness of the star based on the light that hit the pixels in the aperture.  If the telescope pointing is not good enough to keep the target stars in their respective apertures on the pixels, it is impossible to measure the brightness of those stars with a precision of 20 parts per million.

Update From:  Kepler telescope readies for new mission after communications scare

Once the spacecraft checks out, Kepler will kick off its latest effort, looking toward the galactic center for planets whose gravity distorts the light from far more distant stars. This technique, known as gravitational microlensing, has been used with ground-based telescopes to discover about 46 planets, some of them orphaned from their parent stars. But the method is a first for Kepler, which searches for dips in starlight caused by planets crossing in front of their suns.

The Illegal Map of Swedish Art

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It also used to include useful photos of each statue. Not any more. The Supreme Court of Sweden has ruled that it is illegal to provide free access to a database of art photographs without the artists’ consent. Therefore Offentlig Konst can no longer show you a picture of a work of art, even when the artwork is in public ownership, on public display and sited in a public area,

Source: Maps Mania: The Illegal Map of Swedish Art

The Basics of Web Application Security

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Security is a massive topic, even if we reduce the scope to only browser-based web applications. These articles will be closer to a “best-of” than a comprehensive catalog of everything you need to know, but we hope it will provide a directed first step for developers who are trying to ramp up fast.

Source: The Basics of Web Application Security

Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s

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Beyond the price spike, Ethereum is also attracting attention from giants in finance and technology, like JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and IBM, which have described it as a sort of Bitcoin 2.0.

Source: Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s – The New York Times

The system is complicated enough that even people who know it well have trouble describing it in plain English.