Online market ‘is turning drug dealers from goons to geeks’

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Researchers argued that Silk Road and its successors, known as cryptomarkets or darknet markets, became successful after bringing together four technologies: the bitcoin virtual currency and encrypted internet protocols such as Tor, which allowed anonymity, as well as Escrow and customer feedback systems, which gave buyers and sellers confidence in their transactions.

Source: Online market ‘is turning drug dealers from goons to geeks’ | World news | The Guardian

“In the drug cryptomarket era, having good customer service and writing skills, and a good reputation, via feedback, as a vendor or buyer may be more important than muscles and face-to-face connections.”

Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory

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That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago (Listen to it here.). And it is a ringing (pun intended) confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory..

Source: Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory – The New York Times

“Everything else in astronomy is like the eye,” he said, referring to the panoply of telescopes that have given stargazers access to more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum and the ability to peer deeper and deeper into space and time. “Finally, astronomy grew ears. We never had ears before.”

World’s largest solar plant goes live, will provide power for 1.1M people

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CSP uses either lenses or parabolic mirrors to concentrate the sun’s light onto a small point where water or another substance is heated.

The heat is used to create steam, which runs a turbine that produces electricity. In the Noor CSP, concave mirrors focus on molten salt, heating it anywhere from 300 degrees to 660 degrees Fahrenheit.

Source: World’s largest solar plant goes live, will provide power for 1.1M people

Currently, the Noor CSP can generate 160 megawatts (MW). But as additional phases are completed, in two years it’s expected to generate more than 500MW — enough power to meet the needs of 1.1 million Moroccans.

Reverse engineering an IP camera

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During setup the app instructs the user to either plug in an Ethernet cable or press the ‘pair’ button on the camera which causes the camera to switch to host mode and offer up an open (aka insecure) wireless network.  The app then scans for this network which is typically called CameraHD-(MAC address) and prompts the user to connect to it. This is an alarming feature for a camera designed for outdoor use particularly as the camera also offers a host of unfiltered network services, including the network video feed (RTSP), a bespoke internal messaging service for initiating alerts and two distinct web servers (nuvoton and busybox), one of which has an undocumented firmware upgrade page. Readers of our other blogs will know how much we like upgrading firmware…

Source: Push To Hack: Reverse engineering an IP camera

Tablet shipments decline 10.1% in 2015

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The tablet market is still in decline.

Q4 2015 is the fifth straight quarter in a row to see a decrease year over year: 65.9 million units shipped, down 13.7 percent from the 76.4 million units that shipped the same quarter last year, according to market research firm IDC. For the whole year of 2015, shipments were 206.8 million, down 10.1 percent from the 230.1 million shipped in 2014.

Source: IDC: Tablet shipments decline 10.1% in 2015, leaders Apple and Samsung both lose market share

IDC argues that the biggest trend to watch for in 2016 is the transition towards detachable devices. Indeed, pure slate tablets experienced their greatest annual decline to date of 21.1 percent, while detachable tablets more than doubled their shipments since the fourth quarter of last year.

HDMI Cable Overview

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HDMI is a horrid format; it was badly thought out and badly designed, and the failures of its design are so apparent that they could have been addressed and resolved with very little fuss. Why they weren’t, exactly, is really anyone’s guess, but the key has to be that the standard was not intended to provide a benefit to the consumer, but to such content providers as movie studios and the like. It would have been in the consumer’s best interests to develop a standard that was robust and reliable over distance, that could be switched, amplified, and distributed economically, and that connects securely to devices; but the consumer’s interests were, sadly, not really a priority for the developers of the HDMI standard.

Source: HDMI Cable Overview — Blue Jeans Cable

Math whizzes of ancient Babylon figured out forerunner of calculus

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During that interval, Jupiter’s motion across the sky appears to slow. (Such erratic apparent motion stems from the complex combination of Earth’s own orbit around the sun with that of Jupiter.) A graph of Jupiter’s apparent velocity against time slopes downward, so that the area under the curve forms a trapezoid. The area of the trapezoid in turn gives the distance that Jupiter has moved along the ecliptic during the 
60 days. Calculating the area under a curve to determine a numerical value is a basic operation, known as the integral between two points, in calculus. Discovering that the Babylonians understood this “was the real ‘aha!’ moment,” Ossendrijver says.

Source: Math whizzes of ancient Babylon figured out forerunner of calculus | Science | AAAS

After cuneiform died out around 100 C.E., Babylonian astronomy was thought to have been virtually forgotten, he notes. It was left to French and English philosophers and mathematicians in the late Middle Ages to reinvent what the Babylonians had developed.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

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If JWST works as expected, it’s carrying enough fuel on-board that it should operate from 2018 through 2028, and although it’s never been done, the potential exists for a robotic (or crewed, if the technology gets developed by then) re-fueling mission to L2, which could increase the telescope’s lifetime by another decade. Just as Hubble’s been in operation for 25 years and counting, JWST could give us a generation of revolutionary science if things work out as well as they could. It’s the future of astronomy, and after more than a decade of hard work, it’s almost time to come to fruition. The future of space telescopes is almost here!

Source: The Future Of Astronomy: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – Forbes

Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case

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“We just don’t believe Rosewill’s products and customers infringed on valid patent claims,” said Cheng. “Minero’s case does not have merit, and its patent is not only expired but would suck even if it wasn’t expired. Now that they have started the litigation, it would be irresponsible for Newegg to not finish it.”

Source: Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case | Ars Technica