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May 31, 2022

Hacker Stole Verizon Employee Data, Holds It For $250,000 Ransom

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Verizon has suffered a data breach. A hacker recently accessed the company’s employee database and stole personally identifiable information about hundreds of its employees. The stolen information includes the full name, phone number, email address, and corporate ID numbers.

According to a Motherboard report, the hacker got access to the Verizon database by tricking an employee to grant them remote access to their corporate computer. They posed as internal support and convinced the victim through social engineering. Once the hacker had access to the database, they launched a script to copy the information.

“These employees are idiots,” the hacker told Motherboard in an online chat. They shared the stolen data, perhaps part of it, with the publication. The report suggests the information is accurate but unclear how up to date. The publication called some of the phone numbers and four people confirmed their full names and email addresses. They also confirmed that they work at Verizon.

May 31, 2022

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reveals next-generation Starlink satellite details

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, internet, satellites

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has revealed the first technical details about the company’s next-generation Starlink ‘Gen2’ satellite design, confirming that it will far outmatch the current generation of satellites by almost every measure.

Speaking in an onsite interview and Starbase tour with YouTuber Tim Dodd (The Everyday Astronaut), Musk – largely unprovoked – revealed that SpaceX has already built at least one functional Starlink Gen2/V2.0 satellite prototype and shipped it to the South Texas Starship factory, where it is currently being stored. More importantly, Musk also provided the first direct specifications for the next-generation spacecraft, stating that each Starlink V2.0 satellite will weigh about 1.25 tons (~2750 lb), measure about seven meters (~23 ft) long, and be almost an order of magnitude more capable than the “Starlink 1” satellites they’ll ultimately supersede.

Almost ten months after SpaceX first revealed its updated plans for a next-generation, 30,000-satellite constellation, those details have confirmed a few key points of speculation about the future of Starlink.

May 31, 2022

17 pictures that show how mind-bogglingly large the Universe is

Posted by in category: space

The observable Universe is 92 billion light-years in diameter. These pictures put just how large that is in perspective.

May 31, 2022

Why Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites scare China? Chinese Researchers have come up with a plan to “destroy” SpaceX Starlink satellites

Posted by in categories: computing, Elon Musk, internet, military, satellites

China has to have the capability to identify and destroy SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, according to Chinese military experts in a report released in April. The research, headed by Ren Yuanzhen of the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications, was published in the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Modern Defence Technology. The publication inexplicably disappeared from the online version of The South China Morning Post after The South China Morning Post reported on its contents.

David Cowhig, a former US ambassador, was able to complete the translation of the document before it vanished, which allowed him to uncover a number of preventative steps that were suggested to be taken against Starlink. According to the study, China has to “use a mix of soft and hard kill measures to disrupt the operating system of the constellation and deactivate part of the Starlink satellites.”

May 30, 2022

Bottling the sun

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

A recent experiment showed this virtually limitless form of clean power is possible on Earth. Now, one of the most complex energy projects in history aims to make nuclear fusion a reality for the whole planet.

May 30, 2022

AMD-Powered Frontier Supercomputer Breaks the Exascale Barrier, Now Fastest in the World

Posted by in category: supercomputing

AMD-powered systems now comprise five of the top ten fastest supercomputers.


The AMD EPYC-powered Frontier supercomputer is the first exascale system in the world, taking the top spot with mind-bending stats.

May 30, 2022

Bizarre neutron star spins every 76 seconds inside a stellar graveyard

Posted by in category: cosmology

Neutron stars are normally extremely fast-spinning stellar corpses left over from the intense violence of a supernova, but researchers have found one in a “stellar graveyard” where one should not be – and it spins at a relatively glacial rate of once every 76 seconds.

Researchers with the University of Sydney found the bizarre radio signal, designated PSR J0901-4046, emitted by the neutron star thanks to the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and weren’t even expecting to see it. The region of the sky they were observing was thought to be free of pulsars, since none had been observed there before.

Now they might know why. Capturing eight-second-long samples of the sky, they caught sight of a single pulse from the star, which had to be confirmed with subsequent observation due to its unexpectedly long rotational period.

May 30, 2022

NVIDIA launch rumor: GeForce RTX 4090 first, RTX 4080 + RTX 4070 after

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering

We might be consumed with CPU news with AMD’s upcoming Zen 4-based Ryzen 7,000 series CPUs, teasing a 16-core engineering sample at 5.5GHz+ but now we’re back to GPU rumors again with NVIDIA reportedly launching the higher-end GeForce RTX 4,090 first.

According to the latest from leaker “kopite7kimi”, NVIDIA will reportedly launch the GeForce RTX 4,090 first, then the GeForce RTX 4,080 and GeForce RTX 4,070 after. This would break tradition, as NVIDIA normally launches the x080 and x070 series GPUs first, followed by the x090 series GPU… but the RTX 4,090 launching first makes sense.

May 30, 2022

Israeli company Virusight’s device detects COVID-19 in 20 seconds

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, robotics/AI

Virusight Diagnostic, an Israeli company that combines artificial intelligence software and spectral technology announced the results of a study that found that its Pathogens Diagnostic device detects COVID-19 with 96.3 percent accuracy in comparison to the common RT-PCR.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Department of Science and Technology, University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy with partner company TechnoGenetics S.p. A.


The Virusight solution was tested on 550 saliva samples and found to be safe and effective.

May 30, 2022

Gene-edited tomatoes could be a new source of vitamin D

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, food, genetics, health, neuroscience

Tomatoes gene-edited to produce vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, could be a simple and sustainable innovation to address a global health problem.

Researchers used gene editing to turn off a specific molecule in the plant’s genome which increased provitamin D3 in both the fruit and leaves of tomato plants. It was then converted to vitamin D3 through exposure to UVB light.

Vitamin D is created in our bodies after skin’s exposure to UVB light, but the major source is food. This new biofortified crop could help millions of people with vitamin D insufficiency, a growing issue linked to higher risk of cancer, dementia, and many leading causes of mortality. Studies have also shown that vitamin D insufficiency is linked to increased severity of infection by Covid-19.