Latest Front Page News

New system makes it harder to track Bitcoin transactions

Submitted by: Odio @ 10:03 AM | Thursday, February 9, 2017 | (url: https://phys.org/...)

Researchers from North Carolina State University, Boston University and George Mason University have developed a Bitcoin-compatible system that could make it significantly more difficult for observers to identify or track the parties involved in any given Bitcoin transaction.

Bitcoin was initially conceived as a way for people to exchange money anonymously. But then it was discovered that anyone could track all Bitcoin transactions and often identify the parties involved.

Bitcoin operates by giving each user a unique public key, which is a string of numbers. Users can transmit money in the form of digital bitcoins from one public key to another. This is made possible by a system that ensures a user has enough bitcoins in his or her account to make the transfer. The use of the public keys gave users a sense of anonymity, even though all of the transactions were visible on the public Bitcoin blockchain which lists all transactions. Over time, experts and private companies have developed highly effective methods of de-anonymizing those public keys.

Now researchers have developed a system called TumbleBit, which is a computer protocol that runs on top of Bitcoin.

TumbleBit takes advantage of an existing concept called "mixing service." The idea works like this: instead of Party A paying Party B directly, many different Parties A pay an intermdiary "tumbler," which then pays the Parties B. The more parties are involved, the harder it is to determine which Party A paid which Party B.

Category: Technology | 2 Comments
Tags: bitcoin

japan ruined seafood and is going to kill us all

Submitted by: Goshin @ 03:10 PM | Tuesday, February 7, 2017 | (url: http://www.japant...)

At 530 sieverts, a person could die from even brief exposure, highlighting the difficulties ahead as the government and Tepco grope their way toward dismantling all three reactors crippled by the March 2011 disaster.

Tepco also announced that, based on its analysis of images taken by a remote-controlled camera, that there is a 2-meter hole in the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactors primary containment vessel. It also thinks part of the grating is warped.

The hole could have been caused when the fuel escaped the pressure vessel after the mega-quake and massive tsunami triggered a station blackout that crippled the plants ability to cool the reactors.

The searing radiation level, described by some experts as unimaginable, far exceeds the previous high of 73 sieverts per hour at the reactor.

An official of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences said medical professionals have never considered dealing with this level of radiation in their work.

According to the institute, 4 sieverts of radiation exposure would kill 1 in 2 people.

Experts say 1,000 millisieverts, or 1 sievert, could lead to infertility, loss of hair and cataracts, while exposure to doses above 100 millisieverts increases the risk of cancer.

they sendin a robot in that'll explode in 2 hours due to the radiation levels to check on stuff

in the meantime stop eating seafood from pacific
lagbar is dead


474 Arrested, 28 Sexually Exploited Children Rescued During Statewide Human Trafficki

Submitted by: Odio @ 08:19 PM | Wednesday, February 1, 2017 | (url: http://ktla.com/2...)

Hundreds of people were arrested and dozens of sexually exploited children and adult victims were rescued across California during a statewide operation to combat human trafficking, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department announced Tuesday.

More than 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and task forces, including the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, participated in the third annual Operation Reclaim and Rebuild enforcement operation, according to a sheriffs news release.

The statewide operation took place over the three-day period between last Thursday and Saturday.

In total, 474 arrests were made, including 142 males on solicitation charges, and 36 males on suspicion of pimping, according to figures provided by the Sheriffs Department.

Additionally, 28 commercially and sexually exploited children and 27 adult victims were rescued.

You are worthy of more. And we will work tirelessly with our partners to provide you services and help you rebuild your life, Sheriff Jim McDonnell said, addressing the victims during a news conference on Tuesday.

The minors who were recovered during the operation were being cared for by various children and family services agencies across the state, according to sheriffs officials. The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking and the Saving Innocence organization were coordinating efforts to help victims in L.A. County.

Operation Reclaim and Rebuild focused on rescuing victims of sexual slavery and human trafficking, providing victims with much-needed services, identifying and arresting their captors, seeking successful prosecutions, and disrupting the demand for vulnerable victims by targeting their customers, the release stated.

Police agencies and other trafficking task forces throughout our state joined in the enforcement operation to send the clear message that California law enforcement shares a unified mandate: Human trafficking must not be tolerated in our state!

Category: Politics | 14 Comments
Tags: pizzagate

new form of matter discovered

Submitted by: Goshin @ 02:07 PM | Monday, January 30, 2017 | (url: http://www.popula...)

Crystals are structures in which a pattern of atoms or molecules repeats in space. Now, two teams of researchers have figured out that crystals' repeating patterns can also exist through time. These "time crystals," detailed in a new paper in Physical Review Letter, are an entirely new kind of matter, one that can never reach equilibrium.

To create the time crystals, researchers at University of Maryland hooked together 10 ytterbium atoms and hit them with two lasers multiple times to keep them out of equilibrium. Though the atoms did settle into a pattern, they could not reach equilibrium, meaning that the crystals perpetually remain in motion, though they don't contain any energy. Almost all of physics is based in studying matter that is at equilibrium, so the ability to create these non-equilibrium crystals is a huge deal for the future of physics.

This is a new phase of matter, period, but it is also really cool because it is one of the first examples of non-equilibrium matter," lead researcher Norman Yao from the University of California, Berkeley told EurekaAlert!.

The idea of time crystalsa form of matter that appears to move even at its energy-less ground statewas first proposed by Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek in 2012. Usually, if matter is in its ground state, movement should be impossible, because it contains no energy.

The researchers say that time crystals resemble Jell-O. When you tap Jell-O, it jiggles. The only difference is that the crystals are jiggling without using any energy, without any tap. By definition, time crystals can never stop oscillating, no matter how little energy they contain.

Right now, it's unclear what the practical use of this discovery will be, but it's possible that these crystals could serve a function in quantum computers.


also metallic hydrogen was created last week or somethin

Category: Technology | 27 Comments
Tags: science

Lookups for 'Claque' Spike Following Reports of Trump's CIA Visit

Submitted by: cael @ 07:10 PM | Wednesday, January 25, 2017 | (url: https://www.merri...)

Claque spiked in lookups on January 23, 2017, following stories about the enthusiastic applause for Donald Trump when he visited CIA headquarters. It was revealed that many of those in attendance were not CIA staff, but Trump supporters invited for the occasion. Trump had also hired actors to applaud during the announcement of his candidacy.

Category: Console Gaming | 2 Comments
Tags: trump

White Men Cant Jump Remake in Development

Submitted by: Odio @ 09:51 AM | Wednesday, January 18, 2017 | (url: http://www.coming...)

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kenya Barris creator of ABCs hit comedy Black-ish will write and produce a White Men Cant Jump remake of 20th Century Foxs hit comedy.

Barris will be joined as a producer by Los Angeles Clippers player Blake Griffin and Ryan Kalil of the NFLs Carolina Panthers under their Mortal Media banner alongside partner Noah Weinstein.

The original 1992 film starred Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as a pair of street basketball hustlers, and Rosie Perez as the latters girlfriend. Directed by sports enthusiast Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, Tin Cup), it was a sleeper hit upon release,grossing over $90 million worldwide.

Barris is also at work on a new Shaft remake, while the Mortal Media partners are currently developing a Rocketeer reboot with a black female lead for Disney.

Category: Entertainment | 17 Comments
Tags: jews

Scientists Use Nanoparticles to Create a Universal Treatment for Allergies

Submitted by: Odio @ 10:28 PM | Saturday, January 7, 2017 | (url: https://futurism....)

ALLERGIES

Allergies are commonand depending on what you are allergic to and the severity of your allergies, it can be everything from a daily nuisance, to a debilitating handicap, to deadly.

Now, the promise of a universal treatment has just come to light. The method follows a system that could potentially end all allergies by using a Trojan horse concept that will allow our bodies to recognize common allergens as the harmless elements that they really are.

For years, scientists have tried in vain to prevent human immune systems from going haywire after being exposed to things such as pollen, animal fur, dust, etc. Their current efforts take a different approach. Instead of trying to calm the immune system, they are trying to use nanoparticles to carry these common allergens past the immune systems defenses so that it officially recognizes these elements as being harmless.

Category: Technology | 14 Comments
Tags: orbital123

[OFN]A new method to fuck up the Carbon Cycle has been invented.

Submitted by: Odio @ 10:38 PM | Thursday, January 5, 2017 | (url: http://www.bbc.co...)

The researchers say that soda is more effective than current methods and less damaging to the environment.

The team have already successfully trialled microcapsules filled with the substance.

They believe that the baking soda approach could be 40% cheaper than existing technology.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is believed by many scientists and politicians to be a critical element in global attempts to avoid dangerous levels of climate change caused by CO2 emissions.

The burning of coal, gas and oil for energy production remains the single biggest source of the gas.

Category: Technology | 23 Comments
Tags: co2

Avatar-style S. Korean manned robot takes first baby steps

Submitted by: Odio @ 03:58 PM | Wednesday, December 28, 2016 | (url: http://phys.org/n...)

A giant South Korean-built manned robot that walks like a human but makes the ground shake under its weight has taken its first baby steps.

Designed by a veteran of science fiction blockbusters, the four-metre-tall (13-foot), 1.5 ton Method-2 towers over a room on the outskirts of Seoul.

The hulking human-like creation bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie "Avatar".

It is claimed as a world first by its creators at Hankook Mirae Technology, a South Korean robotics company, where about 30 engineers were hard at work conducting initial tests Tuesday afternoon.

"Our robot is the world's first manned bipedal robot and is built to work in extreme hazardous areas where humans cannot go (unprotected)," said company chairman Yang Jin-Ho.

A pilot sitting inside the robot's torso makes limb movements which are mimicked by Method-2, whose metal arms each weigh 130 kilograms (286 pounds).

The robot, more than twice the size of a tall man, is so heavy that it shakes the ground when it takes a step with a loud whirring of motors.


Category: Technology | 11 Comments
Tags: robots

New York officials report the first ever case of bird flu spread from cat to human

Submitted by: Odio @ 03:17 PM | Wednesday, December 28, 2016 | (url: http://www1.nyc.g...)

One person, of more than 350 people screened, has been found with H7N2; this person is a veterinarian who had prolonged close exposure to respiratory secretions of sick cats at Animal Care Centers of NYCs (ACC) Manhattan shelter and has recovered from mild illness

Precautionary guidance issued for people who recently adopted a cat from any NYC shelter or rescue group

December 22, 2016 The Health Department today announced that its ongoing investigation of an outbreak of low pathogenic avian influenza H7N2, a strain of influenza A virus, among cats housed at Animal Care Centers of NYCs (ACC) shelters confirms that the risk to humans is low. One person has been found with a presumptive diagnosis of this virus, which was identified by Health Department lab testing and preliminarily confirmed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab testing yesterday. Further testing will be forthcoming in coming days.

The infected person is a veterinarian who was involved in obtaining respiratory specimens from sick cats at the Manhattan shelter. The illness was mild, short-lived, and has resolved. More than 160 ACC employees and volunteers, including several people who had similar exposure to sick cats, were screened by the Health Department and not found to have infection with the H7N2 virus. Additionally, the Health Department contacted more than 80% of the people who adopted cats from the Manhattan shelter, and none is suspected of having H7N2.

There have been two previous documented human cases of H7N2 infection in the United States one in a person managing an outbreak of the virus in turkeys and chickens in 2002 and the other with an unknown source in 2003. Both of these patients also had mild illness and recovered. This is the first reported case due to exposure to an infected cat. There has been no documented human-to-human transmission.



Category: Technology | 14 Comments
Tags: plague

Nauseating': Google profits from Holocaust denial websites, Jewish museum says

Submitted by: Odio @ 09:57 PM | Friday, December 23, 2016 | (url: https://www.rt.co...)

A Jewish heritage museum has become the latest to criticize Google over its search hits, accusing it of profiting from Holocaust denial. The search giant accepted money from the museum to stop a neo-Nazi website from appearing at the top of the results.
David Schendowich, marketing director of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, says the facility pays Google up to $2 a click via AdWords to direct internet users to its own website when a person types in "did the Holocaust happen. This is to stop internet users from being directed to a white supremacist site by the name of Stormfront, which lists the "top 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn't happen."

Category: Tribes | 7 Comments
Tags: jews

Dylann Roof says not to consider his mental health in trial because psychology is a J

Submitted by: Odio @ 02:21 PM | Monday, December 19, 2016 | (url: http://metro.co.u...)

Roof, 22, was found guilty this week of the racist massacre of nine black worshippers as they prayed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Now, his trial is moving on to consider whether or not he should be given the death penalty.

According to a motion he filed, handwritten, the white supremacist killer said he wouldnt be calling on mental health experts to testify because he doesnt believe in psychology.

It is a Jewish invention and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont, he wrote separately in a journal.

He also fired his entire legal team and is now going to act as his own lawyer during the death penalty phase of his trial, which starts on January 3.

Roof opened fire on an historic African-American church, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, on June 17, 2015.

The same jury that convicted Roof of 33 charges related to the massacre including hate crime and obstruction of religion will soon decide if he is sentenced to life in prison without parole, or death.

In his handwritten note, he said: I will not be calling mental health experts or presenting mental health evidence.

Roofs lawyers unsuccessfully tried to stop him from acting as his own lawyer, warning that he was a high-school dropout and was therefore not best placed to present his own mitigation.

They reportedly feared Roof fired them because he was afraid that embarrassing details relating to himself and his family would be presented in court as evidence, even though it would have been done so in an attempt to spare him a death sentence.

Category: Entertainment | 26 Comments
Tags: jews

Ocean temperatures faithfully recorded in mother-of-pearl

Submitted by: Odio @ 08:23 PM | Friday, December 16, 2016 | (url: http://phys.org/n...)

Mother-of-pearl or nacre (pronounced nay-ker), the lustrous, tough-as-nails biomineral that lines some seashells, has been shown to be a faithful record of ancient ocean temperature.
Writing online Thursday, Dec. 15, in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison physics Professor Pupa Gilbert describes studies of the physical attributes of nacre in modern and fossil shells showing that the biomineral provides an accurate record of temperature as the material is formed, layer upon layer, in a mollusk.
"We can very accurately correlate nacre tablet thickness with temperature," says Gilbert, explaining that mother-of-pearl is formed as mollusks lay down microscopic polygonal tablets of the mineral aragonite like brickwork to build layers of the shiny biomineral.
The work is important because it provides scientists with a new and potentially more accurate method of measuring ancient ocean temperatures, improving on methods now used with other biominerals to tease out the record of the environmental conditions at which the materials formed in the distant past.
"Everyone else measures temperatures in the ancient world using chemical proxies," says Gilbert, referencing methods that, for example, use ratios of isotopic oxygen locked into tiny fossil shells made by marine microorganisms known as Foraminifera to get a snapshot of ocean temperatures in the distant past.

Category: Technology | 2 Comments
Tags: science

Earths crust is getting thinner than ever, thanks to a rapidly cooling interior

Submitted by: Odio @ 08:35 PM | Wednesday, December 14, 2016 | (url: http://www.scienc...)

If you looked back at Earth 170 million years ago, youd find a very different planet. The worlds continents were all linked up into one vast 'supercontinent' called Pangaea, and according to a new study, the outermost layer of the planet was 1.7 km (1 mile) thicker than it is today.

Researchers have found that since the break-up of Pangaea, Earths inner mantle has been cooling twice as fast as we thought, and it looks like its crust has been thinning out ever since.

"Its important to note [that] Earth seems to be cooling a lot faster now than it has been over its lifetime," says geophysicist Van Avendonk from the University of Texas.

"The current state of Earth, where we have a lot of plate tectonic events, this allows Earth to cool much more efficiently than it did in the past."

To be clear, when we say Earth has been cooling at an unprecedented rate over the past 170 million years, were not talking about the climate, which has definitely not been cooling.

What Avendonk and his team have been investigating is the international temperatures of Earth over time, and theyve found that the planet today is producing far less magma than it was during the time of the dinosaurs.

To trace the changes in Earths outer layer over the past 2.5 billion years, they analysed 234 measurements of crust thickness from around the world over a number of geological ages.

They found that oceanic crust formed in the mid-Jurassic 170 million years ago was 1.7 km (1 mile) thicker than the crust thats being produced today, and since then, the mantle below has been cooling much more rapidly than expected.

So why is Earths crust thinning out?

The outermost crust of Earth is formed by the mantle, which sits between the scorching hot core and the crust, spanning some 2,900 km (1,802 miles), and making up a whopping 84 percent of the planet's total volume.

Magma produced in the mantle forms the outer oceanic crust when it rises to the surface and cools into rock.


Non-OPEC countries agree to cut oil production by 558,000 barrels per day

Submitted by: Odio @ 03:13 PM | Saturday, December 10, 2016 | (url: https://www.rt.co...)

Non-OPEC countries agreed to cut oil production by 558,000 barrels per day (b/d) during a meeting with members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna.


Among the non-OPEC participants at the meeting were 12 oil exporting countries Azerbaijan, Oman, Mexico, Sudan, South Sudan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Equatorial Guinea, Bolivia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The 558,000 b/d figure was voiced by Qatar's energy minister at a press conference following the six hour long talks.

OPEC members also confirmed their commitment to the plan to reduce the oil supply by 1.2 million b/d. This, together with the commitments made by non-OPEC states, would lead to the total reduction of oil production by about 1.7-1.8 million b/d, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said at the press conference.

Saudi Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid Al-Falih told the press conference that 2017 would be a good year for the global oil market.

The parties to the negotiations also agreed to form a special group to monitor the observance of the agreement both by the OPEC and non-OPEC countries. The group would consist of three OPEC members and two non-OPEC countries, Novak said.

"This agreement cements and prepares us for long-term cooperation," Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told reporters after the meeting, calling the deal "historic".

"Today's deal will speed up the oil market stabilisation, reduce volatility, attract new investments," Novak said.

The deal became the first such agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries since 2001. In April, OPEC and Russia tried to reach a deal on oil production which was cut during negotiations in Doha, but failed to come to an agreement, as Saudi Arabia sunk the deal at the last moment.

OPEC made a decision to cut its own output on November 30.


Category: Technology | 38 Comments
Tags: oil