Month: February 2016

Composite image of the Smith Cloud, as it might look from Earth if we could see it. The cloud itself is in false color, radio data from the Green Bank Telescope. The background image shows the cloud's actual location, with the Milky Way stretching from top to bottom right. (credit: Saxton/Lockman/NRAO/AUI/NSF/Mellinger)

Seventy million years ago, some unknown force blasted a tremendous amount of gas out of our galaxy. Known as the Smith Cloud, that gas is now arcing back toward the Milky Way, pulled in by its gravity. Thirty million years from now, it will return to our galaxy once more.

The cloud and its trajectory were already well-known, but the new study confirms its origin was inside the Milky Way.

The Smith Cloud was originally an amorphous blob of gas, but the forces it has been subjected to have shaped it into a comet-like form. It’s a whopping 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 across. At that size and its current distance, if it could be seen in visible light, it would appear 30 times bigger than the Moon in the night sky.

The wait for "spring 2016" just got a little more specific and easier to bear, as Bethesda Softworks has announced its Doom reboot will be released on PS4, Xbox One, and Windows on May 13. Players will be able to buy the game for $60 or invest in a $120 collectors edition that includes a 12-inch Revenant demon statue and a metal case. Players who decide to put their money down early will get a "Demon Multiplayer Pack" as a preorder bonus, a package that includes a number of cosmetic upgrades and six "Hack Modules" that can be used for a one-time boost in multiplayer.

Today's announcement comes alongside a new campaign trailer, shown above, which... actually doesn't tell us that much about the game's campaign. Instead, the jumpcut-filled trailer is packed with lots of extremely gory shooting action and almost no indication that the game has an actual plotline to speak of. Which is kind of how it should be when it comes to Doom.

The game originally known as Doom 4 was first announced way back in 2008, and largely unseen by the public during its long and reportedly troubled development. The game was eventually renamed to just Doom and first shown off in its new form at Quakecon 2014.

(credit: BBC)

Today, the BBC announced that Matt LeBlanc—best known as Joey from the sitcom Friends—is joining the cast of Top Gear alongside Chris Evans. Although the full cast is yet to be confirmed, it's widely believed that Evans and LeBlanc will be joined by car journalist Chris Harris and German racing driver Sabine Schmitz. And if the picture on Top Gear's website is anything to go by, The Stig will be back in May of this year as well.

LeBlanc has proper car credentials, too. He was the fastest "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" on Top Gear and is a frequent sight in the paddock club at Formula 1 races. According to Top Gear's website, further cast announcements are due soon—Harris has just announced he's closed his Patreon, if any more clues are needed.

Hiring LeBlanc is a smart move by the BBC. The previous incarnation of the show had to work hard to create global appeal but did so successfully, earning a lot of money for the corporation along the way. With Clarkson et al. off to Amazon, LeBlanc gives the new version some star appeal beyond Evans (who is unknown in the US).

Google has now started blocking websites that use deceptive content or ads to make you do things that you wouldn't normally do, such as fake download buttons that appear right next to the real download button, or pop-ups demanding you phone tech support to remove a million malware infections that were apparently found on your computer. It sounds like this will be a gradual rollout; it'll take time for Google to work out which sites are consistent offenders.

The blocking will occur via Google's Safe Browsing tech, which you've probably seen before: it's that big red interstitial that appears when you click on a dodgy search result. Safe Browsing has been around for years, but it mostly just prevented you from visiting sites that were serving up malware, or sites that Google had otherwise deemed unsafe.

In November, however, Google started blocking sites that used "social engineering attacks" to get you to install unwanted software or reveal sensitive information—and today, Google is expanding that to websites that serve up deceptive embedded content (i.e. adverts). Google gives the following examples of ads that will get a website blocked: