Month: May 2019

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  You'll be able to build structures and worlds on your table with friends... [credit: Microsoft ]

Microsoft may believe it has made augmented reality's killer app: the just-announced Minecraft Earth for iOS and Android.

AR on mobile devices may carry tremendous potential, but it's easy enough to argue that the mainstream value proposition hasn't arrived yet. Pokémon Go is probably the most oft-cited "killer app" for AR, but it's only barely a true AR app. And there are some neat shopping apps and educational tools (from Warby Parker and Ikea, for example) but none of them have made a big dent in the mainstream consciousness.

At first glance, Minecraft Earth seems a bit like Pokémon Go, given that it seems to be location aware in some ways. But there's a bit more to it than that. Players will be able to construct builds on their living room tables either alone or in collaboration with others, then go and place them full-size in the outside world when they're ready. You can collect new mobs (both familiar and new) and resources around you to incorporate in your build, then fight them in the life-size version of the build. Fundamentally, it appears to be the basic Minecraft experience translated to augmented reality with geolocation features.

(credit: Pixabay)

Stack Overflow said hackers obtained private data for about 250 users after breaching the site and spending the next week escalating their access.

“While our overall user database was not compromised, we have identified privileged Web requests that the attacker made that could have returned IP address, names, or emails for a very small number of Stack Exchange users,” Mary Ferguson, Stack Overflow VP of Engineering, wrote in a blog post published Friday. “Our team is currently reviewing these logs and will be providing appropriate notifications to any users who are impacted.”

In an update, Ferguson said investigators now estimate the number at 250 public network users. Officials for the developer community site will notify those affected. The company first disclosed the breach on Thursday in a four-sentence post that said “some level of production access was gained on May 11."

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  Khan's Moto Razr render. [credit: Waqar Khan ]

Lenovo's smartphone division has once again been caught misleading the press on its future plans. This time, the company held a press event for Chinese media and showed off what it said was a render of the mythical Moto Razr phone reboot with a foldable display. The only problem is that "Lenovo's" Razr render was a fanmade video that it downloaded from the Internet, and the creator says the company didn't even have permission to use it.

The allegedly stolen video in question is this Moto Razr concept video created by Waqar Khan. What appears to be an edited version of Khan's video was given to the Chinese media, and reports like this one from Sina Technology (a media company from the owners of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter clone) rehosted the video saying (through translation), "Lenovo today unveiled its own folding screen mobile phone video in an interview with Sina Technology and other media."

The rehosted video, reportedly from Lenovo, shows Khan's Razr render with some—but not all—of the watermarks removed. The most noticeable remaining watermark is on the clock, which says "Concept by @WaqarKahnHD" above and below the time. This appears on the inside and outside screens of the phone render. The original video has watermarks in the bottom left and top right corners of the video, which have been cropped out in the version given to the Chinese media.

Enlarge / The original Yutu rover, shown on the Moon. (credit: NASA)

While some of the details are still being worked out, it's generally agreed that the Moon formed when a Mars-sized body collided with the early Earth. Some of the debris put into orbit by the collision would then go on to condense into the Moon.

One of the consequences of this is that the early Moon spent a lot of its history being bombarded by this debris, a process that should have left its surface molten. This magma ocean would only solidify slowly as the bombardment wound down, and the process of solidification should have left a mark on the Moon's composition. So far, indications of this have been difficult to come by. But now, there are signals that the Chang’E-4 mission to the Moon's far side has finally spotted some of the Moon's mantle, which contains signs of its magma ocean.

The end of an ocean

At first glance, the end of a magma ocean might seem simple: molten rock solidifies, leaving behind a solid body. But different minerals have their own melting points and densities, which can cause the ocean to become stratified. Ultimately, it's thought that the densest minerals will solidify at the base of the ocean, while the crust would be formed from lighter material that could solidify while floating on top of the remaining magma. Thus, we'd expect to see certain minerals on the surface and a different group of minerals deep in the mantle.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Putra Kurniawan | EyeEm)

A man who threatened to kill the family of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was today sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Markara Man, a 33-year-old from California, pleaded guilty on August 31, 2018 after making threats to Pai because he disagreed with the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules. In one email to Pai, Man wrote, "I will find your children and kill them."

"Threatening to actually kill a federal official’s family because of a disagreement over policy is not only inexcusable, it is criminal,” US Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia said in a Justice Department announcement of the sentencing today. The case was heard at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“It’s not too much to expect copyright owners to consider whether something actually infringes before cutting off people’s access,” Moss tells us.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

The May 2019 update for the Xbox One's system software is now rolling out, bringing some small refinements to the friends list, messaging, and game/app list.

Starting with the last one first, the app list will now ignore "a," "an," and "the" when sorting or grouping alphabetically. This is the kind of change that makes me amazed that they weren't already doing this, as it almost always makes for easier-to-use listings. Video games don't even have The The to contend with.

The Messaging change is rather inexplicable. There's a sensible change: incoming messaging requests from your friends are now prioritized, with requests from non-friends put in a separate category. But for some reason, Microsoft is going to wipe all group messages as a result. You can save backups of the messages for a limited time at Xbox.com, and messages with individual users are safe, but the group messages are all going. There's no obvious justification for this change, as even if there were some significant change being made to group messaging, one would expect Microsoft to handle migrating the messages from old to new.

Enlarge / Strangers in your Slack channel could have messed with Slack for Windows' download settings, redirecting files to a malicious shared folder. It's fixed now. (credit: NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images)

On May 17, researchers at Tenable revealed that they had discovered a vulnerability in the Windows version of the desktop application for Slack, the widely used collaboration service. The vulnerability, in Slack Desktop version 3.3.7 for Windows, could have been used to change the destination of a file download from a Slack conversation to a remote file share owned by an attacker. This would allow the attacker to not only steal the files that were downloaded by a targeted user, but also allow the attacker to alter the files and add malware to them. When victims opened the files, they would get a potentially nasty surprise.

Tenable reported the vulnerability to Slack via HackerOne. Slack has issued an update to the Windows desktop client that closes the vulnerability.

The potential attack used a weakness in the way the "slack://" protocol handler was implemented in the Windows application. By creating a crafted link posted in a Slack channel, the attacker could alter the default settings of the client—changing the download directory, for example, to a new location with a URL such as “slack://settings/?update={‘PrefSSBFileDownloadPath’:’’}”. That path could be directed to a Server Message Block (SMB) file-sharing location controlled by the attacker. Once clicked, all future downloads would be dropped onto the attacker's SMB server. This link could be disguised as a Web link—in a proof-of-concept, the malicious Slack attack posed as a link to Google.

Enlarge / The aftermath of a simulated neutron star merger. (credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab)

We are all, as Carl Sagan said, star-dust. You might think that since most stars are pretty much the same, all star-dust is equal. But we have evidence that some star-dust is more equal than others. Yes, some elements seem to have a very special origin: neutron star mergers.

Most stars are pretty much all hydrogen. Near their center, fusion busily turns hydrogen into helium. Eventually, that hydrogen will run out and, like a pub that runs out of beer, the real destruction begins. The star starts turning helium into heavier elements at an increasingly feverish rate. The end, no matter how hot and heavy the star, comes when the star’s core is made of iron.

Up to iron, the process of fusion releases more energy than it consumes. But after iron, fusion consumes more energy than it releases, which essentially shuts the star down. Once this was understood, scientists were left wondering where the remaining 80 odd elements that are heavier than iron came from.