Damit Miet-E-Scooter länger halten, hat der Anbieter SKip ein neues Modell vorgestellt, das mit einem wechselbaren und wasserdichten Akku ausgerüstet ist. (E-Scooter, Technologie)
Damit Miet-E-Scooter länger halten, hat der Anbieter SKip ein neues Modell vorgestellt, das mit einem wechselbaren und wasserdichten Akku ausgerüstet ist. (E-Scooter, Technologie)
The various items may have belonged to a Roman sorceress.
Enlarge/ All these items were contained within a wooden box unearthed at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. (credit: Cesare Abbate (ANSA))
Crystals, amber, amethyst, phallic amulets, glass beads, figurines, and a miniature human skull were among the many artifacts archaeologists uncovered from an excavation site at Pompeii recently. The objects were probably left behind by someone fleeing the famous volcanic eruption in 79 AD—possibly even a sorceress. The various objects will be displayed at the Palastra Grande in Pompeii later this year.
“They are objects of everyday life in the female world and are extraordinary because they tell micro-stories and biographies of the inhabitants of the city who tried to escape the eruption,” Massimo Osanna, general director of the Archaaological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement.
The catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD wiped out several nearby towns and killed thousands of people. The eruption released 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ejecting many tons of molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the course of two days. In the first phase, immediately after the eruption, a long column of ash and pumice blanketed the surrounding towns, most notably Pompeii and Herculaneum. By late night or early morning, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving hot ash, lava fragments, and gases) swept through and obliterated what remained, leaving the bodies of the victims frozen in seeming suspended action.
It’s been a very long slog, but production is finally slated to begin this fall.
Enlarge/ Amazon is adapting the late Robert Jordan's bestselling 14-book series of fantasy novels, The Wheel of Time. (credit: Tor Books)
Amazon has announced its first round of casting for The Wheel of Time, the long-awaited TV adaptation of the late Robert Jordan's bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels. Within that genre, Jordan's series is as popular as George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.The last book in the series was published after Jordan died and written from Jordan's notes by bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.
The TV series will center on Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. (In this world, magic exists, but only certain women can use it—i.e., the members of the Aes Sedai.) She identifies five young people, one of whom could be the reincarnation of a person who prophecies say will save or destroy humanity. Together, the youngsters embark on a journey across the world.
Josha Stradowski will play Rand al'Thor, aka The Dragon Reborn, He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Coramoor, Shadowkiller, and who knows how many other monikers. He's apparently the person featured in the prophecy. Marcus Rutherford has been cast as apprentice blacksmith and dream walker Perrin Aybara. Zoe Robins will play healer Nynaeve al'Meara, and Madeleine Madden will play the powerful channeler Egwene al'Vere. Finally, Barney Harris has been cast as series comic relief, Matrim Cauthon.
Thompson threatened “suicide by cop” and to shoot up a Silicon Valley office.
Enlarge/ Paige Thompson, 33, a former Seattle technology company software engineer, was arrested after she boasted about a massive data theft from Capital One on GitHub. She is now accused of 30 other data thefts. (credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)
In a petition filed on August 13 in federal court in Seattle, the Justice Department asserted that Paige Thompson—the former Amazon employee accused of stealing data from Capital One credit card applications—had done far more, including "major cyber intrusions that resulted in the theft of massive amounts of data from what now appears to be more than 30 victim companies." US Attorney for Western Washington Brian Moran's filing was for a motion to keep Thompson imprisoned until trial because she is a flight risk and "has a long history of threatening behavior that includes repeated threats to kill others, to kill herself, and to commit suicide by cop."
Aside from Capital One, the victim organizations have not been named by Justice officials, but the filing stated that they included "other companies, educational institutions, and other entities." The data from these sources reviewed thus far appears largely to not include personal information.
"At this point, however, the government is continuing to work to identify specific entities from which data was stolen, as well as the type of data stolen from each entity," Moran wrote in his filing. "The government expects to add an additional charge against Thompson based upon each such theft of data, as the victims are identified and notified."
In-flight headsets are the latest sign that VR has much more to offer than gaming.
Enlarge/ Ars editor Sam Machkovech donning an Oculus Go headset. This isn't the headset British Airways will use, but it serves a similar function. (credit: Sam Machkovech)
Plane travel can be a hassle at best and a panic-inducing experience at worst. But passengers who get anxious around takeoff may have a new option to calm those nerves. British Airways announced that it is testing out virtual reality headsets for the rest of this year on flights between London’s Heathrow and New York City’s John F. Kennedy airport.
The airline is tapping SkyLights for the VR eyewear headsets that will be available for its first-class passengers. The AlloSky hardware can present 3D views even when the viewer is lying flat.
As far as programming, British Airways will have options. The VR headsets will offer visual entertainment in 2D, 3D, or 360° formats. The airline will also provide more therapeutic programs to help people who have a fear of flying. These VR experiences include guided meditation and sound therapy.
In the wake of an apparent explosion of the nuclear-powered engine of an experimental cruise missile, the Russian government has reportedly evacuated residents of a nearby village. According to local media, residents of Nyonoska, the site of a Russian missile testing facility, were told to evacuate and that a "special" passenger train would move residents to a safe distance during some sort of military operation—possibly an effort to retrieve the nuclear reactor involved in the accident. But just hours before that evacuation was to take place, the Russian government cancelled the operation.
On August 13, Russian news outlet TV 29 reported that residents of Nyonoska were saying that they had been told they would be evacuated from 5am to 7am local time today, in what TV 29 jokingly referred to as "a new stage in the development of Arctic tourism." Authorities in Severodvinsk told Interfax that the movement of civilians was because of "planned activities" at the Nyonoska testing range. But that evening, acting head of Severodvinsk, Irina Sakharova, said that the activities were called off and that "everything is to be carried out in a regular, planned mode."
After the accident on August 8, radiation levels in the village were reported to be three times the normal background levels (to borrow a phrase, this is not great but not terrible). A similar spike was seen in the nearby city of Severodvinsk.
Explains the odd distribution of material found by the Juno orbiter.
Enlarge (credit: K. Suda & Y. Akimoto/Mabuchi Design Office)
Planet-forming disks start out as a mix of dust and gas, but the gas doesn't stick around for long. As the star at their center ignites, the radiation it emits starts driving off the gas, eventually leaving a disk with nothing but dust behind. That creates a narrow window for the formation of gas giants, which have to grow big enough to start sweeping in gas before the star drives it all off.
Our current models suggest that the best way to do this is to start with a large solid body, roughly 10 times the mass of Earth. That's big enough to draw in gas quickly and start a runaway process by which the ever-increasing mass pulls in more material from farther away in the disk. This would suggest that, buried deep below the clouds and layers of metallic hydrogen on Jupiter, there's a solid core that would dwarf the Earth if it were ever stripped of all the material above it.
Among other things, the Juno mission was intended to test this idea by studying the gravitational field of the giant planet. But the data it has been sending back suggests something strange is going on inside Jupiter, with more heavy material outside the immediate core area than we'd expect. Now, an international team of researchers is providing a possible explanation: Jupiter's core was shattered by a head-on collision with a massive protoplanet.
Second season will be the last—the shortest run of all Star Wars animated series.
The second and final season of Disney’s Star Wars Resistance takes place between the events of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
It's safe to say that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which drops right before Christmas, is the most hotly anticipated film release of the year. In the meantime, hardcore fans can sate their hunger for all things Star Wars with season two of Star Wars Resistance. And it looks like the animated series will be coming to an early end. Along with the release of the first trailer, Disney announced that this second season will be the last for Star Wars Resistance.
(Some spoilers for season one below.)
The animated series—inspired by Japanese anime—has largely flown under the radar since its debut in October 2018, in part because it explores a part of the mythological timeline that coincides with events in the current trilogy-in-progress. Oscar Isaac and Gwendoline Christie even reprised their film roles of Poe Dameron and Captain Phasma, respectively, to voice those characters in the series. (Carolyn Hennesy voiced General Leia Organa, since we have tragically lost Carrie Fisher.)
Asus was one of the first companies to launch an “ultrabook” after Intel introduced the new product category in 2011. And while the ultrabook label has fallen out of fashion, every Asus ZenBook laptop released since then has been powered by…
Asus was one of the first companies to launch an “ultrabook” after Intel introduced the new product category in 2011. And while the ultrabook label has fallen out of fashion, every Asus ZenBook laptop released since then has been powered by an Intel chip… until recently. In May, Asus unveiled a ZenBook Flip 14 convertible […]
Advertising on pirate sites can seriously harm certain brands, a new survey has revealed. The Trustworthy Accountability Group and Brand Safety Institute report states that the majority of people would buy less products from the companies as a result. The question remains, however, whether these people actually use pirate sites to begin with.
In recent years, various copyright holder groups embraced a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites.
Major copyright holder groups such as the RIAA and MPAA see this as an effective strategy. Their ultimate goal is to drain these infringing sites of their revenue.
Several voluntary initiatives have been set up to facilitate this process. This includes the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an anti-piracy certification program operated by giants including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Disney and Warner.
TAG’s goal is to get as many advertisers and advertising networks on board as possible, to effectively prevent ads from showing up on ‘dubious’ websites. This isn’t just so these companies can have a clear conscience. A new survey, conducted by TAG and Brand Safety Institute (BSI), suggests that it’s a wise business decision as well.
The survey in question polled 1,017 adults in the United States. These respondents were asked whether they believe that advertisers should prevent their ads from showing up on dubious sites. In addition, the survey asked whether they would buy less if they saw a brand’s ads on these sites.
The results of the survey, perhaps unsurprisingly, show that many people would like advertisers to prevent their ads from appearing on ‘dangerous’ sites. Hate speech, porn, and hacked sites were seen as most troublesome, and pirate sites follow at a distance, with 53% of the respondents urging advertisers to take action for this category.
When asked whether people would actually buy less should they encounter ads on such sites, the results are clear as well. Here, a new category of “terrorist training videos” tops the list, with 90% of the respondents stating that they would buy less. For piracy sites, this goes down to 82%.
While it’s clear that advertising on the wrong sites can lead to reputational damage and potentially fewer sales, it’s worth taking a closer look at the full survey results to provide some nuance.
When asked whether people would buy less after seeing ads on pirate sites, 18% actually said that they would buy the same amount. It wouldn’t be a surprise if this includes pretty much all the people who actually use these sites, and then some.
Conversely, the vast majority, if not all of the remaining 82% might never visit any pirate sites to begin with, so they won’t see the ads anyway.
However, Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG and co-founder of BSI, stresses that their survey shows the danger of advertising on inappropriate sites. “This survey drives home the real and measurable risk to a company’s bottom line from a preventable brand safety crisis,” he says.
“While reputational harm can be hard to measure, consumers said that they plan to vote with their wallets if brands fail to take the necessary steps to protect their supply chain from risks such as hate speech, malware, and piracy.”
For TAG the results of the survey are a great promotional message. The organization would like to see more companies come aboard as members, which in increase its cash flow.
Becoming a certified TAG member is not cheap. The basic membership package starts at $10,000 and this can go up to 65,000 if an advertiser is accepted for the ‘Thought Leadership’ package. Advertising agencies and ‘ad tech’ companies can also join, with TAG requiring some to pay even more.
While several major brands are willing to pay these amounts in order to be on the safe side, not all are. Aside from the cost issue, some brands and ad agencies are actually not interested in banning ads on pirate sites.
As we pointed out in the past, there are also plenty of advertising outfits that still love to work with pirate sites. In fact, there are many advertisers and ad agencies that specifically target them.
DMCAForce is such a company. The CEO, Mark Bauman, previously explained that his company seeks solutions to keep both copyright holders and website operators happy.
Bauman said that his advertising company prefers not to ban or block any sites. It doesn’t want to reward piracy either but sees cooperation between site operators and copyright holders as a win-win.
At the end of the day, pirate site visitors are also consumers. While TAG’s survey is probably right that advertising on such sites will be frowned upon by the general public, one has to question whether the users of these sites share the same opinion.
In that regard, it’s worth noting that participants in the TAG survey couldn’t indicate that they would buy more after seeing ads on pirate sites. That may have provided some valuable extra insight.
Damit Miet-E-Scooter länger halten, hat der Anbieter SKip ein neues Modell vorgestellt, das mit einem wechselbaren und wasserdichten Akku ausgerüstet ist. (E-Scooter, Technologie) 
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