news.buyenne.com

SkyFire’s new infrared technology is intended to capture high-resolution images of the lunar surface. (credit: Lockheed Martin)

The maiden launch of NASA's Space Launch System, likely in late 2018 or early 2019, will primarily serve to demonstrate that the massive rocket is capable of delivering a sizable payload—the Orion spacecraft—into a lunar orbit. However, amid the launch fireworks and shakedown mission for the uncrewed Orion spacecraft, NASA will also manage to do a little science.

The adapter ring that connects Orion to the rocket will include 13 bays for CubeSats, shoe-box sized payloads that until now haven't been delivered in significant numbers into deep space. Each of those payload operators is working to finalize contracts with NASA for the ride into space, and on Monday, Lockheed Martin announced a few details of its 6U CubeSat, called SkyFire. Lockheed's payload will capture high-quality images of the Moon. And in exchange for the ride into deep space, NASA will receive data from the mission.

“The CubeSat will look for specific lunar characteristics like solar illumination areas,” James Russell, Lockheed Martin SkyFire principal investigator, said in a news release. “We’ll be able to see new things with sensors that are less costly to make and send to space.”

(credit: Getty / Aurich)

AT&T has agreed to pay $7.75 million after a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation uncovered a cramming scam in which AT&T customers were billed $9 a month for a non-existent directory assistance service.

When the DEA investigated two Cleveland-area companies for drug-related crimes and money laundering, the agency seized the companies' "cars, jewelry, gold, and computers." In the process, the feds "discovered financial documents related to a scheme to defraud telephone customers," according to a Federal Communications Commission announcement today.

"The key participants in the scheme told DEA agents that the companies were set up to bill thousands of consumers (mostly small businesses) for a monthly directory assistance service on their local AT&T landline telephone bills," the FCC said. "The DEA referred this investigation to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau in 2015." The FCC investigated further and convinced AT&T to agree to today's settlement.

Enlarge / Devices running the iOS 10 beta. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Public betas are now a given for major and minor iOS and macOS releases for Apple, but that wasn't the case just a couple of years ago. The reason? Apple Maps, according to a Fast Company piece with quotes from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi, and Internet Software and Services SVP Eddy Cue.

To recap, the Maps app in iOS switched from using Google's data to Apple's in iOS 6 back in 2012. The transition did not go well; the reception from the press and the public was bad enough that it prompted a rare apology and led to the departure of longtime iOS software head Scott Forstall.

"We made significant changes to all of our development processes because of [Maps]," Cue told Fast Company. "To all of us living in Cupertino, the maps for here were pretty darn good. Right? So [the problem] wasn’t obvious to us. We were never able to take it out to a large number of users to get that feedback. Now we do."

MICROS, an Oracle-owned division that's one of the world's top three point-of-sale services, has suffered a security breach. The attack possibly comes at the hands of a Russian crime gang that siphoned out more than $1 billion from banks and retailers in past hacks, security news site KrebsOnSecurity reported Monday.

Oracle representatives have told reporter Brian Krebs that company engineers "detected and addressed malicious code in certain legacy MICROS systems" and that the service has asked all customers to reset their passwords for the MICROS online support site. Anonymous people have told Krebs that Oracle engineers initially thought the breach was limited to a small number of computers in the company's retail division. The engineers later realized the infection affected more than 700 systems.

Krebs went on to report that two security experts briefed on the breach investigation said the MICROS support portal was seen communicating with a server that's known to be used by the Carbanak Gang. Over the past few years, Carbanak members are suspected of funneling more than $1 billion out of banks, retailers, and hospitality firms the group hacked into.

Shaun Bridges was captured by CCTV security cameras, leaving a Secret Service field office with a large bag. The government said the bag may have contained hard drives with keys needed to access his Bitstamp wallet. (credit: US Attorney's Office San Francisco)

The lawyer representing Shaun Bridges, the corrupt Secret Service agent who was part of the Silk Road investigation, has said that his recent appeal is largely worthless and has asked to be removed from the case.

Davina Pujari, who is Bridges’ third lawyer since his appeals process began in December 2015, wrote in a filing last Friday to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

After having carefully examined this record and after having researched the relevant statutes and case law, counsel has concluded that this appeal presents only legally frivolous issues. Therefore, counsel requests the Court's permission to withdraw as attorney of record and to allow Appellant to file any further briefs he deems necessary.

Last year, Bridges was sentenced to 71 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing money from Silk Road dealers while investigating the site. He is now in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and is set to be released in January 2021.

The building that houses the IceCube servers. (credit: USAP.gov)

Tantalizing hints have regularly turned up to indicate the existence of a sterile neutrino—a theoretical fourth type of neutrino separate from the three predicted by the Standard Model. Researchers have now searched for it using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a powerful neutrino detector in Antarctica that is able to spot neutrinos of cosmic origin. Could this particle finally be found, ushering in a thrilling new era of physics?

No. IceCube’s search has turned up nothing, as revealed in results published today. The lack of detection doesn’t necessarily mean sterile neutrinos don’t exist, but it does put the strictest constraints on them yet, narrowing down the range of energies they could have and informing future studies on where to look.

Had sterile neutrinos been found, they would have explained anomalies in old research, revealed new physics beyond the Standard Model, and potentially provided clues for mysteries such as the nature of dark matter and the imbalance between matter and anti-matter in the Universe. “If you throw in a fourth neutrino, it changes everything,” said Francis Halzen, principal investigator for IceCube and one of the paper’s authors.

The world of Harry Potter has become an industry. The books have sold hundreds of millions of copies around the world, the film adaptations raked in billions of dollars, and there are now real-life Hogwarts castles at Universal theme parks. But the latest creation born from the fantasy franchise is a decidedly old-school entity: it's a play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, showing exclusively in London.

Most people won't ever get to see the staged version for themselves—it's already sold out for the next year—but fans can buy the script in book form (UK). Within two weeks of its release, it has already become controversial among fans. The play is nevertheless required reading if you liked the novels. It's a genuine reinvention of the Potterverse with a new cast of Hogwarts students who create very different alliances than their parents' generation did.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!