ReHacked #127: Olympic Photographer Catches Bullets in Mid-Air with the Sony Alpha 1, SpaceX’s Starship may transform space travel, Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account and more
Simply having a positive attitude won’t get you far. --Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington
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Olympic Photographer Catches Bullets in Mid-Air with the Sony Alpha 1 | PetaPixel #interesting
Dranginis, a sports photographer who has been covering the Beijing Games for Lithuania’s National Olympic Committee (NOC), has captured at least 6 photos containing bullets leaving rifles being fired during the shooting portion of biathlon events.
While Nikon’s flagship Z9 can shoot at a staggering clip of 120 frames per second for 11-megapixel photos, the rival flagship Sony Alpha 1 is no slouch either, capturing 30fps with the electronic shutter.
SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel | The Economist #engineering #space
Something like Starship has been in development at SpaceX for over a decade, under names such as MCT (Mars Colonial Transporter), ITS (Interplanetary Transport System), and BFR (Big Fucking Rocket). Earlier versions were huger still: the ITS had a 300-tonne payload at one point. But all versions had one thing in common: they are designed to be entirely reusable.
SpaceX already flies partially reusable rockets: the first stages of its Falcon 9 machines fly back to Earth under their own power. Once refurbished and refuelled, they can fly again, spreading their construction cost over many launches. But their second stages, which end up much higher and moving at orbital speeds, remain expendable.
Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account - The Verge #software #privacy
Microsoft says it’s planning to update Windows 11 Pro so it will require an internet connection and a Microsoft Account during the initial setup phase. The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup.
Microsoft has been increasingly pushing Windows users to use a Microsoft Account since Windows 10, and this new change to Windows 11 Pro won’t sit well with many hoping to avoid Microsoft’s data and telemetry gathering in Windows.
Dad takes down town's internet by mistake to get his kids offline #internet
A French dad faces jail time and a hefty fine after using a signal jammer to prevent his kids from going online and taking the rest of a nearby town down with them.
Starting at midnight and until 3 AM every day of the week, the French town of Messanges found that their cellular and Internet service were no longer working.
After a mobile carrier reported the issue to the Agence nationale des fréquences (ANFR), a public agency responsible for managing the radioelectric spectrum in France, it was determined that a signal jammer was being used to block radio frequencies in the town.
Home | Dune : Spice Wars #games
How a Saudi woman's iPhone revealed hacking around the world | Reuters #privacy #security
A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack government officials and dissidents around the world.
It all started with a software glitch on her iPhone.
An unusual error in NSO’s spyware allowed Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul and privacy researchers to discover a trove of evidence suggesting the Israeli spyware maker had helped hack her iPhone, according to six people involved in the incident. A mysterious fake image file within her phone, mistakenly left behind by the spyware, tipped off security researchers.
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Why we shouldn’t push a positive mindset on those in poverty | Psyche Ideas #psychology #society
The first strand involves understanding how behaviour is a response to ecological cues: how does a person with a set of fundamental needs navigate an environment filled with threats, opportunities and constraints? For those who are poor or living on a very low income, one of the most salient aspects of one’s environment is scarcity: simply not having enough money to meet one’s daily needs. In addition to being materially scarce, resources can also be unstable over time: income one week is not predictive of earnings the following week. Scarcity and instability are common even in rich countries with developed welfare states, such as the UK, where home evictions and the use of food banks accompany the increasing precarity of welfare benefits and low-wage work.
oilslick, a color elevation map layer designed to highlight the fine detail in terrain, and perform equally well throughout the entire range of Earth's elevation.
Ageing: Mental speed stays high until age 60 | New Scientist #psychology
In support of previous studies, the researchers found that people’s reaction times speed up from their teens to around age 20, then slow down as they get older. This decline has typically been attributed to slower mental speed, but this isn’t the case, says von Krause.
The team used an established model of cognition based on previous research, which assumes people make decisions by continuously considering information until they reach a threshold of certainty.
According to this model, the decrease in reaction time from age 20 is probably due to people wanting more certainty before making decisions as they age, visual information taking more time to travel from their eyes to their brain and people taking longer to physically hit the button as they get older.
The analysis suggests that people’s mental speed increases in their 20s, and stays high until age 60. “Until older adulthood, the speed of information processing in the task we studied barely changes,” says von Krause.
“People become more cautious in their decisions with increasing age – they try to avoid mistakes. At the same time, the motor processes – the pressing of the response keys in an experiment – slow down with increasing age.”
ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back #computers #history
On the 23rd April 1982, Cambridge-based Sinclair Research unveiled its latest product and 40 years later, its influence and place in history cannot be overstated. Without the ZX Spectrum, the games industry – at least in the UK and certain other European countries – would certainly not be the behemoth it is today.
Australian state sets minimum pay for Amazon contractors in landmark step | Reuters #economy
Australia's New South Wales state ordered employers of freelance delivery drivers such as Amazon.com Inc to pay a minimum rate, a decision hailed by a union as making it the world's first jurisdiction to compel the retailer to follow laws on such payments.
The measure, to be phased in over three years from March 1, requires companies which hire drivers with their own small vehicles to pay a minimum of A$37.80 ($27.20) per hour in Australia's most populous state.
That makes the state, the headquarters of Amazon's operations in Australia, the first place where the retail giant must pay wages to contractors that are set by law, the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) said.
Revealed: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians | Credit Suisse | The Guardian #world #politics #economy
A massive leak from one of the world’s biggest private banks, Credit Suisse, has exposed the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.
Details of accounts linked to 30,000 Credit Suisse clients all over the world are contained in the leak, which unmasks the beneficiaries of more than 100bn Swiss francs (£80bn)* held in one of Switzerland’s best-known financial institutions.
The leak points to widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds. The Guardian is part of a consortium of media outlets given exclusive access to the data.
We can reveal how Credit Suisse repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients across the world.
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