ReHacked #61: Hawking's black hole theorem confirmed, How to Read Analog Sensors Using a PC Sound Card, flying car from Slovakia and more

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HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests #freespeech #politics

Several online media outlets in Hong Kong took down opinion articles and videos from their websites or said they would move out of the city after one more columnist of the Apple Daily was arrested at the airport on Sunday.

Stand News, a pro-democracy news outlet, said in a statement that it had temporarily removed commentaries written by its bloggers and readers from May this year and before until it had decided whether it was appropriate to publish them again.

It said it had decided to stop accepting monthly sponsorship from readers and to shelve older commentaries. It added that it had enough money to run for another nine to 12 months and maintain its current editorial guidelines.

Physicists observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for the first time #science #nature #physics

In the study, the researchers take a closer look at GW150914, the first gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), in 2015. The signal was a product of two inspiraling black holes that generated a new black hole, along with a huge amount of energy that rippled across space-time as gravitational waves.

If Hawking’s area theorem holds, then the horizon area of the new black hole should not be smaller than the total horizon area of its parent black holes. In the new study, the physicists reanalyzed the signal from GW150914 before and after the cosmic collision and found that indeed, the total event horizon area did not decrease after the merger — a result that they report with 95 percent confidence.

Download Speeds: Comparing 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G Mobile Networks #technology

Measure with Music: How to Read Analog Sensors Using a PC Sound Card #hardware

Virtually any desktop or laptop could be turned into a simple data acquisition system using this method. Thanks to moderate system requirements, even the very old computers can be repurposed for this application. Socket 478 based platforms from early 2000’s with integrated sound cards are readily available for ~free from recycling bins and are perfectly capable of running the data acquisition software (thankfully, Debian still supports 32-bit platforms). With the total cost of other components under $1, this can hopefully bring affordable and interactive data acquisition to DIYers, experimenters and students in science and physics classes. I do not recommend (in fact, I highly discourage) using this method for anything but educational purposes. It is not meant to be used for industrial or even lab data acquisition – there are much better alternatives.

Klein Vision AirCar completes 35-minute test flight in Slovakia #technology #futurism

A prototype flying car has completed a test flight between two cities in Slovakia, spending 35 minutes airborne.

Klein Vision's AirCar flew between Nitra and the capital Bratislava on Monday, according to a press release published Wednesday.

The AirCar Prototype 1 is powered by a 160 horsepower BMW engine, and comes equipped with a fixed propeller. It transforms from aircraft to road vehicle in less than three minutes.

It has now completed more than 40 hours of test flights, according to Klein Vision, including flying at 8,200 feet and reaching a maximum cruising speed of 190 kilometers per hour (118 miles per hour).

BitTorrent Turns 20: The File-Sharing Revolution Revisited #software #internet #history

Twenty years ago a then relatively unknown programmer named Bram Cohen single-handedly sparked a new file-sharing revolution. At the time, social media had yet to be invented, but BitTorrent never needed likes to go viral. The file-sharing protocol sold itself and soon conquered the Internet.

“My new app, BitTorrent, is now in working order, check it out here,” Bram Cohen wrote on a Yahoo! message board on July 2, 2001.

What Did Ancient Languages Sound Like? #history #culture #longread

How exactly do we know what ancient languages sounded like? We have no audio recordings after all. The question is not so simple. Consider what English sounds like. Not only did it sound different in the 16th century than it does today, but it sounds different in New Zealand than it does in Ireland, and different in Brooklyn than in Atlanta or almost any other US city. Two friends from the same small town might pronounce a word such as aunt differently, and even the same person might sound different when reciting a poem in class than they do when hanging out with friends on the weekend. This was true for ancient languages as well, even if the many of the finer details are lost to us.

Social media is broken. A new report offers 25 ways to fix it #internet #longread

A new report outlines growing problems with social media — including the spread of misinformation and lack of competition and transparency — and offers some solutions.

Seven areas of concern addressed at the summit, and just a few of the potential solutions.  

1. The spread of false news and misinformation

2. The difficult balance between user privacy and platform transparency

3. Lack of regulation for social media companies

4. Lack of competition

5. Algorithms contribute to bias, racism, and polarization

6. Social media business models don’t always serve users

7. The line between free speech and harmful speech is sometimes unclear

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Dainius