Exoplanets are worlds orbiting distant stars. The history of our knowledge of exoplanets, the various types of exoplanets, how astronomers find them, and more, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-are-exoplanets…
Tag: archive
Coronavirus Tests Science’s Need for Speed Limits
Preprint servers and peer-reviewed journals are seeing surging audiences, with many new readers not well versed in the limitations of the latest research findings. From a report: Early on Feb. 1, John Inglis picked up his phone and checked Twitter, as he does most mornings. He was shocked at what fresh hell awaited. Since 2013, Dr. Inglis, executive director of Cold…
Authors, Publishers Condemn the ‘National Emergency Library’ As ‘Piracy’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Last week, when the Internet Archive announced its “National Emergency Library,” expanding access to more than a million digitized works, the group explained the move as a goodwill gesture in the time of coronavirus. With so many brick-and-mortar libraries forced to close their doors, in other words, the group was opening up its…
Internet Archive’s ‘National Emergency Library’ Has Over a Million Books To Read Right Now
The Internet Archive will suspend its waiting lists for digital copies of books, as part of its National Emergency Library, the organization said. From a report: “Users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized,” according…
What Are the Best Free Streaming Services?
An anonymous reader shares some free streaming media options: There’s over 10,000 public domain audiobooks at LibriVox.org, created by volunteers reading public domain works. (If you’ve got time, why not record yourself reading your own favorite public domain poem or novel?) And there’s also a lot of free audiobooks (and ebooks) available through Hoopla, a free “digital media” service that’s partnering…
NASA To Launch 247 Petabytes of Data Into AWS, But Forgot About Egress Costs Before Lift-Off
NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn’t realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data. The Register reports: The data in question will come from NASA’s…
An Update On Microsoft’s ‘GitHub Arctic Vault Program’
news.com.au reports:
The GitHub Arctic Vault program is part of the now Microsoft-owned code repository GitHub…aimed at preserving the information for generations to come… “We chose to store GitHub’s public repositories in the Arctic World Archive in Svalbard [a Norwegian island] because it is one of the most remote and geopolitically stable places on Earth and is about a mile down the…
Cosmic rays and Titan’s organic molecules
A new study from researchers in Tokyo helps explain how cosmic rays affect prebiotic organic chemistry in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/titan-cosmic-rays-atmosphere-prebiotic-organic-chemistry…
Slickwraps Data Breach Exposing Financial and Customer Info
Slickwraps, a mobile device case retailer, has suffered a major data breach exposing employee resumes, personal customer information, API credentials, and more. Bleeping Computer reports: In a post to Medium, a security researcher named Lynx states that in January 2020 he was able to gain full access to the Slickwraps web site using a path traversal vulnerability in an upload script…
Google Chrome Will Soon Start Blocking Insecure Downloads
“Google has revealed plans to initially warn Chrome users about ‘insecure’ downloads and eventually block them outright,” reports The Verge.
The warnings will begin in April: “Today we’re announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files,” Joe DeBlasio of the Chrome security team wrote in a blog post. “Insecurely-downloaded files are a risk to users’ security…