Signal, in a blog post: Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to. Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to comment in that story, we’re posting this to help…
Tag: magic
DHS Is Looking Into Backdoors In Smart TVs By China’s TCL
chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: The acting head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency was assessing the cyber risk of smart TVs sold by the Chinese electronics giant TCL, following reports last month in The Security Ledger and elsewhere that the devices may give the company “back door” access to deployed sets, The Security…
‘Magic’ angle graphene and the creation of unexpected topological quantum states
Electrons inhabit a strange and topsy-turvy world. These infinitesimally small particles have never ceased to amaze and mystify despite the more than a century that scientists have studied them. Now, in an even more amazing twist, physicists have discovered that, under certain conditions, interacting electrons can create what are called ‘topological quantum states.’ This finding, which was recently published in the…
What’s the birthstone for December?
If you were born December, you’ve got 2 birthstones, turquoise and zircon. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/december-birthstone-zircon-turquoise…
Physicists Nail Down the ‘Magic Number’ That Shapes the Universe
Natalie Wolchover writes via Quanta Magazine: As fundamental constants go, the speed of light, c, enjoys all the fame, yet c’s numerical value says nothing about nature; it differs depending on whether it’s measured in meters per second or miles per hour. The fine-structure constant, by contrast, has no dimensions or units. It’s a pure number that shapes the universe to…
Uri Geller Finally Apologizes for Suing Pokemon 20 Years Ago
In January of the year 2000, Pokémon was sued by stage magician Uri Geller for $97 million (over a Pokémon card with a similar name that carried the magician’s trademark bent spoon). 20 years later, Kotaku reports…
Spoon-bending magician Uri Geller gave Nintendo permission to use the character Kadabra on Pokémon cards today, after a 20 year legal dispute in which Geller…
Quantum magic squares
The magic of mathematics is particularly reflected in magic squares. Recently, quantum physicist Gemma De las Cuevas and mathematicians Tim Netzer and Tom Drescher introduced the notion of the quantum magic square, and for the first time studied in detail the properties of this quantum version of magic squares. …
Epidemiologist explains CDC guidance on 15 minutes of exposure
New guidance from the CDC says that 15 minutes of exposure – regardless of whether that occurs at one time – can result in transmission of the coronavirus. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/epidemiologist-explains-cdc-guidance-15-minutes-covid19-exposure…
Twisted Graphene Could Power a New Generation of Superconducting Electronics
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene — sheets of carbon one atom thick — and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an…
Twitch Users Protest Its DMCA Policy By Streaming Videos With Homemade Sound Effects
Wednesday Twitch warned its users to delete any videos containing copyrighted music. PC Gamer reports on what happened next: Since October, Twitch has been deleting significant quantities of videos over copyright claims, leaving the affected streamers with no way to respond or issue counter-claims. Twitch eventually explained that the number of DMCA notifications it receives from major record labels has surged,…