The hot new cyberattack that’s sweeping the nation
On Tuesday, a powerful and terrifying new cyberattackworm emerged in Ukraine, quickly spreading to the Russian Federation and other countries no one cared enough to report on because they weren’t the US.
It was hard to tell which infection was worse: The cyberattack itself or the race to write and publish something (anything!) about it, framing it just like the last “massive” cyberattack explosion to hit the whole world.
The cyber-news virus hit American media quickly, locking up common sense like an unpatched Windows machine with a “hack me” sign on it. It got root on domestic infosec twitter and quickly spread into the headlines of The New York Times, who rushed out a piece incorrectly naming the (actual) cyberattack as ransomware.
Once the Times wrote about it, the cyber-news infection exploded to lock up headlines through the week — impacting more people through hysteria than the actual cyberattack was affecting organizations and people in the real world. Airports, shipping companies, banks, FedEx and even Cadbury Chocolate were affected, but infosec twitter was the hardest hit.
The 4 stages of Twitter during a malware outbreak.
1. OMG WE’RE ALL SCREWED IT’S SO BAD
2. It sucks
3. Should have patched
4. It was Russiaβ Sev (@sudosev) June 29, 2017
The virus is real, but the reporting has been so competitive and the limelight-chasing so fast and furious that the end result is disorganized, hysterical, and overwhelming.
In reality, it looks like there was a cyberattack on a country by another country, which of course couldn’t be contained, so now it’s in every country. This week’s cyber flavor of the month was deployed to harm Ukraine on the same day a Ukrainian military officer was assassinated by a car bomb. He just happened to be the man who was investigating and gathering evidence for The Hague of Russia’s military aggression for Ukraine’s case against Russia in the International Court of Justice.
And harm Ukraine it did. In just a few hours, key parts of the country’s government, infrastructure, top energy companies, private and state banks, main airport, Kyiv’s metro system, and even companies that do business with these entities were affected. If anyone was trying to imagine a way to “cyber bomb” a country, then the effect of this wiper would be as close as it gets.
Some of our gov agencies, private firms were hit by a virus. No need to panic, we’re putting utmost efforts to tackle the issue π pic.twitter.com/RsDnwZD5Oj
β Ukraine / Π£ΠΊΡΠ°ΡΠ½Π° (@Ukraine) June 27, 2017
The attack was made to look like ransomware, probably because that word is like Patient Zero for headline panics right now. In reality it was created to be a wiper — something that just locks up files forever and ever. This means it reveals itself after locking up all your files and demands a ransom to de-encrypt them — except that part’s a lie. The creators had no intention of getting any money; its intent was to destroy.
I’m guessing that real ransomware criminals, who care about customer service, are gonna be pissed about the reputational harm to their pay-and-get-your-files-back scheme.
Relevant bits of the wiper were also seen in the ransomware that was so last month: WannaCry. That’s because the code to create this monster of the week was rehashed from an exploit released into the wild by Shadow Brokers, widely believed to be a Russian state entity, in one of their dumps of NSA tools.
Couldn’t decrypt their common sense
The cyberattack is still spreading and wreaking real havoc just as fast as its headlines are. (Engadget’s editors are patched and up to date, I swear!) The wiper’s effect on infosec companies seems to be a viral desperation to be part of the story — so acute that the damn thing has several names, because squatter’s rights rule in the race for attention, I guess. You may have heard of it as Petya, or Not Petya, ExPetyr, or GoldenEye, or even Nyetya.
But if you’re like most people, you’re just wondering if it is going to affect you, and if you need to do anything.
Bad Malware pickup lines: Hey girl, is your name Petya or GoldenEye? Either way you’ve already fully encrypted my heart π
β Malware Unicorn (@malwareunicorn) June 29, 2017
Petya/Not Petya (or whatever) will affect you if it starts hitting services you use or need, and even then there’s not much you can do about it. In any case, the usual virus advice applies: Patch and update (Windows especially, as usual), and otherwise make some backups that you store offline.
After that, it’s just a matter of getting your sanity back after drowning in a week of crazed and confused headlines about a new hacking danger, after several years of breach overwhelm and a hack attack every damn week of the year.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to watch cybersecurity journalism freak out about something new they don’t understand or wait to get facts on. I have special popcorn for infosec Twitter’s predictable race to scratch and bite its way into those fleeting headlines. But it’s a crap situation for trying to figure out what the hell is really going on, not to mention that it adds a heavy load of bad news to our already-overwhelming bad-news saturation levels.
This week’s hot new cyberattack is definitely doing its share of damage, but that damage shouldn’t be to our sanity. We have to stay informed, yet the level of hysteria and craziness from this week of cyberconfusion alone is enough to make anyone want to check out. And this is already after a lot of people spent the first few months after America’s 2016 election feeling scared and depressed, frantically checking their phones every five minutes for the next batch of I-can’t-believe-it’s-happening news.
Take my advice and make a plan to cut through the noise. Look at your news sources and trim them down; with cybersecurity, pick a few sources (or better, individual journalists) you can trust, and cull the rest from the herd. This is often the hardest part; The New York Times reported it as ransomware, making that source one you should definitely question.
It helps to take a little time to look at what people are saying about sources and journalists when it comes to hacking and infosec, and to be especially critical of people’s motivations behind their soundbites and headlines. Everyone in infosec (and cybersecurity journalism) wants to be famous, but few are willing to take the time to be correct. When you find ones you can trust, they’ll usually be solutions-oriented — and not trying to get your clicks, seek validation, or sell you anything.
#Petya encrypts ON BOOT. If you see CHKDSK message your files not yet encrypted, power off immediately. You can recover with with LiveCD. pic.twitter.com/nKL4Xixjn9
β Hacker Fantastic (@hackerfantastic) June 27, 2017
Next, decide what kind of hacking news is going to be your priority — the Russian hacking scandal, ransomware, breaches, encryption — and deprioritize anything else. Then establish a baseline of hours each day for you to spend on news reading and social media, like one hour in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. In researching news overwhelm for my book, one psychologist I interviewed told me, “I know that I personally was spending nearly four hours a day on news, and finally had to decide an hour was enough.” Once you make a determined plan on how many hours are reasonable, this is your target.
So, at the very least, we’re now ready for next week’s panic.
Image: Getty (Laptop fire)
The Met’s latest exhibit puts oversharing on a pedestal
The rules are simple: For five months, twelve pairs of artists participating in The Metropolitan Museum’s Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists exhibit had to use their phones to take and share photos or videos with each other. Texts or captions were not allowed.
A dozen artists were picked to participate, and asked to invite one fellow artist to be their conversation partner. The project was designed to explore what would happen when, thanks to the instant nature of smartphone photography, artists can create and share their works with “unprecedented intimacy.” The exhibit, made possible by Adobe, is open until December 17, 2018 and features multi-format presentations of the dozen resulting conversations.
The participating artists had to upload their media to an iCloud account shared between them and the museum. They weren’t allowed to post any of the material to social media. The exhibit’s curator and organizer Mia Fineman told Engadget that they didn’t use a messaging app because those tend to compress files. And that’s a compromise they didn’t want to make since some of the prints in this gallery are 19 inches by 19 inches. Although they wanted to create an app to let the artists send each other full-res files, they weren’t able to finish one in time for the project.
Since uploading to iCloud isn’t the way we typically send each other pictures, the resulting exchanges for Talking Pictures aren’t a perfect mimicry of real-world interaction. But they most likely wouldn’t have been even if the participants had used iMessage anyway. The artists were all aware from the beginning that their work would eventually be displayed for the world to see, so there was always going to be a limit on how personal they got.
That’s not to say the exhibits at Talking Pictures aren’t intimate. Manjari Sharma and Irina Rozovsky started out as acquaintances, but grew close over the course of the project, after they discovered they were both pregnant and due in April. Their exchange, which is presented as two rows of prints spanning an entire wall in the museum, gets uncomfortably familiar. In addition to stunning nightscapes and snapshots of family members, Sharma and Rozovsky also uploaded pictures of their pregnant, fuzzy bellies, moments during delivery and even their placenta afterwards.
But few other conversations got that intimate — not even between one pair of artists that were actually married to each other. Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowitz had a pretty typical dialogue that mostly consisted of pictures of funny signs, political observations and beautiful landscapes. And since this was presented on an iPad that you swipe through, browsing their conversation felt more like scrolling through their Instagram feeds without witty captions, hashtags or likes.
Most of the other interactions feel similarly mundane. Whether they are played on a TV screen or printed out and bound in a voluminous book, the projects feel like a collection of Instagram accounts. In other words, each conversation typically contains pictures that are good on their own, some more impressive than others, but rarely tell a cohesive story or offer meaningful commentary.
Two sets of work stand out, though. Cynthia Daignault and Daniel Heidkamp shared photos of their paintings done specifically for Talking Pictures, usually within days of each other. Their work includes 60 prints (measuring 19 x 19 inches) of paintings that are 18 x 18 inches in real life. Each image was shot with an iPhone, and is clear enough that clumps of paint looked as if they were actually there. Laid out chronologically in a twelve-by-five grid, it again reminded me of an Instagram page, albeit one that stuck to the older square-only format.
Each print depicts something you’d typically share on social media — like serene countrysides or a hand holding up a newspaper. Some of the paintings were even colored to look like they had filters applied, although whether that was deliberate isn’t clear. And yet, because the amount of thought and preparation that went into it is abundantly obvious, Daignault and Heidkamp’s piece bowls its audience over with skilled, careful execution.
The pair whose pictures delivered the most effective interpretation of the exhibit’s message, however, is Christoph Niemann and Nicholas Blechman. Both are talented illustrators (Blechman is the art director at the New Yorker), and their collaboration is presented in a thin, nondescript hardcover book. Flip it open, and you’ll see a picture of a hand-drawn black circle with a dotted line that goes over to the next page. Turn over, and that dot has made its way across the next two pages and has become a chicken’s egg. On the page after that, a photo shows the next stage in the dot’s evolution — as the back of a real man’s head.
The rest of the book plays out the same way — sketches blending with the real world in a cute, often comical way. Again, it sometimes reminds me of certain Instagram accounts, where people take photos of them holding up cutouts of pictures against real-world scenes. But what Niemann and Blechman’s work highlights is their ability to use instant sharing to inspire thoughtful, creative responses. For example, in reaction to a photo that Blechman shared of a bush growing through a crack in the pavement, Niemann sketched a smooth-surfaced globe with similar globs peeking out through crevices all over. Even on its own, this back-and-forth stands as a powerful criticism of man’s impact on Earth.
Excited to be in a group show at the @metmuseum . Opening 6/27. A visual conversation with @nblechman via smartphone https://t.co/c8vf4zkWjR pic.twitter.com/fwHcK1CJ43
β Christoph Niemann (@abstractsunday) June 23, 2017
When sharing photos is so easy and efficient, the result should be mutual inspiration and growth, not an endless stream of images screaming “look-at-me”. But this is sadly lost on the Instagram and Snapchat generation (which I am admittedly a part of). Blechman and Niemann’s book (which you can buy from their website) isn’t all serious thought-provoking criticism, though. In fact, it offered mostly cheeky, clever perspectives on everyday situations that will make you marvel at the artists’ genius.
Like the book, the exhibit ultimately never gets too dark or critical. It could ask questions like whether smartphone cameras have cheapened modern photography, or if our generation is too obsessed with itself. But it doesn’t. Instead, it simply celebrates the ways artists were able to wield phones as paintbrushes.
Talking Pictures is a diverse collection of pictorial conversations that showcases the different ways we use our phones today. But we already knew that the camera has morphed from a tool to preserve special moments to a window for instant sharing. The exhibit also proves, albeit unintentionally, that it takes careful thought to differentiate the mundane from the meaningful. While you’ll enjoy getting an inside look at these artists’ lives and points of view, you probably won’t leave feeling like you’ve learned a lesson. And so, Talking Pictures unfortunately remains in forgettable, mediocre territory instead of leaving a lasting impact.
Palmer Luckey donates to software that brings Oculus games to Vive
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has always railed against the idea of locking VR games to a single platform. Now, several months after leaving Facebook following controversy about his political donations to a pro-Trump group, Luckey is stepping back into the VR world in a surprising way. Waypoint reports that he’s contributing $2,000 a month to the Patreon campaign for Revive, a tool that lets HTC Vive owners play games that are only available on the Oculus Rift.
“As some of you suspected the sudden extreme jump in the pledge amount is indeed by Palmer Luckey,” Revive developer Jules Blok said in the campaign’s blog. “I’d like to thank him for his pledge and everything he has done for the VR community as a whole.”
Revive was a response to Facebook’s exclusive Oculus titles, which only worked with the Rift headset and were available through the Oculus Store. Before that, the VR community had hoped that games would work across the Rift and Vive, so as not to stifle innovation in the VR arena. While it makes sense for gamers to be upset, it’s also worth considering that Oculus funded plenty of titles that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. So it’s not surprising that Facebook would want to keep those games to itself.
Facebook initially pushed back against Revive by implementing a headset check, but it didn’t take too long for the app’s developers to crack Oculus’ DRM. The social network later relented and removed its headset check, which led Revive’s developers to remove its DRM cracking.
Now, Vive owners can easily play Oculus titles using Revive. It makes sense for Facebook to avoid causing too much of a fuss, since they still have to buy the games from its storefront. While Luckey’s support is a bit surprising, given that he was the public face of Oculus for years, it’s in line with his personal philosophy of keeping the VR ecosystem open. And, if anything, it’ll certainly be more well received than his plans for a “virtual” border wall.
Via: Waypoint
Source: CrossVR (Patreon)
Afghanistanβs all-girl teen robotics team denied entry to US
Next month, the inaugural FIRST Global Challenge robotics competition will bring together high school teams from around the world. Taking place in Washington, DC, over 150 teams are set to participate. However, while the team from Afghanistan’s robot will be there, the team itself won’t because the US has denied their visa applications.
The team is made up of six teenage girls who traveled over 500 miles to the US embassy in Kabul for their visa interviews. They actually made the trip twice in hopes that another round of interviews would help their case. And the visa denial isn’t the first obstacle the team has been faced with — their robotics kit, put together and delivered by the competition, was held at customs for months. The holdup was apparently due to fears surrounding ISIS’ use of robots. The supplies cleared customs only three weeks ago.
The team, brought together by Afghanistan’s first woman tech CEO, Roya Mahboob, has designed a ball-sorting robot that will be shipped to the US for the competition and they’ll be able to video conference into the event when their robot is evaluated. A team from Gambia has also been denied visas and the State Department can’t comment on why because the records are confidential.
Mahboob said that participating in the competition was very important for the country. “Robotics is very, very new in Afghanistan,” she told Forbes. One of the team members, a 14-year-old girl named Fatemah said, “We want to show the world we can do it, we just need a chance.”
Via: The Verge
Source: Forbes
The Moto X4 may be the first non-Google phone to get Project Fi
There’s only been one problem with Project Fi’s well-received phone carrier network: too few phones. Until now, the only devices that work with it have been Google’s own Nexus and Pixel handsets. It looks like that’s about to change, though. Project Fi teased a release on Twitter, announcing “a new Fi-compatible device at a mid-tier price from one of our partners later this year.” VentureBeat reports this device will be Lenovo’s Moto X4, which will likely become the very first non-Google phone on the Google Fi system.
We know relatively little about the X4, other than a leaked marketing photo that surfaced this past May. According to a video leaked on Reddit, it’s possible that the device will be an higher-end mid-range phone with a Snapdragon 660 processor, a 3,800mAh battery, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a fingerprint reader.
Google Fi impressed us with its low cost, ease of use and the disruptive ability to use Wi-Fi and multiple cellular networks. It’s also begun testing LTE service for voice calls and a family plan, two features missing from the start. If you’re excited about having a new iteration in the Moto X line, you shouldn’t have too long to wait. VentureBeat’s sources claim the new X4 handset should launch in the fourth quarter of this year. We’ve reached out to Google for confirmation on this matter and will update this post when we hear back.
Source: Project Fi/Twitter, VentureBeat
MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Brilliant Control for Your Smart Home Devices
For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Brilliant to give MacRumors readers a chance to win a Brilliant Control, which is a touchscreen-equipped smart lighting solution that’s able to control your lights and all of your other smart home products.
The Brilliant Control, available in a range of colors to match any decor, is designed to replace one of the light switch panels in your home. On-screen touch sliders can be used to turn connected lights on and off, or dim them. Brilliant Control is also able to interface with other smart home products using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so that same touchscreen can be used to control everything from your Nest thermostat to your Sonos speakers.
Because there’s easy access to smart home products through the display, everyone in the family can control connected devices without the need to pull out a phone and open up an app.
In addition to a touchscreen, the Brilliant Control includes a motion sensor, a video camera, ambient light sensor, and voice control, plus integration with Amazon Alexa, so voice commands can be used to control lights and all other smart home devices.
It’s similar to an Amazon Echo, but with a touchscreen and built-in integration with your lights. Brilliant Control works with a range of smart home products, plus IFTTT, SmartThings, and Wink hubs, but it isn’t compatible with HomeKit.
While the base Brilliant Control is designed to replace a single light switch, there are other (pricier) versions that can replace panels with up to four light switches.
Pricing for the Brilliant Control starts at $199 and the device can be purchased from the Brilliant website, but we have two to give away to MacRumors readers. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.
Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.
a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (June 30) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on July 7. The winners will be chosen randomly on July 7 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen. Brilliant Control prizes will be shipped to winners later this summer following the product’s launch.
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Some OnePlus 5 owners are seriously bugged by a strange scrolling issue
Why it matters to you
If your OnePlus 5 is doing some pretty strange things while scrolling, your eyes aren’t fooling you. Other users appear to be suffering from the issue.
The OnePlus 5 has garnered some pretty favorable reviews over the past week or so, including one from our own Andy Boxall who praised the deviceβs no-compromises, straightforward approach to a low-priced flagship. However, there appears to be an issue plaguing some units that have made their way to customers, and itβs an odd one.
Some have called it βjelly-likeβ scrolling. Others, like Damir Franc on YouTube, more accurately classified it as a βstrobing effect.β Whatever the name, the fact is some OnePlus 5 devices have exhibited some pretty odd behavior while scrolling, the likes of which are off-putting for a phone with such a high-end processor and RAM spec.
There are many videos floating around online displaying this, including a litany of reports on Reddit, but the one above offers a pretty clear depiction of the problem. Itβs a compression effect that gives menu items in a vertical list a strange sense of inertia. Scroll down, and youβll find the items above your finger will bunch together and squish, while those below it will expand and stretch. The opposite is true when youβre going in the other direction, and to some degree it looks like an intentional design choice to make scrolling more weighted and animated. Instead, it just ends up feeling like youβre navigating the phone with drunk goggles on.
If it was intentional, it wouldnβt be the first touchscreen device to purposefully do some pretty strange things with scrolling. However even thatβs not a satisfactory answer, for two reasons.
First, not all phones are exhibiting the issue. Second, the effect isnβt smooth β itβs downright jumpy. Looking at it in the video above, the compression is inconsistent and a little delayed. Itβs almost as if vertical sync has been disabled, causing a juddering sensation that animates different parts of the display at different speeds.
Understandably, some owners have been left scratching their heads, while others have proposed theories. A user on the XDA Developers forums actually looked into the vertical sync possibility and found that the OnePlus 5 was in fact turning off the function regularly, but only when the device wasnβt animating anything on screen. Many others believe the display may have been mounted upside down on defective units based on the idea that the effect is less noticeable when you hold the phone the other way around, but thatβs not a conclusive argument either. For what itβs worth, we havenβt encountered the issue on any of our OnePlus 5 units here in the Digital Trends office.
To make matters worse, OnePlus hasnβt been particularly helpful in sourcing the cause. It appears the company has taken the Samsung approach of denying the existence of a problem at all. This was the manufacturerβs response to XDA:
βThe OnePlus 5 uses the same level of high-quality components as all OnePlus devices, including the AMOLED display. Weβve received feedback from a small number of users saying that at times they notice a subtle visual effect when scrolling. This is natural and thereβs no variance in screens between devices.β
The problem is, of course, that the effect is anything but subtle, and seems to affect each unit differently. Although the situation appears dire now, the phone has only been freshly released, so itβs quite possible future updates could alleviate things as they did with the Galaxy S8βs red tint issue. Weβll keep you posted as things develop.
Placer app finds people to stand in line so you donβt have to
Why it matters to you
If you’re in NYC and don’t have time to stand in lines — let alone ones that wrap around the block — Placer is an app that will find line-sitters for you at popular venues and locations.
When youβre in New York City, lines are inevitable regardless of the location or time of day. Theyβre also probably the main reason why New Yorkers rely so heavily on door delivery services whether itβs for essentials like food and groceries, or evenΒ alcohol. For events where your presence is essential β museum queues, product launches, popular restaurants β Placer is here to help.
Similar to TaskRabbit, this mobile app for iOS and Android eliminates having to stand in line by connecting you with registered line-sitters known as βPlacersβ β people you pay to stand in line for you. The idea came from the company foundersβ trip to Europe when they found themselves standing in lines for up to four hours at a time.
βThis wait often led to running out of time to experience everything we wanted while on holidays. In my situation, I was constantly having to send my wife and three kids to go to other places while I waited at the attractionΒ andΒ then would call them to get back in time,βΒ Dan Filmer, founder and CEO of Placer, told Digital Trends.
Launched exclusively in New York City on Thursday, June 29, the app provides you with a feed of popular places around NYC ranging from bakeries to stadiums and most recently, kiosks. Underneath each location is the average wait time and how far away you are in reference to your current location.
Once you find the place youβre looking for, youβll tap on the image and click on the βI want a placerβ icon. Youβll then have to identify how many people your Placer will be standing in line for β adults and children β and the exact time youβd like them to be in line. You can book up to 24 hours in advance if your plans are set ahead of time.
Youβll receive a notification when a Placer is available along with the amount theyβre charging to stand in line. The Placers set their own rates based on weather, star rating, and overall experience with the wait time. All payments are made through the app so you donβt have to worry about having to carry cash or using a third-party payment service.
When you find your placer in line, you provide them with a βjump codeβ to confirm youβve found the right line-sitter and take your place in line. You can identify them through either their profile picture on the app, wearing purple Placer merchandise, or the outfit they described through communication.
For some, the concept of this app might give you immediate anxiety thinking about the rude stares and eye rolls you might get from people standing in line behind you as you switch spots with your Placer β especially if theyβre holding spots for multiple people.
Filmer expressed that as of now, there arenβt any locations that prohibit Placers and assures that itβs actually good for business. Using the platform helps to reduce frustration customers experience with long lines at particular venues and can actually help to get more people through its doors.
βMy approach is to let the person in charge of the line β and those waiting in front and behind me β know that Iβm a Placer and am waiting in line for someone else and explain how the app works,βΒ Jose Leal, a line-sitter for Placer, told Digital Trends.
When we tried the app out ourselves, the interface was straightforward and simple to use. If you request a Placer for more than one venue or location, it neatly organizes them all in a section called βMy Jumps.β Youβll also be able to save potential places for the future and suggest ones for Placer to add in if they arenβt available through the app.
We scrolled through the feed to see all of the places available and came across ones that were known for their long wait time β Shake Shack,Β DΕ Cookie Dough Confections, andΒ Trader Joeβs. Weirdly enough, restaurants way out of our range like the West Coastβs In-N-Out Burger showed up as well.
Searching for places was also a bit difficult because none of the places we typed in showed up automatically. It would show a number of different ones first and we didnβt find the specific restaurant we were looking for until we scrolled further down into the results.
We went withΒ Shake Shack β whose burgers and fries hypnotize people into standing in lines that wrap around the block β and tapped on βI want a placer.β Unfortunately, we didnβt find a placer until a few hours later, only to try it again the next day and find one three within seconds. The placers had rates ranging between $20-$35, which we could then either assign, or decide to wait for a cheaper deal.
Filmer explained that the appβs algorithm works to find you the highest ranked placer closest to the venue or location youβre booking and if theyβre not registered within that vicinity, then the platform will continue to search for the best placer. He assured the wait time for placer responses will decrease seeing as how they currently have 500 in NYC, with more signing up each day.
Happy Asteroid Day! Hereβs how scientists plan to save us from Armageddon
One hundred years from now, while borrowing time on one of NASAβs telescopes, an amateur astronomer sees something disconcerting β a massive asteroid heading towards Earth. Luckily this asteroid was discovered decades earlier by a similar group of stargazers, and a spacecraft was dispatched and pull the object out of our way.
June 30 is Asteroid Day, a United Nation sanctioned event designed to raise awareness about asteroid risks and shine a spotlight on the people working to spot near-Earth objects in the sky. This year more than 700 events are planned in 190 countries, with participation from agencies like NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). along with a 24-hour livestream online.Β If the above scenario ever does occur, we may have Asteroid Day to thank for our preparedness.
βThe ultimate goal is to protect our planet from future asteroid impacts.β
βThe ultimate goal is to protect our planet from future asteroid impacts,β Asteroid Day co-founder Grig Richters told Digital Trends. βThis can only be achieved when the global community works together to fund the science and the space missions.β
In 2014, Richters and his co-founders β including Queen guitarist Brian May whom, you may not know, is also an astrophysicist β gathered more than 200 signatures from renowned scientists and artists for the Asteroid Day declaration. In December 2016, the United Nations approved International Asteroid Day βto raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard.β
The sky is falling!
Asteroid risks have been known for some time. June 30 marks the anniversary of the Tunguska event, an impact event that occurred in 1908 and flattened 770 square miles of forest in Siberia.
And the current threat is very real. Just four years ago, a meteor entered Earthβs atmosphere undetected before illuminating the sky and exploding over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The event, which was captured on numerous dashboard cameras, caused nearly 1,500 people to seek medical treatment and damaged over 7,200 buildings.
βWe could be struck tomorrow by an object that wipes out a city and we have no knowledge,β NASA astronauts and planetary scientist Tom Jones told Digital Trends. βWe have very little knowledge of what could happen to us tomorrow or a thousand years from now, just because we havenβt used our space tools to evaluate the hazard thoroughly.β
To be sure, thereβs slim chance weβll be hit by a large asteroid like the one that lead to the dinosaursβ extinction. Weβve identified most of them and theyβre travelling at a safe distance from Earth.
βWe do not have to be concerned about a significant asteroid impacting Earth on the short-middle term, if significant means a body that is capable of global effects,β planetary scientist Patrick Michel told Digital Trends in November.
βWeβve found about 1.5 percent of the million or so objects that could be a city-buster-type asteroid.β
The more realistic concerns come from smaller objects like the one that exploded above Chelyabinsk, which are small enough to sneak by undetected but big enough to cause local damage. However, at 65 meters wide, the Chelyabinsk meteor was small compared to objects around 450 feet in diameter, which can cause regional destruction. But even these city-busters are difficult to spot.
βAbout 95 percent of the large ones that could do-in civilization have been found,β Jones said. βBut we know about 1.5 percent of the million or so objects that could be a city-buster-type asteroid.β
Avoiding Armageddon
Mitigating the risk of an impact is a two-pronged approach. First we have to discover and track asteroids. Then we demonstrate ways to deflect them.
Scientists around the world are working to identify, track, and protect against asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs). Since 1998 NASA has had a congressional mandate to catalogue NEOs, particularly those over a half-mile wide, which could cause destruction on a global scale.
ESA and NASAβs proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Mission (AIDA)Β would send a spacecraft to an asteroid to test technologies that may someday save us from an impact.
AIDA would consist of two spacecraft β ESAβs Asteroid Impact Monitoring Mission (AIM) and NASAβs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The joint missions would head to a double asteroid system called Didymos, which pass about ten million miles by Earth in 2022.
After AIM performs scientific surveys of the asteroid system, the DART spacecraft will crash directly into the smaller of the asteroids. The idea is that an impact may be sufficient to deflect an asteroid thatβs on a collision course with Earth. Although ESA denied AIM funding in favor of its ExoMars mission, NASA still intends to pursue AIDA.
Meanwhile, another NASA project, the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM)Β seeks to tug an asteroid off its trajectory by using a spacecraftβs gravitational attraction. The agency asked for proposals from private partners to help with experimentation and payload delivery.
The private sector has an important role to play in our study of asteroids. The nonprofit B612 foundationβs sole goal is to protect Earth from asteroids and its current Sentinel Mission aims to develop an infrared telescope specifically designed to spot NEOs.
But asteroids arenβt all bad. As the leftovers from our solar systemβs early days, they hold clues to how the solar system formed and offer a perspective on our place in it. NASAβs OSIRIX-REx spacecraft is on its way to study the asteroid BennuΒ before taking samples and returning to Earth. Asteroids also contain metals like iron, nickel, and cobalt, which make them of interest for LuxembourgΒ and mining companies like Planetary Resources.
βWe will be struck again β itβs just a matter of when.β
Itβs clear that asteroids are a topic of increasing interest for public and private institutions, but Jones and those behind Asteroid Day are concerned that we arenβt doing enough. βWe will be struck again,β he said. βItβs just a matter of when.β
He added that we have the potential to stop a catastrophe βon a scale thatβs unimaginable in human experienceβ within the next century by putting even just a fraction of our effort and funding into programs like AIDA. βPostponing activity at Mars for a couple years is a good trade forβ¦this unique opportunity to hit and deflect the small asteroid Didymos. If we miss this weβll have to find another nice target down the road.β
βItβs pretty cheap insurance,β he quipped.
An asteroid impact of global scale is unlikely, but the fact remains that weβre unprepared. On the other hand, we know about just a fraction of the asteroids that could cause regional damage, and will need to increase our efforts to identify them. Hopefully Asteroid Day can raise awareness of the issue and inspire future generations of scientists to take up the task.
Happy Asteroid Day! Hereβs how scientists plan to save us from Armageddon
One hundred years from now, while borrowing time on one of NASAβs telescopes, an amateur astronomer sees something disconcerting β a massive asteroid heading towards Earth. Luckily this asteroid was discovered decades earlier by a similar group of stargazers, and a spacecraft was dispatched and pull the object out of our way.
June 30 is Asteroid Day, a United Nation sanctioned event designed to raise awareness about asteroid risks and shine a spotlight on the people working to spot near-Earth objects in the sky. This year more than 700 events are planned in 190 countries, with participation from agencies like NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). along with a 24-hour livestream online.Β If the above scenario ever does occur, we may have Asteroid Day to thank for our preparedness.
βThe ultimate goal is to protect our planet from future asteroid impacts.β
βThe ultimate goal is to protect our planet from future asteroid impacts,β Asteroid Day co-founder Grig Richters told Digital Trends. βThis can only be achieved when the global community works together to fund the science and the space missions.β
In 2014, Richters and his co-founders β including Queen guitarist Brian May whom, you may not know, is also an astrophysicist β gathered more than 200 signatures from renowned scientists and artists for the Asteroid Day declaration. In December 2016, the United Nations approved International Asteroid Day βto raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard.β
The sky is falling!
Asteroid risks have been known for some time. June 30 marks the anniversary of the Tunguska event, an impact event that occurred in 1908 and flattened 770 square miles of forest in Siberia.
And the current threat is very real. Just four years ago, a meteor entered Earthβs atmosphere undetected before illuminating the sky and exploding over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The event, which was captured on numerous dashboard cameras, caused nearly 1,500 people to seek medical treatment and damaged over 7,200 buildings.
βWe could be struck tomorrow by an object that wipes out a city and we have no knowledge,β NASA astronauts and planetary scientist Tom Jones told Digital Trends. βWe have very little knowledge of what could happen to us tomorrow or a thousand years from now, just because we havenβt used our space tools to evaluate the hazard thoroughly.β
To be sure, thereβs slim chance weβll be hit by a large asteroid like the one that lead to the dinosaursβ extinction. Weβve identified most of them and theyβre travelling at a safe distance from Earth.
βWe do not have to be concerned about a significant asteroid impacting Earth on the short-middle term, if significant means a body that is capable of global effects,β planetary scientist Patrick Michel told Digital Trends in November.
βWeβve found about 1.5 percent of the million or so objects that could be a city-buster-type asteroid.β
The more realistic concerns come from smaller objects like the one that exploded above Chelyabinsk, which are small enough to sneak by undetected but big enough to cause local damage. However, at 65 meters wide, the Chelyabinsk meteor was small compared to objects around 450 feet in diameter, which can cause regional destruction. But even these city-busters are difficult to spot.
βAbout 95 percent of the large ones that could do-in civilization have been found,β Jones said. βBut we know about 1.5 percent of the million or so objects that could be a city-buster-type asteroid.β
Avoiding Armageddon
Mitigating the risk of an impact is a two-pronged approach. First we have to discover and track asteroids. Then we demonstrate ways to deflect them.
Scientists around the world are working to identify, track, and protect against asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs). Since 1998 NASA has had a congressional mandate to catalogue NEOs, particularly those over a half-mile wide, which could cause destruction on a global scale.
ESA and NASAβs proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Mission (AIDA)Β would send a spacecraft to an asteroid to test technologies that may someday save us from an impact.
AIDA would consist of two spacecraft β ESAβs Asteroid Impact Monitoring Mission (AIM) and NASAβs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The joint missions would head to a double asteroid system called Didymos, which pass about ten million miles by Earth in 2022.
After AIM performs scientific surveys of the asteroid system, the DART spacecraft will crash directly into the smaller of the asteroids. The idea is that an impact may be sufficient to deflect an asteroid thatβs on a collision course with Earth. Although ESA denied AIM funding in favor of its ExoMars mission, NASA still intends to pursue AIDA.
Meanwhile, another NASA project, the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM)Β seeks to tug an asteroid off its trajectory by using a spacecraftβs gravitational attraction. The agency asked for proposals from private partners to help with experimentation and payload delivery.
The private sector has an important role to play in our study of asteroids. The nonprofit B612 foundationβs sole goal is to protect Earth from asteroids and its current Sentinel Mission aims to develop an infrared telescope specifically designed to spot NEOs.
But asteroids arenβt all bad. As the leftovers from our solar systemβs early days, they hold clues to how the solar system formed and offer a perspective on our place in it. NASAβs OSIRIX-REx spacecraft is on its way to study the asteroid BennuΒ before taking samples and returning to Earth. Asteroids also contain metals like iron, nickel, and cobalt, which make them of interest for LuxembourgΒ and mining companies like Planetary Resources.
βWe will be struck again β itβs just a matter of when.β
Itβs clear that asteroids are a topic of increasing interest for public and private institutions, but Jones and those behind Asteroid Day are concerned that we arenβt doing enough. βWe will be struck again,β he said. βItβs just a matter of when.β
He added that we have the potential to stop a catastrophe βon a scale thatβs unimaginable in human experienceβ within the next century by putting even just a fraction of our effort and funding into programs like AIDA. βPostponing activity at Mars for a couple years is a good trade forβ¦this unique opportunity to hit and deflect the small asteroid Didymos. If we miss this weβll have to find another nice target down the road.β
βItβs pretty cheap insurance,β he quipped.
An asteroid impact of global scale is unlikely, but the fact remains that weβre unprepared. On the other hand, we know about just a fraction of the asteroids that could cause regional damage, and will need to increase our efforts to identify them. Hopefully Asteroid Day can raise awareness of the issue and inspire future generations of scientists to take up the task.
AIVAnet 