New Horizons probe captures images at record distance from Earth

Voyager 1 has held the distance record for a captured image for the past 27 years thanks to its legendary “Pale Blue Dot” photo (3.75 billion miles away from Earth), but that milestone just got smashed. NASA’s New Horizons probe took pictures of Kuiper Belt objects at a distance of over 3.79 billion miles from our cosmic home on December 5th. They weren’t technically the first images to break the record, though — an image of the “Wishing Well” star cluster from two hours earlier (below) has that honor.

The kicker? That record is likely to be broken again within a matter of months. Voyager 1’s achievement lasted as long as it did because the mission crew shut off the camera shortly after capturing the Pale Blue Dot image. That won’t be happening with New Horizons. The spacecraft is slated to swing by another Kuiper Belt object (2014 MU69) on January 1st, 2019 and record more imagery in the process. So long as the mission goes according to plan, New Horizons could hold on to its lead for a long time.

Via: The Verge

Source: NASA

MIT CSAIL’s drone is never quite sure where it is

The current generation of autonomous drone navigation and flightpath planning systems are almost too precise, demanding hundreds of measurements be taken so that the UAV knows exactly where it is in space at any given moment. And if those readings are off by even a little, then the drone is in for an impact. What’s more, all that data collection is computationally intensive — especially for smaller drones where the space and weight capacities are limited.

The new NanoMap system from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), however, strikes the right balance between accuracy and speed. With it, drones can navigate heavily populated areas — think forests or Amazon fulfillment centers — at up to 20 mph. Simply put, the system doesn’t sweat the details.

Unlike other common mapping systems, such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which are data intensive and difficult to maintain at real-time, the NanoMap uses depth-sensing to measure just the drone’s immediate surroundings. This enables the drone to understand generally where it is in relation to obstacles and anticipate how it will need to change course to avoid them.

“The key difference to previous work is that the researchers created a map consisting of a set of images with their position uncertainty rather than just a set of images and their positions and orientation,” says Sebastian Scherer, a systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, wrote in an MIT release. “Keeping track of the uncertainty has the advantage of allowing the use of previous images even if the robot doesn’t know exactly where it is and allows in improved planning.”

This uncertainty is surprisingly helpful. Without working the factor into its modeling, MIT’s test drone would crash roughly 25 percent of the time whenever it drifted more than 5 percent away from where it expected to be. But by incorporating that uncertainty, the MIT team was able to reduce crashes to just 2 percent of its flights.

CryptoCelebs: Famous people who’ve bought the cryptocurrency craze

Cryptocurrencies are the latest craze sweeping the world, and it’s not just average Joes dropping their life savings for a piece of the action. Some of the most popular people in the world have used their money, celebrity, and immense social media followings to invest in or endorse cryptocurrency-based businesses and services.

A lot of the celebrity support for cryptocurrencies revolves around the Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) the cryptocurrency startups create. An ICO is a fundraising event where a cryptocurrency sells a percentage of that currency, in the form of tokens, to people in exchange for money to help get the cryptocurrency off the ground. A few words of praise from certain celebrities have helped numerous cryptocurrencies earn millions of dollars in funding.

Actors, musicians, athletes, and entrepreneurs have all been drawn to the allure of cryptocurrencies. These are some of the most notable celebrity endorsements.

50 Cent

No rapper has benefited from the rise in popularity of cryptocurrencies like 50 Cent. In an effort to stay current with how his fans purchase music, 50 Cent accepted bitcoin purchases of his 2014 album Animal Ambition. He received 700 bitcoins, which were valued at $660 each, at the time, and admits he forgot about the stash. Once each bitcoin’s value exploded in 2017 to a record high of $19,850 in mid-December, his forgotten stash rose in value to as high as nearly $14 million. When 50 celebrated his new fortune in January, the value had dropped to $10,000 per bitcoin, enough for a nearly $8 million haul.

Nas

Nas was a celebrity endorsing cryptocurrency before it became a fad. He invested in bitcoin digital wallet Coinbase in early 2014. Months later in a August 2014 interview, Nas proclaimed that bitcoin had the potential to be “as big, if not bigger, than the Internet.” A few months later, the Illmatic rapper informed his millions of fans on Facebook that he would be rewarding bitcoins to those with the highest scores on his Nas trivia contest at The Rap Test website. At the time of the August 2014 interview, the legendary lyricist claimed he and his team had been collecting bitcoins for over a year, when the price of a bitcoin hovered between $100-$1,000. At the time of press, each bitcoin is worth roughly $8,000, which would net the multi-millionaire rapper a hefty sum of money if he kept a large enough number of bitcoins in his stash.

Richard Branson

Richard Branson, the Virgin Group founder trying to make commercial space flights a reality, rarely does anything less than epic. His love of cryptocurrency is no different. He invested $30 million into bitcoin startup Bitpay in 2014. Before that, he announced he would accept bitcoins as a form of payment for tickets on his upcoming commercial space travel service Virgin Galactic, in late 2013. Branson received six bitcoin purchases for tickets only a few months after that announcement. Later in 2014, the multi-billionaire voiced his immense satisfaction in Bitcoin’s future in a September 2014 interview. His cryptocurrency support hasn’t wavered over the years, with Branson investing in bitcoin service provider Blockchain last year.

Ashton Kutcher

The That 70s Show star has had a complicated, but profitable relationship with technology over the last decade. He portrayed Steve Jobs in a film, and was an early investor in Airbnb and Uber. One of his early hits was in cryptocurrency, and it’s starting to pay off. Kutcher is one of the earliest celebrities to the cryptocurrency craze, tweeting about Ethereum in May 2014, more than a year before its initial release in July 2015. Ethereum is now one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world, with one Ethereum valued at more than $830, at the time of press. Kutcher also invested in Bitcoin processing service Bitbay, and regularly updates his 19 million Twitter followers about the latest Bitcoin news.

Katy Perry

Back in November 2017, Katy Perry shared with her more than 68 million Instagram followers how she got some cryptocurrency advice from one of the best people to get any financial advice from: Warren Buffett. It wasn’t long after her meeting with Buffett that Perry became a cryptocurrency supporter. In January, she posted on Instagram what may be the prettiest advertisement for cryptocurrency to date, embroidering her nails with the logos of five cryptocurrencies. Tweeting about how much you love bitcoin is one thing. Decorating your nails with the logos of five of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world is a different level of crypto dedication.

Floyd Mayweather

Floyd Mayweather is synonymous with two things – money, and winning. Now, he may be one of the most active celebrity endorsers in the cryptocurrency market. In July 2017, Mayweather endorsed the ICO for blockchain prediction platform Stox.com. A month later in August 2017, the undefeated pugilist promoted the ICO for a blockchain-based content marketplace known as Hubii Network. Then, in September 2017, Mayweather signed on to being the brand ambassador for cryptocurrency platform Centra. Mayweather’s endorsement is as good as his right jab, with Centra raising more than $30 million weeks after Mayweather’s endorsement. No wonder the revered boxer has referred to himself as “Crypto Mayweather.”

DJ Khaled

DJ Khaled’s greatest talent is promotion. He can make any mundane meetings feel like the Super Bowl with his boisterous personality and grandiose descriptions of everything. Just like Mayweather, Khaled used his social media promotional prowess to endorse the potential of cryptocurrency platform Centra. In September 2017, Khaled bragged to his more than 12 million followers on Twitter and Instagram about having a “titanium centra debit card” from Centra. A month later in October 2017, he posted a video on his Instagram page showing off the features of Centra Wallet app on his iPhone, a few weeks after the app hit the Apple Store.

Mike Tyson

Unlike most celebrities whose cryptocurrency endorsements don’t extend beyond a few social media posts, Tyson tied Bitcoin directly to his brand. In late 2015, Tyson partnered with Bitcoin Direct to release Bitcoin ATMs branded with the fighter’s ferocious image. Months later in January 2016, Tyson and Bitcoin Direct announced the former heavyweight champ would get his own digital Bitcoin wallet where people can buy and exchange cryptocurrency directly form the app.

Jamie Foxx

Jamie Foxx has given a few technology endorsements over the years, including a backpack with built-in speakers, and Verizon Wireless. So, it’s not a big surprise that the 50-year old comedian has got in on the cryptocurrency craze. Foxx promoted his participation in the ICO of cryptocurrency exchange platform Cobinhood to his more than four million followers on Twitter in September 2017. Cobinhood raised nearly $10 million mere weeks after Foxx’s endorsement. Not bad for a few minutes of typing a tweet.

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Nvidia says it’s working to increase supply of GPUs

Nvidia recently spoke out regarding the rising price of GPUs and requested retailers to prioritize gamers over cryptocurrency miners. During an investor call on Thursday, the company’s CEO said that it was working to increase supply in order to meet the high demand spurred by the cryptocurrency boom.

“We’re working really hard to get GPUs out into the marketplace for the gamers. We’re doing everything we can, but I think the most important thing is, we just got to catch up with supply,” Jensen Huang said during the earning’s call.

During the call, the company acknowledged that the surge of interest in cryptocurrencies had driven sales and helped provide a strong quarter for the company. However, the company’s executive vice president, Colette Kress, said that Nvidia’s core focus would be on gamers as the cryptocurrency market is too unstable to rely on in the long-term. This echoes the sentiments of some of the most prominent figures finance.

“Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile,” Kress told investors, according to Polygon. She also said that the company expects the revenue from cryptocurrencies to remain flat for the first quarter of 2018, which means that gamers may still have trouble getting their hands on a reasonably priced GPU.

“There’s a fairly sizable pent-up demand going into this quarter,” Huang said. “The demand is great, and it’s very likely the demand will remain great as we look through this quarter.”

He also noted that it was retailers who were setting the prices for GPUs and once again stressed that Nvidia had advised its retail partners to serve gamers over cryptocurrency miners, though Nvidia ultimately has no control over the policies of individual retailers.

“… We’re doing everything we can to advise e-tailers and system builders to serve the gamers,” he said.

Both AMD and Nvidia are working to increase the supply of GPUs, but AMD has noted that it faces shortages of various types of memory, including GDDR5 and HBM2, which has hamstrung GPU production. Huang did not comment on memory issues and simply said that they were “constrained.”

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The 2018 Winter Olympics have been the victims of a hack, organizers confirm

It has now been confirmed that the 2018 Winter Olympics was the subject of a cyberattack. On Sunday, game organizers verified rumors that the Olympics were hacked during Friday’s opening ceremony. However, the source of the attack has yet to be revealed. While systems including the internet and television services were affected on Friday evening, organizers assured media that the breach “had not compromised any critical part of their operations,” according to a Reuters report.

Cybersecurity experts noted in January that there were early suggestions that Russia-backed attackers may have been planning a hack as a retaliation against the nation’s ban from the Pyeongchang Games. The Russian federation has not been allowed to compete as a result of anti-doping regulations (though Russian athletes have been taking part of the games as the Olympic Athletes from Russia, or OAR).

That said, Russia has fervently denied any suggestion of hacking. A few days before the Olympics began, the government noted that any claims linking Russian operatives to hacks on Pyeongchang were “unfounded.”

North Korea may also serve as a prime suspect, given the games’ proximity to the long-isolated nation. However, the North Korean team marched alongside the South Korean delegation for the first time at an Olympics opening ceremony since 2006, perhaps as a symbolic olive branch.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), for its part, is staying mum on the issue. “Maintaining secure operations is our purpose,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. “We are not going to comment on the issue. It is one we are dealing with. We are making sure our systems are secure and they are secure.”

Adams added that while he did not know who was behind the attack, “… best international practice says that you don’t talk about an attack.”

Luckily, it would appear that the hack was short-lived and quickly addressed. “All issues were resolved and recovered yesterday morning,” Pyeongchang organizing committee spokesman Sung Baik-you told press. “We know the cause of the problem but that kind of issues occurs frequently during the Games. We decided with the IOC we are not going to reveal the source (of the attack),” he added.

Still, news of the attack makes a number of sponsors even warier, having already been concerned about the possibility of such an event at the Olympics. A number of sponsors have insured themselves against hacks, and now, it would seem as though that was a very necessary precaution.

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Adult content domains are home to half the sites using cryptomining malware

A new study reveals that cryptocurrency miners are turning to porn sites to exploit users’ computing power when they’re online. A Bejing-based company called 360NetLab has analyzed internet traffic patterns and concluded that sites offering adult content, while small in terms of web traffic, make up the vast majority of sites containing web mining code on their homepages.

These cryptocurrency mining programs usually download without permission when you click on the site and run in the background, using the computing power of your CPU to create new cryptocurrency (usually Monero). This can significantly diminish the performance of your computer while you’re online.

According to 360NetLab, 628 websites out of Alexa’s top 300,000 contained cryptomining code within their homepage (Alexa is a web traffic and analysis service that ranks websites by visitors, not to be confused with the ubiquitous voice assistant of the same name).

While small in terms of actual traffic, the research found that a whopping 49 percent of the domains containing cryptomining software were sites offering adult content.

We’re not linking to any of these sites for obvious reasons, but in terms of traffic the most-visited sites were mejortorrent, firefoxchina, scamadviser, and thepiratebay.blue. The most prevalent coin-mining tool is coinhive, which is used by 57 percent of the sites. Others include jsecoin, webmine, and cryptoloot.

More and more mining site providers want a piece of the action as well. The coin-mining software downloads started to become more prevalent around September of last year, and saw a big surge in January.

As the International Business Times points out, what these companies are doing is not technically illegal in most countries. Some sites claim that cryptocoin mining is a way to fund their websites, just like hosting advertising or asking for subscriptions. Most users would argue that it should be opt-in only. In fact, one new site called authedmine only mines with the user’s permission.

600 websites is a pretty small number, however, so there’s no need to panic. Any decent antivirus software can protect your computer by detecting the mining software before it’s downloaded. As always, make sure your operating system and security software are up to date.

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BitGrail cryptocurrency exchange loses $170 million in Nano tokens

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail has lost about 17 million Nano tokens. In total, the stolen tokens were worth $170 million.

BitGrail made the announcement on its website and said that it had lost about $170 million due to fraudulent transactions. It has already notified the authorities, who are investigating the matter. In addition, the exchange has placed a hold on all transactions in order to verify their authenticity.

A similar theft occurred earlier this year with Japan’s Coincheck exchange. That particular hack was much larger, with the exchange estimated to have lost as much as $534 million in cryptocurrency. Coincheck has said that it will reimburse the affected users, but BitGrail founder Francesco Firano said it would be impossible to completely refund the affected clients.

The team behind Nano have released a statement saying that theft was not due to an issue with Nano’s protocol, and lays the blame on BitGrail’s software. The announcement went on to state that they believe that “Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.”

The team said that they would not be responding to any accusations from Firano, and are turning over all of their information regarding the incident — such as blockchain entries, screenshots, and chat logs — to law enforcement.

Additionally, the team published a copy of the conversation with Firano. They allege that he suggested modifying the Nano ledger to cover his losses. Nano said that was impossible and not something they’d do even if they could.

In a tweet, Firano called the accusations against him “unfounded” and said that he told the police that the Nano development team may have compromised their investigation by releasing the transcript of his conversation with them.

In the wake of the unfounded accusations made against me by the dev team and of the dissemination of private conversations that compromise police investigations, Bitgrail s.r.l. is forced to contact the police in order to protect its rights and users

— Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 10, 2018

In a later tweet, Firano denied that he or Bitgrail were at fault for the theft.

No, if was our fault, all coin should be hacked.
I can’t say why they were stolen because there is an ongoing investigation by police

— Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 10, 2018

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How to partition your hard drive in Windows

Partitioning your hard drive is a great way to organize your files, folders, and applications into their own virtual drives. Although there are advantages to having multiple physical drives for the same purpose, with the rise in multi-terabyte hard drives, partitioning a single drive is a viable method to give your system that multi-drive functionality with plenty of space on each, without shelling out for a second drive.

If you have just bought a new drive and want to split it up, you’ll need to partition it before using it. Whether you’re working with a new drive, or just looking to partition an existing one though, the process is much the same. Fortunately, learning how to partition your hard drive in Windows 10 is quick and easy. If you follow the steps below, we’ll help take you from a single drive system, to one with as many virtual drives as you want in just a few quick steps.

If you’re looking to create new volumes for backup purposes, we’d still recommend you use one of the best external hard drives instead. If you’d rather someone else handled the backup process for you, these are the best cloud providers.

Windows Disk Management

The simplest way to partition your new or existing hard drive is with Windows’ built-in Disk Management tool. Although some third-party applications have slightly expanded feature sets, the standard Windows tool is perfectly capable of creating new partitions for you to work with.

Note: Although the below steps are specifically for Windows 10 systems, they are also applicable to Windows 7 and 8.1, where the process is much the same.

Step 1: Use the Windows search box to search for “Disk management” and select “Create and format hard disk partitions” from the results box. Alternatively, use the Windows “power user” menu (Win key + X) and click “Disk management.”

Step 2: Select the hard drive you want to partition from the list of available drives. If it is a new drive, skip to Step 4. If it is an existing drive with files and even your operating system installed on it, you’ll need to create some “unallocated space” before you can partition it. Right-click it and select “shrink volume” from the resulting drop-down menu.

Step 3: Your PC will then calculate how much free space you can allocate to the new partition. Once completed, it will ask you how much of it you want to use. If you want to use all the free space on the hard drive, simply click the “Shrink” button. If you want to specify the size of the eventual partition, input it in megabytes in the respective field, before hitting Shrink.

The process can take a minute depending on the speed of your drive but when complete, you’ll have a new “unallocated” space shown next to the corresponding physical drive in the bottom-half of the Disk Management screen.

Step 4: Right-click the “Unallocated” space and select “New Simple Volume” from the resulting menu.

Step 5: Follow the on-screen instructions and select the size of the volume (the default will use all unallocated space) and the drive letter.

Step 6: It’s wise to format new and old drives when creating a new partition. When given the option, select to do so. For “file system” select “NTFS.” The “exFAT” option is more commonly used for portable devices. You can also add a volume label — name — if you want. You can leave the “allocation unit size” at default. Select “quick format” if you are short on time. A full format is rarely required.

Step 7: Continue to click through “Next” buttons and finally, hit “Finish” to create the volume. Your hard drive will now have a brand new partition with its very own designation. You’ll be able to see it, and all the information about it, on the Disk Management page.

Third party alternatives

If you’d rather use a specific third-party tool to partition your hard drive in Windows 10, there are a few out there worth considering. These are some we can recommend:

EaseUS Partition Master Free

With tools for moving and resizing partitions, wiping them clean, and altering labels and designations, EaseUS’s Partition Master Free is a great tool enjoyed by millions of users around the world. It even comes with a “Partition Recovery Wizard,” which can help you recover lost or deleted partitions after a hard-drive failure.

Mini Tool Partition Wizard Free

Mini Tool’s partitioning application is fully featured, even in the free version, and adds the ability to convert file systems without formatting a drive and even test the stability of your hard drive to see if there are any bad sectors.

GParted

Incredibly lightweight, GParted isn’t the prettiest of partition managers, but it has broad support for file systems and formats and has a full suite of partitioning creation, resizing and deletion abilities.

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Pennsylvania wants a paper trail on all voting machines, but money is an issue

The term “voter fraud” seemed to be as ubiquitous as the candidates’ names in the 2016 presidential race, and now, Pennsylvania is hoping to do something about it. On Friday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered counties planning on replacing their electronic voting systems with machines that would maintain a paper trail, hopefully guarding against interference in a future election.

According to the governor’s office, these new systems will improve the security of voting systems, and will also simplify the process of auditing votes. The addition of the paper backup is, in some ways, an antiquated yet effective solution to a decidedly modern problem.

“This directive will ensure that the next generation of the commonwealth’s voting systems conforms to enhanced standards of resiliency, auditability and security,” Acting Secretary of State Robert Torres said in a statement.

Pennsylvania is not requiring all counties to throw away their equipment yet, however. Rather, the directive only applies to counties that are already in the process of switching systems — those counties will be required to buy new machines with the paper backup addition.

While this all sounds well and good, there is one glaring problem — Pennsylvania does not have the budget to help pay for these new machines. In fact, Governor Wolf released a new budget plan just this week that does not include any additional funding to help counties replace old voting machinery.

Marybeth Kuznik, the founder and executive director of nonprofit VotePA, noted that this is a serious issue. “The General Assembly needs to step up to the plate and budget for this,” she told local news stations. But even so, Kuznik calls the order itself “a huge step forward for Pennsylvania for better elections.”

There are a total of 13 states across the U.S. in which most or all voting systems store votes entirely electronically without any paper backups to verify the results. While this may have been borne of an eco-friendly initiative, the result is a machine whose counts are effectively impossible to audit, making hacks particularly dangerous.

“In the world’s leading democracy, we can’t take the position that we can’t afford to do elections correctly,” said David Hickton, a former federal prosecutor and founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. “The recent attacks on our election should concern everybody, and a priority has to be placed on doing what is necessary.”

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‘Fortnight’ overtakes ‘PUBG’ record with 3.4 million players at one time

Like two sumo wrestlers going at each other, the big multiplayer shooters continue to one-up each other with more and more players joining the fray. This time it was Epic Games’ Fortnite, who boasted in a blog post that they had beaten the record for most concurrent players previously held by Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds.

Although Fortnight recorded 3.4 million players at one time over the weekend — besting PUBG’s previous mark of 3.2 million — the accomplishment was blemished by the repeated server crashes caused by the massive number of players.

“The extreme load caused 6 different incidents between Saturday and Sunday, with a mix of partial and total service disruptions to Fortnite,” they wrote. The post goes into some pretty technical details about what caused the various outages, which involved everything from matchmaking to account retrieval to instant messaging to overwhelming their cloud servers. Basically, they just got clobbered.

PC Gamer was quick to point out that the Fortnight count encompasses players on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, while PUBG’s numbers only reflect Steam players. As Epic didn’t break their numbers down by platform, it’s impossible to say who truly has the upper hand.

It’s the biggest game they’ve ever had, and the company recently pulled the plug on their free-to-play MOBA Paragon, with many team members moving to Fortnite.

“It’s been an amazing and exhilarating experience to grow Fortnite from our previous peak of 60K concurrent players to 3.4M in just a few months, making it perhaps the biggest PC/console game in the world!” they wrote. Epic obviously needs some help, as their blog post opens and closes with a plea for people with “domain expertise” to apply for a job at the company.

More game updates are planned for the near future, however, with an earlier post promising 60 FPS for all console versions later this month. Extra servers will also soon be online for West Coast and Brazilian Xbox players. Epic also announced upcoming integration with Facebook and other social networks for friend invites.

Several cosmetic updates are also in the works, with new outfits, gliders, and animations. New weapons and consumables are also mentioned, as well as the promise of different items in future updates.

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