Iran's 'Porn Blockers' Are Impacting Access To These Sites In Other Countries

A visitor takes pictures of an adult film actress during the Eros Show in the Bulgarian capital Sofia April 2, 2008. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

The Independent: Porn blocks in Iran break the internet across the world

The country’s strange technique was meant to stop people watching adult videos, but had a much broader effect than intended

Iran introduced blocks on pornography so aggressive that they broke the internet around the world.

The country's censorship laws on adult websites are infamously stringent, and require access pornographic websites to be cut off. But last week the state internet provider did so not only for those in Iran but for people across the world – as far away as Russia and Hong Kong.

The strange ban was the result of the way that the internet provider cut off access to those sites. It did so using some of the basic mechanisms of the web – not just stopping people in Iran accessing the websites, but changing the directions that power the internet so that nobody could.

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CSN Editor: I am sure that this is "pissing-off" some people.

Quantum Computing Could Make Supercomputer Obsolete In 5 Years

Multilayer microwave integrated quantum circuit (left) uses silicon wafers with features etched using MEMS techniques to create enclosures that serve as high-Q resonators as well as providing shielding. Superconducting metalization (blue) covers the walls of these enclosures to provide low-loss wafer-to-wafer bonding. A cross-section of the rectangular cavity resonator (upper right) shows interlayer aperture coupling between the cavity and transmission lines above. 3D superconducting transmission lines (lower right) could be constructed using membranes (green) in the MEMS structure where qubits and act as a compact low-loss quantum bus.

(Source: Yale)

Next Big Future: Universal Quantum computers could replace supercomputers within 5 years

Some researchers are predicting that the market for "universal" quantum computers that do everything a supercomputer can do plus everything a supercomputer can not do — in a chip that fits in the palm of your hand — are on the verge of emerging. The rise of quantum computing may be as important a shift as John von Neumann's stored program-and-data concept.

Here are some of the scientists and breakthroughs that will enable this shift.

Robert Schoelkopf (Yale, Quantum Circuits inc) claims a number of "world's firsts," the latest of which is the longest "coherence time" for a quantum superposition.

Read more ....

Update: Quantum Computing on Cusp - Researchers say supercomputer obsolete in 5 years -- EETimes

CSN editor: To me the 5 years is too optimistic .... but the trend lines are that Quantum computers will replace supercomputers in the near future.

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Mark Zuckerberg Talks About AI And Its Future In The World (Video)

Astronomers Predicty A Supernova Will Appear In The Sky In 2022

Our night sky could be set to include a new star in 2022, if the predictions of a group of astronomers turn out to be correct, because of a supernova explosion. Supernovas are intense explosions caused when two stars merge together. Pictured is an artist's impression

Daily Mail: Mark your calendars! A dazzling supernova will appear in the sky in 2022, predict astronomers

* Scientists have studied a binary star system for years and claim it will explode
* The supernova explosion is 'boldly' predicted for 2022, give or take a year
* If they are correct, it will be the first time anyone has predicted a supernova
* Will be one of brightest star in the night sky when it appears, astronomers say

Our night sky could be set to include a new star in 2022, if the predictions of a group of astronomers turn out to be correct.

A professor who has been studying a binary star system, two stars orbiting each other, claims they will soon start to merge together to create what he has dubbed 'Boom star'.

The stars will end their lives in an explosion, known as a supernova, he says.

This will be will make them ten thousand times brighter than they already are - producing one of the brightest stars visible in our sky.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: If it is bright enough .... for everyone this will be a once in a lifetime experience.

Would You Take A Blood Test That Predicts How Long You Will Live?

REUTERS/Luis Galdamez

Daily Mail: Would YOU take it? Scientists discover breakthrough blood test that could 'predict how long people will live'

* Experts at Boston University claim to have discovered the game-changing test
* They believe biomarker patterns in the blood will help predict a person's probability of developing cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes
* The discovery means patients will be able to identify realistic health risks early - and, crucially, modify behaviour to change the outcome

It may sound like the premise of a science fiction film.

But, believe it or not, scientists at Boston University claim to have discovered a game-changing blood test that could help predict lifespans.

The study, published in the journal Aging Cell on Friday, used biomarker data collected from 5,000 blood samples and analysed it against the donors' health developments over the subsequent eight years.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: I wold definitely take it .... and avoid (or minimise) the risk factors that such a test would discover.

15 Sci-Fi Films We Want To See In 2017

Popular Mechanics: 15 Sci-Fi Films We Want To See in 2017 (and 4 We Don't)

The blockbusters, the hopeful sleepers, and the bottom feeders.

2017 holds plenty of uncertainty, but great sci-fi movies look like a sure thing. We'll see the return of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 and finally get some Luke Skywalker in the eighth installment of the Star Wars saga. But 2017 is full of exciting releases, crossing huge franchises, wonderful one-offs, and some more artsy types as well. These are the films that have us excited for 2017 (and few that we'll likely be skipping.)

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CSN Editor: Blade Runner is on the top of my list.

How To Defeat Facial Recognition Software

An image of a Hyperface pattern, specifically created to contain thousands of facial recognition hits. Photograph: Adam Harvey

The Guardian: Anti-surveillance clothing aims to hide wearers from facial recognition

Hyperface project involves printing patterns on to clothing or textiles that computers interpret as a face, in fightback against intrusive technology

The use of facial recognition software for commercial purposes is becoming more common, but, as Amazon scans faces in its physical shop and Facebook searches photos of users to add tags to, those concerned about their privacy are fighting back.

Berlin-based artist and technologist Adam Harvey aims to overwhelm and confuse these systems by presenting them with thousands of false hits so they can’t tell which faces are real.

The Hyperface project involves printing patterns on to clothing or textiles, which then appear to have eyes, mouths and other features that a computer can interpret as a face.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: It's good to know that the surveillance state can still be defeated.

Virtual Reality Was A Disappointment At This Year's CES

The words of the day at CES were "incremental improvement."

Photo by Josh Miller/CNET

CNET: Virtually boring: VR really disappoints at CES this year

Virtual reality promises to be a mega-trend that upends how we use computers and just plain get along. So why's it such a snooze at the world's biggest tech expo?

Call it a virtual disappointment. Or virtually unsurprising. I'll just say I was virtually underwhelmed.

Whatever pun you choose, the virtual reality industry has some explaining to do after this year's Consumer Electronics Show, during which the biggest product announcements can largely be categorized as "more of the same."

Consider computer maker Lenovo, which showed off a VR headset whose primary selling point is that it's cheaper than competitors like the $599 Oculus Rift from Facebook or the $799 HTC Vive -- though Lenovo isn't discussing prices yet and the prototype on display doesn't actually work.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: When you consider all the hype for the past year in regards to VR .... satisfying everyone's expectations was a tall order.

Latest X-Ray Images Are Giving Astronomers A Revealing Look At The History Of Black Holes

The image is from the Chandra Deep Field-South. The full field covers an approximately circular region on the sky with an area about two-thirds that of the full moon. However, the outer regions of the image, where the sensitivity to X-ray emission is lower, are not shown here. The colors in this image represent different levels of X-ray energy detected by Chandra. Here the lowest-energy X-rays are red, the medium band is green, and the highest-energy X-rays observed by Chandra are blue. The central region of this image contains the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen, equivalent to about 5,000 objects that would fit into the area of the full moon and about a billion over the entire sky. Image courtesy X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B. Luo et al. For a larger version of this image please go here.

Space Daily: Deepest X-ray image ever reveals black hole treasure trove

An unparalleled image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is giving an international team of astronomers the best look yet at the growth of black holes over billions of years beginning soon after the Big Bang. This is the deepest X-ray image ever obtained, collected with about 7 million seconds, or 11 and a half weeks, of Chandra observing time.

The image comes from what is known as the Chandra Deep Field-South. The central region of the image contains the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen, equivalent to about 5,000 objects that would fit into the area of the full Moon and about a billion over the entire sky.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: It is hard to fathom how massive these objects really are .... ranging in mass from about 100,000 to 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.

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NASA Can Now Better Predict A Total Solar Eclipse's Path

Using of a number of NASA datasets, notably the global elevation maps from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the shape and location of the shadow is depicted with unprecedented accuracy.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/SVS/Ernie Wright

Science Daily: NASA moon data provides more accurate 2017 eclipse path

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, millions in the U.S. will have their eyes to the sky as they witness a total solar eclipse. The moon's shadow will race across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. The path of this shadow, also known as the path of totality, is where observers will see the moon completely cover the sun. And thanks to elevation data of the moon from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, coupled with detailed NASA topography data of Earth, we have the most accurate maps of the path of totality for any eclipse to date.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: This will be a rare opportunity for many who live in the U.S..

This Robot Can Play Chess With A Chessboard

A robot developed by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute plays chess at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 8, 2017 ©Rob Lever (AFP)

AFP: For 'intelligent' robot, chess is just a hobby

A robot developed by engineers in Taiwan can pour coffee and move chess pieces on a board against an opponent, but he's looking for a real job.

The robot developed by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, which spent the week playing games against opponents at the Consumer Electronics Show, was displaying what developers call an "intelligent vision system" which can see its environment and act with greater precision than its peers.

With this enhanced vision, the robot can perform variety of tasks for service and manufacturing, and can also learn on the job with artificial intelligence.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: Playing chess with a robot has just got interesting.

Huge Iceberg Is About To Break Off From Antarctica

An iceberg one-fourth the size of Wales is about to break off of Antarctica.

Credit: Copyright MIDAS Project, A. Luckman, Swansea University

Live Science: Delaware-Size Iceberg Is About to Break Off from Antarctica

An icy thread measuring a mere 12 miles (20 kilometers) long is all that's anchoring a massive iceberg the size of Delaware to its home in West Antarctica, climate scientists report.

If the iceberg breaks away — an event known as calving — the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica will lose more than 10 percent of its area, which amounts to about 2,000 square miles (5,000 square km), according to Project MIDAS, an Antarctic research project based in the United Kingdom.

MIDAS researchers noticed the rift in 2014, and have used satellite and other data to monitor it ever since. The rift made headlines late last year when NASA's IceBridge mission snapped a photo showing the eerily immense crack, which measured 70 miles (112 km) long, more than 300 feet (91 meters) wide and about one-third of a mile (0.5 km) deep as of Nov. 10, 2016.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: At its current rate, this will split within 2 years .... unless the region experiences a greater cooling trend.

The Art And Science of Designing Noise Alarms

Atlas Obscura: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

There's an art and science to making one sound seem more urgent than another.

When the cockpit recorder transcript from Air France Flight 447 was leaked to the public in 2011, many startling details emerged. The plane, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board, had been under the control of pilots who were communicating poorly and not realizing one another’s mistakes. The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times.

Everyone present ignored it. Within four minutes, the plane had hit the water.

Read more .....

CSN Editor: Like building a better mouse trap .... there is a need to build a better alarm.

The Race To Build Quantum Computers Is Heating Up

Next Big Future: Google, Microsoft, labs and start-ups will create universal quantum computers in 2017 and achieve quantum supremacy over classical computers

Google started working on a form of quantum computing that harnesses superconductivity in 2014. In 2017 or 2018 Google hopes to perform a computation that is beyond even the most powerful ‘classical’ supercomputers — an elusive milestone known as quantum supremacy. Its rival, Microsoft, is betting on an intriguing but unproven concept, topological quantum computing, and hopes to perform a first demonstration of the technology.

The quantum-computing start-up scene is also heating up. Christopher Monroe, co-founded the start-up IonQ in 2015, plans to begin hiring in earnest this year.

Physicist Robert Schoelkopf at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who co-founded the start-up Quantum Circuits, and former IBM applied physicist Chad Rigetti, who set up Rigetti in Berkeley, California, say they expect to reach crucial technical milestones soon.

The largest trapped ion quantum computer with 20 qubits is being tested in an academic lab led by Rainer Blatt at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: Both Microsoft and Google are investing heavily in this tech frontier.

Will Global Warming Result In Europe Cooling Down?

CONVEYOR BELT Rising temperatures could shut down the Atlantic Ocean current (depicted here) that helps warm northwestern Europe, a new simulation shows.

Science News: Warming could disrupt Atlantic Ocean current

New simulations revise freshwater impact on circulation’s stability.

Spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could shut down the major ocean current that ferries warm water to the North Atlantic, new climate simulations suggest. While not as extreme as the doomsday scenario portrayed in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, such a shutdown could cause wintertime temperatures to plummet by an estimated 7 degrees Celsius or more in northwestern Europe and shift rainfall patterns across the globe.

Many previous climate simulations predicted that the Atlantic circulation would remain largely stable under future climate change. But those simulations failed to accurately portray how relatively freshwater flows between the Atlantic and Southern oceans, an important mechanism as the climate warms. After fixing that inaccuracy, Yale University climate scientist Wei Liu and colleagues set up an extreme climate scenario to test the current’s robustness. Doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere shuttered the Atlantic current in 300 years, the researchers’ simulation showed.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: So the argument now is .... global warming will cause catastrophic cooling in Europe.

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A Historical Analysis On Climate Change

Screenshot of MWP Mapping Project (Source: Luening http://t1p.de/mwp downloaded 27-Dec-2016)

Watts Up With That?: Documenting the Global Extent of the Medieval Warm Period

In this article I pose the following questions:

Was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) a global event?
Where the MWP temperatures higher than recent times?
The reasons for asking these questions are that climate establishment have tried to sideline the MWP as a purely local North Atlantic event. They also frequently state that current temperatures are the highest ever.

I attempt to answer these questions below.

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CSN Editor: A good historical analysis on climate change.

The Communist Zil Limousine Is No More

ByvalByvalich

Popular Mechanics: The Ultimate Communist Automaker Is Dead

Who'll make Putin a new American-style copycat limo now?

What the hell is ZiL to begin with? Well, it's the acronym of 'Zavod imeni Likhachova', or 'Plant named for Likhachov', an automobile, truck, military vehicle and heavy equipment manufacturer based in Moscow, Russia. Its trucks, you've seen plenty of in cold war movies and in developing countries around the world. Its cars, not so much. That's because they were never meant to be driven by the common people.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: This model is so out of date that .... in a way .... gives it a certain style.