Sreys Blog Posts

It started out as a way to troll the so-called liberal media, borne out of alt-right posts on message board 4chan. Now, according to Jewish civil rights organization the Anti-Defamation League, the “OK” hand symbol has gone from prank to a hate symbol associated with white supremacy. The gesture joins 35 other symbols added to the ADL’s “Hate on Display” database, announced on Thursday. Joining it are the logos for new and re-branded far-right and white supremacist groups, as well as Dylann Roof’s bowl-cut. Mark Pitcavage, a senior fellow at ADL’s Center on Extremism, wrote in a statement ( h/t Washington Post ) that the added symbols “are the latest calling cards of hate.” “While some hate symbols are short-lived, others take on a life of their own and become tools for online trolling,” Pitcavage added. The “OK” hand gesture (which, to be fair, has always meant something else in other cultures ) is perhaps the most noteworthy addition, for its origins. Its association with the

As Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige builds out his own TV universe spawned from the “Avengers” films, Marvel’s dedicated television unit is seeing its live-action world contract. Feige’s division — part of the Walt Disney Studios feature-film operation — is currently working on multiple shows for the nascent streamer Disney Plus centered on Marvel Cinematic Universe characters like Falcon and Winter Soldier, as well as Loki, and Vision and Scarlet Witch, with shows based on She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Moon Knight also in the works. Meanwhile, with Hulu having this week killed a planned series based on the character Ghost Rider, Marvel Television — the division of Marvel Entertainment responsible for the comic-book publisher’s initial push into live-action TV under Disney ownership — now has few announced live-action projects on the air or in the works. According to multiple industry sources who spoke with Variety , the perception throughout the entertainment business is that live-acti

A newly announced iOS exploit could lead to a permanent, unblockable jailbreak on hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to researcher axi0mX who discovered it. Dubbed “ checkm8 ,” the exploit is a bootrom vulnerability that could give hackers deep access to iOS devices on a level that Apple would be unable to block or patch out with a future software update. That would make it one of the biggest developments in the iPhone hacking community in years. EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read “checkmate”), a permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of iOS devices. Most generations of iPhones and iPads are vulnerable: from iPhone 4S (A5 chip) to iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip). https://t.co/dQJtXb78sG — axi0mX (@axi0mX) The exploit is specifically a bootrom exploit, meaning it’s taking advantage of a security vulnerability in the initial code that iOS devices load when they boot up. And since it’s ROM (read-only memory), it can’t be overwritten or patched

Sign up to receive our daily newsletter! ( TMU ) —   Black holes are thought to be the most powerful and mysterious objects in the universe, formed from the remnants of collapsed stars. Scientists believe that most galaxies host a supermassive black hole at their center and that when galaxies merge, two different black holes collide, unleashing incomprehensible energy. This week scientists announced that for the very first time they will observe a collision between three supermassive black holes in deep space—and they’re not quite sure what will happen. This rare black hole triumvirate was discovered with the help of nearly half a dozen teams and tools, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope, the citizen-science project Galaxy Zoo, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA’S Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), whose handlers joined forces to discover an unus

For years, scientists have been scanning the outer reaches of the solar system for signs of Planet Nine, a world that could be about 10 times as massive as Earth. While this speculative planet has not been directly detected, its presence is inferred by the gravitational tug that astronomers think it is exerting on smaller objects near it. But what if this mysterious gravitational source isn’t a planet at all? What if it is actually a black hole ? But not just any black hole—a black hole from the dawn of the universe. This tantalizing possibility, which would have dramatic implications for particle physics and cosmology, is explored in a paper published on the arXiv preprint server this week. According to co-authors Jakub Scholtz and James Unwin, a hypothetical object called a primordial black hole (PBH) could account for the odd orbits observed in the distant solar system. “A solution with an ordinary planet and a solution with an exotic compact object like a primordial black hol

Looking on the bright side could save your life. People who look at life from a positive perspective have a much stronger shot at avoiding death from any type of cardiovascular risk than pessimistic people, according to a new meta-analysis of nearly 300,000 people published Friday in the medical journal JAMA . “We observed that an optimist had about a 35% lower risk of major heart complications, such as a cardiac death, stroke or a heart attack, compared to the pessimists in each of these studies,” said cardiologist Dr. Alan Rozanski, a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who is lead author of the study. In fact, the more positive the person, the greater the protection from heart attacks, stroke and any cause of death, said Rozanski, who is also the chief academic officer for the department of cardiology at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. “The more pessimistic (a person was), the worse the outcome,” he added. It’s not just your heart that’s protected by a

Gallery of Space Time Travel/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic ‘Planet Nine’ may actually be a black hole By Sid Perkins Sep. 27, 2019 , 1:10 PM For nearly 5 years, growing numbers of scientists have blamed the weird orbits of distant solar system objects on the gravitational effects of an as-yet-undiscovered “Planet Nine” that lies in the icy realm far beyond Neptune. But a pair of physicists is now floating an intriguing idea that could offer a new way to search for the object: What if that supposed planet is actually a small black hole? Previous studies have suggested Planet Nine, which some astronomers refer to as “Planet X,” has a mass between five and 15 times that of Earth and lies between 45 billion and 150 billion kilometers from the sun. At such a distance, an object would receive very little light from the sun, making it hard to see with telescopes. To detect objects of that mass, whether planets or black holes, astronomers can look for weird blobs o

NASA has caught a rare cosmic event with one of its newest telescopes — a black hole violently ripping apart a star roughly the size of our sun. The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, was captured in detail by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS.  Researchers published their findings of the event in  The Astrophysical Journal on Thursday. Scientists used an international network of 20 robotic telescopes called ASAS-SN (All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae) to detect the tidal disruption event back in January, before turning to TESS, which caught the beginning of the cosmic showdown.  Using its permanent viewing zones, TESS was able to watch the star getting sucked into the black hole and collect necessary data used to study the event. NASA released an animated video illustrating the cataclysmic phenomenon.  “TESS data let us see exactly when this destructive event, named ASASSN-19bt, started to get brighter, which we’ve never been able to do before

We will use your email address only for the purpose of sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Every Netflix user has been there. Spending what seems like half your night scrolling through lists of films and TV shows trying to find something to watch. But there is actually a way for users to get even more out of their subscription fee. A list of secret codes has been revealed which means searching the site is about to get much easier. By changing the digits of the code at the end of the URL means you can browse through all categories rather than being restricted to just the one. For example, if you are looking for a children’s film you can add ‘783’ to the end of the URL and all suitable films will appear. Read More Considering the majority of us spend hours of our lives watching Netflix, getting addicted to the new must-see show we think

Respawn Entertainment The new arena is a clash between ice and fire Apex Legends season 3 is almost here and while Respawn has revealed a few things already — like Crypto the new Legend or the new Charge Rifle — it seems it was saving the biggest surprise for last. Thanks to a new announcement trailer, we now know that Apex Legends is getting a new map called World’s Edge as part of season 3. Welcome to World’s Edge, a new Apex Legends map where molten heat and chemical ice collide. Join our cast of Legends – including the newest Legend, Crypto – on the dropship as they’re whisked from Planet Solace towards World’s Edge on Planet Talos. pic.twitter.com/vp7UzVrXaC — Apex Legends (@PlayApex) September 27, 2019 The cinematic doesn’t reveal much about the map, and is CG rather than gameplay, but we can gather a few details from what we see. While Kings Canyon is mostly deserts, this map seems to give players a lot more biomes to explore. There’s a snow-covered mountain range

Image: Sony / Marvel Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios will make a third Spider-Man movie together after all. Sony and Disney have struck a new deal over Spider-Man, which would let the web-slinging hero return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “I am thrilled that Spidey’s journey in the MCU will continue, and I and all of us at Marvel Studios are very excited that we get to keep working on it,” says Marvel Studios co-president Kevin Feige, according to Variety . “Spider-Man is a powerful icon and hero whose story crosses all ages and audiences around the globe. He also happens to be the only hero with the superpower to cross cinematic universes, so as Sony continues to develop their own Spidey-verse, you never know what surprises the future might hold.” The two studios previously announced this summer that Spider-Man would leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the companies couldn’t agree on a new financing deal . Disney wanted a 50/50 cut on all revenue made via Spider-Man fil

Most people rarely deal with irrational numbers—it would be, well, irrational, as they run on forever, and representing them accurately requires an infinite amount of space. But irrational constants such as  π and √2—numbers that cannot be reduced to a simple fraction—frequently crop up in science and engineering. These unwieldy numbers have plagued mathematicians since the ancient Greeks; indeed, legend has it that Hippasus was drowned for suggesting irrationals existed. Now, though, anearly 80-year-old quandary about how well they can be approximated has been solved. Many people conceptualize irrational numbers by rounding them to fractions or decimals: estimating π as 3.14, which is equivalent to 157/50, leads to widespread celebration of Pi Day on March 14th. Yet a different approximation, 22/7, is easier to wrangle and closer to  π. This prompts the question: Is there a limit to how simple and accurate these approximations can ever get? And can we choose a fraction in any form w

This image made available by the European Space agency shows galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012, an improved version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. A study from the Max Planck Institute in Germany published Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, in the journal Science uses a new technique to come up with a rate that the universe is expanding that is nearly 18% higher than the number scientists had been using since the year 2000. (NASA, ESA, R. Ellis (Caltech), HUDF 2012 Team via AP) The universe is looking younger every day, it seems. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });   New calculations suggest the universe could be a couple billion years younger than scientists now estimate, and even younger than suggested by two other calculations published this year that trimmed hundreds of millions of years from the age of the cosmos. The huge swings in scientists’ estimates—even this new calculation could be off by billions of year

The hellish planet Venus may have had a perfectly habitable environment for 2 to 3 billion years after the planet formed, suggesting life would have had ample time to emerge there, according to a new study.  In 1978, NASA’s Pioneer Venus spacecraft found evidence that the planet may have once had shallow oceans on its surface. Since then, several missions have investigated the planet’s surface and atmosphere, revealing new details on how it transitioned from an “Earth-like” planet to the hot, hellish place it is today.  It’s believed that Venus may have been a temperate planet hosting liquid water for 2 to 3 billion years before a massive resurfacing event about 700 million years ago triggered a runaway greenhouse effect , which caused the planet’s atmosphere to become incredibly dense and hot. Researchers from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies shared a series of five simulations that show what Venus’ environment would be like based on different levels of water coverage. 

A neutron star that spins at an unimaginable rate of 707 times per second also shoots out powerful pulses of gamma rays into the universe.  The star is at least 4,400 light-years from Earth, though its exact distance is a mystery (more on that later). The celestial body is what is known as a pulsar , a dense, rapidly spinning neutron star left behind by the collapse of a giant star. Pulsars have strong magnetic fields, and as they rotate, they spit out beams of radiation along their two magnetic poles. Much like a lighthouse beam, these streams can be seen by Earthlings only when pointing right at Earth, so pulsars appear to blink.  The newly discovered pulsar has the distinctly non-charismatic moniker PSR J0952-0607. The star was originally detected in 2017 by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, according to the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, but no gamma-ray bursts were initially detected. However, the radio telescope array Low-Frequency Array detected pulsating

Scientists in the UK have made a “world first” discovery on a distant planet that hosts both water and temperatures which could support life. Water vapour has been detected on a potentially habitable super-earth known as K2-18b, located about 110 light years away. Watch the video above The exoplanet was first spotted in 2015 by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft but analysis of data has revealed new details that have not been seen on a super-earth before. K2-18b is classed as a super-earth because it is bigger than our earth – twice as big in fact, as well as eight times heavier. Current equipment is only able to determine basic factors such as distance, mass and temperature but sophisticated tools developed at University College London have been able to translate existing data from the Hubble Space Telescope to make sense of the unique molecule signatures of water vapour. K2-18b is too far away for astronomers to see, but they can look at how starlight is filtered through the planet’s atm

In 2010, astronomers working with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope announced the discovery of two giant blobs. These blobs were centered on the core of the Milky Way galaxy, but they extended above and below the plane of our galactic home for over 25,000 light-years. Their origins are still a mystery, but however they got there, they are emitting copious amounts of high-energy radiation.  More recently, the IceCube array in Antarctica has reported 10 super-duper-high-energy neutrinos sourced from the bubbles, leading some astrophysicists to speculate that some crazy subatomic interactions are afoot. The end result: the Fermi Bubbles are even more mysterious than we thought.  Two giant blobs of hot gas It’s not easy to make big balls of hot gas. For starters, you need energy, and a lot of it. The kind of energy that can spread hot gas to a distance of over 25,000 light-years doesn’t come easily to a typical galaxy. However, the peculiar orientation of the Fermi Bubbles — extendi

Everybody wants a wormhole. I mean, who wants to bother traveling the long-and-slow routes throughout the universe, taking tens of thousands of years just to reach yet another boring star? Not when you can pop into the nearest wormhole opening, take a short stroll, and end up in some exotic far-flung corner of the universe.  There’s a small technical difficulty, though: Wormholes , which are bends in space-time so extreme that a shortcut tunnel forms, are catastrophically unstable. As in, as soon as you send a single photon down the hole, it collapses faster than the speed of light. But a recent paper, published to the preprint journal arXiv on July 29, has found a way to build an almost-steady wormhole, one that does collapse but slowly enough to send messages — and potentially even things — down it before it tears itself apart. All you need are a couple of black holes and a few infinitely long cosmic strings.  Easy-peasy. The wormhole problem In principle, building a wormhole i