LINKS 09
Who Really Invented the Alphabet?
Who really invented the alphabet? Despite its vast influence, we are still uncertain about precisely where the world’s most influential communication system came from. One reason for this uncertainty is that debate about the alphabet’s origins has tended to focus on questions for which there is little clear evidence, such as the exact date of its invention and the personal identity, social status, and educational background of the inventor(s).
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Long-Lost Chambers Found Within 4,400-Year-Old Egyptian Pyramid
New rooms have been discovered in an ancient Egyptian pyramid, confirming the suspicions of archaeologists who first excavated the magnificent site almost 200 years ago.
The rooms were recently discovered at the Pyramid of Sahura, built around 4,400 years ago for the Egyptian pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty. The structure has been undergoing a restoration project since 2019 to clean its interior rooms and prevent further collapse, ultimately hoping to prolong its lifespan.
One Of History’s Strangest Tech Mysteries: The Baghdad Battery
A Baghdad battery is not a brand of car battery you can grab off the shelf at your local auto parts store, but the story surrounding these so-called bygone “batteries” is as perplexing as trying to ferret out why your car won’t start.
Four of these 5‑inch-tall ceramic jars were initially found inside a grave in 1936, close to where a new rail line was being built at the time. It was also located near what was once the royal city of Ctesiphon, about 20 miles southeast of modern-day Baghdad.
First Black Hole Ever Photographed is Spinning, Scientists Confirm
Analyzing more than two decades of observational data collected by more than 20 telescopes, an international team of scientists says that the black hole at the center of the nearby M87 galaxy is spinning.
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Pulsars, not dark matter, explain the Milky Way’s antimatter
For years, astronomers have been puzzled by an excess of antimatter particles emanating from the Milky Way’s galactic center. Many astronomers and physicists hoped that this phenomenon would’ve been caused by dark matter particles, either annihilating or decaying, and then creating positrons. However, recent results suggest a far more mundane explanation: rotating neutron stars, whose relativistic jets and fast-moving material create matter-antimatter pairs. No dark matter required.
U.S. votes against anti-Nazi resolution at U.N.
UNITED NATIONS — The United States says it was one of three countries to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism over freedom of speech issues and concerns that Russia was using it to carry out political attacks against its neighbors.
The resolution entitled “Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” was approved by the U.N.’s human rights committee on Friday with 131 in favor, 3 against with 48 abstentions.
Earliest Baskets in Europe, From Almost 10,000 Years Ago, Found in Spanish Cave
Elaborate baskets made of tough local grass were used by hunter-gatherers to bury their dead at Cueva de los Murciélagos, while early farmers also turned their hand to sandals.
3D-Druck: Wenn die Müslibox zum Filamenttrockner wird
Während PLA noch vergleichsweise gutmütig ist, reagieren PETG und Nylon gerne mit fiesen Druckfehlern auf zu feuchte Lagerung: 3D-Druck-Filamente sind hygroskopisch, was bedeutet, dass sie Feuchtigkeit aus der Umgebungsluft aufnehmen können.
The Cinema of Orson Welles
Acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) was, early in his career, a film critic. It was during this time that he wrote this short tome on the great Orson Welles for the Museum of Modern Art. Bogdanovich gives us an overview of why Welles is worthy of appraisal as well as providing a film-by-film deeper dive into Welles’ oeuvre.
A Golden Age of Building? Excerpts and lessons from Empire State, Pentagon, Skunk Works and SpaceX
Patrick Collison has a fantastic list of examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together since the 19th Century. It does make you yearn for a time that feels… different, when the lethargic behemoths of government departments could move at the speed of a racing startup.
Staatstrojaner per Online-Werbung
Dass tausende Firmen unsere Daten für Online-Werbung sammeln, ist bekannt. Eine Recherche zeigt nun, dass auch Staatstrojaner-Hersteller das Werbesystem nutzen, um Zielpersonen zu tracken und zu hacken. Ob Deutschland über derartige Software verfügt, will die Bundesregierung nicht verraten.
Meet Cocoa Press
Cocoa Press allows you to turn your chocolate ideas into reality.
How to turn off NameDrop in iOS 17
iOS 17 offers a lot of interesting new features for your iPhone, one of which is called, appropriately, NameDrop. What NameDrop does is let you exchange contact information with another iPhone (and gives you a chance to use your snazzy new Contact Poster) by just holding the top of your phone near the top of someone else’s iPhone.
The Rise Of Hux-Well
Noam Chomsky stopped just one rung shy of perfection with his illuminating book, Manufacturing Consent, about how commercial media work as extensions of government and corporate power to manufacture the consent of the masses. Likewise, Matt Taibbi’s title, Hate, Inc. is a near-perfect indictment of cable and digital news profit models that manufacture and prioritize enmity to the exclusion of the truth and the common good.
Datenleak enthüllt geheimen Kunstschatz von Oligarch Abramowitsch
Picasso, Monet, Freud und Schiele: Interne Daten geben Einblicke in die Sammlung von Abramowitsch und zeigen, wie die Werke wohl vor Sanktionen geschützt wurden
Mercury Works Offers Kodak IMAX Film to Photographers for First Time
Zach Horton from Mercury Works tells PetaPixel that Kodak is providing Mercury Works with the 65mm film, which is often not available to the public without substantial minimum orders, often in the realm of $15,000 orders for most of Kodak’s 65mm film stocks.
Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from News Corp, Fox
Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp on Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal. Murdoch will exit his roles at both companies in mid-November and will be appointed as chairman emeritus of both companies.
“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles,” Murdoch reportedly wrote in a staff memo Thursday. “Our companies are in robust health, as am I.”
NASA’s New Shortcut to Fusion Power
Physicists first suspected more than a century ago that the fusing of hydrogen into helium powers the sun. It took researchers many years to unravel the secrets by which lighter elements are smashed together into heavier ones inside stars, releasing energy in the process. And scientists and engineers have continued to study the sun’s fusion process in hopes of one day using nuclear fusion to generate heat or electricity. But the prospect of meeting our energy needs this way remains elusive.
OpenAI unveils DALL‑E 3, allows artists to opt out of training
Most cutting-edge, AI-powered image generation tools today take prompts — descriptions of images — and turn them into artwork in an array of styles, ranging from the photorealistic to fantastical. But crafting the right prompt can be a challenge, so much so that “prompt engineering” is becoming a bona fide profession.
Neuigkeiten im Fall Assange
In der letzten Zeit scheint etwas Bewegung in den Fall Julian Assange gekommen zu sein. Die australische Regierung hat sich zu guter Letzt eingeschaltet und übt öffentlichen Druck auf die zuständigen Behörden in den USA aus, die Anklage(n) fallen zu lassen. Eine Delegation, die über 60 australische Parlamentarier vertritt, befindet sich auf dem Weg in die USA. Es finden auch in Deutschland weiter Mahnwachen statt, auf denen die Freilassung von Julian Assange gefordert wird, so z.B. diese Woche am Donnerstag in Berlin und Bremen, am Freitag in Berlin und Paderborn und am Samstag in Bonn.
NASA report finds no evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial
NASA’s independent study team released its highly anticipated report on UFOs on Sept. 14, 2023.
In part to move beyond the stigma often attached to UFOs, where military pilots fear ridicule or job sanctions if they report them, UFOs are now characterized by the U.S. government as UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena.
Space Drugs Factory Denied Reentry to Earth
The U.S. Air Force denied a recent request from Varda Space Industries to land its capsule at a Utah training area, pushing back the startup’s plans to show off the fruits of its in-space manufacturing, TechCrunch has learned. The company’s application for a commercial space license was also denied by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, an FAA spokesperson said.
Ukraine places trust in White House to prevent Musk pulling plug on Starlink comms for the Armed Forces
Archaeologists discover world’s oldest wooden structure
Half a million years ago, earlier than was previously thought possible, humans were building structures made of wood, according to new research by a team from the University of Liverpool and Aberystwyth University.
The research, published in the journal Nature, reports on the excavation of well-preserved wood at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dating back at least 476,000 years and predating the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.
A Quarter In, A Quarter-Million Out: 10 Years of Emulation at Internet Archive
10 years ago, the Internet Archive made an announcement: It was possible for anyone with a reasonably powerful computer running a modern browser to have software emulated, running as it did back when it was fresh and new, with a single click. Now, a decade later, we have surpassed 250,000 pieces of software running at the Archive and it might be a great time to reflect on how different the landscape has become since then.
Von Vektorröhren zu Intel und Nvidia: 40 Jahre Supercomputer in Karlsruhe
Vor 40 Jahren, im September 1983, nahm an der damaligen Universität Karlsruhe ein Computer vom Typ Control Data Cyber 205 den Betrieb auf. Diese CDC Cyber 205 galt trotz ihrer aus heutiger Sicht bescheidenen Leistung von 200 bis 800 Megaflops (64 Bit, 2 Pipes) als einer der schnellsten Vektorrechner weltweit. Heutzutage ist ein Notebook-Prozessor flotter.
Skydio’s New X10 Drone Looks Amazing, But You Can’t Buy It
Drone manufacturer Skydio has announced the X10, a drone that features “the best sensors ever” in a compact drone, resists rain, and can fly in very low light. It has all the features that would make it stand up to DJI, but Skydio won’t sell it to you.
The Beatles Derek Taylor Never-Before-Heard Collection of Lost Beatles Recordings: Including the 1967 Kenwood Sessions and John Lennon Private Recordings
Microsoft erhält vom US-Militär weiteren Auftrag für Gefechtsbrillen
Nach anfänglichen Problemen mit Übelkeit und Kopfweh gibt es nun grünes Licht für eine weitere Entwicklungsphase der Mixed-Reality-Lösung für den Kampfeinsatz
US Army Orders More Microsoft AR Headsets
The U.S. Army has awarded Microsoft another contract for its Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) after positive tests of the latest prototype. The augmented reality goggles are designed for combat situations.
What Does “Far-Right” Even Mean Anymore?
“Far right” is basically anything that contests the Establishment narrative.
Anybody taking the legacy, corporate media at face value these days is likely under the impression that the entire world is being overrun with “far-right” extremists, after all, anything orthogonal to the current WEF-inspired world order seems to be, by definition, far right.
Stable Diffusion Deepfakes and Stylizations With a Single Image
A new academic/industry collaboration from China and Singapore proposes a novel method of injecting ‘custom’ people into latent diffusion-based text-to-image systems such as Stable Diffusion without the need for tedious and resource-intensive fine-tuning.
Phineas Fisher, Hacktivism, and Magic Tricks
It’s said that a good magician never reveals their secrets. Computer hacking is a particularly good type of magic trick, and for the most part, hackers don’t reveal their secrets either. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile this, because we read about hacking all the time — in newspapers, at conferences, in blog posts, on social media — but mostly we only think we’re reading about hacking. There’s a subtle difference between learning the mechanical hand movements needed to stack a deck of cards, and performing a magic trick in front of a crowd.
These conspiracy theory memes will make you want to believe
Upon purchasing Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk famously said that “almost every conspiracy theory that people had about [the social media network] turned out to be true.”
Johannes Kepler
Music of the Spheres
I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, … if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.
Kepler, Harmonices mundi, Bk V, trans. Aiton, Duncan and Field, p.391.
Byrne’s Euclid
The First Six Books of
The Elements of Euclid
With Coloured Diagrams and Symbols
A reproduction of Oliver Byrne’s celebrated work from 1847 plus interactive diagrams, cross references, and posters designed by Nicholas Rougeux
JWST reveals dusty secrets inside spiral galaxies
Matter within galaxies starts off diffuse, contracts to become dense, then forms stars, which in turn feeds back to affect the matter that surrounds it. Using four separate observatories, including ALMA and the Very Large Telescope on Earth, plus Hubble and JWST in space, the PHANGS collaboration aims to untangle this cosmic mystery. By looking at six galaxies through the eyes of both Hubble and JWST, a number of important cosmic secrets have been revealed at last. You’ll never see dust the same way again.
You can get $500 in credit when you preorder Samsung’s 57-inch Odyssey Neo G9 gaming monitor
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The Practical Power of Fusing Photons
Changing the color of light supercharges solar energy, 3D printing, and night vision
DEF CON 31 Main Stage Talks
DEFCONConference
96 videos 3,278 views Updated 6 days ago
October 14, 2023’s annular eclipse will have huge consequences 6 months later
Only twice a year are the physical conditions favorable for the Sun, Earth, and Moon to all align in space: creating conditions for either solar or lunar eclipses. On October 14, 2023, an annular solar eclipse is coming to Earth, as the new Moon will pass in front of the Sun’s disk as seen from our planet. Six months later, on April 8, 2024, the next eclipse — a total solar eclipse — will grace our skies. This is the science behind why this happens.
Cova Dones: a major Palaeolithic cave art site in eastern Iberia
This article presents details of the recent discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Cova Dones, Valencia. The preliminary results reveal a rich graphic assemblage with features that are unusual for Mediterranean Upper Palaeolithic art and were previously unknown for the Pleistocene in the eastern Iberian coast.
Geolocating a Traveler via OSINT techniques
So because a lot of people complimented me on the previous challenge,
I decided to do another one for you guys.
In today’s blog, we will dive into an OSINT investigation I’ve conducted to identify the exact geolocation of a traveler — as a part of an OSINT challenge he gave.
NFTs: Remember Them?
Non-fungible tokens are a social currency, born from “a desire to do more with blockchain than just cryptocurrency,” according to Steven Schuchart, principal analyst at GlobalData.
Eve Thomas writes at Verdict that the first NFT is widely thought to have been created in 2014 – ‘Quantum’ was created on the Namecoin blockchain by Kevin McCoy. It is a kaleidoscopic, pulsing octagon, which was auctioned off through Sotheby’s for $1.47 million.
The U.S. may have the largest known lithium deposit in the world
McDermitt Caldera, straddling the border of Oregon and Nevada, may hold 20 to 40 million metric tons of extractable lithium, which would make it the largest known lithium deposit in the world. The caldera was the site of a massive volcanic eruption roughly 16 million years ago, which spewed lithium-rich magma. If the U.S. takes advantage of the monumental lithium deposit held within McDermitt Caldera, it will own a key domestic supply for building out a clean energy economy while simultaneously gaining a strong position in the global market.
Happy 65th Birthday, Integrated Circuit
On 12 September 1958, Jack Kilby demonstrated the integrated circuit for the first time.
It was an unassuming object. A seeming hodge-podge of germanium, aluminium, gold wires and glue. A simple oscillator circuit with a single transistor, a capacitor and three resistors.
Intel has unveiled Thunderbolt 5, the latest iteration of its a standard aimed at enabling super-fast connectivity.
Did JWST plus ALMA just reveal how pulsars form?
In 1987, the closest supernova directly observed in nearly 400 years occurred. Will a pulsar arise from those ashes? JWST offers clues.
GA-ASI Poised to Begin LongShot Flight Testing Phase
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is poised to begin the flight-testing phase on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) LongShot program.
Humanity on the Brink: Genomic Research Unearths Startling Decline in Human Ancestor Populations
A new genomic model indicates a significant bottleneck in human ancestor populations between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, aligning with the era of the last common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern Homo sapiens. Further archaeological evidence is needed for validation.
Las Vegas struggles to get back online after cyber attack
Study: The Indo-European language family was born south of the Caucasus
Google outlines Outline SDK: Censorship, geo-block-beating tool to drop into apps
This Monterey Bay deep-sea creature is the ‘sister’ that took its own evolutionary path
We still don’t know what the world’s first animal looked like, but scientists say it arose roughly 700 million years ago from a soup of single-celled organisms floating in the ocean. The multi-celled creature thrived, multiplied and evolved, at some point splitting into two distinct species.
Zahlen, bitte! 1900 Zeichnungen und ein Zeichen: Die Höhle von Lascaux
1940 entdeckten Forscher in Lascaux Jahrtausende alte Höhlenmalereien. Forschungen zufolge steckt hinter den exakten Tier-Darstellungen wohl ein tieferer Sinn.
A cool or lovely or mind-bending astronomical image/video with a description so you can grok it
M51 is a nearby spiral galaxy that we happen to see face-on. As is the case with a lot of nearby galaxies, the exact distance isn’t well known; it’s roughly 20 – 30 million light-years away. Different methods yield different values for its distance, and it’s not far enough away, ironically, for the expansion of the Universe to be strong enough to use redshift reliably.
Veilid (pronounced Vay-Lid, from ‘Valid and Veiled Identification’)
Veilid allows anyone to build a distributed, private app. Veilid gives users the privacy to opt out of data collection and online tracking. Veilid is being built with user experience, privacy, and safety as our top priorities. It is open source and available to everyone to use and build upon.
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