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posted by takyon on Friday October 21 2016, @08:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the breaking-the-net dept.

I just tried to access my Paypal account, and apparently it is down.

Companies including Twitter, Netflix, PayPal and eBay appeared to have their websites broken. And other services like PlayStation Network appeared to be hit by a major outage:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/netflix-twitter-internet-down-not-working-broken-paypal-ebay-facebook-instagram-a7374506.html

Update: Internet service appears to stablize after waves of cyber attacks


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-no-moon! dept.

China is scheduled to launch a space station into orbit in less than an hour. According to Ars Technica:

China will take its next step toward a large space station on Thursday, when it intends to launch the Tiangong-2 laboratory into orbit. The 8.5-ton, 10.4-meter-long facility will launch from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert, aboard a Long March 2-F rocket. The launch is set for 10:04am ET (14:04pm UTC) Thursday, and live video is available.

This space station, "Heavenly Palace 2," will be China's second after it launched the similarly sized Tiangong-1 laboratory in 2011. Following this week's launch, China plans to send two taikonauts to Tiangong-2 in four to six weeks aboard a Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. They will live there for about a month, testing out the lab's life support systems and performing scientific research. According to China's official news service, Xinhua, those experiments will involve areas of medicine, physics, and biology, as well as quantum key transmission, space atomic clock, and solar storm research.

China has plans within the next decade to send up an even larger space station. This, on top of plans to establish a moon colony, as well.

Also at Spaceflight Now.

[Update] The launch was a success — coverage at: phys.org and Nature.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday September 09 2016, @01:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the someone-set-us-up-the-bomb dept.

North Korea may have just conducted a fifth nuclear test:

A seismic event in North Korea on Friday morning measured by the U.S. Geological Survey with a magnitude of 5.3 appeared to be a nuclear test, South Korea's meteorological agency said. The seismic event was detected near North Korea's known nuclear test site, where it detonated its fourth nuclear device in January.

USGS: M5.3 Explosion - 15km ENE of Sungjibaegam, North Korea

Bloomberg also has coverage Shallow Earthquake Detected Near North Korea Nuclear Site which goes into some analysis on the political impact of the test.

Separately, Vanity Fair notes None of your snark, please:

The Independent reports that North Korean party officials held several mass meetings across the country in an attempt to warn citizens that criticizing the state via indirect, ironic statements such as "This is all America's fault" would be illegal and "unacceptable." And the consequences for disobeying are particularly unfunny: according to the nonprofit group Liberty in North Korea, any criticism of the government—including, apparently, the North Korean version of "Thanks, Obama"—"is enough to make you and your family 'disappear' from society and end up in a political prison camp."

Even common idioms are not safe from the sarcasm crackdown: Radio Free Asia reported that, during one of the meetings, the party banned the common expression "a fool who cannot see the outside world," which the regime believes constitutes criticism of Kim's refusal to attend international celebrations marking the end of World War II. (Even party officials within the hyper-authoritarian state were reportedly "shocked" by Kim's decision.)


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 01 2016, @01:55PM   Printer-friendly

The BBC are reporting an explosion at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where SpaceX company was readying a rocket for launch.

The cause of the blast is not clear and it is not known if anyone was hurt. Nasa said SpaceX was test-firing a rocket which was due to take a satellite into space this weekend.

Pictures from the scene show a huge plume of smoke rising above the Cape Canaveral complex.

The force of the blast shook buildings several miles away.


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the shook dept.

According to a New York Times story, earthquakes, including one estimated at 6.2 magnitude, have struck the towns of Amatrice and Accumoli in Italy's Rieti province and Pescara del Tronto in Ascoli Piceno province. In the latter town, two people were killed. The mayor of Accumoli Amatrice declared that "half the town no longer exists." The towns lie about 100 miles (160 km) from Rome.

takyon: BBC. USGS: M6.2 and M5.5.

Update: Death toll revised up to 120.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday August 03 2016, @02:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-many-kWh-is-that? dept.

From the Bitfinex.com homepage:

Investigating - Today we discovered a security breach that requires us to halt all trading on Bitfinex, as well as halt all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex.

We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.

The theft is being reported to—and we are co-operating with—law enforcement.

As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach. Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC. We are taking this necessary accounting step to normalize account balances with the objective of resuming operations. We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation. While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected.

The amount was posted in a reddit thread here: I can confirm that the loss from the hack stands at 119,756btc.

According to coindesk.com:

The price of bitcoin fell sharply today exacerbating an already ongoing decline as global market participants reacted to news that one of the largest digital currency exchanges had been hacked.

Earlier this afternoon, Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex halted trading after discovering a security breach, which included taking its website offline and pausing all withdrawals and deposits. Representatives from the exchange told CoinDesk engineers were seeking to uncover issues at press time, though the company had confirmed roughly 120,000 BTC (more than $60m) was lost or stolenvia social media.

In response, bitcoin prices fell to $560.16 by 19:30 UTC, $530 by 23:30 and $480 at press time, CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data reveals.

This price was roughly 20% lower than the day's opening of $607.37 and 27% below the high of $658.28 reached on Saturday, 30th July, when the digital currency began pushing lower.


Original Submission