Interstellar-like black hole devours star in rare cosmic collision

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Sep 30, 2019 3:07 AM CDT

Firstly, rest-in-peace star ASASSN-19bt. Now that the sentiments are over, NASA has recently caught a cosmic crime in the act as a black hole some 375 million light-years away has eaten a fellow star.

Interstellar-like black hole devours star in rare cosmic collision

The star was known as ASASSN-19bt and was observed by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short. The satellite provided scientists and researchers a viewing at what happens when a star is torn apart by a black holes extreme gravitational pull. This cosmic level collision is labelled as a tidal disruption event or TDE, which is when a black hole begins the process of tearing the gas from the star before it eventually forms into an accretion disk.

Astronomer Thomas Holoien said "Only a handful of TDEs have been discovered before they reached peak brightness, and this one was found just a few days after it started to brighten." He continued and said "This makes ASASSN-19bt the new poster child for TDE research. Having so much data about ASASSN-19bt will allow us to improve our understanding of the physics at work when a star is unlucky enough to meet a black hole."

Continue reading: Interstellar-like black hole devours star in rare cosmic collision (full post)

Asteroid mining to make Earth rich, 800 billion liters of space water

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Sep 30, 2019 2:03 AM CDT

A new study has claimed that there is about 1,000 water-rich or "hydrated" asteroids that are prime for harvesting, and mining them would be easier than landing back on the moons surface and harvesting the lunar poles.

Asteroid mining to make Earth rich, 800 billion liters of space water

Andrew Rivkin, an asteroid researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Research Laboratory in Maryland and lead author on the paper said that "Most of the hydrated material in the near-Earth population is contained in the largest few hydrated objects". Rivkin also suggested that if we were to land on these asteroids, and somehow established a connection line back to Earth massive profits could be made.

It is estimated that out of the 1,000 water-rich asteroids that more than 25 of them are large enough to provide more than a significant amount of water. Space.com says that the indicated asteroids contain enough water to fill 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools and is much more water than both the Lunar poles. If there was a way to successfully establish refueling stations on these orbiting asteroids, human space exploration could unlock a 'level-up' moment as there would be no need to send fuel from Earth anymore.

Continue reading: Asteroid mining to make Earth rich, 800 billion liters of space water (full post)

Reports link online child sex abuse directly to Facebook Messenger

Jak Connor | Internet & Websites | Sep 30, 2019 1:03 AM CDT

A new report out of The New York Times has connected the use of Facebook Messenger to the reports of child sex abuse online.

Reports link online child sex abuse directly to Facebook Messenger

According to "people familiar with the reports" out of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sex abuse online, an immense 12 million of those source back to Facebook Messenger. Back in March, Facebook announced its new initiative to make their platform more secure, and while this effort would benefit majority of the user-base, throughout its execution nefarious users would also become more secure.

Encrypting messengers on their own platform would make it much more difficult for the company to track abusers and sexual predators, which would greatly influence the fact that Facebook is the majority holder when it comes to reports on their platform. Zuckerberg said back in March, "Encryption is a powerful tool for privacy, but that includes the privacy of people doing bad things. When billions of people use a service to connect, some of them are going to misuse it for truly terrible things like child exploitation, terrorism, and extortion."

Continue reading: Reports link online child sex abuse directly to Facebook Messenger (full post)

Cuphead sells 5 million copies, devs celebrate with 20% discount

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2019 6:32 PM CDT

Cuphead sure is successful for a two year-old.

Cuphead sells 5 million copies, devs celebrate with 20% discount

Studio MDHR's indie darling Cuphead is now two years old, and in that time the game has managed to sell over 5 million copies on Xbox, Switch, and PC. Last we checked the game was at 4 million copies, meaning Cuphead managed to move 1 million units in two months' time, a feat accomplished thanks to the Nintendo Switch port.

To celebrate the milestone, the devs have planned five days of festivities including giveaways, a 20% discount on the game, and more goodies.

Continue reading: Cuphead sells 5 million copies, devs celebrate with 20% discount (full post)

The Last of Us Part II will play great on base PS4 consoles

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2019 5:41 PM CDT

Naughty Dog assures their upcoming post-apocalyptic sequel will play great even on older PS4 consoles.

The Last of Us Part II will play great on base PS4 consoles

Now that consoles are family ecosystems rather than generations, it's imperative every game runs great on each respective system--especially first-party games like The Last of Us Part II. This cross-system optimization becomes more challenging as games become more ambitious, GPU- and CPU-intensive, and bigger in size. Games today typically have performance trade-offs with older hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One systems thanks to the marked hardware disparity. Although The Last of Us Part II is the biggest game Naughty Dog has ever made, and will obviously look best on a PS4 Pro, the team still plans to make it run smoothly on the 2013 launch PS4s.

"Our target platform is the PS4, the base. You want to have that balance, but there's still a lot of optimization now to get done. What you saw here isn't quite our final frame rate and final screen resolution, stuff like that," NaughtyDog lead game designer Emilia Schatz told USgamer.

Continue reading: The Last of Us Part II will play great on base PS4 consoles (full post)

BoJack Horseman ends in 2020 with season six

Derek Strickland | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Sep 29, 2019 4:56 PM CDT

Netflix will say goodbye to BoJack Horseman in 2020, ending an era of feels, amazing puns, and originality.

BoJack Horseman ends in 2020 with season six

BoJack Horseman will end in 2020 with its sixth season, Netflix recently confirmed. The last season will be split up in two parts, Netflix says: "It's safe to say Horsin' Around won't be BoJack Horseman's only lasting legacy. The final two-part season airs October 25 and January 31."

The move is somewhat surprising given the show's critical acclaim. BoJack Horseman enjoyed a strong five-year run that saw showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg tackled deep, existential issues like depression, anxiety, mid-life crises, and impostor syndrome, all wrapped in an anthropomorphic world that's all-too-relateable.

Continue reading: BoJack Horseman ends in 2020 with season six (full post)

Respawn's new Medal of Honor VR shooter has online multiplayer

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2019 11:53 AM CDT

Medal of Honor is getting resurrected as a VR shooter, and it'll have an online multiplayer mode.

Respawn's new Medal of Honor VR shooter has online multiplayer

Respawn's new Oculus-exclusive VR project is actually a WWII-based Medal of Honor FPS, not Titanfall 3. The game is focusing strongly on immersion and interactivity with a historically-accurate singleplayer campaign, complete with multiple theaters of war across Europe. It's also quite funky and hilarious, too, letting gamers embrace the jank of VR by doing wacky things like catching grenades, climbing walls and shooting enemies, and other creative experimental combos.

EA's penchant for online engagement will drive its way into the new Medal of Honor VR game, too. We'll see a multiplayer mode tacked on, likely with some sort of monetization or maybe expansion content. From what we've seen of the gameplay, multiplayer actually sounds like tons of fun. There should be opportunities for crazy action across the board.

Continue reading: Respawn's new Medal of Honor VR shooter has online multiplayer (full post)

This four-hour Destiny lore recap video is the best thing ever

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2019 5:23 AM CDT

YouTuber My Name is Byf condenses years of lore into a four-hour video to prime gamers for Shadowkeep.

This four-hour Destiny lore recap video is the best thing ever

Bungie's lore mastery sets them apart in the industry. Whether it be Halo's wide heroic scope to Destiny's more macabre and bizarre sci-fi overtones, the studio is well-known for their universe-building. Destiny's lore in particular is extremely deep and rich, oozing with flavor at every turn and captivating players. There's a mystique to Bungie lore and matched with some of the best art design in gaming, this sense of mystery propels gamers forward even amidst turbulent grinds.

But Destiny's grown into a leviathan. It's a hydra that keeps sprouting heads. With every expansion it gets bigger and harder to understand. There's floating black pyramids, worm gods, archaic constructs powered by milk, terrifying hive monstrosities, and so much more that make the classic Light vs Dark story quite complex. How will new players ever understand what's going on?

Continue reading: This four-hour Destiny lore recap video is the best thing ever (full post)

SpaceX compares its Starship MK1 to the Millennium Falcon

Elon Musk must be sipping champagne by now, with SpaceX hitting a new milestone in its Starship and Super Heavy rockets with the first fully-assembled Starship MK1 shown off.

SpaceX compares its Starship MK1 to the Millennium Falcon

This is the Starship MK1 in all of its engineering glory, the first prototype that has been shown off by SpaceX as part of its continued foray into interplanetary transportation systems. Starship MK1 uses SpaceX's own Super Heavy rocket system that will see payloads delivered to both the Moon, and in future missions, to Mars.

Where the new Starship takes things to the next level is that it uses an in-space re-filling by propellant -- with the Starship docking with tanker Starship vessels to re-fuel before taking off for their larger destination -- Mars, and other planets in and around our solar system. The additional fuel is required for the large amount of supplies and passengers, of which we're talking supplies to build bases on other planets (like Mars) and up to 100 passengers.

Continue reading: SpaceX compares its Starship MK1 to the Millennium Falcon (full post)

Tesla could soon have 1 MILLION MILE battery in its cars

Anthony Garreffa | Electric Vehicles & Cars | Sep 29, 2019 3:57 AM CDT

As it stands, the Tesla EVs of today have power cells with lifespans somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 miles -- but now we could be looking at upwards of 1 million miles thanks to new research.

Tesla could soon have 1 MILLION MILE battery in its cars

This is what Elon Musk and Jeff Dahn are talking about in a new paper in the Journey of The Electrochemical Society (JES) which teases we might be living in a world with Tesla EVs that have 1 million mile batteries.

Tesla's battery research arm is partnered with Dahn and his research team, with Dahn explaining: "Cells of this type should be able to power an electric vehicle for over one million miles and last at least two decades in grid energy storage".

Continue reading: Tesla could soon have 1 MILLION MILE battery in its cars (full post)