JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2017
It was a remote camera. Many lightning photographers take multiple low-shutter high-res photos per second, with a setting that discards everything that doesn't exceed a specific gamma value. That's an unusually good shot even for that kind of setup, though.
Edit: also, "CG barrage" refers to a cloud-to-ground lightning barrage. The photographer is a storm chaser who left the camera in the path of a storm that was already known to produce hundreds of lightning strikes per minute.
the coolest thing I've ever seen through a telescope was the transit of venus in 2012
a bunch of local astronomers put up the solar protected telescopes for the public on a big hill and I convinced my roommates to come because well its a pretty cool thing!
I didn't look at all the dates but 2019 is the next transit for mercury and if you can view it some where it should be also cool as heck
cool
+1
Tossrocktoo weird to livetoo rare to dieRegistered Userregular
If you're into astronomical events, the first total solar eclipse to make landfall in the continental United States in nearly 40 years is happening this August. The path of totality stretches across the entire width of the states, from South Carolina to Oregon. Of course, you won't need a telescope for that!
+4
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Yeah out here in Wyoming we're expecting a big tourism surge on account of the eclipse and whatnot.
Also we're expecting like 20 fucking inches of snow over the next 48 hours and I am NOT AMUSED
If you're into astronomical events, the first total solar eclipse to make landfall in the continental United States in nearly 40 years is happening this August. The path of totality stretches across the entire width of the states, from South Carolina to Oregon. Of course, you won't need a telescope for that!
Though a telescope will give you more stuff to do during the partial phases before and after :P
There's another total eclipse in the US in 2024, too. I strongly recommend making it to one of these, because the next one in the US after 2024 isn't until 2046.
Spain is getting a brief total eclipse in 2026, but the next major one over most of Western Europe is 2081. You get some decent Annular eclipses in 2028 and 2030, though.
Australia gets a really good total eclipse in 2028.
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The fact that the Svalbard seed vault got flooded due to melting permafrost seems like the kind of thing a really, really bad writer would consider a clever metaphor.
The fact that the Svalbard seed vault got flooded due to melting permafrost seems like the kind of thing a really, really bad writer would consider a clever metaphor.
That really seems like someone should have planned for that.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The idea that dinosaurs had clear enough prescience to believe in a single baseball player millions of years in the future, and the logically implied detail with which they could predict the Chicxulub impactor, is harrowing.
Just seeing this after a couple of days ago a handcrafted painted engraved enamel tile sign like you'd hang in the living room that says "Because you believed in me, I believed in me." showed up at work that nobody knows where it came from, it kinda feels like somebody is throwing a new variable into the simulation.
+5
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
There's also that one dude who pitched a no hitter while on LSD and doesn't even remember it.
Yeah my father told me stories of how it was everywhere when he played
The various drugs people took and so much more
It's a wonder he went to Vet school after baseball but dropped out because he did not like how casual people were about putting down pets
well, assuming I didn't flunk that physics exam I just took, I walk for my Bachelor of Science on Saturday and fly to Brunei to study Borneo's herpetofauna on Sunday
Just seeing this after a couple of days ago a handcrafted painted engraved enamel tile sign like you'd hang in the living room that says "Because you believed in me, I believed in me." showed up at work that nobody knows where it came from, it kinda feels like somebody is throwing a new variable into the simulation.
I got to go on a parabolic flight last week through work and over 31 parabolas spent about 11 minutes in microgravity and about twice that in 1.8g. It was really really cool.
Like the coolest thing I've ever done cool.
+43
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
It's like an exercise in radical Cartesian reductionism, where you build a universal worldview starting from the most basic principles with the most compelling evidence. And instead of starting with "I think, therefore I am," dude landed on "Okay, so we know there's dinosaurs, right?"
Maybe "they" isn't "dinosaurs", but instead people, "somewhere"
Basically he says if he can look at fossils and find the trust that dinosaurs existed, people can also look at him and trust him to achieve something in baseball
I got to go on a parabolic flight last week through work and over 31 parabolas spent about 11 minutes in microgravity and about twice that in 1.8g. It was really really cool.
Like the coolest thing I've ever done cool.
Oh man that's fucking awesome. This is definitely high up on my bucket list. A little way under actually being in orbit, but there's not much more I (feasibly) want to do more than that.
At some point in the past, the NSA discovered a security bug in Windows XP. Rather than inform Microsoft, they build a piece of software called an "exploit", that is built to utilize a bug in software, to use this bug for their own clandestine work. In summer of 2016 a group of hackers, possibly connected to the Russian government, leaked NSA tools and their lists of vulnerabilities that they used. The exploit that the NSA had created, EternalBlue, was dumped in another round of leaks by The Shadow Brokers in April 2017, and was used to create the ransomware "WannaCry".
WannaCry utilizes a vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol on Windows. The SMB protocol is a network file sharing protocol that would send and receive packets from a server. This is normally used to access files on the server, send files to print queue, and "keep alive" messages with the server. The way WannaCry works, it finds a vulnerable SMB port and sends special packets to the computer via the SMB protocol that allow them to execute anything they want (known as "arbitrary code execution"). WannaCry, once on a computer, would check a URL, and if the URL didn't come back with a live site, it would begin encrypting the files on the computer. While doing that it would check for other vulnerable SMB ports, and spread from there. In this way it infected over 200,000 computers in 150 countries in 2 days. After it encrypted the files, it would instruct the user to send $300 via bitcoin to an account within 3 days or $600 in bitcoin in 7 days.
Now, this wasn't the only method of attack. An NSA tool was also leaked that allowed people to install backdoors on computers, called Double Pulsar. Within a week of it's release, it has infected over 200,000 computers (This seems to be where everyone just stops counting). This was also used to spread WannaCry.
The SMB bug was disclosed to Microsoft at some point and in March 2017, a month before the NSA tool's leak and two months before WannaCry, they released security updates, including for OS that are no longer supported by Microsoft. However, it still managed to infect many computers.
Now, remember that URL that WannaCry checks? Well an anonymous security researcher was curious as well, and when he registered the URL, it halted the spread of WannaCry everywhere.
It's suspected that the URL was put in place to potentially foil security researchers. When examining viruses, malware, or ransomware, researchers will place it in a quarantined system that's full encapsulated to prevent the spread outside of the system or the small network. That quarantined system will often return a positive connection to any URL request. So this way, it would prevent the researcher from examining the spread of WannaCry. However this is not universally the case with quarantined systems and not every environment setup for the test will automatically return a positive for requests. This is why it's understandable but amateur for the programmers of WannaCry to install a kill switch.
Some hackers tried to take down the kill switch URL via the Mirai Botnet's brute force attacks, but the researcher who registered it has cached it, which lets it handle much more traffic.
Additionally the ransomware has no way of decrypting the files itself, and there's no automatic method of decryption after you've paid. What a lot of people are finding is that they paid and then nothing happened. They never got their files back. Additionally there's been reports of some new types of WannaCry that don't have the killswitch, and some worse malware that tries to hide itself as WannaCry.
My advice is to update your windows devices!
+10
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Eichstädt's work is incredible; most of the Juno images people have been showing this past week are from him.
The Juno team doesn't actually have people or resources for processing the raw images from the probe, so what they're doing is just hurling them directly at the public and saying "hey, have fun with this." Stuff like that, or the high res images where you can make out shadows and details in the clouds, are the result.
Juno's next pass in July is going over the Great Red Spot, so it'll be getting that kind of treatment. I think the correct response is "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
Between that, the JWST, and the ubertelescope monster starting construction in Chile this week, it's a fun time to be a space dork.
(On which note, currently shopping for telescopes. Wheeeeeeeeeowmywalletwheeeeee!)
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
That would make for a really tense Apollo movie. "Neil, get back here! The thrusters are jammed and this whole place is going to be the sun in two hours!
+13
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hey wait a second
Why were they called the Apollo missions and not like, the Diana missions?
+17
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I've wondered for years, how do photographers do that?
Be aiming at the right place, at the right time, and take the picture in the split second the lightning flashes?
If there's something that helps them, shouldn't that be used to help avoid lightning?
you can take decent pictures of lightning with a pretty basic camera, as long as it's nighttime
manual cameras will usually have a shutter speed option that is just "shutter stays open as long as you hold down the button"
so you find a storm, wait for thunder, point in the direction you think it's coming from, then hold down the shutter
works best with a tripod or other method of stabilization
0
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Posts
Edit: also, "CG barrage" refers to a cloud-to-ground lightning barrage. The photographer is a storm chaser who left the camera in the path of a storm that was already known to produce hundreds of lightning strikes per minute.
Thor's trying to draw his hammer from the earth again.
stay safe
Will do! I think it's mostly hail and lightning by this point.
Edit:
Bring it on, motherfucker!
Also, this should have been a rainbow with a lightning bolt through it, but my phone's shutter speed is for shit.
a bunch of local astronomers put up the solar protected telescopes for the public on a big hill and I convinced my roommates to come because well its a pretty cool thing!
I didn't look at all the dates but 2019 is the next transit for mercury and if you can view it some where it should be also cool as heck
cool
Also we're expecting like 20 fucking inches of snow over the next 48 hours and I am NOT AMUSED
As I would joke around with my brother for years
What will you do when the mammoth appear?
Adopt one, ride it around. Ima name him Harry.
Though a telescope will give you more stuff to do during the partial phases before and after :P
There's another total eclipse in the US in 2024, too. I strongly recommend making it to one of these, because the next one in the US after 2024 isn't until 2046.
Spain is getting a brief total eclipse in 2026, but the next major one over most of Western Europe is 2081. You get some decent Annular eclipses in 2028 and 2030, though.
Australia gets a really good total eclipse in 2028.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/
That really seems like someone should have planned for that.
My mind
I feel like this is a "What is delicious?" Scenario.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Hence: Yogi Berra
Just seeing this after a couple of days ago a handcrafted painted engraved enamel tile sign like you'd hang in the living room that says "Because you believed in me, I believed in me." showed up at work that nobody knows where it came from, it kinda feels like somebody is throwing a new variable into the simulation.
Yeah my father told me stories of how it was everywhere when he played
The various drugs people took and so much more
It's a wonder he went to Vet school after baseball but dropped out because he did not like how casual people were about putting down pets
Dude that is really damn awesome.
Now I know what I'm doing all summer long...
Like the coolest thing I've ever done cool.
Basically he says if he can look at fossils and find the trust that dinosaurs existed, people can also look at him and trust him to achieve something in baseball
Oh man that's fucking awesome. This is definitely high up on my bucket list. A little way under actually being in orbit, but there's not much more I (feasibly) want to do more than that.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
At some point in the past, the NSA discovered a security bug in Windows XP. Rather than inform Microsoft, they build a piece of software called an "exploit", that is built to utilize a bug in software, to use this bug for their own clandestine work. In summer of 2016 a group of hackers, possibly connected to the Russian government, leaked NSA tools and their lists of vulnerabilities that they used. The exploit that the NSA had created, EternalBlue, was dumped in another round of leaks by The Shadow Brokers in April 2017, and was used to create the ransomware "WannaCry".
WannaCry utilizes a vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol on Windows. The SMB protocol is a network file sharing protocol that would send and receive packets from a server. This is normally used to access files on the server, send files to print queue, and "keep alive" messages with the server. The way WannaCry works, it finds a vulnerable SMB port and sends special packets to the computer via the SMB protocol that allow them to execute anything they want (known as "arbitrary code execution"). WannaCry, once on a computer, would check a URL, and if the URL didn't come back with a live site, it would begin encrypting the files on the computer. While doing that it would check for other vulnerable SMB ports, and spread from there. In this way it infected over 200,000 computers in 150 countries in 2 days. After it encrypted the files, it would instruct the user to send $300 via bitcoin to an account within 3 days or $600 in bitcoin in 7 days.
Now, this wasn't the only method of attack. An NSA tool was also leaked that allowed people to install backdoors on computers, called Double Pulsar. Within a week of it's release, it has infected over 200,000 computers (This seems to be where everyone just stops counting). This was also used to spread WannaCry.
The SMB bug was disclosed to Microsoft at some point and in March 2017, a month before the NSA tool's leak and two months before WannaCry, they released security updates, including for OS that are no longer supported by Microsoft. However, it still managed to infect many computers.
Now, remember that URL that WannaCry checks? Well an anonymous security researcher was curious as well, and when he registered the URL, it halted the spread of WannaCry everywhere.
It's suspected that the URL was put in place to potentially foil security researchers. When examining viruses, malware, or ransomware, researchers will place it in a quarantined system that's full encapsulated to prevent the spread outside of the system or the small network. That quarantined system will often return a positive connection to any URL request. So this way, it would prevent the researcher from examining the spread of WannaCry. However this is not universally the case with quarantined systems and not every environment setup for the test will automatically return a positive for requests. This is why it's understandable but amateur for the programmers of WannaCry to install a kill switch.
Some hackers tried to take down the kill switch URL via the Mirai Botnet's brute force attacks, but the researcher who registered it has cached it, which lets it handle much more traffic.
Additionally the ransomware has no way of decrypting the files itself, and there's no automatic method of decryption after you've paid. What a lot of people are finding is that they paid and then nothing happened. They never got their files back. Additionally there's been reports of some new types of WannaCry that don't have the killswitch, and some worse malware that tries to hide itself as WannaCry.
My advice is to update your windows devices!
The Juno team doesn't actually have people or resources for processing the raw images from the probe, so what they're doing is just hurling them directly at the public and saying "hey, have fun with this." Stuff like that, or the high res images where you can make out shadows and details in the clouds, are the result.
Juno's next pass in July is going over the Great Red Spot, so it'll be getting that kind of treatment. I think the correct response is "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
Between that, the JWST, and the ubertelescope monster starting construction in Chile this week, it's a fun time to be a space dork.
(On which note, currently shopping for telescopes. Wheeeeeeeeeowmywalletwheeeeee!)
Why were they called the Apollo missions and not like, the Diana missions?
you can take decent pictures of lightning with a pretty basic camera, as long as it's nighttime
manual cameras will usually have a shutter speed option that is just "shutter stays open as long as you hold down the button"
so you find a storm, wait for thunder, point in the direction you think it's coming from, then hold down the shutter
works best with a tripod or other method of stabilization
That's...a great point, and I can't seem to find a historical answer besides "it seemed kind of metal."