Black holes spinning faster and faster

Many giant black holes in the centre of galaxies are spinning faster than at any time in the history of the universe, and may have been set in motion comparatively recently, new research shows.

Dr Alejo Martinez-Sansigre of the University of Portsmouth and Professor Steve Rawlings of the University of Oxford used radio, optical and X-ray data to test their theoretical models of spinning black holes, and found the models stood up well for supermassive black holes with twin jets.

Using the radio observations, the two astronomers were able to sample the population of black holes, deducing the spread of the power of the twin jets. By estimating how the black holes acquire material, they could then work out how quickly they might be spinning.

The observations also give information on how the spins of supermassive black holes have evolved. In the distant past, say the researchers, practically all spun very slowly, whereas nowadays some have very high spins. So on average, they're spinning faster than ever before.

It's the first time that the evolution of the spin of the supermassive black holes has been closely described, and suggests that those that grow by swallowing matter will barely spin, while those that merge with other black holes will be left spinning rapidly.

"The spin of black holes can tell you a lot about how they formed. Our results suggest that in recent times a large fraction of the most massive black holes have somehow spun up," says Dr Martinez-Sansigre.

"A likely explanation is that they have merged with other black holes of similar mass, which is a truly spectacular event, and the end product of this merger is a faster -spinning black hole."

Later this decade, the team hopes to test the theory that these supermassive black holes have been set spinning relatively recently.

"With so many collisions, we expect there to be a cosmic background of gravitational waves, something that will change the timing of the pulses of radio waves that we detect from the remnants of massive stars known as pulsars," says Professor Rawlings.

"If we are right, this timing change should be picked up by the Square Kilometre Array, the giant radio observatory due to start operating in 2019."

Mobile gaming market booming thanks to iPhone & Facebook

Online gaming is bigger than ever thanks to Facebook and mobile devices like Apple's iPhone.

To be sure, both have opened up gaming opportunities to a huge amount of new users, helping to expand the industry exponentially. Although the huge user base is quite positive for gaming companies, it’s important to remember the competition is fierce.

"It's [really] an ugly scene," Alexandre de Rochefort, chief financial officer of mobile video game specialist Gameloft told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris.

"The smartphone market is not a goldmine for developers. It's a bit like playing the lottery."

After reminding hopeful game developers that the industry is no cakewalk, executives noted developing and distributing games has become easier thanks to companies like Amazon who rent out computing space to test games for the likes of Facebook and the App Store.

UK-based media firm Screen Digest states the mobile gaming market has grown from $2.2 billion in 2007 to $3.7 billion in 2010, with estimates putting growth at around a staggering $7.8 billion by 2014.

"Since Apple launched its App Store, the mobile gaming market has undergone a transformation," explained Screen Digest analyst Jack Kent.

"Before, less than 5 percent were paying to access mobile games, in Europe at least ... since then consumers are a lot more willing to pay for content and particularly games."

As expected, changes in the industry have sparked deals amongst big gaming corporations like Electronic Arts (EA) and privately held smaller companies such as Zynga of Farmville fame.

Screen Digest reported 26 mobile gaming-related acquisitions within the last year, up from 12 in 2009 and 11 from the first quarter of this year. With $200 million in venture capital funds floating around last quarter alone, mobile gaming certainly has a hot niche in the market.

"We used to stay away from games," Neil Rimer, Index co-founder and partner, told the summit. "It was really like the movie industry where you had to come up with this basic idea for a game and then spend 5 to 15 million euros ($7 to $21 million) and two years building the thing," he said.

"Sometimes it would work. Many times it would bomb and you were out 15 million bucks."

Although it all sounds like rainbows and unicorns for app developers, it’s important to keep in mind that there are certain barriers to entry that make success in the mobile gaming market difficult. Even Rovio Mobile, maker of the uber-popular Angry Birds game, developed 51 titles before hitting the jackpot with Angry Birds.

The swords and mermaids of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The fourth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise had high expectations set for it, and it met most of them.

This film was classic Jack Sparrow, as developed through the first three movies by the expert Dep, in a story which was not written for him, and it shows.

On Stranger Tides is a novel about pirates of the Caribbean searching for the Fountain of Youth, surely, but Jack Sparrow was not a character in that novel.

Disney wanted to do another supernatural pirates film, and so inserted their own supernatural pirate into the existing story.

Most of the time it works, but occasionally you can tell that this tale was not really meant for our Jack. I guess when you base a franchise of films on an amusement park ride, things like this are bound to happen.

Even ignoring the historical inaccuracies - which is easy, as we’ve been doing it since we met Jack years ago, the mythology of this entry is a bit strained and over-exposed.

Usually the advantage to sequels is that the characters don’t really need to explain anything. The audience already understands how the world and plot work through the developments of the story so far.

Here however, the characters have to take the time to explain because the tale is so far divergent from the preceding trilogy. It’s not all bad, however, as they often managed to artfully mix the exposition in with fight scenes and chases, so it’s almost like a Police Squad gag in which it’s entirely possible to completely ignore the dialog because it feels almost extraneous to the scene.

The only really deep characters, ironically, are a pair of secondary characters, a cleric and a mermaid, who fall for one another, and finish the tale somewhat mysteriously. I can only guess - since I didn’t read it - that their touching story played a larger role in the novel.

Of course, we don’t go to see a Pirates film for the deep back-story, we go for the swashbuckling. The action scenes are well crafted. We even get to see some exciting day-light swashbuckling, as Jack escapes from the king’s palace, and moves through the streets leaping onto the tops of coaches.

The sword-fighting is well choreographed and clearly understood, relying on humor as much as action to entertain. Especially good is the melee between Dep and Cruz’s characters. They match strike for strike, and without the fog of most of the rest of the film the action is pointed.

The visuals, scenery and CGI are matching in style with the previous three films. As I mentioned, there is lots of fog. Particularly impressive was the ruined lighthouse the characters found when they left the ships behind and headed inland to locate the fountain. The fantastic elements were a bit muted compared to the third film, which was nearly incomprehensible, actually reminding me more of the first Pirates film in that way.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is just as fun as you’d expect it to be, and about as deep.

The film is in theaters starting this weekend.

Kaspersky wants Interpol for the web

The world needs an Internet Interpol, as well as enforceable online identities and an “Internet passport”, Eugene Kaspersky has told the AusCERT 2011 conference this week.

The founder of Kaspersky Labs said his “Interpol” needed to be a global, borderless cybercrime unit that would exist with the support cooperation of international law enforcement agencies.

Kaspersky told AusCERT conference in Queensland that the “embedded” nature of cybercrime in the online world could be compared to the omnipresence of sharks in Australia waters.

The "digital world is under attack," he said. Although the idea has been discussed by government authorities and the security industry have been discussed for more than a decade, nothing’s been done.

He said another reason cybercrime has risen is that “some cybercriminals from non English-speaking countries don’t release malware in their own country because they don’t want police to connect them to it," something that an international agency could help monitor.

"Sooner or later we will have [an Internet Interpol],” Kaspersky said. “I am also talking about Internet passports and having an online ID. Some countries are introducing this idea, so maybe in 15 years we will all have it,” he forecast.

The security software millionaire said an international online identification system could help in the fight against identity theft and the illicit theft of passport documents online.

He also believes the rise of cloud computing demands industry standards for cloud security.

Pirate Party raided two days before elections

German police have seized a number of servers belonging to the Pirate Party just two days before (Bremen) state elections.

The equipment was confiscated after French authorities demanded German law enforcement officials investigate the collaborative Piratepad platform.




The service was apparently exploited to publish an SSH key, which was then used to attack a server belonging to the French energy group EDF.

"[Although] the investigations are not directed against the Pirate Party, the scope and damage is enormous. Two days before state elections in Bremen, our homepage and much of our communication infrastructure [has been] paralyzed," German Pirate Party chairman Sebastian Nerz confirmed in an official statement.



"The [scope] of the action and [its timing] is an absolute scandal. [We] will examine [if the investigation and seizure] breached § 21 of the Basic Law."

Nerz also emphasized that the Pirate Party opposed ongoing retaliatory attacks against the Federal Criminal Police Office (bka.de) and the police (polizei.de). 



"We criticize and condemn the totally inappropriate action by the investigating authorities, but the events are not a reason to attack other websites - which we distance ourselves from."

It should be noted the Pirate Party is the sixth largest in Germany.

Calculate Linux 11.6 Beta 1

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced that the first beta of Calculate 11.6, a Gentoo-based distribution for desktops and servers, is out and ready for testing: "On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the project the first beta of Calculate Linux 11.6 is released. All editions of the distribution are available for download: Calculate Linux Desktop with desktop KDE (CLD), GNOME (CLDG) and XFCE (CLDX), Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS), Calculate Directory Server (CDS) and Calculate Scratch Server (CSS). Major changes: using hybrid ISO images with support for recording to CD and USB Flash drives; udev has been integrated into initramfs live CD in order to better support devices and boot speed; added screen splash auto-resolution; added video driver choice menu...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: cld-20110519-i686.iso (1,647MB, MD5, torrent), cldg-20110519-i686.iso (1,385MB, MD5, torrent), cld-20110519-x86_64.iso (1,824MB, MD5, torrent), cldg-20110519-x86_64.iso (1,560MB, MD5, torrent).