An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 shakes northern California, causing injuries and damage to buildings.

Flickr user: stefanvds

The vast expanse between stars is not quite empty—it’s home to a diffuse spread of dust, aptly called the interstellar medium (ISM). Studies of the ISM have largely relied on inferences since direct observations of the dim, diffuse material are difficult. But now it seems we have a chance for an up-close look. According to a recent study, seven dust particles caught by the Stardust spacecraft likely came from the ISM. If true, the particles may be the first material captured from outside the Solar System, allowing scientists to study the ISM more directly.

Assuming that they did originate outside the Solar System, the particles can be used to address unanswered questions about the ISM. For one thing, scientists are still unsure whether most of the gas in the ISM is atomic, molecular, or ionic, or whether any of these phases is dominant at all. Scientists would also hope to address whether most particles there are crystalline or amorphous in structure and how much iron is present.

(There are materials called GEMS—glass with embedded metal and sulfides—that may also originate from outside the Solar System, but this is a contentious subject within the scientific community.)

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A malicious application could enable the theft of login credentials, sensitive images, and other data from Android smartphones by making use of a newly discovered information-leakage weakness in the operating system, according to a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of California at Riverside.

The attack, known as a user interface (UI) inference attack, makes use of the design of programming frameworks that share memory, allowing one application to gather information about the state of other applications. The information can be gathered without any special Android permissions or by grabbing screen pixels, according to a paper presented at the USENIX Security Conference on Friday.

The technique gives attackers the ability to infer the state of a targeted application, enabling more convincing attacks. If malware knows that the targeted user has just clicked on a "login" button, then it can throw up a dialog box asking for a username and password. If the malware can infer that a user is about to take a picture of a check or sensitive document, it can quickly take a second picture.

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Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, there are many faces that a majority would find beautiful, say, George Clooney’s or Audrey Hepburn’s.

Psychologists interested in mate selection and the visual processing of faces have long sought to understand why some faces are widely regarded as attractive. Researchers have identified several cues associated with facial beauty, including “averageness”—faces close to the population mean are judged attractive—and “sexual dimorphism”—faces that accentuate characteristics that distinguish males and females are desirable.

There has also been long-standing interest in facial symmetry. Most faces appear broadly symmetric. Close inspection, however, almost always reveals subtle deviations from perfect symmetry. It is common for one eye to be positioned slightly above the other, or further away from the mid-line, and features are rarely perfectly symmetric in shape. Having examined the relationship between degree of facial symmetry and perceived attractiveness, many studies have found that beautiful faces exhibit greater symmetry.

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Following last week's devastating floods, Surendra Phuyal reports from Bardia - one of Nepal's worst-affected districts.

The US government claims these are Ross Ulbricht's fraudulent identification cards. United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of NY

Federal prosecutors added three new charges to the criminal case against Ross Ulbricht, the alleged mastermind behind the Silk Road online drug marketplace.

According to a 17-page amended indictment filed late Thursday night, the government introduced one count of “narcotics trafficking,” of “distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet,” and of "conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents."

Previously, Ulbricht was indicted in February 2014 on four formal criminal offenses: narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.

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Two earthquakes measuring 5.3 and 5.1 have been detected beneath Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano

I must confess that the last time I used an iPhone was three or four years ago. While I’ve followed the hardware changes from generation to generation, I’ve never really been able to write about the iPhone or iOS in detail. While objective data is great to work with, a great deal of evaluation relies on subjective experience. To fix this gap in knowledge, I received an iPhone 5s. After a month, I’ve really come to have a much more nuanced view of how Android and iOS compare, along with how Apple’s iPhone compares to the rest of the smartphone market. To find out how it compares, read on for the full article.

Ukraine is launching its first 24-hour English language news station, aiming to promote the country's image abroad and counter what it claims is a Russian media campaign against it.

The National Zoo in Washington DC has been celebrating panda cub Bao Bao's first birthday.

Crowds came out to see the demolition of the 100-year-old Wellington Annex building in Albany, New York on Saturday.

More than 2,500 people march in New York's Staten Island to protest over the death of an unarmed black man following an incident with a white police officer.

Chinese authorities shut down the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival on its opening day.

During their 30 years of graphics celebration, today AMD announced a forthcoming addition to the Radeon R9 200 graphics card lineup. Launching on September 2nd will be the company’s new midrange enthusiast card, the Radeon R9 285.

The R9 285 will take up an interesting position in AMD’s lineup, being something of a refresh of a refresh that spans all the way back to Tahiti (Radeon 7970). Spec wise it ends up being extremely close on paper to the R9 280 (née 7950B) and it’s telling that the R9 280 is no longer being advertised by AMD as a current member of their R9 lineup. However with a newer GPU under the hood the R9 285 stands to eclipse the 280 in features, and with sufficient efficiency gains we hope to see it eclipse 280 in performance too.

AMD GPU Specification Comparison   AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon R9 280X AMD Radeon R9 285 AMD Radeon R9 280 Stream Processors 2560 2048 1792 1792 Texture Units 160 128 112 112 ROPs 64 32 32 32 Core Clock 662MHz 850MHz ? 827MHz Boost Clock 947MHz 1000MHz 918MHz 933MHz Memory Clock 5GHz GDDR5 6GHz GDDR5 5.5GHz GDDR5 5GHz GDDR5 Memory Bus Width 512-bit 384-bit 256-bit 384-bit VRAM 4GB 3GB 2GB 3GB FP64 1/8 1/4 ? 1/4 TrueAudio Y N Y N Typical Board Power 250W 250W 190W 250W Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm? TSMC 28nm Architecture GCN 1.1 GCN 1.0 GCN 1.1? GCN 1.0 GPU Hawaii Tahiti Tonga? Tahiti Launch Date 11/05/13 10/11/13 09/02/14 03/04/14 Launch Price $399 $299 $249 $279

Looking at the raw specifications, the R9 285 is a 1792 stream processor Graphics Core Next product. Paired with these SPs are 112 texture units (in the standard 16:1 ratio), and on the backend of the rendering pipeline is 32 ROPs. As is unfortunately consistent for AMD, they are not disclosing the product’s base clockspeed, but they have published the boost clockspeed of 918MHz.

Meanwhile feeding R9 285’s GPU falls to the card’s 2GB of GDDR5. This is on a 256-bit bus, and is clocked at 5.5GHz for a total memory bandwidth of 176GB/sec.

The R9 285 will have a rated typical board power (AMD’s analogue for TDP) of 190W. Notably this is only 10W higher than the Pitcairn based R9 270X despite the 40% larger SP count, or alternatively is 60W lower than the Tahiti based R9 280. While we don’t have a ton of details on the GPU at this time, taking into consideration the R9 270X comparison in particular, it’s clear that AMD has done some work on efficiency to squeeze out more compared to the GCN 1.0 based Pitcairn and Tahiti parts that R9 285 is going to be placed between.

The GPU itself is based on a newer version of AMD’s architecture, at least GCN 1.1 based on the presence of TrueAudio support. AMD has not formally announced the underlying GPU at this time, but given the timing and the specifications we believe it’s based on the new Tonga GPU, which was first announced for the FirePro W7100 earlier this month. In any case we don’t have much in the way of details on Tonga at this time, though we expect AMD to flesh out those details ahead of R9 285’s September 2nd launch. The biggest question right now – besides whether this is a “full” Tonga configuration – is whether Tonga is based on GCN 1.1 or something newer.

Based on some prior AMD statements and information gleaned from AMD’s CodeXL tool, there is reason to suspect (but not confirm) that this is a newer generation design. AMD for their part has done something very similar in the past, launching GCN 1.1 back on the Radeon HD 7790, but essentially hiding access to and details of GCN 1.1’s feature set until the launch of the Hawaii based R9 290X later in the year. Whether AMD is doing this again remains to be seen, but it is something we have seen them do before and don’t doubt they could do again. Though whether they will confirm it is another matter, as the company does not like to publicly differentiate between GCN revisions, which is why even the GCN 1.1 name is unofficial.

Sapphire's Radeon R9 285 Dual-X

Working for the moment off of the assumption that R9 285 is Tonga based and that it’s a GCN 1.1 part, we expect that performance should be a wash with the R9 280 while the R9 285 has an advantage on features. GCN 1.1 does have some mild performance optimizations to it that will give the R9 285 an edge, though it remains to be seen what the impact will be of the narrower memory bus. The fact that the Tahiti based R9 280X remains in AMD’s lineup indicates that if nothing else, it won’t match the performance of a full Tahiti configuration. Otherwise when it comes to features, being GCN 1.1 based means that the R9 285 will bring with it support for True Audio, support for bridgeless CrossFire thanks to the XDMA engine, GCN 1.1’s superior boost mechanism, and full support for AMD’s upcoming FreeSync implementation of DisplayPort Adaptive Sync (GCN 1.0 GPUs are not fully adaptive).

As for AMD, this offers the chance to refresh some of their oldest GCN 1.0 products with a more capable GPU while also cutting costs. While we don’t have die size numbers for Tonga, it is reasonable to expect that it is smaller due to the narrower memory bus along with the die size optimizations that we saw go into Hawaii last year, which means it will be cheaper to manufacture than Tahiti. This also brings down board costs, again due to the narrower memory bus and the lower TDP allows for simpler power delivery circuitry.

AMD will be positioning the R9 285 to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760, the company’s second-tier GK104 part. The GTX 760 performs roughly the same as the R9 280, so AMD need only not regress to maintain their competitiveness, though any performance lead they can squeeze out will be all for the better. The GTX 760 is frequently found at $239 – a hair under the R9 285’s launch price – so NVIDIA will hold a very slight edge on price assuming they don’t adjust prices further (the GTX 760 launched at $249 almost 14 months ago).

The R9 285 for its part will be launching at $249 on September 2nd. This will be a hard launch, and with AMD’s partners already posting product pages for their designs we suspect this will be a pure virtual (no reference card) launch. AMD also tells us that there will be both 2GB and 4GB cards; we’re going to have to see what the price premium is, as the suitability of 2GB enthusiast cards has been challenged by the presence of so much RAM on the current-generation consoles, which will have a knock-on effect on console-to-PC ports.

Though with the launch of the R9 285 and impending discontinuation of the R9 280, buyers looking at picking up an R9 285 in the near term will have to be on the looking for R9 280 on clearance sale. It’s already regularly found for $220 and lower, making it $30 cheaper than the R9 285 and possessing 3GB of VRAM to the R9 285’s 2GB. This will make the R9 280 a strong contender, at least until supplies run out.

Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison AMD Price NVIDIA Radeon R9 290 $400     $310 GeForce GTX 770 Radeon R9 280X $280   Radeon R9 285 $250     $240 GeForce GTX 760 Radeon R9 280 $220   Radeon R9 270X $180     $160 GeForce GTX 660

Finally, coinciding with the launch of the R9 285 will be a refresh of AMD’s Never Settle bundles. The details on this are still murky at this time, but AMD is launching what they call the Never Settle Space Edition bundle, which will see Alien Isolation and Star Citizen as part of a bundle for all R9 series cards. The lack of clarity is whether this replaces the existing Never Settle Forever bundle in this case, or if these games are being added to the Never Settle Forever lineup in some fashion. AMD has said that current Silver and Gold voucher holders will be able to get the Space Edition bundle with their vouchers, which lends credit to the idea that these are new games in the NSF program rather than a different program entirely.

Both Alien Isolation and Star Citizen are still-in-development games. Alien Isolation is a first person shooter and is expected in October of this year. Meanwhile the space sim Star Citizen does not yet have a release date, and as best as we can tell won’t actually be finished until late 2015 at the earliest. In which case the inclusion here is more about access to the ongoing beta, which is the first time we’ve seen beta access used as part of a bundle in this fashion.

Iceland issues a red alert to the aviation industry for the Bardarbunga volcano, meaning significant ash emissions are likely.

Iceland issues a red alert to the aviation industry for the Bardarbunga volcano, meaning significant ash emissions are likely.

The UN has called for action to prevent what it says may be a possible massacre in the northern Iraqi town of Amerli.

CarPlay, Apple’s in-car iOS integration product, has shown up in flashy demos at various trade shows this year, but it will take a while before we see it on the roads, according to Lucas Mearian at Computerworld. Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Honda are all believed to be pushing back plans to include CarPlay in some of their new models until 2015.

Apple’s influence on the automotive industry may have been unintentional at first, but the arrival of the iPod created an infotainment paradigm shift. iPod owners wanted their MP3 players to connect to their cars. Less than a decade later and even the cheapest rental car now comes with a plethora of USB ports and wireless options for piping one’s tunes through the car’s speakers. CarPlay is an evolution of this approach, moving the display from the mobile device to the car’s center stack, as well as integrating Siri into the infotainment system.

An Apple-created solution, (potentially) free of the kludginess that often comes with third-party systems may help sell cars to the 42 percent of American smartphone users who have iOS, but equally might do little to attract their Android-using counterparts, who outnumber them 5 to 4 domestically and by quite a considerable margin worldwide.

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Space Quest wasn’t the first computer game my dad bought for us to play. As a child of the mid-1980s with an IBM PC, I had a whole rapidly exploding industry of games spread out before me, and the first game he brought home from the store (the same store where I'd someday work!) was Oo-topos, the third of Polarware’s Comprehend series of illustrated text adventures. Space Quest came a bit later, after I was already a pro at thinking my way through convoluted parser-based puzzles.

But even if it wasn’t the first one, Space Quest was probably the most important game my dad brought home from the store, because Space Quest was my introduction to Sierra On-line. And Sierra was responsible for some of the most amazing experiences available to gamers in the '80s and '90s. When I think back on my kid years, the memories of growing up are intertwined with memories of Space Quest and Quest for Glory and, yes, Leisure Suit Larry.

I even remember the smell of the weird yellow invisible ink markers that Sierra packaged with their game hintbooks—oh yes, in those long-ago days, there was no World Wide Web to turn to for game hints. If you got stuck, you called the Sierra hint line (which, if memory serves, was a 900 number), or you went back to the local Babbage's and dropped $10 on an official Sierra hintbook. The answers were all printed in invisible ink, and you scribbled with their provided highlighter-like marker over the books' pages to reveal the answers. Later Sierra games used special blue ink and a red tinted gel filter strip to hide the answers, similar to the "tech stats" on the back of Generation 1 Transformers boxes.

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Stack Exchange

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites.

solidsnake asks:

I'm a beginner Web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired).

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