Darendukes

Enlarge / The first image of the environment around a black hole. As a matter of fact, it's not all dark. (credit: National Science Foundation)

Two years ago, telescopes around the world turned their attention to two supermassive black holes. Now, after a massive computational effort, their data has been combined in a way that allowed them to function as a single, Earth-sized telescope. The results are an unprecedented glimpse of the environment around supermassive black holes, and they confirm that relativity still works under the most extreme gravitational forces.

The environment near the black hole appears to change on very short time scales, though we're not sure about the significance of this. White circles reflect the resolving power of the Event Horizon Telescope. (credit: Astrophysical Journal)

The black hole in that's the subject of today's announcement is a supermassive one at the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light years away. M87 is an active galaxy where the black hole is feeding on matter and ejecting jets of material. The image itself, however, is made from photons that were temporarily trapped in orbit around the black hole. Here, at the edge of the event horizon, the intense gravity causes space itself to swirl around the black hole, and causes nearby matter to move at approximately the speed of light. The eventual escape of these photons causes a bright ring to appear around the black hole, with the details of the ring reflecting the physics of the object.

A monster

At a press conference this morning, Avery Broderick of the Perimeter Institute described what the images tell us. One key finding is that the object is truly a black hole, at least as we've understood black holes using relativity. It does not have any visible surface, and the "shadow" of light it creates is circular within the limits of our observations. We can also tell that it spins clockwise. All of the properties we can infer from these images are consistent with relativity. "I was a little stunned that it matched the predictions we made so well," said Broderick.

(credit: Aurich x Getty)

Following an initial announcement last October, Sony has announced that PSN players will finally be able to change their online handles starting sometime Wednesday in the US and Thursday in Europe. But players who do change their online names might face issues ranging from minor to critical when trying to play some legacy PS4 titles.

PlayStation Director of Social Media Sid Shuman writes that all PS4 games published after April 1, 2018 "have been developed to support the online ID change feature." That said, he adds that not all recent releases have been tested, and some may not "fully support the feature."

For PS4 games published before April 1, 2018, Sony has already identified a handful that experience serious problems after users change their PSN names. The following games may run into "critical issues" such as loss of in-game currency and game or trophy progress along with improper functioning of user-generated content and other parts of the game (including paid DLC). Sony recommends you not change your PSN name if you plan on playing any of these titles:

Enlarge / The blazing fast conclusion of Verizon's speed test. (credit: David Weissmann)

It was a bit earlier than scheduled, but Verizon switched on parts of its 5G network today, debuting in "select areas" of Minneapolis and Chicago. Every carrier out there likes to slice and dice definitions to have the "First 5G" everything, but in terms of using a real, mmWave 5G signal and something approximating a 5G smartphone, Verizon has made the most progress yet in getting a 5G ecosystem up and running.

5G is still in its very early stages, with access in only a few cities and almost zero device support, so it has been hard to know what 5G will really be like in the real world. Verizon spokesperson David Weissmann shared on Twitter the best look yet at 5G, where he showed a real-life 5G speed test, running on a real smartphone, getting data from a real 5G tower. Specifically Weissmann was out in Minneapolis, pulled out his Verizon™ Moto Z3 phone with the Moto 5G Mod attached, and loaded up the Ookla Speedtest.net app. Behold his speed test:

Thrilled to be in Minneapolis as @verizon 5G UWB makes history!

Speed test here in front of US Bank Stadium

Impressive! pic.twitter.com/jvW4YlYPMA

— David Weissmann (@djweissmann) April 3, 2019

Weissmann's speed test ended with a blazing-fast 762Mbps down and a 19ms ping (the video does not show upload speeds). Unless you are rocking gigabit fiber Internet at home, this is probably much faster than your home Internet connection. Ookla's latest aggregate speed reports peg the average US mobile download speed at 27Mbps, while the average fixed broadband download in the United States is at 96Mbps.

When Warner Brothers and DC Films announced they would be making a Joker film back in 2017, the reactions from fans were... mixed. Did we really need another film treatment exploring the origins of Batman's clown-faced nemesis? But now the first trailer for Joker has dropped, and it goes a long way toward putting our doubts to rest.

Joker is intended as a standalone film, with no sequels planned—part of DC Films' decision to move away from the shared-universe approach of their prior franchise films (aka, the Marvel model). So it has no relation to the Justice League films that came before. That freed Director Todd Phillips to create his own darker, gritty version of this iconic character, with a much smaller budget of $55 million.

Star Joaquin Phoenix was initially reluctant to take on the role, for various reasons. (Seriously, who wants to go up against Heath Ledger's legendary performance in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight? Plus, Jared Leto was already playing the Joker in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). But he ultimately decided that Phillips' interpretation was sufficiently unique that he signed on. (It helped that it was for a standalone film; in the past, Phoenix has resisted committing to superhero films that would require him to play the same role in multiple films.) And we're very glad he did, because Phoenix succeeds in breathing new life into this iconic role.

Enlarge / An Eastern diamondback rattlesnake milked for venom. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

In an ongoing crackdown on dubious homeopathic products, the US Food and Drug Administration posted warning letters on Monday to four homeopathic companies the agency said committed violations that put consumers at risk, including lacking quality controls for products containing snake venom as well as skipping safety testing for products intended for children.

“We’re committed to continue taking appropriate actions when we believe patients are being put at risk by products that contain potentially harmful ingredients or have significant quality issues,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

One of the chided companies, Red Mountain Incorporated, based in Florida, was found to lack all quality controls for its homeopathic product said to contain components of snake venom. “Without an adequate QU [Quality Unit], you lack the ability to ensure the safety, identity, strength, quality, and purity of your drug product,” the agency wrote in its letter.

Enlarge / A pile of fish trapped in the flood deposits. (credit: UC Berkeley)

The Chicxulub impact is famed for having killed the dinosaurs and most other species alive on Earth at the time, and it left behind a thin layer of dust rich in rare elements. Modeling of the impact has suggested almost too many ways it could have killed: massive tsunamis, a magnitude 11 earthquake, global wildfires and searing heat, months of frigid darkness, acid rain, a massive surge of carbon dioxide, and more. While we've had confirmation that some of these events occurred, we don't have a strong sense of their impact because we haven't found fossils that tell us much about what happened to the ecosystems of the time.

That may have changed, according to a report in PNAS. The paper describes a large deposit residing just under the iridium-rich dust that marks the impact, apparently formed while heavier debris was still falling from the sky. The site, in western North Dakota, contains a mix of fresh and saltwater species, and it seems to have formed when water rushed ashore from what was then a nearby ocean.

On the edge of your sea

At the time of the Chicxulub impact, the Earth looked very different. A long-running hothouse period had likely left the planet without any significant polar ice, meaning extremely high ocean levels. A large area of the US Midwest was underwater as an arm of the oceans formed the Western Interior Seaway, extending from the antecedent of the Gulf of Mexico up to roughly the Canadian border. Its western shores were dotted with valleys cut by rivers that flowed to the nearby ocean.

All those frightening tales kids tell around the campfires to spook their friends come to terrifying life in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a new film from producer Guillermo del Toro. It's based on a series of children's books from the 1980s by Alvin Schwartz, who drew upon common folklore and popular urban legends for his scary stories.

Remember that classic campfire ditty, "the worms crawl in the worms crawl out/the worms play pinochle on your snout"? So does Schwartz. It's the basis for his scary story "The Hearse Song." You'll also find variations on the killer with a hook for a hand who preys on couples necking in parked cars. So too the hapless babysitter who discovers the call is coming from inside the house, along with plenty of other frightening fare. (The 2018 documentary Scary Stories delves more deeply into Schwartz's source material.)

While the books are technically aimed at kids, the material is pretty dark, which is why the series has often been listed among the most challenged books by the American Library Association. People have objected to the violence in the Scary Stories series—and illustrator Stephen Gammell's genuinely disturbing, surreal images only add to the potential nightmares. In fact, publisher Harper Collins released a new 30th-anniversary edition in 2011 that didn't include Gammell's original illustrations, causing an uproar among longtime fans.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | eriksvoboda)

Office Depot and a partner company tricked customers into buying unneeded tech support services by offering PC scans that gave fake results, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Consumers paid up to $300 each for unnecessary services.

The FTC yesterday announced that Office Depot and its software supplier, Support.com, have agreed to pay a total of $35 million in settlements with the agency. Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million while Support.com will pay the other $10 million. The FTC said it intends to use the money to provide refunds to wronged consumers.

Between 2009 and 2016, Office Depot and OfficeMax offered computer scans inside their stores using a "PC Health Check" software application created and licensed by Support.com.