Recommended Links of the Week (No. 736)

Learning hacking, hacking casinos, the Swedish solar system, the evolution of dogs and the Baghdad batteries are articles that form part of the mix of links, videos and galleries you will find in these Recommended Links of the Week. Enjoy!

How to Learn Hacking: The Spiral Path: "What I am quite clear about is that to know about hacking, and to be good, you have to know many things. And many things with many things in many disciplines. And when I say many things in many disciplines, I mean many things in many disciplines with great depth. That does not imply that you cannot be a good hacking professional if you do not know much about databases, XML databases, Web3 application architectures, or without deep knowledge of artificial intelligence models. No. What I am saying is that the great hackers I have known know a lot about many things, and very deeply."

A Raspberry Pi Breaks the Security of Casino Card Shufflers Worldwide: "One of the most secure systems, at least in theory, is everything related to casino security. They are small bunkers that combine something as characteristic as gambling and money. Therefore, it is key that no one can hack them, that no one can alter everything that entails the security of that money. Well, some researchers acting as computer pirates have managed to break the security of the card shuffling machines of the world's largest manufacturer. Are we facing a hack like "Ocean's Thirteen"?"

Intel Shows Its Photonic CPU with 8 Cores and 528 Threads at 7 nm and with RISC-V Architecture: "Intel has been working with DARPA since the dawn of the storm that was the creation of the Internet for its military defense service back in the last century. Yesterday afternoon they presented their latest novelty from the Hot Chips 2023 symposium, which means going one step further within server chips, something they have been demanding from the American agency. What exactly is it? Well, Intel has created an optical CPU based on photonics with Mesh to Mesh fabric."

The Crypto Fever Exploded, but These 'Degenerates' Keep Playing - "They Know 99% Are Scams": "With the explosion of FTX, the fall of other major projects in the sector, the regularization and the cooling of the global economy, the dream of cryptocurrencies went down the drain at the end of 2022. And it followed the same path in 2023. The projects that survived furled their sails and all those who believed they could get rich buying and selling these assets ended up leaving the market or counting their bet as lost. But there was a redoubt that, far from moving aside, has kept a large part of what remains in the market."

Webb Captures a Spectacular and Unique Cosmic Swirl: "Unlike the collection of strange and wonderful spiral galaxies with irregular or interrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies have prominent, well-developed spiral arms like those shown in this image. This galactic portrait is a composite image that integrates data from Webb's near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and the innovative mid-infrared instrument (MIRI). In this image, the dark red regions trace the warm, filamentary dust that permeates the galaxy's medium."

The Extraordinary Swedish Solar System That Spans the Entire Country: "The Swedish Solar System is the largest scale model of the Solar System that exists, and it covers the entire Swedish territory. It was created by astronomers Nils Brenning and Gösta Gahm to help visualize and understand the immense scale of our planetary system. The scale of the Swedish Solar System is 1:20 million. This means that each meter in the model equals 20 million meters (or 20,000 km) in space. The planets are represented by various spherical objects and sculptures scattered across different cities and towns in Sweden."

Coherence, the Jewel of Science Fiction Cinema Made with a Minimum Budget: "The film is constructed as a game for the viewer. From the first moment, the viewer fully enters the film, dialoguing with it by becoming self-aware through abrupt cuts with black screen separations and the slight movement of the image characteristic of documentaries and TV reality shows, which is increasingly common in cinema. The viewer asks questions throughout the film, many of them will not be resolved by the end, but the ending is surely more satisfying that way."

'Sleeper': The Future as Seen by Woody Allen: "The plot of Sleeper is clearly based on the aforementioned novel by Wells, passing through the filter of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). Woody Allen plays Miles Monroe, who enters a New York hospital in 1973 for a routine operation and wakes up two hundred years later, in a future that can be described as a dictatorship led by a Californian New Age guru. Given that the police have no record of his identity, a subversive group wants to recruit him as a mole."

The Evolution of Several Dog Breeds in 100 Years: "Since the domestication of dogs began around 30,000 years ago, humans have sought to breed certain breeds of these animals with particular traits. This has led to a great variety in dog species, with breeds that differ significantly from each other. But selective breeding also means that many current dog breeds bear little resemblance to the animals they originally were. During the 20th century this process accelerated as more sophisticated methods of selective breeding began to be discovered."

Why Are We Hooked on the Music We Listened to in Our Youth?: "Sociological and biological or physical factors combine to find an explanation for this phenomenon. On the one hand, the social perspective is very present when analyzing the weight of music in the formation of individual and collective identities. Likewise, the styles and songs with which we socialize in those formative stages are associated with key moments in our lives. And, finally, our brain has a greater capacity in those years to listen and assimilate new sounds, something that is lost as we age."

From Bird-Men to the Wright Brothers: The Mathematics That Helped Us Take to the Air: "At this moment there are between eight and twenty thousand airplanes crossing the sky simultaneously in the world. Each of these flights is possible thanks to mathematics, in aspects ranging from fuel consumption planning to the design and improvement of the aircraft. The first vehicles that allowed humans to rise above the earth's surface (hot air balloons, airships, gliders and airplanes) were based on various geometric, algebraic or analytical concepts."

The Controversial Baghdad Vessels, Which Some Consider Voltaic Batteries Created in Antiquity: "In the specific case of the Baghdad batteries, we are talking about terracotta vessels fourteen centimeters high with an opening of almost four, inside which, attached to that mouth by a layer of bitumen, there is a copper sheet rolled around an iron rod nine centimeters long and two and a half in diameter. The upper part of this protrudes one centimeter and shows remains of having been insulated from the copper with a lead wrapper."

VIDEOS: Synchronized whale swimming, at the premiere of Alien [1979], the paradise of octopuses, sleeping standing in Tokyo, lightning on the Acatenango volcano in Guatemala, rips off his head and keeps going, ugliest face contest, channel with science fiction atmospheres, Border Collie calculating movement, THIS IS AMAZING, in the vacuum of space without a suit, visiting "Michaelsoft Binbows" in person, cooking LEGO fish, the terrifying mosquito larva, artificial intelligence driving drones at championship level, cannonball versus ballistic gel, Enter Sandman (Metallica) on guitar, 80s music in medieval covers, Head of the Ria of Bilbao, a building full of gashapons and how 4chan created ANONYMOUS.

GALLERIES: Beautiful photos of fungi, abandoned airports, ceramic cat portraits, a coffee maker for your car, Disney princesses but with actors, portals in portraits, underwater photography, the Lunar Codex, inside the Portuguese Leica factory, life in Brazil, time-lapses of Earth, street art of cats, advanced infrastructure, the Animated Dump of the Week and the Visual Dump.

That's it, friends! We're done for today. Thanks for visiting!