If everything fades into the background, you may have a high IQ

Don't want these emails? Unsubscribe here. Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Top stories: May 25 - Jun 01 Features Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331” by Dan Goodin In March, readers followed along as Nate Anderson, Ars deputy editor and a self-admitted newbie to password cracking, downloaded a list of more than 16,000 cryptographically hashed passcodes. Within a few hours, he deciphered almost half of them. The moral of the story: if a reporter with zero training in the ancient art of password cracking can achieve such results, imagine what more seasoned attackers can do. Read More Features The truth is out there: six (nutty) conspiracy theories for Memorial Day by Jonathan M. Gitlin Conspiracy theories are as American as apple pie or crippling student loans. Seemingly rational individuals are, it turns out, able to hold completely irrational beliefs that can be remarkably resistant to objective reality. We never really landed on the moon. [science_finding_i_don't_like] is just a scam so scientists can get more grant money. Aliens live in a base underneath Denver International Airport. Psychologists (possibly under orders from a shadowy cabal of New World Order officials and cyborg Pharma executives) suggest that a combination of cynicism and a feeling of powerlessness in the face of events, combined with a little added low self worth, makes the most fertile minds for conspiracy theories to take root in. Read More Scientific Method If everything fades into the background, you may have a high IQ by John Timmer The absent-minded professor is a classic image: someone who's lost in deep thoughts all the time but pays very little attention to what's going on right in front of them. There may be a little something to that cliché (if only just a little) if a study published this week in Current Biology is to be believed. The study showed that IQ scores, an imperfect measure of general mental faculties, correlated with their tendency to ignore an image that may be mistaken for background visual noise. Read More Forward this message to a friend More hot stories Prenda buys a $100,000 bond, while former lawyer Gibbs pleads for leniency Someday you may ditch your two-factor authenticator for an electronic tattoo The Swapper review: Swap it to me Female breadwinners are a sign of progress—not an affront to science Feds put Apple on trial over e-books, starting Monday Yahoo Mail reportedly loses key customer following mass hack attack Doing crystal diffraction without the crystals Microsoft settles patent suit for $1 million, plus a Google “bonus” EA says goodbye to the Online Pass, we say good riddance Asus brings 4K to your desktop with massive 31.5” 3840×2160 monitor Email Admin Center This newsletter is a service of Ars Technica. Should you no longer wish to receive these messages, unsubscribe. To ensure delivery of this newsletter to your inbox and to enable images to load in future mailings, please add civis@arstechnica.com to your e-mail address book or safe senders list. You are receiving this email at garn14.tech@blogger.com. Condé Nast Digital 1166 Avenue of the Americas, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10036, attn: Ars Technica Email Coordinator To view our Privacy Policy click here.