Interesting Articles
This page contains links to interesting articles about computers and other stuff. Please let me know if you find any broken links. I may or may not agree with the opinions expressed in any of these articles.
If you are interested in Facebook, you might want to see my Facebook page, which contains suggestions on how to keep your information safe while enjoying Facebook.
I found many of these on SlashDot, and used their descriptions. The nice thing about the Slashdot articles is that you can learn more information from the discussions.
| Article | Description/Comments |
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The Software Side of China's Supply Chain Attack
(Click for story) | Bloomberg BusinessWeek published a story on Thursday which claimed that data center equipments run by Amazon Web Services and Apple were subject to surveillance from the Chinese government via a tiny microchip inserted during the equipment manufacturing process. |
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Windows 10 October 2018 Update is Deleting User Data For Many
(Click for story) | Citing complaints from several users, Windows Central reports: Sometimes, when you perform an upgrade to a new version of Windows 10, the setup may move the user files to the previous installation backup located inside the "Windows.old" folder. However, according to those users experiencing sudden data loss, they looked everywhere, and their personal files are nowhere to be found. |
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Artificial Sweeteners Are Toxic To Digestive Gut Bacteria, Study Finds
(Click for story) | According to a study published in the journal Molecules, researchers found that six common artificial sweeteners approved by the FDA and 10 sport supplements that contained them were found to be toxic to the digestive gut microbes of mice. |
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A Shadowy Op-Ed Campaign Is Now Smearing SpaceX In Space Cities
(Click for story) | Last month when Boeing and SpaceX announced the first astronauts who will fly on their commercial crew spacecraft, several newspapers across the U.S. began publishing an op-ed that criticized the process by which Boeing competitor SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rocket. |
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Company That Sucks CO2 From Air Announces a New Methane-Producing Plant
(Click for story) | Swiss company Climeworks has announced the opening of a new plant in Italy that will collect carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air and pair it with renewably-made hydrogen (H2) to make methane fuel that would add little or no CO2 to the atmosphere. |
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Evidence is Mounting That a World the Size of Neptune Could be Orbiting a Giant Planet Far, Far Away
(Click for story) | About 8,000 light-years away, a giant planet circles an aging star, marching once around its sun in a single Earth-year. But that planet, called Kepler 1625b, might not be traveling completely alone. |
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Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Trio of Evolutionary Scientists
(Click for story) | Arnold introduced genetic mutations into enzymes, and then looked to see what effect the mutations had. She then selected the cases where a particular mutation proved useful |
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Discovery of 'Goblin' Solar System Object Bolsters the Case For Planet Nine
(Click for story) | Astronomers have discovered a dwarf planet, dubbed "the Goblin," in the outer reaches of the Solar System that never gets any closer to the Sun than 6 billion miles. Some experts say its orbital configuration points to the existence of Planet Nine, a hypothetical planet in our Solar System that is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth. |
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Physics Nobel Won By Laser Wizardry -- Laureates Include First Woman in 55 Years
(Click for story) | The laureates include Donna Strickland, who is the first woman to win the award in 55 years. |
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Seattle Police Department Is Offering An Anti-Swatting Service
(Click for story) | One police department in the United States is rolling out a system targeted directly at this illegal hoax practice. |
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New Spray-On Coating Can Make Buildings, Cars, and Even Spaceships Cooler
(Click for story) | Their newly-invented coating has "nano-to-microscale air voids that acts as a spontaneous air cooler," |
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What Will Happen When Killer Robots Get Hijacked?
(Click for story) | What would happen if one of these drones or robots was hijacked by an opposite faction and started firing on civilians? |
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Can DuckDuckGo Become the Anti-Google?
(Click for story) | So it's like Google, except when you search on it, you're completely anonymous |
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Arrays of Atoms Emerge As Dark Horse Candidate To Power Quantum Computers
(Click for story) | two recent studies have demonstrated the promise of the qubits Levine works with: neutral atoms. |
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Scientists Formulate New Method To Create Low-Cost High Efficiency Solar Cells
(Click for story) | Scientists from the Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) believe they've found a winning formula in a new method to fabricate low-cost high-efficiency solar cells. |
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Trump Administration Sees a 7-Degree Rise in Global Temperatures By 2100
(Click for story) | The analysis assumes the planet's fate is already sealed. |
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Researchers Refine a Device That Can Both Harvest and Store Solar Energy, and They Hope It Will One Day Bring Electricity To Rural and Underdeveloped Areas
(Click for story) | scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways. |
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Scientists Can Now Peek Inside Mummies In a Whole New Way
(Click for story) | A revved-up version of traditional CT scanning shows it's possible to acquire microscopic-scale images of ancient Egyptian mummies, revealing previously unseen features such as blood vessels and nerves. |
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Spheres Can Make Concrete Leaner, Greener
(Click for story) | Rice University scientists have developed micron-sized calcium silicate spheres that could lead to stronger and greener concrete, |
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Japanese Company Announces Long-Term Plan To Develop the Moon
(Click for story) | The two missions ispace announced Wednesday are an orbiter launch in mid-2020 and a more complicated lander-and-rover mission a year later. Both will be secondary payloads on Falcon 9 rocket launches, being released by the rocket's second stage in geostationary transfer orbit. |
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Amazon's Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics Revealed In Leaked Video
(Click for story) | With rumblings of employee organization at Whole Foods -- which Amazon bought for $13.7 billion last year -- a 45-minute union-busting training video produced by the company was sent to Team Leaders of the grocery chain last week, |
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Study of 1.6 Million Grades Shows Little Gender Difference in Math and Science at School
(Click for story) | A study of school grades of more than 1.6 million students shows that girls and boys perform similarly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. |
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Google Is Using AI To Predict Floods In India, Warn Users
(Click for story) | Google is partnering with the Central Water Commission of India to alert users in the country about impending floods. |
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A 17-Year-Old Has Become Michigan's Leading Right To Repair Advocate
(Click for story) | Right to repair will decrease the amount of e-waste and people will retain their devices much longer with suitable repair networks. |
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Humans Are Causing the Earth To Wobble More Than It Should, NASA Finds
(Click for story) | A new study by researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and several universities and science centers has pinpointed the causes of Earth's imperfect spin, called "polar motion," and they found that humans are contributing to it. |
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Over 1,100 New Arcade Games Added To the Internet Archive
(Click for story) | The Internet Arcade, our collection of working arcade machines that run in the browser, has gotten a new upgrade in its 4th year. |
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Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land On Asteroid Ryugu
(Click for story) | Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu |
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Massive Undersea Walls Could Stop Glaciers From Melting, Scientists Say
(Click for story) | Building walls on the seafloor could prevent glaciers from melting and sea levels rising due to global warming, scientists say. Barriers of sand and rock positioned at the base of glaciers would stop ice sheets sliding and collapsing, and prevent warm water from eroding the ice from beneath |
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Microplastics Can Spread Via Flying Insects, Research Shows
(Click for story) | Microplastic can escape from polluted waters via flying insects, new research has revealed, contaminating new environments and threatening birds and other creatures that eat the insects. |
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US Senate Staff Targeted By State-Backed Hackers, Senator Says
(Click for story) | "At least one major technology company" has warned an unspecified number of senators and aides that their personal email accounts were "targeted by foreign government hackers." |
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'WaitList.dat' Windows File May Be Secretly Hoarding Your Passwords, Emails
(Click for story) | According to ZDNet, in order for the file to exist users have to enable "the handwriting recognition feature that automatically translates stylus/touchscreen scribbles into formatted text." |
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Study Suggests BPA-Free Plastics Are Just As Harmful To Health
(Click for story) | Plastic products that boast of being "BPA-free" aren't necessarily any safer for us, suggests a new mouse study published Thursday in Current Biology. |
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US Lawmakers Say AI Deepfakes 'Have the Potential To Disrupt Every Facet of Our Society'
(Click for story) | As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security," |
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Road Makers Turn To Recycled Plastic For Tougher Surfaces
(Click for story) | On September 11th in Zwolle, a town in the Netherlands, a 30-metre bicycle track made from 70% recycled plastic and the rest from polypropylene was opened. |
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Scientists Discover a 'Tuneable' Novel Quantum State of Matter
(Click for story) | An international team of researchers led by Princeton physicist Zahid Hasan has discovered a quantum state of matter that can be "tuned" at will -- and it's 10 times more tuneable than existing theories can explain. |
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Giant Trap Is Deployed To Catch Plastic Littering the Pacific Ocean
(Click for story) | A nonprofit has deployed a multimillion-dollar floating boom designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean. |
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Study Finds Probiotics 'Not As Beneficial For Gut Health As Previously Thought'
(Click for story) | The gut microbiome is the sum total of all the micro-organisms living in a person's gut, and has been shown to play a huge role in human health. |
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Robot Boat Sails Into History By Finishing Atlantic Crossing
(Click for story) | For the first time an autonomous sailing robot has completed the Microtransat Challenge by crossing the Atlantic from Newfoundland, Canada to Ireland. |
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FCC Can Define Markets With Only One ISP as 'Competitive', Court Rules
(Click for story) | An appeals court has upheld a Federal Communications Commission ruling that broadband markets can be competitive even when there is only one Internet provider. |
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Climate Change Could Lead To Nutrient Deficiency For Hundreds of Millions
(Click for story) | According to new research, rising carbon dioxide levels will sap some of the nutrients from our crops and lead to dietary deficiencies in millions of humans. |
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Lego Wants To Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks Using Plant-Based Or Recycled Materials
(Click for story) | Lego is trying to refashion the product it is best known for: It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030. |
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CRISPR Gene Editing Fixes Muscular Dystrophy In Dogs, Humans Could Be Next
(Click for story) | A team successfully used CRISPR to correct the genetic defect responsible for Duchenne muscular dystrophy in four beagles bred with the disease-causing gene. |
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Google Funds A Starfish-Killing Robot To Save Australia's Great Barrier Reef
(Click for story) | In a bid to eradicate the pest, Queensland researchers have developed world-first robots to administer a lethal injection to the starfish using new technology.. |
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One Year After the Massive Equifax Data Breach, Pretty Much Nothing Has Changed
(Click for story) | The Equifax data breach was supposed to change everything about cybersecurity regulation on Capitol Hill. A year ago, Equifax announced that 145.5 million U.S. adults had their social security numbers stolen in an easily preventable breach. If any data breach was going to be able to shock Washington into enacting sweeping privacy reforms, this should have been it. |
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How Telepresence Robots Are Combating the Debilitating Effects of Isolation and Loneliness
(Click for story) | Internet-connected robots that can stream audio and video are increasingly helping housebound sick children and elderly people keep in touch with teachers, family and friends, combating the scourge of isolation and loneliness. |
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Mystery of the Cargo Ships That Sink When Their Cargo Suddenly Liquefies
(Click for story) | On average, ten "solid bulk cargo" carriers have been lost at sea each year for the last decade. Solid bulk cargoes -- defined as granular materials loaded directly into a ship's hold -- can suddenly turn from a solid state into a liquid state, a process known as liquefaction. And this can be disastrous for any ship carrying them -- and their crew. |
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NASA Releases Thousands of Hours of Apollo 11 Mission Audio
(Click for story) | NASA and the University of Texas have teamed up to digitize 19,000 hours of recordings from the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first two people on the moon. |
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Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism's Imminent Demise
(Click for story) | Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. |
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India's Biometric Database Is Creating A Perfect Surveillance State -- And U.S. Tech Companies Are On Board
(Click for story) | For the past nine years, India has been building the world's biggest biometric database by collecting the fingerprints, iris scans and photos of nearly 1.3 billion people. |
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Sea level rise already causing billions in home value to disappear
(Click for story) | According to a new report by the nonprofit First Street Foundation, housing values in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut dropped $6.7 billion from 2005 to 2017 due to flooding related to sea level rise. |
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Senators Introduce Bill That Would Require State and Local Governments To Use Paper Ballots in an Effort To Secure Elections
(Click for story) | nine Senators introduced a bill that would require state and local governments to use paper ballots in an effort to secure elections from hackers. |
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Google's Data Collection is Hard To Escape, Study Claims
(Click for story) | Google collects far more data than Facebook, according to the report, and it is the world's largest digital advertising company. Its vast portfolio of services, from Android to Google Search to Chrome to Google Pay, create a firehose of data. Professor Douglas Schmidt and his team intercepted data as it was transmitted from Android smartphones to Google servers. |
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Google Releases a Searchable Database of US Political Ads
(Click for story) | In an effort to provide more transparency and deliver on a promise to Congress, Google just published an archive of political ads that have run on its platform. Google's new database, which it calls the Ad Library, is searchable through a dedicated launch page |
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Climate Change Has Doubled the Frequency of Ocean Heatwaves
(Click for story) | Scientists analyzed satellite-based measurements of sea surface temperature from 1982 to 2016 and found that the frequency of marine heatwaves had doubled. These extreme heat events in the ocean's surface waters can last from days to months and can occur across thousands of kilometers. |
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A Community-Run ISP Is the Highest Rated Broadband Company In America
(Click for story) | A new survey by Consumer Reports once again highlights how consumers are responding positively to [community-run broadband networks]. |
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SpaceX Reveals the Controls of Its Dragon Spacecraft For the First Time
(Click for story) | On Monday, SpaceX let reporters take a look inside its Crew Dragon capsule for the first time, as well as hear from the four astronauts: Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins. Ars Technica writes about several pieces of hardware observed at the event in Hawthorne, California: |
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Scientists Find Way To Make Mineral Which Can Remove CO2 From Atmosphere
(Click for story) | Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. |
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Scientists Claim To Have Solved the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
(Click for story) | a report that claims the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been solved. The Bermuda Triangle is a loosely-defined region of water between the southernmost tip of Florida, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda to the north. British oceanographers now believe that "rogue waves" are responsible for the disappearance of a number of ships in the region. |
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US Invaded By Savage Tick That Sucks Animals Dry, Spawns Without Mating
(Click for story) | It currently poses the largest threat to livestock, pets, and wild animals; the ticks can attack en masse and drain young animals of blood so quickly that they die -- an execution method called exsanguination. |
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NASA's Newest Spacecraft Will Fly Through the Sun's Scorching Hot Atmosphere
(Click for story) | NASA has long wanted to send a vehicle to the Sun's atmosphere, but such a mission has been considered impossible until the last few decades. This region of space, known as the corona, is filled with tiny, energetic particles that can reach above 3 million degrees Fahrenheit. |
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Ankis New Robot Has Artificial Emotional Intelligence
(Click for story) | While Vector can connect to the internet and display weather information, set timers, and speak answers to various questions, it's the social and visual intelligence that people may fall in love with the most. |
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Planet At Risk of Heading Towards Irreversible 'Hothouse Earth' State
(Click for story) | What we do in the next 10-20 years will determine whether our planet remains hospitable to human life or slides down an irreversible path to what scientists in a major new study call "Hothouse Earth" conditions. |
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Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female
(Click for story) | Heart disease is the number-one killer of both men and women, but the latter are significantly less likely to survive heart attacks. According to 2016 American Heart Association statement, 26 percent of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with just 19 percent of men. |
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Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down
(Click for story) | Europe's heatwave -- which led to wildfires in Greece and Sweden, droughts in central and northern parts, and made the normally green UK look brown from space -- is forcing nuclear plants to shut down or curtail the amount of power they produce, local media reports. |
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Bacteria Becoming Resistant To Hospital Disinfectants, Warn Scientists
(Click for story) | Hospitals will need to use new strategies to tackle bacteria experts have warned, after finding a type of hospital superbug is becoming increasingly tolerant of alcohol -- the key component of current disinfectant hand rubs. |
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Inspector General Says NSA Still Hasn't Implemented Its Post-Snowden Internal Security Measures
(Click for story) | n the immediate aftermath of an NSA contractor springing numerous leaks back in 2013, the NSA vowed this would never happen again. It has happened again and it hasn't just been documents. It's also been software exploits, which contributed to a worldwide plague of ransomware. The NSA was going to make sure no one could just walk out of work with thousands of sensitive documents. |
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Top Genetic Testing Firms Promise Not To Share Data Without Consent
(Click for story) | Ancestry, 23andMe and several other top genetic testing companies pledged on Tuesday not to share users' DNA data with others without consent. "Under the new guidelines, the companies said they would obtain consumers "separate express consent" before turning over their individual genetic information to businesses and other third parties, including insurers," reports The Washington Post. "They also said they would disclose the number of law-enforcement requests they receive each year." |
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Hackers Break Into Voting Machines Within 2 Hours at Defcon
(Click for story) | After nearly an hour and a half, Carsten Schurmann, an associate professor with IT-University of Copenhagen, successfully cracked into a voting machine at Las Vegas' Defcon convention on Friday night |
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Dads Pass On More Than Genetics In Their Sperm
(Click for story) | The legacy of a dad's behavior can even live on in his child if his epigenetic elements enter an embryo. For instance, mice born to fathers that experience stress can inherit the behavioral consequences of traumatic memories. |
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Scientists Resurrect 40,000-Year-Old Worms Buried In Ice
(Click for story) | The Boston Globe reports of a previously undisclosed program, called "Quiet Skies," that targets travelers who "are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base." |
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Amazon's Facial Recognition Wrongly Identifies 28 Lawmakers, ACLU Says
(Click for story) | Facial recognition technology made by Amazon, which is being used by some police departments and other organizations, incorrectly matched lawmakers with people who had been arrested for a crime, the American Civil Liberties Union reported on Thursday morning. |
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Evidence Detected of Lake Beneath the Surface of Mars
(Click for story) | The Italian Space Agency announced Wednesday that researchers have detected signs of a large, stable body of liquid water locked away beneath a mile of ice near Mars' south pole. |
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Moon Could Have Been Habitable Once, Scientists Speculate
(Click for story) | Scientists from Birkbeck, University of London speculate that recent results show that the moon is wetter than scientists have previously thought. |
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Russian Shipwreck Allegedly Carrying $130 Billion In Gold Has Been Rediscovered
(Click for story) | A salvage company has located the remains of a Russian warship lost during the the Russo-Japanese War. |
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Robocall Firm Exposes Hundreds of Thousands of US Voters' Records
(Click for story) | RoboCent, a Virginia Beach-based political robocall firm, has exposed the personal details of hundreds of thousands of US voters, according to the findings of a security researcher who stumbled upon the company's database online. |
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Astronomers Discover 12 New Moons Orbiting Jupiter - One on Collision Course With the Others
(Click for story) | Researchers in the US stumbled upon the new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet that is postulated to lurk far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system. |
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Traces of Lost Society Found in 'Pristine' Cloud Forest
(Click for story) | The Quijos Valley lies in one of the most biodiverse cloud forests in the world, along a pre-Columbian trade route that linked the rich Amazonian lowlands with the high Andes. |
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Australian Experiment Wipes Out Over 80% of Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes
(Click for story) | In an experiment with global implications, Australian scientists have successfully wiped out more than 80% of disease-carrying mosquitoes in trial locations across north Queensland. |
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How Minecraft Is Helping Kids Fall In Love With Books
(Click for story) | The project, which is featured on Microsoft's Minecraft.edu website, is currently being presented to school teachers and librarians across the UK |
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Telescope Offers 'Clearest View Yet' of Milky Way - Including Plasma Filaments
(Click for story) | The MeerKAT radio telescope was inaugurated in South Africa this past Friday, revealing the clearest view yet of the center of the Milky Way. |
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Smart TVs Are Invading Privacy and Should Be Investigated, Senators Say
(Click for story) | Many Internet-connected smart TVs are equipped with sophisticated technologies that can track the content users are watching and then use that information to tailor and deliver targeted advertisements to consumers, |
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Killing Rats Could Save Coral Reefs
(Click for story) | scientists studying reefs on tropical islands say the animals directly threaten the survival of these ecosystems |
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Stanley Kubrick Explains The '2001: A Space Odyssey' Ending In A Rare, Unearthed Video
(Click for story) | The director seems to provide a very simple and clear explanation of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" ending. |
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Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity
(Click for story) | these aerial excursions have been empirically determined to be largely powered by electricity. |
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Kepler Telescope To Send NASA Its Last Images
(Click for story) | The space agency has put the satellite into a form of hibernation until August 2, when there's time booked on the Deep Space Network |
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All-time Heat Records Are Being Set All Over the World
(Click for story) | Numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week. |
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Floating Between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres May Have More Water Than Earth
(Click for story) | NASA's Dawn space probe swooped within 22 miles of the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet that's the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter |
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How Smart TVs in Millions of US Homes Track More Than What's on Tonight
(Click for story) | The growing concern over online data and user privacy has been focused on tech giants like Facebook and devices like smartphones. But people's data is also increasingly being vacuumed right out of their living rooms via their televisions, sometimes without their knowledge. |
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SpaceX Will Send an AI Robot To Join Astronauts On ISS
(Click for story) | A robot with true artificial intelligence is about to invade space. |
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Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database With 340 Million Records
(Click for story) | You've probably never heard of the marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis. But it may well have heard of you. |
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First Confirmed Image of a Newborn Planet Revealed
(Click for story) | The startling snapshot shows a bright blob -- the nascent planet -- traveling through the dust and gas surrounding a young star. |
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Space is Full of Dirty, Toxic Grease, Scientists Reveal
(Click for story) | It looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules. |
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Japan's Hayabusa 2 Spacecraft Reaches Cosmic 'Diamond'
(Click for story) | A Japanese spacecraft has arrived at its target - an asteroid shaped like a diamond or, according to some, a spinning top. |
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Russia's Proton Rocket, Which Predates Apollo, Will Finally Stop Flying
(Click for story) | The Russian-manufactured Proton rocket that has been traveling into space since before humans landed on the Moon will finally stop flying. |
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Report Reveals 8 AT&T Buildings Across the US, Hidden in Plain Sight, That Are Central To One of NSA's Most Controversial Internet Surveillance Programs
(Click for story) | News outlet The Intercept published a report that reveals eight AT&T-owned locations: two in California, one in Washington, another in Washington, D.C., one in New York, one in Texas, one in Illinois, and one in Georgia, that serve as backbone or "peering" facilities that the NSA has secretly been using for eavesdropping purposes. |
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Spacecraft Hayabusa2 Returns Photos of Asteroid Prior To Contact
(Click for story) | The Japan Aerospace Exporation Agency (JAXA) has released photos of the asteroid taken from a distance of several hundred kilometers and showing a diamond-shaped object. |
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Some Rivers Are So Drug-Polluted, Their Eels Get High on Cocaine
(Click for story) | Critically endangered eels hyped up on cocaine could have trouble making a 3,700-mile trip to mate and reproduce -- new research warns. |
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Submarine Cables Could be Repurposed as Earthquake Detectors
(Click for story) | Dr Marra and his colleagues hope to use the planet's 1m-kilometre network of undersea fibre-optic cables, which carry the internet from continent to continent, as a giant submarine sensor. |
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Urgent Needs To Prepare For Manmade Virus Attacks, Says US Government Report
(Click for story) | A major U.S. government report warns that advances in synthetic biology now allow scientists to have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. |
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China-based Campaign Breached Satellite Operators, Defense Contractors and Telecommunications Companies in US: Symantec
(Click for story) | A sophisticated hacking campaign launched from computers in China burrowed deeply into satellite operators, defense contractors and telecommunications companies in the United States and southeast Asia, security researchers at Symantec Corp |
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New IBM Robot Holds Its Own In a Debate With a Human
(Click for story) | The human brain may be the ultimate super computer, but artificial intelligence is catching up so fast, it can now hold a substantive debate with a human, according to audience feedback. |
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$950 Million Large Hadron Collider Upgrade 'Could Upend Particle Physics'
(Click for story) | https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/06/15/1941211/950-million-large-hadron-collider-upgrade-could-upend-particle-physics |
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Adobe is Reviving the Stunning Lost Fonts of the Bauhaus
(Click for story) | Adobe worked with the Bauhaus archives in Berlin, Germany, to bring in five design students to create five distinct typefaces, all under the guidance of expert typeface designer Erik Spiekermann. |
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Antarctica Is Melting Three Times As Fast As a Decade Ago
(Click for story) | The rate at which Antarctica is losing ice has tripled since 2007, according to the latest available data. |
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Nearly Half the Patents on Marine Genes Belong To Just One Company
(Click for story) | Certain snippets of the DNA that makes a sperm whale a sperm whale are actually the subjects of patents -- meaning that private entities have exclusive rights to their use for research and development. |
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78 Indigenous Languages Are Being Saved By Optical Scanning Tech
(Click for story) | Project IRENE is using cutting-edge optical scan technology to transfer and digitally restore recordings of indigenous languages, many of which no longer have living speakers |
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Solar Has Overtaken Gas, Wind As Biggest Source of New US Power
(Click for story) | Developers installed 2.5 gigawatts of solar in the first quarter, up 13 percent from a year earlier |
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Giant African Baobab Trees Die Suddenly After Thousands of Years
(Click for story) | It is definitely shocking and dramatic to experience during our lifetime the demise of so many trees with millennial ages. |
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To Hit Climate Goals, Bill Gates and His Billionaire Friends Are Betting on Energy Storage
(Click for story) | Both companies are developing new technologies to store energy, but taking completely different approaches to achieve that goal. |
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Honeybees Seem To Understand the Notion of Zero, Study Finds
(Click for story) | The study authors set out to test the honeybee on its understanding, marking individual honeybees for easy identification and luring them to a specially-designed testing apparatus. |
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NASA Makes Two Decades of Satellite Images of Earth Available To the Public
(Click for story) | The longest continuous daily satellite observation record of Earth ever compiled is now available for all of us to peruse. |
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The Icelandic Families Tracking Climate Change With Measuring Tape
(Click for story) | Every autumn, Haraldsson, often accompanied by his wife and son, sets off on foot to measure the changes in his assigned glacier. |
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New Horizons Spacecraft Wakes Up To Prepare For Historic Flyby of Distant Object
(Click for story) | The craft is expected to pass by Ultima Thule during the New Year's holiday. |
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First 3D Printed Houses For Rent Will Be Built In the Netherlands This Year
(Click for story) | Since there aren't enough construction workers in the country to keep up with housing demands, the city of Eindhoven in The Netherlands is turning to robots for help. |
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China Hacked a Navy Contractor and Secured a Trove of Highly Sensitive Data on Submarine Warfare
(Click for story) | Taken were 614 gigabytes of material relating to a closely held project known as Sea Dragon, as well as signals and sensor data, submarine radio room information relating to cryptographic systems, and the Navy submarine development unit's electronic warfare library. |
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Sucking CO2 From Air Is Cheaper Than Scientists Thought
(Click for story) | A detailed new analysis published in the journal Joule finds that direct air capture may be practical after all. |
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US Government Probes Airplane Vulnerabilities, Says Airline Hack Is 'Only a Matter of Time'
(Click for story) | U.S. government researchers believe it is only a matter of time before a cybersecurity breach on an airline occurs |
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Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt's Climate Claims
(Click for story) | Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, "I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." |
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Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer
(Click for story) | While scammers' biggest paydays come from tricking victims into handing over credit card or bank account information, many robocallers make incremental cash along the way, thanks to little-known databases that try to identify who is calling. |
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Scientists May Have Discovered a New Fundamental Particle: Sterile Neutrino
(Click for story) | MiniBooNE detected a few hundred more electron neutrinos than were predicted in Standard Model theory. The extra particles suggests there is a fourth, heavier flavor. |
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Why I'm Switching From Chrome To Firefox and You Should Too
(Click for story) | What's a concerned citizen of the internet to do? Here's one no-brainer: Stop using Chrome and switch to Firefox. |
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Is Pluto Actually a Mash-Up of a Billion Comets?
(Click for story) | Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute suggest Pluto may be a comet, as opposed to a planet or dwarf planet. According to a study published in the journal Icarus, Pluto could be made up of billions of comets all mashed together. |
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Scientists Race To Find Who is Pumping a Dangerous Gas Into the Atmosphere
(Click for story) | A greenhouse gas is billowing into the atmosphere from a source somewhere in East Asia that no one can identify at a rate scientists have never before seen, and it's ignited a scientific dash to get to the bottom of it. |
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Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work To Grow Exponentially
(Click for story) | The September emails show that Google's business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year. |
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NASA Spacecraft Finds Methane Ice Dunes On Pluto
(Click for story) | Scientists say they have found evidence of dunes of frozen methane on Pluto, suggesting that the distant world is more dynamic than previously thought. |
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Intellivision Lives: Tommy Tallarico Will Relaunch 1980s Console
(Click for story) | The new Intellivision system (name TBA) will carry on the company tradition of "firsts" with its new concept, design and approach to gaming. |
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Birds Had To Relearn Flight After Meteor Wiped Out Dinosaurs, Fossil Records Suggest
(Click for story) | The cataclysm 66 million years ago not only wiped out Tyrannosaurus rex and ground-dwelling dinosaur species, but also flying birds, a detailed survey of the fossil record suggests. |
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Gut Sensor Could Monitor Health -- and Beam Results to a Smartphone
(Click for story) | Doctors are now one step closer to deploying sensors that can travel to parts of a patient's body to diagnose hard-to-detect conditions. |
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Vulnerability in Z-Wave Wireless Communications Protocol, Used By Some IoT and Smart Devices, Exposes 100 Million Devices To Attack
(Click for story) | The Z-Wave wireless communications protocol used for some IoT/smart devices is vulnerable to a downgrade attack that can allow a malicious party to intercept and tamper with traffic between smart devices. |
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As The Planet Warms, We'll Be Having Rice With A Side Of CO2
(Click for story) | As humans expel billions of metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere and raze vast swaths of forests, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our air hurries ever higher. |
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Massachusetts Gains Foothold in Offshore Wind Power, Long Ignored in US
(Click for story) | New Bedford hopes to soon be the operations center for the first major offshore wind farm in the United States, bringing billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs to the town and other ports on the East Coast. |
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ACLU Sues ICE For License Plate Reader Contracts, Records
(Click for story) | The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for records about the agency's use of license plate reader technology, after ICE apparently failed to turn over records following multiple requests. |
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A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine
(Click for story) | The object confirms a specific prediction made by Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown, the astronomers at the California Institute of Technology who first argued for Planet Nine's existence. |
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Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Prompting Outcry Over Surveillance
(Click for story) | The American Civil Liberties Union led a group of more than two dozen civil rights organizations that asked Amazon to stop selling its image recognition system, called Rekognition, to law enforcement. |
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Asteroid From Another Star System Found Orbiting Wrong Way Near Jupiter
(Click for story) | Astronomers have spotted an asteroid orbiting our sun in the opposite (retrograde) direction to the planets. The 2-mile-wide asteroid, known as 2015 BZ509, is the first "interstellar immigrant" from beyond our solar system to remain. |
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China Launches Satellite To Explore Dark Side of Moon
(Click for story) | China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said. |
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Advocacy Groups Call for the FTC To Break Up Facebook
(Click for story) | everal advocacy groups have banded together for a campaign that calls upon the US Federal Trade Commission to intervene and break up Facebook into smaller companies -- and more specifically to split off the Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp services from the mother company. |
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Astronomers Discovered the Fastest-Growing Black Hole Ever Seen
(Click for story) | Astronomers have discovered "a black hole 20 billion times the mass of the sun eating the equivalent of a star every two days. |
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Floating Pacific Island Is In the Works With Its Own Government, Cryptocurrency
(Click for story) | Once we can see how this first island works, we will have a proof of concept to plan for islands to house climate refugees. |
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Congress Is Looking To Extend Copyright Protection Term To 144 Years
(Click for story) | Because it apparently isn't bad enough already, Congress is looking to extend the copyright term to 144 years |
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First Measurement of Distribution of Pressure Inside a Proton
(Click for story) | Inside every proton in every atom in the universe is a pressure cooker environment that surpasses the atom-crushing heart of a neutron star. |
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NASA Says Humans Are Causing Massive Changes In Location of Water Around the World
(Click for story) | Using measurements from Earth-observing satellites, NASA scientists have found that humans have dramatically altered the location of water around the world. |
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A Fleet of Sailing Robots Sets Out To Quantify the Oceans
(Click for story) | A start-up in California called Saildrone has built a fleet of robotic sailboats that are gathering tons of data about the oceans. The saildrones rely on a hard, carbon-fiber sail to catch wind, and solar panels to power all of their electronics and sensors. |
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Tesla Unveils New Large Powerpack Project For Grid Balancing In Europe
(Click for story) | Tesla has unveiled a new large Powerpack energy storage project to be used as a virtual power plant for grid balancing in Europe. It consists of 140 Powerpacks and several Tesla inverters for a total power output of 18.2 MW. |
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Homeland Security Unveils New Cyber Security Strategy Amid Threats
(Click for story) | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday unveiled a new national strategy for addressing the growing number of cyber security risks as it works to assess them and reduce vulnerabilities. |
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Moon of Jupiter Prime Candidate For Alien Life After Water Blast Found
(Click for story) | A NASA probe that explored Jupiter's moon Europa flew through a giant plume of water vapour that erupted from the icy surface and reached a hundred miles high, according to a fresh analysis of the spacecraft's data. |
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US Cell Carriers Are Selling Access To Your Real-Time Phone Location Data
(Click for story) | a senator last week sent a letter demanding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate why Securus, a prison technology company, can track any phone "within seconds" by using data obtained from the country's largest cell giants, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, through an intermediary, LocationSmart. |
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The Rise of Free Urban Internet
(Click for story) | Intersection, the Alphabet-backed smart cities startup known for creating free internet kiosks for cities, is pushing to make free internet accessible in as many major cities as possible across the globe. |
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Researchers Reportedly Exposed Facebook Quiz Data On 3 Million Users
(Click for story) | According to a report from New Scientist, researchers exposed quiz data on over three million Facebook users via an insecure website. The data includes answers to intimate questionnaires, and was held by academics from the University of Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre. |
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Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World's Deepest Ocean Trench
(Click for story) | The Mariana Trench -- the deepest point in the ocean -- extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. |
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Google Hasn't Stopped Reading Your Emails
(Click for story) | If you're a Gmail user, your messages and emails likely aren't as private as you'd think. Google reads each and every one, scanning your painfully long email chains and vacation responders in order to collect more data on you. Google uses the data gleaned from your messages in order to inform a whole host of other products and services, NBC News reported Thursday. |
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Tesla's Giant Battery In Australia Reduced Grid Service Cost By 90 Percent
(Click for story) | Tesla's giant Powerpack battery in Australia has been in operation for about 6 months now and we are just starting to discover the magnitude of its impact on the local energy market. |
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SpaceX Successfully Launches Satellite With New Upgraded 'Block 5' Falcon 9 Rocket
(Click for story) | SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida |
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Russian Fake News Ecosystem Targets Syrian Human Rights Workers
(Click for story) | Kremlin linked news sites like RT and Sputnik figure prominently in an online disinformation campaign portraying Syrian humanitarian workers ("White Helmets") as terrorists and crisis actors, according to an analysis |
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Scientists To Grow 'Mini-Brains' Using Neanderthal DNA
(Click for story) | They could demonstrate for the first time if there were meaningful differences between human and Neanderthal brain biology. |
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Elon Musk's First LA Tunnel Nears Completion, With Free Rides To Kick Off This Summer
(Click for story) | The Boring Company has made some pretty impressive strides in its relatively short existence. |
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26% of Companies Ignore Security Bugs Because They Don't Have the Time to Fix Them
(Click for story) | A survey compiled at the RSA security conference reveals that most companies are still behind with proper security practices, and some of them even intentionally ignore security flaws for various reasons ranging from lack of time to lack of know-how. |
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Supercomputers Are Driving a Revolution In Hurricane Forecasting
(Click for story) | Based upon new data from the National Hurricane Center for hurricanes based in the Atlantic basin, the average track error for a five-day forecast fell to 155 nautical miles in 2017. |
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One of the Milky Way's Fastest Stars Is an Invader From Another Galaxy
(Click for story) | On April 25, the European Space Agency released a data set gathered by the Gaia satellite containing the motions, and much more, of 1.3 billion stars. Astronomers have immediately sifted the data for fast-moving stars. |
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Equifax's Data Breach By the Numbers: 146 Million Social Security Numbers, 99 Million Addresses, and More
(Click for story) | Several months after the data breach was first reported, Equifax has published the details on the personal records and sensitive information stolen in the cybersecurity incident. |
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Could SpaceX Rocket Technology Put Lives At Risk?
(Click for story) | NASA safety advisers are warning that the super-cold propellant SpaceX uses in their Falcon 9 rockets could be "a potential safety risk." |
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Earth's Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point In 800,000 Years
(Click for story) | "We keep burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide keeps building up in the air," said Scripps scientist Ralph Keeling, who maintains the longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide on Earth. "It's essentially as simple as that." |
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NASA Launches a New Mission To Mars
(Click for story) | "This is a big day. We're going back to Mars," said one NASA official, presiding over this morning's launch of the first Mars surface craft to lift off since 2011. |
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Criminals Used a Fleet of Drones To Disrupt an FBI Hostage Operation
(Click for story) | Criminals have discovered another use for drones -- to distract and spy on law enforcement. |
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An amateur mathematician breakthrough towards solving a well-known maths problem.
(Click for story) | Aubrey de Grey, who is more widely known as a maverick biologist intent on extending the human lifespan, has taken the academic world by surprise after announcing a new solution to the so-called Hadwiger-Nelson problem. |
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Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Erupts, Prompting Evacuation Orders
(Click for story) | Hawaii County said steam and lava poured out of a crack in Leilani Estates, which is near the town of Pahoa on the Big Island. Leilani Estates has a population of about 1,500, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. |
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NASA Successfully Tests New Nuclear Reactor For Future Space Travelers
(Click for story) | The reactor can power several homes and appears able to operate in harsh environments. The new reactor uses more-conventional uranium fuel. |
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Hawaii To Ban Certain Sunscreens To Protect Coral Reefs
(Click for story) | Hawaii lawmakers passed a bill that would prohibit the sale of over-the-counter sunscreens containing chemicals they say are contributing to the destruction of the state's coral reefs and other ocean life. |
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Humans were in Philippines thousands of years before previously thought
(Click for story) | About 709,000 years ago, someone butchered a rhinoceros using stone tools on the Philippine island of Luzon. That may not seem remarkable -- except that humans weren't supposed to be in the Philippines so long ago. |
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Scientists Confirmed a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells
(Click for story) | For the first time, scientists have identified the existence of a new DNA structure never before seen in living cells. |
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The Smithsonian's New Tour Guide Is a Robot
(Click for story) | https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/04/30/2319240/the-smithsonians-new-tour-guide-is-a-robot |
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Pristine Lakes Are Filled With Toxins
(Click for story) | Much of the focus on plastic pollution centres on our oceans. Emerging evidence shows it's also a problem in freshwater, which may even be the source. |
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China is Now Monitoring Employees' Brainwaves and Emotions
(Click for story) | The Orwellian-as-all-get-out practice is being conducted using "emotional surveillance technology" by both businesses in China and the country's military, reports the South China Morning Post. |
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A Mass of Copyrighted Works Will Soon Enter the Public Domain
(Click for story) | For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law. |
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EU Votes To Ban Bee-Harming Pesticides
(Click for story) | Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed, in part, on the widespread use of pesticides. |
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NASA To Pay More For Less Cargo Delivery To the Space Station
(Click for story) | A new report from NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, finds that NASA will pay significantly more for commercial cargo delivery to the ISS in the 2020s rather than enjoying cost savings from maturing systems. |
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Researchers Are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body
(Click for story) | The feat offers scientists a new way to study intact brains in the lab in stunning detail. But it also inaugurates a bizarre new possibility in life extension, should human brains ever be kept on life support outside the body. |
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ESA Releases Largest Star Map Ever Online
(Click for story) | The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a treasure trove of data from its Gaia Spacecraft; totaling around 1.7 billion stars. This star map is the largest of its kind to date. |
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Hackers Built a 'Master Key' For Millions of Hotel Rooms
(Click for story) | Security researchers have built a master key that exploits a design flaw in a popular and widely used hotel electronic lock system, allowing unfettered access to every room in the building. |
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SEC Issues $35 Million Fine Over Yahoo Failing To Disclose Data Breach
(Click for story) | Altaba, the company formerly known as Yahoo, will have to pay a $35 million fine for failing to disclose a 2014 data breach in which hackers stole info on over 500 million accounts. |
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More Than 1 Million Kids Had Their Identities Stolen in 2017
(Click for story) | With limited financial history or existing account activity, children are the most likely to become victims of new-account fraud, the research showed. |
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Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?
(Click for story) | Given that all direct evidence would be long gone after many millions of years, what kinds of evidence might then still exist? |
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Google's AR Microscope Quickly Highlights Cancer Cells
(Click for story) | Google Research this week revealed an AR microscope (ARM) capable of detecting cancerous cells in real-time with the help of machine learning. |
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Government Accidentally Releases Documents On 'Psycho-Electric' Weapons
(Click for story) | a news organization that specializes in filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with state and federal government bodies, received mysterious documents about mind control, seemingly by accident. |
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'Sea Nomads' Are First Known Humans Genetically Adapted To Diving
(Click for story) | These nomadic people live in waters winding through the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where they dive to hunt for fish or search for natural elements that can be used in crafts. |
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FDA Wants Medical Devices To Have Mandatory Built-In Update Mechanisms
(Click for story) | The US Food & Drug Administration plans to ask Congress for more funding and regulatory powers to improve its approach towards medical device safety, including on the cybersecurity front. |
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Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta
(Click for story) | numerous news outlets reported on a study which concludes that eating pasta is good for health. In fact, the reports claimed, eating pasta could help you lose weight. Except, there is more to the story. |
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FDA Approves First Contact Lenses That Turn Dark In Bright Sunlight
(Click for story) | This contact lens is the first of its kind to incorporate the same technology that is used in eyeglasses that automatically darken in the sun |
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Former FCC Broadband Panel Chair Arrested For Fraud
(Click for story) | The former chair of a panel built by FCC boss Ajit Pai to advise the agency on broadband matters has been arrested for fraud. |
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One Laptop Per Child's $100 Laptop Was Going To Change the World -- Then it All Went Wrong
(Click for story) | OLPC pushed the laptop's cost to a low of $130, but only by cutting so many corners that the laptop barely worked. Its price rose to around $180, and even then, the design had major tradeoffs. |
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Scientists Accidentally Create Mutant Enzyme That Eats Plastic Bottles
(Click for story) | Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles -- by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles. |
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State-Sponsored Russian Hackers Actively Seeking To Hijack Essential Internet Hardware, US and UK Intelligence Agencies Say
(Click for story) | The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a joint alert warning of a global campaign. |
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Hackers Stole a Casino's High-Roller Database Through a Thermometer in the Lobby Fish Tank
(Click for story) | an unnamed casino was hacked via a thermometer in a lobby aquarium. "The attackers used that to get a foothold in the network. They then found the high-roller database and then pulled that back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud. |
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Lawmakers Call FBI's 'Going Dark' Narrative 'Highly Questionable' After Motherboard Shows Cops Can Easily Hack iPhones
(Click for story) | US lawmakers sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, doubting the FBI's narrative around 'going dark', where law enforcement officials say they are increasingly unable to obtain evidence related to crimes due to encryption. |
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Can We Build Indoor 'Vertical Farms' Near The World's Major Cities?
(Click for story) | The company's goal is to build an indoor farm outside of every city in the world of more than 1 million residents -- around 500 in all. It claims it can build a farm in 30 days and pay investors back in three to five years (versus 20 to 40 for traditional farms). |
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Yahoo's New Privacy Policy Allows Data-Sharing With Verizon
(Click for story) | Yahoo is now part of Oath and there is a new Privacy and Terms contract... |
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NASA May Fly Humans On the Less Powerful Version of Its Deep-Space Rocket
(Click for story) | NASA may make some big changes to the first couple flights of its future deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, after getting a recent funding boost from Congress to build a new launch platform. |
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AI Can Generate a 3D Model of a Person After Watching a Few Seconds of Video
(Click for story) | A new algorithm creates 3D models using standard video footage from one angle. |
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Ocean Current That Keeps Europe Warm Is Weakening Because of Climate Change
(Click for story) | The Atlantic Ocean circulation that carries warmth into the Northern Hemisphere's high latitudes is slowing down because of climate change, a team of scientists asserted Wednesday, suggesting one of the most feared consequences is already coming to pass |
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Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' In Space
(Click for story) | The perfect circle surrounding a galaxy cluster in a new Hubble Space Telescope image is a visual indicator of the huge masses that are bending time and space in that region. |
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FDA Approves AI-Powered Software To Detect Diabetic Retinopathy
(Click for story) | The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved an AI-powered device that can be used by non-specialists to detect diabetic retinopathy in adults with diabetes. |
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Don't Give Away Historic Details About Yourself
(Click for story) | On the surface, these simple questions may be little more than an attempt at online engagement by otherwise well-meaning companies and individuals. Nevertheless, your answers to these questions may live in perpetuity online, giving identity thieves and scammers ample ammunition to start gaining backdoor access to your various online accounts. |
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YouTube Is Illegally Collecting Data From Children, Say Advocacy Groups
(Click for story) | Nearly two-dozen privacy and children's advocacy groups have filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against YouTube, alleging the platform of illegally collecting data from children. |
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One-Degree Rise In Temperature Causes Ripple Effect In World's Largest High Arctic Lake
(Click for story) | A 1 C increase in temperature has set off a chain of events disrupting the entire ecology of the world's largest High Arctic lake. "The amount of glacial meltwater going into the lake has dramatically increased. |
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Berkeley Offers Its Data Science Course Online For Free
(Click for story) | The course -- Data 8X (Foundations of Data Science) -- covers everything from testing hypotheses, applying statistical inferences, visualizing distributions and drawing conclusions, all while coding in Python and using real-world data sets. |
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Scientists Discover That Puffin Beaks Are Fluorescent
(Click for story) | A scientist in England discovered that the bills of Atlantic puffins glow like freshly cracked glow sticks when under a UV light. |
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New Theory Suggests Dinosaurs Were Already Dying When Asteroid Hit
(Click for story) | The new "biotic revenge hypothesis" suggests that dinosaurs were killed off by toxic plants. (And an inability to recognize the taste of a toxic plant.) |
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Scientists Modify A 3D Printer To Print All-Liquid Structures
(Click for story) | Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have successfully printed three-dimensional structures composed entirely of liquids. A special nanoparticle-derived coating can lock water in place for several months in a solution of silicone oil. |
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Center of the Milky Way Has Thousands of Black Holes, Study Shows
(Click for story) | The team searched for those signals in a region stretching about three light-years out from our galaxy's central supermassive black hole. What they found there: a dozen black holes paired up with stars. |
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Hot-Air Dryers Suck In Nasty Bathroom Bacteria, Shoot Them At Your Hands
(Click for story) | Hot-air dryers suck in bacteria and hardy bacterial spores loitering in the bathroom -- perhaps launched into the air by whooshing toilet flushes -- and fire them directly at your freshly cleaned hands. |
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Comcast, AT&T, Verizon Pose a Greater Surveillance Risk Than Facebook
(Click for story) | Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook -- but their surveillance is much harder to avoid. |
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Canada Has Pulled Off a Brain Heist
(Click for story) | Seoul-born Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, a professor at Brown University known for her work on fake news, is moving to Canada. So is Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a Harvard chemistry professor working on quantum computing and artificial intelligence. They are among 24 top academic minds around the world wooed to Canada by an aggressive recruitment effort offering ultra-attractive sinecures, seven-year funding arrangements -- and, Chun and Aspuru-Guzik said in separate interviews with Axios, a different political environment from the U.S. |
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Computer Searches Telescope Data For Evidence of Distant Planets
(Click for story) | As part of an effort to identify distant planets hospitable to life, NASA has established a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers search telescopic images for evidence of debris disks around stars, which are good indicators of exoplanets. |
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Scientists Harvest First Vegetables in Antarctic Greenhouse
(Click for story) | Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets. |
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Cambridge Analytica May Have Had Facebook Data From 87 Million People
(Click for story) | |
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Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
(Click for story) | Facebook scans the text and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, making sure it all abides by the company's rules governing content. If it doesn't, it gets blocked. |
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Facebook Blames a 'Bug' For Not Deleting Your Seemingly Deleted Videos
(Click for story) | Last week, The New York Magazine found that Facebook was archiving videos users thought were deleted. The social media company is now apologizing for failing to delete the videos, blaming it on a "bug." It adds that it's in the process of deleting the content now. s |
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US Suspects Listening Devices in Washington
(Click for story) | For the first time, the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged the existence in Washington of what appear to be rogue devices that foreign spies and criminal could be using to track individual cellphones and intercept calls and messages. |
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Hubble Space Telescope Spots the Farthest Known Star
(Click for story) | Researchers using Hubble space telescope data have spotted Icarus (aka MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1), a blue supergiant whose light was emitted when it was 9 billion light years away from Earth -- over 100 times farther than the previous record-setter. |
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Panerabread.com Leaks Millions of Customers Records
(Click for story) | Panerabread.com, the website for the American chain of bakery-cafe fast casual restaurants by the same name, leaked millions of customer records -- including names, email and physical addresses, birthdays and the last four digits of the customer's credit card number -- for at least eight months before it was yanked offline earlier today, |
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Earth Large Crack in East African Rift is Evidence of Continent Splitting in Two
(Click for story) | A large crack, stretching several miles, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear emerged after heavy rains caused havoc in the nation last month, which also saw neighborhood get flooded and major highways closing off. The downpour also exposed a fault line that geologists now say is evidence that the African continent will split into two over the next tens of millions of years. |
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President of France Emmanuel Macron Talks About Nation's New AI Strategy
(Click for story) | AI will raise a lot of issues in ethics, in politics, it will question our democracy and our collective preferences. For instance, if you take healthcare: you can totally transform medical care making it much more predictive and personalized if you get access to a lot of data. |
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'Thousands of Companies Are Spying On You'
(Click for story) | Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls it "surveillance capitalism." And as creepy as Facebook is turning out to be, the entire industry is far creepier. It has existed in secret far too long, and it's up to lawmakers to force these companies into the public spotlight, where we can all decide if this is how we want society to operate and -- if not -- what to do about it... |
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CRISPR-Altered Plants Are Not Going To Be Regulated (For Now)
(Click for story) | The USDA not only rolled back Obama-era rules regulating genetically edited plants, but now it claims that plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology (read: CRISPR) pose "no risk," MIT's Technology Review reports. |
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Adobe Is Helping Some 60 Companies Track People Across Devices
(Click for story) | The announcement of the new solution for tracking customers across devices was made at the Adobe Summit this week in Las Vegas to a digital marketing conference. |
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FCC Authorizes SpaceX's Ambitious Satellite Internet Plans
(Click for story) | The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved an application by Elon Musk's SpaceX, allowing the aerospace company to provide broadband services using satellites in the U.S. and worldwide. |
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European Commission Says It Will Cancel All 300,000 UK-Owned .EU Domains
(Click for story) | In an official statement Thursday, the European Commission announced it will cancel all 300,000 domains under the .eu top-level domain that have a UK registrant, following Britain's eventual departure from the European Union. |
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China, in Search of Water, is Building a Rain-Making Network Three Times the Size of Spain
(Click for story) | The system, which involves an enormous network of fuel-burning chambers installed high up on the Tibetan mountains, could increase rainfall in the region by up to 10 billion cubic metres a year |
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Galaxy Without Any Dark Matter Baffles Astronomers
(Click for story) | The absence of dark matter from a small patch of sky might appear to be a non-problem, given that astronomers have never directly observed dark matter anywhere. |
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New Deep-Learning Software Knows How To Make Desired Organic Molecules
(Click for story) | Researchers have developed a "deep learning" computer program that produces blueprints for the sequences of reactions needed to create small organic molecules, such as drug compounds. The pathways that the tool suggests look just as good on paper as those devised by human chemists. |
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Verizon Plans To Launch a Palm Smartphone Later This Year
(Click for story) | Verizon is planning on launch a Palm-branded smartphone later this year, an anonymous source told Android Police. |
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Wind and Solar Can Power Most of the United States, Says Study
(Click for story) | The authors analyzed 36 years of hourly weather data (1980-2015) in the U.S. |
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More Than 75 Percent of Earth's Land Areas Are 'Broken,' Major Report Finds
(Click for story) | These once-productive lands have either become deserts, are polluted, or have been deforested and converted for unsustainable agricultural production. |
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Flat-Earther's Steam-Powered Rocket Lofts Him 1,875 Feet Up Into Mojave Desert
(Click for story) | "Mad" Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. |
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Steve Jobs Tried To Warn Mark Zuckerberg About Privacy In 2010
(Click for story) | Zuckerberg should have heeded what he heard from the late Steve Jobs eight years ago. |
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Facebook Scraped Call, Text Message Data For Years From Android Phones
(Click for story) | Facebook also had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received. |
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British Scientists Develop Wearable MRI Scanner
(Click for story) | British scientists have invented a new type of brain scanner that patients can wear on their head allowing them to move while being tested. |
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CDs, Vinyl Are Outselling Digital Downloads For the First Time Since 2011
(Click for story) | The RIAA released its 2017 year-end revenue report on Thursday, showing that revenue from digital downloads plummeted 25 percent to $1.3 billion over the previous year. Revenue from physical products, by contrast, fell just 4 percent to $1.5 billion. Overall, the music industry grew for a second year straight. |
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'Catastrophe' as France's bird population collapses due to pesticides
(Click for story) | Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, because insects they feed on have disappeared |
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More Evidence Ties Alleged DNC Hacker Guccifer 2.0 To Russian Intelligence
(Click for story) | An anonymous source close to the U.S. government investigation of the hacker told the Daily Beast that on one single occasion, Guccifer 2.0 failed to log into the usual VPN that disguised their traffic. As a result, they left one honest IP trace at an unnamed social media site. |
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SpaceX Launch Last Year Punched Huge, Temporary Hole In the Ionosphere
(Click for story) | The Falcon 9 rocket that launched last August reportedly ripped a temporary hole in the ionosphere due to its vertical launch, which Ars Technica notes as being rather unusual.s |
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World's Largest Animal Study On Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link
(Click for story) | Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale, lifetime study (PDF) of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. |
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Mark Zuckerberg Addresses the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Says Facebook 'Made Mistakes' in Protecting Data
(Click for story) | Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday commented on the massive, deepening data harvesting scandal his company has been embroiled in since last Friday. s |
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Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped US Colleges
(Click for story) | Chinese companies are taking advantage of America's financially strapped higher-education system to buy schools, and the latest deal for a classical music conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey, is striking chords of dissonance on campus. |
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Orbitz Says Legacy Travel Site Likely Hacked, Affecting 880,000 Credit Cards
(Click for story) | Orbitz says a legacy travel booking platform may have been hacked, possibly exposing the personal information of people that made certain purchases between January 1, 2016 and December 22, 2017. |
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Machine Learning Spots Treasure Trove of Elusive Viruses
(Click for story) | Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover nearly 6,000 previously unknown species of virus. The work illustrates an emerging tool for exploring the enormous, largely unknown diversity of viruses on Earth. |
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AI Can Diagnose Prostate Cancer As Well As a Pathologist
(Click for story) | Chinese researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system which can diagnose cancerous prostate samples as accurately as any pathologist, holding out the possibility of streamlining and eliminating variation in the process of cancer diagnosis. |
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Facebook Under Pressure as EU, US Urge Probes of Data Practices
(Click for story) | Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced calls on Monday from U.S. and European lawmakers to explain how a consultancy that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users. |
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About a Quarter of US Adults Say They Are 'Almost Constantly' Online
(Click for story) | As smartphones and other mobile devices have become more widespread, 26 percent of American adults now report that they go online "almost constantly," up from 21 percent in 2015, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January 2018. |
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How Hardware Artisans Are Keeping Classic Video Gaming Alive
(Click for story) | If you want to play classic Nintendo games, you could buy a vintage Super NES. Or you could use an emulator. Or -- if you're really serious -- you could use floating point gate arrays to design a new console that makes them look great on modern TVs." He shares Fast Company's article about "some of the other folks using new hardware to preserve the masterworks of the past. |
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Researchers Claim They Can Predict Where Lightning Is Likely To Strike
(Click for story) | A study by researchers at the University of Calgary's Schulich School of Engineering suggests it's possible to predict where lightning will strike and how often. |
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North Carolina Police Obtained Warrants Demanding All Google Users Near Four Crime Scenes
(Click for story) | In at least four investigations last year -- cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the massive downtown fire in March 2017 -- Raleigh police used search warrants to demand Google accounts not of specific suspects, but from any mobile devices that veered too close to the scene of a crime |
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Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study
(Click for story) | The bottled water industry is estimated to be worth nearly $200 billion a year, surpassing sugary sodas as the most popular beverage in many countries. But its perceived image of cleanliness and purity is being challenged by a global investigation that found the water tested is often contaminated with tiny particles of plastic. |
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NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Space Telescope Is Running Out of Fuel
(Click for story) | Charlie Sobeck, the system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, said in a NASA statement that Kepler is running low on gas. According to Sobekc, it only has "several months" before it reaches the end of the its life. |
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Scientists Create a Way For People With Amputations To Feel Their Prosthetics
(Click for story) | https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/03/14/2032238/scientists-create-a-way-for-people-with-amputations-to-feel-their-prosthetics |
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New Bill In Congress Would Bypass the Fourth Amendment, Hand Your Data To Police
(Click for story) | Lawmakers behind a new anti-privacy bill are trying to sneak it through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass government spending bill. |
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China's Anti-Pollution Initiative Produces Stellar Results
(Click for story) | China has declared war on its pollution -- one of the worst on the planet -- and now appears to be winning. Popular Mechanics reports: "Over the past four years, pollution in China's major cities has decreased by an average of 32 percent, with some cities seeing an even bigger drop, according to professor Michael Greenstone of the Energy Policy Institute. |
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Data Breach Victims Can Sue Yahoo in the United States, Federal Judge Rules
(Click for story) | Yahoo has been ordered by a federal judge to face much of a lawsuit in the United States claiming that the personal information of all 3 billion users was compromised in a series of data breaches. |
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Cable Industry Finally Fights Cord Cutting With Fewer Ads
(Click for story) | The cable industry is slowly realizing that more advertisements and higher prices aren't the solution to cord cutting. |
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Half of Ransomware Victims Didn't Recover Their Data After Paying the Ransom
(Click for story) | A massive survey of nearly 1,200 IT security practitioners and decision makers across 17 countries reveals that half the people who fell victim to ransomware infections last year were able to recover their files after paying the ransom demand. |
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NASA Spacecraft Reveals Jupiter's Interior In Unprecedented Detail
(Click for story) | NASA's Juno spacecraft has revealed that Jupiter's iconic striped bands, caused by immensely powerful winds, extend to a depth of about 3,000km below the surface. The findings also provide a partial answer to the question of whether the planet has a core, "showing that the inner 96% of the planet rotates 'as a solid body,' even though technically it is composed of an extraordinarily dense mixture of hydrogen and helium gas," |
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The Slow Death of the Internet Cookie
(Click for story) | Marketers are moving away from using cookies to track user data on the web to target ads now that people are moving away from desktop. 90% of marketers say they see improved performance from people-based marketing, compared with cookie-based campaigns. |
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Diabetes Is Actually Five Separate Diseases, Research Suggests
(Click for story) | Scientists say diabetes is five separate diseases, and treatment could be tailored to each form. Diabetes, or uncontrolled blood sugar levels, is normally split into type 1 and type 2. But researchers in Sweden and Finland think the more complicated picture they have uncovered will usher in an era of personalized medicine for diabetes. The study, by Lund University Diabetes Centre in Sweden and the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, looked at 14,775 patients including a detailed analysis of their blood. The results, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, showed the patients could be separated into five distinct clusters: |
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Stars Billions Of Years Old Drop Big Clue To Early Universe
(Click for story) | Astronomers have picked up a radio signal from the moment the lights went on in the universe billions of years ago, and they've discovered some surprises embedded in it. No, not aliens, but potential evidence of something just as mysterious and elusive. |
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Jupiter's Great Red Spot May Soon Disappear
(Click for story) | The Great Red Spot has been a fixture of Jupiter 's cloudy visage for centuries and is among the most recognizable features in the solar system. But it won't always be there. In fact, the Great Red Spot is shrinking, and recently, news stories reported that it could vanish within the next 10 or 20 years . |
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IBM's Watson Is Going To Space
(Click for story) | IBM announced it would be providing the AI brain for a robot being built by Airbus to accompany astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). "The robot, which looks like a flying volleyball with a low-resolution face, is being deployed with Germany astronaut Alexander Gerst in June for a six month mission," reports The Next Web. "It's called CIMON, an acronym for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, and it's headed to space to do science stuff." |
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Scientists Find Life In 'Mars-Like' Chilean Desert
(Click for story) | For the first time, researchers have seen life rebounding in the world's driest desert, demonstrating that it could also be lurking in the soils of Mars. |
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Microbes Found in Earth's Deep Ocean Might Grow on Saturn's Moon Enceladus
(Click for story) | Life as we know it needs three things: energy, water and chemistry. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus has them all, as NASA spacecraft Cassini confirmed in the final years of its mission to that planet. |
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North Pole surges above freezing in the dead of winter, stunning scientists
(Click for story) | The sun won't rise at the North Pole until March 20, and it's normally close to the coldest time of year, but an extraordinary and possibly historic thaw swelled over the tip of the planet this weekend. Analyses show that the temperature warmed to the melting point as an enormous storm pumped an intense pulse of heat through the Greenland Sea. |
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Trump Administration Cracks Down On H-1B Visa Abuse
(Click for story) | The Trump administration is cracking down on companies that get visas for foreign workers and farm them out to employers. Some staffing agencies seek hard-to-get H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, only to contract them out to other companies. |
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Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn't Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files
(Click for story) | Back in October, a grand jury indictment charged Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates with a variety of crimes, including conspiring "to defraud the United States." On Thursday, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a new indictment against the pair, substantially expanding the charges. As one former federal prosecutor told the Washington Post, Manafort and Gates' methods appear to have been "extensive and bold and greedy with a capital 'G,' but ... not all that sophisticated." |
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Amateur Astronomer Spots Supernova Right As It Begins
(Click for story) | Amateur astronomer Victor Buso was testing his camera-telescope setup in Argentina back in September 2016, pointing his Newtonian telescope at a spiral galaxy called NGC613. He collected light from the galaxy for the next hour and a half, taking short exposures to keep out the Santa Fe city lights. When he looked at his images, he realized he'd captured a potential supernova -- an enormous flash of light an energy bursting off of a distant star. |
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US Border Officials Haven't Properly Verified Visitor Passports For More Than a Decade Due To Improper Software
(Click for story) | U.S. border officials have failed to cryptographically verify the passports of visitors to the U.S. for more than a decade -- because the government didn't have the proper software. |
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Antarctica Is Losing Ice Faster Every Year
(Click for story) | A survey of satellite data published in the journal Cryosphere confirms what scientists have suspected for a while now: ice loss from the critical region of Antarctica is happening at an increasingly fast pace. |
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Game Industry Pushes Back Against Efforts To Restore Gameplay Servers
(Click for story) | A group of video game preservationists wants the legal right to replicate "abandoned" servers in order to re-enable defunct online multiplayer gameplay for study. The game industry says those efforts would hurt their business, allow the theft of their copyrighted content, and essentially let researchers "blur the line between preservation and play." |
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Barbie Will Be Used To Teach Kids To Code
(Click for story) | Mattel and Tynker are teaming up to launch seven new Barbie-themed coding lessons this coming summer. "The curriculum, aimed at teaching girls about computer programming, will also expose them to potential careers like becoming a veterinarian, astronaut, or robotics engineer," reports Engadget. "The larger goal is to introduce coding to 10 million kids by 2020." |
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