MONDAY, 10 AUGUST 2020, 08:09
NASA is “reconsidering how we talk about space,” reports CNET:NASA gave two examples of cosmic objects it’ll no longer use nicknames for. Planetary nebula NGC 2392 has been called the “Eskimo Nebula.” “‘Eskimo’ is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions,” NASA explained. NASA already added a note to a 2008 image release showing...
Bill Gates gave a wide-ranging new interview to Wired’s Steven Levy (also republished at Ars Technica.) The interview’s first question: as a man who’d been warning about a pandemic for years, are you disappointed with the response of the United States? Bill Gates: Yeah. There’s three time periods, all of which have disappointments. There is 2015 until this particular pandemic hit. If we had...
Slashdot reader quonset shares CNN’s report on “zombie cicadas” under the influence of “a psychedelic fungus” called Massospora containing the chemicals found in hallucinogenic mushrooms (citing a new study published in PLOS Pathogens).After infecting its host, the fungus results in “a disturbing display of B-horror movie proportions,” West Virginia University said in a press release. First...
Space agency says ‘certain cosmic nicknames are insensitive’ and vows to drop any reference to them
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing the unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.
In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community...
“Researchers have found that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip, one of the most widely used in Android phones, has hundreds of bits of vulnerable code that leaves millions of Android users at risk,” reports Gizmodo:To back up a bit, Qualcomm is a major chip supplier to several well-known tech companies. In 2019, its Snapdragon series of processors could be found on nearly 40% of all Android...
Huawei Technologies will stop making its flagship Kirin microchips next month, financial magazine Caixin said on Saturday, as the impact of US pressure on the Chinese tech giant grows.
The BBC reports:U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he wants a “clean” internet. What he means by that is he wants to remove Chinese influence, and Chinese companies, from the internet in the U.S. But critics believe this will bolster a worrying movement towards the breaking up of the global internet. The so called “splinternet” is generally used when talking about China, and more recently...
Not only is the app many Americans’ primary means of communicating with China, it’s also been the mobilizing arm of Chinese Trumpism.
The international R&D hub Imec has made a millimetre-wave motion detection radar integrated in a standard 28nm CMOS chip, reports Electronics Weekly, adding that it consumes just 62 mW,”making the sensor integrable into small, battery-powered devices…”The radar operates in the frequency band around 60 GHz, a license-free ISM band that can be used for new IoT applications for industrial and...
MTN Group is considering selling its stake in Iran’s ride-hailing app Snapp as it trims its e-commerce portfolio and plans an exit of the Middle East.
One of the few women in the computer industry in its early days, she paved the way for the efficient, lightning-fast apps of today.
Looking for a new way to communicate during the pandemic? A Los Angeles company has created phone booth-sized machines to beam live holograms into your living room.
Algorithms routinely come up with ‘recommendations’ for anti-vax ‘bestsellers’ or juices that cure cancer
It’s a truism that we live in a “digital age”. It would be more accurate to say that we live in an algorithmically curated era – that is, a period when many of our choices and perceptions are shaped by machine-learning algorithms that nudge us in directions favoured by those who...
Long-time Slashdot reader philml writes:Popular Mac developer Charlie Monroe woke up to find that none of his users could run his software. Instead, Mac OS was giving a message saying that it “will damage your computer”. Monroe described the ensuing hassle in a blog post titled “A day without business.” In a later update he added that Apple “has called and apologized for the complications. The...
Headaches are telling you something about how your brain works with your body, influencing your behaviour and feelings
We need pain. It seems contradictory to say it, particularly now that we have so many ways of dealing with it and switching it off. Pain not only tells us something is wrong, it also protects us. If you slam the car door on your hand, it’s going to hurt. You will have damaged...
UPI reports:Efforts to save the giant panda from extinction have come at the expense of other large mammals, a new study released Monday by the science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution said… Since the giant panda reserves were set up in China during the 1960s, leopards have disappeared from 81% of reserves, snow leopards from 38%, wolves from 77% and Asian wild dogs from 95%. Researchers...
Building a personal website offers a variety of benefits – including improving your personal brand and teaching you new skills.
Plus: A Canon ransomware hack, a nasty Twitter bug, and more of the week’s top security news.
Do you need a small, cheap way to improve your life? These are the affordable pick-me-ups that we can’t live without.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SyFy: For the first time, scientists have detected neutrinos coming from the Sun’s core that got their start via the CNO process, an until-now theorized type of stellar nuclear fusion. […] The Borexino neutrino observatory is 1400 meters under the rock below the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. It has an 8.5 meter wide nylon balloon filled with 280 tons of...
Good news! An orbiter saw signs of almost a dozen previously uncounted colonies in Antarctica, boosting known numbers for a threatened species.