A SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during test flight Wednesday before swooping down to a pinpoint landing near its launch site. Approximately three minutes after landing, however, multiple independent video feeds showed the rocket exploding on its landing pad. CNN reports: SpaceX’s SN10, an early prototype of the company’s Starship Mars rocket, took off around 5:15…
Tag: Conservative
Did Facebook Change Its Rules to Placate the Right?
Former lobbyist/political advisor Joel Kaplan joined Facebook in 2011 to lead its Washington D.C. outreach, reports BuzzFeed news. But some employees said they were very unhappy with decisions made by both Kaplan and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet’s most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones. Then…
Facebook Blames ‘Technical Issues” for Its Broken Promise to the US Congress
Facebook is blaming “technical issues” for its broken promise to the U.S. Congress to stop recommending political groups to its users, reports The Markup: Facebook made the pledge once in October, in the run-up to the presidential election, and then falsely reiterated it had taken the step after rioters overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly event partially coordinated…
Over 300 Million Indians May Have COVID-19
About one in four of India’s 1.35 billion people may have been infected with the coronavirus, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of a government serological survey, suggesting the country’s real caseload was many times higher than reported. From the report: India has confirmed 10.8 million COVID-19 infections, the most anywhere outside the United States. But the survey,…
Boeing Curbed Rocket Test Over Hydraulics Issue, NASA Says
Boeing’s test of the largest rocket in U.S. history ended earlier than expected on Jan. 16 because a hydraulic-system setting exceeded a preset limit, dealing another setback to the company’s space ambitions. From a report: The first firing of all four RS-25 engines on the Space Launch System rocket ended just 67.2 seconds into the planned eight-minute test. The so-called hot…
Hungary Mulls Sanctions Against Social Media Giants
Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga on Monday raised the prospect of sanctioning social media firms over what she called “systematic abuses” of free speech. From a report: The minister said she would meet the Hungarian competition watchdog this week to discuss possible penalties for what she described as unfair commercial practices as well as convening a meeting of the country’s digital…
Twitter Temporarily Suspends Account of US Representative
CNN reports: Twitter on Sunday temporarily suspended the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for repeated violations of new rules the social media platform put in place following the violent U.S. Capitol riot earlier this month, a company spokesperson told CNN. “The account referenced has been temporarily locked out for multiple violations of our civic integrity policy,” the spokesperson said. As…
Facial Recognition Reveals Political Party In Troubling New Research
Researchers have created a machine learning system that they claim can determine a person’s political party, with reasonable accuracy, based only on their face. TechCrunch reports: The study, which appeared this week in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, was conducted by Stanford University’s Michal Kosinski. Kosinski made headlines in 2017 with work that found that a person’s sexual preference could be…
Google Sued by YouTube Rival Over Search Rankings
Video-sharing site Rumble accused Google in a lawsuit of abusing the power of its search engine and mobile operating system to boost its YouTube video service over rivals, the latest allegation of anticompetitive conduct against the Alphabet unit. From a report: Toronto-based Rumble, which has become popular among conservative pundits, on Monday filed an antitrust suit in federal court in California…
Parler CEO Complains Vendors ‘All Ditched Us Too’, While Confused Users Download ‘Porn-y’ App Parlor
The Verge reports: The CEO of the conservative-friendly social app Parler said that all of its vendors have abandoned the company following recent bans from Google, Apple, and Amazon. “Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us too, on the same day,” Parler CEO John Matze said in an interview with Fox News on…