US Navy is Liable for Mass Software Piracy, Appeals Court Rules

The United States Navy is liable for a mass copyright infringement. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the German software company Bitmanagement, which accused the Navy of copying software without permission. Bitmanagement claimed more than $500 million in damages, but the final amount has yet to be determined. From a report: The dispute started when the US…

Stanford Researchers Identify Four Causes For ‘Zoom Fatigue’ and Their Simple Fixes

In the first peer-reviewed article that systematically deconstructs Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior on Feb. 23, Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), has taken the medium apart and assessed Zoom on its individual technical aspects. He has identified four consequences of prolonged video chats that…

FBI Confirms Report of ‘Long, Cylindrical’ UFO ‘Moving Really Fast’ Over New Mex

An anonymous reader shares a PopularMechanics report: An American Airlines flight crew encountered an unidentified flying object over New Mexico on February 21. American Airlines has confirmed the strange incident, during which a “long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile” zipped over the Airbus A320, according to a pilot’s transmission obtained by The War Zone. American Airlines Flight…

Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Face New Rules in India

India is establishing new rules to govern internet firms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] a fresh challenge for the American giants in a huge market that is key to their global expansion. From a report: The new guidelines, unveiled Thursday, say that in order to counter the rise of problematic content online…

Cool video! Perseverance’s descent and touchdown on Mars

Check out this amazing new video from NASA’s Perseverance rover, showing its own descent and landing on the surface of Mars last week. Truly, it’s like nothing seen before! Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/video-perseverance-rover-descent-and-touchdown-on-mars…

How To Fall 35,000 Feet and Survive

Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page — an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet, documents one case of a sky diver who, upon total parachute failure, was saved by bouncing off high-tension wires. Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice. Like concrete, liquid doesn’t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the…

Climate Activist Jailed in India as Government Clamps Down on Dissent

Before anyone outside her hometown knew her name, Disha Ravi spent four years raising awareness among young people in Bangalore about the effects of climate change. Now the 21-year-old activist is jailed in New Delhi. The allegation: She distributed a “tool kit” in the form of a Google Doc containing talking points and contact information for influential groups to drum up…

Grizzlies Are Coming Back. But Can We Make Room For Them?

As grizzly bears expand their range in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming into places where they haven’t been seen in a century or more, they’re increasingly encountering humans. From a report: Things intensified last summer as trails and campgrounds across the region flooded with inexperienced tourists seeking refuge in the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic. Grizzly attacks spiked. Bear managers were inundated…

A new quantum switch for electronics

A Russian physicist and his international colleagues studied a quantum point contact (QCP) between two conductors with external oscillating fields applied to the contact. They found that, for some types of contacts, an increase in the oscillation frequency above a critical value reduced the current to zero—a promising mechanism that can help create nanoelectronics components. This research supported by the Russian…

3 Ways to Future-Proof Your University

By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management This article was originally published in Campus Tech, January 2021. When the pandemic led to the initial shutdown of university campuses in early February, Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China, was among the first to move all its courses to an online format. By April, at the height […]
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