Giant iceberg breaks off Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica

A giant iceberg, about twice the size of Chicago, broke off from Antartica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in late February 2021. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/giant-iceberg-breaks-off-antarctica-brunt-ice-shelf…

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…

Is this the end of the A-68A iceberg?

Satellite images reveal that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has broken into multiple pieces. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/end-of-the-a68a-iceberg-feb2021…

After SolarWinds Breach, Lawmakers Ask NSA for Help in Cracking Juniper Cold Case

As the U.S. investigation into the SolarWinds hacking campaign grinds on, lawmakers are demanding answers from the National Security Agency about another troubling supply chain breach that was disclosed five years ago. From a report: A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are asking the NSA what steps it took to secure defense networks following a years-old breach…

Will iceberg twice the size of NYC break off Antarctica this year?

A crack on the Antarctic ice shelf grew dramatically in late 2020 into 2021. Scientists are watching to see if the rapidly accelerating crack will cause the shelf to rip apart before Antarctica’s sunlit summer season – going on now – comes to an end. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/iceberg-brunt-ice-shelf-antarctica-break-off…

Demis Hassabis interview: Our AI will unlock secrets of how life works

DeepMind’s co-founder says artificial intelligence is set to crack many of the toughest problems in science, from the nature of life to nuclear fusion Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833140-700-demis-hassabis-interview-our-ai-will-unlock-secrets-of-how-life-works/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Authorities Don’t Need To Break Phone Encryption in Most Cases, Because Modern Phone Encryption Sort of Sucks.

Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, shares in a series of tweets: My students Max and Tushar Jois spent most of the summer going through every piece of public documentation, forensics report, and legal document we could find to figure out how police were “breaking phone encryption.” This was prompted by a claim from someone knowledgeable, who…

Successful IT Workers Applaud Non-Traditional Paths to Tech

Tech columnist Chris Matyszczyk describes what happened after Microsoft’s senior cloud advocate tweeted “Hire folks with non-traditional paths to tech.”
Thomas Zeman, whose Twitter bio declared he’s “scaling pods at daytime, working on a docker based raspberry pi router at nighttime,” mused in reply: “Depends a bit what tech you are talking about. When doing machine learning for cancer recognition on medical…