Exploring the Open Source That Really Goes Into a RISC-V Chip

“Maker Andreas Spiess talks about the Open Source that really goes into a RISC-V chip and the ESP32-C3,” writes
Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 — sharing a link to this article from Hackaday: It’s an exciting time in the world of microprocessors, as the long-held promise of devices with open-source RISC-V cores is coming to fruition. Finally we might be about to see open-source…

Vaccines Adapted for Variants Will Not Need Lengthy Testing, FDA Says

The Food and Drug Administration said this week that vaccine developers would not need to conduct lengthy randomized controlled trials for vaccines that have been adapted to protect against concerning coronavirus variants. From a report: The recommendations, which call for small trials more like those required for annual flu vaccines, would greatly accelerate the review process at a time when scientists…

Experian Challenged Over Massive Data Leak in Brazil

Experian may be in trouble again — this time in Brazil. ZDNet reports on “the emergence of a leak that exposed the personal data of more than 220 million citizens and companies, which is being offered for sale in the dark web.” After receiving feedback from Experian over a massive data leak in Brazil, São Paulo state consumer rights foundation Procon…

Upheaval and extinctions linked to magnetic reversal 42,000 years ago

42,000 years ago, a breakdown in Earth’s magnetic field led to environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/magnetic-field-reversal-42000-years-ago-neanderthal-extinction…

WHO Investigators Now Believe Cornavirus was ‘Circulating Widely’ in Wuhan in December

“Investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought,” reports CNN, “and are urgently seeking access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city that China has not so far let them examine.” The lead investigator for…

WHO Investigators Now Believe Coronavirus was ‘Circulating Widely’ in Wuhan in December

“Investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought,” reports CNN, “and are urgently seeking access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city that China has not so far let them examine.” The lead investigator for…

VP and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon: ‘The Turing Test is Obsolete. It’s Time To Build a New Barometer For AI’

Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon, writes: While Turing’s original vision continues to be inspiring, interpreting his test as the ultimate mark of AI’s progress is limited by the era when it was introduced. For one, the Turing Test all but discounts AI’s machine-like attributes of fast computation and information lookup, features that are some of…

New sunspot cycle could be among strongest on record

A study of oppositely charged magnetic field bands, moving in the sun’s northern and southern hemispheres, suggests the coming sunspot cycle – Cycle 25 – will be a particularly strong one. This result contradicts an earlier expert forecast, suggesting a weak Cycle 25. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sunspot-cycle-25-among-strongest-on-record-says-ncar…

How the world came to understand black holes

Earlier this month, Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez split the 2020 physics Nobel Prize for decades of work on black holes. Click here to learn more about their monumental achievement and about the history of our understanding of these exotic objects in space. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nobel-prize-3-astrophysicists-black-holess-penrose-genzel-ghez…