Tag: Estonia

Images of shadows cast by jet contrails

Jet contrail shadows may appear to be cast by a low-altitude bright light shining upwards. In fact, this shadow is normally cast on clouds below the jet and its contrail. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/jet-contrail-casts-a-shadow…

Is There a Tech Worker ‘Exodus’ From the San Francisco Bay Area?

The New York Times reports on an “exodus” of tech workers from the San Francisco Bay Area, where “Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you” — and your commute could be over an hour. The biggest tech companies aren’t going anywhere, and tech stocks are still soaring… But the migration from the Bay Area appears real. Residential…

Germany, France, 11 Other EU Countries Team Up For Semiconductor Push

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Germany, France, Spain and ten other EU countries have joined forces to invest in processors and semiconductor technologies, key to internet-connected devices and data processing, in a push to catch up with the United States and Asia. Europe’s share of the 440-billion-euro ($533 billion) global semiconductor market is around 10%, with the EU…

Ask Slashdot: Why Haven’t We Implemented Public Key Infrastructure Voting?

Long-time Slashdot reader t0qer has a question: why haven’t we gone to an open source, Public Key Infrastructure-based voting system? “I’m fairly well versed in PKI technology, and quoting this site, it would take traditional computers 300 trillion years to break RSA-2048 for a single vote.”
SSL.com has a pretty interesting piece on using Public Key Infrastructure in voting. There’s also a…

Guided Projects Offering Becomes the Fastest to Reach One Million Enrollments on Coursera

Enterprise offering now includes private authoring of Guided Projects, courses, and assessments  By Shravan Goli, Chief Product Officer and Namit Yadav, General Manager, Rhyme The pandemic has accelerated the rate of digital transformation among institutions, creating an urgent need to support skills development in new ways. With face-to-face training not possible in the current environment, […]
The post Guided Projects Offering Becomes…

Are There Exceptions to the Rule that Going Electric Reduces Emissions?

“Averaged over the globe, electric vehicles (EVs) already represent about a 31-percent emissions savings” writes Ars Technica, noting results from a study which also found similar savings from energy-efficient home-heating pumps. “Even in the scenario where these technologies are promoted but the grid isn’t cleaned up much, there’s a substantial benefit through 2050.” But the researchers also separated the world into…

Bitcoin’s climate change impact may be much smaller than we thought

Bitcoin mining may have released 17 megatonnes of CO2 in 2018, similar to the annual emissions from Estonia and just one-third of an earlier emission estimate Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2224037-bitcoins-climate-change-impact-may-be-much-smaller-than-we-thought/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

AI learns to predict the outcomes of human rights court cases

AI is going into law. It can now predict the outcomes of human rights cases and next year Estonia is planning to use the technology to moderate disputes in small claims courts Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2212953-ai-learns-to-predict-the-outcomes-of-human-rights-court-cases/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Why I’m boycotting TurboTax this year

It’s an evil parasite that only makes your taxes more complicated. It’s tax season again, and that means you’re probably thinking about using TurboTax. You wouldn’t be alone; Intuit, the company that sells TurboTax, claimed in 2016 that the app has 31 million users. Its competitors do pretty well for themselves too, with H&R Block… Continue reading Why I’m boycotting TurboTax this year