Google chief Sundar Pichai has warned that “regulation can get it wrong” as his firm is increasingly targeted by antitrust moves. From a report: Last week, the European Commission set out new regulation to curb the power of big tech. The Digital Services Act hopes to increase transparency and competition for tech firms. The legislation will force firms, such as Google,…
Tag: failure
The First Person In the UK To Have Air Pollution Listed As a Cause of Death
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A nine-year-old girl who died following an asthma attack has become the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death. Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London, died in 2013. Southwark Coroner’s Court found that air pollution “made a…
Nigeria Orders Mobile Users To Link Phones To National ID Numbers
Nigeria’s telecommunications regulator ordered mobile-phone users to link their devices to their national identity numbers, raising the prospect of millions of lines being blocked. From a report: Subscribers have until Dec. 31 to comply with the requirement, the Nigerian Communications Commission said in a statement Tuesday on its website. Failure to do so will result in their phone lines being cut…
Physicists attempt to unify all forces of nature and rectify Einstein’s biggest failure
Einstein’s failed dream could ultimately become his ultimate triumph, as a small group of theoretical physicists rework his old ideas to explain the most pressing issues of modern science. Source: https://www.livescience.com/einstein-biggest-failure-teleparallel-gravity.html
Do Games Made Under Crunch Conditions Deserve ‘Best Direction’ Awards?
The annual Game Awards ceremony awarded this year’s “Best Direction” award to Naughty Dog studio’s The Last of Us Part II — provoking a strong reaction from Kotaku’s staff writer. “I think it’s pretty obvious that no game that required its developers to crunch, like The Last of Us Part II did, should be given a Best Direction award.” It’s no…
Component Failure Found in Crew Capsule NASA Hoped to Launch in 2021
The Verge reports that a power component failed on the Orion deep-space crew capsule that NASA hopes to launch (unmanned) from its Space Launch System (or SLS) in late 2021, in a mission called Artemis 1. The problem? It’s buried deep within one of the spacecraft’s power/data units (or PDUs) within the adapter that connects the capsule to its power/propulsion trunk…
Why Players Blame Skill-Based Matchmaking For Losing In Call of Duty
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two months ago, esports pro Seth “Scump” Abner logged into the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War multiplayer alpha and found himself struggling. Not because of any major gameplay changes developer Treyarch had made, Cold War plays like any other Call of Duty from the past decade, but rather because of the…
Google Fires AI Ethics Co-Lead Timnit Gebru
Timnit Gebru, one of the best-known AI researchers today and co-lead of an AI ethics team at Google, said she was fired Wednesday for sending an email to “non-management employees that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.” VentureBeat reports: She said Google AI employees who report to her were emailed and told that she accepted her resignation when…
New Electric Cars Have Problems In Latest Consumer Reports Survey
schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog, adding: “And CR decides to predict poor reliability on EVs it hasn’t even evaluated yet.” From the report: The latest auto survey from Consumer Reports shows several newer electric cars to be beset with problems, contradicting the conventional wisdom that EVs with their simpler powertrains should have fewer issues than gasoline- or diesel-powered cars. The…
Arecibo telescope receiver platform crashes onto dish
The telescope has been inoperable since mid-November, when multiple engineering companies reported that safety in and around it could not be guaranteed. Now their fears have come to pass. No one was injured. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/arecibo-telescope-receiver-platform-crashes-onto-dish…