Pakistan’s PM Asks Facebook To Ban Islamophobic Content

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Facebook to ban Islamophobic content on its platform, warning of a spike in radicalization amongst Muslims, hours after he hit out at the French president for “attacking Islam.” Reuters reports: Pakistan summoned the French ambassador in Islamabad as anger spread on Monday over President Emmanuel Macron’s reaction to the murder last week of a…

NASA’s Probe Sampled Too Much From Asteroid Bennu and Now It’s Leaking

Iwastheone shares some space news from OPB: A NASA spacecraft sent out to collect a sample of rock and dust from an asteroid has nabbed so much that it’s created an unexpected problem. Rocks are jammed in the device in a way that’s keeping a Mylar flap open, creating a gap that’s letting some of the collected pebbles and dust drift…

Debian Donates 10,000 Euros to Fund Free and Decentralized Livestreaming

PeerTube (developed by Framasoft) is “the free and decentralized alternative to video platforms, providing you over 400,000 videos published by 60,000 users and viewed over 15 million times,” according to its web site. But now they’re exploring livestreaming, writes Debian developer Phil Hands (Slashdot reader #2,365): Holding DebConf20 online this year highlighted the effort involved in setting up Live Streaming using…

Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In early September, the City Council in Portland, Ore., met virtually to consider sweeping legislation outlawing the use of facial recognition technology. The bills would not only bar the police from using it to unmask protesters and individuals captured in surveillance imagery; they would also prevent companies and a variety…

US Charges Russian Hackers Behind NotPetya, KillDisk, OlympicDestroyer Attacks

The US Department of Justice has unsealed charges today against six Russian nationals believed to be part of one of Russia’s most elite and secretive hacking groups, universally known as Sandworm. From a report: US officials said all six nationals are officers in Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency of the Russian Army, DOJ…

Venus flyby on the way to Mercury

On Saturday, October 20, 2018, the BepiColombo space probe set off on its journey to Mercury from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The 6.40 meters high and 4.1 tons heavy BepiColombo space probe consists of two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), which was constructed by the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), which was…

James Webb Space Telescope passes environmental testing

The James Webb Space Telescope – successor to the Hubble – just passed a series of environmental testing trials, designed to simulate the rigors of its anticipated launch in 2021. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/james-webb-space-telescope-passes-environmental-testing…

Many Amazon Returns Are Just Destroyed or Sent to Landfills

What happens when we return items to Amazon? “Perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill,” according to Marketplace, an investigative consumer program on Canada’s public TV:
Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don’t end up back on the e-commerce giant’s website for resale, as customers might think. Marketplace journalists posing as…

Netflix Indicted By Texas Grand Jury Over ‘Lewd’ Depiction of Children In ‘Cuties’

A Texas grand jury indicted Netflix for the “lewd” representation of children in the controversial French film “Cuties.” The Hill reports: The Sept. 23 indictment shows the Tyler County Grand Jury charged the popular streaming site for “promotion of lewd visual material depicting child” for its drama about a young girl who is torn between her conservative Muslim family’s values and…

‘World’s Fastest Electrodes’ Triple the Density of Lithium Batteries

French company Nawa technologies says it’s already in production on a new electrode design that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery chemistries, delivering up to 3x the energy density, 10x the power, vastly faster charging and battery lifespans up to five times as long. NewAtlas reports: Nawa is already known for its work in the ultracapacitor market,…