The programming language JavaScript emerged 25 years ago and has grown to become one of the most important pieces of the web and browser applications we use today. From a report: JavaScript is the go-to language for front-end development and has spawned Microsoft’s Typescript, a superset of JavaScript with a stronger optional type system for developers that compiles to JavaScript when…
Tag: giants
Scientists discover new way to measure turbulence of large planets and exoplanets
The swirls, eddies, and wavy bands of Jupiter and Saturn may remind us of a soothing, starry, starry night—but they reveal these two gas giants to be stormy, turbulent places. The turbulence produces energy cascades, a non-linear transfer of energy between different scales of motion. These are as fundamental to understanding planetary dynamics as the cardiovascular system is to understanding the…
Schedar shines brightly at the Queen’s heart
Orange-hued Schedar is the brightest star in the distinctive W-shaped northern constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/schedar-short-life-of-burning-bright…
Amazon and Apple ‘Not Playing Their Part’ in Tackling Electronic Waste
Global giants such as Amazon and Apple should be made responsible for helping to collect, recycle and repair their products to cut the 155,000 tonnes of electronic waste being thrown away each year in the UK, MPs say. From a report: An investigation by the environmental audit committee found the UK is lagging behind other countries and failing to create a…
Rapid-forming giants could disrupt spiral protoplanetary discs
Giant planets that developed early in a star system’s life could solve a mystery of why spiral structures are not observed in young protoplanetary discs, according to a new study by University of Warwick astronomers. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-11-rapid-forming-giants-disrupt-spiral-protoplanetary.html…
hCaptcha Runs On 15% Of the Internet
In a blog post, hCaptcha announced that its bot detector is running on about 15% of the internet, adding they they “took most of this market share directly from Google reCAPTCHA.” From the post: Competing with Google and other Big Tech companies seems like a tall order: their monopolistic market power, platform effects and army of highly paid developers are generally…
France Orders Tech Giants To Pay Digital Tax
New submitter Based.Tech writes: The French Finance Ministry has sent out notices to big tech companies liable for its digital service tax to pay the levy as planned in December, the ministry said on Wednesday. France suspended collection of the tax, which will hit companies like Facebook and Amazon, early this year while negotiations were underway at the Organisation for Economic…
Google, Facebook and Twitter Threaten To Leave Pakistan Over Censorship Law
Global internet companies Facebook, Google and Twitter and others have banded together and threatened to leave Pakistan after the South Asian nation granted blanket powers to local regulators to censor digital content. From a report: Earlier this week, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan granted the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority the power to remove and block digital content that pose “harms, intimidates or…
MSNBC: Parler Does Censor, Removes Users, and Really Hates Trolling
For seekers of a right-leaning free-speech utopia, “Parler may turn out to be, in the end, a false refuge,” warns Marc Ambinder at MSNBC: First — sorry, folks — Parler does censor. It removes users, regularly. It does not actually seem to tolerate hate speech, and because it’s a much smaller platform, it might even be more efficient in finding and…
Will Parler Spread Misinformation – or Just Segregate It Onto a Single App?
“The rising popularity of alternative social media app Parler is raising concerns over the spread of misinformation and potential for radicalizing users on a platform that’s taken a hands-off approach to regulating content,” reports The Hill’s reporter on technology policy: The app has been boosted by conservatives, surging since Election Day, as Republicans amp up allegations of anti-conservative bias from social…