Astronomers have long been looking into the vast universe in hopes of discovering alien civilisations. But for a planet to have life, liquid water must be present. The likelihood of that scenario has seemed impossible to calculate because it has been the assumption that planets like Earth got their water by chance when a large ice asteroid hit the planet. Source:…
Tag: GoT
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine Just Got a Lot Easier to Distribute
Pfizer and BioNTech “have asked the U.S. health regulator to relax requirements for their COVID-19 vaccine to be stored at ultra-low temperatures, potentially allowing it to be kept in pharmacy freezers,” reports Reuters, which adds that approval “could send a strong signal to other regulators around the world that may ease distribution of the shot in lower-income countries.” Slashdot reader FrankOVD…
Bill Gates Questions Societal Value of ‘GameStop’ Mania, Argues It’d Be ‘Good to Get Rid of’ Bitcoin
The price of bitcoin — now over $57,000 — has nearly doubled in the last 7 weeks. Even Elon Musk tweeted that its price seems high — though one analyst tells Bloomberg that Tesla has already made a profit of nearly $1 billion from its recent Bitcoin investment, more than it earned selling electric cars in all of 2020. Yet speaking…
Second Google AI Ethics Leader Fired, She Says Amid Staff Protest
Alphabet’s Google on Friday fired scientist Margaret Mitchell, she said in a Twitter post, after weeks of being under investigation for moving thousands of files outside the company amid a battle over research freedom and diversity. From a report: Google’s ethics in artificial intelligence research unit has been under scrutiny since December’s dismissal of scientist Timnit Gebru, which prompted protest from…
Mars landing team ‘awestruck’ by photo of descending rover
The world got its first close-up look at a Mars landing on Friday, as NASA released a stunning picture of its newest rover being lowered onto the dusty red surface. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-mars-team-awestruck-photo-descending.html…
Citi Can’t Have Its $900 Million Back
Matt Levine: Last August, Citigroup wired $900 million to some hedge funds by accident. Then it sent a note to the hedge funds saying, oops, sorry about that, please send us the money back. Some did. Others preferred to keep the money. Citi sued them. Yesterday Citi lost, and they got to keep the money. I read the opinion, by U.S….
SolarWinds Hack Was ‘Largest and Most Sophisticated Attack’ Ever, Microsoft President Says
A hacking campaign that used a U.S. tech company as a springboard to compromise a raft of U.S. government agencies is “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Microsoft Corp President Brad Smith said. From a report: The operation, which was identified in December and that the U.S. government has said was likely orchestrated by Russia, breached…
How Bill Gates Is Funding the Fight Against Climate Change
Bill Gates was interviewed tonight on the CBS News show 60 Minutes about his efforts to combat climate change: The good news is Gates believes it’s possible to prevent a catastrophic rise in temperatures. The bad news? He says in the next 30 years we need scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations and global cooperation on a scale the world has never seen….
WHO Team Member to New York Times: What We Learned in China
Peter Daszak is part of the World Health Organization’s 14-member team investigating the origins of the coronavirus. This weekend on Twitter he described “explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China” to journalists — only to see team members “selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began.” Daszak was responding to a New York…
Cryptocurrency Magnate’s Plan to Turn 67,000 Acres into Blockchain-Based ‘Smart City’
“A cryptocurrency company that owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada wants state government to grant technology companies power to form local governments on land they own,” reports the Associated Press. Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, ultimately envisions “a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint —…