How astronomers rediscovered a ‘lost world’

And why this rediscovery of a lost world – called NGTS-11b – bodes well for finding habitable exoplanets. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/lost-world-ngts-11b-exoplanet-habitable-zone…

TikTok’s New CEO Says Company Will Reveal How Its Algorithms Work

In his first public statement as CEO of TikTok, former Disney exec Kevin Mayer says the company will be releasing that code that drives its content-moderation algorithms so that experts can observe how its policies are enforced in real time. He says TikTok will also reveal its data flows to regulators, and is calling on its rivals to do the same….

Election Officials Are Vulnerable To Exim Security Vulnerability, Report Shows

whh3 writes: The Wall Street Journal has an “exclusive” scoop about a report detailing that several counties host their own mail servers using a version of Exim that is vulnerable to exploitation (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), exposing electing officials to potential interference during the upcoming cycle. “[Cybersecurity vendor Area 1 Security Inc.] found that officials in six small jurisdictions in…

Dark Sky Sanctuary established in New England

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine was certified as a Dark Sky Sanctuary on May 8, 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/first-dark-sky-sanctuary-in-new-england…

Could mini-Neptunes be irradiated ocean planets?

Many exoplanets known today are ‘super-Earths,’ with a radius 1.3 times that of Earth, and ‘mini-Neptunes,’ with 2.4 Earth radii. Mini-Neptunes, which are less dense, were long thought to be gas planets, made up of hydrogen and helium. Now, scientists at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/Cnes) have examined a new possibility, namely that the low density of mini-Neptunes could…

Airbnb Criticized For Asking Its Customers To Donate to Their Past Hosts

“Airbnb has been in hot water with hosts since the coronavirus crisis began, since the company told hosts to refund guests who needed to cancel their trips due to the pandemic,” reports Travel + Leisure magazine. “According to USA Today, the company spent $250 million in March to try to reimburse hosts for their cancellations plus a $17 million fund for…

Grant Imahara, Host of ‘MythBusters’ and ‘White Rabbit Project,’ Dies At 49

Grant Imahara, an electrical engineer and roboticist who hosted the popular science show MythBusters and Netflix’s White Rabbit Project, has died suddenly following a brain aneurysm. He was 49. From The Hollywood Reporter: An electrical engineer and roboticist by training, he joined Discovery’s MythBusters in its third season, replacing Scottie Chapman and was with the show until 2014 when he left…

Spintronics Researchers Demonstrate How to Process Magnetic Vortices for Data Storage

Research continues in a field which involves using the spin and magnetism of electrons in solid-state devices — spintronics. hackingbear shared this report from Nature:
Electric control of magnetic vortex dynamics in a reproducible way on an ultrafast time scale is a key element in the quest for efficient spintronic devices with low-energy consumption. Researchers in China and Germany demonstrated a simple…

Google Open Sources Trademarks With the Open Usage Commons

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google has announced it is launching a new organization, Open Usage Commons (OUC), to host the trademarks for three of its most important new open-source projects. These are Angular, a web application framework for mobile and desktop; Gerrit, a web-based team code-collaboration tool; and Istio, a popular open mesh platform to connect, manage,…