Tag: individual

NSO Used Real People’s Location Data To Pitch Its Contact-Tracing Tech, Researchers Say

Spyware maker NSO Group used real phone location data on thousands of unsuspecting people when it demonstrated its new COVID-19 contact-tracing system to governments and journalists, researchers have concluded. From a report: NSO, a private intelligence company best known for developing and selling governments access to its Pegasus spyware, went on the charm offensive earlier this year to pitch its contact-tracing…

Moon passes in front of Taurus the Bull

These next three nights – December 26, 27 and 28, 2020 – the bright waxing gibbous moon shines in front of the constellation Taurus the Bull. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/moon-passes-in-front-of-taurus-the-bull…

Quantum Computer Makers Like Their Odds For Big Progress

For years, quantum computing has been the preserve of academics. New advances, however, are pushing this potentially revolutionary technology toward practical applications. From a report: At the Q2B conference this month, quantum computer makers Google, IBM, Honeywell, IonQ and Xanadu detailed specific steps they expect by 2024 that will push their machines further down the road of commercial practicality. Those achievements…

Nintendo Leak Reveals Extreme Measures Taken To Track Hackers

An internal Nintendo leak has revealed measures the company took when approaching a 3DS homebrew hacker. The measures are rather extreme and apparently include surveillance of the individual in question, as well as internal presentations and instructions on how to approach him. From a report: This comes courtesy of prominent Twitter Nintendo leaker Eclipse. According to documents unearthed by Eclipse –…

Winner Announced In the World’s First ‘Quantum Chess’ Tournament

Aleksander Kubica is a postdoctoral fellow at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Institute for Quantum Computing. And he’s also the winner of the world’s first quantum chess tournament. (It’s now available for streaming on Twitch, and begins with a clip of the late Stephen Hawking playing a 2016 game against Ant-Man star Paul Rudd.) “It’s a complicated version of…

Only 10 senior Black researchers awarded UK science funding last year

Just 10 senior researchers who received public funding in 2018-19 were Black, or 0.5 per cent of the total that year, the first breakdown of UK science funding by individual ethnic groups reveals Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2262849-only-10-senior-black-researchers-awarded-uk-science-funding-last-year/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Nathan Myhrvold’s Dazzling High-Resolution Photographs of Snowflakes

Nathan Myhrvold is a former CTO of Microsoft, co-founder of the equity company Intellectual Ventures, and the founder of “food innovation lab” Modernist Cuisine (which among other things resulted in book of remarkable food photography). But he’s now photographing the intricate designs of snowflakes, reports Fast Company: Over the span of 18 months, Myhrvold built a camera with a microscopic lens…

Google Plans to Calculate ‘Criticality’ Scores for Open Source Projects

Programming columnist Mike Melanson writes:
As part of its involvement in the recently announced Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), Google has penned a blog post outlining one of the first steps it will take as part of this group, with an attempt at finding critical open source projects. “Open source software (OSS) has long suffered from a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem,”…

‘Zodiac Killer’ cipher solved after 51 years

The notorious serial killer, who to this day has never been caught, left several mysterious ciphers. The unidentified individual, who terrorized parts… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/341783/zodiac-killer-cipher-solved-after-51-years…