Rather than leaving home young, as expected, star siblings are more likely to stick together in long-lasting, string-like star groups, according to a new study of data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/gaia-tracks-sibling-stars-in-milky-way…
Tag: lists
The sun is between us and Mars now
So we can’t see Mars in our night sky. But, more importantly for NASA, beginning this week, space engineers won’t be able to risk sending commands to our fleet of spacecraft at Mars. What happens instead? Watch this video. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mars-solar-conjunction-sept-2-2019-spacecraft-protocol…
Wells Fargo’s Computer Kept Charging ‘Overdrawn’ Fees On Supposedly Closed Accounts
The New York Times explains a new issue by describing what happened when Xavier Einaudi tried to close his Wells Fargo checking account. For weeks after the date the bank said the accounts would be closed, it kept some of them active. Payments to his insurer, to Google for online advertising and to a provider of project management software were paid…
Advertisers Are Blacklisting News Stories That Contain Forbidden Words
Zorro shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Companies are increasingly insisting their ads do not appear near articles or videos that contain any of a long list of words. Like many advertisers, Fidelity Investments wants to avoid advertising online near controversial content. The Boston-based financial-services company has a lengthy blacklist of words it considers off-limits. If one of those…
What are the full moon names?
Lists of common full moon names – both by month and by season – for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/full-moon-names…
Is Hiring Broken?
DevNull127 writes: Hiring is broken and yours is too,” argues a New York-based software developer whose LinkedIn profile says he’s worked at both Amazon and Google, as well as doing architecture verification work for both Oracle and Intel. Summarizing what he’s read about hiring just this year in numerous online articles, he lists out the arguments against virtually every popular hiring…
Privacy-Focused Android Q Still Lets Advertisers Track You
“The upcoming version of the Android operating system is taking a strong focus on privacy,” reports SD Times, “but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes it could still do better.” Android Q’s new privacy features include: user control over app access to device location, new limits on access to files in shared external storage, restrictions on launching activities, and restrictions on…
GitHub Starts Blocking Developers In Countries Facing US Trade Sanctions
After a developer based in the Crimea region of Ukraine was blocked from GitHub this week, the Microsoft-owned software development platform said it has started restricting accounts in countries facing U.S. trade sanctions. GitHub lists Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syris as countries facing U.S. sanctions. ZDNet reports: As the developer reports, his website https://tkashkin.tk, which is hosted on GitHub,…
Hackers Stole 7.5TB of Secret Data From Russia’s Intelligence Agency
Hackers have reportedly stolen about 7.5 terabytes of data from a major Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contractor, thus exposing the secret projects the agency was working on to de-anonymize Tor browsing, scrape data from social media, and cut off Russia’s internet from the rest of the world. Fossbytes reports: Russia’s FSB is the successor agency to the infamous KGB and…
New Map Shows Where America’s Police, Businesses Are Using Facial Recognition and Other Surveillance Tech
“Fight For the Future, a tech-focused nonprofit, on Thursday released its Ban Facial Recognition map, logging the states and cities using surveillance technology,” reports CNET — noting that “surveillance technology” in this case includes Amazon’s Ring doorbell security cameras. A CNET investigation earlier this year highlighted the close ties between Ring and police departments across the US, many of which offer…