For years, tech companies have touted blockchain technology as a means to develop identity systems that are secure and decentralized. The goal is to build a platform that could store information about official data without holding the actual documents or details themselves. Instead of just storing a scan of your birth certificate, for example, a decentralized ID platform might store a…
Tag: long-term
Gamma-ray and optical flares detected from the blazar S5 1803+784
Using NASA’s Fermi spacecraft, astronomers have conducted a long-term monitoring campaign of a blazar known as S5 1803+784 and have identified several gamma-ray and optical flares from this source. The finding is detailed in a paper published February 19 on arXiv.org. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-03-gamma-ray-optical-flares-blazar-s5.html…
Biden Signs Executive Order To Address Chip Shortage Through a Review To Strengthen Supply Chains
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday meant to address a global chip shortage impacting industries ranging from medical supplies to electric vehicles. From a report: The order includes a 100-day review of key products including semiconductors and advanced batteries used in electric vehicles, followed by a broader, long-term review of six sectors of the economy. The long-term review will…
Could Drinking Coffee Lower Your Risk of Heart Failure?
The New York Times reports: A large analysis looked at hundreds of factors that may influence the risk of heart failure and found one dietary factor in particular that was associated with a lower risk: drinking coffee… The analysis included extensive, decades-long data from three large health studies with 21,361 participants, and used a method called machine learning that uses computers…
VLC Will Get a New UI This Year With 4.0 Launch
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: News website Protocol ran an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major version of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul. “We modified the interface to be…
3 Ways to Future-Proof Your University
By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management This article was originally published in Campus Tech, January 2021. When the pandemic led to the initial shutdown of university campuses in early February, Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China, was among the first to move all its courses to an online format. By April, at the height […]
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Watch an ISS spacewalk February 1
On Monday, February 1, 2 NASA astronauts will perform the 2nd in a pair of International Space Station spacewalks to finish installing a European science platform and complete long-term battery upgrade work. How to watch live. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/watch-iss-spacewalk-feb2021…
Watch ISS spacewalk January 27
On Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 2 NASA astronauts will perform the first in a pair of International Space Station spacewalks, to finish installing a European science platform and complete long-term battery upgrade work. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/watch-iss-spacewalk-jan2021…
BP Slashes Its Oil Exploration Team by 85%, Starts Switching to Renewables
Reuters reports on big changes at BP (the company formerly known as British Petroleum):
Its geologists, engineers and scientists have been cut to less than 100 from a peak of more than 700 a few years ago, company sources told Reuters, part of a climate change-driven overhaul triggered last year by CEO Bernard Looney. “The winds have turned very chilly in the…
More Companies Are Joining ‘Tech Exodus’ From California
This week Digital Reality data center services announced it was also relocating its headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas, citing factors like a low cost of living and “supportive business climate”. (Though it will still maintain a “significant” presence in the Bay Area.) And Align Technology (makers of the Invisalign orthodontic dental aligners) also announced it had relocated…