“Edmund M. Clarke, the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, has died of Covid-19,” writes Slashdot reader McGruber. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Professor Clarke was best known for his work in model checking, an automated method for detecting design errors in computer hardware and software. CMU president Farnam Jahanian said the world had “lost a…
Tag: post
Can mRNA Biotechnology be Adapted to Improve Flu Vaccines and Fight Cancer?
Reuters notes the “miraculous speed” of mRNA vaccines, while also calling it “a glimpse of what’s possible if it can be applied post-pandemic to treat cancer or rare diseases.” The vaccine market alone is worth about $35 billion each year, and investors apparently believe mRNA companies will capture around two-third of that, leading market researcher Bernstein to evalaute the combined worth…
How San Francisco Got a Very Special Monolith on Christmas Day
Ananda Sharma, founder of the app Gyroscope, describes to a local TV station the monolith he discovered during a Christmas-morning jog under a candy-cane red sunrise. “I think I smelled it before I saw it…” He spotted a double rainbow and wanted to peek at that too. At first, he thought the monolith was “a big post,” but as he got…
Russians Are Believed To Have Used Microsoft Resellers in Cyberattacks
As the United States comes to grips with a far-reaching Russian cyberattack on federal agencies, private corporations and the nation’s infrastructure, new evidence has emerged that the hackers hunted their victims through multiple channels. From a report: The most significant intrusions discovered so far piggybacked on software from SolarWinds, the Austin-based company whose updates the Russians compromised. But new evidence from…
Volkswagen CEO Says Apple Can Mount Major Challenge With Auto Push
Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess said cash-rich technology giants invading the auto industry pose a much bigger challenge for the German manufacturer than traditional rivals like Toyota Motor. From a report: “We look forward to new competitors who will certainly accelerate the change in our industry and bring in new skills,” Diess said in a LinkedIn post when asked…
Nuro Becomes First Company To Receive Commercial Autonomous Vehicle Permit From California DMV
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Hours after announcing that it acquired self-driving truck startup Ike, Nuro revealed it’s the first company to receive permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to charge a fee and receive compensation for its driverless delivery service. Unlike the autonomous testing licenses the California DMV previously granted to Nuro and others,…
Signal Says Cellebrite Cannot Break Its Encryption
Signal, in a blog post: Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to. Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to comment in that story, we’re posting this to help…
Facebook Says It’s Standing Up Against Apple For Small Businesses. Some Of Its Employees Don’t Believe It.
Last Tuesday, Facebook launched what it portrayed as a full-throated defense of small businesses. But while the $750 billion company’s public relations effort has presented a united front with small businesses, some Facebook employees complained about what they called a self-serving campaign that bordered on hypocrisy, according to internal comments and audio of a presentation to workers that were obtained by…
Google Told Its Scientists To ‘Strike a Positive Tone’ in AI Research
Alphabet’s Google this year moved to tighten control over its scientists’ papers by launching a “sensitive topics” review, and in at least three cases requested authors refrain from casting its technology in a negative light, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing internal communications and interviews with researchers involved in the work. From a report: Google’s new review procedure asks that researchers consult with…
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…