“NASA declared the Mars digger dead Thursday after failing to burrow deep into the red planet to take its temperature,” reports the Associated Press: Scientists in Germany spent two years trying to get their heat probe, dubbed the mole, to drill into the Martian crust. But the 16-inch-long (40-centimeter) device that is part of NASA’s InSight lander couldn’t gain enough friction…
Tag: Press
‘Major Component Malfunction’ Ends SLS Rocket Test Early. NASA Considers New Timeline
“NASA’s rocket charged with taking the agency back to the moon fired its four main engines Saturday afternoon, but the test in Mississippi was cut short after a malfunction caused an automatic abort,” reports Florida Today… “We did get an MCF on engine four,” a control room member said less than a minute into the test fire, using an initialism that…
Joe Biden Promotes ‘Science Advisor’ to US Cabinet-Level Position
“President-elect Joe Biden announced Friday that he has chosen a pioneer in mapping the human genome — the so-called ‘book of life’ — to be his chief science adviser,” reports the Associated Press, “and is elevating the top science job to a Cabinet position.” Biden nominated Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who was the…
MIT Professor Charged With Hiding Work For China
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was charged Thursday with hiding work he did for the Chinese government while he was also collecting U.S. dollars for his nanotechnology research. The Associate Press reports: Gang Chen, 56, was arrested by federal agents at his home in Cambridge on charges including wire fraud, officials said. While working for MIT, Chen entered into undisclosed…
Qualcomm To Acquire NUVIA: A CPU Magnitude Shift
Today, Qualcomm has announced they will be acquiring NUVIA for $1.4 billion — acquiring the start-up company consisting of industry veterans which originally were behind the creation of Apple’s high-performance CPU cores. AnandTech reports: NUVIA was originally founded in February 2019 and coming out of stealth-mode in November of that year. The start-up was founded by industry veterans Gerard Williams III,…
Parler Users Breached Deep Inside US Capitol Building, GPS Data Shows
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: At least several users of the far-right social network Parler appear to be among the horde of rioters that managed to penetrate deep inside the U.S. Capitol building and into areas normally restricted to the public, according to GPS metadata linked to videos posted to the platform the day of the insurrection in…
German Investigators Shut Down Biggest Illegal Marketplace On the Darknet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: German prosecutors said Tuesday that they have taken down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet and arrested its suspected operator. The site, known as DarkMarket, was shut down on Monday, prosecutors in the southwestern city of Koblenz said. All sorts of drugs, forged money, stolen or…
Firefox To Block Backspace Key From Working as ‘Back’ Button
Mozilla developers plan to remove support for using the Backspace key as a Back button inside Firefox. From a report: The change is currently active in the Firefox Nightly version and is expected to go live in Firefox 86, scheduled to be released next month, in late February 2021. The removal of the Backspace key as a navigational element didn’t come…
New Zealand’s Central Bank Says Its Data System Was Breached
The Associated Press reports:
New Zealand’s central bank said Sunday that one of its data systems has been breached by an unidentified hacker who potentially accessed commercially and personally sensitive information. A third party file sharing service used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to share and store sensitive information had been illegally accessed, the Wellington-based bank said in a statement….
Supersonic Jets Get a Boost as FAA Issues Rule to Spur Tests
New regulations for testing the next generation of ultra-fast jets were finalized by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, an attempt to streamline the development of supersonic flight. From a report: The FAA on Wednesday announced the regulations as several companies work on developing prototypes of aircraft capable of flying faster than the speed of sound, it said in a press release….