Celebrate the 91st anniversary of Pluto’s discovery

The I Heart Pluto Festival 2021 is a free event running from February 13 – 18 hosted by Lowell Observatory. Join in with nightly virtual events! Source: https://earthsky.org/space/i-heart-pluto-festival-2021-virtual-events-91st-anniversary…

Wall Street Fund Wants To Hire r/WallStreetBets Users To Help Pick Meme Stocks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Cindicator Capital is the kind of investment fund that relies on software and algorithms to model investment strategies based on any number of disparate factors. In the wake of the WallStreetBets subreddit throwing hedge funds into chaos and driving stock prices to non-sensical extremes, Cindicator has posted a job listing on LinkedIn hoping…

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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The 1st sign of intelligent life beyond Earth?

Physicist Avi Loeb of Harvard believes we should take seriously the idea that ‘Oumuamua – the 1st known object to pass through our solar system from interstellar space – might have been created by an alien civilization. His new book is called “Extraterrestrial.” Source: https://earthsky.org/space/book-avi-loeb-extraterrestrial-1st-sign-of-intelligent-life…

Get ready for Perseverance’s landing on Mars February 18

Some call attempts to land on Mars “7 minutes of terror.” The Perseverance mission will provide the most detailed video and photos of a landing yet. We’ll watch ourselves land on another planet, for the first time ever. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/get-ready-nasa-perseverance-landing-feb2021…

Hey, kids! Meet the new Hot Wheels Mars rover!

Mattel, maker of Hot Wheels, has just released a new Hot Wheels Mars Perseverance Rover to celebrate the landing of the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars on February 18. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/hot-wheels-mars-perseverance-rover-mattel…

See Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky

Find out how to spot Sirius, the brightest star as seen from Earth. Learn the mythology behind this dazzling light and how it earned the nickname of the Dog Star. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/sirius-the-brightest-star…

Has Section 230 Created a ‘Vast Web of Vengeance’?

Slashdot reader GatorSnake shares “Another take of the implications of Section 230… One person poisoned the online personas of multiple people who had ‘wronged’ her, with it being nearly impossible to have the false accusations removed from the sites or from Google’s search results.” The New York Times reports:
Mr. Babcock, a software engineer, got off the phone and Googled himself. The…

Google Explores Alternative To Apple’s New Anti-Tracking Feature

Google is exploring an alternative to Apple’s new anti-tracking feature, the latest sign that the internet industry is slowly embracing user privacy, Bloomberg is reporting, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Internally, the search giant is discussing how it can limit data collection and cross-app tracking on the Android operating system in a way that is less…

Google Launches News Showcase In Australia Amid Dispute Over Proposed Law

Google has launched a limited version of its News Showcase in Australia despite threatening to pull Search from the nation a fortnight ago. ZDNet reports: News Showcase, Google claims, provides an “enhanced view” of articles, and aims to give participating news publishers more ways to share important news to readers while having “more direct control of presentation and branding.” The product…