Tag: secret

Biofuel-Powered Rocket Makes Historic Launch in Maine

Despite bad weather and early technical difficulties, employee-owned bluShift Aerospace “made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0,” reports Maine’s Portland Press Herald:
The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a rocket using bio-derived fuel… It carried three payloads, two commercial and one, free of…

Facebook’s Secret Settlement On Cambridge Analytica Gags UK Data Watchdog

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Remember the app audit Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to carry out a little under three years ago at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Actually the tech giant is very keen that you don’t. The UK’s information commissioner just told a parliamentary subcommittee on online harms and disinformation that a secret…

Report Finds Extremists Did Use Facebook to Plan Capitol Attack

NBC News reports: A number of pro-Trump extremists used Facebook to plan their attack on the U.S. Capitol, a watchdog organization has found, contradicting claims by Facebook’s leadership that such planning was largely done on other sites. Private Facebook groups spent months advising one another about how to “take down” the U.S. government, particularly after Joe Biden was elected president, according…

Online Far-Right Movements Fracture, as ‘Gullible’ QAnon Supporters Criticized

“Online far-right movements are splintering,” argues NBC News: Users on forums that openly helped coordinate the Jan. 6 riot and called for insurrection…have become increasingly agitated with QAnon supporters, who are largely still in denial that President Donald Trump will no longer be in the Oval Office after Jan. 20… [QAnon adherents] have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and…

Megalodon shark’s enormous babies ate their siblings in the womb

Megalodons – the extinct giant sharks that lived in most of Earth’s oceans about 3 million years ago – gave birth to babies that were larger than adult humans, scientists say. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/megalodon-extinct-giant-shark-enormous-babies…

Journalists Scrutinize QAnon’s Role in Capitol Hill Mob — And Its Hosting Infrastructure

On Thursday Axios tried to assess QAnon’s role in the mob that stormed America’s Capitol building:
Adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who imagine a vast deep-state cabal of pedophiles arrayed against Trump, have for years insisted that a moment of reckoning for their enemies is imminent. QAnon believers have largely accepted that Trump is waiting for the right time to bring…

EPA Finalizes Rule Limiting Research Used for Public Health, Environmental Policy

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule that limits scientific research used in the crafting of public health and environmental policy. From a report: Researchers argue the rule that prioritizes studies with all data available publicly “essentially blocks” research that uses personal information and confidential medical records that can’t be released because of privacy conditions, per the New York Times,…

Edward Snowden Urges Donations to the EFF

In October, Edward Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. A new web page by the EFF applauds his past activities as a U.S. whistleblower. “His revelations about secret surveillance programs opened the world’s eyes to a new level of government misconduct, and reinvigorated EFF’s continuing work in the courts and with lawmakers to end unlawful mass spying.” And then they…

The Secret to Longevity? 4-Minute Bursts of Intense Exercise May Help

The New York Times reports on results from a rigorous five-year study in Trondheim, Norway that raises the question: If you increase your heart rate, will your life span follow? The study, one of the largest and longest-term experimental examinations to date of exercise and mortality, shows that older men and women who exercise in almost any fashion are relatively unlikely…