In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work. From a report: Police in China’s Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense…
Tag: sitting
IBM Quantum Computers Now Finish Some Tasks In Hours, Not Months
IBM has found a way to combine a new program execution environment, Qiskit, with a balance of “classical” and quantum computing to deliver a 100 times speedup for tasks that depend on iterative circuit execution. Computations that take months now will take mere hours, IBM said. Engadget reports: Qiskit by itself allows more circuits to run at a “much faster” rate,…
Moon and Antares before dawn February 6
Let the moon show you Antares, the red supergiant star, on the morning of February 6, 2021 Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/moon-antares-scorpius-feb-before-dawn…
New evidence for multiple ice ages on Mars
Earth has had at least 5 major ice ages. Now it appears Mars – the next planet outward from the sun – has undergone anywhere from half a dozen to 20 ice ages in the past several hundred million years. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/new-evidence-for-multiple-ice-ages-on-mars…
Xbox’s ‘Instant On’ Feature Could Consume 4 Billion kWh By 2025
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The “instant on” feature that’s activated by default on new Xbox Series S/X consoles could suck up a total of 4 billion kWh — the equivalent of a year’s operation for a large power plant — from US owners alone through 2025. That’s according to a preliminary report released this week from…
Epic Games Buys a Huge Mall
Epic Games is buying an old shopping mall — with nearly one million square feet of space — and plans to convert it into its new global headquarters by 2024. From a report: The deal gives Epic the 980,000 square foot Cary Towne Center for $95 million. Cary Towne Center is about 2 miles from Epic’s current HQ. Epic Games has…
How Toxic Fumes Seep Into the Air You Breathe on Planes
An anonymous reader shares an investigative report by LA Times: The plane had begun its descent into Boston. Inside the cockpit, the captain was slumped in his seat. Sitting beside him, copilot Eric Tellmann was starting to pass out. Tellmann managed to strap on his oxygen mask, then grabbed the captain’s arm and forced him to follow suit. Reviving slowly, the…
Two strange blobs of X-ray energy are swirling out of the galaxy’s center
The eROSITA X-ray telescope just revealed two strange bubbles of X-ray energy, sitting smack-dab inside the Fermi Bubbles. Source: https://www.livescience.com/erosita-x-ray-bubbles.html
2020 in review: The hunt for life on Venus continues
Clara Sousa-Silva spent most of 2020 sitting on a huge secret – the apparent detection of phosphine, a potential sign of life, on Venus. She tells New Scientist what it felt like and what comes next Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833135-400-2020-in-review-the-hunt-for-life-on-venus-continues/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Young moon, Jupiter, Saturn glorious December 15 to 18!
The 2 bright shining objects near the moon – December 15 to 18, 2020 – will be Jupiter and Saturn. These 2 giant planets are now nearing their great conjunction on December 21. Don’t miss this! Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/young-moon-to-swing-by-jupiter-saturn…