International Business Machines (IBM) has fired as many as 100,000 employees in the last few years in an effort to boost its appeal to millennials and make it appear to be as “cool” and “trendy” as Amazon and Google, according to a deposition from a former vice president in an ongoing age discrimination lawsuit. From a report: The technology company is…
Tag: Texas
A new species of duck-billed dinosaur
Duck-billed dinosaurs – hadrosaurids – were common 80 million years ago. Now scientists have discovered a complete skull of a previously unknown species of hadrosaurid, which sported unusual skull and face features. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/new-species-duck-billed-dinosaur-texas…
Now Calling Balls and Strikes: Robot Umpires
An anonymous reader shares a report: Baseball’s future has arrived in the Atlantic League, a collection of eight independent professional teams that span from New Britain, Conn., to Sugar Land, Texas. Last week marked the introduction of the most significant innovation: an automated strike zone, shifting responsibility for calling balls and strikes from a person to an emotionless piece of technology…
Decades-Old Computer Science ‘Boolean Sensitivity’ Conjecture Solved in Two Pages
Long-time Slashdot reader Faizdog writes: The “sensitivity” conjecture stumped many top computer scientists, yet the new proof is so simple that one researcher summed it up in a single tweet. “This conjecture has stood as one of the most frustrating and embarrassing open problems in all of combinatorics and theoretical computer science,” wrote Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas, Austin,…
Wind Is Outpacing Coal As a Power Source In Texas For the First Time
A new report (XLSX) from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas says wind power has surpassed coal for the first time in the state. CNN reports: Wind has generated 22% of the state’s electrical needs this year. It just edged out coal, which provided 21% of the Lone Star State’s power, according to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages…
First free flight of SpaceX’s Starhopper aborted after engine fire
On Wednesday, July 24th, the prototype test vehicle for the SpaceX craft the Starhopper commenced its first untethered “hop test” at the company’s test facility in Boca Chica, Texas. This test is an important milestone for SpaceX, intended to validate the Raptor engine in free flight and bring the company one step closer to creating the super-heavy launch system that will…
Physicist studying how extreme weather in space affects satellites
A physicist at The University of Texas at Arlington is developing a new scale to measure weather storms in space that could lead to a better understanding of how those storms impact Earth. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-07-physicist-extreme-weather-space-affects.html…
Record wettest 12 months for US, again
Wet conditions from July 2018 through June 2019 resulted in a new 12-month precipitation record in the US Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/us-record-wettest-12-months-june2019…
Huawei Reportedly Plans Massive US Layoffs
Huawei is planning major layoffs at its US research labs as it struggles under the weight of the Commerce Department blacklisting, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. From a report: The embattled Chinese telecom’s Futurewei R&D subsidiary employs about 850 people in Texas, California and Washington state. The layoffs may number in the hundreds, according to the Journal, which cited anonymous…
Facebook AI Pluribus Defeats Top Poker Pros In 6-Player Texas Hold ‘Em
Carnegie Mellon University and Facebook AI research scientists have developed an AI dubbed Pluribus that took on 15 professional human players in six-player no-limit Texas Hold ’em and won. The researchers describe how they achieved this feat in a new paper in Science. Ars Technica reports: Playing more than 5,000 hands each time, five copies of the AI took on two…