Facebook will lift its ban on political ads on Thursday, ending a self-imposed prohibition that began immediately after the November 2020 general election and remained active for months. Politico reports: Facebook informed top political advertisers of its decision by phone and email on Wednesday, according to sources with knowledge of the announcement. The social media giant banned political and social issue-related…
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Asteroid dust in Chicxulub crater seals deal on dino extinction
Scientists examined rock cores taken from the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, site of the asteroid impact that triggered dinosaur extinction, and found iridium, a telltale sign of asteroids. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/asteroid-dust-iridium-chicxulub-crater-dinosaur-extinction…
Google Finance Adds Crypto Data Tab For Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash
Google Finance now has a dedicated “crypto” field for bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash. CoinDesk reports: Right at the top of the page, where users can “compare markets,” crypto is listed among the five default markets, which also includes U.S., Europe, Asia and “Currencies.” At the moment, it appears Google Finance only tracks a limited number of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, ethereum,…
Mercury’s greatest elongation Mar 6, 2021
Mercury, the innermost planet, has a close conjunction with the king planet Jupiter on March 5, and then reaches its greatest elongation from the sun on March 6. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/mercurys-greatest-elongation-march-6-2021…
Bill Gates Prefers ‘More Open Nature’ of Android, Regrets Microsoft’s Missing Phone Market
Bill Gates “prefers the more open nature of the Android ecosystem, as it’s more ‘flexible’ about how software interfaces with the OS,” reports PC Magazine, citing remarks Gates made on Clubhouse to CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin: “I actually use an Android phone,” Gates told Sorkin. “Because I want to keep track of everything, I’ll often play around with iPhones, but the…
What is a quasar?
A quasar is an extremely bright and distant point-like source visible to radio telescopes. The source is a so-called Active Galactic Nucleus, fueled by a supermassive black hole. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/definition-what-is-a-quasar…
Perseverance saw its own descent stage crash
The Mars rover images a plume of debris from the impact of the descent stage that helped the spacecraft land safely on the red planet. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photo-mars-perseverance-descent-stage-smoke-plume…
How Facebook Silenced an Enemy of Turkey To Prevent a Hit To the Company’s Business
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this report from ProPublica: As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook’s top executives faced a political dilemma. Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People’s Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request,…
Apple’s Powerful M1 MacBooks are Lowering The Resale Value of Older MacBooks
“The impressive performance and battery life gains of the new M1 MacBooks have created a historic discontinuity in the normally placid resale market,” reports ZDNet: Should you spend $800 for a one year old MacBook Air when for $200 more you could get a MacBook Air with several times the performance and 50 percent better battery life? That’s a question savvy…
SolarWinds’ Former CEO Blames Intern for ‘solarwinds123’ Password Leak
“Current and former top executives at SolarWinds are blaming a company intern for a critical lapse in password security that apparently went undiagnosed for years,” reports CNN. The password in question, “solarwinds123,” was discovered in 2019 on the public internet by an independent security researcher who warned the company that the leak had exposed a SolarWinds file server… It is still…