Alaska, the state with the largest land mass in the nation, is leading the country in a critical coronavirus measure: per capita vaccinations per capita vaccinations. From a report: About 13 percent of the people who live in Alaska have already gotten a shot. That’s higher than states such as West Virginia, which has received a lot of attention for a…
Tag: West Virginia
Trump Auctions Arctic Refuge To Oil Drillers In Last Strike Against US Wilderness
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers. The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are…
What are your chances of a white Christmas this year?
Dreaming of a white Christmas? Here’s a map depicting which places in the US have the best chance of being snowy on Christmas Day 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/chances-of-white-christmas-us-2020…
Senator Tries To Block Frontier’s FCC Funding, Citing ISP’s Various Failures
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Republican US senator from West Virginia has asked the government to block broadband funding earmarked for Frontier Communications, saying that the ISP is not capable of delivering gigabit-speed Internet service to all required locations. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) outlined her concerns in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit…
Comcast To Enforce 1.2TB Data Cap In Entire 39-State Territory In Early 2021
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast’s 1.2TB monthly data cap is coming to 12 more states and the District of Columbia starting January 2021. The unpopular policy was already enforced in most of Comcast’s 39-state US territory over the past few years, and the upcoming expansion will for the first time bring the cap to every market…
Ask Slashdot: Why Haven’t We Implemented Public Key Infrastructure Voting?
Long-time Slashdot reader t0qer has a question: why haven’t we gone to an open source, Public Key Infrastructure-based voting system? “I’m fairly well versed in PKI technology, and quoting this site, it would take traditional computers 300 trillion years to break RSA-2048 for a single vote.”
SSL.com has a pretty interesting piece on using Public Key Infrastructure in voting. There’s also a…
Astronomers Trace Mysterious Fast Radio Burst To Extreme, Rare Star
The first detection of a fast radio burst inside the Milky Way leads scientists back to a magnetar, partially solving a long-standing mystery. CNET reports: Sifting through a trove of radio telescope data in 2007, Duncan Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University, spotted something unusual. Data obtained six years earlier showed a brief, energetic burst, lasting no more than 5…
NASA Discovers a Rare Metal Asteroid That’s Worth $10,000 Quadrillion
Iwastheone shares a report from Observer: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called “16 Psyche” in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid Psyche is located at roughly 230 million miles (370 million kilometers) from Earth and measures 140 miles (226 kilometers) across, about the size of West Virginia. What…
A Disturbing Twinkie That Has, So Far, Defied Science
Apparently Twinkies aren’t immortal. After discovering that his 8-year-old Twinkies “tasted like old sock,” biologist Colin Purrington sent them to a pair of scientists — Brian Lovett and Matt Kasson from West Virginia University in Morgantown — to study the kind of fungus growing on them. An anonymous reader shares the report from NPR: The researchers immediately thought some kind of…
‘Zombie Cicadas’ Are Under the Influence of a Psychedelic, Mind-controlling Fungus
Slashdot reader quonset shares CNN’s report on “zombie cicadas” under the influence of “a psychedelic fungus” called Massospora containing the chemicals found in hallucinogenic mushrooms (citing a new study published in PLOS Pathogens).
After infecting its host, the fungus results in “a disturbing display of B-horror movie proportions,” West Virginia University said in a press release. First Massospora spores eat away at…