Science

Facebook Bans Creation of New Events Near Federal and State Houses Leading Up to Inauguration

To head off a potential encore of last week’s violent insurrection, Facebook is blocking users from creating new Facebook events in the vicinity of the White House, the U.S. Capitol building, and any state capitol buildings through President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. It’s also restricting features for…Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Science, Instagram, White House, Joe Biden, U S Capitol, Social Information Processing

Report: Google About to Face Its Third State Antitrust Suit, This Time Over Play Store

Google is reportedly about to face its third antitrust lawsuit from state attorneys general–this time challenging its stranglehold on the Play Store, the default app portal for hundreds of millions of devices worldwide.Read more...
Tags: Google, Science

Apple Is Reportedly Cracking Down on App Sideloading on M1 Macs

Well, that was fun while it lasted.Read more...
Tags: Science

NASA's attempt to burrow into Mars met 2 insurmountable obstacles: cement-like soil and an unexpected energy shortage

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars, with its "mole" burrowed deep in the soil. ​​NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA has given up on its InSight lander's "Mars mole" after two years of trying to burrow into the planet's surface. The Martian soil turned out to be too thick, and dust accumulating on the lander's solar panels was causing the robot to generate less and less power.  No Mars mission in the foreseeable future will take the planet's temperature — a measurement crucial to under...
Tags: Science, News, Trends, Nasa, Earth, Insight, Mars, Solar System, Planetary Science, NASA JPL Caltech, Tech Insider, Mole, Smrekar, Morgan McFall Johnsen, NASA JPL Caltech NASA, Mars Smrekar

Apple Reportedly Planning to Redesign the iMac at Long Last

The Apple rumor mill sure is churning fast and furious today. Read more...
Tags: Apple, Science

Amazon Warehouse Employees in Alabama Will Vote to Unionize

Amazon workers might make a breakthrough at a company that’s done everything it can to trample organized labor. Nearly 6,000 employees at a Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center will soon be able to vote on whether to unionize; mail-in ballots are to be submitted by March 29, and the National Labor Relations Board…Read more...
Tags: Amazon, Science, Alabama, National Labor Relations Board, Bessemer Alabama, Amazon Warehouse Employees

Iranian Spying Campaign Sent Holiday Greetings Riddled with Malware

What did you ask for over the holidays? Surely not an infestation of foreign spies in your phone or laptop, but that’s the present you would’ve received had you been foolish enough to click on some very dodgy texts and emails swirling around the internet late last year. Read more...
Tags: Science

Trump Administration Clears Way for Mining Company to Take Over Sacred Indigenous Land

After more than 15 years of protest by tribal organizations, local communities, and environmental groups across the country from Arizona to Washington, DC, an extended battle over a valuable parcel of land in central Arizona entered a new phase. On Friday, the Forest Service released the final environmental impact…Read more...
Tags: Science, Washington Dc, Arizona, Rio Tinto, Forest Service, Apache, The Trump Organization, Tonto National Forest, Trump Administration Clears Way for Mining Company

The iPhone 13 Might Sport an In-Screen Fingerprint Sensor, Which Sure Would Be Useful Right Now

Apple is reportedly testing an in-screen fingerprint reader, one of the key upgrades the company has planned for this year’s iPhones, according to Bloomberg.Read more...
Tags: Apple, Science, Bloomberg Read

The Stand-Out Laptops of CES 2021

It was definitely strange not being able to hold, type on, or touch the brand new laptop screens at CES as we would have in pre-covid times. There’s only so much you can tell about a product you only see or read about online, so that tangibility is an absolute necessity to figuring out what a laptop is all about.…Read more...
Tags: Science, Asus, Hp, Acer, MSI, Lenovo, Chromebooks, Laptops, ADATA, Gaming Laptops, XPG, 2 In 1s, CES 2021

Climate disasters in the US broke records in 2020. Scientists may now know why: Earth was the hottest it has ever been.

Sled dogs wade ankle-deep through water on top of a melting ice sheet in northwestern Denmark. Steffen Olsen/Danish Meteorological Institute NASA announced that 2020 was likely Earth's hottest year on record, just edging out 2016 (though the difference was small enough to consider it a tie). Last year brought a record-breaking hurricane season, extreme wildfires, heat waves, and flood-inducing storms to the US. The intensity of these climate disasters is, in part, linked to rising temperat...
Tags: Amazon, Science, News, Climate Change, Australia, California, Oregon, Environment, US, Trends, Global Warming, Nasa, Earth, Philippines, Oceans, Wildfires

The Sex Toy Industry Fought for Normalcy at the All Digital CES 2021

Last year was a watershed moment for sex tech. For the first time in CES’s decades-long history, the category wasn’t banished to the dark corners of the showroom floor. This was after a contentious 2019, when the Consumer Tech Association (CTA) revoked an award from Lora DiCarlo’s Osé sex toy for being “immoral,…Read more...
Tags: Science, OhMiBod, Lora DiCarlo, Consumer Tech Association CTA

UK to face delay in delivery of Pfizer vaccine

In a letter to the EU commission health and social affairs ministers of six states called the situation ‘unacceptable’ Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverageThe UK is among several countries facing delays in delivery of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine due to upgrades in its production capacity, the company has said.The US pharmaceutical firm is increasing production at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, in an effort to produce more doses than originally planned for 2021,...
Tags: UK, Science, US, Eu, UK News, Infectious Diseases, Astrazeneca, Pharmaceuticals industry, Pfizer, Coronavirus, Puurs Belgium

Coronavirus live news: global death toll passes milestone as Emirates cancels Australian flights

Global coronavirus death toll reaches 2 million people; UK shuts travel corridors and requires negative Covid tests to enter; German vaccine officials forced to guess who is eligible from namesBrazil rushes to save premature babies as Covid swamps hospitalsVaccine passports: what are they and do they pose a danger to privacy?US suffers bleak January as Covid rages and vaccination campaign falters‘At the coalface’: what the Australian expert in WHO’s Covid mission in China hopes to find 10.31pm ...
Tags: UK, Science, Cdc, China, India, US, World news, Infectious Diseases, Trump, Afp, Disease Control and Prevention, Coronavirus

After Failing to Tweet Through It, WhatsApp Delays Privacy Policy Updates

After trying—and failing—to combat public outrage using a series of ostensibly well-intentioned tweets, WhatsApp announced on Friday that it would postpone its plans to implement a spate of controversial changes to its privacy policy. Read more...
Tags: Science

The 10 Best Deals of January 15, 2021

Friday’s Best Deals | Kinja DealsRead more...
Tags: Amazon, Science, Nintendo, Video Game Publishers

Europe and Canada are facing temporary hits to coronavirus vaccine supply while Pfizer renovates a Belgian plant to eventually produce more doses

Vincent Kalut / Photonews via Getty Images The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is renovating a key manufacturing plant for its coronavirus vaccine in Puurs, Belgium. This will delay shipments to Europe and Canada in late-January and early February. Pfizer is still aiming to produce 2 billion doses in 2021. Mass-production a key challenge facing the world's vaccination campaign. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. European countries and Canada will receive fewer doses of Pfizer...
Tags: Health, Europe, Science, US, Trends, Bloomberg, Canada, Healthcare, Astrazeneca, Pfizer, University of Oxford, Wall Street Journal, Polaroid, Novavax, Eli Lilly, Moderna

Drowned Out by Noise, These Horny Frogs Wave Their Arms and Legs to Get Noticed

A species of Ecuadorian glass frog combines high-frequency croaking and a striking visual display to attract mates, in what is a fascinating adaptation to a noisy environment.Read more...
Tags: Science, Frog

A Teen Made $3 Million in Five Weeks on Snapchat, and How's Your Life Going?

Last year, Snapchat announced what sounded like a real-life Scrumdiddlyumptious bar scheme to lure TikTok users with promises of riches beyond their wildest dreams. The company announced that, in order to promote its TikTok clone Spotlight, it would pay out $1 million total to creators, every day. The company provided…Read more...
Tags: Science

Leaked Parler Data Points to Users at Police Stations, U.S. Military Bases

Location data gleaned from thousands of videos posted on the social network Parler and extracted in the days before Amazon restricted access to app this week, reveal its users included police officers around the U.S. and service members stationed on bases at home and abroad. Read more...
Tags: Amazon, Science, Proud Boys, Parler

Covid-19 Vaccine Stockpile Already Empty When States Were Promised New Shipments

A plan meant to speed up the delivery of covid-19 vaccines to the American public is already facing trouble. On Friday, Oregon governor Kate Brown tweeted that the state won’t be getting additional vaccine shipments as expected next week, because the federal government had shipped out its remaining reserves earlier…Read more...
Tags: Science, Oregon, Vaccine, Vaccines, Kate Brown, Tozinameran

Scientists figured out how to turn black holes into power sources

A group of scientists from Columbia University recently published a paper detailing how humanity could power an off-Earth colony by tapping into one of the universe’s largest and most powerful resources: black holes. The big idea here is that a spinning black hole gives off a certain amount of energy. If we enveloped this energy field with an external gravity source (a big gravity gun?) we could force the singularity to generate negative energy. This negative energy would, theoretically, sort of...
Tags: Startups, Science, Tech, Earth, Artificial Intelligence, Columbia University, Neural

Apple, the Company That Basically Invented Podcasts, Has Reportedly Decided to Give This Whole Podcast Thing a Try

Apple has been slowly building its empire of subscription services for everything from news and fitness to TV and cloud storage. But Apple has dragged its feet on podcasts, which is strange considering the company popularized the creation and distribution of podcasts about [checks notes] 16 years ago. Apple is…Read more...
Tags: Apple, Science

Global coronavirus death toll reaches 2 million people

‘Our world has reached a heart-wrenching milestone’ says United Nations chief António GuterresCoronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverageMore than two million people have now lost their lives to the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, with United Nations chief António Guterres lamenting the impact of the “vicious virus”.“Our world has reached a heart-wrenching milestone,” the Portuguese politician announced on Friday in a video marking the moment. Continue reading...
Tags: Europe, Science, UK News, World news, US news, Infectious Diseases, United Nations, Antonio Guterres, Coronavirus, António GuterresCoronavirus

SpaceX may launch and land its newest Starship rocket prototype on Monday. With any luck, it won't explode.

Left: SpaceX founder Elon Musk looks upward during a press briefing on March 2, 2019. Right: SpaceX's Starship serial No. 8 rocket-ship prototype launches from a pad in Boca Chica, Texas, on December 9, 2020. Dave Mosher/Insider; SpaceX SpaceX is preparing to launch the latest prototype of its Starship spacecraft — a system that could one day carry humans to Mars. The new prototype, called serial No. 9 or SN9, is set to rocket tens of thousands of feet in the air, belly-flop toward the...
Tags: Transportation, Space, Spacex, Elon Musk, Texas, Science, News, Trends, Earth, Spaceships, Rockets, Mars, Faa, Spaceflight, Rocket Launch, Federal Aviation Administration

There are no extra COVID-19 vaccines doses left to send to states, despite Trump's health officials promising to release more 3 days ago

Boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo manufacturing plant in Portage, Michigan on Sunday, December 13, 2020. AP/Morry Gash/Pool Federal officials promised earlier this week to stop stockpiling second doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and instead use them to get more people their first shots. That statement prompted many states to open up vaccine distribution to a wider swath of the public thi...
Tags: Post, Science, News, Abc, Washington Post, Washington, Massachusetts, Brown University, America, Trends, Public Health, Connecticut, Pfizer, Biden, Centers For Disease Control And Prevention, Trump

New Intel CEO Talks a Little Trash About Apple While Trying to Reverse Company's Woes

Pat Gelsinger was just named as Intel’s new CEO earlier this week, and apparently is off to a bold start following a recent employee meeting where Gelsinger told employees that Intel needs to deliver better PC products than anything made by that “lifestyle company in Cupertino.” Ouch.Read more...
Tags: Science, Intel, Pat Gelsinger, Gelsinger

Mortal Kombat's Fascination With Blood Wants to Go Beyond Gory Fatalities

Although there’ll be plenty of those too, it seems.Read more...
Tags: Science, Mortal Kombat, Noob Saibot, DOS games

You Can't Block Climate Action And Say You Support Democracy

In the wake of last week’s right-wing riot at the Capitol, some businesses are turning away from the politicians that incited it. The president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a lobbying group that represents 14,000 companies in the manufacturing sector, issued a statement calling the incident…Read more...
Tags: Science, Capitol, National Association of Manufacturers

This Was WhatsApp's Plan All Along

Even if you aren’t the type of person who peruses WhatsApp on a regular basis, chances are you’ve tried perusing its new privacy policy. Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Science, Whatsapp, Signal Protocol, Cross Platform Software