February is ‘a month of bright planets,’ NASA says in new skywatching update | Digital Trends

February 3, 2025February 2, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The moon has “many engagements” with the planets in February, NASA said in its monthly update on what to look out for in the night sky.

Throughout February, so long as clear nights prevail, you’ll be able to see the moon in the night sky along with many of our solar system’s planets.

The easiest to spot is Venus, looking brilliant in the west after sunset. “February is a month for love, so what better time to spotlight Venus, which is associated with the Roman goddess of love?” NASA said in its latest skywatching video (above).

Facebook owner Meta to pay $25m to settle Trump lawsuit over ban | BBC News

January 30, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

US President Donald Trump has signed a legal settlement that will see Facebook and Instagram owner Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m).

Trump sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots that year.

In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the lead up to US presidential elections.

The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

US economic growth slows despite consumers spending more | BBC News

January 30, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Economic growth in the US slowed at the end of last year, as trade and investment declined and the country was hit by hurricanes and labor strikes.

The economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.3% between October and December, down from 3.1% in the three months before, according to the US Commerce Department.

The pace, fuelled by solid growth in consumer spending, was nevertheless weaker than economists had forecast.

The figures come amid heightened uncertainty about the path for the world’s largest economy, as US President Donald Trump calls for a policy shake-up.

Apple fixes zero-day flaw affecting all devices | TechCrunch

January 29, 2025January 28, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Apple released the latest updates for its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems on Monday, which included switching on Apple Intelligence by default for newer devices.

As part of this batch of software updates, Apple also released several patches fixing security bugs, including a zero-day bug that “may have been actively exploited” — meaning hackers were using it to compromise devices — against users with iPhones running software older than iOS 17.2, which was released in December 2023.

The bug was found in Core Media, the media engine that powers a range of Apple devices, and is now fixed across its product line, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and its mixed-reality headset, Vision Pro. Apple said hackers could have “elevated privileges” by exploiting a memory corruption bug, which would have allowed broader access to a device’s data.

DeepSeek triggered a wild, baseless rally for some Chinese stocks | TechCrunch

January 29, 2025January 28, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Chinese AI company DeepSeek made global headlines for helping spark a massive sell-off in U.S. tech stocks on Monday, with Nvidia dropping almost 20%.

In China, the hype around DeepSeek has sent shares of some public companies with supposed ties to it soaring. The problem: There’s no evidence these companies ever invested in or cooperated with DeepSeek to begin with.

Rumored DeepSeek investors Huajin Capital and Zhejiang Orient popped by 10% on Monday, while a research company called Sublime China Information jumped 20% for supposedly cooperating with DeepSeek on its AI models.

Uber CEO: Autonomous Vehicles Will Take Over Drivers Soon | Entrepreneur

January 28, 2025January 27, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Rideshare driving was the most-searched side hustle last year, garnering nearly 31,000 monthly Google searches, per a Creative Fabrica study. More than seven million people drive or deliver with Uber alone every month.

However, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview on Friday that driving for Uber is only a safe gig for the next decade. After that, autonomous vehicles, or cars that drive themselves, will take over the same routes humans drive today.

“You fast forward 15, 20 years, I think that the autonomous driver is going to be a better driver than the human driver,” Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern at WSJ Journal House Davos. “They will have trained on lifetimes of driving that no person can, they’re not going to be distracted.”

NASA wants to know how much life it’s venting into space | Mashable

January 24, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Astronauts will wriggle into their spacesuits next week to swab outside the International Space Station and see if the lab orbiting 250 miles above Earth is releasing microorganisms into space.

The experiment will focus on collecting samples of bacteria and fungi near vents. NASA wants to know whether germs can survive the harsh environment and, if so, how far they travel. The specimens will be frozen and taken back to Earth for analysis.

Despite the U.S. space agency’s stringent spacecraft cleaning process, hardy microscopic lifeforms can’t be totally removed from instruments bound for space. Furthermore, people carry veritable ecosystems of life on their skin and in their bodies when they go to space. Humans can’t help but spread this stuff — a point John Grunsfeld, NASA’s former chief scientist, emphasized in 2015.

TikTok had an incredibly wild whirlwind of a weekend | CNN Business

January 23, 2025January 21, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The extraordinary developments for one of America’s most popular social media apps over this weekend will be one for the history books. The banning — and unbanning — of TikTok involved actions from a former president, a sitting president and a future president and gripped 170 million Americans who use the app daily.

With just hours to go before a nationwide ban was set to come into effect, TikTok went dark late Saturday. By midday on Sunday it was back online, crediting then-President elect Donald Trump. But its long-term fate in America remains undetermined.

So what on earth happened? Here’s a countdown to the ban – and its unbanning:

Trump threatens China: More tariffs are coming on Feb. 1 | CNN Business

January 23, 2025January 21, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that even more tariffs could be coming as soon as next week: This time China was his target, as Trump threatened to unleash a wave of higher taxes on imports from America’s second-biggest trading partner.

In an Oval Office press conference that echoed similar off-the-cuff remarks on Monday, Trump said that he is considering a 10% across-the-board tariff on all Chinese goods starting as early as February 1. On Monday, Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada but deflected on China, noting that former President Joe Biden left in place extensive tariffs that Trump imposed during his first administration.

World’s fastest supercomputer ‘El Capitan’ goes online — it will be used to secure the US nuclear stockpile and in other classified research | Live Science

January 22, 2025January 21, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The fastest supercomputer in the world has officially launched at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL) in California.

The supercomputer, called “El Capitan,” cost $600 million to build and will handle various sensitive and classified tasks including securing the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons in the absence of underground testing, according to LNNL representatives. This was prohibited in 1992.

Research will primarily be focused on national security, including material discovery, high-energy-density physics, nuclear data and weapon design, as well as other classified tasks.

Construction on the machine began in May 2023, and it came online in November 2024, before being officially dedicated on Jan. 9.