Category: News and Views

Scientists want to store DNA of 6.7 million species on the moon, just in case | Live Science

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A “lunar ark” hidden inside the moon’s lava tubes could preserve the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of Earth’s species, a group of scientists has proposed.

The ark, or gene bank, would be safely hidden in these hollowed-out tunnels and caves sculpted by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels above. It would hold the cryogenically preserved genetic material of all 6.7 million known species of plants, animals and fungi on Earth, which would require at least 250 rocket launches to transport to the moon, according to the researchers.

Scientists believe the endeavor could safeguard our planet’s wildlife against both natural and human-caused apocalyptic scenarios, such as a supervolcano eruption or a nuclear war, and ensure the survival of their genes.

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The pros and cons of vaccine passports | Fast Company

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After a year of canceled concerts, closed-door sporting events, and restricted air travel, vaccine passports are being touted as a way to quicken the route back to normalcy.

The premise is straightforward: A digital or paper document will indicate whether individuals have received a COVID-19 vaccination or, in some cases, recently tested negative for the coronavirus. This could allow them to travel more freely within their communities, enter other countries, or engage in leisure activities that have largely been closed off during the pandemic.

Vaccine passports seem like a desirable alternative to continuing lockdowns until herd immunity—estimated to occur at about a 70%-85% vaccination rate—is achieved.

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5 Ways to Beat the Competition | business.com

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To become a successful business, you need to find ways to stay a step ahead of your competition. Doing so is often easier said than done, and there’s no simple answer to how to beat your competition.

Competition exists in every market. Smarter companies nullify the effect of competitors in order to increase market share.

How do they do that? Here are five simple, yet powerful ways to beat your competition.

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Why popular YouTubers are building their own sites | BBC News

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Whether he’s showing off astronomically expensive computer gaming hardware or dumpster-diving for the cheapest PC builds possible, Linus Sebastian’s videos always strike a chord, and have made him one of the most popular tech personalities on YouTube.

But Google-owned YouTube gets most episodes of Linus Tech Tips a week late.

Now, they debut on his own site called Floatplane, which attracts a much smaller crowd.

“Google has been very, very good to me,” Linus says. “But it’s a lot of eggs in one basket.”

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PPP Loans Are Supposed to Be Tax-Free. These 19 States Didn’t Get the Memo | Inc.com

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Tax time is confusing and stressful under the best of circumstances. It could be even worse if you’ve taken out a loan from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.

The tax status of the PPP has been muddled from the beginning. While these forgivable loans were never meant to be taxed as income, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, under the Trump administration, held that business owners could not deduct expenses that were paid for with PPP. Congress disagreed, and in December 2020 put its position into law with the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which also contained a $900 billion relief package.

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The iMac Pro is being discontinued | TechCrunch

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Chalk this up to inevitability. The iMac Pro is soon to be no more. First noted by 9to5Mac, TechCrunch has since confirmed with Apple that the company will stop selling the all-in-one once the current stock is depleted.

One configuration of the desktop is still available through Apple’s site, listed as “While Supplies Last” and priced at $5,000. Some other versions can also still be found from third-party retailers, as well, if you’re so inclined.

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Chinese Hacking Spree Hit an ‘Astronomical’ Number of Victims | WIRED

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WHEN NEWS HIT earlier this week that Chinese hackers were actively targeting Microsoft Exchange servers, the cybersecurity community warned that the zero-day vulnerabilities they were exploiting might have allowed them to hit countless organizations around the world. Now it’s becoming clear just many email servers they hacked. By all appearances, the group known as Hafnium breached as many victims they could find across the global internet, leaving behind backdoors to return to later.

Hafnium has now exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange servers’ Outlook Web Access to indiscriminately compromise no fewer than tens of thousands of email servers, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation into the hacking campaign who spoke to WIRED. The intrusions, first spotted by security firm Volexity, began as early as January 6, with a noticeable uptick starting last Friday and spiking early this week. The hackers appear to have responded to Microsoft’s patch, released Tuesday, by ramping up and automating their hacking campaign. One security researcher involved in the investigation who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity put the number of hacked Exchange servers at more than 30,000 in the US alone, and hundreds of thousands worldwide, all apparently by the same group. Independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs first reported that 30,000 figure Friday, citing sources who had briefed national security officials.

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How Jersey Mike’s Subs Grew In 2020: It Began Acting Like a Tech Company

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When the lockdowns hit in March, business at Jersey Mike’s dropped 45 percent in a week. And with fall sports on hiatus, CEO and founder Peter Cancro lost the ability to reach his football-loving customers with game-day commercials. So he went on the offensive: He shifted his marketing dollars to Fox News, NBC, CNN, and ABC.

“Everyone was watching the news, so they saw we were still open,” says Cancro, who used the marketing blitz to reaffirm his small-business roots. One commercial, for instance, opens on a photo of Cancro posing with his high school football coach, Rod Smith — the banker who famously went on to lend him $125,000 to buy his original sub shop in 1975.

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Elon Musk wants to build a city called Starbase in Texas | Mashable

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is getting into the city-building business.

On Tuesday, Musk tweeted about “creating the city of Starbase, Texas.” He followed that up with a few other details, some of which are typically Muskian — for example, he says the city will be dog friendly and its leader will be The Doge, a pun on a medieval elected lord title of the same name and the cryptocurrency DOGE, which is Musk’s favorite.

However, it appears that Musk is serious about creating a new city. SpaceX’s launch and development site for Starship resides in the unincorporated community in Cameron County, Texas. Musk claims he wants to incorporate the village and the land that surrounds it into a much bigger city called Starbase.

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Reese’s is launching a peanut butter cup with no chocolate | CNN

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Peanut butter purists called and Reese’s answered.

Reese’s latest iteration of its wildly popular peanut butter cup will be all peanut butter, no chocolate, Hershey (HSY) announced on Monday.

The Reese’s Ultimate Peanut Butter Lovers Cup is made entirely of peanut butter, both inside and in the peanut butter candy-flavored outer shell.

This is the first time in the company’s 90-year-history that its peanut butter cups have taken chocolate completely out of the equation. Versions of the Peanut Butter Lovers Cup came out in 2019 and 2020, but those still contained some chocolate.

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