science tech
ScienceAssociated PressNASA: Mystery object is 54-year-old rocket, not asteroid
A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday. Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September.
- NewsAssociated Press
Midday fireball, boom thrill gazers from Ontario to Virginia
A noontime boom that was heard and felt from southern Ontario to Virginia was likely caused by a disintegrating meteor, according to an organization in western New York that keeps track of such phenomena. Witnesses across the area reported hearing the boom or seeing a fireball in the sky shortly after noon on Wednesday, said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society in Geneseo. Police agencies and fire departments around central New York received 911 calls reporting a boom that shook windows, but clouds prevented sightings in much of the area.
NewsAssociated PressJudge says no to digging up remains of President Harding
U.S. President Warren G. Harding's remains will stay right where they have lain since 1927 after a judge rejected a request to exhume them. The grandson of the nation's 29th president and his lover, Nan Britton, went to court in an effort to get the Republican’s remains dug up from his presidential memorial in Marion, the Ohio city near where Harding was born in 1865. James Blaesing said he was seeking Harding’s disinterment as a way “to establish with scientific certainty” that he is Harding's blood relation.
SciencePeoplePlayful Chimps at Georgia Sanctuary Enjoy the First Snowfall of the Season — See the Pictures!
Many of the chimps found it more exciting to eat the snow than play in it!
Technology20minutes.frDJI Pocket II : Immortalisez les fêtes en vidéo avec des images de qualité « pro »
CAMERA - Avec sa nouvelle caméra Pocket II, DJI propose un produit simple d’accès capable d’immortaliser des images au rendu cinéma
ScienceThe ConversationFlightless birds were more common before human-driven extinctions – new study
Evolution towards flightlessness has been much more common through history than scientists once thought.
ScienceThe IndependentScientists find 81-year-old snapper, the world’s oldest tropical reef fish
‘It saw the Beatles take over the world, and it was collected in a fisheries survey after Nirvana came and went. It’s just incredible,’ says marine biologist
BusinessAssociated PressDiscovery's reality-heavy streaming service launches in Jan.
Discovery is joining the increasingly crowded streaming fray with its own reality-focused service Discovery Plus that will include shows from the Food Network, HGTV, TLC and its other networks. The service will cost $5 a month with ads and $7 a month without ads. Discovery said the service will be available on “major platforms," connected TVs, web, mobile and tablets, but it didn't specify which services would carry it.
ScienceThe IndependentScientists invent technology to extract oxygen and fuel from Mars’ salty water in huge step forward to colonising Red Planet
SpaceX founder Elon Musk recently announced that humans will land on Mars in four years
TechnologyPA Media: MotoringFirst details of upcoming DS 4 reveal technology-focused model
Hatchback will bring a premium feel and a high-end interior.
PoliticsPA Media: TechAnti-vaccine disinformation greatest risk to Covid-19 jab, MP warns
Damian Collins suggested there should be international rules to keep an eye on how tech giants 'behave'.
ScienceThe IndependentNew species of deep-sea comb jelly that ‘moves like hot air balloon attached to ocean floor’ discovered
Gelatinous animal found in deep underwater trenches using remotely operated vehicle
BusinessABC NewsSalesforce to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion amid remote work boom
Cloud computing giant Salesforce said it will acquire workplace messaging service Slack in a deal valued at $27.7 billion. Salesforce announced the deal on Tuesday, saying that under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share. The deal is subject to shareholder approval and expected to close in the second quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2022.
Technology20minutes.frGoogle Maps : A l'instar de Facebook, l'application lance un fil d'actualités personnalisé
OUTIL - Dans la mise à jour de l'application de navigation GPS, un nouvel onglet « Découvrir » a fait son apparition
Science20minutes.frPorto Rico : Le célèbre télescope géant d'Arecibo s'est effondré
ASTRONOMIE - Il était utilisé par les astronomes du monde entier depuis 57 ans et avait permis des découvertes cruciales dans l’espace
TechnologyCar and DriverMaybe Hyundai Wants to Buy the Robot Dog to Make Its Cars Look Like This
Hyundai reportedly wants to buy Boston Dynamics from Softbank. It could be part of a wild effort to build walking cars.
- TechnologyReuters Videos
Salesforce to buy Slack in $27.7 bln deal
Salesforce has agreed to buy workplace messaging app Slack for just over $27 billion. It marks the biggest deal made by the cloud-computing giant and furthers its rivalry with Microsoft. By purchasing Slack, U.S. firm Salesforce has bet remote working will be here for a long while yet. The deal - one of the biggest tech mergers in recent years - allows Salesforce to provide a unified platform for businesses, Where employees, customers and partners can connect with each other and the apps they use. For Slack, the deal comes as it struggles to fully capitalize on the switch to remote working seen during the global health crisis. The app has proven popular with businesses over the last few years. It effectively changed workplace communications by focusing on real-time messaging that could be broken into conversations with groups. It proved a more versatile platform than email. But the messaging style that Slack helped build has become a highly competitive space. Microsoft has aggressively promoted its similar Teams product with integrated video and voice calling. It has also bundled Teams with many of its office software packages - a big attraction for companies that want to save costs.
BusinessThe TelegraphVon der Leyen vows to transform European tech startups into 'giants'
The President of the European Commission today vowed to remove bureaucratic barriers so EU tech start-ups can "grow into giants" and take on rivals in Silicon Valley. Speaking at the annual Web Summit conference, which was being held virtually, Ursula Von Der Leyen said Europe had the potential to be a global leader in technology but the region was "still punching below its weight". She blamed infrastructure gaps, lower investment as well as regulatory complexity and bureaucratic barriers. Although Europe is attracting more capital for startups at seed stage than any other region in the world, she said, too many European start-ups were leaving the bloc to set up elsewhere. "I want Europe to be a place where innovators can thrive, a place where start-ups can grow into giants," she said. "For this, we will strive to invest in the right assets, we want to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of progress." Her speech comes just days before the EU is expected to release its Digital Services Act, a key piece of legislation which is expected to overhaul the bloc's relationship to the internet. Draft versions of the law suggest that dominant tech companies will be forced to share data with challengers and rivals. "We are setting some basic boundaries to the power of gatekeeper platforms," the President added today. "For example they shouldn't discriminate in favour of their own services and users should always be in control of their own data and be able to take it with them in a usable form". The plans have rattled American tech giants, which have suggested excessive regulation could prevent them from improving products and provide less choice to consumers. Von der Leyen's comments, however, suggest Europe remains focused on reigning in Silicon Valley while helping to create European rivals. She added the €150 billion pledged for digital investment as part of the Covid recovery package will be partly used to fund a new generation of European microprocessors and supercomputers. The President also said the Digital Services and Digital Markets Act will replace the bloc's patchwork of national regulations for tech companies with one core set of digital rules. "The European single market must also function in the digital world," she said. "We are creating a single baseline set of rules for all digital businesses from Lisbon to Lapland".
BusinessThe TelegraphAge of the office is coming to an end, warns British Slack chief set for $750m payout
The age of the office is coming to an end with rows of individual desks set to be banished for good, British entrepreneur and Slack co-founder Cal Henderson has said. Mr Henderson, who is set to land a $750m (£554m) payout from the blockbuster sale of his workplace messaging app to Salesforce, said the way people work will change forever after Covid. Speaking at the Web Summit today, the 39-year-old Slack chief technology officer said that had the pandemic lasted a brief period then people would have “come back to normal”. But he added: “The longer that we’ve been through this state, the more it feels like this is the new normal, and that will permanently affect the way everybody works post-pandemic." Mr Henderson - a keen video gamer who was born in Birmingham - said the office will become similar to a social hub where employees can build relationships with fellow staff, whole working remotely for much of the time. His comments follow a report earlier in the year by advisory group McKinsey, which advocated for the switch from cubicles to more open planned collaborative settings. The group said that depending on the company as much as 80pc of office space could be given up for collaborative rooms. Alongside videoconferencing app Zoom, Slack is part of a vanguard of digital firms which have thrived during the pandemic as workers and families were forced to communicate online. Slack aims to replace the need for internal emails through channel-based messaging. The company was sold to Marc Benioff’s Salesforce in a $27.7bn cash plus stock mega-deal on Tuesday. The deal will rank as one of the largest-ever software acquisitions. The alliance unites the two internet companies against Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, which stunted Slack’s rise by launching a rival service in 2017 that it has since pushed out to hundreds of millions of Office subscribers. Slack’s stock had fallen more than 20pc since it went public last year before rumours of the Salesforce takeover emerged, despite the rise in demand for corporate messaging services. Shares in Salesforce, which is valued at $220bn, fell 4pc after Tuesday's announcement.
- NewsThe Conversation
Vaccines are here, but how will we get them to billions of people?
Logistics is the unsung hero in vaccination. But here's why it's critical.
HealthThe GuardianCutting UK overseas aid could harm the fight against future pandemics
Cutting UK overseas aid could harm the fight against future pandemicsIn our age of emerging pathogens, funding for global research into zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19, Ebola and Sars is vital * Coronavirus – latest updates * See all our coronavirus coverage
NewsThe ConversationUK Agriculture Bill: how farming and forestry could co-exist happily
Alternative farming models, like wood pasture grazing, would allow the UK government to maintain food production while regenerating ecosystems.
TechnologyAssociated PressA year in 60 secs: TikTok lists top videos, creators of 2020
From skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac to learning Cardi B's rump-shaking choreography, TikTok users got creative in a pandemic year with new songs, dances and memes in 60 seconds or less. The social media video app on Wednesday shared its list of top 100 videos, creators and trends in America during 2020, recapping a year of viral videos that were sometimes a needed distraction in a tumultuous year. “The through line is that these are videos that brought joy and inspiration to millions of Americans in a year that has been a bit of a whirlwind for everyone as we all try to figure it out,” said Kudzi Chikumbu, director of creator community at TikTok.
Technology20minutes.frApp Store : Découvrez les applications les plus téléchargées en 2020
APPLE - Les réseaux sociaux pour les iPhone et les programmes de visioconférences pour les iPad sont les grands gagnants de l’année 2020 sur l’App Store
- ScienceReuters Videos
Elon Musk: Humans will land on Mars in 4 to 6 years
Musk predicts when humans will land on Mars Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO: "I think, I feel fairly confident about six years from now. Earth-Mars synchronisation occurs roughly every 26 months so we had one this year this summer and it means roughly in two years there will be another one and then two years after that so I think, I'd say if you say six years from now, I think highly confident. If we get lucky, maybe four years." SpaceX has begun testing its Mars rocket prototype to eventually fly paying customers to the moon and beyond Date: May 29, 2020 Elon Musk's tweet: “One day Starship will land on the rusty sands of Mars.”
What to read next
These Psychological Thrillers on Netflix Are So Chilling, You'll Be Spooked For Days
Pop Sugar UK Entertainment