175112295
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
It’s been a tough year for Boeing, to say the least.
Besides all the issues with their airplanes, including the grounding of all the 737-MAX aircraft, there was also the issue with the Starliner spacecraft, which was arguably the most high-profile debacle.
The fact that the two astronaut crew of the maiden Starliner voyage are still on the Space station awaiting a lift on a rival SpaceX craft to come back home is a black-eye that can’t be disguised.
SpaceX owner Elon Musk, commenting on the troubles of Boeing, said that at least it now has a CEO who goes to the factory to check things with his own eyes.
And so changes are in motion at the aerospace giant.
Boeing has announced this week that the head of the company’s troubled defense, space and security unit is leaving the planemaker, effective immediately.
174607970
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
Kamala Harris, who failed miserably protecting our borders, was tapped to lead another component of the Biden-Harris agenda, connecting rural Americans to high-speed internet.
The program was launched in 2021 at a cost of $42 billion to American taxpayers.
President Biden put VP Harris in charge of the effort, and after 985 days under her leadership, NOT ONE person has been connected, and zero Americans have benefitted from this boondoggle.
Brendan Carr, who serves as Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, shared the abject failure of the Biden-Harris plan, which broadband infrastructure builders have said is “wired to fail.”
Thirty-two individuals representing telecom companies nationwide wrote to Gina Raimondo, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, to sound the alarm on why the Biden-Harris plan was destined to fail.
174517923
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Press2ToContinue writes:
Microsoft laid off a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team this year, with a team leader sending an email saying the initiatives were no longer needed.
The email, sent earlier this month and obtained by Business Insider, is from an individual whose name has not been released. It is unclear how many team employees were laid off.
“True systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020,” said the email, which was sent to thousands of employees, according to BI.
The email reportedly said the DEI team was eliminated due to “changing business needs” as of July 1.
In 2020, following the riots that broke out over the death of George Floyd, Microsoft was one of many companies that pledged to spend millions of dollars to hire more people of color. In June 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to employees saying the company had “committed to take action to help address racial injustice and inequity, and unequivocally believe that Black lives matter.”
The company promised to invest $150 million in diversity and inclusion, including doubling “the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors, and senior leaders in the United States by 2025.”
One year after the pledge, the company released a progress report on its “Racial Equity Initiative,” which included spending millions to work on “justice reform,” increasing broadband access, increasing tech education for students as historically black colleges and K-12 computer programs, and funding tech support for black-led nonprofits.
Microsoft now appears to have retreated, at least somewhat, from those efforts – and it’s not the only tech company to do so. Zoom laid off a DEI team earlier this year, saying it would instead work with external consultants from now on, Bloomberg reported. Google and Meta (Facebook) also made cuts to DEI following their 2020 pledges.
173311331
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Press2ToContinue writes:
Stephen Scherr, chief executive officer of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and a member of its board of directors, will step down on March 31, following the car rental company’s largest quarterly loss since 2020 after a risky bet on electric vehicles.
Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought.
Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz’s profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for.
In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars.
In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles.
A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors.
Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics.
173266349
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Press2ToContinue writes:
The mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 continues to baffle the aviation world, making it one of the most perplexing incidents in history. Departing from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014, the aircraft vanished from radar screens, carrying 239 passengers and crew members. Despite extensive multinational efforts spanning a decade, involving the scanning of a vast 46,300 square mile area, the aircraft remains missing.
Recent developments have thrust tiny sea creatures, known as barnacles, into the spotlight of scientific inquiry, offering a potential breakthrough in the search for MH370's wreckage.
These barnacles were discovered clinging to the initial piece of debris conclusively linked to MH370—a flaperon bearing the distinctive marking "657 BB," which washed ashore on Reunion Island, situated off the coast of Africa, a year following the event.
Barnacles have earlier also helped researchers in tracking "ghost nets" posing threats to marine life to locating missing vessels.
172979992
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Press2ToContinue writes:
The Hong Kong branch of a multinational company has lost $25.6 million after a scammer used deepfake technology to pose as the firm’s chief financial officer (CFO) in a video conference call and ordered money transfers, according to the police, in what is being highlighted as first of its kind cases in the city.
The transaction was ordered during a meeting where it was found that everyone present on the video call except the victim were deepfakes of real people, said the Hong Kong police, on Friday (Feb 2).
Scammers in this case used deepfake technology to turn publicly available video and other footage of staff members into convincing meeting participants.
172710621
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Press2ToContinue writes:
From the "What-Could-Possibly-Go-Wrong" department:
LONDON (AP) — England’s 1,000-year-old legal system — still steeped in traditions that include wearing wigs and robes — has taken a cautious step into the future by giving judges permission to use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings.
The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn’t be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information.
“Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI,” said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. “But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce.”
At a time when scholars and legal experts are pondering a future when AI could replace lawyers, help select jurors or even decide cases, the approach spelled out Dec. 11 by the judiciary is restrained. But for a profession slow to embrace technological change, it’s a proactive step as government and industry — and society in general — react to a rapidly advancing technology alternately portrayed as a panacea and a menace.
172371209
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Press2ToContinue writes:
Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change.
Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.
States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds. While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction.
Consumer demand for electric vehicles is rising in the United States, necessitating six times as many chargers on its roads by the end of the decade, according to federal estimates. But not a single charger funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law has come online and odds are they will not be able to start powering Americans’ vehicles until at least 2024.
172226837
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Press2ToContinue writes:
An undergraduate student used an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and AI to decipher a word in one of the Herculaneum scrolls to win a $40,000 prize (via Nvidia). Herculaneum was covered in ash by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and the over 1,800 Herculaneum scrolls are one of the site's most famous artifacts. The scrolls have been notoriously hard to decipher, because they cannot be unwrapped because they're basically like a stick of charcoal. Instead they must be virtually unwrapped, using a 3D scan dataset of it in its wrapped state. So, the task is to find the tiny bits of ink, assemble them into letters, and try to decipher what they say.
Machine learning is now becoming the key that picks the lock. A student deciphered one of the words using a GTX 1070, which doesn't even have any tensor cores. Imagine what he could do with a RTX 4090!
172212401
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Press2ToContinue writes:
01.AI, a Chinese AI startup, has stockpiled enough Nvidia AI and HPC GPUs to last 18 months, in anticipation of a U.S. export ban. Looks like 01.AI is taking 'Go big or go home' to a new level with their GPU shopping spree. They're basically the dragon from 'The Hobbit,' but instead of gold, they're hoarding Nvidia chips. Maybe they're planning the ultimate LAN party or just really into extreme Minecraft graphics. Either way, it's like they say: 'In the land of tech embargos, the one with the secret GPU stash is king.' Or in this case, playing 4D chess while the rest of us are stuck figuring out which port the HDMI cable goes into.
99853097
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Press2ToContinue writes:
What you’re looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe. The photo comes from Rosetta’s OSIRIS, or Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. The raw data was collected on June 1, 2016, and posted publicly on March 22 of this year.
84168041
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
"The (tax) benefits we give to poor people are so limited compared to what we give to the top 1%” of taxpayers, Congresswoman Gwen Moore says, “It’s a drop in the bucket.” Many states implement drug-testing programs to qualify for benefit programs so that states feel they are not wasting the value they dole out.
However, seven states who implemented drug testing for tax benefit program recipients spent $1m on drug testing from the inception of their programs through 2014. But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average – around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population – meaning there’s been little cost savings from the drug testing program. Why? “Probably because they can’t afford it,” say Moore.
“We might really save some money by drug-testing folks on Wall Street, who might have a little cocaine before they get their deal done,” she said, and proposes a bill requiring tests for returns with itemized deductions of more than $150,000.
“We spend $81bn on everything – everything – that you could consider a poverty program,” she explained. But just by taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other income, a bit of the tax code far more likely to benefit the rich than the poor, “that’s a $93bn expenditure. Just capital gains,” she added. Why not drug-test the rich to ensure they won't waste their tax benefits?
She is “sick and tired of the criminalization of poverty”. And, she added: “We’re not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off Snap. But if we are going to drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let’s start on the other end of the income spectrum.”
83989543
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
The proposed names for recently discovered superheavy elements are:
Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113
Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115
Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117
Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118
This isn't finalized. Not sure I even like some of these, and maybe you feel the same way. Above are the proposed names that will substitute for the current placeholders (e.g., ununpentium, ununseptium). Nilhonium, Moscovium, and Tennesine are all named for places; Oganessen is named for the Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian.
But we have until November to lobby for other names. Here's a chance to go down in history and name an element on the periodic table. How about naming one Elementy McElementface?
81065331
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
Forging a bold step in the right direction, Stack Overflow announced today that they don't care if you use an ad blocker when you visit their site.
"The truth is: we don’t care if our users use ad blockers on Stack Overflow. More accurately: we hope that they won’t, but we understand that some people just don’t like ads. Our belief is that if someone doesn’t like them, and they won’t click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won’t click on them harms campaign performance."
"Publishers can’t win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people’s faces. Think scantily-clad women selling flight deals, weight-loss supplement promos or wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube-men promoting car dealerships."
It's possible that this declaration by SO might help to clarify to advertisers that it is the overabundance of low quality ads that practically force the public to seek out ad blockers. But seriously, what is the likelihood of that?
81030445
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
White lines along the center of roads have been removed in parts of the UK, with some experts saying it encourages motorists to slow down. So is it the beginning of the end for the central road marking?
You are driving along the road when the dotted white line that has been your companion — separating your car from oncoming traffic — suddenly disappears.
One theory is that you will slow down, making the road safer.
What could possibly go wrong?
