Non-IT News Thread
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Elon Musk upbeat on Starship test flights
The American entrepreneur Elon Musk has given a further update on his Starship and Super Heavy rocket system.
He plans to use the new vehicles to send people to the Moon and Mars, and also to move them swiftly around the Earth. The SpaceX CEO is in the process of building prototypes and plans to start flying them in the coming months. The Mk1 version of his Starship would begin high-altitude tests in the next one to two months, he said. "This is the most inspiring thing I've ever seen," the entrepreneur told an audience gathered at the company's Boca Chica, Texas, facility where the prototype has been assembled. "So this thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000ft, about 20km, and come back and land. So that giant thing, it's really going be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back." -
https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-tv-comes-to-amazon-fire-tv/
Google's live TV streaming service, YouTube TV, is finally available on Amazon Fire devices, effectively ending years of feuding between the two tech giants.
YouTube TV will now be available on Fire TV devices including the second-gen Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube, Toshiba and Insignia Fire TV Edition smart TVs, and more.
YouTube TV is a premium live TV streaming service that offers over 70 live channels including locals and an "unlimited" DVR. It's also a winner of CNET's Editors' Choice award.
The addition of YouTube TV on Fire TV follows the YouTube app's inclusion on the service in July of this year. (It was previously subject to a workaround.) Prime Video arrived on Google Chromecast at the same time.
Sure for how long?
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Island reveals rising tide of plastic waste
A remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean has helped reveal the scale of the problem of plastic waste facing our seas.
Some 75% of bottles washed ashore on Inaccessible Island, in the South Atlantic, were found to be from Asia - with most made in China. The researchers said most of the bottles were made recently, suggesting they were being discarded by ships. An estimated 12.7 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans each year. But this figure just covers land-based sources. The team from South Africa and Canada, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said that it had been assumed that most of the debris found at sea was coming from the land. -
BBC News - China anniversary: Hong Kong protester shot by live round
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-49891403 -
BBC News - Russian alcohol consumption down 43%, WHO report says
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49892339 -
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BBC News - Man gored by bison sees date undergo same fate months later
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49898709Some serious dumbassery here.
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Hack strikes Words with Friends and Draw Something, amid claims 218 million players’ details breached
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Former Yahoo engineer admits using his access to steal users’ sexual images
The 34-year-old man targeted accounts of younger women, including friends and colleagues.
A former Yahoo software engineer has pleaded guilty to hacking into thousands of users’ accounts in search of sexually explicit images and videos and other types of private data.
Reyes Daniel Ruiz on Monday admitted to using his access as a Yahoo engineer to compromise about 6,000 user accounts, federal prosecutors said. The engineer, now 34, cracked user passwords and accessed internal Yahoo systems to access the accounts. He told prosecutors he targeted accounts belonging to younger women, including personal friends and work colleagues.
He used his access to the Yahoo accounts to compromise victims’ accounts on other services, including iCloud, Facebook, Gmail, and Dropbox, in search of additional private images and videos. After a former employer observed suspicious account activity, Ruiz admitted to destroying the computer and hard drive he used to store the private data, prosecutors said.
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Mysterious fireball that crashed and burned wasn't a meteor
Something bright came in hot enough to spark several fires in Chile recently, and it looks like it wasn't natural.
Last week, bright, flaming objects were spotted in the sky over the island of Chiloe in southern Chile before reportedly crashing to the ground and starting a series of small fires. Now, after a preliminary investigation, officials from Chile's National Service of Geology and Mining say they've ruled out a disintegrating meteorite as the cause after failing to find any evidence of space rock at seven points where fires were started. So, what are we dealing with here? Just some super-heated space junk reentering the atmosphere or is someone testing their space lasers on Chilean scrub? Technically, we're talking about unidentified flying objects. Yes, UFOs. Although nothing big or well-piloted enough to reopen The X-Files for, it would seem. -
BBC News - How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48859333 -
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
BBC News - How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48859333That's a pretty interesting article -
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Uncovering secrets of mystery civilization in Saudi Arabia
A team of researchers is carrying out the first in-depth archaeological survey of part of Saudi Arabia, in a bid to shed light on a mysterious civilisation that once lived there. The Nabataean culture left behind sophisticated stone monuments, but many sites remain unexplored.
The rock-strewn deserts of Al Ula in Saudi Arabia are known for their pitch-black skies, which allow stargazers to easily study celestial bodies without the problem of light pollution. But the region is becoming even more attractive for archaeologists. A long-lost culture known as the Nabataean civilisation inhabited the area starting from around 100 BC and persisted for some 200 years. While the Nabataeans ruled their empire from the stunning city of Petra in Jordan, they made Hegra (the modern Mada'in Saleh) in Al Ula their second capital. Now, archaeologists are planning to carry out the first in-depth survey of a chunk of land here that's roughly the size of Belgium. The large international team of more than 60 experts has started work on an initial, two-year project to survey the core area of 3,300 sq km in north-western Saudi Arabia. -
More than a quarter of UK mammals face extinction
More than a quarter of mammals are facing extinction, according to a detailed and devastating report on the state of the natural world in the UK.
It also said one in seven species were threatened with extinction, and 41% of species studied have experienced decline since 1970. Providing the clearest picture to date, the State of Nature report examined data from almost 7,000 species. It drew on expertise from more than 70 different organisations. These included wildlife organisations and government agencies. The report said 26% of mammal species were at risk of disappearing altogether. A separate report outlined the picture in Scotland, where the abundance and distribution of species has also declined. Scotland saw a 24% decline in average species abundance, and about one in 10 species threatened with extinction. -
BBC News - Florida man shoots son-in-law in birthday surprise gone awry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49924581 -
Milky Way's centre exploded 3.5 million years ago
A cataclysmic energy flare ripped through our galaxy, the Milky Way, about 3.5 million years ago, a team of astronomers say.
The so-called Seyfert flare started near the supermassive black hole in the centre of the galaxy, they add. The impact was felt 200,000 light-years away. The discovery that the Milky Way's centre was more dynamic than previously thought can lead to a complete reinterpretation of its evolution. "These results dramatically change our understanding of the Milky Way," says co-author Magda Guglielmo from the University of Sydney, Australia. "We always thought about our galaxy as an inactive galaxy, with a not so bright centre," she added. -
BBC News - Indian selfie deaths: Four drown in reservoir in Tamil Nadu
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49965819 -
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
BBC News - Indian selfie deaths: Four drown in reservoir in Tamil Nadu
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49965819Darwin Award winners.
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Nobel chemistry prize: Lithium-ion battery scientists honoured
Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of lithium-ion batteries.
John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the prize for their work on these rechargeable devices, which are used for portable electronics. At the age of 97, Prof Goodenough is the oldest ever Nobel laureate. Professor of chemistry Olof Ramström said lithium-ion batteries had "enabled the mobile world". The trio will share the prize money of nine million kronor (£738,000). The lithium-ion battery is a lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery that is used in everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric cars. The Nobel Committee said: "Lithium-ion batteries are used globally to power the portable electronics that we use to communicate, work, study, listen to music and search for knowledge."
