Whenever Doctor Who is ready to cast a new Doctor, the internet is always aflurry with wild suggestions and outlandish “leaks” that, more often than not, never play out as true. But as Doctor Who fandom looks toward the return of showrunner Russell T Davies—and the 14th Doctor arriving in time for next year’s 60th…
Source: Gizmodo – Doctor Who’s Future Is Being Blown Apart by a Bizarre New Rumor
Faster internet access has significantly weakened civic participation in Britain, according to a study that found involvement in political parties, trade unions and volunteering fell as web speeds rose. From a report: Volunteering in social care fell by more than 10% when people lived closer to local telecoms exchange hubs and so enjoyed faster web access. Involvement in political parties fell by 19% with every 1.8km increase in proximity to a hub. By contrast, the arrival of fast internet had no significant impact on interactions with family and friends. The analysis of behaviour among hundreds of thousands of people led by academics from Cardiff University and Sapienza University of Rome found faster connection speeds may have reduced the likelihood of civic engagement among close to 450,000 people — more than double the estimated membership of the Conservative party. They found that as internet speeds rose between 2005 and 2018, time online “crowded out” other forms of civic engagement.
The study’s authors have also speculated that the phenomenon may have helped fuel populism as people’s involvement with initiatives for “the common good,” which they say are effectively “schools of democracy” where people learn the benefit of cooperation, has declined. Other studies have shown that social media engagement has strengthened other kinds of civic engagement, for example by helping to organise protests and fuelling an interest in politics, even if it does not manifest in traditional forms of participation. However, politics conducted online has been found to be more susceptible to “filter bubbles,” which limit participantsâ(TM) exposure to opposing views and so foster polarisation.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Faster Internet Speeds Linked To Lower Civic Engagement in UK
The James Webb Space Telescope has reached its new home. NASA has confirmed the remote observatory successfully entered its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (aka L2) after one last course correction burn. The telescope’s primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have already been deployed, but you’ll have to wait until the summer for the first imagery. NASA will spend the next several months readying the JWST for service, including a three-month optics alignment process.
The L2 orbit is crucial to the telescope’s mission. It provides a largely unobstructed view of space while giving the spacecraft a cold, interference-free position that helps its instruments live up to their full potential. The JWST is expected to study the early Universe using infrared light, providing data that wouldn’t be available from an Earth orbit telescope like Hubble.
The arrival is also a relief for NASA. The stakes were high given the project’s $10 billion cost, of course, but it also proves that the space agency could successfully launch and deploy a sophisticated observatory far from Earth. And while they’re different devices, the JWST is widely considered the spiritual successor to Hubble — with the older telescope clearly in rough shape, expectations are particularly high for the new machine.
🏠 Home, home on Lagrange! We successfully completed our burn to start #NASAWebb on its orbit of the 2nd Lagrange point (L2), about a million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. It will orbit the Sun, in line with Earth, as it orbits L2. https://t.co/bsIU3vccAj#UnfoldTheUniversepic.twitter.com/WDhuANEP5h
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 24, 2022
We’ve all been there. Someone you admire suddenly adds laser eyes to their avatar. They’ve been red-pilled into the world of crypto.
Source: Gizmodo – The Celebrities We’ve Lost to NFTs
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild community is bonkers, combining all sorts of glitches to reach areas that the game would normally bar you from entering. These impossible-to-reach areas that exist outside the borders of the map sometimes contain random items, like treasure chests that were likely forgotten or…
Source: Kotaku – Nine Months Later, Breath of the Wild Player Is First To Collect ‘Impossible’ Arrow
Before we fully throw 2021 into the “let us never speak of it again” file and slam the drawer shut, why not let’s take a look back at the year in online porn? After all, every year, porn video sharing network Pornhub releases a deep dive into that year’s traffic, providing a look at the world’s secret desires. What…
Source: LifeHacker – What Pornhub’s 2021 Search Trends Say About Us
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can further escalate his desperate legal battle to avoid extradition to the United States on espionage charges, the New York Times reported, thanks to a UK High Court ruling on Monday that gives him more ammunition to take the fight to the nation’s highest court.
Source: Gizmodo – U.S. May Have Waited Too Long to Promise Not to Torture Julian Assange, Court Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: NASA’s Spinoff magazine is one of the things I look forward to reading every year. The space agency’s research trickles down to the rest of the world in surprising and interesting ways, which it tracks and collects in this annual publication. This year is no different, and NASA tech can be found in everything from hiking gadgets to heavy industry and, funnily enough, space. There are dozens of technologies that have made their way to everyday use in a variety of places highlighted in this year’s issue, which you can browse here [PDF]. I talked with Daniel Lockney, the head of NASA’s Tech Transfer Program overseeing the deployment of its tech and research among terrestrial companies looking to put it to good use. “Typically what happens is: NASA develops something, they report it to my office, and we look at it to figure out, first, does it work? And second, who else can use it? And if someone can, we figure out how to get it to them,” Lockney explained. “I try to give as much away for free as I can. I’ve got no direction to generate revenue or bring something back to the U.S. treasury. The 1958 NASA act that created us says to disseminate our work — nothing in there about making a dime.”
The result is cheap or free licensing of interesting tech like compact, long-lasting water filters, unusual mechanical components, and other tech that was needed for space or launch purposes but might find a second use on the ground. Lockney highlighted a couple items in the latest batch that he thought were especially interesting. “There was a partnership with GM to develop the Robo-Glove, a functional glove that astronauts will wear to help reduce strain during repetitive tasks and increase grip strength,” he said. “Squeezing something on a spacewalk, you can do it a couple times, but if you’re gripping a tool for the whole afternoon… so we developed this glove to assist in that work, and now it’s being used at factories around the world.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – NASA Celebrates Private Sector Deployments of Space-born Tech in Its Latest Spinoff
What happens when a trip into space to save humanity needs saving itself? Dean Devlin is going to let us know. The Syfy Network has just picked up a new show called The Ark from the producer of mega sci-fi hits such as Independence Day, Stargate, and Universal Soldier.
Source: Gizmodo – Independence Day and Stargate Producer Lands New Syfy Series
Enlarge / A simulation of a black hole merger. (credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet))
I was pretty excited when LIGO, the giant double-eared gravitational wave observatory in the US, detected the first gravitational waves. When Virgo came online, triangulating gravitational wave signals became possible, and gravitational wave astronomy became a reality.
Once the initial excitement of seeing individual events died away, it was only a matter of time and statistics before scientists started pulling new insights out of the data. A pair of new papers has looked at black hole merger statistics, and the papers’ results suggest that there might be something unusual in the distribution of black hole spins.
Gravitational waves are the result of mass moving through space and time. The mass stretches space and time, causing a ripple effect, much like the bow wave from a boat moving through water. And, just like a bow wave, the heavier and faster the mass, the bigger the wave. Unlike water, space-time is very stiff, so it needs more than an ocean liner to create a noticeable gravitational wave.
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Source: Ars Technica – Spinning black holes may prefer to lean in sync
Garuda Linux is an Arch-based distribution that makes Linux installation and setup easy while maintaining the stripped-down, high-performance OS model that Arch is known for. Of all the Linux distros that strive to make it easier to install Arch, Garuda is quite possibly the one that comes closest to the spirit and intent of its upstream parent.
Source: LXer – Garuda Linux: An Arch-Based Linux Distro Built for Speed and Beauty
Scribus 1.5.8 is the latest release of a powerful program that brings professional page layout management to Linux. Learn more about the new release here.
The post Scribus 1.5.8 Powerful Desktop Publishing App Brings More Improvements appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Scribus 1.5.8 Powerful Desktop Publishing App Brings More Improvements
Since its launch in November, much hooplah has been made about Halo Infinite’s customization options. Between the dearth of variety in free options (too many grays) and the sticker prices of paid options (too many $$$s), there’s a sense that looking great in 343 Industries’ popular multiplayer shooter costs money. But…
Source: Kotaku – The Halo Infinite Players Who Look Amazing Without Spending A Penny
Employee monitoring software—which you can safely expect to be installed on your work-issued computer—allows your workplace to view every site you visit, every email you’ve sent, and even all the personal passwords you save. Maybe you’ve already come to terms with the fact that expectations for privacy have been…
Source: LifeHacker – How Worried Should You Really Be about Signing into Netflix on a Work Laptop?
Enlarge / Servicemen of Russia’s Eastern Military District units attend a welcoming ceremony as they arrive in Belarus to take part in joint military exercises. Russia’s military is combining its own means of transport with train travel. (credit: Getty Images)
Hacktivists in Belarus said on Monday they had infected the network of the country’s state-run railroad system with ransomware and would provide the decryption key only if Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko stopped aiding Russian troops ahead of a possible invasion of Ukraine.
Referring to the Belarus Railway, a group calling itself Cyber Partisans wrote on Telegram:
BelZhD, at the command of the terrorist Lukashenko, these days allows the occupying troops to enter our land. As part of the “Peklo” cyber campaign, we encrypted the bulk of the servers, databases and workstations of the BelZhD in order to slow down and disrupt the operation of the road. The backups have been destroyed.
Dozens of databases have been cyberattacked, including AS-Sledd, AS-USOGDP, SAP, AC-Pred, pass.rw.by, uprava, IRC, etc.
Automation and security systems were deliberately NOT affected by a cyber attack in order to avoid emergency situations.
The group also announced the attack by Twitter.
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Source: Ars Technica – Hactivists say they hacked Belarus rail system to stop Russian military buildup
There’s a new Raspberry Pi-powered creation out there that just might make a golfer out of me, if only for the coolness factor. Maker Nick O’Hara has taken a Raspberry Pi, an air compressor, and his ingenuity to create a robot golf caddy that launches clubs to you on command.
O’Hara designed the robot golf caddy for a professional golfer,
Source: Hot Hardware – Raspberry Pi Robot Golf Caddy Shoots Clubs Out Of Its Bag For That Happy Gilmore Swagger
In 2015, new land emerged in the South Pacific, linking a pair of pre-existing islands, Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai. Hotel owner Gianpiero Orbassano visited the newly formed island, as ABC News reported at the time, and he, along with his son, proceeded to stroll the beaches and climb to the tallest point.…
Source: Gizmodo – Tonga Eruption Was So Powerful, Scientists Propose New ‘Ultra’ Classification
If Intel’s statements at CES 2022 are anything to go by, we’re probably going to see its Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs appearing in laptops before we’ll see them in desktop form. That date could be as soon as next week, in fact, but it also could be later; we don’t actually know.
If you’re hungry for info on the final configurations of Intel’s
Source: Hot Hardware – Alleged Intel Arc Alchemist Laptop GPUs Detailed In Mobile Specs Roundup
Goose had a need, a need for speed. So did Maverick. If you do as well, AT&T will happily supply you with up to 5Gbps of delightfully fast fiber broadband internet service, though obviously there are some caveats. The fastest speed tier in AT&T’s home internet stable doesn’t come cheap, and you have to live in a select area where it is offered.
AT&T
Source: Hot Hardware – AT&T Rolls Out 2Gbps And Blazing Fast 5Gbps Fiber Broadband Service, Are They Worth It?
Intel hasn’t said much about its upcoming Arc dedicated GPUs since announcing their branding and a handful of architectural details a few months ago, but recent leaks have given us some indications of what we can expect when it comes to performance and to the GPUs that Intel is planning for laptops later this year.
Of the leaks, the one about the laptop Arc models is more concrete. A slide originally leaked on Twitter outlines a total of five different GPU models for laptops, ranging from a couple of slow-but-better-than-integrated options at the bottom all the way to a potential high-end GeForce or Radeon competitor.
The best of the GPUs includes 512 of Intel’s GPU execution units (EUs) attached to 16 GB of 16 Gbps video memory using a 256-bit interface; that wide a memory interface and that much memory suggests a high-end GPU that’s trying to compete with GeForce 3070- and 3080-series and Radeon 6800- and 6900-series products. The middle two GPU options—one 384 EU model with 12 GB of RAM connected to a 192-bit interface and one 256 EU model with 8 GB of RAM and a 128-bit interface—are reminiscent of the specs for Nvidia’s mainstream RTX 3060 and 3050 laptop GPUs. The two low-end models, which connect to 4 GB of RAM with a 64-bit memory interface, seem poised to compete with GPUs like Nvidia’s GeForce MX series or the beefed-up RDNA2 integrated GPUs in AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 6000 laptop processors.
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Source: Ars Technica – Leaked specs for Intel’s still-elusive Arc laptop GPUs include up to 16 GB of RAM
