Month: August 2019

JACK OF ALL TIRADES: Twitter boss loses account to cunning foul-mouthed pranksters

Plus a Cisco bug, dentists bitten by malware, and France takes down a worm Roundup This week ended with a bang, thanks to some Twitter hackers.… …read more Source:: Register


Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged

After analyzing high-growth companies in the United States, a team of economists discovered that most superstar entrepreneurs are middle-aged. Their study is being published in the journal American Economic Review: Insights. The New York Times reports: The researchers looked at start-ups established between 2007 and 2014 and analyzed the top 0.1 percent — defined as…


AI Poised to Turn the Internet into Gibberish

Last Thursday two lowly masters grad students, Aaron Gokaslan and Vanya Cohen managed to replicate the secretive OpenAI model and cheekily named their version OpenGPT-2. The code can be downloaded from this Google Colab page and apparently no prior experience in language modeling is required to use it. More useful might be the skills required…


Plasma Thrusters For Small Satellite Systems Hit Hyper Drive

Greg Nichols reporting for ZDNet: A company that makes propulsion systems for small satellites, Orbion Space Technology, has announced $9.2M in Series A funding. The round was led by Material Impact, a venture firm focused on translating early stage materials technologies into products and companies. Orbion has developed a very Star Trek-sounding technology that may…


Steampunk Radio Looks The Business

Radios are, by and large, not powered by steam. One could make the argument that much of our municipal electricity supply does come via steam turbines, but that might be drawing a long bow. Regardless, steampunk remains a popular and attractive aesthetic, and it’s the one that [Christine] selected for her radio build. The build…


Flickr lets you print giant poster-size photos again – CNET

Flickr’s last owners ditched the wall art option, but new SmugMug management thinks the serious photographers it’s courting will like it. …read more Source:: CNet


Mutant Sheep Are Being Bred In Lab To Fight Lethal Child Brain Disease

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have created a flock of sheep that carry the gene for a lethal inherited brain disorder in humans. The condition, Batten disease, usually starts in childhood and is invariably fatal, often within a few years of diagnosis. The project, which is designed to test treatments…


CRISPR Now Cuts and Splices Whole Chromosomes

Researchers report they’ve adapted CRISPR and combined it with other tools to cut and splice large genome fragments with ease. The study, conducted by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., has been published in this week’s issue of Science. Science Magazine reports: The tried and true tools…


Voice Chess Uses Phone, Arduino, And An Electromagnet

[Diyguypt] may be an altruist to provide the means for people who can’t manipulate chess pieces to play the game. Or he may just have his hands too busy with food and drink to play. Either way, his voice command chessboard appears to work, although it has a lot of moving parts both figuratively and…


Comcast, Beware: New City-Run Broadband Offers 1Gbps For $60 a Month

A municipal broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado went live for new customers today, less than two years after the city’s voters approved the network despite a cable industry-led campaign against it. Ars Technica reports: Fort Collins Connexion, the new fiber-to-the-home municipal option, costs $59.95 a month for 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds, with…