Let’s consider an example with an imaginary planet. In this solar system, the planet completes one orbit around its sun in 8.6 solar days, instead of 365 days, as the Earth does. (I’m using a shorter year because it magnifies the difference between solar and stellar days, so you can see it more easily.) Here… Continue reading Could Climate Change Alter the Length of the Day?
Author: Wired Magazine
Twitter Finally Gets an Edit Button
Another issue naysayers are likely to have with Twitter’s edit feature as currently designed is that it initially hides the context of what was changed from other users. Twitter’s short, snappy style of conversation means users often don’t fully take in the content of posts they share—as evidenced by the platform’s June 2020 introduction of… Continue reading Twitter Finally Gets an Edit Button
Behind Google Worker Protests of an Israeli Government Cloud Deal
Ariel Koren, a Google employee who became a face of worker protests against the company’s contract with the Israeli government, announced her resignation yesterday. The Jewish marketing manager says she faced retaliation from management and some colleagues for expressing pro-Palestinian views within the company. In October she joined other Google and Amazon employees in public… Continue reading Behind Google Worker Protests of an Israeli Government Cloud Deal
Is the Psychedelic Therapy Bubble About to Burst?
In April 2021, a widely anticipated paper in the field of psychedelics dropped. The study, a small trial run at Imperial College London and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, investigated the use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to treat depression. Led by Robin Carhart-Harris, who now directs the Neuroscape… Continue reading Is the Psychedelic Therapy Bubble About to Burst?
The FTC May (Finally) Protect Americans From Data Brokers
On August 29, the Federal Trade Commission announced it had filed a landmark lawsuit against data broker Kochava for “selling geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices” that can be used to trace individuals’ time-stamped movements to sensitive locations. These include reproductive health clinics, places of worship, addiction recovery centers, and shelters for… Continue reading The FTC May (Finally) Protect Americans From Data Brokers
A US Freight Rail Crisis Threatens More Supply-Chain Chaos
Unions have also disputed how railroads have used new congressionally-mandated automated emergency braking systems to justify plans to remove conductors from trains, which would leave the engineer the sole human in charge of up to 3 miles of rail cars moving at up to 70 miles an hour. While the new braking system automatically stops… Continue reading A US Freight Rail Crisis Threatens More Supply-Chain Chaos
NASA Delays the Launch of Its Giant Moon-Bound Rocket
NASA has pushed back the launch of its Artemis 1 mission to the moon due to an issue with one of the engines of the giant SLS rocket. With 40 minutes left on the countdown clock at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Mission Control announced an unplanned hold as technicians investigated a problem that… Continue reading NASA Delays the Launch of Its Giant Moon-Bound Rocket
How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
Most of the quantum fields that fill our universe have one, and only one, preferred state, in which they’ll remain for eternity. Most, but not all. True and False Vacuums In the 1970s, physicists came to appreciate the significance of a different class of quantum fields whose values prefer not to be zero, even on… Continue reading How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
This Gorgeous Wireless Speaker System Offers Hassle-Free Hi-Fi
KEF’s original LSX was one of our favorite wireless speaker systems, and the new LSX II improves on everything we liked about the original. These sleek bookshelf speakers deliver fantastic, room-filling sound from a small footprint, and setting them up with everything from a TV to your Spotify account couldn’t be easier. It’s not easy… Continue reading This Gorgeous Wireless Speaker System Offers Hassle-Free Hi-Fi
Why the Twilio Breach Cuts So Deep
The communication company Twilio suffered a breach at the beginning of August that it says impacted 163 of its customer organizations. Out of Twilio’s 270,000 clients, 0.06 percent might seem trivial, but the company’s particular role in the digital ecosystem means that that fractional slice of victims had an outsized value and influence. The secure… Continue reading Why the Twilio Breach Cuts So Deep