The rumbling started Monday morning deep under the Salton Sea. A rapid succession of small earthquakes — three measuring above magnitude 4.0 — began rupturing near Bombay Beach, continuing for more than 24 hours. Before the swarm started to fade, more than 200 earthquakes had been recorded.
The temblors were not felt over a very large area, but they have garnered intense interest — and concern — among seismologists. It marked only the third time since earthquake sensors were installed there in 1932 that the area had seen such a swarm, and this one had more earthquakes than the events of 2001 and 2009.
The quakes occurred in one of California’s most seismically complex areas. They hit in a seismic zone just south of where the mighty San Andreas fault ends. It is composed of a web of faults that scientists fear could one day wake up the nearby San Andreas from its long slumber.
Washington (AFP) – The US government on Saturday ended its formal oversight role over the internet, handing over management of the online address system to a global non-profit entity.
The US Commerce Department announced that its contract had expired with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the internet’s so-called “root zone.”
That leaves ICANN as a self-regulating organization that will be operated by the internet’s “stakeholders” — engineers, academics, businesses, non-government and government groups.
The move is part of a decades-old plan by the US to “privatize” the internet, and backers have said it would help maintain its integrity around the world.
US and ICANN officials have said the contract had given Washington a symbolic role as overseer or the internet’s “root zone” where new online domains and addresses are created.
A synthetic called Alcosynth promises the positive effects of drinking without the nasty next-day consequences. Is it too good to be true?
AMELIA WARSHAW
09.27.16 1:00 AM ET
We’ve heard just about every hangover remedy in the book, from the age-old advice to drink a glass of water and take two aspirin before bed, to recommendations for the boozy “hair of the dog.” But what if a hangover could be avoided altogether?
According to Professor David Nutt of the Imperial College London, hangovers will be gone by 2050 thanks to a synthetic he patented known as “Alcosynth.”
“It will be there alongside the scotch and the gin. They’ll dispense the Alcosynth into your cocktail and then you’ll have the pleasure without damaging your liver and your heart,” he told The Independent.
British women can now select a sperm donor to father their child by using a mobile phone app, believed to be the first service of its kind in the world.
DETROIT (AP) — Within five years, a majority of ride-hailing company Lyft’s rides will be in self-driving cars, the company’s co-founder and president predicted on Sunday.
John Zimmer also said that personal car ownership will come to an end because autonomous rides will become a cheaper way to travel than owning an automobile. He made the predictions in an essay on the future of transportation in urban areas.
Technology, auto and ride-hailing companies are moving quickly toward self-driving vehicles. San Francisco-based Lyft is testing autonomous cars on the streets of San Francisco and Phoenix in partnership with General Motors. Its main competitor Uber is starting to carry passengers around Pittsburgh in autonomous cars with a human backup driver.
Zimmer said autonomous cars will start out giving rides at low speeds, around 25 miles per hour, in limited areas with a number of restrictions. The cars also won’t be able to operate in bad weather. “As technology improves, these cars will be able to drive themselves in more and more situations,” Zimmer said.
Facebook says it is working to fight the spread of fake news on its platform after false stories claiming the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy and that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was backingHillary Clinton appeared among its “trending topics.”
The trending section is supposed to include news stories that are popular among users, but the algorithms used to determine their selection have backfired on the company.
“We’ve actually spent a lot of time on News Feed trying to reduce [fake news and hoaxes’] prevalence in the ecosystem,” Adam Mosseri, who leads work on Facebook’s News Feed, said Wednesday at a tech conference. “I think we’re doing now some more similar work on trending to improve the experience in a similar way.”
hummm what could possibly wrong with that?
Rob Price
We’ve got our first good look at Google’s new burrito-delivering drones in action.
The Roanoke Times has got its hands on footage of some of the first public tests of Project Wing — a drone delivery project run by X (formerly Google X), an experimental lab owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.
The drones are being tested in Virginia, on the Virginia Tech university campus. X has teamed up with Chipotle to deliver burritos. Previous reports say that X intends to use the drone to deliver burritos from a food truck to students, though The Roanoke Times’ footage appears to just show test flights for now, rather than genuine food deliveries. (But there was a food truck close by!)
BY RAPHAEL SATTER AND DANIELLA CHESLOW
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS (AP) — A botched attempt to break into the iPhone of an Arab activist using hitherto unknown espionage software has trigged a global upgrade of Apple’s mobile operating system, researchers said Thursday.
The spyware took advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple’s mobile operating system to take complete control of iPhone devices, according to reports published Thursday by the San Francisco-based Lookout smartphone security company and internet watchdog group Citizen Lab. Both reports fingered the NSO Group, an Israeli company with a reputation for flying under the radar, as the author of the spyware.
“The threat actor has never been caught before,” said Mike Murray, a researcher with Lookout, describing the program as “the most sophisticated spyware package we have seen in the market.”
The reports issued by Lookout and Citizen Lab – based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs – outlined how an iPhone could be completely compromised with the tap of a finger, a trick so coveted in the world of cyberespionage that in November a spyware broker said it had paid a $1 million dollar bounty to programmers who’d found a way to do it. Such a compromise would give hackers full control over the phone, allowing them to eavesdrop on calls, harvest messages, activate cameras and microphones and drain the device of its personal data.
22:16, 12 JUL 2016
UPDATED 22:16, 12 JUL 2016
BY ELLE GRIFFITHS
The incident caused speculation online – and is not the first time NASA have been accused of tampering with the feed
UFO spotters have raised the alarm after the International Space Station live feed cut out just as a large mysterious object appeared to enter Earth’s atmosphere.
The incident occurred on July 9 and was first reported by prolific UFO hunter Streetcap1 in a video uploaded the same day.
The enthusiast did not directly imply that the object was an alien spacecraft saying: “This could well be a meteor or the like.
But he implied that the camera being turned off was slightly sinister: “What made it interesting was that the camera cut off when the UFO seemed to stop.”
Other enthusiasts put forward theories including one who suggested in could be the Chinese space cargo ship Tiangong-1.
Federal investigators looking into electric car maker Tesla Motors’ Autopilot system after a fatal crash in Florida are zeroing in on the limitations of the system and how it reacts when obstacles cross its path.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday posted a nine-page letter seeking information from Tesla about Autopilot and why it failed to detect a tractor-trailer that crossed in front of a Model S sedan May 7 in Williston, Florida.
Much of the letter seeks information on how the system works at intersections with crossing traffic, but it also asks Tesla to describe how the system detects “compromised or degraded” signals from cameras and other sensors and how such problems are communicated to drivers.
The crash in Williston killed former Navy Seal Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio. Tesla, which collects data from its cars via the Internet, says the cameras on Brown’s Model S sedan failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and the car didn’t automatically brake.
The safety agency also asked Tesla for its reconstruction of the Brown crash, and for details of all known crashes, consumer complaints and lawsuits filed or settled because the Autopilot system didn’t brake as expected.
NHTSA said Tesla must comply with its request by Aug. 26 or face penalties of up to $21,000 per day, to a maximum of $105 million.
CNN)We think of automobiles as American as baseball, apple pie, and hotdogs – or at least that’s what the car advertisers have gotten us to believe.
But as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s investigation into a fatal self-driving car accident should remind us, the automobile’s centrality to the American way of life was an expensive and political battle with nearly uncountable human casualties.
A robot-powered burger joint is coming to San Francisco.
In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It’s fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.
Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline’s Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.
Now it looks like the restaurant is actually happening. A job posting on Craigslist from early June gives us our first glimpse into how the company’s future flagship, presumably opening so on, might work.
The new site collects every website you’ve been on, everything you’ve searched and many of the things you’ve done with your phone
Andrew Griffin
Google has launched a new site that shows absolutely everything it knows about its users. And there’s an awful lot of it.
The new My Activity page collects all of the data that Google has generated by watching its customers as they move around the web. And depending on your settings that could include a comprehensive list of the websites you’ve visited and the things you’ve done with your phone.
Google has long allowed its users to see the kinds of information that is being generated as people use the company’s products,including letting people listen in on automated recordings that it has made of its users. But the new page collects them together in a more accessible – and potentially more terrifying – way than ever before.
Study aims to determine prevalence of tiny jellyfish with potent sting.
June 30,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
The Jersey Shore NJ, The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has authorized a study in partnership with Montclair State University to determine the distribution and prevalence of clinging jellyfish, a dime-to-quarter sized and invasive jellyfish that packs a powerful sting that has been reported mostly in the Shrewsbury River in recent weeks.
The jellyfish, not a New Jersey Native but a native to the Pacific Ocean, is very difficult to spot in the water. A sting can produce severe pain and other localized symptoms and, in some cases can result in the need for hospitalization.
Multiple specimens have been observed and collected in the Shrewsbury River, while a single clinging jellyfish has been confirmed in the Manasquan River. The studies will be conducted in these waterways, as well as northern portions of Barnegat Bay – where the jellyfish has not, as yet, been observed.
Fortunately no clinging jellyfish have been found on coastal beaches, nor are they anticipated, as they prefer to cling to vegetation found in sheltered bay and estuarine waters.
“The DEP, working in partnership with Montclair State University, will initially focus on areas where clinging jellyfish have been observed and reported, as well as other bay and river locations where they could conceivably thrive,” DEP Commissioner Martin said. “While the marine environment is one of change, we hope this important study will help us increase our understanding of the presence of clinging jellyfish in these areas and to ultimately better inform the public.” (DEP press release June 23, 2016)
The DEP has authorized a 30-day study, beginning on June 23, 2016, that will involve systematic trawling of the water to collect any jellyfish that may be present, as well deployment of artificial sea grass mats to see if they attract clinging jellyfish, and genetic analysis. The DEP will release its findings to the public after the study is concluded.
Depending on the results of the initial study, the DEP will evaluate whether to authorize a second phase of work.
“Given that this species has not been recorded in New Jersey, we need to understand the distribution and life history to establish a baseline,” said Dr. Paul Bologna, an associate professor of biology at Montclair. “This will support the development of public education and management strategies.” (DEP press release June 23, 2016)
Areas of focus for the study will include locations that have submerged vegetation, creek mouths and marinas. Any specimens that are collected will be sent to a laboratory for positive identification.
The clinging jellyfish (Gonionemus vertens), is not known to inhabit ocean beaches or other sandy areas, but tends to attach itself to submerged aquatic vegetation and algae in back bays and rivers, areas not heavily used for swimming.
According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the clinging jellyfish has a red, orange or violet cross across its middle. Each jellyfish can trail 60 to 90 tentacles that uncoil like sharp threads and emit painful neurotoxins. Clinging jellyfish primarily feed on zooplankton.
Both the adult (medusa) and polyp stages of the clinging jellyfish are capable of stinging, a mechanism they use to stun prey and to defend against predators.
DEP encourages the public to exercise common sense and caution in areas where the jellyfish have been discovered for recreation. Anyone wading through these areas, especially near aquatic vegetation should take precautions, such as wearing waders to protect themselves.
If stung by a clinging jellyfish:
Apply white vinegar to the affected area to immobilize any remaining stinging cells.
Rinse the area with salt water and remove any remaining tentacle materials using gloves or a thick towel.
A hot compress can then be applied to alleviate pain.
If symptoms persist or pain increases instead of subsiding, seek prompt medical attention.
By Len Melisurgo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on June 19, 2016 at 7:02 AM, updated June 19, 2016 at 7:34 AM
Unless you’re obsessed with astronomical clocks, you probably won’t even notice it. But when the sun sets in the western sky Monday, it will be the culmination of the longest day of the year.
June 20 is the summer solstice, marking the official start of the 2016 summer season — and the day with the most amount of sunlight all across the northern hemisphere.
While many New Jerseyans will be at the Shore or hitting other vacation spots as the solstice arrives, folks in other parts of the world will be holding traditional solstice celebrations that include drinking, feasting and dancing around big bonfires, singing songs and, in some places, going bare.
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