How to unlock your smartphone while wearing a mask
Kurt 'The CyberGuy' Knutsson on how companies are making it easier to unlock smartphones while wearing a mask.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s targeting the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first flight of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket — which marks a major schedule shift. The company had previously planned to conduct its first New Glenn launch from Florida by the end of this year, although it was becoming increasingly clear that timeline wouldn’t hold. In a blog posting, Blue Origin said its team “has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.” Blue Origin noted that the updated timeline follows the U.S. Space… Read More
The latest crop of NASA-backed concepts for far-out space exploration includes “borebots” that could drill as far as a mile beneath the Martian surface in search of liquid water, and a nuclear-powered spacecraft that could intercept interstellar objects as they zip through our solar system. Researchers in Washington state are behind both of those ideas. The borebots and the interstellar-object checker are among 16 proposals winning Phase I funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. For more than two decades, NIAC (which started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) has backed early-stage projects that could… Read More
Older doesn’t mean better.
Twenty years after the first human genome sequence was published, an international research team has kicked the sequencing game to the next level with a set of 64 reference genomes that reflect much higher resolution and more genetic diversity. Since the Human Genome Project completed the first draft of its reference genome, decoding the human genetic code has been transformed from a multibillion-dollar endeavor into a relatively inexpensive commercial service. However, commercial whole-genome sequencing, or WGS, often misses out on crucial variations that can make all the difference when it comes to an individual’s health. “As a metric, 75% of… Read More
Pictures just won’t do these places justice.From Popular Mechanics
The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to us humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth. That’s the claim coming from a team of 10 researchers across the U.S., including biologists at Seattle’s Burke Museum and the University of Washington. In a study published by Royal Society Open Science, the team lays out evidence that an ancient group of primates known as plesiadapiforms must have emerged before the mass-extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. (Technically, modern-day birds are considered the… Read More
Stoke Space Technologies, the Renton, Wash.-based company founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, has attracted $9.1 million in seed investments for extending rocket reusability to new frontiers. The first goal will be to develop a new kind of reusable upper stage, Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said. “That’s the last domino to fall in the industry before reusability is commonplace,” Lapsa told GeekWire. “Even right now, I think space launch is in a production-limited paradigm.” Rocket reusability is the watchword, to be sure — not only at Blue Origin, where Lapsa was an award-winning rocket… Read More
Six-packs. For your six-pack. From Popular Mechanics
Expert-tested essentials for hunting deer, elk, ducks, birds, and beyondFrom Popular Mechanics
Prefer pen and paper to a smartphone or tablet? These smart notebooks will let you take notes the old-fashioned way and easily digitize them.From Popular Mechanics
A sharp jump in U.S. Treasury yields this week has bond managers talking about a "tantrum", worrying about extreme moves and pockets of poor liquidity in the $20 trillion market. The selloff in U.S. Treasury bonds, which pushes prices down and yields up, has gathered steam in recent weeks due to rising expectations for economic growth - and fears inflation could spike if the economy overheats. Bond market investors and analysts drew parallels to the 2013 taper tantrum, when bond yields rose dramatically after then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke told lawmakers the Fed could take a step down in its pace of purchases of assets that had been propping markets.
"Her political connections apparently also won her an appointment with the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, at his residence in New Delhi."
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s chief medical adviser on Thursday downplayed the results of two studies suggesting that a new coronavirus variant found in New York City in November will be more resistant to vaccines now being administered. Dr. Jay Varma said it was premature to infer from laboratory results how effective the vaccines would be on the variant, echoing concerns of other scientists who questioned why preliminary studies are given to the media ahead of academics.
Fisker Inc CEO said on Thursday that the electric vehicle startup is considering setting up a battery cell manufacturing facility with an unidentified major supplier in Europe or the United States, to secure stable supplies of the key component. Fisker, which was once a rival to Tesla Motors Inc in the nascent market for electric luxury cars, struggled with the recall of batteries made by its previous supplier, A123, which later filed for bankruptcy. "We did not want to take any risk on batteries," Henrik Fisker, chairman and CEO of Fisker, told Reuters.
Aviat Networks, Inc. (AVNW) could produce exceptional returns because of its solid growth attributes.
The company has built a pipeline of Korean original content including sci-fi thriller "The Silent Sea", reality series Baik's Spirit and sitcom "So Not Worth It", Netflix said in a blog post. Netflix, which had 3.8 million paid subscribers in the country at the end of 2020, has already invested nearly $700 million, feeding off the global popularity of the pop culture machine of South Korea. It has created more than 70 Korean-made shows, including the hit zombie thriller "Kingdom" and documentary series "Black Pink: Light Up the Sky" about the highest charted female K-Pop act.
The big shareholder groups in The Go-Ahead Group plc ( LON:GOG ) have power over the company. Insiders often own a...
Shareholders might have noticed that Centerra Gold Inc. ( TSE:CG ) filed its full-year result this time last week. The...
The British pound has fallen on Friday to slice through the 1.40 level. This correction has been long overdue and quite frankly is welcomed.
A United Airlines plane with a Pratt & Whitney engine that failed on Saturday had flown fewer than half the flights allowed by U.S. regulators between fan blade inspections, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. The Boeing Co 777 plane had flown nearly 3,000 cycles, equivalent to one take-off and landing, which compares to the checks every 6,500 cycles mandated after a separate United engine incident in 2018, said the sources. United declined to comment.