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We – the United States – are at war with China. And China’s next play – following COVID-19 - is to be “first” in the multi-trillion-dollar market of space. President Trump is taking concrete steps to beat China in space: last week, he launched the Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and, this week, he attends the launch of a public-private partnership at the Kennedy Space Center meant to ensure America is no longer reliant on Russia for shuttles to the International Space Station. "Our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of...

Computer giant IBM, which has a large presence in Research Triangle Park, is laying off an unspecified number of employees, the company said Friday. The company did not directly blame the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic for the layoffs. Earlier this year, the company told analysts it was restructuring parts of its business, including its Global Technology Services division, in a move that could lead to savings of $2 billion. In April, IBM took a $900 million charge against its first-quarter earnings in relation to that restructuring. “IBM’s work in a highly competitive marketplace requires flexibility to constantly...

Conclusion: as the epidemic whirls on, the effective HIT drops dynamically, down-- at the end-- to only 10%. And-- for everyone worried about whether or not effective first wave suppression has just left everyone vulnerable, and implies a nearly-as-big second wave once distancing is reduced: the model nicely predicts that removing the "highly susceptibles" from the population in the first wave makes the second wave likely rather muted.

Cisco on Friday informed customers that it has patched a vulnerability that allowed unauthorized users to join password-protected Webex meetings. Cisco said the flaw had been exploited. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-3142 and classified as high severity, affected Cisco Webex Meetings Suite sites and Cisco Webex Meetings Online sites, releases earlier than 39.11.5 and 40.1.3. However, Cisco says the fixes apply only to the sites and users are not required to update their mobile or desktop Webex Meetings applications.

Indian discrimination against non-Indians and other out-group Indians is pervasive in the IT sector in locations where Indians have emigrated. This discrimination is invisible and uncovered by the major IT media entities. For this reason, this article you are about to read will seems dramatically different than any article published in any major IT media entity. We cover why this issue is blacked out in IT media in the article.

With the current coronavirus crisis creating a boom for video meetings, competition for secure platforms has become fierce. The recent controversies surrounding early frontrunner Zoom allowed Google to pounce at the opportunity, making rival Google Meet free to the general public. Google has begun positioning itself as the pro-privacy option because of supposed protections it has in place, even as many in the public remain skeptical. No protections in the world, however, will change that Google is a corporation whose whole business model revolves around tracking, mining, and selling personal user data, along with the history of privacy violations that...

What happened ?

If you could transport yourself back to the Middle Ages and tell people that living things too small to see can cause disease, they’d think you were crazy. Seeing is believing and, quite often, not seeing is not believing. Tragically, this phenomenon is also operative with the virus in our political system called Big Tech bias, which is, unseen by most and with no paper trail, killing Republican electoral chances and remaking our nation. What if I told you that Big Tech could have been responsible for President Trump’s impeachment? What about the credible expert who warns that Big Tech...

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Among the ongoing mysteries surrounding last week's [Jan 29] arrest of Harvard University nanoscientist Charles Lieber is the precise nature of the research program Lieber was conducting in his cooperation with Chinese researchers.

Apple and the US government are at loggerheads for the second time in four years over unlocking iPhones connected to a mass shooting, reviving debate over law enforcement access to encrypted devices. Attorney General Bill Barr said Monday that Apple failed to provide "substantive assistance" in unlocking two iPhones in the investigation into the December shooting deaths of three US sailors at a Florida naval station, which he called an "act of terrorism."

Soldiers and Civilians with the U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Ansbach Provost Marshal Office (PMO) practiced and qualified with the Army’s new weapons system during a range at the Oberdachstetten Training Area Jan. 9-10. Prior to being issued the M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System (MHS), the PMO used the M9 Beretta, a 1980s-era pistol. During the range, the reaction to handling and firing the new weapon was positive.

20 years since Y2K. Never met anyone that built a bomb shelter, but do remember the tension that night as the clocks around the world ticked over. https://www.documentjournal.com/2019/12/y2k-20-years-later-documents-contributors-recall-the-armageddon-that-never-was/

-snip- my love of farms and farming never went away, and in 1999, I purchased my paternal grandfather’s 130-hectare (320-acre) property, Pinehurst Farm, which had been out of the family for 55 years. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do with the place, but by the time I retired in 2007, there was more and more talk about climate change due to human-caused carbon emissions. I knew that agriculture has a large carbon footprint, and I wondered if there was a way to make farming more sustainable. -snip- I recalled a conversation I’d had with my dad and his friend,...

A door blew off a Boeing 777X as the new plane was undergoing what was supposed to be its final structural inspection by federal regulators. The test is meant to push the plane beyond its limits. Engineers had the plane pressurized and on the ground. They loaded it up well beyond capacity and bent its wings in an extreme manner, in a way almost certain to never happen in the real world. As the ground test was underway and as engineers and FAA inspectors watched, a door blew off the plane. Sources tell KOMO there was a stunned silence after...

Cyber-assistant taught to duck sensitive topics Apple has programmed its Siri voice assistant to avoid politically charged subjects, and deflect or duck questions that require its AI to take a stand on issues, it emerged this week. From a tranche of documents leaked by a former contract worker who evaluated Siri responses to user questions for accuracy, The Guardian obtained a set of guidelines drawn up last year to ensure Siri's responses to "sensitive" topics comes across as neutral. In keeping with these guidelines, Siri's responses were revised to endorse "equality" while avoiding the word "feminism," even if asked directly....

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SEATTLE — In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board. Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017. More than a dozen current and former employees at the F.A.A. and Boeing who spoke...

China has reportedly developed an over-the-horizon maritime early warning radar system that its creator claims can detect stealth aircraft far beyond visual range, an advanced capability that could threaten US fifth-generation fighters operating in the area. Liu Yongtan, the team leader for the radar project, told Chinese media his high-frequency surface wave radar emits "high frequency electromagnetic waves with long wavelengths and wide beams" that travel along the surface of the sea, the Global Times reported Monday, citing a recent interview with Naval and Merchant Ships magazine. The radar system, part of China's ongoing efforts to prevent a sneak attack...

Eluding radar, quietly sailing into enemy territory and launching long-range precision attacks from less-detectable positions all begin to paint the picture of how a “stealthy” offensive surface destroyers could transform modern maritime warfare. Can a massive surface destroyer, armed with Tomahawk missiles, deck-mounted guns, sensors, antennas and heat-generating onboard electrical power, truly be considered stealthy? Surely, tall, vertical masts, hull-mounted sensors and protruding antenna could never be a low-observable ship, yet performing these missions comprised the technical starting point from which engineers launched into building a first-of-its-kind stealth warship. Stealth attributes are just one of a number of defining characteristics...