Science, Technology, and Social Media

California Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested Sunday evening that tech companies should pay California residents for money they make off selling their data. “Your data is being monetized every single nanosecond. And, to the extent it’s been monetized and it’s yours, I think in some way shape or form you should be rewarded,” Newsom, a Democrat, said during an interview on ...

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers are pushing legislation that would effectively place a monetary value on the data some big tech companies collect on users. Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Josh Hawley of Missouri will propose legislation Monday forcing Silicon Valley giants to tell users how they are monetizing personal data. Their bill would also require Facebook, Google and ...

A new undercover video from Project Veritas shows a Google executive claiming that busting up big tech companies will make it more difficult to prevent “the next Trump situation.”  The executive also called Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s willingness to break up Silicon Valley “misguided” before praising the Massachusetts Democrat. The executive also revealed the reason why Google decided not to show ...

The Democratic National Committee and two Silicon Valley giants are working together to police platforms for misinformation ahead of the first presidential debates, CNN reported Thursday. The DNC is monitoring disinformation daily and is alerting Facebook and Twitter if it sees false information going viral, the report noted. Both companies have previously taken action against accounts after tips from the ...

By Sharon Levy, Knowable Magazine Spending most of their lives buried in streambeds, freshwater mussels can be easy to miss. You could wade across a dense bed of them without noticing. An observant snorkeler might see scattered shells and pairs of holes in the river bottom where the creatures’ siphons pierce the sediment. Yet even though they’re hunkered out of ...

A group of laid-off journalists is starting in ad campaign urging lawmakers to break up some of the largest social media companies in the country. The Save Journalism Project, a group started of reporters who want to highlight big tech’s effect on the news industry, launched in June to show how Facebook and Google’s digital ad revenue has hollowed out news publishers. ...

Hands-on STEM Project Culminates with Launch on 50thAnniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing Centennial, Colo., (June 20, 2019) — United Launch Alliance (ULA) has selected K-12 student “payloads” to launch atop its intern-built sport rocket at this summer’s Student Rocket Launch. The event, sponsored by ULA and Ball Aerospace, offers a unique, hands-on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) experience ...

A nearby star may support life on two newly discovered Earth-like planets, according to the journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The two yet unnamed worlds were recently discovered by the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) orbiting Teegarden’s Star, an old and remarkably stable star located just 12 light years from Earth. Scientists are encouraged by the fact that ...

By Vanessa Bates Ramirez In early 2018, Cape Town, South Africa came dangerously close to being the world’s first major city to run out of water. People lined up for blocks to collect spring water. Stores sold out of receptacles like buckets and bowls. Bottled water was rationed in tourist-heavy parts of the city. April 12 was designated “Day Zero”—the ...

(Source: Pixabay/ author: Thomas Ulrich) Technology has become such an integral part of our lives that some parents are worried about their children’s presence on social media. According to the “Children and Parents Media Use and Attitude Report” (2018) children in the UK from ages 11 to 17 spend up to 9 hours a day on social media. These numbers ...

Liberal activists are upset that YouTube and Twitter tagging their content as hateful as the companies attempt to wipe out white supremacist content. Twitter temporarily suspended liberal researcher David Neiwert for posting Klu Klux Clan imagery on his platform  Left-leaning journalists are criticizing Twitter for taking out a blogger at Southern Poverty Law Center who reports on white supremacy Activists ...

Facebook is disputing a Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday that suggests CEO Mark Zuckerberg might have been aware of some potential abuses of private data. Zuckerberg raised issues with a third-party app that was capable of accessing Facebook users’ information regardless of their privacy settings, and was thus aware there was a problem, a source told TheWSJ. The company ...

On Wednesday, June 12, SpaceX successfully launched the RADARSAT Constellation Mission for MDA, a Maxar company, from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Falcon 9 lifted off at 7:17 a.m. PDT, or 14:17 UTC with the first of three RADARSAT satellites deploying approximately 54 minutes after launch. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage ...

By Tim Vernimmen, Knowable Magazine The image above, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” was painted in 1884 by French artist Georges Seurat. The black lines crisscrossing it are not the work of a toddler wreaking havoc with a permanent marker, but that of neuroscientist Robert Wurtz of the National Eye Institute in the US. Ten ...

Twitter temporarily suspended Project Veritas’s account Wednesday after the group published internal documents from Pinterest and alleges that they show the company suppressing a pro-life group. Project Veritas shared documents Tuesday on Twitter showing that Pinterest monitored Live Action and alleged that it was in attempt to censor the pro-life group. Veritas reported that a whistleblower said a Pinterest staffer ...