Science, Technology, and Social Media

By Emily Willingham, Knowable Magazine As alarm grew over autism prevalence at the turn of this century, there was much public talk of a growing “epidemic.” That language has since softened, and it is now clear that many autistic people were there all along, their condition unrecognized until relatively recently. But what is the cause? The emerging narrative today is ...

One of the newest technologies in our modern world, real time face recognition, is now being used in a variety of ways. It may seem like something out of a sci-fi film, but it’s becoming more commonplace every day. Already, Facebook is using this software to make it easier to tag your friends in pictures. And if you’ve purchased an ...

By Alexandra Witze, Knowable Magazine Teddy Roosevelt called the Grand Canyon one of the great sights that every American should see. And 100 years ago, on February 26, 1919, Congress underscored Roosevelt’s travel recommendation by designating the Arizona canyon a national park. But the history of the 277-mile-long canyon runs much deeper. Humans first encountered it some 12,000 years ago, ...

Some of the people responsible for moderating content on Facebook are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome while others are morphing into rabid conspiracy theorists, The Verge reported Monday. Many of the employees at Facebook contractor Cognizant are having meltdowns while attempting to moderate the vast troves of content people post on the social media platform. Combing through people’s content is ...

Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who was allegedly involved in a false information campaign in Alabama, played a crucial role in developing software capable of creating “deepfake” news articles, sources confirmed. Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggests he distanced himself from OpenAI in 2018 after disagreements about the direction researchers were taking the group. OpenAI developed software capable of making fake news ...

New reports are shedding light on the extent of Facebook’s ability to gobble up people’s private information. It appears the the company can also obtain very intimate data on users when they are not even using Facebook Facebook can apparently obtain deeply personal information without explicit permission about some people through Google and Apple apps Facebook is capable of using ...

I remember when YouTube was relevant. The popular videos were the top movie trailers, significant political figures and most read news stories, but now, YouTube’s “Popular Right Now” list is full of crap. The list is now topped with “Will Smith’s Meme Review”, some dude standing still for 24 hours, a Mom and daughter reunited at Walmart, and someone who ...

On Thursday, February 21 at 8:45 p.m. EST, SpaceX launched the Nusantara Satu satellite from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Falcon 9 also delivered the Beresheet lunar spacecraft and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) S5 spacecraft to orbit. Deployments occurred at approximately 33 and 44 minutes after liftoff. Falcon 9’s first stage for ...

The Trump administration congratulated the Government of Israel and our respective commercial space industries for the historic SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch of SpaceIL’s Lunar Lander named Beresheet. The mission launched yesterday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, at 8:45 p.m. EST and will land on the Moon in about two months, according to a Fox News report. The ...

By M. Mitchell Waldrop, Knowable Magazine Troels Schönfeldt can trace his path to becoming a nuclear energy entrepreneur back to 2009, when he and other young physicists at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen started getting together for an occasional “beer and nuclear” meetup. The beer was an India pale ale that they brewed themselves in an old, junk-filled lab ...

By Tom Siegfried, Knowable Magazine Except for various cartoon characters, the Geico Gecko and Mr. Ed, animals can’t speak. Yet they have a lot to say to scientists trying to figure out the origins of human language. Speaking isn’t the only avenue for language. After all, linguistic messaging can be transmitted by hand signals. Or handwriting. Or texting. But speech ...

Despite a record number coal plant closures across the United States, the country’s power sector still experienced a rise in carbon emissions in 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday issued its annual report on emissions. The agency estimated that carbon dioxide output from U.S. power plants rose 0.6 percent in 2018 from the previous year, climbing to nearly ...

Several major companies stopped buying advertisements on YouTube after their ads appeared on videos where pedophiles littered the comment sections, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The videos pedophiles targeted apparently did not violate the company’s rules, but the content became overrun with lewd remarks directed at the children, many of them young girls doing gymnastics or playing Twister, the report ...

President Donald Trump urged United States telecommunications companies Thursday to step up their efforts to develop the next generation of cellular phone technology or risk getting left behind. “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard,” the president told his Twitter ...

YouTube appears to have added a new content guideline preventing users from posting videos that criticize potential hate crime hoaxes. The change comes amid media reports suggesting actor Jussie Smollett falsely claimed a group of men assaulted him one night in Chicago. “Content claiming that specific victims of public violent incidents or their next of kin are actors, or that ...