Science, Technology, and Social Media

On May 9, 2019, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos discussed his vision to go to space to benefit Earth. In addition, he also announced the Blue Moon lunar lander, which is capable of taking people and payloads to the lunar surface. Below you’ll find more information about these announcements. Blue Moon lunar lander: Blue Origin announced Blue Moon, its large lunar ...

By Rachel Ehrenberg, Knowable Magazine Plant biologist Pamela Ronald is concerned with the pressing problem of feeding the world without destroying it. The question of how to grow enough food for an expanding global population has grown more urgent in the face of climate change. And it’s only made harder, she says, by the push-back against the use of the ...

ISIS terrorists are likely using Facebook’s auto-generated video features to spread propaganda, a new complaint alleges Facebook’s AI tools failed to ding a large number of easily identifiable ISIS-related content, a new complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission notes. The complaint comes as the company is focused on eliminating white nationalist material  Researchers complain after a new study alleges ...

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes thrashed CEO Mark Zuckerberg Thursday and called on the federal government to break up enormous sections of the massive social media company. “The most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power is Mark’s unilateral control over speech,” Hughes wrote in a New York Times editorial. The company is “far too big and far too powerful,” he explained, noting ...

Dragon arrived at the International Space Station on May 6, 2019 and was captured at 4:01 a.m. PDT while flying about 257 statute miles over the North Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft was then installed on the Harmony module for the duration of its four-week stay at the orbiting laboratory. Filled with more than 5,500 pounds of supplies and payloads, Dragon ...

The Federal Trade Commission is haggling over whether to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally responsible for mishandling the privacy data of millions of users, The New York Times reported Saturday, citing anonymous sources. The FTC, which is made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, appears split on a proposal that would hold the billionaire personally responsible for mishandling ...

On Saturday, May 4, SpaceX launched its seventeenth Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-17) at 2:48 a.m. EDT, or 6:48 UTC, from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage about 9 minutes after liftoff. The Dragon spacecraft supporting the CRS-17 mission previously supported the CRS-12 mission in August 2017. ...

Blue Origin is targeting New Shepard’s next launch on May 2, 2019, with liftoff scheduled for 8:30 am CDT / 13:30 UTC. The mission, named NS-11, will take 38 payloads above the Kármán line into space. Some of the payloads flying on NS-11 include: Orbital Medicine Orbital Medicine, a small business focused on aerospace medicine, comes to us through funding ...

By Amber Dance, Knowable Magazine Call it the body’s postal system. Cells package goodies into little envelopes made of membranes. Then these packages cruise the bloodstream — billions of them in every milliliter of blood — to recipient cells far and near, delivering freight such as genetic material and proteins. These little bubbles, known as extracellular vesicles, or EVs, tell ...

Amazon warehouse workers are monitored by tracking systems that measure each employee’s productivity, issue warnings for workers that lag and fire those consistently behind, according to documents obtained by The Verge. Amazon offers a base $15 an hour wage and its warehouses, called fulfillment centers, are often competitive to work at. The company is continuously replacing slow performing employees with ...

A Tesla Model 3 is touted as a zero-emissions car by government regulators, but it actually results in more carbon dioxide than a comparable diesel-powered car, according to a new study. When the CO2 emissions from battery production is included, electric cars, like Teslas, are ” in the best case, slightly higher than those of a diesel engine, and are ...

A college student filed a lawsuit against Apple on Monday, alleging that the tech giant’s facial recognition software led to the teen’s arrest for crimes he didn’t commit. Ousmane Bah, 18, filed a lawsuit Monday for $1 billion, alleging that facial recognition software in the company’s stores falsely identified him as the criminal responsible for a series of thefts that ...

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) won’t miss out on an Easter feast Sunday, although their holiday meal may not look quite like it would at home on planet Earth. The six station residents greeted a private cargo ship on Good Friday that brought Easter meal choices including pork chops with gravy, smoked turkey, asparagus, potatoes au gratin, lemon ...

Facebook admitted Thursday night in an updated post from March that the company released millions of additional users Instagram passwords. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s update was published on the same day that U.S. Attorney General William Barr published special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian election meddling. The company acknowledged that millions of additional exposed Instagram passwords were recently discovered. The ...

Vaccinations rates are strikingly low for children who attend one of Google’s child care centers in Silicon Valley, tech magazine outlet Wired reported Thursday, citing a California public health data base. Only 49 percent of children are completely vaccinated in one Google day care center in Santa Clara County, California, where the vaccination rate for mumps-measles-and rubella is 95 percent. ...