Arizona University scientists find two minerals never before lodged in a meteorite discovered in Somalia
Scientists have identified two minerals never before seen on Earth in a meteorite weighing 15.2 metric tonnes (33,510 pounds). The minerals came from a 70-gram (nearly 2.5-ounce) slice of the meteorite, which was discovered in Somalia in 2020 and is the ninth-largest meteorite ever found, according to a news release...
How call from worried US sleuth led hacker and digital forensics expert to develop an anti-tracking tool
Matt Edmondson, a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security for the last 21 years, got a call for help last year. A friend working in another part of government – he won’t say which one – was worried that someone might have been tailing them when they were...
Strength of a father: Brazil football legend Pele’s children shower him with love on Christmas Day in hospital
Pele’s daughter took to social media Christmas Day night to thank the hospital for looking after her father. The Brazil legend’s family have gathered in hospital as his condition worsened – with his daughter vowing to stick by his side as the 82-year-old receives care after his cancer progressed. Kely...
Companies constantly install invasive computer codes on your devices and mobile phones to keep an eye on you – Epstein
Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioural Research and Technology, recommends taking the following steps to protect your privacy: Use a virtual private network (VPN) such as Nord, which is only about $3 per month and can be used on up to six devices. In my...
Big Tech slavery: Without corporate openness and democratic oversight, epistemic inequality rules
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are spearheading the surveillance market transformation, placing themselves at the top tier of the epistemic hierarchy. They know everything about you and you know nothing about them. You don’t even know what they know about you. “They operated in the shadows to amass huge knowledge...
14 Iranian fishermen set free by Somali insurgents Al Shabaab after over 8 years
Fourteen Iranian fishermen have returned home after years in captivity by al-Shabaab militants in Somalia. They were freed after “lengthy negotiations with government officials, tribal chiefs and Somali elders,” Iranian news agency ISNA reports. They were flown back to Iran late on Saturday before being taken to their hometown of...
Surveillance capitalism: Even modern cars are equipped with multiple cameras that feed Big Data
Christopher Wylie, now-former director of research at Cambridge Analytica, blew the whistle on the company’s methods of illicitly collecting clients data without their knowledge or consent. According to Wylie, they had so much data on people, they knew exactly how to trigger fear, rage and paranoia in any given individual....
Big Tech: Social media collect data and your photos, which are used to train facial recognition software
The Google Nest security system has a hidden microphone built into it that isn’t featured in any of the schematics for the device. Voice data, and all the information delivered through your daily conversations, is tremendously valuable to Big Data, and add to their ever-expanding predictive modelling capabilities. You cannot...
Premier League’s back! Arsenal and their surprise emergence as title contenders offers the most interest
The show must always go on. The celebrations in Argentina were still at fever pitch when the Carabao Cup returned two days on from the World Cup final, as if it was a parallel universe away from Qatar or Buenos Aires. “Spectacular,” Jurgen Klopp enthused despite Liverpool’s 3-2 defeat to...
Covid returns to ravage China where projections show the virus will kill one million before June
In many places, life took on a semblance of pre‑Covid normality in 2022, as countries shed pandemic-control measures. Governments ended lockdowns, reopened schools and scaled back or abandoned mask-wearing mandates. International travel resumed. There were optimistic proclamations, too. In January, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declared that SARS‑CoV-2 no longer...