Jupiter’s Ganymede, largest moon in solar system, looks amazing in NASA’s photos
On June 7, NASA’s Juno probe zoomed within just 1,038 kilometres of Jupiter’s enormous satellite Ganymede, which is bigger than the planet Mercury. It was the closest any probe had come to Ganymede since May 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft got within about 1,000 km of the moon’s icy surface....
World media censure Indonesian government for draconian internet regulation
Media organisations in the world have written a joint letter to Indonesia’s minister of Communication and Information Technology calling on him to rescind Ministerial Regulation 5/2020 (MR5) that allows media companies and owners to monitor content. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate, the Alliance of Independent Journalists...
‘Deepfake’ maps that will show you’re in London, not Nairobi, coming soon
Satellite images showing the expansion of large detention camps in Xinjiang, China, between 2016 and 2018 provided some of the strongest evidence of a government crackdown on more than a million Muslims, triggering international condemnation and sanctions. Other aerial images – of nuclear installations in Iran and missile sites in...
Risks of remote presence: Your online content can be screenshot, misused
Remote attendance of events, including work, has its own challenges: you leave a lot in your trail that can work against you. Recording of such events has its own social and professional risks that you need to be aware of and give informed consent or decline where appropriate. This may...
Remote sensing: Gear up for virtual weddings, dowry deals and memorials
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we work and remote work will continue for the foreseeable future, according to media research. Forbes magazine predicts that by 2025, an estimated 70 per cent of the workforce will be toiling at home at least part-time. Also, here to stay – in...
When cool old-school computers prove too good to die, in-demand and impractical to retire
Sometimes cool old-school IT refuses to die, in demand and impractical to retire Some 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – a solar-monitoring satellite launched in 2010 – bristles with high-tech sensors. Yet one of the Earth-bound systems that supports those sensors was, until 2015, decidedly old-school....
Cement: The polluter environmentalists hate, builders and building owners love
Cement is everywhere, but few people notice the impact it has on the environment. A standard building material used everywhere it is often confused with concrete. Cement is a key component in making concrete. By burning limestone at extremely high temperatures, this process turns the stone into a fine powder...
Book review: America’s jolly physics Nobel laureate who nearly bombed Nevada
In the early 1950s, the physicist Frederick Reines and his colleague Clyde Cowan designed an experiment to detect neutrinos, the tiniest and most elusive of subatomic particles. Theorists were convinced that neutrinos must exist – and that they would be untraceable. And Reines liked nothing better than a challenge. The...
Cybersecurity: Importance of security culture in Zero Trust defence models
During a preview of this year’s Republic of South Africa conference, a team from Orange Cyberdefense demonstrated a range of pretty scary scenarios of what can happen when malicious actors take control of a user’s home router. These range from duping users into downloading payloads dressed up as fake VPN...
Delaying a Covid vaccine’s second dose boosts immune response, research finds
Facing a limited vaccine supply, the United Kingdom embarked on a bold public-health experiment at the end of 2020: delaying second doses of Covid-19 vaccines in a bid to maximise the number of people who would be at least partially protected from hospitalisation and death. Now, a study suggests that...
