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Sign of the times

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#3,317 ·

North Dakota oil spill 3 times larger than first estimated


A December oil pipeline spill in western North Dakota might have been three times larger than first estimated and among the biggest in state history, a state environmental expert said Friday.

About 530,000 gallons of oil is now believed to have spilled from the Belle Fourche Pipeline that was likely ruptured by a slumping hillside about 16 miles northwest of Belfield in Billings County, Health Department environmental scientist Bill Seuss said. The earlier estimate was about 176,000 gallons.
 
#3,318 ·

As 120 countries push for a ban, nuclear survivors take the floor


Over the past two days, about 120 governments have participated in nuclear ban talks at the United Nations, determined to move ahead even though nuclear-armed states like the United States are refusing to participate and pressuring allies to do the same. The high-level segment of the meeting, which invited government ministers and UN permanent representatives to speak, was scheduled to end on Monday but ran until lunchtime on Tuesday due to overwhelming interest. States continued to cite the "historic nature" of the negotiations, with the delegate from Liechtenstein observing that "the broad and high-level representation today shows strong political support for this process."

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#3,322 ·

Streaming Services Generated More Than 50% of All U.S. Music Industry Revenue in 2016


Streaming music services were for the first time ever responsible for more than 50% of all U.S. music industry revenue in 2016, according to new numbers released by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Thursday.

Paid and ad-supported streaming together generated 51% of music revenue last year, to be precise, bringing in a total of $3.9 billion. In 2015, streaming music was responsible for 34% of the music industry's annual revenue.
 
#3,323 ·

IBM technology creates smart wingman for self-driving cars


IBM said that it has patented a machine learning technology that defines how to shift control of an autonomous vehicle between a human driver and a vehicle control processor in the event of a potential emergency.

Basically the patented IBM system employs onboard sensors and artificial intelligence to determine potential safety concerns and control whether self-driving vehicles are operated autonomously or by surrendering control to a human driver.
 
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#3,325 ·

Golden Age of TV is not so golden for writers: Why the Writers Guild of America is moving closer to a strike


A decade ago, Hollywood writers brought the entertainment industry to a standstill when they walked off the job for three months in a dispute over pay for movies and TV shows distributed online. The strike halted dozens of TV and movie productions and sent shock waves through the Los Angeles economy.

Now, the Hollywood community is feeling a sense of déjà vu as the possibility of another strike looms large. After the collapse of talks with the major studios, the Writers Guild of America is seeking a strike authorization vote from members. While the union has until May 1 to reach an agreement, tensions are as high as they've been in years, say people close to the negotiations not authorized to comment.

The charged atmosphere is the result of a perfect storm of economic and digital changes bearing down on the business. Since the last writers strike, the industry has seen far-reaching shifts. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have transformed Hollywood and contributed to an unprecedented number of quality series being produced - a phenomenon often described as the new Golden Age of TV.
 
#3,326 ·

Super SEALs: Elite Units Pursue Brain-Stimulating Technologies


At a conference near Washington, D.C., in February, the commander of all Navy special operations units made an unusual request to industry: Develop and demonstrate technologies that offer "cognitive enhancement" capabilities to boost his elite forces' mental and physical performance.

"We plan on using that in mission enhancement," Rear Adm. Tim Szymanski said. "The performance piece is really critical to the life of our operators."
 
#3,327 ·

Yahoo and AOL are part of Verizon's new 'Oath' brand


Somewhere along the way, Verizon's planned purchase of Yahoo got real complicated. Thanks to security breachs of gargantuan proportions, Yahoo has lost a ton of value -- and the company was struggling even when Verizon announced its intentions to buy the former internet juggernaut. Part of the value lost is in the Yahoo brand, which Verizon apparently considers toxic at this point. To that end, Verizon is changing the name of the combined Yahoo and AOL company. Business Insider first reoprted that "Oath" will be the new name of the company (which would be the parent company of Engadget). Minutes after we published this story, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong confirmed the change in a tweet.
 
#3,328 ·

Carbon Footprint of Canada's Oil Sands Is Larger Than Thought


The Donald Trump administration approved the Keystone XL pipeline knowing the tar sands crude oil it would deliver from Canada is even more polluting than the Obama administration thought when it turned the project down in 2015.

Recent government studies of a different tar sands pipeline found that the project's greenhouse gas emissions "may be five to 20 percent higher than previously indicated," the State Department noted on March 23 in its decision approving the Keystone XL permit.
 
#3,330 ·

This tiny electric jet startup thinks it can reinvent regional air travel


Flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles can be a huge pain in the ass. You can expect to spend over $200 on your plane ticket, plus another five hours of traveling door-to-door thanks to traffic, security, and other headaches. This is the type of hassle-rich trip - short but overly expensive and overly complicated - that a new startup called Zunum Aero is aiming to reinvent.

The Kirkland, Washington-based company, which came out of stealth mode today, plans to build a fleet of hybrid electric jets to sell to major carriers for service on densely traveled regional routes like San Francisco to Los Angeles or Boston to Washington, DC. The company has received backing from Boeing and JetBlue Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of JetBlue Airways.

Lower operating costs (i.e., no fueling) will allow carriers to reduce fares by 40 to 80 percent, they predict.
 
#3,333 ·

Employee Burnout Is a Problem with the Company, Not the Person


Employee burnout is a common phenomenon, but it is one that companies tend to treat as a talent management or personal issue rather than a broader organizational challenge. That's a mistake.

The psychological and physical problems of burned-out employees, which cost an estimated $125 billion to $190 billion a year in healthcare spending in the U.S., are just the most obvious impacts. The true cost to business can be far greater, thanks to low productivity across organizations, high turnover, and the loss of the most capable talent. Executives need to own up to their role in creating the workplace stress that leads to burnout-heavy workloads, job insecurity, and frustrating work routines that include too many meetings and far too little time for creative work. Once executives confront the problem at an organizational level, they can use organizational measures to address it.
 
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Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee slams UK and US net plans


Sir Tim Berners-Lee was speaking to the BBC following the news that he has been given the Turing Award.

It is sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of computing.

Sir Tim said moves to undermine encryption would be a "bad idea" and represent a massive security breach.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said there should be no safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online. But Sir Tim said giving the authorities a key to unlock coded messages would have serious consequences.

"Now I know that if you're trying to catch terrorists it's really tempting to demand to be able to break all that encryption but if you break that encryption then guess what - so could other people and guess what - they may end up getting better at it than you are," he said.
 
#3,336 ·

Hyperloop One Unveils its Vision for America, Details 11 Routes as Part of Global Challenge


WASHINGTON, DC. Apr. 6, 2017 - Executives from Hyperloop One joined leading policymakers and transportation experts here today to reveal details of select Hyperloop routes in the United States and to initiate a nationwide conversation about the future of American transportation.

Of more than 2,600 participants in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge, 11 teams presented routes, linking 35 cities and covering more than 2,800 miles. They join 24 other teams from around the globe, each vying to be among 12 finalists. Three eventual winners will work closely with Hyperloop One engineering and business development teams to explore project development and financing.
 
#3,338 ·

Are some wolves being 'redomesticated' into dogs?


It happened thousands of years ago, and it may be happening again: Wolves in various parts of the world may have started on the path to becoming dogs. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that the animals are increasingly dining on livestock and human garbage instead of their wild prey, inching closer and closer to the human world in some places. But given today's industrialized societies, this closeness might also bring humans and wolves into more conflict, with disastrous consequences for both.

"It's a thought-provoking study, and does a good job of laying out how diet has the potential to change a large predator," says Lee Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, who wasn't involved in the research.
 
#3,340 ·

Hybrid ink 'drawable' electonic circuits create radical possibilities for flexible gadgets


Who said pen and paper was dead? German scientists have developed a new type of ink that allows fully-functioning electronic circuits to be 'written' directly onto a surface from a pen. The technology could provide an inexpensive means of manufacturing printed circuits suitable for flexible smartphones, tablets and other radical gadget designs.

The circuits are ready to be used as soon as the ink dries and requires no additional processing, claim researchers from the Leibniz Institute for New Materials (INM).
 
#3,341 ·

Sir Tim Berners-Lee lays out nightmare scenario where AI runs the financial world


The architect of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee today talked about some of his concerns for the internet over the coming years, including a nightmarish scenario where artificial intelligence (AI) could become the new 'masters of the universe' by creating and running their own companies.

Masters of the universe is a reference to Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, regarding the men (and they were men) who started racking up multi-million dollar salaries and a great deal of influence from their finance roles on Wall Street and in London during the computerised trading boom pre-Black Monday.
 
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Are your sensors spying on you?


Hackers are able to decipher PINs and passwords just from the way we tilt our phone when we are typing in the information.

Cyber experts at Newcastle University, UK, have revealed the ease with which malicious websites, as well as installed apps, can spy on us using just the information from the motion sensors in our mobile phones.
 
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