By BeauHD from
Slashdot's Goldilocks-Zone department:
HughPickens.com writes: The Conversation reports that according to research by Dr. Charles Lineweaver and Dr. Aditya Chopra, a plausible solution to Fermi's paradox is near universal early extinction of life on exoplanets, which they have named the Gaian Bottleneck. "The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens," says Chopra. "The mystery of why we haven't yet found signs of aliens may have less to do with the likelihood of the origin of life or intelligence and have more to do with the rarity of the rapid emergence of biological regulation of feedback cycles on planetary surfaces." According to the researchers, most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable. About four billion years ago, Earth, Venus and Mars may have all been habitable. However, a billion years or so after formation, Venus turned into a hothouse and Mars froze into an icebox. Even if wet rocky Earth-like planets are in the "Goldilocks Zone" of their host stars, it seems that runaway freezing or heating may be their default fate. Large impactors and huge variation in the amounts of water and greenhouse gases can also induce positive feedback cycles that push planets away from habitable conditions. The difference on Earth may be that as soon as life became widespread on our planet, the earliest metabolisms began to modulate the greenhouse gas composition of the atmosphere. "The emergence of life's ability to regulate initially non-biological feedback mechanisms could be the most significant factor responsible for life's persistence on Earth, conclude Lineweaver and Chopra. "Even if life does emerge on a planet, it rarely evolves quickly enough to regulate greenhouse gases, and thereby keep surface temperatures compatible with liquid water and habitability."
Read Replies (0)
By BeauHD from
Slashdot's monopolistic-influence department:
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Infowars: Speaking to the "New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream" symposium, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stated Google is "directly engaged" with the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Assange said, "The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, set up a company to run the digital component of Hillary Clinton's campaign." As reported by Quartz in late 2015, an under-the-radar startup known as "The Groundwork" was funded by Schmidt "to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election." Assange went on to say that "[...] once Hillary Clinton becomes president, those people in Google, like Jared Cohen, will be placed into positions around the new Clinton presidency." Controlling the majority of the world's smart phones, Assange adds, raises even more serious concerns in light of the company's growing and monopolistic influence. "Google controls 80 percent of the smart phone market through its control of Android and if you control the device itself -- that people use to read -- then anything that they connect to through that device you have control over as well. [...] Google has gotten into bed with the Obama administration in a very significant way," Assange stated. "It is the company that visits the White House more than any other -- averaged once per week in the last 4 years."
Read Replies (0)
By BeauHD from
Slashdot's anonymous-user department:
blottsie quotes a report from The Daily Dot: In the wake of programmer Jacob Appelbaum's abrupt departure from the Tor Project, rumors and accusations about both sexual misconduct and bullying have surfaced that extend back years. Now, four witnesses -- including a current senior Tor employee -- are stepping forward into the public eye, adding valuable insight into how Appelbaum allegedly intimidated those around him to keep accusations of sexual misconduct secret and pressure those who are speaking out to remain anonymous. [Late last week, a website was launched in which alleged victims of Appelbaum's sexual misconduct joined together to post their stories in an effort to publicize them without a much-feared wave of personalized and professional backlash. The stories are graphic and describe the ways Appelbaum allegedly assaulted people in public and in private. Three current Tor employees -- two of which agreed to be named on the record -- have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site's authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question. Appelbaum broke his silence on Monday, deriding the accounts of his former colleagues as "vague rumors." It was an "attack," he said, on his reputation, led by character-assassins spreading "vicious and spurious" allegations against him.] In May, one of Tor's core software developers dodged the FBI and left the U.S. for Germany to avoid testifying in a criminal hacking investigation.
Read Replies (0)
By BeauHD from
Slashdot's what's-new department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 47 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The browser has gained a sidebar for synced tabs from other devices, improvements to YouTube playback and HTML5 support, and is seeing the end of support for Android Gingerbread. [If you're logged in with your Firefox Account, the sidebar will show all your open tabs from your smartphone and other computers. The sidebar even lets you search for specific tabs. Next, Firefox 47 supports the open source VP9 video codec on machines with powerful multiprocessors. VP9 is the successor to VP8, both of which fall under Google's WebM project of freeing web codecs from royalty constraints.] Firefox 47 is available for download on Firefox.com, and will be slowly released on Google Play. You can view the full Firefox 47 changelog here. If you're a developer, Firefox 47 for developers offers more details for you.
Read Replies (0)
By BeauHD from
Slashdot's better-things-to-do department:
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNBC: According to a new study from marketing intelligence firm SimilarWeb, people are spending less time on social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The company analyzed Android users' daily time spent on these social networks from January to March 2016 with the same period in 2015, which included data from the U.S., UK, Germany, Spain, Australia, India, South Africa, Brazil and Spain. Instagram usage was down 23.7 percent this year, Twitter usage was down 23.4 percent, Snapchat usage was down 15.7 percent, and Facebook usage was down 8 percent. Daily usage was down even more in the U.S. for most of the apps. In the U.S., Instagram usage was down 36.2 percent, Twitter was down 27.9 percent, Snapchat was down 19.2 percent but Facebook only fell 6.7 percent. Current installs for the four big social networks were down nine percent year over year. Meanwhile, Facebook's messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger increased their installs by 15 percent and 2 percent respectively.
Read Replies (0)
By manishs from
Slashdot's X-files-I-want-to-believe department:
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Gizmodo report: Starting today, it appears the U.S. military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say "appears" because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the U.S. Navy's largest installation, China Lake, Californi -- home to the Navy's 1.1 million acre Naval Air Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won't tell us much about what's going on. The FAA issued an advisory warning pilots on Saturday that global positioning systems (GPS) could be unreliable during six different days this month, primarily in the Southwestern United States. On June 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, and 30th the GPS interference testing(PDF) will be taking place between 9:30am and 3:30pm Pacific time. But if you're on the ground, you probably won't notice interference.
Read Replies (0)
By manishs from
Slashdot's stepping-in-rival's-territory department:
Once an icon in the smartphone business, BlackBerry is having a hard time transitioning to Android. According to a report on CNET, the company's BlackBerry Priv Android smartphone, citing a high-level executive at AT&T, is really struggling. From the report: AT&T offered a more detailed account of why the Priv has disappointed. BlackBerry and the carrier expected to see demand for an Android phone with a physical keyboard. Instead, most of the buyers were BlackBerry loyalists, the executive said. Those faithful, however, struggled with the transition from the BlackBerry operating system to the Android operating system, leading to a higher-than-expected rate of return. BlackBerry's decision to market the phone as a high-end device also hurt its prospects, the executive said. The Priv initially sold unlocked for $699, above the starting price of the iPhone 6S, which sells for $650. Few premium phones have fared well beyond devices from Apple and Samsung.
Read Replies (0)