Every tech company with voice-activated computer assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant promises to protect privacy. But it turns out that Apple has been allowing its Siri voice assistant to transmit highly personal recordings of people without their knowledge as part of a project that transcribed portions of Siri …
“Are Republican leaders really willing to throw in their lot with demented conspiracy theorists? “The answer, for the moment, would seem to be yes. President Trump tacitly endorsed the far-right QAnon cult the other day, saying its followers were patriots who “love our country” and, more importantly, “like me very much”. When a reporter pointed …
Tiny pieces of plastic that pollute the environment can be produced by simply opening a plastic bottle or tearing a food wrapper. Microplastics are between 0.001 and 5 millimetres in size and are usually either produced directly, or form when large plastic debris breaks up. We now know that millions of tonnes of microplastics are …
Since E.T has yet to show up on our planet, estimating the number of alien civilisations in our galaxy might seem a premature – and rather futile – exercise. But that hasn’t stopped the authors of a new study from claiming that across the entire Milky Way, there are probably just over 30, each with …
Continue reading ‘Are there any available aliens out there?’ »
Analysis of the ice in an Alpine glacier has shed unexpected light on the murder of Thomas Becket, Henry II’s “turbulent priest”, 900 years ago. Scientists from the University of Nottingham have been tracking historical levels of airborne pollution by analysing the chemicals that were trapped in layers of ice as the Colle Gnifetti glacier, …
Continue reading ‘Background of a famous dispute (and murder)’ »
