Technology

Launch of Bangabandhu satellite postponed till March

  

Pns: The launch of Bangladesh’s first commercial satellite Bangabandhu-1 has been deferred and has been pushed down to March tentatively.Construction of the satellite is complete, Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman for Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said on Wednesday.A precise date has not been set yet, but a launch is probably in March, added.The telecom regulatory body’s chief said he visited France and witnessed the complete satellite last week. It will be...

Facebook post creates Israel false alarm

  

Pns: Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man last week after a Facebook post he made saying "good morning" in Arabic was mistranslated to read "attack them" in Hebrew, local media have reported. Police confirmed that the construction worker was briefly held under suspicion of incitement but was released as soon as the mistake was realised. The post showed a photo of the worker next to a bulldozer in the West Bank. Such vehicles have been used to attack Israelis in the...

vapes are as injurious as cigarettes

  

Pns: A new research suggested that e-cigarettes appear to trigger unique immune responses as well as the same ones triggered by regular cigarettes. Immune responses are the biological reactions of cells and fluids to an outside substance the body doesn’t recognise as its own. Such immune responses play roles in disease, including lung disease spurred on by cigarette use. Senior author and associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, Mehmet...

Tech pundit Scoble faces harassment claims

  

Pns: Renowned tech consultant and commentator Robert Scoble has apologised after multiple accusations of inappropriate behaviour towards women. In a post on Medium, journalist Quinn Norton accused Mr Scoble of groping her body at a technology conference in the early 2010s.Another woman, former colleague Michelle Greer, also said Mr Scoble made unwanted advances, touching her leg during a conference in February 2010.On Facebook, Mr Scoble said: "I know that apologies are not...

More than 200 URLs blocked in Pakistan in three years: report

  

Pns: In random tests involving 22 internet service providers (ISPs) it has been found that more than 200 URLs have been blocked in Pakistan, according to a research study carried out by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Bytes for All Pakistan. The research report released on Wednesday looked at data from 2014 to 2017 and confirmed detection of 210 URLs in the country that were blocked by 22 ISPs.Several tests, including the HTTP Invalid Request Line and...

Facebook joins effort to boost newspaper subscriptions

  

Pns: Facebook announced Thursday initiatives to help struggling news organisations gain paid subscribers, following a similar move unveiled earlier this month by Google. The social network giant said it will test "premium news models" for organisations that deliver their content on Facebook, to enable the publishers to have more control over pricing, subscriber relationships and revenue."Earlier this year, many publishers identified subscriptions as a top priority, so we worked...

Huge cave found on moon, could house astronauts: Japan scientists

  

Pns: Scientists at Japan's space agency have discovered a huge moon cave that could one day house a base that would shelter astronauts from dangerous radiation and wild temperature swings, officials said Thursday. Data taken from Japan's SELENE lunar orbiter has confirmed the existence of the 50 kilometre (31 miles) long and 100 metre wide cavern that is believed to be lava tube created by volcanic activity about 3.5 billion years ago. The major finding was published this week in US...

Herbal remedies in Asia linked to liver cancer: Study

  

Pns: Researchers have uncovered widespread evidence of a link between traditional Chinese herbal remedies and liver cancer across Asia, a study said Wednesday. The findings suggest stronger measures are needed to prevent people from consuming chemicals called aristolochic acids (AA), which are derived from the woody vines of the Aristolochia plant family, said the report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.The acids can be found in some traditional Chinese medicines...

Google unveils AI that learns on its own

  

Pns: Google’s artificial intelligence group, DeepMind, has unveiled the latest incarnation of its Go-playing program, AlphaGo – an AI so powerful that it derived thousands of years of human knowledge of the game before inventing better moves of its own, all in the space of three days. Named AlphaGo Zero, the AI program has been hailed as a major advance because it mastered the ancient Chinese board game from scratch, and with no human help beyond being told the rules. In games...

Twitter steps up fight against sexual harassment

  

Pns: Twitter has announced tough new rules on tweets containing "non-consensual nudity" and sexual harassment, which could be seen as fallout from the Harvey Weinstein abuse scandal. The rules will come into force in the coming weeks, Twitter said in a statement late Tuesday, after company co-founder Jack Dorsey on Friday posted a series of tweets promising policy changes.The San Francisco-based social media giant will "immediately and permanently suspend any account we identify...

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