Your round-up of some of the other stories in the news today
Sonos CEO John MacFarlene Steps Down From the Company He Helped Found
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After nearly a decade and a half as the chief executive officer of the hardware company he cofounded, John MacFarlane has announced his resignation as the head of Sonos. The move had…
MIT Unveils New Material That's Strongest and Lightest On Earth
A team of MIT researchers have created the world’s strongest and lightest material known to man using graphene. Futurism reports: Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms…
Why You Shouldn't Trust Geek Squad
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: The Orange County Weekly reports that Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants. This…
Author of Swift Language Chris Lattner is Leaving Apple; We're Interviewing Him (Ask a Question!)
Software developer Chris Lattner, who is the main author of LLVM as well as Apple’s Swift programming language, is leaving Apple, he said today. From a post: When we made Swift open source and launched Swift.org we put a lot…
An Asteroid Passed By Earth At About Half the Distance Between Our Planet and Moon
On Monday at 7:47 A.M. EST, an asteroid thought to be between 36 and 111 feet wide passed roughly 120,000 miles from Earth — and astronomers didn’t spot it until Saturday. Smithsonian reports: According to astronomer Eric Edelman at the…
US Military Seeks Biodegradable Bullets That Sprout Plants
The Department of Defense is looking at ways to clean up the hundreds of thousands of training rounds used by the U.S. army. It is putting out the call for the development of biodegradable ammunition loaded with seeds that sprout…
Windows 10 Will Soon Let You Opt-Out of Automatic Driver Updates
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Microsoft is giving users some more control over Windows 10 updates, with a new beta build of its operating system released Monday. The build allows folks with the Windows 10 Professional, Education,…
The End of Yahoo: Marissa Mayer To Resign; Yahoo To Change Its Name To Altaba
maxcelcat writes: Spotted on The Register’s twitter feed: Yahoo! Submission to The SEC. Most of the board is leaving, including CEO Marissa Mayer. The company has been bought by Verizon and is changing its name to Altaba Inc. I’m old…
2016 Was Second Hottest Year For US In More Than 120 Years of Record Keeping
Last year was the second hottest year for the United States in more than 120 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, marking 20 above-average years in a row. While Georgia and Alaska recorded their hottest…