An international team of astronomers has found signs that a habitable planet may be lurking in Alpha Centauri, a binary star system a mere 4.37 light-years away. It could be one of the closest habitable planet prospects to date, although it's probably not much like Earth if it exists. From a report: The new findings: The Alpha Centauri system's potential to host life-bearing worlds has always intrigued scientists, but no known exoplanets have ever been established there -- in part because the close proximity meant it was too bright for astronomers to really narrow in on any planetary objects in the area. But in a paper published in Nature Communications on Wednesday, an international team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile found a bright thermal imaging signal coming from the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A. The signal was derived through Near Earths in the Alpha Center Region (NEAR), a $3 million project supported by the ESO and Breakthrough Watch. The latter is an initiative backed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to look for Earth-size rocky planets around Alpha Centauri and other star systems within 20 light-years of us. NEAR was able to push forward upgrades to the VLT that included a thermal chronograph, which can block stellar light and look for heat signatures coming from planetary objects as they reflect the light from their star. It found the signal around Alpha Centauri A after analyzing 100 hours of data.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [A] group of researchers from the Technion in Israel and Google in Tel Aviv presented an automated conjecturing system that they call the Ramanujan Machine, named after the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who developed thousands of innovative formulas in number theory with almost no formal training. The software system has already conjectured several original and important formulas for universal constants that show up in mathematics. The work was published last week in Nature. One of the formulas created by the Machine can be used to compute the value of a universal constant called Catalan's number more efficiently than any previous human-discovered formulas. But the Ramanujan Machine is imagined not to take over mathematics, so much as provide a sort of feeding line for existing mathematicians. As the researchers explain in the paper, the entire discipline of mathematics can be broken down into two processes, crudely speaking: conjecturing things and proving things. Given more conjectures, there is more grist for the mill of the mathematical mind, more for mathematicians to prove and explain. That's not to say their system is unambitious. As the researchers put it, the Ramanujan Machine is "trying to replace the mathematical intuition of great mathematicians and providing leads to further mathematical research." In particular, the researchers' system produces conjectures for the value of universal constants (like pi), written in terms of elegant formulas called continued fractions. Continued fractions are essentially fractions, but more dizzying. The denominator in a continued fraction includes a sum of two terms, the second of which is itself a fraction, whose denominator itself contains a fraction, and so on, out to infinity. The Ramanujan Machine is built off of two primary algorithms. These find continued fraction expressions that, with a high degree of confidence, seem to equal universal constants. That confidence is important, as otherwise, the conjectures would be easily discarded and provide little value. Each conjecture takes the form of an equation. The idea is that the quantity on the left side of the equals sign, a formula involving a universal constant, should be equal to the quantity on the right, a continued fraction. To get to these conjectures, the algorithm picks arbitrary universal constants for the left side and arbitrary continued fractions for the right, and then computes each side separately to a certain precision. If the two sides appear to align, the quantities are calculated to higher precision to make sure their alignment is not a coincidence of imprecision. Critically, formulas already exist to compute the value of universal constants like pi to an arbitrary precision, so that the only obstacle to verifying the sides match is computing time.

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Cloud computing company Salesforce is joining other Silicon Valley tech giants in announcing a substantial shift in how it allows its employees to work. From a report: In a blog post published Tuesday, the company says the "9-to-5 workday is dead" and that it will allow employees to choose one of three categories that dictate how often, if ever, they return to the office once it's safe to do so. Salesforce will also give employees more freedom to choose what their daily schedules look like. The company joins other tech firms like Facebook and Microsoft that have announced permanent work-from-home policies in response to the coronavirus pandemic. "As we enter a new year, we must continue to go forward with agility, creativity and a beginner's mind -- and that includes how we cultivate our culture. An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our Towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks," writes Brent Hyder, Salesforce's chief people officer. "In our always-on, always-connected world, it no longer makes sense to expect employees to work an eight-hour shift and do their jobs successfully," Hyder adds. "Whether you have a global team to manage across time zones, a project-based role that is busier or slower depending on the season, or simply have to balance personal and professional obligations throughout the day, workers need flexibility to be successful."

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An impeachment lawyer pleading, with a cat on his head.

Eight men were arrested across England and Scotland this week as part of a coordinated crackdown against a SIM swapping gang that has hijacked the identities and social media profiles of US celebrities. From a report: The UK National Crime Agency, which made the arrests on Tuesday, said the gang targeted well-known sports stars, musicians, and influencers, primarily located in the US. "These arrests follow earlier ones in Malta (1) and Belgium (1) of other members belonging to the same criminal network," Europol, which coordinated the multi-national investigation, said today. Officials said this gang engaged in SIM swapping attacks, where they tricked US mobile operators into assigning a celebrity's phone number to a new SIM card under the attacker's control. While they had access to the victim's phone number, the SIM swappers would reset passwords and bypass two-factor authentication on the victim's accounts. "This enabled them to steal money, bitcoin and personal information, including contacts synced with online accounts," the NCA said. Europol said the gang stole more than $100 million worth of cryptocurrency using this method

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A Chinese spacecraft went into orbit around Mars on Wednesday on an expedition to land a rover on the surface and scout for signs of ancient life, authorities announced in a landmark step in the country's most ambitious deep-space mission yet. From a report: The arrival of Tianwen-1 after a journey of seven months and nearly 300 million miles (475 million kilometers) is part of an unusual burst of activity at Mars: A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates swung into orbit around the red planet on Tuesday, and a U.S. rover is set to arrive next week. China's space agency said the five-ton combination orbiter and rover fired its engine to reduce its speed, allowing it to be captured by Mars' gravity. "Entering orbit has been successful ... making it our country's first artificial Mars satellite," the agency announced. The mission is bold even for a space program that has racked up a steady stream of achievements and brought prestige to China's ruling Communist Party.

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Facebook is building an audio chat product that is similar to the popular young app Clubhouse, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the matter, as the social network aims to expand into new forms of communication. From the report: Clubhouse, a social networking app, has gained buzz for letting people gather in audio chat rooms to talk about various topics. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has been interested in audio communication forms, said the people with knowledge of the matter, and he appeared in the Clubhouse app on Sunday to chat about augmented and virtual reality. Facebook executives have ordered employees to create a similar product, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The product is in its earliest stages of development, they said. Facebook has a history of breaking into new technologies and chasing different mediums that have attracted users, especially if those audiences are young. Mr. Zuckerberg bought the photo-sharing site Instagram, the messaging app WhatsApp and the virtual reality company Oculus when all were small start-ups.

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Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said social-media services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube need clearer laws and rules to govern whether controversial accounts, like former U.S. President Donald Trump's, have a place on their services, rather than being asked to make free-speech decisions themselves. From a report: "Unilateral action by individual companies in democracies like ours is just not long-term stable -- we do need to be able to have a framework of laws and norms," Nadella said in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg Television's Emily Chang. "Depending on any one individual CEO in any one of these companies to make calls that are going to really help us maintain something as sacred and as important as our democracy in the long run is just no way that at least I, as a citizen, would advocate for." [...] In the past several years, antitrust regulators have ramped up investigations into the market power of large technology companies, just as Microsoft fell under government scrutiny and faced a U.S. antitrust lawsuit more than two decades ago, when Nadella was a rising manager. It's better for the younger technology companies to face robust competition and handle negative consequences of growing too big ahead of time, rather than waiting until their size leads to problems for consumers and rivals, the CEO said. "Big by itself is not bad, but competition is good," he said. "And more importantly, you need to have a business model that really is aligned with the world doing well. There are certain categories of products where the unintended consequences of the growth on that category or lack of competition creates issues." The need for competition includes rivalry from China, Nadella said, although national security concerns must be reckoned with by each government, Nadella said. "There is no God-given right for U.S. tech companies to take for granted that there cannot be other tech powers," he said. "All of us in the West Coast of the United States need to be more grounded, because sometimes I think we celebrate our own advances far too much." Instead, companies should look at what's happening in the world and how relevant their technology is, he said.

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A steady downward trend in ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere has resumed after a dangerous uptick, scientists say.

Researchers have discovered new "highly malleable, highly sophisticated" malware from a state-backed Chinese hacker group, according to Palo Alto Network's Unit 42 threat intelligence team. From a report: The malware "stands in a class of its own in terms of being one of the most sophisticated, well-engineered and difficult-to-detect samples of shellcode employed by an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)," according to Unit 42. The malware, which Unit 42 has dubbed "BendyBear," bears some resemblance to the "WaterBear malware family" (hence the bear in the name), which has been associated with BlackTech, a state-linked Chinese cyber spy group, writes Unit 42. Background: BlackTech has been active since at least 2013, according to Symantec researchers. BlackTech has historically focused chiefly on intelligence targets in Taiwan, as well as some in Japan and Hong Kong. The group has targeted both foreign government and private-sector entities, including in "consumer electronics, computer, healthcare, and financial industries," said researchers with Trend Micro. Trend Micro also previously assessed that BlackTech's "campaigns are likely designed to steal their target's technology."

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It’s weird but good that Trump hasn’t figured out that he doesn’t need Twitter to broadcast his virulent trolling on the net.

Trump came very close to overthrowing the government.

Twitter held firm when the Indian government demanded last week that the social media platform take down hundreds of accounts that criticized the government for its conduct during protests by angry farmers. On Wednesday, under threat of prison for its local employees, Twitter relented. From a report: The company, based in San Francisco, said it had permanently blocked over 500 accounts and moved an unspecified number of others from view within India after the government accused them of making inflammatory remarks about Narendra Modi, the country's prime minister. Twitter said it acted after the government issued a notice of noncompliance, a move that experts said could put the company's local employees in danger of spending up to seven years in custody. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Twitter said it was not taking any action on the accounts that belonged to media organizations, journalists, activists or politicians, saying it did not believe the orders to block them "are consistent with Indian law." It also said it was exploring its options under local laws and had requested a meeting with a senior government official. "We remain committed to safeguarding the health of the conversation occurring on Twitter," it said, "and strongly believe that the tweets should flow." The brewing conflict in India offers a particularly stark example of Twitter's challenge in hewing to its self-proclaimed principles supporting free speech. The platform has been caught in an intensifying debate over the outsize role of social media in politics, and growing demand in many countries to tame that influence. In the United States, Twitter was thrust into the center of the clash last month after it permanently suspended the account of Donald J. Trump, the former president, for encouraging protests in Washington, D.C., that turned violent. In that case, it exercised its right under U.S. laws that give social platforms the ability to police speech on their services. But in India, Twitter is blocking accounts at the government's demand. Controlled by Mr. Modiâ(TM)s Bharatiya Janata Party, the Indian government has become increasingly aggressive at stifling dissent. It has arrested activists and journalists, and pressured media organizations to hew to its line. It has also cut off mobile internet access in troubled areas.

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Airpods followup. As you may recall, I lost one of my AirPod Pro's 10 days ago. I tried to order a replacement through the Apple website, but the page appears to be broken. So I compromised, and bought a couple of less expensive bud-style headphones, one from Jabra, which comes highly recommended by Wirecutter, and Skullcandy. Together they cost about what the Airpod Pro's cost. But here's the thing, both of them sound awful on my iPhone. No bass at all, all high end. So I tried them on my Pixel 4a, same thing. My hearing is fine, I tried the one remaining AirPod Pro, and it sounds great. So now I'm trying to figure out how to equalize the audio on either of these phones. I can't believe there isn't a built-in equalizer, but it seems there's not. I really got to like the AirPods, didn't think I would. I find over-ear headphones clunky now.