Wednesday, October 9
2024 Space and Astronomy Events Calendar
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2024 Space and Astronomy Events Calendar

Jump to:The New York Times has offered this calendar to readers since 2017. It’s a collection of newsworthy events in spaceflight and astronomy curated by the paper’s journalists.The entries below these instructions will be updated regularly to adjust dates and revise information in the calendar’s entries. New events will be added and entries will be removed after they conclude or are indefinitely postponed.The easiest way to use this calendar is to bookmark this page on your web browser and revisit it regularly. Instructions for bookmarking in common web browsers are below.A second option is to subscribe to the interactive feed that adds the events to your personal digital calendar. Google users can click on this link to subscribe. Apple iCloud and Outlook users may need to copy this URL ...
Opinion |  Sam Altman has returned to OpenAI.  I have a question for him.
Business

Opinion | Sam Altman has returned to OpenAI. I have a question for him.

Podcaster and MIT scientist Lex Fridman, who has emerged as the tech world's father confessor, expressed the range of emotional barrages I've encountered time and time again: “You sit, both proud, like a parent, but almost like proud and I'm afraid that this thing will be much smarter than me. I like both pride and sadness, almost like a feeling of melancholy, but ultimately joy.”When I visited OpenAI headquarters in May, I found the culture quite impressive. Many of the people I interviewed had arrived when OpenAI was a nonprofit research lab, before the ChatGPT hype, when most of us had never heard of the company. “My parents didn't really know what OpenAI did,” Joanne Jang, a product manager, told me, “and they were like, 'Are you going to leave Google?'” Mark Chen, a researcher invo...
The United States added 216,000 jobs in December, beating forecasts
Business

The United States added 216,000 jobs in December, beating forecasts

The U.S. job market ended 2023 with a bang, gaining more jobs than experts expected and raising hopes that the economy can stabilize at a solid, sustainable level of growth rather than fall into recession.Employers created 216,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported Friday. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.7%.While hiring has slowed in recent months, layoffs remain near historic lows. The durability of both hiring and wage increases is even more notable in light of the Federal Reserve's aggressive series of interest rate hikes over the past two years. But a number of analysts warn that the situation is still unclear and say the effects of such higher rates will take time to filter through economic activity.“The real test for the jo...
It is believed that a 13-year-old boy was the first to “beat” Tetris
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It is believed that a 13-year-old boy was the first to “beat” Tetris

Ms. Cox bought her son a version of a Nintendo console called the RetroN, which used the same hardware as the original Nintendo console, from a pawn shop, as well as an old cathode ray tube television to help him get started. In a week, Willis said, she plays about 20 hours of Tetris.“I'm actually fine with it,” said Ms. Cox, a high school math teacher. “He does other things besides play Tetris, so it wasn't that hard to say OK. It was harder to find an old CRT TV than it was to say, “Yeah, we can do this for a while.”For decades, players have "beated" Tetris by hacking the game's software. But Willis, who over the past year has become one of the best Tetris players in the country, is thought to be the first to do so on the original hardware.“It's never been done by a human before,” sa...
How Paynter Jacket Co. found success with limited-edition Chore coats
Business

How Paynter Jacket Co. found success with limited-edition Chore coats

Fi Cotter Craig, a British television producer, was scrolling through Instagram one day when she was struck by a photo. “I saw my friend wearing a jacket that I really thought I was going to kill her for,” Ms Cotter Craig said. "Rather than kill her, I called her and said, 'Where did you get that jacket?'"Chloe Speed, who lives in Amsterdam and works in marketing for Nike, envied her husband's new blue coat and got it. “The color was so iconic and beautiful,” Ms. Speed ​​said. “Every time you wear it, it gets a little softer in places and fits better.”Ethan Cannon, a divinity student in St. Louis, was pulling into the parking lot of a restaurant one rainy night when he was stopped by the attendant. "He stood in the rain, blocking traffic," Mr. Cannon recalled. "The first thing he sai...
Florida health official calls for suspension of Covid vaccines
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Florida health official calls for suspension of Covid vaccines

Florida's surgeon general called for a suspension of the use of Covid vaccines on Wednesday, citing widely debunked concerns that contaminants in the vaccine could become permanently integrated into human DNA.“These vaccines are not appropriate for use in humans,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state's surgeon general and highest-ranking health official, said in a statement released by the Florida Department of Health.Federal health officials and other experts have repeatedly sought to counter Dr. Ladapo's erroneous comments about vaccines, pointing out that a careful review of the scientific evidence found no basis for his claims.The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that it had not identified any “safety concerns related to the sequence or quantity of residual DNA.”The Covid vaccines m...
General Motors reports a 14% increase in U.S. auto sales in 2023
Business

General Motors reports a 14% increase in U.S. auto sales in 2023

General Motors said Tuesday that its U.S. new vehicle sales rose 14% last year, amid a broader recovery in the auto industry driven by a strong economy and improved supply of critical components.The company sold 2.6 million cars and light trucks in 2023, up from 2.3 million in 2022, when a computer chip shortage prevented GM and other manufacturers from producing as many cars as consumers wanted to buy .But in a potentially worrying sign for the company, sales rose just 0.3% in the final three months of the year. This suggests that demand for cars and trucks weakened late in the year as Federal Reserve interest rate hikes made car purchases more expensive.Separately, Toyota Motor, the second-largest U.S. auto seller after GM, said its 2023 sales rose 7% to 2.2 million vehicles. The compa...
What’s in a name?  The battle between the little T. Rex and the Nanotyrannus.
International

What’s in a name? The battle between the little T. Rex and the Nanotyrannus.

When fossil hunters unearthed the remains of a dinosaur in the hills of eastern Montana five years ago, they brought with them several key features of a Tyrannosaurus rex: a pair of giant legs for walking, a pair of much smaller arms for tearing apart prey and a long tail stretching behind it.But unlike an adult T. rex, which would be the size of a city bus, this dinosaur was more the size of a pickup truck.The specimen, now on sale for $20 million in a London art gallery, raises a question that has come to obsess paleontologists: Is it simply a young T. rex that died before reaching maturity, or does it represent a different model but related species of dinosaur known as Nanotyrannus?The dispute has produced reams of scientific research and decades of debate, polarizing paleontologists al...