Charlotte Henry

The first-ever image of a black hole has been published. It was taken in a galaxy called M87, BBC News reported. The picture was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. It will give researchers information to further study the phenomen.

The image shows an intensely bright “ring of fire”, as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined – which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth. The edge of the dark circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can escape.

You might think that deactivating your Facebook account would stop it tracking you around the internet. You’d be wrong. CNET’s Alfred NG tried deactivating his account and found it still collected vasts amounts of data on him. The data only goes if you actually completely delete your account.

Even when your account is deactivated, the social network continues collecting data about your online activities. All that data gets sent back to Facebook and is tied to your account while it’s in this state of limbo. It’s as if you’d changed nothing. Facebook says it only removes all of your data if you permanently delete your account. Deactivating isn’t as extreme, the company says, and the social network continues collecting your data in case you change your mind and want to return to your profile.

J.J. Abrams spoke to Fast Company about what it is like to be stepping into the unknown and working with Apple. It comes alongside the news that Julianne Moore will star in ‘Lisey’s Story’ which he is producing for Apple’s new TV+ Service.

While you could say six or eight (episodes), what does it even look like when it comes out? I have faith in (Apple), but, again, it’s not like there’s complete clarity on how it presents in the world, how it’s perceived. What’s the interface, exactly? And what do people feel when they use it? Who knows. So it’s the Wild West.

AppleInsider ran an experiment to test the effect of a T2 chip on video encoding. It found that a Mac Mini with a T2 chip encoded video in nearly half the time an iMac without one did.

Considering the possibility that the slow hard drive was the problem, we re-ran the test to both a USB 3.1 type C SSD on the iMac 4K with identical results. Additionally, running the test on an i7 Mac mini with an external 4200RPM laptop hard drive connected by USB 3.1 type A provided identical results with a higher speed encode, effectively eliminating the slow drive on the entry-level iMac 4K as a bottleneck. So, 100 percent of the difference between the iMac 4K and i3 Mac mini with the basic Video Toolkit is because of the T2.

China is moving to ban mining cryptocurrency. Bloomberg News reports that having banned coin offerings in 2017, as well as asking local exchanges to stop trading, Chinse officials are preparing to go a step further.

The National Development Reform Commission, the country’s powerful economic planner, this week listed crypto-mining among a plethora of industries it intends to eliminate because they “seriously wasted resources” or polluted the environment. The agency is seeking public feedback on the guidelines and indicated that the crypto-mining ban could take effect as soon as they’re formally issued… While China was once home to about 70 percent of Bitcoin mining and 90 percent of trades, authorities have waged a nearly two-year campaign to shrink the crypto industry amid concerns over speculative bubbles, fraud and wasteful energy consumption.

When a Chinese national was arrested at President Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago resort in March, the Secret Service confiscated a variety of devices from her. These included a thumb drive. Now, you might think the one thing you would not do in such circumstances is plug that thumb drive into a Secret Service computer. According to Miami Herald, you’d be wrong.

Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another agent put Zhang’s thumb drive into his computer, it immediately began to install files, a “very out-of-the-ordinary” event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any further corruption of his computer, Ivanovich testified.

Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Denmark blocked a draft tax proposal aimed at tech giants over the weekend. However, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager continued to push for the tax which would affect Apple as well as Google, Facebook, and Amazon reported AppleInsider.

Vestager has argued that a “global solution” is ultimately needed, but that if results are to come “in a reasonable period of time,” Europe will have to lead the way with a harmonized tax. France’s National Assembly is voting today on a national GAFA tax, which would claim 3 percent from digital ads and other income sources for tech firms with revenues over 750 million euros, or about $842 million. Of concern is the fact that tech companies often escape paying regular taxes, even as they and the demands on government budgets continue to grow.

LONDON – The iconic BT Tower in central London suffered technical problems that left a Windows error message on display for days. The landmark is a key part of the London skyline, but people noticed its screen asking for the system to be reset. The error message said: “Choose operating system to start or press TAB to select a tool: (Use arrow keys to highlight your choice and then press ENTER).” INSIDER noted that the message comes from Windows 7. The tower carries telecommunications transmissions from London to the rest of the UK.

The info board normally displays messages of good cheer, like: “Good morning London,” or “It’s coming home,” referring to England’s short-lived success in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The display was fixed eventually, however, and a BT spokesperson said: “A technical issue caused the info band on the BT Tower to display an error message.” The tower was the tallest building in London from it’s unveiling in 1965, until 1980.

Digital fashion is a real and growing business. Vogue Business reported on the growing popularity of digital clothing lines, which are powered by 3D modeling. Scandinavian retailer Carlings released its first digital clothing collection in November 2018.  It included 19 limited-edition genderless, sizeless pieces that cost between €10 and €30. It sold out in a week.

The concept might seem outlandish, but gamers have been spending real money on digital fashion items for years. Glu Mobile’s Covet Fashion game lets players style models with digitally rendered designer clothing and accessories. It brought in $53.4 million in sales last year (a portion of which is from advertising)…But as people live and display more of their lives online — coupled with growing concerns about sustainability — digital clothing has the potential to expand well beyond gaming.