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San Francisco’s first tech boom wasn’t about silicon, but steel. Steel cable that triggered a revolution in urban transportation. Scotsman Andrew S. Hallidie, an experienced maker of wire rope (steel cable), employed his expertise to invent the cable car on Clay Street in San Francisco, with the first run on August 2, 1873. Hallidie said he wanted to surmount hills in the City too steep for horse-drawn streetcars.

Not only read more

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In a decision steeped in controversy, Japan started releasing radioactive water from its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday.
In South Korea, protests and panic sales of sea salt have continued for months, while Hong Kong and Macau have issued their own bans on Japanese seafood from ten regions. China and read more

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The Self-Driving Cars Wearing a Cone of Shame
There’s a brilliant campaign to stop San Francisco’s autonomous vehicles in their tracks. Self-driving cars have met their match in the form of the humble traffic cone: a viral video of disabling autonomous Cruise and Waymo vehicles by placing bright orange traffic cones on their hoods.

The cones read more

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For over a decade, the Twitter bird logo has been inseparable from the social media platform. But with the service’s X rebrand, Musk is saying goodbye to ‘all the birds.’

Early Monday morning, Twitter began replacing its blue bird logo with a fan-made “𝕏” logo. The same X also appears on Twitter’s homepage, as a profile picture for its official @twitter read more

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Tony Bennett, legendary singer and master of the American songbook, dies at 96 “I’ve never worked a day in my life,” Tony Bennett told USA TODAY in 2011, “because I love what I do.” The great singer cited that bit of Confucian wisdom often. In a career spanning more than six decades, Bennett conveyed that joy and read more

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A star is born: On its one-year anniversary, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope published an image capturing the formation of 50 young stars in vivid detail, including some that indicate the development of future planetary systems.

The new Webb image features the closest star-forming region to us, at roughly read more

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Canadian wildfire smoke reaches Europe as Canada reports its worst fire season on record
(CNN) Canada has officially marked its worst wildfire season on record, with smoke from the blazes crossing the Atlantic Ocean and reaching western Europe, with at least 19,027,114 acres already charred across the country. Wildfire activity in Canada typically peaks from June to August, leaving read more

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(CNN) – A geometry problem that has been puzzling scientists for 60 years has likely just been solved by an amateur mathematician with a newly discovered 13-sided shape. Called “The hat” because it vaguely resembles a fedora, the elusive shape is an “einstein” (from the German “ein stein,” or “one stone”). That means it can completely cover a surface without read more

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Barrel-chested Lucas Helmke, 33, from Brisbane, Australia, has pushed his strength and stamina to their limits to break the most push ups in one hour world record. Lucas performed 3,206 push ups within one hour – that’s an average of over 53 per minute. The previous record of 3,182 was set by another Aussie, Daniel Scali, in April 2022. Lucas read more

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“Hi, Joel? It’s Marty Cooper.” Engineer Martin Cooper cradled a bulky object to his ear, listening. The gray device had two rows of numbered buttons between the ear and mouthpiece. An antenna poked from the top, reaching skyward to pick up invisible signals from the city’s jangling atmosphere. Next to the sidewalk, cars and taxis zipped down read more

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 24 (Reuters) – Intel Corp (INTC.O) co-founder Gordon Moore
, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry whose “Moore’s Law” predicted a steady rise in computing power for decades, died Friday at the age of 94, the company announced. Intel and Moore’s family philanthropic foundation said he died surrounded by family at his home in read more

The Year of the Rabbit: An illustrated guide to Lunar New Year
Grab your favorite red shirt; it’s time to celebrate the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. Saying goodbye to the Tiger, we enter the Year of the Rabbit on January 22, 2023. Millions of families worldwide are preparing celebrations for one of the year’s biggest festivals. If you’re a Lunar New Year newbie, read more

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A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said. The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year.

After traveling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun read more

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December 2019

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King Charles Pays Tribute To Queen Elizabeth In First Christmas Speech As Monarch
“I’m standing here in this exquisite chapel of St George, at Windsor Castle, so close to where my beloved mother, the late queen, is laid to rest with my dear father,” the sovereign said. “I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards, and messages which so many of you have read more