The reality: The number of U.S. Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic declined by 9.9 percent in 2017, eMarketer found, or about 1.4 million total users. That’s almost three times the decline expected. There were roughly 12.1 million U.S. Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic by the end of the year.
Source: Facebook lost around 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year. 2018 won’t be much better. – Recode
When industry powered US growth, companies grew by spending on capital investments like factories and machinery. Back in 1975, firms once spent six times more on capital investments than they did on research and development. But as the US shifted toward a services and knowledge-based economy, intangible investments became increasingly important. In 2002, R&D expenditures for the average firm surpassed capital expenditures for the first time. It’s stayed that way since; nowadays, average R&D spending is roughly twice that of capital expenditures.
Source: US startups are shunning IPOs. That’s bad news for Americans — Quartz
In what’s being hailed as a “major breakthrough” in Maya archaeology, researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala.
Source: Guatemala’s Maya Society Featured Huge ‘Megalopolis,’ LiDAR Data Show
Dear Lifehacker, I have some background in coding, but I’ve never touched Android development before. I’d like to get started, but I’m not entirely sure what I need. I don’t need to “learn to code” per se, but I could use some guidance on where to start with Android. Can you help?
Following successful first and second-stage burns, Electron reached orbit and deployed customer payloads at 8 minutes and 31 seconds after lift-off.
“Rocket Lab was founded on the principle of opening access to space to better understand our planet and improve life on it.
Source: Blast off! Rocket Lab successfully reaches orbit on second attempt
The bottom line is simple: if Bitcoin wants to be taken seriously it probably shouldn’t be this easy or legal to manipulate the markets. While decentralization is supposed to replace regulation it’s clear that there is still a way to go before it can be truly taken seriously.
Source: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000 | TechCrunch
For a typical user, the browser presents the highest risk, but we have yet to see proof of concept code that exploits this vulnerability through JavaScript – and browser vendors have started issuing patches as well (for example, Mozilla has issued a new version of Firefox, 57.0.4, where they have decreased the precision of time sources to make attacks such as Spectre more difficult or impossible). If you run stuff as Administrator: Spectre makes no difference for you really.
In other words: the world will end over the weekend.
Source: Meltdown and Spectre: clearing up the confusion – SANS Internet Storm Center
Bitmain, which runs China’s two largest bitcoin-mining collectives, is setting up regional headquarters in Singapore and now has mining operations in the U.S. and Canada, Wu Jihan, the company’s co-founder, said in an interview. BTC.Top, the third-biggest mining pool, is opening a facility in Canada and ViaBTC, ranked No. 4, has operations in Iceland and America, their founders said.
Source: Bitcoin Miners Are Shifting Outside China Amid State Clampdown – Bloomberg
More news on Bitcoin today.
From: Microsoft Halts Bitcoin Transactions Because It’s An “Unstable Currency
While Bitcoin price has always fluctuated, it never swung like it did in the past three months. To be widely adopted by the financial sector, a digital or fiat currency must be stable in order to be useful, something that Bitcoin is definitely not.
From:
Like many subsea drones, the 10-foot-long Icefin is shaped like a torpedo. It made headlines in 2014 as one of the prototype drones that plumbed the Antarctic as part of a NASA program to test the technology. Now, a new program called the Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe (RISE UP), NASA is funding three expeditions to put an upgraded Icefin under the ice. This was its first deployment..
Source: The Search for Aliens Starts Now—in Antarctica
When Icefin dove to the sea floor it found odd, feathery creatures waiting for them. “My favorite moments from the seafloor were our visits by crinoids…it was incredible to behold,” she says, referring to the to the odd, feathery dwellers that call Antarctica home.
A fundamental design flaw in Intel’s processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.
Source: ‘Kernel memory leaking’ Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign • The Register
There were rumors of a severe hypervisor bug – possibly in Xen – doing the rounds at the end of 2017. It may be that this hardware flaw is that rumored bug: that hypervisors can be attacked via this kernel memory access cockup, and thus need to be patched, forcing a mass restart of guest virtual machines.