Germany Plans $1.4 Billion In Incentives For Electric Cars

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg article: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government reached a deal with automakers to jointly spend 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) on incentives to boost sluggish electric-car sales. Buyers will be able to receive as much as 4, 000 euros in rebates to help offset the higher price of an electric vehicle, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at a press conference in Berlin. Purchasers of hybrid cars will get as much as 3, 000 euros off the price. The industry will shoulder 50 percent of the cost. The program is set to start in May, pending approval from the German parliament’s budget committee, he said. “The goal is to move forward as quickly as possible on electric vehicles, ” Schaeuble told reporters, adding that the aim is to begin offering the incentives next month. “With this, we are giving an impetus.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Germany Plans $1.4 Billion In Incentives For Electric Cars

Slack To Disable Thousands of Logins Leaked on GitHub

An anonymous reader writes: Thursday one technology site reported that thousands of developers building bots for the team-collaboration tool Slack were exposing their login credentials in public GitHub repositories and tickets. “The irony is that a lot of these bots are mostly fun ‘weekend projects’, reported Detectify. “We saw examples of fit bots, reminding you to stretch throughout the day, quote bots, quoting both Jurassic Park…and Don Quixote….” Slack responded that they’re now actively searching for publicly-posted login credentials, “and when we find any, we revoke the tokens and notify both the users who created them, as well as the owners of affected teams.” Detectify notes the lapse in security had occurred at a wide variety of sites, including “Forbes 500 companies, payment providers, multiple internet service providers and health care providers… University classes at some of the world’s best-known schools. Newspapers sharing their bots as part of stories. The list goes on and on…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Slack To Disable Thousands of Logins Leaked on GitHub

Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People’s NHS Records

Hal Hodson, reporting for New Scientist:It’s no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant’s collaboration with the UK’s National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document — a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust — gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust — Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free — each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. The agreement also includes access to patient data from the last five years. According to their original agreement, Google cannot use the data in any other part of its business. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People’s NHS Records

Astonishing Behind-the-Scenes Video Shows How The Jungle Book Was Filmed in Downtown LA

It’s been two weeks since Disney’s Jungle Book was released—and we still can’t quite believe the whole thing was filmed in a downtown L.A. warehouse . Now Disney is peeling back the curtain and showing us just how this incredible spectacle was created. Read more…

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Astonishing Behind-the-Scenes Video Shows How The Jungle Book Was Filmed in Downtown LA

This Futuristic Ion Thruster Will Take a Mission to Mercury

The very name of the T6 ion thruster sounds like something from sci-fi. But it’s very real, and this little engine will be one of four that take the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo spacecraft to Mercury. Read more…

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This Futuristic Ion Thruster Will Take a Mission to Mercury

iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years

Apple’s record-setting growth has finally come to an end. During the company’s first quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Apple reported its first year-over-year decline since 2003. Apple reported revenues of $50.6 billion, down from about $58 billion during the same period last year. Read more…

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iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years

New ‘Image Enhance’ Lets Satellites See 2-Inch Objects on Mars

Researchers have developed a new image enhancement technique that allows them to boost the resolution of satellite images, revealing unprecedented levels of detail. Read more…

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New ‘Image Enhance’ Lets Satellites See 2-Inch Objects on Mars