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Bill Gates recently got to check out the Omniprocessor, an ingenious machine designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, which turns human waste into water and electricity. In places without good waste treatment plants, it could be a real game-changer.
Source: TheGatesNotes
Gizmo is a 31-year-old nerdcore hip-hop rapper from the Caribbean who migrated to the United States before moving to Japan. His most recent album, The Rise of Negatron, tells the story of the rise of the supervillian Negatron and the perks of being a supervillian. BGN recently spoke to Gizmo about the project and his music career so far.
BGN: How long have you been rapping and how did you get into nerdcore hip-hop?
Gizmo: Well, I’ve never been a stranger to rhyming. As far as seriously rapping and making music, I’ve been doing that for about 4 years now. Nerdcore came about naturally.. You know.. Being a nerd and all (lol). A lot of my concepts, similes and analogies are based on video games, comics, anime and Sci-fi in general. All of which I was crazy about growing up and all of which I still love to this day!
BGN: What are the major influences for your most recent album, The Rise of Negatron?
Gizmo: There’s a lot of influences to the project as a whole so I’ll just name the main ones. Star Wars, Thanos, Darkseid and Star Fox. I can see you all being like “wth?! How does that even mesh?!” Lol.
BGN: The Rise of Negatron is unique because it is told from the point of view of supervillians. Why did you decide to tell a story from a supervillain’s point of view rather than a superhero?
Gizmo: I may catch some flack for this butttttt superheroes bore me. There.. I said it. Not all of them though, but most of them do. It’s pretty straight forward with most heroes. “I’m the good guy, I stand up for those weaker, yadda yadda yadda justice.” The villains however, always have some outlandish creative way to attain power, financial gain or whatever they desire. “I’ll use a antigravity device to pull a meteor into a populated city!” That’s a bit old school, but it still seems more interesting to me. Villains can be complex psychologically and completely delusional in believing what they are doing is the “right thing.” They can become good guys for personal interest and revert back to their agenda later. They just seem more dynamic and diverse to me. That’s why I chose to write from that perspective.
Read More from Latonya Pennington from Black Girl Nerds
This year has been very heartbreaking for the Black community, and it’s imperative that we not only support the Black artists who continue to use their work to make their and our lives better, but who also want to contribute to the resurgence of our community. Those who want to share light. Those who want to tell stories with their talent, to open the eyes of the masses.
So support we shall!
Name, Age, Hometown:
Sean Mack, 27, Saginaw, Michigan
When did you start drawing (or when did you begin to take drawing more seriously)? What made you start drawing, and why do you continue?
I’ve been drawing since I could pick up crayons, really. I’m not sure what started it really. I just loved to draw things as a kid. Ghostbusters. Ninja Turtles. I drew in notebooks, walls, all that. My folks told me they think I got the creative side from my grandmother because she was into arts and crafts so that may be where it stemmed from. I continued because it was something I loved to do. I wasn’t really into much of anything else like sports and all that jazz. I just loved to draw.
How would you describe your main (if you have many) drawing style?
I’d say it’s a melting pot of a lot of things that influenced me as I was growing up. Comics, animation – both American and Japanese — and life mostly. It’s not based on realism, but I try to keep a feel of it at least in my art somewhere.
Do you practice discipline, where you draw even when you don’t feel like it, versus drawing when you want?
Yeah definitely. There’s plenty of times I’ve basically forced myself to draw when I didn’t have the energy to. I may not draw every day but it’ll be enough time for me to not get rusty and lazy with things.
What are some of your favorite pieces you’ve created? Your least favorite?
My favorite so has to be the work I did with C.J. Johnson on his graphic novel KOBK (Killed Or Be Killed). I think I love it because it was basically challenged me to get out of my comfort zone and because I never really did a full graphic novel before. My least favorite? I’d had to say one of the first freelance jobs I had. It was for the producer duo from England and it just didn’t go down great at all, haha.
Read more from Cynthia Franciillon at Black Girl Nerds
A scientist’s analysis of photos taken from NASA’s Curiosity suggests that there is evidence of ancient life on Mars, but many critics are warning people not to get too excited just yet.
The new paper in the journal Astrobiology claims that Curiosity’s photos of the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Mars’ Yellowknife Bay reveal microbially-induced sedimentary structures (MISS).
If this is true, the structures would serve as proof that microbial life exists, or at least existed, on Mars.
While some science-lovers are gazing at the photos with wide eyes filled with amazement, skeptics aren’t too sure about the evidence.
After all, the paper was even intended to be nothing more than a “hypothesis paper.”
The photos are currently being treated as if they are extraterrestrial versions of ghost pictures—those who already believe in that kind of thing are excited about the visuals but those who have long been skeptics remain unimpressed.
The circumstantial evidence comes from Nora Noffke, who has spent quite some time looking for signs of life on Mars.
That alone, for some people, is enough to suggest that Noffke could be reading too deeply into the vague markings on Mars’ surface.
Not everybody is discounting the paper, however, and Geek contributor Graham Templeton believes, at the very least, the photos are something to get excited about it.
“All wishful thinking aside, and within the context of this paper’s openly hypothetical status, it’s not irresponsible to get at least a little bit excited about these findings,” Templeton wrote.
In the same breath, however, Templeton explained why many experts aren’t placing any bets on the research just yet.
Outside of the markings in Curiosity’s photos, there is no other evidence to support microbial life on Mars.
“Curiosity has been blasting rock samples with lasers and measuring atmospheric methane to search for direct chemical evidence of current or ancient life, but so far the findings have been ambiguous at best,” Templeton added. “If microbes really did carpet Gillespie Lake for a long period, that might have been one of a small selection of places where that was the case.”
So the pictures are no sure sign of life on Mars but it’s important to note that Curiosity’s mission isn’t over just yet.
The rover is still making its way across the rocky planet hoping to one day send back solid evidence of life on Mars.
Companies Acknowledge Biases in the Hiring Process and Do Something About It
Solving the problem could really be as simple as acknowledging that there is a problem and taking the proper steps to move forward. Studies indicate that some employers tend to bypass potential employees who are women or people of color because they assume they will not be competent in the technology field. While making the field more diverse is a goal that some companies are striving for now, years of hiring executives excluding women and people of color have left the tech space struggling to become more inclusive.
Hiring Staffs Stop Resorting to What’s Familiar
For some hiring executives, there is no blatant attempt to exclude certain races or genders. Instead, there is a subconscious bias that encourages them to connect with and hire people who look familiar or have similar backgrounds. Since the tech industry is already filled with white men, that comfort with familiarity often results in other white men being hired over their Black and female counterparts.
From the iPad to Google Glass, the 1989 film accurately predicted many technological advances.
Source: ABC News
Destruction of Data
The recent Sony attack revealed that hackers, believed to be from North Korea, were capable of getting data and destroying it as well. Data destruction is not a common occurrence in the U.S. This attack causes the victim to spend time and money to rebuild systems.
Ransomware
This threat locks up documents and access to the victims’ systems. The hacker asks for a ransom in order to give access back to the user.
NASA has spent years searching for other Earth-like planets, and while several have already been found, the latest discoveries by Kepler could be the most Earth-like new worlds yet.
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has been searching for new planets for years and the new discoveries, deemed Kepler 438 b and Kepler 442 b, appear to be incredibly similar to Earth.
The two planets were among several other planets that were discovered by the spacecraft and brought Kepler’s total discovered planets past the 1,000 mark milestone.
Both of the planets appear to have relatively similar temperatures to Earth and boast environments where liquid water is likely to be in abundance.
The planets are also rocky worlds and are comparable to Earth’s size and orbit.
While the planets are certainly pretty close to Earth in certain ways, the study’s co-author, David Kipping, warned that the planets still might not be habitable for humans.
“We can’t say for sure whether these planets are truly habitable — only that they are promising candidates for habitability,” Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said, according to Scientific American.
Another major catch is that the planets are extremely far away.
One is 500 light years away while the other is more than 1,000 light years away.
To put that in perspective, a light year is the equivalent to roughly 5.9 trillion miles.
The study’s lead author, Guillermo Torres, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is excited about what the discoveries could mean for the search for extraterrestrial life.
“These planets do exist; we didn’t know that before,” Torres said in a phone interview with Fox News. “What we’re really looking for is signs of life eventually. We’re not there yet. It will take many years, but this is the first step.”
The addition of Kepler 438 b and Kepler 442 b brings the grand total of planets no larger than twice the size of Earth to eight or nine, depending on who you ask.
There are still debates over another recently discovered planet.
Either way, Torres says it’s just proof that the universe is full of Earth-like planets and the only challenge is finding them and reaching them.
Of course, there are some notable differences between Earth and the newly discovered worlds.
Kepler 438 b gets about 40 percent more energy from its sun-like star and makes a much tighter orbit around it.
This means the planet would have years that are no longer than about 35 Earth days and the red dwarf star would give the planet red rays of sunlight as opposed to the yellow sunlight we experience on Earth.
Three seasons into Arrow, we’ve seen Felicity Smoak turn MVP, Roy Harper’s evolution into Arsenal, and Sarah Lance die, become a hero and die again. We even saw the rebirth of Thea Queen when her hair went Legend of Korra, Book 4 and she morphed into fierce-Thea over a summer abroad. In the time it took you to learn the three-man weave at basketball camp, Thea learned to turn off physical pain and sword fight trained assassins. How unaccomplished does that make you feel? Now take all those feelings of ineptitude and multiply them by 55 episodes, and you might have an idea how John Diggle feels.
Diggle began as a promising character of color in the series, asserting himself as someone uninterested in “being anyone’s sidekick.” A 40-something ex-Special Forces with hero-diesel build? And he says he’s no one’s sidekick? Arrow had me going on that one. They had me going, that is, until it took under half a season for him to become just that. Not even a particularly useful one either – whenever Ollie excludes him on missions he sits back at headquarters and dreams of being appreciated. “Maybe I’ll get a code name soon,” he thinks to himself, looking up at the salmon ladder. “Or a mask. A mask would do.” It’s embarrassing. On the list of respectable sidekicks, John Diggle’s name falls somewhere under Kimmy Gibbler, Memphis Bleek, and Tails.
He’s strictly there for diversity purposes at this point – they couldn’t get rid of him so they turned him into Cole from Martin, where every time he talks about his job for a mission, everyone yells, “You ain’t got no job!” His presence onscreen solely to say things like “You’re not seeing straight on this one, Ollie” every 18 minutes. The frustrating part is his character had such promise at the start of the show, although let’s be clear – he was never written as Ollie’s equal even in season 1, and the way he was the punch line of Ollie’s daily shenanigans sneaking away in season 1 while Diggle facepalms and says “aw, shucks” was borderline offensive. Heaven forbid we break with the norm and have an interesting Black character that helps Ollie out as an equal. He was always the goofy and hapless counterpart opposite Ollie’s hero-ness, but essential enough to each mission to keep us believing in his utility on the team.
Read more from Jordan Calhoun at Black Nerd Problems
Detours travels to Rochester, New York, to meet BlackBox Biometrics Inc., a company that’s developed a head-mounted sensor to detect and measure sports-related concussions.
Source: The Verge