Halifax infirmary gets a new hybrid operating room, Musk dissolves Twitter’s board of directors, Laser attack blinds self-driving cars
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday, November 2nd, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Halifax Infirmary in Nova Scotia has opened a new hybrid operating room with advanced diagnostic imaging equipment. This will allow patients in cardiac or vascular surgery to undergo diagnostic tests in the same room if complications arise, instead of having to be moved to where diagnostic equipment is located. According to the Nova Scotia government, the new equipment is a safer option for patients and also provides better images of what surgeons are doing. The QEII Foundation fundraised $4 million for the purchase of the equipment.
Source: Global News
Elon Musk has dissolved Twitter’s board of directors. This is the latest of Musk’s plans for reforms, as he continues to cement his control over the social media platform. His planned reforms include reviewing how Twitter verifies users’ accounts as well as significant job cuts. Top executives have already been laid off while he brings in his high-profile allies to the company. According to the Washington Post, the first round of job cuts that could affect 25 per cent of the company’s staff is under discussion.
Source: BBC
A collaborative research between U.S. and Japanese universities uncovered a vulnerability in autonomous cars that hides moving pedestrians and other obstacles. Lidar, a radar-like device that acts like the eyes of autonomous cars can be blinded by expertly timed lasers, large enough to hide pedestrians and obstacles. The deleted data tricks the car to think that the road is safe to move and hence endangers whatever is in the car’s blind spot.
Source: TechXplorer
Instagram says it has fixed the software bug that affected thousands of users on Monday. The bug prevented thousands of users from accessing their accounts for about eight hours while others had their accounts suspended and followers stripped away. Instagram did not provide any explanation for the outage. It is therefore unclear whether it was an internal issue or whether the platform was hacked.
Source: CBC
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.