Meta will be forced to pay a record €1.2 billion fine over claims it abused its users’ data. The Irish Data Protection Commission said that Meta had broken the EU’s data protection rules by moving data between Europe and the US. It had failed to protect European users from having their data used under US law when it did so, regulators said. It will now be fined €1.2 billion, as well as being required to delete the Facebook data or move it back into Europe. That fine is easily a record under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR. The previous record was held by Amazon – which was fine €746 million by regulators in Luxembourg – though the four biggest fines after that have been paid by Meta as part of data issues at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta called the fine “unjustified and unnecessary”, and said that it would appeal the ruling. It also said that there would be no immediate disruption to the way Facebook works. The company has repeatedly threatened that new limits on how data is transferred to the US could cause it to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe. Meta said in response to the new ruling that it will be able to continue to operate as it does today if a new data agreement between the EU and US is able to come into effect. Previously, data sharing between the US and Europe was governed by a framework called the “Privacy Shield”, which allowed that data to flow if US companies showed they were using proper data protections. In 2020, however, that was scrapped after the European Court of Justice said that it was not properly protecting data. Since then, lawmakers have been working on a new deal, known as the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, though that is yet to go into effect. But lawmakers have indicated that it should be ready by October, when the deadline for Meta to delete the Facebook data at the heart of the fine is up. Read More Instagram back online after hours of global outages Instagram experiencing global outages Solar panel efficiency to increase 50% with first ‘miracle’ tandem cells

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A Vatican astronomer has come to the help of NASA with a historic mission to study an asteroid. Meteorite expert and Vatican astronomer, Jesuit Brother Bob Macke, came to the aid of the US space agency after building a custom device that would allow the study of material of a sample collected from an asteroid. The mission is that of the unmanned spacecraft, Osiris-Rex, which was launched in 2016 in order to collect samples on an asteroid named Bennu. Bennu is located close to Earth and Osiris-Rex successfully collected a cup of material from the asteroid in 2020. Now, the vessel is approaching Earth and is due to release the sample in a return capsule on 24 September before continuing its orbit of the sun. Macke was contacted by the lead of the mission’s sample analysis working group, Andrew Ryan, who asked him to build the device that was needed in order to analyse the sample of the Bennu asteroid. The device has been devised so that it can analyse the density and porosity of the samples to help identify the make up of the asteroid surface. It is known as a pycnometer and NASA has strict requirements for the device, though other companies contacted were not willing to custom make one. Macke, however, took up the task and was able to build it in five weeks thanks to the assistance of students at the University of Arizona who collaborate with the Vatican Observatory’s advanced technology telescope in Tucson. In March it was delivered to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston for a test run and is hoped to be used for the real thing when the sample arrives from space. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The co-founder of the OceanGate is now planning to send 1000 people to Venus despite the bad press the company has received following the doomed Titanic submersible trip in June which killed five people. Despite the tragedy, which saw the submersible implode killing everyone onboard, including the company's co-founder Stockton Rush, his colleague Guillermo Söhnlein is not deterred and has told Insider that he now has ambitions for space. According to Söhnlein he now wants to see 1000 people living on the surface of Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system, by 2050. The American businessman born in Argentina said: "I think it is less aspirational than putting a million people on the Martian surface by 2050. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "You're absolutely right that when you talk about going to Venus, it would raise eyebrows outside the space industry. And it even raises eyebrows inside the space industry." "I think I've been driven to help make humanity a multi-planet species since I was 11 years old, I had this recurring dream of being the commander of the first Martian colony." This all sounds well and good and after all Elon Musk has similar aspirations for Mars but Venus is an odd one as at this moment in time its one of the least hospitable planets in the galaxy. Aside from being the hottest planet in the solar system, as mentioned, its atmosphere is made up of greenhouse gases and its clouds contain sulphuric acid which make Venus so hot that temperatures can reach 475 °C. Regardless of this, Söhnlein thinks it is "very doable" that a floating space station could withstand the harsh conditions on Venus but will likely be met with skepticism. Söhnlein's Humans2Venus project has been co-founded with researcher Khalid Al-Ali and will strive to develop technologies that will reduce launch costs and fund space projects without government money. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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