[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: listening phones, HIV denialism, Euncie Foote, nuclear war, asteroids

[rfmcdonald]

• This alarming VICE report notes the ways in which our phones--and other mobile devices, I'm sure--are in fact listening to us.


• This distressing story looks at how HIV denialism has become popular among many Russians, and the terrible toll this belief system inflicts on people victimized by it (children, particularly).


• Smithsonian Magazine notes how the 1856 discovery of the greenhouse effect created by carbon dioxide by pioneering scientist Eunice Foote was overlooked because she was a woman.


• The detonation of more than 100 substantial nuclear weapons, this report notes, would doom civilization through climate change and agricultural collapse. Motherboard has it.


• Asteroids in orbits linked to that of the Earth would be excellent first targets for asteroid mining, Universe Today reports.