A team of scientists announced they have harvested hydrogen from water in microgravity—a proof-of-principle test that may one day lead to a way to acquire fuel or other resources during a long-distance, crewed space mission. | Continue reading
Eleven light-years from Earth, orbiting a dim red star, there’s an exoplanet called Ross 128b that, as we recently reported, has some the best prospects for life of any known distant world. New results may help astronomers figure out what the planet is made of—and they offer more … | Continue reading
San Francisco's Fire Department is one of the few left in the United States that still uses wooden ladders. Each is made by hand at a dedicated workshop. Some have been in rotation for nearly a century. We'll get to the why and how, but hang on: Wouldn't a wooden ladd … | Continue reading
Guys may loudly rule the dark corners of the internet and be considered the “computer nerds,” but according to a new paper from Cal Poly and North Carolina State University, it’s the ladies who are kicking ass and taking names when it comes to coding. | Continue reading
The skies aren’t big enough for everyone. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit reversed a ruling from last year that found the FAA cannot regulate small drones used by hobbyists. New regulations are expected to come soon, which should please companies that are … | Continue reading
Contrary to earlier reports, Orlando police confirmed Monday they will renew a contract with Amazon to pilot its controversial face recognition software, Rekognition—a move that is sure to reignite concerns of privacy and civil liberties advocates who have pushed back against la … | Continue reading
Photographers already face an uphill battle in trying to preventing people from using their digital photos without permission. But Nvidia could make protecting photos online much harder with a new advancement in artificial intelligence that can automatically remove artifacts from … | Continue reading
The engineers at Citroën have apparently thrown almost 100 years of French design refinement out the window with a new product you don’t drive, but will improve your motoring experience. The carmaker’s new Seetroën glasses won’t win you any style points, but Citroën claims the gl … | Continue reading
A kid-sized submarine arrived in northern Thailand, just a few hours before the final four members of a youth soccer team and their coach were rescued from the flooded Tham Luang cave complex. Elon Musk, whose minions had built the sub out of SpaceX rocket materials for the sole … | Continue reading
It’s really, really hard to find a good Microsoft Windows device for under $500. There are some diamonds in the rough—devices that sacrifice display quality or form or speed to get the price way down. Yet until today there was no clear winner. Microsoft’s new Surface Go could cha … | Continue reading
There are many reasons that AT&T’s merger with Time Warner presented the clear possibility of harming consumers. Somewhere on the list is the possibility of turning the carefully curated, profitable, and beloved HBO into a big-data monster like Netflix. To hear AT&T’s exe … | Continue reading
Brio’s magnetic wooden trains are as iconic a toy as Lego bricks or Hot Wheels cars. Traditionally kid-powered, a few years ago electric motors were introduced to the line, but this year Brio trains are being upgraded with smart features that allow them to interact with tracks a … | Continue reading
In the latest incident of seemingly innocuous data sharing leading to potentially dangerous exposure, the popular fitness app and activity trackers Polar Flow has been revealing the location of military and government personnel working at sensitive locations, according to ZDNet. | Continue reading
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that he is building “a tiny, kid-size submarine” to rescue the 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach infamously trapped within the submerged Tham Luang cave complex. According to the Bangkok Post, a nine-person engineering team assemb … | Continue reading
A girl falls into a manhole, another lady face-plants on some stairs, and one guy almost gets mauled by a goddam bear. At this point, we’re way past ridiculous, and it’s all happening simply because people are walking around like techno zombies whose life-forces are seemingly sus … | Continue reading
Apparently sick of being criticized by everyone from US Congress to Seth Rogan for not doing enough to purge its platform of bots, trolls, and malicious foreign actors, Twitter has started liberally dropping the ban hammer on suspicious accounts, suspending more than 70 million u … | Continue reading
A group of scientists Thursday unveiled research into a new method for stealing people’s passwords. The extreme conditions required for success, however, mean the odds this attack will ever be used fall somewhere between astronomical and zero-fucking-chance. | Continue reading
When Google introduced Google Duplex, its AI assistant designed to speak like a human, the company showed off how the average person could use the tech to save time making reservations and whatnot. What wasn’t touched on was the possibility that Duplex may have a use on the other … | Continue reading
It’s been a roller-coaster ride for one California lawmaker over the past month as he’s tried to push a comprehensive net neutrality bill through the state’s legislature. | Continue reading
The evolutionary journey of how dogs came to occupy millions of human living rooms is a complicated one, filled with detours and false starts. A new study out Thursday in Science seems to better illuminate one of these detours. It suggests the first domesticated dogs to come to t … | Continue reading
The first real film based on a Marvel/DC character was 1966's Batman: The Movie, starring Adam West’s campy version of the Caped Crusader. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam), and Captain America all had weekly, live-action serials sho … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, 12 Thai boys from a youth soccer team and their coach were discovered by diving experts trapped in an air pocket deep within a submerged cave system. Water levels within the cave complex aren’t expected to drop for months, but a daring plan to rescue the boys i … | Continue reading
Last month, members of European Parliament voted to move forward with a sweeping overhaul of the European Union’s copyright laws that critics say will impede the spread of news, kill memes, bolster tech giants, and stifle innovation. Ahead of the final vote this week, Wikipedia I … | Continue reading
Last week, an incomplete scene featuring Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor surreptitiously hit the web, giving fans eager for leaks and spoilers a taste of what to expect from the next season of Doctor Who. But while in the entertainment business leaks and spoilers are part and … | Continue reading
For modern smartphone owners, it’s a common enough of an occurrence. You’re just sitting there, talking about whatever, when suddenly you say something that triggers the digital assistant on your phone. Now normally, you’d probably get annoyed for a second, tap a button to dismis … | Continue reading
For a few brief moments, comic book fans around the world were shocked to hear some tragic news. But luckily, the panic didn’t last long. As first reported by CinemaBlend, Siri spent a little time this week telling people that Stan Lee had died on July 2. Why would a computer pro … | Continue reading
It’s the smartphone conspiracy theory that just won’t go away: Many, many people are convinced that their phones are listening to their conversations to target them with ads. Vice recently fueled the paranoia with an article that declared “Your phone is listening and it’s not par … | Continue reading
Scientists haven’t conclusively spotted any new particles since the Higgs boson, and that’s got some people worried—there are a ton of other physics puzzles remaining, many of which would require the presence of a new particle to resolve. But recently, there have been some tantal … | Continue reading
Should Microsoft end its federal contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? This was the question posed to tens of thousands of Microsoft employees late last month—all users of the anonymous messaging board Blind. | Continue reading
As the U.S. prepares for war in space, China’s bringing the space war home. Its ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle is reportedly capable of hitting a target from a kilometer away, igniting flammable objects, and burning through human skin. And it’s ready for production, the researchers … | Continue reading
The Ugandan government has implemented a law forcing mobile users to pay taxes to use mobile money and social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Skype. | Continue reading
Everyone, from time to time—or at every single moment of every single day—wishes they could somehow escape technology. It’s not ultimately that fun to be inundated at all hours with the collapse of society, the weekend activities of people you barely knew ten years ago, bad memes … | Continue reading
MoviePass has been operating for nearly a full year on its too-good-to-be-true premise of offering essentially unlimited movie passes to subscribers for just $9.99 per month. It’s the monorail and, according to a report from the Miami Herald, company CEO Ted Farnsworth sure seems … | Continue reading
New York officials announced the conviction and sentencing of Nevada-based Sungame Corporation and its CEO Neil Chandran for grand larceny and securities fraud, saying the fraudsters would be forced to pay up $2.8 million to redress hundreds of people the company scammed with pro … | Continue reading
Saturday’s test of the MOMO-2 unmanned rocket, which was scheduled to be the first privately funded Japanese rocket to reach space, went very poorly for Interstellar Technologies’ Takafumi Horie, a convicted securities fraudster who a 2014 Financial Times profile dubbed “Japan’s … | Continue reading
The UK government’s Home Office released a report this week announcing plans for a forthcoming centralized biometric database of its citizens, compiling DNA, fingerprint, face, and possibly even voice data for law enforcement to access and share, according to the Telegraph. In ad … | Continue reading
With the price boom of 2017 and the constant chatter about the blockchain revolution, it feels like people have forgotten the one thing bitcoin is proven to be good for: buying drugs. On Thursday, law enforcement gave everyone a reminder of cryptocurrencies roots when it took dow … | Continue reading
Federal prosecutors have charged hundreds of people with allegedly defrauding the US government’s health care system out of a combined $2 billion. And many of the charged are doctors who are also being accused of aiding the opioid crisis by illegally prescribing more than 13 mill … | Continue reading
For nearly 30 years, Masafumi Nagasaki lived a life many of us extremely logged-on folks can only dream of. A life completely void of commuting, the internet, and screens. He had the entire island of Sotobanari to himself—foraging, raking debris from the shore, and watching baby … | Continue reading
The older we get, the greater our likelihood of dying. Or at least that’s what we thought. New research suggests mortality rates level off after we turn 105, and that no upper limit exists for the human lifespan. It’s an extraordinary conclusion—one that’s not going over very wel … | Continue reading
New research shows that crows can recreate tools from memory, a capacity previously thought impossible for birds. | Continue reading
Using data collected by NASA’s late-great Cassini space probe, scientists have detected traces of complex organic molecules seeping out from Enceladus’ ice-covered ocean. It’s yet another sign that this intriguing Saturnian moon has what it takes to sustain life. | Continue reading
You may have seen the ads that Facebook has been running on TV in a full-court press to apologize for abusing users privacy. They’re embarrassing. And, it turns out, they may be a sign of things to come. Based on a recently published patent application, Facebook could one day use … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, Slack confirmed that users worldwide were experiencing difficulty connecting to the workplace messaging service, pledging to investigate the problem and provide updates soon. | Continue reading
By today’s standards it was ugly, it was slow, and it was primitive, but Windows 95 was the first operating system I mastered inside and out, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Microsoft’s most memorable PC OS. That can be the only explanation for why part of me would also love … | Continue reading
Recent headlines have suggested that California lawmakers are considering a bill that would give Californians “unprecedented control over their data.” This is true but that is not the whole story. | Continue reading
When the Surface Laptop was released a year ago, it immediately struck me as the Microsoft-built computer I’d been waiting for. You see, I’ve always admired the design of all of Microsoft’s Surface products, but at the same time felt that they weren’t exactly for me. The keyboard … | Continue reading