Using a new technique, astronomers have documented one of the heaviest neutron stars known to science. It’s an important discovery for astronomers, but the newly recorded object is also providing an unprecedented opportunity to conduct particle physics research from a distance. | Continue reading
When Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of members of the European Parliament on Tuesday, he insisted that Facebook was ready for Friday, the day when the European Unions’s strict new data privacy law went into effect. But users in Europe have already filed complaints against Fac … | Continue reading
Our individual walking styles, much like snowflakes, are unique. With this in mind, computer scientists have developed a powerful new footstep-recognition system using AI, and it could theoretically replace retinal scanners and fingerprinting at security checkpoints, including a … | Continue reading
With electric vehicles rapidly becoming more viable for long distance trips, enthusiasts like to push the limits of what their cars can do on a single charge. Two men in Denver set out to break the record distance in a Model 3 this weekend and after 32 hours, they were victorious … | Continue reading
Ad-blocking tool Ghostery suffered from a pretty impressive, self-inflicted screwup Friday when the privacy-minded company accidentally CCed hundreds of its users in an email, revealing their addresses to all recipients. | Continue reading
If you want to send something deep, deep into space, it’s impractical to load it up with lots of heavy propellant. Scientists with their eyes on long-distance space travel have contemplated thrusters that wouldn’t need any propellant at all. The EmDrive, a copper cone that would … | Continue reading
For more than a week, PGP developers have been rapidly working to patch critical flaws in the legacy encryption protocol used for sending and receiving secure emails that’s widely relied upon by lawyers, journalists, dissidents, and human rights advocates, many of whom operate at … | Continue reading
A group of shareholders and several Google employees are teaming up to back a proposal that would tie executive compensation to the company’s ability to meet certain diversity goals. But Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is opposing the proposal, saying that linking executive pa … | Continue reading
Instapaper has informed its European users that it will temporarily cut off their access to the platform starting today. The reason? This Pinterest-owned service needs more than the two years it had to comply with the European Union’s new batch of privacy rules that go into effec … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, Apple announced a new privacy website to help users better navigate just how much of their data is collected by the company, but so far, the feature is only available in Europe. | Continue reading
That’s one small hole for a probe, but one giant leap for NASA. This past weekend, the space agency jerry-rigged Curiosity’s malfunctioning drill, allowing the rover to bore into Martian rock for the first time in over a year. | Continue reading
Following critical coverage of his electric car company, Tesla, Elon Musk has been on a Twitter tear against the media, threatening to build a service that would allow the general public to rank the trustworthiness and “core truth” of stories, journalists, publications, and edito … | Continue reading
For years, the FBI has claimed it needs a backdoor for encrypted devices because too much evidence is being lost in our brave new world. At the end of 2017, law enforcement began a new push, claiming there were 7,800 devices waiting to be cracked. Now it says there was a programm … | Continue reading
An Antares rocket launched from Virginia before sunrise this morning and is on its way to the International Space Station. Its 7,400 pounds of cargo include an experiment that will chill atoms to just about absolute zero—colder than the vacuum of space itself. | Continue reading
The Supreme Court, as you may have read, gave its opinion today on Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis and, in a 5-4 split, decided to uphold forced arbitration agreements that preclude employees from pursuing class-action lawsuits against their bosses in court. Neil Gorsuch penned the m … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, the media got very excited about Trump.dating, a site for the pro-Donald set that promised to “make dating great again.” Much of the media coverage was critical: The site only allowed users to conduct heterosexual searches; the male-half of the couple originall … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, the media got very excited about Trump.dating, a site for the pro-Donald set that promised to “make dating great again.” Much of the media coverage was critical: The site only allowed users to conduct heterosexual searches; the male-half of the couple originall … | Continue reading
Privacy and anti-monopoly advocacy groups launched the Freedom from Facebook campaign on Monday, demanding that the Federal Trade Commission force the social media giant to break up into four separate companies. Sensing a moment of weakness, activists hope to establish stronger p … | Continue reading
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show. | Continue reading
At Google I/O earlier this month, CEO Sundar Pichai showcased an experimental Google Assistant feature called Duplex which can make routine phone calls on your behalf. In one striking demo, the digital assistant called a hair salon and scheduled an appointment with an employee … | Continue reading
Snap’s stock price is now hovering around its lowest point ever since the company went public last year. Yet, its whiz-kid founder, Evan Spiegel, was 2017's highest-paid CEO, taking home $504 million. And according to a new report, Spiegel is almost single-handedly responsibl … | Continue reading
On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug explicitly developed to prevent migraines. But while the drug may signal a new wave of effective treatments for this debilitating—yet often ignored and dismissed—medical condition, there are still questions as … | Continue reading
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show. | Continue reading
One of the men behind the Scan4You, a counter-antivirus tool used by cybercriminals to determine whether their malware would be flagged during routine security scans, has been convicted on three counts in federal court. | Continue reading
One of the men behind the Scan4You, a counter-antivirus tool used by cybercriminals to determine whether their malware would be flagged during routine security scans, has been convicted on three counts in federal court. | Continue reading
When you think about knitting, you might picture grandmas clicking big wooden needles or something wintery, like a snow-covered lodge. But knitting is everywhere, producing just about everything you put against your skin each day, from socks and t-shirts to hoodies and beanies. A … | Continue reading
Lurking quietly in the deep dark jungles of New Guinea are a group of lizards who share a rather striking feature: green blood. It’s a rare trait for vertebrates to have, but new insights into this strange blood could lead to innovative medical treatments. | Continue reading
Earlier this year, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jamie Dimon promised to launch a new partnership that would upend the healthcare industry and lower the cost of care for the employees of their very large companies. That has yet to come to fruition, in large part du … | Continue reading
A surprising thing happened on Wednesday: The Senate did something good. | Continue reading
In a monumental decision that will resonate through election season, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 52-47 to reinstate the net neutrality protections the Federal Communications Commission decided to repeal last December. | Continue reading
There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about the court-martial at the Fort Huachuca military base in Arizona at the end of February. But when the analyst from the Department of Defense forensic laboratory presented a report on fingerprint evidence, it included an element that … | Continue reading
Sometimes, scientists have the answers all along—they just don’t think to ask the question. For example, it appears that in 1997, the Galileo orbiter flew through a jet of water shooting out from Jupiter’s moon Europa without even trying. | Continue reading
It’s been nearly three months since many Google employees—and the public—learned about the company’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically cla … | Continue reading
There are typically two approaches to taking usable photos in low-light conditions. You can either use a slow shutter, which requires a tripod to eliminate blur, or electronically increase the sensitivity of a camera’s sensor, which introduces ugly noise artifacts. But there’s no … | Continue reading
Australia’s Liberal Party government has announced that it will soon be illegal to purchase anything over $10,000 AU ($7,500 US) with cash. The government says it’s, “encouraging the transition to a digital society,” and cracking down on tax evasion. But not everyone is happy wit … | Continue reading
The Federal Communications Commission summoned all of its regulatory strength Thursday and dropped a record $120 million fine on a notorious robocall operator who placed nearly 100 million spoofed calls. It’s just a shame that the punishment probably won’t accomplish anything. | Continue reading
The New York Police Department is testing out a device called the “Skim Reaper” in an effort to hinder credit card fraud. | Continue reading
You probably haven’t experienced the crippling anxiety of thinking about increasing your Klout score in quite some time. As of May 25, you won’t have ever have to do it again. | Continue reading
Kinect was never for you. Yeah, you with the Xbox One that was bundled with a Kinect. That big honking spatial camera was an impressive piece of tech, but it never did you much good as a console add-on did it? | Continue reading
Top tech companies are launching a bidding war for a massive Pentagon cloud contract, even as their workforces are pressing them to refuse all military work. In addition to the protests from employees, the bidding process for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, … | Continue reading
Google could soon have a feature that lets your phone impersonate people—because consumer-facing artificial intelligence isn’t terrifying enough. Called Duplex, it’s intended to make people’s lives easier by handling standard phone calls that are necessary, but not especially per … | Continue reading
Last year, Microsoft assured us that the death of the Windows phone didn’t mean the death of Windows on your phone. Today, the company teased a future where Android users will have the same cool phone-to-PC experience iOS users with a Mac currently enjoy. The Windows phone may be … | Continue reading
Astronauts hoping stay on the moon long-term missions have another reason to worry about moon dust: It could be quite harmful if inhaled, as demonstrated in a new study. | Continue reading
Did you catch 60 Minutes last night? If you did, you may have learned about a drug called Acthar that went from $40 in 2001 to over $40,000 today. It’s a perfect illustration of just how poorly regulated the US pharmaceutical industry continues to be and how there’s absolutely n … | Continue reading
Elon Musk is apparently planning to purge Tesla factories of contractors in the strangest way possible. The company CEO is planning to cut off access to the company to any contractor who doesn’t have a Tesla employee to vouch for the quality of their work. | Continue reading
Do not be me. I was desperate for a new Apple laptop to replace my dying 2012 one and as soon as the 2016 Macbook Pro with Touch Bar was available to buy I ordered it. This was a major redesign for Apple, and experience with other products told me that buying the first generation … | Continue reading
Liza Lizarraga has spent hours combing through paper and digital archives to track her family’s history the old-fashioned way, and she has spit in a test tube to find out what morsels of her family’s history might be revealed by her DNA. In September, though, Lizarraga will walk … | Continue reading
After a calamitous data breach exposing the personal information of more than 145 million U.S. citizens, Equifax shareholders this week voted to re-elect all of the company’s board members following its first annual shareholder meeting since the incident. | Continue reading