Elon Musk’s SpaceX is having trouble keeping track of its trash. For the second time in the past year, rocket debris from a SpaceX launch has washed up on shore in North Carolina.   The huge chunk of metal was discovered on an Outer Banks beach in the US state. The rocket component, which was

Facebook has said 30 million accounts were compromised in a major hack. That’s down from the 50 million accounts the social network first estimated, but it’s still not great news.   Though Facebook has taken steps to protect users in light of the attack, the company said hackers had access to millions of people’s personal

It’s the stuff of nightmares: a stuffed animal with a beating heart. After spotting viral posts on social media about users strapping fitness trackers to rolls of toilet paper, Chinese website Abacus tried it with a Xiaomi wristband.   The surprise result: The fitness tracker detected a heartbeat. The toilet paper’s “heart rate” ranged from

Leaked documentation reveals new Macs contain a hidden mechanism designed to make them inoperative if they are independently repaired, reports show. According to technical memos obtained by a number of outlets, any Mac with Apple’s new T2 chip conceals a security feature critics describe as a ‘kill switch’, which effectively bricks the devices if they

Google kept quiet for more than six months about its discovery of a bug that put at risk the personal data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users, the company said Monday, a delay that could spark a new round of regulatory and political scrutiny.   The decision to not immediately report the software bug

A new font can help lodge information deeper in your brain, researchers say, but it’s not magic – just the science of effort. Psychology and design researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne created a font called Sans Forgetica, which was designed to boost information retention for readers.   It’s based on a theory called “desirable

China secretly inserted surveillance microchips into servers used by major technology companies, including Apple and Amazon.com, in an audacious military operation likely to further inflame trade tensions between the United States and its leading source of electronics components and products, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thursday morning.   The article – which the companies vigorously denied –

We tap away on our mobile devices all day long. Isn’t it about time they tapped us back? Human-computer interaction researcher Marc Teyssier clearly thinks so. He’s the brains behind MobiLimb, a horrifying finger-like robotic attachment for smartphones and tablets that somehow simultaneously evokes The Addams Family and Black Mirror.   Today, he published a

Facebook announced on Friday that its engineering team had discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. Due to a flaw in Facebook’s code, hackers were able to take over an account and use it in the same way you would if you had logged into the account with a password.   The company

Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of people, and yes, it’s as weird as it sounds.   It works through a combination

Life just got worse for the 50 million people caught up in what may be the biggest hack of Facebook ever. On Friday, the Silicon Valley tech firm revealed that it had detected a security breach in which an as-yet unknown attacker, or attackers, managed to gain access to tens of millions of users’ accounts by exploiting vulnerabilities

A hacker gained access to nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts by exploiting a weakness in the social network’s systems, Facebook said on Friday. News of the cyber attack – which appears to be one of the most significant in Facebook’s history – sent shares of the company down roughly 3 percent in midday trading on Friday,

Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels.   The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit

Everybody knows the world’s got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2 could provide the means of tomorrow’s battery technology.   For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new

Hydrogen fuel cells are a greener way to power vehicles. But they have also been cost-prohibitive. Now that’s starting to change – last week, German passengers boarded the world’s first hydrogen-powered trains.   “Sure, buying a hydrogen train is somewhat more expensive than a diesel train,” said Stefan Schrank, a project manager at locomotive company

Hello there, savvy iPhone shopper. Ready for an upgrade? There are a few things you should know before emptying your wallet at the Apple store. It’s an especially confusing moment: Apple will sell no fewer than eight iPhone models in 2018. But they haven’t all gone on sale yet — and there are reasons to hold

You might not be aware, but on 23 March 2016, the internet as we know it almost came crashing down. A huge amount of the software the Internet is built upon crashed when an angry programmer decided to unpublish all his code from a popular Javascript registry called npm.   That doesn’t sound like a

Apple just announced three new iPhones this week: the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, and the iPhone XR. The iPhone XS and XS Max will be available to preorder starting Friday before going on sale a week later, on September 21. The iPhone XR won’t be available until October 26, with preorders opening up

A lot of military technology manages to be both awe-inspiring and vaguely terrifying, and so it is with the Molar Mic – this little microphone and speaker combination actually clips on to the wearer’s back teeth. It’s completely wireless and invisible to anyone else.   Despite its rather precarious position, the little device can pick

When You Wu was growing up in China, officials would shut off water to his community for half a day each week in the name of conservation. The experience contributed to Wu’s interest in water scarcity, which he chose to study more in-depth after moving to the United States 10 years ago.   The Massachusetts

It’s finally in the water. For five years now, The Ocean Cleanup, an organisation founded by 24-year-old Dutch innovator Boyan Slat, has been trying to create a system that can clean plastic out of the world’s oceans.   There’s a mind-boggling amount of plastic in the oceans, and that amount grows every day. At least

Life has been soaking up sunlight and storing it as a fuel source for billions of years. But scientists have just put a new twist on this ancient process that could finally provide us with the efficiency we need to compete with fossil fuels.   A study led by the University of Cambridge in the

Around 20 years ago, two computer scientists proposed a technique for teleporting a special quantum operation between two locations with the goal of making quantum computers more reliable.   Now a team of researchers from Yale University have successfully turned their idea into reality, demonstrating a practical approach to making this incredibly delicate form of

What does your neighbourhood look like? Are there gyms, parks, swimming pools? Or are you surrounded by busy roads, fast food outlets, and convenience stores? The answer looks increasingly important. Obesity is a complex health issue impacted by a range of factors, one of which is the physical, urban environment we live in. Now, scientists

A new form of misinformation is poised to spread through online communities as the 2018 midterm election campaigns heat up. Called “deepfakes” after the pseudonymous online account that popularized the technique – which may have chosen its name because the process uses a technical method called “deep learning” – these fake videos look very realistic.

As the Pentagon reorients toward great-power competition with adversaries like Russia and China, its preparations go beyond learning to ski and practicing to drive across Europe.   US military units rely on wireless networks and radio-frequency communications to talk on the battlefield, sharing intelligence, targeting data, and orders. But concern is growing that rivals like

If you’re watching a movie where an underwater submarine is communicating with an aeroplane, some creative licence is being taken – the sonar waves used by subs can’t reach the air, and radio waves used by planes don’t travel at all well underwater.   That’s always caused problems for communications between underwater and airborne vehicles,

You probably use Wi-Fi on the regular to connect your smartphone, computer, or other electronic device to the glory of the world wide web. But soon, that same technology could also keep you safe in real-life public areas.   According to a peer-reviewed study led by researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, ordinary Wi-Fi can effectively and cheaply

Elon Musk’s Boring Company, founded in late 2016, has only sold merchandise so far. But this week, it announced plans to build a 3-mile (5-kilometre) tunnel that could transport people in Los Angeles to Dodger Stadium in just four minutes.   The Boring Company says its new tunnel to Dodger Stadium will be the first

Disney is making humanoid robots that can perform mind-boggling stunts in midair, according to TechCrunch. Disneyland parks have incorporated animatronics into their displays for decades, but with its new project, “Stuntronics,” Disney hopes to take performing robotics to the next level.   The project was born of a research experiment named “Stickman.” Stickman was a

There’s a new world land speed record of 448.757 mph (that’s 722.1 km/h) – and what’s even more astonishing is the record was set in a 50-year-old car, the Challenger 2, which first attempted the feat back in 1968.   The original record run was attempted by legendary speed freak Mickey Thompson, so it’s fitting

When silkworms spin their cocoons so they can transition from caterpillar to moth, they produce one of the most valuable fibres in the world. Now a team of researchers has edited silkworm genes so that, in addition to producing their own silk, they spin that of another creature – the golden orb weaver spider.  

China has successfully tested a new hypersonic aircraft, a potential “hypersonic strike weapon” that could one day be capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads and evading all existing defence networks like the US missile shields, according to Chinese state-run and state-affiliated media, citing experts and the domestic designers.   The Xingkong-2 (Starry Sky-2) hypersonic experimental

In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three British scientists for their work on superconductors and superfluids, which included the explanation of a rather odd phase of matter.   Now their discovery has a practical application – shrinking an electrical component to a size that will help quantum computers reach a scale that

Facebook isn’t content to know just who you are, what you do, where you go, and who you talk to. It also wants to know how you spend your money. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is asking banks – including JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup – to turn over

Academics at Imperial Tech Foresight (ITF), an offshoot of Imperial College London, have been working to bring to life nebulous and intangible technological advances in a way you’ve never seen before.   They have created a table of disruptive tech, taking inspiration from the periodic table of chemical elements. It contains 100 innovations, ranging from

A failed assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday was mounted with explosive-armed drones, according to news reports. Nine days earlier, and on the other side of the world, terrorists claimed to have sent an armed drone to attack the international airport in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.  

If you’re bluffing your way through a game of high-stakes poker, it’s a good idea to avoid shifty, nervous eye movements, which just might give your hand away. But it’s not just during poker that our eyes can betray us. A recent study suggests the way our eyes move actually reveals a scary amount about

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from air traffic control radar screens, never to be seen again – and in the process spawned the most incredible aviation mystery of the 21st century.   The 239 people on board were never found, and are presumed dead. Investigations dedicated to finding the plane, the

The Chinese shipbuilder that’s constructing Beijing’s third aircraft carrier, Type 002, leaked an artist’s impression of that carrier on social media in late June that heightened intrigue about China’s naval ambitions before quickly taking it down.   The China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation photo showed the future Type 002 with a large flight deck that featured

Sometimes, while waiting for quantum computers to become a thing, or complaining that your stupid laptop keeps dying on 5 percent battery, it’s easy to forget just how far technology has come over the past 50 years.   Sure, we can all list off a whole bunch of innovations that have changed the way the

Today’s students have access to all kinds of gadgets and apps to aid their learning, but could these electronic devices be doing more harm than good? A new study suggests the very presence of phones in a lecture hall can knock down grades overall.   The research found that when phone or laptops were allowed

His formal title is His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, Akihito, who succeeded to Japan’s Chrysanthemum Throne upon the death of his father in 1989. Now, the 84-year-old Akihito is giving up that noble seat, officially abdicating in 2019. When he goes, it won’t just signal the end of a decades-long reign, and the first time

Why do batteries die? And, why can they only be recharged so many times before they won’t hold a useful amount of charge? My young son asked me about that years ago when his battery-powered toy car stopped moving, wondering about what he called an “everlasting battery”.   And this same question has probably crossed

Russian hackers infiltrated US electric utilities last year and had the ability to cause widespread blackouts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a briefing on Monday.   Symantec first reported on a hacking campaign by the state-sponsored group Dragonfly targeting dozens of victims in the US energy sector in 2017. But this is

A group of German engineering students won the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition on Sunday, as their prototype pod shattered speed records and raced through a nearly mile-long tunnel at 290 miles per hour (466 kilometre per hour).   WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich, won first place for the third time in

When you add a smiley face to the end of a message, you may be saying more than you realise. Emoticons, faces formed from punctuation symbols such as :-), and emojis, picture symbols such as 😀, are now common features of the way we communicate using phone and internet messaging services and social media.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to save lives by predicting natural disasters, stopping human trafficking, and diagnosing deadly diseases. Unfortunately, it also has the potential to take lives.   Efforts to design lethal autonomous weapons – weapons that use AI to decide on their own whether or not to attempt to kill a person