Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
When it first appeared in 1984, Montezuma’s Revenge was considered one of the most challenging video games to appear on a gaming console. Now, in an effort to help machines learn more efficiently, AI researchers have created an algorithm that actually motivates the hero of this classic video game in some very important ways—and it’s…
Researchers at Harvard and MIT have spent the last seven years perfecting this robotic bee. The result is Robobee, a mechanical bee so lifelike it kind of makes you want to duck indoors. The researchers released new video showing Roboee demonstrating its latest trick: It can land and perch sideways on a wall, just like…
Athletes have already expressed concern about traveling to the heart of the Zika outbreak to compete in this summer’s Olympics. Now journalists are opting out entirely. Several NBC employees will not travel to Brazil to cover the games, including Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, who announced today that she’s pregnant. The CDC made a recommendation in…
For $100,000, Hammacher Schlemmer will sell you a life-size replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but for $2.39 million Theropod Expeditions will sell you the real thing—or at least 45 percent of one. With 135 of its 300 bones being genuine fossils collected in Montana and Wyoming, it’s more complete than many T-rex skeletons on display…
If you’ve ever been frustrated at your inability to complete a level of Super Mario Brothers, here’s a little something to cheer you up. Computer scientists have demonstrated that solving a level in the popular video game is tantamount to solving some of the hardest problems in computational science. They’re known as “NP hard” problems,…
Websites like Natural News accuse the Centers for Disease Control of orchestrating a global conspiracy around the Zika virus. Specifically, they claim that the illnesses and birth defects that people are seeing have nothing to do with the virus, but instead have something to do with “chemicals” and vaccines. But Natural News still wants you…
Companies like New Balance have been using recycled plastic from water bottles to make shoes for years now. But Adidas is taking that idea one step further. Teaming up with Parley for the Oceans, its new Adidas x Parley sneakers are also made from plastics recovered from the ocean. The amount of garbage, particularly plastics,…
Mosquitos are little bastards that do more killing, spread more disease, and cause more annoyance than any other creature on Earth. That’s because they have a really sophisticated needle-like system for biting us to suck our blood. But exactly how they bite might surprise you. It’s a gnarly process. The proboscis of the Mosquitos hides…
One of the main differences between Android and iOS is the way you can transform the look of Google’s operating system, down to the very last pixel. Alternative launcher apps re-skin Android, changing not just wallpaper, colors, and icons, but the layout of the interface itself. It’s also ridiculously easy to return to your default…
We don’t usually think of fish as being particularly smart, but a new experiment reveals that at least one species of tropical fish is capable of distinguishing between human faces. Scientists have never seen fish do this before, and it’s changing our understanding of these creatures and how brains work. A new study published in…
While freediving in their home of Byron Bay, Australia, photographer Tim Samuel and videographer Franny Plumridge stumbled on a rare sight: a fish stuck inside a jellyfish. The fish was apparently somewhat able to steer its new and permanent hat. But the look on its face says it all: Oh God, what have I done.…
There’s a common refrain among people of a certain age: “Wow, I’m really glad I wasn’t a teenager in the age of smartphones and Snapchat.” They’re not wrong. After polling over 10,000 18-year-olds from 25 different countries, a new UNICEF study confirms that being a teen online these days is fraught with risk, danger, and…
Starting today, it appears the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say “appears” because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the US Navy’s largest installation in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won’t tell…
Most of us have resigned ourselves to never seeing “Hamilton” in this lifetime, but Lin-Manuel Miranda himself says that it doesn’t have to be that way. He wants to fight the ticket robots together so us lowly non-celebs can buy them before they’re resold for half the price of a new car. Writing in the…
After the full impact of the Flint water crisis was revealed, it was almost inevitable that more cities would start to see the same problems when it came to lead in their water supplies. Now it’s been proven that dozens of utilities are underreporting the amounts of lead in their water: 33 cities in the…
There are more drones than ever, but a new report claims that sightings by pilots are falling, so it’s possible we can put to rest some of the fear over a drone bringing a plane down. To be clear, the report is from the pro-drone Academy of Model Aeronautics, so it should be taken with…
At no point in the history of the pogo stick has anyone ever thought it was the coolest way to get from point A to point B. But recent upgrades that let pogo sticks launch their riders higher than ever have also opened the door to performing some incredibly impressive stunts. There’s still a good…
They’re the workhorses of our highways, but Anki is about to make one of your childhood fantasies come true by letting you race a pair of giant tractor trailers on its Overdrive racing set. They might not be as fast as the existing Anki race cars, but they come with devastating new weapons to help…
Last year, Samsung promised us foldable phones, possibly unveiled by this January. That date is clearly long gone, but sources tell Bloomberg that the new launch date could be early 2017, so maybe we won’t have to wait so long to decide if this is something we all actually want. In the latest report, sources…
Google made some big promises about how it would cure what ails us, but now it looks like we may never get those diabetes-detecting contact lenses or that FitBit-like cancer-detection wearable. Former employees of the GoogleX biotech division, called Verily Life Sciences, tell Stat that these projects are examples of “Silicon Valley arrogance” and, well,…
