Tech News

Why Are SWAT Teams Being Called On Gamers? 

Welcome to this week’s Reading List, your Sunday guide to some of the most interesting science and technology stories on the internet this week. This week, we’ll examine a wartime deception, cyberattacks, swatting, and changes in the world around us. During the Second World War, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops had a unique mission: staffed…

After 300 Years Of Evolution, Has The Piano Reached Acoustic Perfection?

The modern piano evolved rapidly in the first 150 years after its invention, but it is now so good, acoustically, that it probably won’t change much more in the future. That’s the conclusion of acoustician Nicholas Giordano, dean of Auburn University’s College of Sciences and Mathematics in Alabama. He described his work last month at…

The Impact Site Of Apollo 16’s Third Stage Booster Has Been Found On The Moon

Shortly after Apollo 16 blasted off from Florida in 1972, the Saturn V Booster was used as an experiment in and of itself, to measure seismic activity within the moon. Now, the crash site has been found. https://gizmodo.com/over-200-new-moonquakes-discovered-in-apollo-16-data-1730211959 Shortly after it was used to bring the mission into Lunar orbit, the S-IVB was to be…

SpaceX’s Launch Escape System Looks Totally Badass

In two years, SpaceX will begin ferrying astronauts into orbit. But before it can do so, the commercial spaceflight company must prove to NASA that its ride will be safe. A big part of that guarantee comes from the fire-breathing propulsion system pictured above. Arranged in four pairs around the outside of a Crew Dragon…

Visualization of Flight Searches Reveals Our True Thanksgiving Travel Plans

The most popular destination this Thanksgiving may not have been mom and pop’s house, but rather Miami Beach or Disney World, according to a telling visualization of airline search data. It’s a well-known fact that air traffic spikes on Thanksgiving weekend. But data journalists at The Upshot were curious to learn whether our flight patterns…

This Cambridge Chapel’s Light Display Is a Glorious Ode to Knowledge 

The interior of a Cambridge chapel comes alive with light in an eye-popping immersive project art installation. It’s the creation of artist Miguel Chevalier, and the installation was commissioned by the University of Cambridge for a fundraiser last month — the first time the university has invited an artist to do such a project in…

Got a kid who’s ready to colonize to Mars? NASA has just released a set of Martian survival activities, suitable for grades K-12. From touring the Red Planet’s topography to building rovers and engineering artificial environments, it’s everything a future Martian explorer needs to get a head start.

We Still Don’t Know Why the Heck There Are So Many Blue Tarantulas

A very particular shade of blue hair has evolved independently on eight separate occasions and in at least three different ways in tarantulas, a new study finds. And scientists are having a hell of a time figuring out why. Like most animals with a blue hue, tarantulas don’t get their color from pigments. Rather, that…

How Fast Can We Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy System?

Starting later this month, the world’s nations will convene in traumatized Paris to hammer out commitments to slow down global climate change. Any long-term solution will require “decarbonizing” the world energy economy – that is, shifting to power sources that use little or no fossil fuel. How fast can this happen, and what could we…

An Up-Close Look at The Exclusive Engine for The Next Airbus

Rolls-Royce Holdings has just released this cool factory photograph of their newest large turbofan aircraft engine, the Trent 7000. It’s the seventh generation of their Trent family, and built exclusively for the upcoming Airbus airliner, the A330neo. The Airbus A330neo, successor to the Airbus A330, will be a wide-body twin-engine jet airliner, and its Trent…

Cards Against Humanity’s Black Friday “Deal” Is the Best Worst Thing Ever

Black Friday was all-around awful this year, but once again, Cards Against Humanity made out pretty well. The secret to the party game’s success? Asking for your money, and offering nothing in return. Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday, the creators of Cards Against Humanity launched a “sale” in which they offered to take five…

#BlackFridayParking Highlights Just How Much of the US Is Wasted on Parking Lots

A quick survey of any big-box store will show you that Americans devote far too much real estate to the parking of their vehicles. But wait, argue businesses, we need that parking for our customers! Yet even today, on the biggest shopping day of the year, chances are the parking lots near you are nowhere…

Here are All the Winners of This Year’s Dance Your PhD Contest

Science and interpretive dance met once again this year, as PhD students around the world took to the stage to bring their research to vivid life in the annual Dance Your PhD contest. Social scientist Florence Metz, a PhD student from the University of Bern in Switzerland, beat out 31 other teams to take the…

14 Exquisite Clandestine Cameras From The Golden Age of Espionage

The upcoming rare cameras auctions at Bonhams will feature rare photography equipment and accessories crafted by iconic manufacturers (Hasselblad, Leica, Nikon, Rolleiflex just to name a few). But for those who are fond of the history of spying, the real stars of the event on December 3 in Hong Kong) will be these spy-worthy clandestine…

The NSA Will Finally Kill Its Metadata Snooping Program This Weekend

The National Security Agency is finally shutting down one of its spying programs this weekend. I do not recommend screaming I LOVE ISIS JIHAD into your phone to celebrate. The USA Freedom Act, a bill that eliminated the NSA’s bulk phone metadata collection, passed Congress in June, but the program kept going during a 180-day…

Transform Your Thanksgiving Leftovers Into Booze

Your Thanksgiving guests have departed, leaving you with enough mashed potatoes to feed an army. You’re staring down three weeks worth of turkey sandwiches and feeling slightly ill. Here’s another idea: Turn those leftovers into booze, and drink away your turkey coma until Christmas. Here are a few simple recipes to get you started. Cranberry…

MRI of Mother and Child Shows Love Through The Eyes of Science

MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe captured this stunning MRI image of herself and her child inside a 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner, creating an emotionally striking yet abstract work of art. Saxe wrote about this image in Smithsonian Magazine: To some people, this image was a disturbing reminder of the fragility of human beings. Others…

For Retailers, Today Really Is the Shittiest Day of the Year

You’ve heard of Black Friday, the darkest day for American capitalism; Cyber Monday, where everyone gets out their latent shopping aggression online; now there’s even Grey Thursday, as retailers open on Thanksgiving Eve to get an edge on the competition. But, friends, have you heard of Brown Friday? On today’s day-after-Thanksgiving madness, in their frenzy…

Physicists Create “Urine Black Holes” To Solve the Splashback Problem 

Good news for khaki-clad men plagued by speckled staining of their trousers from urine splash back: physicists may have found the optimal splash-suppressing design for a urinal insert, thereby creating a “urine black hole.” Urine gets in, but it can’t get back out. “Since the mid-19th century, both enlisted and fashion-conscious owners of khaki trousers…

Board Games Have Always Been Great at Teaching Americans To Buy More Stuff

Here in the wake of Thanksgiving, there’s a tremendous marketing push by retailers who implore us to buy more things. Frankly, our entire economy depends upon people buying stuff they don’t need. But Americans have a tendency to romanticize the Before Times™ — an era when consumerism wasn’t so rampant. This longing for the days…