the digest (Page 175)

Latest in the digest

The FDA just announced a recall of Allergan breast implants, linking the manufacturer to hundreds of cases of a rare cancer.

Most People With This Rare Cancer Got a Specific Breast Implant

By Dan Robitzski

In a new piece for Quartz, professor David Carroll argues that the U.S. is a surveillance state not entirely unlike China.

Professor: US Surveillance State Is a Lot Like China’s

By Kristin Houser

The gold, silver, and bronze found in Olympic medals given out during the 2020 Tokyo Games was extracted from old smartphones and other electronics.

Robots and Machines

2020 Olympic Medals Will Be Made Out of Recycled Smartphones

By Dan Robitzski

Chris Wetherell, the guy who built Twitter's "retweet button" compared his work to handing an infant a loaded gun and setting them loose.

The Guy Who Invented the Retweet Is Filled With Regret

By Dan Robitzski

A new experiment used VR to trick people's brains into thinking they inhabited spider or bat bodies. People reported feeling like the body was theirs.

Virtual Reality

Bizarre New VR Makes People Feel Like They’re Spiders

By Dan Robitzski

The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 satellite has successfully unfurled its massive boxing ring-sized solar sail on Tuesday.

LightSail 2 Spacecraft Officially Unfurls Massive Solar Sail

By Victor Tangermann

Presidential hopeful John McAfee is missing, and according to his campaign manager, unless he's found, "secreted data" will be released.

John McAfee’s Manager Threatens to Release Secret Data “Payloads”

By Kristin Houser

A number of millennial farmers in the U.S. are making more money talking about farming on their YouTube channels than from farming itself.

Millennial Farmers Make More Money on YouTube Than From Farming

By Victor Tangermann

San Francisco may provide safe "housing" in the form of a parking lot for people who live inside their vehicles and need to avoid tickets and fines.

San Francisco Plans “Safe” Parking for People Living in Vehicles

By Dan Robitzski

A decade after Google was caught wiretapping unencrypted WiFi networks with its Street View cars, a court ordered the stolen data deleted.

Google to Delete Private Data Captured by Street View Cars

By Dan Robitzski

Airbus has unveiled a new airplane design inspired by birds of prey, and it hopes the wild-looking concept will inspire the next generation of engineers.

Advanced Transport

Airbus Debuts Wild Plane Concept Inspired by Birds of Prey

By Kristin Houser

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that scientists should be expected to better justify all of the billions of dollars their experiments cost.

Physicist: Maybe We Don’t Need an Expensive New Collider

By Dan Robitzski

IBM just announced that it was making three of its artificial intelligence projects designed to help doctors and cancer researchers open-source.

Artificial Intelligence

IBM Just Made its Cancer-Fighting AI Projects Open-Source

By Dan Robitzski

Giving birth in space might cause changes to the human body, including new skin tones and bigger heads, predicts evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon.

Biologist: Babies Born in Space Might Not Be Fully Human

By Kristin Houser

Facebook is already inundated with scam posts for its yet-unreleased cryptocurrency, Libra. It's a bad sign for a company trying to earn public trust.

Facebook Is Having Trouble Fighting Scams About Its Own Altcoin

By Dan Robitzski

Unrestored tapes of the first Moon walk just sold for more than $1.8 million at auction — more than 8,000 times the price paid by their owner in 1976.

Someone Just Paid $1.8 Million for Videos of the First Moon Walk

By Kristin Houser

In an impressive feat of strength, an all-electric Ford F-150 pickup truck just pulled 1 million pounds of massive rail cars behind it for 1,000 feet.

Advanced Transport

Watch an Electric Ford F-150 Pickup Truck Tow 1 Million Pounds

By Victor Tangermann

The forced-swim test used to detect depression in lab animals may be on the way out, as both scientists and animal rights activists rally against its use.

Health & Medicine

Scientists Are Reconsidering an Incredibly Cruel Animal Experiment

By Kristin Houser

A team of hackers stole 7.5 terabytes of information from a company working for Russian intelligence, revealing a number of troubling projects.

Science & Energy

A Russian Intelligence Contractor Just Got Hacked

By Dan Robitzski

This Website Will Turn Your Face Into a Renaissance Portrait

Artificial Intelligence

This Website Will Turn Your Face Into a Renaissance Portrait

By Victor Tangermann

Leaked NYPD documents reveal the police department's strategy for building public trust through funny social media posts.

Leaked NYPD Documents Instruct Cops to Be Funny Online

By Dan Robitzski

France is assembling a "red team" of sci-fi writers to help it predict what sorts of technologies it might face on the battlefield of the future.

France Is Hiring Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Future Military Threats

By Kristin Houser

Microsoft just invested $1 billion into OpenAI, which will now try to develop artificial general intelligence for Microsoft's cloud services.

Microsoft Invests $1 Billion in Elon Musk-Founded OpenAI

By Dan Robitzski

A Puerto Rican startup called Instarz plans on building a self-assembling, self-sustaining Moon habitat that can support eight astronauts for a year.

Puerto Rican Startup Plans to Launch Self-Sustaining Moon Habitat

By Dan Robitzski

The U.S. military says it downed an Iranian drone using a new directed-energy weapon — but Iran is denying to incident even took place.

US Navy’s Energy Weapon Gets First “Kill,” Shoots Iranian Drone

By Kristin Houser

Neither the government nor private tech companies have taken steps to protect the 2020 presidential election from being manipulated.

Congressman: The 2020 Election Is Not Safe From Hackers

By Dan Robitzski

Franky Zapata's second attempt to cross the English Channel on his flying hoverboard was a success — and now he's turning his attention to his flying car.

Advanced Transport

Inventor Set to Fly Across the English Channel on His Hoverboard

By Kristin Houser

Henk Rogers wants to build a lunar spaceport so that all the billionaires building shiny new rockets actually have someplace to land.

Science & Energy

The Guy Who Popularized “Tetris” Wants to Build a Lunar Spaceport

By Dan Robitzski

India successfully launched their first ever lunar lander as part of its Chandrayaan-2 mission early Monday morning local time.

India Successfully Launches Lunar Lander Toward The Moon

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has big plans for the Starship: a "Super Heavy" variant will feature up to 41 Raptor engines, 35 of which will be used as a booster.

Elon Musk: Starship Super Heavy Will Have 41 Raptor Engines

By Victor Tangermann

The FaceApp aging filter may be a viral sensation right now, but earlier versions of the smartphone app were incredibly racist.

Earlier Versions of FaceApp Were Incredibly Racist

By Kristin Houser

The Chinese space station Tiangong-2 incinerated as planned during its scheduled decommissioning on Friday. Now there's video footage of the event.

Science & Energy

Watch a Chinese Space Station Burn up in Earth’s Atmosphere

By Dan Robitzski

A new smart glove makes VR more immersive by making the virtual objects people touch feel as though they're really there.

Science & Energy

Smart Glove Lets You Grip Virtual Objects

By Dan Robitzski

A new subset of 7,500 unmodified photographs of natural objects is still able to completely throw AIs for a loop.

Artificial Intelligence

Why AIs Have No Idea What’s In These Mundane Pictures

By Victor Tangermann

Research suggests that the Earth's core and mantle have been swapping tungsten and hafnium for the last 2.5 billion years.

Science & Energy

The Earth’s Core Is Leaking, Baffling Scientists

By Dan Robitzski

A new lightweight knee brace generates electricity as people walk around, potentially charging medical devices or wearables.

Weird Gadget Uses Your Knee Motion to Charge Your Phone

By Dan Robitzski

A pair of musicians-turned-programmers used a John Coltrane record to train a neural network, and the result is provocative.

Artificial Intelligence

Jazz Generated by a Neural Network Is Absolutely Terrifying

By Jon Christian

A driverless bus collided with a 30-year-old woman in Vienna, Austria while traveling at 7.5 mph, according to Bloomberg.

Driverless Bus Collides with Pedestrian in Vienna

By Victor Tangermann

A major conservation organization just added over 7,000 more species to its endangered "Red List." The next stop on the list is extinction.

Climate Change Poised to Eradicate Over 7,000 More Species

By Dan Robitzski

Elon Musk tweeted that the company may test a hovering Roadster at the "end of next year" — keeping the dream of a floating Tesla alive.

Tesla May Test “Hovering” Roadster in Late 2020

By Kristin Houser

Just one inning into the "robot umpire" Trackman's major league debut, a human coach decided to pick a fight and got ejected from the game.

Baseball Coach Ejected for Fighting With Robot Umpire

By Dan Robitzski

Elon Musk: Starhopper Survived Massive Fireball, Will Fly Again Soon

Elon Musk: Starhopper Survived Massive Fireball, Will Fly Again Soon

By Victor Tangermann

Chinese researchers have created a CRISPR alternative called LEAPER that they say is less likely to trigger an unwanted immune response.

Health & Medicine

Chinese Scientists Say They’ve Found a Safer Alternative to CRISPR

By Kristin Houser

Pharma startup Multiply Labs wants to 3D print customized pills that combine all necessary prescriptions at exact doses.

This Startup Wants to 3D Print One Pill With All Your Prescriptions

By Victor Tangermann

The Chinese city Guangzhou gave 17,000 GPS-tracking wristwatches to elementary schoolchildren. The watches let parents monitor what their kids are up to.

China Gives GPS-Tracking Wristwatches to 17,000 Kids

By Dan Robitzski

China is about to decommission its Tiangong-2 space station by rocketing it toward a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean dubbed the "spacecraft cemetery."

Science & Energy

China’s Tiangong-2 Space Station Will Fall Out of the Sky Friday

By Dan Robitzski

A new study suggests resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, could preserve the muscle mass and strength of astonauts exposed to Mars' microgravity.

Red Wine Compound Could Keep Astronauts Strong on Mars

By Kristin Houser

Authorities in Colombia have quarantined four plantations after noticing symptoms of the banana disease TR4 amongst the crops.

Science & Energy

Bad News: A Banana-Killing Fungus Has Likely Reached the Americas

By Kristin Houser

A Norwegian company has developed a new remote-controlled fish pen that could both reduce the cost of feed and minimize salmon dying from sea lice.

Robots and Machines

Norwegian Firm Plans Offshore Remote-Controlled Salmon Farm

By Victor Tangermann

Georgia Tech researchers have built tiny microbots that move in response to vibrations — and they could one day attack diseases in your body.

These Vibration-Powered Microbots Are Almost Too Small to See

By Kristin Houser

DARPA assembled a team called Squad X that uses robots to scout out a battlefield before human soldiers engage in combat.

DARPA’s “Squad X” Teams Up Soldiers With Scout Robots

By Dan Robitzski

The upcoming "Cats" movie will use something called "digital fur technology" to turn stars like Taylor Swift into giant cats.

Science & Energy

“Digital Fur Technology” Will Turn Taylor Swift Into a Cat

By Dan Robitzski

A new study reveals that tens of thousands of porn sites automatically monitor your, uh, behavior, and send the data to companies like Facebook and Google.

Science & Energy

Facebook And Google Know All Your Kinks

By Dan Robitzski

Google has reportedly decided to halt plans for launching a censored search engine in China."We have terminated Project Dragonfly."

Google “Terminated” Its Chinese Search Engine Plans

By Victor Tangermann

China Is Obsessed With Facebook’s Cryptocurrency

China Is Obsessed With Facebook’s Cryptocurrency

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told TIME he thinks "we could land on the Moon in less than two years" — but that "we" might not include NASA.

Elon Musk: We Could Land on the Moon In “Less Than Two Years”

By Kristin Houser

Oakland, California's city council just voted unanimously to ban all municipal uses of facial recognition tech within its borders.

The City of Oakland Votes to Ban Facial Recognition

By Dan Robitzski

Elon Musk's Neuralink announced that it's almost ready for human experimentation. People on Twitter want to offer up their brains.

People Are Begging Elon Musk to Drill Holes in Their Skulls

By Dan Robitzski

In a recent trial, a tongue stray currently used to treat multiple sclerosis symptoms seemed to help people battling cannabis dependence quit smoking weed.

Health & Medicine

There’s Now a Tongue Spray to Help You Stop Smoking Weed

By Kristin Houser

The German government just proposed to make measles vaccinations mandatory for children and people who work at kindergartens and schools.

Health & Medicine

Germany Plans to Make Measles Vaccines Mandatory for All Children

By Victor Tangermann

IBM's new electronic tongue Hypertaste is portable, fast, and capable of identifying a range of liquids, filling a gap in today's offerings.

Artificial Intelligence

IBM Unveils New “Electronic Tongue” to Taste and Identify Liquids

By Kristin Houser

A new AI system tracks people's tiny, involuntary eye movements to identify them, sort of like an ocular fingerprint scanner.

Artificial Intelligence

New AI Identifies People by Their Minuscule Eye Movements

By Dan Robitzski

Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail2 just snapped some incredible photos of the Earth days before it's planning to unfurl its solar sails.

Experimental Spacecraft LightSail 2 Snaps Amazing Photos

By Victor Tangermann

As rockets lower themselves to the lunar surface, they kick up dangerous, bullet-like storms of rocks and dust. If unaddressed, they could lead to conflict.

Rockets Causing Lunar Dust Storms Could Spark International War

By Dan Robitzski