the digest (Page 179)

Latest in the digest

Tesla has announced the Tesla Arcade, a temporary event where people can visit its showrooms to play the games available through the cars' touchscreens.

Tesla Uses Arcade Games to Lure Potential Buyers to Showrooms

By Kristin Houser

A new system could enable smart speakers to listen in for signs of a heart attack and immediately call for medical assistance.

Health & Medicine

Future Smart Speakers Could Call 911 if They Hear a Heart Attack

By Dan Robitzski

Facebook's cryptocurrency could give the company even more sway and influence — perhaps even turn them into a virtual nation according to Jennifer Grygiel.

Expert: Facebook Is Trying to Become an Independent Country

By Victor Tangermann

Researchers have discovered a glue that's both strong and reversible — so of course they used it to suspend an engineering student from the ceiling.

Science & Energy

Snail-Inspired Glue Can Paste You to the Ceiling, Then Let You Go

By Kristin Houser

Shortly after Facebook annoucned Libra, its new cryptocurrency, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown and European leaders called for strong regulations.

Senator Slams Facebook’s New Crypto: “Facebook Is Already Too Big”

By Dan Robitzski

The first expedition for Boaty McBoatface has taught researchers something new about how climate change in Antarctic waters affects the rest of the world.

Boaty McBoatface Makes Major Discovery on Maiden Voyage

By Kristin Houser

Earlier this month, researchers from Australia's Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration published research containing a dire warning: prevent and reverse climate change or face the end of human civilization as we know it.

Doomsday Report Author: Earth’s Leaders Have Failed

By Dan Robitzski

The inward migration of a recently formed exoplanet is causing never-before-seen structures to form in its host star's protoplanetary disk.

Science & Energy

A Baby Exoplanet Is Creating Strange Dust Rings Around Its Star

By Kristin Houser

Surveillance cameras will only get more sophisticated and harder to avoid, so privacy expert William Webster calls for increased transparency.

Artificial Intelligence

Privacy Expert: Surveillance Cams Will Soon Be Impossible to Spot

By Dan Robitzski

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft just zipped really close to tiny asteroid Bennu to snap an incredibly detailed image.

NASA Photographs Asteroid That Could Smash Into Earth in 22nd Century

By Victor Tangermann

An investigation into the potential link between CBD and nightmares confirms that researchers still aren't sure what the cannabis compound can do.

Health & Medicine

CBD Seems to Be Giving People Bizarre Nightmares

By Kristin Houser

DARPA wants contractors to develop an "air-breathing" hypersonic weapon. Now Raytheon is ready to test a missile that can travel 5x faster than sound.

New Missile Lobs Nukes 5x Faster Than Sound

By Dan Robitzski

Amnesty International argues that Facebook took away a crucial tool for humans rights investigators without consulting them.

Human Rights Group: Facebook Won’t Let Us Investigate War Crimes

By Dan Robitzski

Twitch is suing the trolls that hijacked its platform to share extreme, sometimes illegal videos — even though it doesn't actually know who they are.

Twitch Sues Anonymous Users for Streaming Porn, Murderous Rampage

By Kristin Houser

YouTuber Simone Giertz bought a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck in her latest video.

Watch This YouTuber Mod Her Tesla Model 3 Into a Pickup Truck

By Victor Tangermann

NASA head Jim Bridenstine announced that the SpaceX capsule explosion earlier this year has delayed the space agency's plans for crewed missions.

NASA Head: “No Doubt” SpaceX Explosion Delayed Flight Program

By Dan Robitzski

A pakistani politician unknowingly gave a press conference while a Facebook AR filter gave him cute cat ears during the livestream.

Virtual Reality

Politician Accidentally Rocks AR Kitty Ears During Livestream

By Dan Robitzski

Through the IAU100 NameExoWorlds competition, every country on Earth has the opportunity to name an exoplanet and its host star.

Science & Energy

Here’s Your Chance to Name an Exoplanet and Its Star

By Kristin Houser

NASA Discovers Brand-New Crater on Mars

By Dan Robitzski

A team of scientists have come up with a new way to minimize muscle loss for space travelers: testosterone plus plenty of exercise.

Health & Medicine

Scientists Want to Jack Astronauts Up On Steroids

By Victor Tangermann

A new Comcast feature pairs with eye-tracking systems to allow customers to use their eyes like they would a remote control.

TV Viewers Can Now Change the Channel With Just Their Eyes

By Kristin Houser

A sleeping Tesla driver let Autopilot take the wheel for 30 miles on one of the busiest freeways in the U.S. — and his snooze appears deliberate.

“Fully Sleeping” Tesla Driver Cruises 30 Miles on Autopilot

By Kristin Houser

The European Space Agency just placed a piece of satellite in an extremely hot plasma wind tunnel to melt it into a ball of liquid metal.

Watch a Satellite Piece Melt Into a Puddle of Metal

By Victor Tangermann

The lyrics database Genius embedded a hidden typography code into its lyrics to prove that Google was copying content directly from its site.

Science & Energy

Genius Used a Typography Trick to Bust Google For Stealing Lyrics

By Dan Robitzski

As global temperatures rise, the Arctic is melting away, releasing more greenhouse gases and revealing previously-frozen nuclear waste and diseases.

The Melting Arctic Is Releasing Poison, Disease and Nuclear Waste

By Dan Robitzski

A parody robot video imagines what might happen if a powerful bot decided to take revenge on the engineers testing its "robustness."

Boston Dynamics

Watch a Robot Take Revenge in Brutal Boston Dynamics Parody

By Kristin Houser

Samsung tweeted a warning reminding TV owners to "prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks."

Internet Of Things

Samsung: Scan Your Smart TV for Viruses Every Week or Else

By Victor Tangermann

Security experts detect trillions of attempted hacks every day, many of which target political systems and elections using cheap, readily-available tools.

Science & Energy

Hackers Are Threatening Elections Around the World

By Dan Robitzski

Former "Mythbusters" co-host Adam Savage just showed off an incredible-looking, 3D-printed titanium Iron Man suit — and yes, it can fly.

Robots and Machines

Watch “MythBusters” Host Adam Savage Fly a Titanium Iron Man Suit

By Victor Tangermann

Hackers from Xenotime, which previously took down a Saudi oil plant, are now attempting to breach American power plants with their malware Triton.

Hackers Have Spent Months Trying to Breach America’s Power Plants

By Dan Robitzski

A patient who received a fecal transplant died after the procedure — prompting the FDA to put a halt to a number of fecal transplant trials.

Health & Medicine

FDA Halts Fecal Transplant Trials After Patient Dies

By Kristin Houser

NVIDIA researchers have released an online demo for GauGAN, an AI-powered app that transforms crudely drawn images into photorealistic landscapes.

Artificial Intelligence

Amazing Site Uses AI to Turn Your Scribbles into Lovely Landscapes

By Kristin Houser

The ACLU published a new report warning about the rise of AI-driven surveillance systems, which could strip away our privacy and cause overpolicing.

Artificial Intelligence

AI-Aided Video Surveillance Will Watch and Silently Judge Us

By Dan Robitzski

Adobe trained a neural net to detect faces that were manipulated using Photoshops' liquify tool, though the company hasn't released it to the public.

Artificial Intelligence

Adobe Built an AI to Spot Photoshopped Faces

By Dan Robitzski

In an apparent dig at Elon Musk, scientists from Russia sent a tiny toy car with a cutout of Roscosmos' Dmitry Rogozin in the driver's seat into space.

To Mock Elon Musk, Russia Just Launched a Toy Car Into Space

By Kristin Houser

During a closed-doors audience at the Vatican, the Pope told oil executives that we need to find an energy solution that doesn't sacrifice the environment.

Pope to Oil Execs: “Energy Use Must Not Destroy Civilization”

By Victor Tangermann

A semi-autonomous robot can go in and dismantle decommissioned nuclear reactors, handling some of the tricker tasks on its own.

New Robots Can Safely Decommission Nuclear Reactors

By Dan Robitzski

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNN Business that NASA will need "$20 to $30 billion" over a span of five years to return to the Moon by 2024.

NASA Budget Billions Short to Return Americans to the Moon

By Victor Tangermann

Speaking to a crowd at E3, Elon Musk said once more that our reality is probably a simulation. But he says the plot could use some improvements.

Elon Musk: If Reality Is a Simulation, “The Plot Is Terrible”

By Dan Robitzski

NASA Orbiter Spots “Star Trek” Starfleet Insignia on Mars

By Victor Tangermann

Beneath the Pacific Ocean, at the point farthest from any landmass, lies a mass grave where used spacecraft and decommissioned space stations go to rest.

A Look Inside the Deep-Sea Graveyard for Dead Spacecraft

By Dan Robitzski

Rather than using a controller to command their virtual vehicles in a new Tesla racing game, drivers will use their car's actual steering wheel and brakes.

New Tesla Racing Game Uses Car’s Actual Steering Wheel and Brakes

By Kristin Houser

A Defense News investigation has revealed many problems with the military's in-development F-35 fighter jet that had previously gone unreported.

US Military’s Trillion-Dollar F-35 Fighter Jet Is Almost Unflyable

By Kristin Houser

Experts argue that geoengineering, the umbrella term for hacking the planet to mitigate climate change, could lead to global conflict.

How Geoengineering Could Lead to World War III

By Dan Robitzski

Harvard geneticist George Church explains why he built a database of protective and harmful gene variations, and predicts how it could improve medicine.

Prosthetics and Devices

George Church Told Us Why He’s Listing Superhuman Gene Hacks

By Dan Robitzski

Scientists from Florida State University just created the world's strongest magnetic field using a toilet paper roll-sized magnet.

Robots and Machines

A Tiny Magnet Just Created the World’s Strongest Magnetic Field

By Victor Tangermann

Tyson Foods — one of the world's largest and most controversial meat producers — is launching a line of alt-meat products.

Tyson Foods’ Alt-Meat Nuggets Will Hit Grocery Stores This Summer

By Kristin Houser

Artificial Intelligence

A Spy Used a Deepfake Photo to Infiltrate LinkedIn Networks

By Dan Robitzski

Billionaire VC Vinod Khosla predicts that music as we know it will be gone in ten years, replaced by personalized AI-generated soundtracks.

Artificial Intelligence

Billionaire: Future Music Will Be AI-Generated to Match Our Moods

By Dan Robitzski

A new report finds that the U.S. military is the single largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the world, emitting more carbon than several countries.

The War on Terror is Murdering the Environment

By Dan Robitzski

Uber exec Eric Meyhofer said that the company has "seen people bully [Uber's self-driving] cars," including aggressive behavior and shouted obscenities.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Road-Raging Humans are Bullying Uber’s Self-Driving Cars

By Victor Tangermann

Jupiter's moon Europa, which many scientists suspect could support extraterrestrial life, has the same kind of salt in its oceans as Earth.

Jupiter’s Moon Europa Has Right Kind of Saltwater to Support Life

By Dan Robitzski

San Francisco hopes an AI-powered tool that redacts information from police reports will eliminate racial bias from the suspect-charging process.

Artificial Intelligence

San Francisco Is Using AI to Try to Make Courts Less Racist

By Kristin Houser

A new NASA study reveals why the Milky Way's black hole is so tranquil: a powerful and unique magnetic field is holding it at bay.

Here’s What’s Keeping the Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole at Bay

By Dan Robitzski

Drones can now dodge objects thrown at them thanks to a combination of artificial intelligence and event cameras, an advanced type of sensor.

Watch This Drone Expertly Dodge Stuff Thrown at It

By Kristin Houser

A team of scientists successfully tested a laser that can track down cancer cells and kill them — all by simply shining a light from outside the skin.

New Laser Zaps and Destroys Cancer Cells in Real Time

By Victor Tangermann

Harvard geneticist George Church has assembled a database of genetic mutations that could give people superhuman-like capabilities or medical benefits.

This Harvard Prof Is Listing Genes That Could Make You Superhuman

By Dan Robitzski

A member of the quickly disbanded Google AI ethics board says lawmakers need to approach regulating the company like it's a "world power."

Professor: Lawmakers Must Treat Google Like A “World Power”

By Kristin Houser

NASA just moved to the next phase of its Psyche mission. Now the spacecraft that will visit the distant asteroid is undergoing final design changes.

NASA Is Preparing to Explore an All-Metal Asteroid

By Dan Robitzski

Uber Air has unveiled the first full-scale mock-up of one of the flying taxis it hopes to have ferrying passengers across the skies by 2023.

Advanced Transport

Uber Air Offers First Look Inside Its Flying Taxi

By Kristin Houser

Engineers built a new tool that matches DNA samples to specific faces from a database that could be linked to the specific genes found in the sample.

Facial recognition

Terrifying AI Matches DNA to Facial Recognition Databases

By Dan Robitzski

a new companion robot called Irony Man was programmed to be ironic and sarcastic to better match how humans talk, but it doesn't know when to stop.

Scientists Built a Robot With a Sense of Irony. It’s Insufferable

By Dan Robitzski

On August 13, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will make history by delivering the first ever DJ set from space for promoters BigCityBeats.

ISS Astronaut Will Deliver First DJ Set From Space

By Kristin Houser

Uber is officially starting to make Uber Eats food deliveries by drone as part of a limited trial in San Diego this summer according to Bloomberg.

Uber Eats Will Start Making Drone Deliveries This Summer

By Victor Tangermann