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,
Month: September 2018
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.