The line between human-made materials and living organisms just got more blurred. Researchers have created a new biomaterial that isn’t alive, but which exhibits three key traits for life: metabolism, self-assembly, and organisation. The new material can crawl forward like a slime mould, growing new strands from the front as the old ones at the

After years of chastising us for failing to safely eject USB drives from computers, Microsoft has done the unthinkable: finally acknowledging it’s okay to yank that sucker out and live your best life. Ever since USB drives became a thing, the Windows maker has warned and admonished computer users for not safely removing external hardware

The world watched in horror Monday night while flames tore through the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. As fire consumed the roof and toppled its iconic central spire, it seemed as though the historic church could be lost forever – but it’s possible, thanks to cutting-edge imagining technology, that all hope may not be lost.

The dog-like robots from Boston Dynamics are back with another video, albeit this time the video is less focused on virality and more a demonstration of raw power. Behold, 10 robot dogs pulling a large truck: (Boston Dynamics/YouTube) Pretty intense, no? Don’t get too worried – these little guys aren’t coming to pull your house

Scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind device that generates electricity from nothing other than the natural phenomenon of snowfall. Based upon the principles of the triboelectric effect, in which electrical charge is generated after two materials come into contact with one another, the researchers’ new technology exploits the fact that snow particles carry a positive electrical

In what the Israeli media is calling a “world’s first,” scientists at Tel Aviv University have 3D printed a small heart using human tissue that includes vessels, collagen, and biological molecules – a breakthrough, according to Haaretz, that they hope could one day render organ donation obsolete. The technology is still many years out from

Humanity could be on the verge of an unprecedented merging of human biology with advanced technology, fusing our thoughts and knowledge directly with the cloud in real-time – and this incredible turning point may be just decades away, scientists say. In a new research paper exploring what they call the ‘human brain/cloud interface’, scientists explain

Stratolaunch, the massive aircraft dreamed up by the late Paul Allen, flew for the first time on Saturday, becoming the largest plane by wingspan ever to take to the skies. Larger than Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose – which flew only once, in 1947- Stratolaunch lifted off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in the

Facebook said it accidentally hid bizarre and “inappropriate” messages inside “tens of thousands” of virtual-reality controllers, including “Big Brother is Watching” and “The Masons Were Here.” Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, said on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages in its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing

We are just days away from the final season of Game of Thrones, and the predictions just keep rolling in. Using artificial intelligence, students at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now put in their own two cents. During a recent seminar, these budding computer scientists created an algorithm that predicts which characters will

A new type of air filter has the potential to work faster, cheaper and better than any other, killing virtually all airborne bacteria and viruses in a fraction of a second. It’s a germaphobes dream, and a bullish weapon against the spread of infectious diseases, some of which, like measles, can remain suspended in the air

A team of scientists says they’ve built a quantum computer that generates a superposition of several possible futures the computer could experience. The research, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, describes how this quantum system could help futuristic artificial intelligence learn much faster than it can today – and it could mean quantum computers are finally

One of the scariest – and most troubling – iPhone problems is when your phone will not charge. But don’t panic. There are some fairly mundane reasons why this might happen, and they’re generally easy to solve. On the other hand, keep in mind that to do something even as simple as charge your phone,

When artificial intelligence systems start getting creative, they can create great things – and scary ones. Take, for instance, an AI program that let web users compose music along with a virtual Johann Sebastian Bach by entering notes into a program that generates Bach-like harmonies to match them. Run by Google, the app drew great

What once seemed like the moonshot vision of tech billionaires and idealistic architects could soon become a concrete solution to several of the world’s most pressing challenges. At a United Nations roundtable on Wednesday, a group of builders, engineers, and architects debuted a concept for an affordable floating city. Unlike instances in the past when

Scientists have figured out how to genetically alter bacteria to churn out super-strong spider silk. Pound for pound, spider silk is much stronger than steel, but farming spiders is incredibly inefficient, according to a press release – so finding a way to mass produce the material could lead to super-strong fabrics and perhaps even next-generation

Some want to keep a clean record for future employers while others are merely following their therapist’s orders. In any case, there are plenty of reasons to take a break from Facebook. Before you do something you might regret, though, remember there is a way to deactivate your account without deleting it for good. Instead

A prolific cybersecurity research firm says it has managed to make Tesla’s self-driving feature veer off course by sticking three small stickers on the road pavement. Keen Lab, a two-time honoree of Tesla’s “bug bounty” hall of fame program, said in a research paper on Saturday that it found two ways to trick Autopilot’s lane

A team from NASA and MIT has created a new type of airplane wing — and it could make air travel far more efficient. In a paper published in the journal Smart Materials and Structures on Monday, the researchers describe how they built an airplane wing from hundreds of identical, lightweight cube-like structures, all bolted

It’s difficult to remember a time when Google did not oversee, organize and mine every aspect of our existence, but in 2004, its new email service seemed so powerful that it couldn’t be real. Gmail’s announced features were mind-bending: a gigabyte’s worth of storage that blew away other services by 100 times. And it would

Humans will always make the final decision on whether armed robots can shoot, according to a statement by the US Department of Defense. Their clarification comes amid fears about a new advanced targeting system, known as ATLAS, that will use artificial intelligence in combat vehicles to target and execute threats. While the public may feel

If you’ve ever made a somewhat rash online purchase after a couple of drinks then you’re not alone – a new survey says nearly 4 in 5 people who consume alcohol have shopped on the web while intoxicated. These purchases add up too, with US$444 the average annual spend for a drunk shopper, and a

The founder of MoviePass is back, and this time he’s not messing around. MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes has a new startup called PreShow, and it’s using a business model straight out of A Clockwork Orange: The company’s new app helps you score free movie tickets — as long as you sit through 15 to 20

Kalashnikov’s AK-47 represents a timeless design and an instantly recognisable icon of warfare, but one thing it cannot do is fly. But Russian arms maker Almaz-Antey Business Insider, 2018 on what looks like a literal flying AK-47 drone. Images filed with the patent show a minimalist drone formed around a Kalashnikov-style rifle, and were Business

A chemical reaction you learned about in middle school could help solve the energy crisis. Running an electrical current through water splits it into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be used as a reliable, zero-emission fuel source. In the past, the process of purifying water beforehand was too energy intensive for this

Jak Wilmot, the co-founder of Atlanta-based VR content studioDisrupt VR, spent 168 consecutive hours in a VR headset – that’s a full week – pent up in his apartment. “This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but welcome to a week in the future,” he said in a video about the experiment.

By combining math with 3D printing, researchers from Boston University have created a new material that seemingly defies logic: light and air have no trouble passing through it — but sound cannot. “The idea is that we can now mathematically design an object that can block the sounds of anything,” researcher Xin Zhang said in

Facebook just had a very bad day. Facebook, including Messenger, and Instagram users across North America experienced outages for most of Wednesday, starting in the afternoon and ending late the same night. Third party outage sites suggested it affected users across the entire globe. The media reported it was perhaps the longest interruption ever experienced

When a child first does something without being asked, their parents want to celebrate. Researchers at the University of Southern Carolina (USC) are having that moment right now. The team claims to have created the first AI-controlled robotic limb that can learn how to walk without being explicitly programmed to do so. The algorithm they

A California family is outraged that a doctor told their elderly relative his lungs were failing and he was going to die imminently – via a telepresence robot. “You might not make it home,” the doctor at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center told the patient, according to local television channel KTVU, which broke the story. The

There’s a little-known feature built into your iPhone that keeps a history of everywhere you’ve been – and how many times you’ve been there. This “Significant Locations” list can be found in your settings, but it’s rather hard to find, whether purposeful or not. Apple tracks and stores where you’ve been and how often (and

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests autonomous driving systems may have more difficulty detecting pedestrians with dark skin than those with light skin. The researchers responsible for the study had eight image-detection systems analyse images of pedestrians. The people in the photos were separated into two groups based on how their

Your bags are packed, your rooms are booked, you’re all set for your vacation; there’s just one problem, the government has canceled your tickets. As early as 2014, China began conceptualizing a Social Credit System (SCS), sort of like a credit score for citizen behavior where behaviors deemed good for society are rewarded with privileges

Lots of video games let you take on the role of the anti-hero: Grand Theft Auto, Hitman, even Mario’s mischievous alter-ego, Wario. But there’s never been a video game anti-hero quite like Plague Inc. – in this massively successful pandemic simulator, you actually play the role of a deadly and contagious pathogen, hell-bent on wiping

Lab-made marijuana is coming. In a move that’s expected to transform the marijuana and pharmaceutical industries, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced on Wednesday that they had for the first time created cannabis compounds in a lab, instead of by harvesting them from a plant. If the technique can scale, it could

The newly launched Nokia 9 PureView has something no other smartphone has: a five-camera array on the back. But before the handset has even got into people’s hands, there are claims that it’s triggering trypophobia – a fear of clusters of small holes. While those with trypophobia will no doubt try their best to avoid

A man died after crashing a 2016 Tesla Model S into a tree in Miami, Florida yesterday afternoon, according to local news. The car reportedly swerved through multiple lanes of traffic before hitting a median and some trees and bursting into flames – and the death may have been related to the electric carmaker’s iconic

Facebook’s treatment of its legions of content moderators is under scrutiny after the publication of a report alleging tough working conditions and low pay that saw some employees break down under the weight of the content they were reviewing. On Monday, The Verge’s Casey Newton published an extensive investigation into a content-moderation workplace in Arizona. These

Social media sites like YouTube are stepping up their enforcement against anti-vax content. YouTube channels that promote anti-vaccination content are not allowed to run ads on the video sharing platform, according to a policy first reported by BuzzFeed News on Friday. YouTube said that it considers anti-vaccination content to be “dangerous or harmful,” which as

Last week, we reported on a mysterious new website, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, that shows you a new human face, generated by an AI, every time you hit the refresh button. It’s a growing trend: more copycat websites like ThisAirbnbDoesNotExist.comand ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net have also cropped up in its wake. And now, ThisCatDoesNotExist.com takes the trend to its logical conclusion:

Earth might have a dizzying array of life forms, but our biology ultimately remains a solitary data point – we simply don’t have a reference for life based on DNA different from our own. Now, scientists have taken matters into their hands to push the boundaries on what life could be like. Research funded by

A group of computer scientists once backed by Elon Musk has caused some alarm by developing an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) they say is too dangerous to release to the public. OpenAI, a research non-profit based in San Francisco, says its “chameleon-like” language prediction system, called GPT–2, will only ever see a limited release in

Researchers in China have developed a new way to remove bacteria from water that they say is both highly efficient and environmentally sound. By shining ultraviolet light onto a two-dimensional sheet of a compound called graphitic carbon nitride, the team’s prototype can purify 10 litres (2.6 liquid gallons) of water in just one hour, killing virtually

At first glance, the two rows of portraits at the top of this article just look like a bunch of average-looking people. The catch is, none of them exist. All of these faces are fakes, put together by artificial intelligence. To be more precise, these faces are created by a generative adversarial network (GAN) developed

China’s Academy of Space Technology is working on an orbital power plant that would capture solar energy in space and beam it back to Earth.  The plant would be able to harness solar power even when it’s cloudy back on Earth, since its photovoltaic array would be floating high above any terrestrial weather. With plans to

Sleep is pretty great. In humans, evidence suggests it has a whole range of benefits, including this one: it keeps the brain healthy by letting neurons prune unnecessary synaptic connections we make during the day. This process, called synaptic homeostasis, prevents the brain from being overrun by useless memories. It’s possible that it helps to improve

In a sensational test of technological independence, Russia is making plans to cut off its internet from the rest of the world, with a giant ‘unplugging’ experiment that will affect over 100 million Russian internet users. The action – which the nation has boasted of doing for years – would be a temporary test, designed

Alarming video captured by a Twitter user in Philadelphia highlights a rare but little-known danger of electroshock Taser-style weapons. In the footage, posted on Saturday, a man is seen struggling with security guards on the street, before being fired upon with a Taser-style device. Almost instantly, the man is alight, screaming in agony as his