Tomorrow
The most futuristic tech we cover, from AI to private space travel to concept cars.
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Ford GoRide Health shifts to autonomy and shuts down in five cities
It seemed like things were going well for Ford's GoRide Health, a service that offered non-emergency transportation to hospitals and other health care facilities. This spring, it outlined a plan to expand into 40 cities over the course of four years. Instead, Ford is shutting the service down in the five cities it currently operates. According to TechCrunch, Ford is relocating GoRide Health to Miami, where it will focus on autonomous vehicles.
Christine Fisher12.03.2019
Bloodhound’s supersonic car hit 628MPH in under a minute
Not long ago, the Bloodhound supersonic car was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the project came close to shutting down altogether. But after test runs at the Hakskeen Pan dry lake bed race track in South Africa, the car seems to be pulling ahead. It reached 628MPH (1,010 km/h) in 50 seconds, making it the sixth fastest car ever.
Christine Fisher12.03.2019
Amazon plans three solar power projects in the US and Spain
Amazon continues to face criticism for its lack of environmental commitments, but it's making at least some strides toward reducing its impact on the planet. The internet giant has unveiled plans for three new solar power projects, two of them in the US and one in Spain. The American plants in Lee County, Illinois and Northern Virginia will offer a combined capacity of 180MW and produce about 400,000MWh of electricity per year. A solar farm southeast of Sevilla, meanwhile, will offer up to 149MW of capacity for Amazon's Spanish efforts.
Jon Fingas12.03.2019
X-ray lasers can spot elusive electron motion
Scientists can track the movements of an atom's nucleus relatively easily, but electrons have proven elusive -- they move so fast that they tend to be reduced to blurs. Now, however, those movements could be crystal clear. Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Lab have developed a technique, X-ray laser-enhanced attosecond pulse generation (XLEAP), that can observe even the fastest motions of electrons. The laser pulses at just 280 attoseconds, or billionths of a billionth of a second, and can create snapshots of electrons to track their progress. The trick was to modify the laser in a way that squeezed electrons into tighter groups, making for shorter X-ray bursts.
Jon Fingas12.03.2019
Fired Google employees will file federal labor charges against the company
Four Google employees fired last week say they were let go for engaging in protected labor organizing, and that they plan to fight back. In a letter shared today, they say they're filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
Christine Fisher12.03.2019
Ring gave police a detailed map of area doorbell installations
Police departments partnered with Amazon's Ring security service had access to maps that revealed where Ring video doorbells were located, CNET reports. While Amazon has said police do not have access to the location of devices -- which they can request footage from -- the heat maps provided to police allowed them to zoom in on specific locations.
Christine Fisher12.03.2019
NASA set to reveal findings from its Parker Solar Probe tomorrow
NASA is ready to present its first findings from the Parker Solar Probe mission and will reveal what it has discovered to the public on December 4th. The probe flew closer to the sun -- three times -- than any other spacecraft before it over the past year, collecting data as it went along using four science instruments. Shortly after it launched, its team members discovered that the probe is capable of a higher downlink rate than they thought. They used that capability to their advantage and retrieved a lot more data from its first two flybys than they expected to get.
Mariella Moon12.03.2019
Amazon offers quantum computing on its AWS servers
Quantum computing is arguably the next major milestone for tech companies, but unless you're the likes of Google or IBM, it's a fairly costly endeavor. But Amazon -- which up until now has been pretty quiet on the quantum front -- has plans to offer a quantum computing service to companies through the internet, thereby eliminating some of the costs and other challenges associated with pursuing the technology.
Rachel England12.03.2019
Putin signs law requiring Russian apps on smartphones, TVs and PCs
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation that bans the sale of smartphones, computers and Smart TVs without Russian apps pre-installed. The law will come into force on July 1st of next year, but before that, the government will create a list of Russian applications that must be pre-installed on various devices, according to Reuters.
Steve Dent12.03.2019
Homeland Security wants airport face scans for US citizens
Homeland Security is joining the ranks of government agencies pushing for wider use of facial recognition for US travelers. The department has proposed that US citizens, not just visa holders and visitors, should go through a mandatory facial recognition check when they enter or leave the country. This would ostensibly help officials catch terrorists using stolen travel documents to move about. The existing rules specifically exempt citizens and permanent residents from face scans.
Jon Fingas12.02.2019
Twitter introduces a Privacy Center to keep users informed
Today, Twitter launched a Privacy Center, where it will share announcements, new privacy products and communication about inevitable security incidents. "By using Twitter, you've shown us that you trust us with your data," the Twitter Privacy Center states. "We do not take that trust lightly."
Christine Fisher12.02.2019
Apple, Google and Microsoft sign letter backing Paris Agreement (updated)
The Trump administration may already be pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, but a large chunk of the tech industry wants the country to stay in... with some glaring exceptions. The CEOs of many companies, including tech giants like Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and Tesla, have signed a United For The Paris Agreement letter calling on the US to remain part of the effort to keep climate change in check. They argued that the international pact would "strengthen [US] competitiveness" by helping it lead the way in technologies that will usher in an eco-friendly future. It also sets "clear goals" that help with planning and spur innovation, the companies said.
Jon Fingas12.02.2019
A new blood test could indicate multiple conditions with one sample
A new blood test could use a single plasma sample to assess health and predict the likelihood of developing a range of diseases. Thanks to Theranos, this may sound familiar, but unlike that debacle, this proof-of-concept is backed by research published in Nature Medicine.
Christine Fisher12.02.2019
Europe's space agency approves the Hera anti-asteroid mission
European ministers in charge of the ESA space agency have approved Hera, a mission that will test whether deflection could save humanity from a rogue asteroid. During the $320 million mission, ESA and partner NASA will send a pair of spacecraft to a double-asteroid system called Didymos. NASA will first crash its DART probe into the smaller asteroid (Didymoon) at a speed of around 13,320 MPH, with the event recorded by an Italian cubesat called LICIACube. Hera will arrive later to map the impact crater and measure the asteroid's mass.
Steve Dent12.02.2019
Astronomers find stellar black hole so large it shouldn't exist
Just because there's a picture of a black hole doesn't mean astronomers have figured out how they work. Chinese-led researchers have detected a stellar black hole in the Milky Way with a mass so large that it breaks current stellar evolution models. LB-1, a black hole 15,000 light-years away, has a mass 70 times greater than that of the Sun -- previous estimates suggested that no stellar black hole would have more than 20 times the Sun's mass. Scientists expected many dying stars to shed most of their gas, making something this large impossible without readjusting theories.
Jon Fingas12.01.2019
After Math: All the Black Friday deals we slept through
Between the hellish travel conditions (looking at you, Colorado), consuming a week's worth of calories in a single sitting, scrubbing the mountains of resulting dirty dishware and getting stuck listening to your weird uncle explain his latest flat Earth conspiracy theory, Thanksgiving is far and away the year's most exhausting holiday. This is why we get the following Friday off by default -- tis the season for napping. So if you, like I, were zonked out through Black Friday, don't stress. Those same products are going to be right back on sale less than a month from now. But here's a quick roundup of what could have been.
Andrew Tarantola12.01.2019
Strawberry-flavored HIV medicine could save thousands of children
There are roughly 80,000 babies and toddlers who die of AIDS every year, and that's partly due to the difficulty of administering the medicine. It can be extremely difficult for a toddler to swallow a pill or a foul-tasting syrup with alcohol. Cipla may have a much better solution. It's introducing a new anti-HIV drug, Quadrimune, whose strawberry-flavored granules are much easier to swallow. While it comes in capsules, parents can make it more palatable by sprinkling the contents on soft food or in drinks.
Jon Fingas11.30.2019
Researchers develop E. coli strain that 'eats' carbon-dioxide
While you're stuffing turkey leftovers in your belly, the last thing you want to think about is E. coli. But spare a thought for the bacterium, it's not always here to harm you (and it needs to eat, too). According to a new paper published in Cell, scientists have developed a strain of E. coli that feeds on carbon dioxide. As Nature explains, the bacteria usually prefer sugars (glucose), but the lab-created strain could be used to create biofuels with a lower emissions footprint than conventional production methods.
James Trew11.29.2019
Is the Valve Index the best high-end VR headset?
As VR becomes more and more mainstream, a key to its success will be the choice of headsets available. On the entry-level end is the Oculus Go, at $199. On the upper end is Valve's Index, which features two RGB LCDs running at 1,440 x 1,600 pixels, capable of a 120Hz (or 144Hz) refresh rate and selling for a stunning $999. Senior editor Devindra Hardawar reviewed the Index and found that it had nearly every feature one would expect to find on a high-end VR headset, including finger-sensing controllers, excellent image quality and plush cushioning around the eye pieces and rear head strap.
Amber Bouman11.28.2019
Texas backs out of the lawsuit to stop the T-Mobile and Sprint merger
Texas no longer stands in the way of the T-Mobile and Sprint merger. The state has reached a settlement with T-Mobile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today. In exchange for T-Mobile's commitment to build a 5G network throughout Texas, Paxton will drop the lawsuit he filed in August in an attempt to block the $26.5 billion deal.
Christine Fisher11.25.2019