How to avoid garbage news on Google Search
When you search Google for something topical, you might see a cluster of headlines from news outlets, reporting breaking stories related to your search query. If you want to focus…
2026
3 buttons that don’t actually do anything
Have you ever pressed a crosswalk button and wondered if it actually does anything? You might be onto something. Called placebo buttons, controls that don’t do anything exist everywhere. Sometimes…
Whatever the mirror test tells us, beluga whales pass it
In hours of underwater video footage from a New York aquarium, a beluga whale named Natasha stretches her neck, pirouettes, nods, and shakes her head in front of a two-way…
SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results. The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed…
Gmail vs Proton Mail: Is it worth switching if you care about privacy?
Google launched its own email service all the way back in 2004 (remember the hype around a free 1GB of email storage space?). In the years since, it’s become the…
China’s shark finning could lead to US seafood sanctions
For migrant workers trapped onboard Chinese distant water fishing fleets, cutting the fins off sharks as they writhe violently on rusted decks in the Indian Ocean isn’t accidental. It’s an…
Texas AG sues Meta over claims that WhatsApp doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption
The Texas Attorney General has sued Meta over allegations that the company’s WhatsApp messenger, used by more than 3 billion people, doesn’t provide the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) it has long…
Soaring solar and a surge in hydro push more coal off the US grid
Last year, the first few months of data from the US grid suggested that fears of a data-center-driven surge in demand were becoming a reality. Demand had risen by about…
A hacker group is poisoning open source code at an unprecedented scale
A so-called software supply chain attack, in which hackers corrupt a legitimate piece of software to hide their own malicious code, was once a relatively rare event but one that…
Ground system issue scrubs first launch of SpaceX’s Starship V3 rocket
SpaceX got within 40 seconds of launching the first flight of a taller, more powerful version of its Starship rocket Thursday, but a pesky problem with the launch tower kept…