Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums
A software engineer’s earnest effort to steer his new DJI robot vacuum with a video game controller inadvertently granted him a sneak peak into thousands of people’s homes. While building…
Dinosaur eggshells can reveal the age of other fossils
When dinosaur fossils surface at a site, it is often not possible to tell how many millions of years ago their bones were buried. While the different strata of sedimentary…
Have we leapt into commercial genetic testing without understanding it?
Daphne O. Martschenko and Sam Trejo both want to make the world a better, fairer, more equitable place. But they disagree on whether studying social genomics—elucidating any potential genetic contributions…
Major government research lab appears to be squeezing out foreign scientists
One of the US government’s top scientific research labs is taking steps that could drive away foreign scientists, a shift lawmakers and sources tell WIRED could cost the country valuable…
Man builds Tetris console inside cardboard box
There was a time when you had to travel to your nearest arcade or beg your parents for a Game Boy if you wanted to play Tetris. Today, the iconic,…
The Internet Archive records its 1 trillionth website
The Internet Archive—one of cyberspace’s most essential library projects—has achieved a feat that’s hard to even conceptualize. After nearly 30 years of painstaking work, the nonprofit has preserved its trillionth…
“Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans
Two skulls from Yunxian, in northern China, aren’t ancestors of Denisovans after all; they’re actually the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in eastern Asia. A recent study has re-dated the…
Help NASA prepare for the next solar storm disaster
NASA has always made it a point to encourage us citizen scientists to lend them a hand. Right now, they could really use your help protecting Earth against waves of…
The history of clocks is one of tyranny and revolution
On a March evening in 1898, gunfire exploded through Mumbai’s Crawford Market. That night, angry city residents raised their rifles at an unusual target: the public clock tower atop the…
Rocket Report: Chinese launch firm raises big money; Falcon 9 back to the Bahamas
Welcome to Edition 8.30 of the Rocket Report! As I write this week’s edition, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.…