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“Today we’re going to talk about building a privacy-focused social platform.” Zuck is aware that Facebook doesn’t have a great track record for privacy. He says that there are wide-spread changes coming on all of the company’s platforms. We’ll go through them one at a time. Messenger Zuck is heavily focusing on private communication instead of the public “town square” content that we’re used to posting on typcial social media feeds like Facebook and Instagram....

The first test showed that the gun worked, but the voltage fried all circuit connections and even dislodged the wires from the railgun itself. The team behind the railgun set to work to further refine the design. For test number five, the railgun was powered by 27,000 Joules. Here it is firing a shot into a block of ballistic gel (slowed down for dramatic effect): Further tests see the railgun destroying smartphones, pumpkins, ceramics, and even, in a video released yesterday, a piggy bank....

Because the aluminum hull of an aircraft is highly conductive, an electrically charged storm cloud will tend to induce a charge separation (or polarization) on the outer surface of any airplane in the vicinity. This creates a difference in potential — a.k.a. voltage — between the cloud and the plane, resulting in a discharge of electric current between them. Since there is also a potential difference between the airplane and the tarmac, the lightning discharges right through the airplane and into the ground....

According to Superphen’s Tech Blog, an iOS 9.2 jailbreak may make its way to us via the Chinese hacker group 3K Assistant. The rough translation of 3K’s post claims the group has been working towards creating an iOS 9.2 untethered jailbreak. While they may already have a working version, a useable tool has yet to be made public. But the group asks that potential jailbreak users running Apple’s latest software remain patient....

Do people actually want to receive these awards? According to Nature magazine, “The Ig Nobel Awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar.” Launch the gallery to see why scientists are so crazy about Ig.

There are lots of bacteria in your damp, dark armpits, and it makes sense that deodorants would affect them—when bacteria break down sweat, they create stinky compounds called thioalcohols. Deodorants and antiperspirants work by reducing the amount of sweat that leaves your pores as well as the number of bacteria there to break down that sweat. But researchers didn’t know if these products could have a lasting impact on the microbiome, and whether they target certain kinds of bacteria more than others....

These Danners, with their red laces and brown leather, and very good-looking. Since they’re waterproof and have both a Vibram midsole and outsole, you could take them hiking—or you could wear them around over the course of a regular day and keep your feet cozy, even if it’s wet or slushy. $160. Knit in Vermont, Darn Tough Socks come with a lifetime guarantee. They’ve made the Retro Crew Light socks from Merino wool, nylon, and Lycra—meaning they’ll keep feet warm....

What’s new in the 10th-generation iPad? Until now, the standard iPad has embraced the original design with tapered edges and a Touch ID-equipped home button below the screen on the front of the device. The 10th-generation iPad moves to a more modern setup with no home button and squared edges to closer emulate the upmarket iPad Air and iPad Pro. Losing that front-facing button leaves room for more screen, giving the 10th-gen....

The magistrate has ordered Apple to load software into the phone that bypasses security measures, namely the feature that deletes the phone’s contents after too many incorrect password attempts, according to the Associated Press. This means that Apple isn’t going to crack the phone itself, just allow the FBI to attempt to enter as many passwords as they want, without the fear of deleting any data. The recovered phone is an iPhone 5c....

Enter the M2 chip The M1-powered MacBook Air I reviewed back in 2020 is one of the best all-around laptops ever. It raised the bar on computers in its class when it came to portability, power, and battery life thanks to Apple’s proprietary silicon. By creating a system-on-a-chip specifically designed for Apple devices, the company created wildly efficient computers. The new M2 chip represents the evolution of that first effort, adding even more power and the capacity for adding more storage and RAM....

Setting up the Studio Display Right out of the box, Apple’s Studio Display looks beautiful. Like the M1 iMac, it comes in a clever package that basically falls open as you remove the 27-inch screen from its accommodations. It’s heavy—the model I’m testing weighs just over 16 pounds—and every bit the shiny glass and lightly textured aluminum monolith you’d expect from an Apple display. My review unit came with the adjustable display arm, which slides up and down in addition to its tilting capabilities....

8K TVs are coming We’re expecting to see a wave of new 8K super-duper-high-resolution TVs at CES (the world’s largest consumer electronics show) in January, but Sony, LG, and Samsung are getting a head start. There’s still no real content to watch in 8K, but start preparing now for pixel overload. Bose made a smart speaker that hopefully sounds better than it looks The first smart speaker from Bose is called the Home Speaker 500 and it has Alexa built in....

The banking system is experiencing an existential threat in the digital age, forcing it to either innovate, or face disruption. In response, two groups in the US are now researching how to build what’s known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC)—a digital dollar—to compete against private cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins, which are crypto assets pegged to the US dollar to stabilize their value. One of the CBDC projects in the US is helmed by MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the other by The Digital Dollar Foundation and Accenture....

Usually when a planet passes in front of a star, it dims the star’s light for a few hours or days, then disappears and returns again after completing its yearly revolution around its sun. But this particular star’s light has dimmed for up to 80 days at a time, and at irregular intervals. That’s no planet. Nor is it likely to be a clot of dust and rocks. Those sorts of debris disks are only known to occur around young stars, and this star is not a young ‘un....

“The new organisms that they were observing were, to their eyes at least, incredibly rich and varied in color,” says Christopher Cooney, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield in England. Their remarks sparked the controversial notion among scientists that animals and plants living near the equator are more colorful than those found at higher latitudes. But a new report by Cooney and his colleagues demonstrates that, for songbirds at least, this pattern holds true....

Warmer weather is upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere. While it’s a welcome reward for surviving the winter to peel a few layers of clothing off, springtime is also when those unwelcome spring allergies start to blossom. If you do suffer from recurrent seasonal allergies, you aren’t alone. According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, more than 50 million Americans experience various types of allergies each year....

Not all asteroids are created equal. According to KT Ramesh, a materials scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the lead author of the new study, while gravity does a good job of modeling large celestial objects into hardy spheres, things are much more eccentric at smaller sizes. Gravity is not necessarily strong enough to mold asteroid-sized things out into spheres, so they tend to be different shapes and sizes. There are few cases that encapsulate how strange this gets better than the former-bowling-pin-former-snowman-now-double-pancake-shaped object called 2014 MU69....

The new world orbits a red dwarf star just 40 light years away from Earth, and became visible to Earth-based telescopes during a planetary eclipse when it passed in front of its relatively dim star. That crucial moment allowed astronomers to not only spot the super-Earth, but also to calculate the planet’s size and mass. They even hope to figure out the chemical makeup of the planetary atmosphere, based on the filtering effect that it has on light from the red dwarf....

Heat stress can lead to various problems for firefighters working in hot environments, including unconsciousness and cardiac arrest, and the standard method of measuring core body temperature through the ear is not always effective enough. Firefighters working in extreme conditions during Australia’s 2009 Black Sunday fires struggled with heat stress in spite of hydration procedures, signaling a need for greater research into how to manage it. In a trial, 50 firefighters from Victoria’s County Fire Authority swallowed an Equivital EQ02 LifeMonitor capsule to monitor their body’s reaction during a training exercise....

As nations, weapon makers, and the international community work on rules about autonomous weapons, talking honestly about the risks from data error is essential if machines are to deliver on their promise of limiting harm. A new release from an institute within the UN tackles this conversation directly. Published today, “Known Unknowns: Data Issues and Military Autonomous Systems” is a report from the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Its intent is to help policy makers better understand the risks inherent in autonomous machines....