Author: admin
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Black Carbon From Rocket Launches Will Heat the Atmosphere
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a pair of outspoken scientists reveal how warp drives—the show’s ubiquitous propulsion system used to get travelers around space—can be incredibly environmentally destructive. From then on, the characters take care to limit the damage of their spaceflights. Could a similar scenario now play out in the…
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Why Watch Content on Your Phone When You Can Watch It on Your TV?
Back when smartphones were still a new thing and HDTVs were a lot less smart–oh, about 10 years ago–putting what was on your phone’s screen onto a television screen typically involved an adapter dongle, a cable, and a ton of frustration. Today, improved wireless standards, smart TVs, streaming media apps, and devices like Roku boxes…
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The Many Possible Futures of Streaming Television
Angela Watercutter: Oh boy, I think streaming is … is it fair to say it’s fractured, if not totally broken? Like, I feel like it kind of grew too fast for its own good. All of a sudden Netflix took off, and everybody kind of saw a cash cow, and all the networks and studios…
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Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists
police forces around the world have increasingly used hacking tools to identify and track protesters, expose political dissidents’ secrets, and turn activists’ computers and phones into inescapable eavesdropping bugs. Now, new clues in a case in India connect law enforcement to a hacking campaign that used those tools to go an appalling step further: planting…
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The Franchise Frenzy Leaves Nothing to the Imagination
Deep in the heart of Middle-earth there is a wood—or maybe a cave or a hut—and in that wood (or cave or hut) a story takes place, centuries before the events of The Lord of the Rings. What’s it about? Who knows! It’s somewhere in the appendices of the LOTR books. And even though some…
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Particle Hunters Can Spend a Lifetime Searching for Answers
IceCube is an example of how big science, and particularly particle physics, now often works on generational time scales. Getting from the idea of IceCube to actually drilling its neutrino sensors into a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to pinpointing a high-energy neutrino source took 30 years. In that time, key personnel retired, passed away,…
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20 Last-Minute Father’s Day Deals (2022)
Relax and take a deep breath. There’s still time to find Dad a gift. And not just any gift, like a tie or a boring wallet, but a gift that he’ll cherish and talk about for years to come. You just have to act fast. From rocking out to walking out, we’ve got you covered…
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Can Democracy Include a World Beyond Humans?
There was once an orangutan named Ken Allen at the San Diego Zoo who was notorious for carrying out complex escape plans. He found every nut and bolt in his cage and unscrewed them; in his open enclosure he threw rocks and feces at visitors. On one occasion, he constructed a ladder out of some…
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‘Pokémon Legends: Arceus’ Helps Me Manage My Productivity Obsession
Now is not the time to be talking about a quest to be more productive—yet here we are. Amidst high levels of stress, deteriorating work-life boundaries, and a terrible news cycle, listening to that inner monologue about what you could or should be doing at any moment is hard on one’s mental health. But still,…
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The US Can Halve Its Emissions by 2030—if It Wants To
That said, he adds that it’s not a permanent solution. A future grid that runs entirely on renewables needs to be more flexible, since operators won’t be able to burn fossil fuels to fill temporary gaps between energy demand and generation. (At night during a heat wave, for instance, people could be running lots of…