Technology

Most boxed copies of Super Mario Bros. look a lot like this at a quick glance. But they won’t sell for $114,000. [credit:Heritage Auctions ] A sealed, early copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $114,000 Friday at specialist house Heritage Auctions, setting a new record for the sale price of an …

Why is this copy of Super Mario Bros. worth a record $114,000? Read More »

Enlarge (credit: Voyage) The ideal self-driving car would drive itself all the time, in all situations. But achieving that goal in practice is difficult—so difficult, in fact, that most self-driving companies have provisions for human backup to help cars get out of tricky or confusing situations. But companies are often secretive about exactly how these …

This self-driving startup built a “car without wheels” for remote driving Read More »

Enlarge / An Electron rocket launches in August 2019 from New Zealand. (credit: Sam Toms/Rocket Lab) At the beginning of this year, a group of NASA scientists agonized over which robotic missions they should choose to explore our Solar System. Researchers from around the United States had submitted more than 20 intriguing ideas, such as …

How small satellites are radically remaking space exploration Read More »

After the rain cleared Tuesday, media were permitted an opportunity to visit an LC-39A surrounded by photo-worthy puddles. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] 10:15am ET Saturday Update: The third time was not a charm. A little more than an hour before a Falcon 9 rocket was due to launch on Saturday morning from Florida, SpaceX announced …

SpaceX stands down from Starlink launch for the third time [Updated] Read More »

Enlarge / World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan attends a press conference organized by the Geneva Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus, on July 3, 2020 at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. (credit: Getty | Fabrice Coffrini) If you happened to read The New …

WHO still skeptical SARS-CoV-2 lingers in air—despite what the NYT says Read More »

Enlarge / Particle tracks from the LHCb detector. (credit: Brookhaven National Lab) The quark model was an intellectual revolution for physics. Physicists were faced with an ever-growing zoo of unstable particles that didn’t seem to have a role in the Universe around us. Quarks explained all that through an (at least superficially) simple set of …

CERN has discovered a very charming particle Read More »

Enlarge / Tim Cook begins his announcement of Apple Silicon. (credit: Apple) Macs with Apple silicon will still support Thunderbolt, according to Apple. The clarification came after Intel’s Thunderbolt 4 announcement led many to speculate that Macs without Intel CPUs would not have Thunderbolt ports. Here’s Apple’s statement, which was provided to The Verge: Over …

Yes, Apple silicon Macs will have Thunderbolt ports Read More »

Enlarge / A person using the video-sharing application TikTok on a smartphone in Faridabad in India on June 30, 2020. (credit: AFP) Update at 5:15pm ET: Amazon now says it sent the email announcing a TikTok ban by mistake, according to The Verge. “This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error,” an …

Amazon bans TikTok on employee phones, then calls it a mistake [Updated] Read More »

Andy (Charlize Theron) and her right-hand man Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), aka Sebastian le Livre. [credit:Netflix ] Four immortal warriors who have secretly protected humanity for centuries become targeted by a corporate CEO keen on extracting and marketing the key to their mysterious powers—just as a new immortal emerges to join their ranks—in The Old Guard. It’s …

Review: Charlize Theron shines as a world-weary immortal in The Old Guard Read More »