Enlarge / A drive-through COVID-19 testing site operated by Omni Healthcare in Melbourne, Fla. on April 8. (credit: Paul Hennessy | Echoes Wire | Barcroft Media | Getty Images) One of the biggest challenges hampering US institutional response to the COVID-19 crisis is testing: when you can’t identify who has the disease, you can’t tell …
Trump administration pulls funding for drive-through COVID-19 testing Read More »
Enlarge / A Long March 3B rocket lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in 2018. (credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images) The Long March 3B rocket is one of China’s oldest active and most reliable boosters, with more than five dozen successful launches. On Thursday, however, the rocket failed when it attempted to launch …
China suffers its second launch failure in less than a month Read More »
Enlarge (credit: Martin Falbisoner / Wikimedia Commons) The US Senate has become the latest organization to tell its members not to use Zoom because of concerns about data security on the video conferencing platform that has boomed in popularity during the coronavirus crisis. The Senate sergeant at arms has warned all senators against using the …
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) A newly discovered botnet that preys on home routers, video recorders, and other network-connected devices is one of the most advanced Internet-of-things platforms ever seen, researchers said on Wednesday. Its list of advanced features includes the ability to disguise malicious traffic as benign, maintain persistence, and infect devices that run on …
Meet dark_nexus, quite possibly the most potent IoT botnet ever Read More »
Using chemistry to unlock the difference between cold- and hot-brew coffee, courtesy of the American Chemical Society. Cold-brew coffee is so hot right now, and not just with hipster consumers. Scientists at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have been taking a deeper look at the underlying chemistry to better understand how the cold-brew method alters …
The chemistry of cold-brew coffee is so hot right now Read More »
Enlarge / We could have used one of these FreeBSD stress balls while trying to get a desktop running. (credit: FAndrey / Flickr) This month’s Linux distro review isn’t of a Linux distribution at all—instead, we’re taking a look at FreeBSD, the original gangster of free Unix-like operating systems. The first FreeBSD release was in 1993, …
Not-actually Linux distro review: FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE Read More »
Enlarge / Kind of looks like a mid-’90s Sega Genesis box cover. We’re not mad about it. (credit: Riot Games) In October, the makers of League of Legends announced an ambitious plan to roll out new games in entirely different genres. A fighting game, a card game, a possible action-RPG, and more—Riot Games is up …
Valorant closed beta: The tactical hero shooter I never knew I wanted Read More »
Enlarge (credit: Soumen Nath / Getty Images) The Trump administration will pay General Motors $489 million to manufacture 30,000 ventilators, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday. GM, of course, is a car company, not a supplier of medical equipment. Rather than designing a ventilator from scratch, GM will be using a …
Feds will pay GM $489 million to make 30,000 ventilators by August Read More »
Enlarge (credit: Orange County NC ) Plastics have a lot of properties that have made them fixtures of modern societies. They can be molded into any shape we’d like, they’re tough yet flexible, and they come in enough variations that we can tune the chemistry to suit different needs. The problem is that they’re tough …
Newly engineered enzyme can break down plastic to raw materials Read More »
(credit: Uryadovy Courier) Coal miners in Serbia recently dug up an unexpected surprise: three probable Roman-era ships, buried in the mud of an ancient riverbed for at least 1,300 years. The largest is a flat-bottomed river vessel 15 meters (49 feet) long, which seems to have been built with Roman techniques. Two smaller boats, each …
Probable Roman shipwrecks unearthed at a Serbian coal mine Read More »