Swarms of drones have been seen flying over Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming in the past few weeks, but no one has claimed responsibility

Pigeons feathers are remarkably complex and understanding how they work has led to the first robot that flies like a pigeon, dubbed PigeonBot

A review of two-factor authentication methods, which involve websites sending confirmation texts to your phone, has found that millions of people may risk having their online accounts hacked

Soft finger-like gripper robots have been engineered to sweat when hot and are able to cool down almost three times more efficiently than humans

A sci-fi collection explores extreme corporate futures, such as a Tinder-run city where you can swipe left or right for everything from sex to teachers

In the memoir Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener examines the collective hyperconfidence that has enabled the tech sector’s meteoric growth

The US Special Operations Command is developing a portable face-recognition system designed to identify people 1 kilometre away. It could also be used by law enforcement

An AI search engine takes one-tenth of a second to search more than 2 billion satellite images, identifying natural or built features that look alike, such as forests or military bases

Tech firms are making record profits but paying little tax. Now global leaders are discussing ways to make them pay their fair share

Clothes that light up by themselves could be a high-tech replacement to high-visibility gear worn by cyclists and construction workers

A lightweight liquid metal alloy that is less dense than water could be used to make exoskeletons and transformable flexible robots

Julia Ebner infiltrated the hidden forums that extremists use. Her experiences lay bare how they hijack social media and video games to spread hate – and how to beat them

A robot can recreate the mechanism plants use to transport water to bend itself towards the sun and open its leaves like a real plant

Doom Eternal does contain gratuitous violence, but the evidence suggests violence in video games doesn't affect people's behaviour in the real world, says Jacob Aron

Join Pearse Keane to find out why the NHS is collaborating with AI company DeepMind and how deep learning could transform ophthalmology

Is our love affair with AI really about building a new kind of deity to meet human needs no amount of rationality can fill? Max Barry's disturbing novel Providence lays out the case, says Sally Adee

The video game Resident Evil 3 was in development long before the coronavirus outbreak, but it holds up a mirror to the strange times we live in today

Fabric with tiny vibrating motors elicits sensations associated with clouds, water and rocks on the skin and has been made into a dress that could improve emotions

An AI-powered application lets you create real-time deepfakes during video calls, making you appear to be speaking as anyone from Albert Einstein to the Mona Lisa

AI can check satellite images of the ocean and distinguish between floating materials such as seaweed or plastics, which could help clean-up efforts

A 3D printed grate can be used to make a smart window that blocks heat from sunlight out in the summer while letting it through in the winter, conserving energy

Telling Lies is a game where you sift through video calls to solve a mystery. Half the time you don't know what you should be doing, but that's part of the fun, says Jacob Aron

देश के साथ-साथ उत्तर प्रदेश में भी कोरोना संक्रमितों की संख्या में इजाफा होता जा रहा है।

दिल्ली में कोरोना वायरस के बढ़ते प्रकोप के कारण हरियाणा और उत्तर प्रदेश सरकार ने अपनी सीमाओं पर सख्ती बढ़ा दी है। लॉकडाउन के दौरान दिल्ली से सटे गुरुग्राम, नोएडा और गाजियाबाद के बॉर्डर को सील कर दिया गया है।

On bank holiday... Friday. For NHS charities.

Get an all day breakfast on a pizza before you go on your killing spree. Only psychopaths will order this, is what I'm saying.

Personally, I welcome whatever reality TV drivel Twitch dreams up to feed our insatiable appetite for content.

These findings suggest that scientists may need to broaden their definition of what a life-supporting planet might look like.

Scientists are speculating as to how the two creatures managed to become preserved in such an unusual way.

Sony has managed to best its top-of-the-line noise cancelling earbuds with a new, improved, and best of all, cheaper model.

Because Amazon movie purchases are really just long-term rentals that can disappear from your library at any time.

Exhaust fumes and cold KFC?

As well as announcing reminders to stay away from each other, the robots also estimate how many people are in the park at any given time.

Up until now mask-wearing had only been an unenforced suggestion by the company.

It delivers almost all the functionality Apple promised, with a steep Apple-like price tag to match.

The hacker in question hasn't even graduated high school yet.

Only the best images are used to create a mosaic of the entire planet, resulting in a super-crisp, high-definition view.

It’s quite the spectacle, but the light show is leading people to be less than cautious about social distancing.

The majority of these children have tested positive for the virus or seem to carry antibodies from an earlier infection.

Alison Roman’s latest comments about Marie Kondo have not sparked joy.

In an interview with The New Consumer about her increased popularity and the avenues she might pursue to capitalize on it, the popular food columnist discussed her hesitance to put her name on a product line—citing the Japanese organization maven and Chrissy Teigen as examples of what she did not foresee in her own future.

“I have a collaboration coming out with [the cookware startup] Material, a capsule collection,” Roman said. “It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere—vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

This week, new claims about the accuracy of the Garden of Eden story emerged online and in tabloid magazines. Professor Tom Meyer, a scripture expert known as the Bible Memory Man, argues that there are two artifacts—a 4,000-year-old seal and roughly 3,600-year-old stone—that provide evidence both for the location of the Garden of Eden and the Adam and Eve story. But do his claims add up? (Spoiler alert: No)

In a story, reported this week in the Daily Express, Meyer, who teaches at his alma mater Shasta Bible College and University, refers first to a Sumerian king list, an inscribed Middle Bronze aged stone prism currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The prism dates to between 2100 B.C. and 1650 B.C. and was discovered in 1922 by Herbert Weld-Blundell during his excavations in Kish, the ancient capital of Sumer, in Mesopotamia. It was purchased by the Ashmolean shortly thereafter.

Meyer said, “In addition to enumerating the long reigns of pre-flood rulers, this prism lists Eridu—an ancient site in southern Iraq—as the first city ever built.” This is significant, he says, because “The ancient site of the Garden of Eden… is thought by some to be located at Eridu under a cluster of tels” (Tels are artificial hills).

Read more at The Daily Beast.

For the past two months, Katie Holliday has been cooped up alone in her Brooklyn apartment thinking longingly about an unlikely erogenous zone: the lower half of a stranger’s face. 

“I remember joking to my friend before all of this started, ‘Imagine if someone’s face becomes their most coveted body part?’” Holliday, who is 31, told The Daily Beast. “‘When someone removes their mask, is it a sign of trust? Is it like letting someone see you naked?’ I was kidding back then, but now it’s reality.”

Holliday doesn’t know exactly when it will be safe to start seeing people like she did before the pandemic began, but she’ll return to a singles scene unlike any other in history. “I’m picturing walking into a bar where everyone’s wearing masks,” she said. “I’ll meet someone whose face is covered. Are they cute or not? I don’t know!” 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

By Rachana Pradhan and Fred Schulte | Kaiser Health News

The Trump administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic-related bailouts to health care providers with checkered histories, including a Florida-based cancer center that agreed to pay a $100 million criminal penalty as part of a federal antitrust investigation.

At least half of the top 10 recipients, part of a group that received $20 billion in emergency funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, have paid millions in recent years either in criminal penalties or to settle allegations related to improper billing and other practices, a Kaiser Health News review of government records shows.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Two years ago, the voices of survivors of sexual harassment and assault launched an unprecedented movement the world over, using Tarana Burke’s MeToo framework. That one moment was a spark into the unknown, but the movement itself was no happy accident. It was built to fuel a reclamation of power for those who had been silenced for too long, a laborious undertaking by activists, advocates, and organizations including mine—the National Women’s Law Center, which also houses and administers the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund.

Since then, the #MeToo movement has enabled considerable progress, including making space for more and more people who have claims of sexual misconduct to come forward. People like Tara Reade.

But despite this dramatic cultural awakening, our institutions and systems are just beginning to stir. The lack of necessary legal and policy changes both in our government and in our workplaces, schools, houses of worship, and otherwise have created a world that very imperfectly serves the needs of survivors. Every domestic worker who is entirely unprotected by our federal and most state civil rights statutes, and every person who is classified as an independent contractor and left out of civil rights protections, have proven that our work must take on the reform and re-envisioning of the very systems that excluded them in the first place. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

This post contains spoilers for Dead to Me Season 2.

Maybe it’s the surreality of, well, everything lately—or maybe it’s just aged like the fine wines all of its characters toss back by the bottle. Whatever the reason, Dead to Me Season 2 hits even better than Season 1—fighting off a sophomore slump with a fresh batch of twists, dramatic ironies, and, most importantly, some more Christina Applegate angsting out to metal. Perhaps this season’s smartest move, however, is a trope pulled straight out of Soapy Dramas 101: Bringing James Marsden back to play his own twin.

Series creator Liz Feldman was sending the usual thank-you notes back and forth with cast and crew after Season 1 wrapped when she received a particularly amusing message from Marsden.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

On Tuesday the president took his first trip since the coronavirus grounded the country, to a Honeywell factory in battleground state Arizona. This particular Honeywell factory produces N95 masks. Pictures of the trip immediately surfaced on the internet, and they showed a president sporting his usual mango-tinted, ever-tan skin, his usual topiary-structured hair tinted a baffling yellowish, and a pair of clear safety goggles.

But what was missing? What we did not see on the president’s face was a mask. While the rest of us cover our faces as recommended by the CDC, the president does not. In fact, we have never seen a mask on the president, despite the president’s love of masking himself when it comes to his tax returns, his sexual assault allegations, and his financial dealings.   

On Wednesday, when pressed on his decision not to wear a mask at a mask factory, the president responded with the very fishy, “I had a mask on for a period of time, I had it on back, backstage. But they said you didn’t need it, so, I didn’t need it. And by the way, if you noticed, nobody else had it on that was in the group.” Okay. Whatever you say. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A 7-year-old boy from Westchester County is the second child in New York state to die from pediatric multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome tied to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. A 5-year-old boy died earlier in the week from the same syndrome at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York City.

The childhood ailment has affected at least 73 children in New York state and authorities are now looking for other potential cases across the country. Cases have also been reported in Washington, D.C., California, Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington state and New Jersey, where a 4-year-old died with symptoms last month.

It has been previously thought that children are less likely to suffer any serious complications from the coronavirus.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

It’s not going out on much of a limb to say that the single greatest line in any rock and roll song—shall we double down and say all music ever?—is “A-wop-bom-a-loo-mop-a-lomp-bom-bom!!”

Surely that says it all.

As with any truly oracular pronouncement, it inspires consternation in the first-time listener, and the second-time listener, and the third, the fourth, and on and on. The mystery never diminishes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Five Australian hospitals are set to receive the experimental coronavirus drug, remdesivir. Sydney's St Vincent hospital has been confirmed as one location, according to a report from The Guardian. More »

Last year, Google turned the mid-range phone market on its head by introducing the ludicrously-priced and well-specced Pixel 3a. A few other brands have followed suit since then, but none have been quite as exciting as the new iPhone SE. Now it truly seems like flagship inclusions at lower price points are here to stay - and it's about damn time. The trend of $1,500 - $2,000 becoming the norm for new phones over the last few years has been bad for buyers. A new middle ground has been long overdue and we welcome it. But is the resurrected iPhone SE actually a good phone to buy in 2020? More »