Technology news

At 7:30PM this evening, China will launch its first crewed mission to the Tiangong-2 space station, which will test the station’s life support and conduct a variety of experiments over the next 30 days. The mission will be the longest flight the country has conducted to date.
This is the first crewed mission for the country since 2013, and will be carried out by a pair of taikonauts: Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong. The pair will ride into space aboard the Shenzhou-11, which will launch atop Ch

The German government has asked that Tesla stop using the word 'Autopilot' in its advertising, over concerns that it might suggest that drivers don’t need to pay attention to the road while driving, according to Reuters.
German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt sent a letter to the automaker on Friday, noting that the term was "misleading" and that the request was made "to avoid misunderstandings and false customer expectations," according to German newspaper Bild am Sonntag. The Feder

The Gypsy Astronaut is a GIFs-only Tumblr with subjects ranging from 1920s silent film to Monty Python to Ghost World to David Bowie to miscellany so obscure it’s impossible to imagine that the source video is even available on YouTube. The hodgepodge is unnerving, but warmly so.It’s one of my favorite GIFs accounts because the artist who operates it, Jack Moon, doesn’t dwell on what other people will find shareable. He’s only interested in picking apart why he finds a mo

Seattle-based designer Mark Wheeler embedded contact microphones on ping pong paddles, hid an Arduino in a retro radio, and designed an app, all to get a ping pong table to play music to the rhythm of a game. The idea of Ping Pong FM, as Wheeler and his team call it, is to play fast enough that the song’s true tempo is maintained. It’s high stakes. If a player misses the ball, the music stops completely. That's no fun.
The microphone in the paddles picks up on the reverberation of th

The Obama administration is considering a major retaliatory cyber attack against Russia, NBC News reports. The move is in response to allegations of the country’s involvement in recent hacks against the Democratic National Committee earlier this summer.
The operation is designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin
NBC reported on Friday that the CIA is preparing for an operation "designed to harass and ‘embarrass’" the country’s leadership, including Russian Presid

The Federal Aviation Administration officially banned Galaxy Note 7s from being brought onto airplanes earlier this week, and under a new Emergency Restriction / Prohibition Order, it’s now a federal crime to fly with the device.
The FAA issued Emergency Restriction/Prohibition Order No. FAA-2016- 9288 on Friday, which states that as of noon on October 15, fliers are prohibited from bringing the device onto an aircraft. The order restricts passengers from carrying the phone "on their perso

Update, 2:10PM ET: NASA announced that the launch will be postponed until October 17th at 7:40PM EDT due to a "ground support equipment (GSE) cable that did not perform as expected during the pre-launch check out."
Tomorrow, Orbital ATK will launch its Antares rocket again — nearly two years after the vehicle’s last launch ended in a spectacular explosion. Since then, the Antares has gone through an extensive upgrade, as the vehicle’s main engines have been repla

Donald Trump isn’t thrilled with Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him in Saturday Night Live's cold open sketch last night, calling the show "boring and unfunny".
Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016Trump’s response to the show’s sketch shows that SNL is on the right track when it comes to satirizing the presidentia

Two months ago, I strained my neck. It’s better, but I now notice that every time it gets cold, I feel tingling all down my arm. I started joking that I had become one of those people who could “tell when it’s about to rain” because my joints hurt. Then I wondered: how does changing weather affect our health?
Turns out, it’s not just that we’re more likely to get sick when the weather turns cold. Lots of health issues are associated with the changing of the se

After seven months of traveling to Mars, Europe and Russia's two ExoMars spacecraft are scheduled to separate from one another this morning — a crucial move just three days before they reach the Red Planet. The two vehicles have been connected to one another since they launched from Earth in March, but now it’s time for both probes to get started on their primary missions. One will look for signs of life in Mars’ atmosphere, while the other just needs to land on the M

The animated GIF is a wordless poem.
Without the barrier of language, it expresses emotions, and visualizes in one looping series of frames what it would take the written word, well, at least a sentence, maybe even two! It's for this reason that some GIFs persist, long past relevance and the internet’s self-destructive short-term memory.
Why does one GIF stick around for years, while another expires faster than a carton of milk? One theory: a long-lasting GIF is often preserved by a rich b

LONDON — A girl may have no name, but she sure has a hell of a strong game on Instagram.
When she's not busy knocking the stuffing out of Lannisters, Freys and anyone else foolish enough to get in her way, Maisie Williams is busy being brilliant on social media.
SEE ALSO: Here are all the 'Game of Thrones' actors who have been spotted so far in Northern Ireland
From glorious Game of Thrones throwback photos to her ever-epic friendship with Sophie Turner, we've rounded up some of Williams'

During America's circus of an election year, the world of The Simpsons seems to be inching closer and closer to reality.
In fact, it may have even gone beyond the bizarro world of Springfield, with creator Matt Groening recently dubbing Donald Trump's candidacy "beyond satire." In a new clip, the show takes us to election day where Mr. Burns is voting for Trump (of course) and Smithers secretly loves Hillary Clinton.
Given Russia's apparent *special* interest in the U.S. election, it's no surpr

Airbnb appears set to score a big win in New South Wales after a government inquiry reportedly gave the company the thumbs up.
The results of a government investigation into the regulation of short-term accommodation in New South Wales were leaked to Fairfax Media Sunday. The inquiry is said to recommend home owners who rent out their homes on Airbnb not face council fines as they currently do in some districts.
SEE ALSO: This startup wants to be the Airbnb of assisted living
The details of the

Did Donald Trump hand Hillary Clinton the presidential election? Is he secretly a shark? Why was Ken Bone ruined? And why can't America have nice things?
Saturday Night Live sought to answer all these questions on Oct. 15 — or at least, to ask them again.
SEE ALSO: Emily Blunt does an uncanny impression of a train in 'SNL' promos
In the political opener for this week's episode, Kate McKinnon and Alec Baldwin reprised their roles as the 2016 presidential frontrunners in a TL;DR parody of th

Billy Bush, Donald Trump's sidekick in the now notorious 2005 tape leaked to the Washington Post, is reportedly receiving a healthy payout from NBC, and the internet knows just what to do with it.
The Today Show anchor was suspended by NBC "pending further review" after he appeared in the clip alongside the Republican presidential candidate, talking explicitly about women. Now Page Six is reporting Bush may get a $10 million settlement from the network.
SEE ALSO: Muslims throw Trumps' answer bac

Australia's new A$5 bill is so high-tech vending machines can't handle it, but no problem — here's something else you can do with all that spare cash.
In a video posted by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), NFSA education manager Cris Kennedy uses the new plastic note to play a record of "Brit's Blues" by Red Norvo and his orchestra, rather than a record player stylus.
The NFSA is at pains to point out they are not playing an official collection record — and they can't guar

With about 15 percent more style points than Steph Curry's infamous hospital shoes and all the swag of an earthbound astronaut, a new, on-of-a-kind shoe debuted this week called the Virgin America First Class Shoe. 
SEE ALSO: Nike Mag self-lacing sneakers fetch $104,000 at Hong Kong auction
The sneakers are the creation of brand agency Eleven Inc. and feature a Wi-Fi hotspot, a built-in phone charging port, a tiny, working video display, three-hour battery life and a seatbelt buckle for tha

GUEST: With all the hustle and bustle going on in the world of chatbots at the moment, one crucial event that is very relevant to the future of A.I. has gone relatively unnoticed. If you are interested in chatbots and A.I., you may have heard about the Loebner Prize, which was created by Hugh Loebner and is a form of the Turing Test that Alan Turing first set up in the 1950s. The Loebner Prize is an annual event in which A.I. specialists from around the world come together to play their bots off

The U.S. Department of Defense and New York University are co-hosting a disaster relief-focused hackathon in Brooklyn this weekend to draw attention to the agency’s new technology accelerator, MD5.
Described by the DoD as a partnership between the agency, NYU, and a “network of top U.S. research universities,” MD5 consists of training programs, hackathon events, and an “acceleration” program that (unlike most accelerators) does not provide funding in

Despite the fact that Samsung has already decided to stop making the problematic Galaxy Note7, airlines continue to announce bans that prohibit passengers from bringing the device on flights, the latest being Australia's leading airlines. 
SEE ALSO: U.S. bans Samsung Galaxy Note7 from all flights
Virgin Australia and its subsidiary, Tiger Airways, as well as Qantas and its subsidiary, Jetstar, have all announced bans on the device, a rule that will begin on Sunday, Australia time. 
"Th

GUEST: With changes in ecommerce taking place at a faster rate than ever before, two major shifts in consumer behavior have impacted retailers in a way that they cannot ignore.
The first is the increasing importance placed on consumer reviews. This trend has grown in significance, with one survey stating that 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Google itself is paying more attention to reviews, with industry analysts noting that consumer opinions ar

"Borrowed Time," a superb short from Pixar animators Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj, just made its online debut.
The emotional work, which observes a still-mourning sheriff as he recalls a tragic accident from his past, took around five years to make, and was created entirely in Coats' and Hamou-Lhadi's spare time. But for its creators, each minute was worth it. They're hoping to expand the world of American short film.
“In America, animation has largely become synonymous with kids&rsqu

After a decade of fitful talks, nearly 200 countries agreed early Saturday morning in Rwanda to the most important near-term global warming agreement ever devised. 
By curtailing the rapidly growing use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by more than 80 percent over the next 30 years, countries may have found a way to avert the worst of the worst-case global warming scenarios. 
The HFC agreement should help avoid up to 0.5 degrees Celsius, or 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, of global warming by t