Technology news

In a cavernous Los Angeles County cleanroom, Northrop Grumman and NASA engineers have pieced together the space agency's prized next-generation telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope.
It's big. 
How big? NASA tweeted a picture of a human standing on a crane beside the behemoth cosmic-sleuthing satellite, for reference. (Human for scale.)
This photo showcases just how big #NASAWebb is! We'll be sharing more behind-the-scenes images captured during the integration of the spacecraft an

What's more disconcerting than watching MIT's dog-like Mini Cheetah robot cavort around? Nine of them doing it in unison.
We've had concerns about MIT's robots for some time now, but a new video from the school's biomimetic robotics lab opens into new levels of terror. After a playful bit of robot soccer, the nine Mini Cheetahs gather together like a military unit and start playing a dystopian version of "Simon Says."The synchronized stretches and backflips are creepy enough, but the leaf piles

When the Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge became the first human to run a marathon in under two hours as part of the recent INEOS 1:59 Project Challenge, this was arguably one of the most significant achievements of athleticism since Sir Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. But almost immediately afterward there was controversy, not toward the runner or the unofficial nature of his run (his record has no official status), but over his running shoes. The trainers in question were the

The Hollywood Reporter recently ran an article by Eriq Gardner entitled “Real-Life ‘Terminator’: Major Studios Face Sweeping Loss of Iconic ’80s Film Franchise Rights,” which is certainly an attention-demanding headline. Some of the franchise properties referred to in Gardner’s piece are worth – without exaggeration – billions of dollars to the studios.  Money, in copyright-land, has the attribute of making things happen. Long story short, th

Collins Dictionary, publishing dictionaries now for two centuries, announced its 2019 "word of the year" on Thursday.
It's a term whose usage increased by a whopping 100-fold between 2018 and 2019, according to Collins' lexicographers, and since 2013 has been employed four times as much. 
In mid-September 2019, Google Trends shows searches for the term skyrocketed to their highest levels ever. The word, or term, is "climate strike."
And it's quite relevant. Earth's climate has experienced 1

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has finally named a culprit behind the mysterious lung illness tied to vape use that's been making headlines since the summer.
A new report identifies vitamin E acetate as a cause of the illness that has come to be identified as EVALI. The CDC reached that determination after 29 EVALI patients from 10 different states were tested, and the offending substance showed up in every result.
"Vitamin E acetate is used as an additive in the production of e-

Image: Vizio Sam’s Club, like every other major retailer, will be taking part in Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2019. But unlike most others (aside from Best Buy), it’s already getting things started with a day-long sale today, Saturday, November 9th. You’ll just need a Sam’s Club membership to take part in the savings.
We’ll update this post with any noteworthy Black Friday deals from Sam’s Club that we stumble upon. Also, if there’s a markedly better d

Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! If you’re no stranger to viciously gunning down opponents in CS:GO, Call of Duty, Battlefield, or simply sniping down pedestrians in GTA, you know the importance of a mouse you can rely on, a mouse that will perfectly mirror each and every little movement you make. That’s what gaming mice are for. Unfortunately, they tend to be pretty steep. But not today, not with this killer deal on Razer&

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Twitter launched its “Retweet with comment” feature in 2015. Since then, it’s been hard to track down all people who quoted the tweet. Thankfully, a tool called Quoted Replies will help you out. Here’s how you can use it: On the Twitter app or desktop site Open the Twitter app or site. Go to the Tweet to which you want to see quot

'Flygskam' is a compound of the Swedish words 'flyg', which means flight, and 'skam' – shame. There, the movement is already changing people's flying habits. More and more travelers are replacing planes with trains. 
Now, 'flygskam' is making ripples around the world. So here are some ways you can reduce your carbon footprint if you truly have to fly.  Read more...More about Travel, Mashable Video, Airlines, Air Travel, and Climate Change

TL;DR: Get the futuristic SparkMaker Original SLA 3D Printer Starter Bundle for $299, a 24% savings. Once upon a time, 3D printing was just a topic of fantasy films. Today, it's a technology that's available to the masses. There's just one problem: it's insanely expensive. Most models will cost you well over $1,000, which is why the creators of SparkMaker took it upon themselves to construct a 3D printer that's actually affordable. 
With the help of over 2K backers, the SparkMaker Orig

Back when I was a youngin’ in the late '80s and early '90s, the top gifts for the holidays were action figures, Nerf guns, and Power Wheels. Fast-forward to 2019 and I’ve got two kids of my own — a 4-year-old and 5-month-old — and holiday shopping for a child is considerably harder.
Before you hit me with an “OK, Boomer,” let me explain. 
My partner and I would like our children to grow up without their eyes glazed over 24/7, glued to a screen ... you kno

TL;DR: Experience the sheer joy of sleeping in ultra cozy bamboo sheets — this 4-piece queen sheet set is just $32.99, a 69% savings. Sadly, you can't wave a magic wand to improve your sleeping habits. But something as straightforward as changing your bedding could be a step in the right direction. It makes sense: if you're uncomfortable, you're probably not getting the best sleep. And what better time to make the move than Black Friday month? (Yes, it has an entire month now.)
Sleepi

TL;DR: Get the informative Android Jetpack and App Development Certification Bundle for $29, a 97% savings. With an average salary of around $90k a year, app development is a lucrative way to make a living  — and it's in super high demand, too. Some companies are even paying people thousands for referrals; they need Android developers that badly. Basically, you'll make a ton of money and be wanted by pretty much everyone. Is that not the dream?
Obviously, it's not that simple &md

House plants: They’re chic. They’re natural and eco-friendly. They help clean the air you breathe. If you don’t have at least one plant in your home, we beg you to reconsider, because you’re truly missing out on some good stuff. 
If you have someone in your life whose studio apartment doubles as a plant nursery, the best gift that you can give them is something that’ll benefit their little green darlings (you can always gift yourself, too — we fully suppo

TL;DR: The powerful Eufy RoboVac 30C robot vacuum cleaner is on sale for £169.99 on Amazon, saving you 41% on list price.We've been waiting weeks for Black Friday deals to start dropping, and we're finally starting to see some movement. It's been painful at times, but it looks like we've made it.
Amazon has launched its "Hidden Gems Sale", which hasn't explicably got anything to do with Black Friday, except that it's definitely a sort of warm up for the main event. Consider this sale a pra

Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth’s. Some may even harbor life. Over 99 percent of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change. With NASA’s new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close

TL;DR: The precise Eufy smart scale is on sale for £31.99 on Amazon, saving you 64% on list price.Amazon has officially launched its "Hidden Gems Sale", which means shoppers can expect impressive deals on loads of lesser known brands, until Nov. 12. Basically, its Amazon's way of building momentum and transitioning to Black Friday. 
We're all for it, because it means you're getting more opportunities to save on some top products that you may not have come across before. You can save o

TL;DR: ZenMate VPN is on sale for £1.66 a month, saving you 82% on list price.Black Friday is so close you can almost taste it, and it tastes pretty sweet. You are going to have plenty of opportunities to save on everything from laptops to 4K TVs, which is exciting. What's not so exciting is protecting these devices, but that doesn't mean it's not absolutely vital.
The online world is a fairly nasty place nowadays, and there are loads of threats lurking out there on the web. The best way o

TL;DR: NordVPN is on sale for £2.82 a month with one month for free, saving you 70% on list price.Sound the alarm, because Black Friday deals are dropping. We know we're still in the early stages of November but it's happening, and once it starts, it will be difficult to stop. The Black Friday deals avalanche is building.
We haven't had any of those big-ticket items going on sale yet. We've not had those massive TV, laptop, or gaming deals, but we are getting some impressive VPN offers to

The Rokuremote is coming to your wrist. The company announced today the launch of an Apple Watch app that lets you control your Roku device, including Rokumedia players and select Roku TVs, with a tap — just like the Roku mobile app, but sized for your wrist.
Considered the limited screen real estate, the app is fairly robust in terms of its feature set.
In addition to the expected media controls — like the ability to play and pause what you’re watching –, the app also of

36Kr,a Chinese news and data website that tracks startups, fell 10% in its Nasdaq debut on Friday.
The disappointing debut followed 36Kr’s decision to slash the size of its offering from 3.6 million shares to 1.4 million and pricing its shares at $14.5, the bottom of marketed range. This meant that the firm, which had initially aimed to raise as much as $100 million, settled for $20 million. A company top executive said that even as the offering is smaller, it has great confidence in its s

Airbnb’s party house problems keep piling up.
Less than a week after the short-term rental site banned party houses in response to a shooting at one, another party house listing reportedly became the scene of an armed robbery. 
Atlanta police are investigating after a group of masked men with guns entered a house rented on Airbnb for what may have been a belated Halloween party. The robbers, who showed up at 2:30 a.m. and came in through an unlocked door, struck two of the victims bef

Microsoft’s been on something of a creative roll lately, but I’m not just talking about its influx of new hardware and crazy form factors. Rather, the company has been innovating in another important, but decidedly user-friendly way: it’s making its hardware a whole lot easier to repair. The company made a big deal over its improvements to the Surface Laptop 3 to make it more serviceable, including a removable SSD and modular, easier-to-access components – all without co

Instagram will soon be expanding one of its biggest and most controversial experiments: hiding the number of likes on a post. 
The service will expand the long-running test, which hides like counts from public-facing parts of the app, to the U.S. starting next week, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced Friday. 
The test is still an experiment, so not all U.S.-based Instagram users will see their like counts disappearing overnight when it goes into effect next week. But to hear Instag