Posts

As of yet there are no documented cases of hackers holding a user ransom by his medical device, but experts are realizing that cyber security for medical devices—really anything connected to the Internet, including surgical robots—is lagging woefully behind the digital protection arming other systems and gadgets. Experts quoted in a recent piece in Bloomberg Business estimate that the security around medical devices is about a decade behind the overall standard....

Selling for $1,000 without a lens or $1,300 with an 18–105-millimeter image-stabilized zoom lens, the camera will probably draw photographers with a wide range of skills. DSLR novices will feel at home with familiar features such as face detection and scene modes, and advanced shooters will appreciate trickle-down technology from Nikon’s higher-end cameras such as the D700’s long-exposure noise-reduction controls, Active D-Lighting (which prevents blown-out highlights while maintaining detail in dark parts of the photo) and a gorgeous three-inch LCD....

Whether you want to generate weird and wonderful AI images from text prompts or create a musical composition in partnership with a computer, there’s a lot to explore. These apps are getting better and better with time, and they can give you a good idea as to what AI can do and where it might be headed in the future. It’s the work of software engineer Philip Wang, and it shows off the power of publicly available Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)....

“The article paints a bleak picture,” says Seth Wynes, a researcher in the Geography Department at the University of British Columbia. “I think it’s important to realize that we have a lot of choice in the planet that we want to have future generations inheriting. Even if we’ve missed the ideal scenario, which is no climate warming—because we’re already locked into some climate warming—we have a much better future in store for us if we act quickly and make significant changes....

This article was originally published in the Spring 2019 Transportation issue of Popular Science.

Here in 2019, we received a considerable information dump about both machines, which should arrive in 2020. Just in case you haven’t been following along with the developments, here’s what we know so far. The new Xbox Microsoft is currently working on an update to the Xbox One that it internally calls Project Scarlett. It’s scheduled to hit store shelves during the holiday shopping season in 2020. The company partnered with AMD to create a custom processor for the upcoming machine that will reportedly quadruple the power of the current Xbox One X, which is the beefiest option in the lineup at the moment....

But the researchers were shocked to find that 27 of the 29 leukemia patients—that’s 94 percent of the study participants—went into complete remission and showed no more signs of the disease. Stanley Riddell, one of the researchers behind the trial, presented the unpublished results on Sunday at the annual AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C. Our blood contains T cells, which are supposed to detect pathogens in the body. In this study, the researchers removed these cells from patient’s blood and tweaked their genes to recognize the cancer cells that would otherwise slip by the immune system....

On October 31, an approximately 1,300-foot asteroid will hurtle by at about 1.3 times the distance of the Moon. It’ll likely be our closest encounter with such a huge space rock until 2027. The timing of 2015 TB145 (the “Halloween Asteroid”) is spooky, but so is the fact that it managed to sneak up on us. We didn’t even know it existed until October 10–just 21 days before its arrival....

Click here to see all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage. What a difference a year makes. Prior to March of 2020, if you didn’t work in a hospital setting or on a construction site, it’s unlikely you had ever worn a face mask. Now, we own them by the dozens—a grab bag of KN95s and bandanas, surgical masks, and floral-printed fabric coverings. Such is life during a global pandemic. And as case counts have begun rising again because of the new highly infectious Delta variant, it begs the question: Will these shields be with us for the foreseeable future?...

The product of more than a decade of dedicated research and development by Microsoft Research (Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011), Skype Translator does what several other Silicon Valley icons—not to mention the U.S. Department of Defense—have not yet been able to do. To do so, Microsoft Research (MSR) had to solve some major machine learning problems while pushing technologies like deep neural networks into new territory. Their lofty goal: To make it possible for any human on Earth to communicate with any other human on Earth, with no linguistic divide....

In the internet age, this operation is harder than ever before, because online shopping drops innumerable digital breadcrumbs. From a web browser that tracks your every move to a delivery company that sends regular updates straight to your phone, shopping services seem determined to leave clues that will ruin the element of surprise. To avoid giving away your plans, you’ll need cunning, craft—and a little digital trickery. Follow these five tips to minimize the risk of gift discovery before the holiday arrives....

Some terrarium purists consider ‘shrooms a sign of aesthetic failure. However, unexpected mushrooms can actually signify an ecosystem that’s working exactly the way it should: recycling dead or decaying plant matter and returning nutrients to the soil. Mushrooms may sprout out of your terrarium’s moss, emerge from rotting wood such as sticks or tree bark, or pop right out of the soil itself. And if you’re a toadstool enthusiast, you can even design your miniature environment specifically to foster mushroom growth....

Understand your storage status Checking the current status of your PS5’s internal storage is simple enough: Open up Settings from the home screen, then choose Storage and Console Storage. Right at the top, you’ll see how much space is left on your PS5. You’ll also see all your used storage broken into separate categories, including game data and media files (like screenshots and videos). To make sure your PS5 and its games keep running smoothly, it’s important to know how the internal storage works, and, if necessary, how to clear out some room on the SSD....

Why your keyboard is also your mouse Modern computing has long relied on keyboard navigation, and the earliest versions were more or less just a bolted-on typewriter. Manufacturers eventually added “home,” “end,” “page up,” and “page down” keys to make navigating reams of information less of a chore. Over time, more specialized keys, including “alt” and “command,” appeared as computers took on new jobs. Still, the keyboard has changed so little that decades-old models may be perfectly compatible with modern operating systems....

How to use Apple’s ‘scan text’ shortcut I’ll use Apple’s Notes app for this walkthrough, as it appears the text-scanning shortcut was built for it, but you can apply the same principles across your mobile operating system. Open any note, tap the camera icon, and choose Scan Text from the four options in the emerging menu. A camera window will appear on the screen. But if you have a piece of tech that supports this feature, you should definitely learn how it works....

Sharing a WiFi network with a bunch of strangers isn’t a great way to keep your data private. Taking the necessary precautions is easy when you’re using a single laptop on free coffee shop WiFi. But if you’re living in a place where you share a network with your neighbors, things start to get complicated. That girl from down the hall seems nice, but you don’t know her. She might be a hacker, right?...

How to select multiple photos on an iPhone At first, selecting a group of photos on iOS may appear a little clunky, and figuring out how to select all the photos on your iPhone may seem downright impossible. But there is a way to do both. The first thing you’ll need to do is open the Photos app and go to either the Library or Albums tab. If you’re trying to grab all the images on your phone, we recommend the former because it has an All Photos option that will display every picture on your device....

Other sorting methods will help you take better care of your clothes, which will not only keep your favorite garments looking great for longer, but will reduce your need to buy more. And in turn, you’ll save money and shrink your carbon footprint. You should start by reading the care labels on your clothes carefully, but beyond that, the level of sorting you choose will depend on the time and energy you want to invest....

Soundproofing a room versus acoustic treatment The first thing to know about how to soundproof a room is that you won’t actually be soundproofing in the literal sense. Soundproofing blocks the sound inside your space from escaping to the outside and prevents outside sounds from leaking into your space. You don’t hear cars, dogs, or leaf blowers, and your neighbors don’t hear you hammering out your guitar riff. This type of isolation is what you’ll find in professional recording studios, which are built from the ground up to achieve a perfect acoustic environment....

The default system on iOS uploads your files to iCloud (or another cloud storage platform), which is incredibly convenient since it automatically syncs your content to your tablet, computer, and the web. But if you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection at hand or just don’t want to pay extra for storage, you can also move your photos and videos over to macOS and Windows manually. Moving files from an iPhone to a Mac computer is easy, but iOS to Windows transfers are relatively straightforward, too....