One of the difficulties in developing quantum computers to their full potential – and there are quite a few – is cutting out interference. With technology as delicate as this, any kind of environmental noise or imperfection that affects the careful balance of a quantum computer could cause havoc with its calculations. To overcome this

According to a new study, the energy costs of mining Bitcoin alone could cause a 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures within 20 years. Bitcoin might be promising a brave new world of financial freedom, but it’s also responsible for a huge spike in electricity use, so the new study has attempted to put a number

This Halloween, the creepiest event to attend might be a mass online social experiment hosted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is famous for churning out some of the world’s top engineers, programmers, and scientists. But the university’s Media Laboratory is increasingly known for launching experimental projects in October that are designed

When you’re high above the clouds at cruising altitude in a giant passenger jet, probably the last thing on your mind is the threat of a mid-air collision with a drone. But at take-off and landing, that danger isn’t so distant. Last year, a drone did in fact collide with an in-flight US Army Black

We’ve all been guilty of ripping our USB Drive out of our computers instead of ejecting them properly, only to receive the judgemental pop up telling us we really shouldn’t have done that. But when everything on the USB works fine next time you plug it in, you can’t help but wonder: does it actually

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is having trouble keeping track of its trash. For the second time in the past year, rocket debris from a SpaceX launch has washed up on shore in North Carolina. The huge chunk of metal was discovered on an Outer Banks beach in the US state. The rocket component, which was three

Facebook has said 30 million accounts were compromised in a major hack. That’s down from the 50 million accounts the social network first estimated, but it’s still not great news. Though Facebook has taken steps to protect users in light of the attack, the company said hackers had access to millions of people’s personal information.

It’s the stuff of nightmares: a stuffed animal with a beating heart. After spotting viral posts on social media about users strapping fitness trackers to rolls of toilet paper, Chinese website Abacus tried it with a Xiaomi wristband. The surprise result: The fitness tracker detected a heartbeat. The toilet paper’s “heart rate” ranged from 59

A new font can help lodge information deeper in your brain, researchers say, but it’s not magic – just the science of effort. Psychology and design researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne created a font called Sans Forgetica, which was designed to boost information retention for readers. It’s based on a theory called “desirable difficulty”,

Leaked documentation reveals new Macs contain a hidden mechanism designed to make them inoperative if they are independently repaired, reports show. According to technical memos obtained by a number of outlets, any Mac with Apple’s new T2 chip conceals a security feature critics describe as a ‘kill switch’, which effectively bricks the devices if they

Google kept quiet for more than six months about its discovery of a bug that put at risk the personal data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users, the company said Monday, a delay that could spark a new round of regulatory and political scrutiny. The decision to not immediately report the software bug –

China secretly inserted surveillance microchips into servers used by major technology companies, including Apple and Amazon.com, in an audacious military operation likely to further inflame trade tensions between the United States and its leading source of electronics components and products, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thursday morning. The article – which the companies vigorously denied – detailed

We tap away on our mobile devices all day long. Isn’t it about time they tapped us back? Human-computer interaction researcher Marc Teyssier clearly thinks so. He’s the brains behind MobiLimb, a horrifying finger-like robotic attachment for smartphones and tablets that somehow simultaneously evokes The Addams Family and Black Mirror. Today, he published a video

Facebook announced on Friday that its engineering team had discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. Due to a flaw in Facebook’s code, hackers were able to take over an account and use it in the same way you would if you had logged into the account with a password. The company says

Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of people, and yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. It works through a combination of

Life just got worse for the 50 million people caught up in what may be the biggest hack of Facebook ever. On Friday, the Silicon Valley tech firm revealed that it had detected a security breach in which an as-yet unknown attacker, or attackers, managed to gain access to tens of millions of users’ accounts by exploiting vulnerabilities

A hacker gained access to nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts by exploiting a weakness in the social network’s systems, Facebook said on Friday. News of the cyber attack – which appears to be one of the most significant in Facebook’s history – sent shares of the company down roughly 3 percent in midday trading on Friday,

Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels. The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit underwhelming.

Everybody knows the world’s got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2 could provide the means of tomorrow’s battery technology. For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new system

Hydrogen fuel cells are a greener way to power vehicles. But they have also been cost-prohibitive. Now that’s starting to change – last week, German passengers boarded the world’s first hydrogen-powered trains. “Sure, buying a hydrogen train is somewhat more expensive than a diesel train,” said Stefan Schrank, a project manager at locomotive company Alstom,