“LightSail 2 is gone after more than three glorious years in the sky, blazing a trail of lift with light, and proving that we could defy gravity by tacking a sail in space,” Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society said in a press release. “The mission was funded by tens of thousands of Planetary Society members, who want to advance space technology.” The fascinating piece of technology, launched into orbit via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in June 2019, used a four-section solar sail of around 244 square feet to project it around the planet a total of 18,000 times in its run....

This is a very serious hack and we don’t know what the websites are—or if there are more of them out there—so, it’s as important as ever to keep your device updated to employ the necessary security patches. This is your best defense: go to Settings, then General, then Software Update to check what version of iOS you’re running. With this kind of exploit, hackers could even get access to assets like tokens that keep you logged into accounts, which means they could get to them without the need for a password....

Download the latest episode of the podcast You can listen to the episode above or: Subscribe via iTunesAdd us on StitcherFollow us on SoundCloud Roku has a new $40 streaming stick that slings 4K Sirius XM bought Pandora for $3.5 billion It doesn’t always get the same kind of coverage as traditional streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, but Pandora is still sending customized radio stations to more than 70 million users per month, 5....

The flow is advancing at 48 feet/hour (approximately 0.009 miles/hour). Many people living in the path of the lava have evacuated their homes, school has been cancelled, and workers have constructed temporary access roads that could help manage traffic in the event that the lava overruns Highway 130.

But there’s still a lot of red tape surrounding renewable energy, making widespread adoption slower than expected. Not to mention, the infrastructure to actually use them is still lacking, and there is not much we can use to capture and transport the energy these sources can deliver. This is where renewable energy engineers come in. As you can tell by the name of the role, these experts focus on working on environmental projects that contribute to developing clean energy sources and eco-friendly solutions and make way for a greener future....

What is it? The Yoga 13 (technically, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, the “IdeaPad” part meaning this is for humans and not businesspeople) is an “ultrabook.” This is a garbage nonsense marketing word pushed by Intel and mostly means “kind of like a MacBook Air”–thin, light, and fast, with certain sacrifices made to keep it that way, like eliminating the optical drive and ethernet port. The laptops aren’t garbage nonsense, though....

The U.S. is making the switch too, albeit more slowly. By 2014, most light- bulbs will be 30 percent more efficient than those currently available. “Incandescents aren’t going away,” says Peter Banwell of the Environmental Protection Agency, “but they will have a minimum efficiency level they’ll need to meet.” Read more of Popular Science’s predictions for 2009.

Blizzard isn’t the first company to test this attention-seeking strategy—especially in the world of gaming. In September, Rockstar Games announced some participants in its Grand Theft Auto livestream series would be eligible to win in-app cash if they participated in a Facebook chat. Both Rockstar and Blizzard were encouraged in this effort by the social media giant, which added viewer rewards to its software development kit in March. The move, which appears to be paying off, was seen by many as a blatant challenge to game-streaming giants like Twitch, which has its own in-stream gamification scheme called “drops”, and YouTube....

“Long exposures change the way we that we see reality,” she says. “It eliminates the unnecessary details and creates more of an emphasis on art.” Tenenbaum began photographing seriously in 2006 after she found herself unsatisfied with her career as a civil engineer and wanting to switch gears with her life. She brought her camera—which she had received as a gift—on a trip and quickly fell in love with the medium....

Sugar science 101 Understanding the marshmallow-making process requires some elementary knowledge of how sugar changes during candymaking, as a major component of delicious, fluffy marshmallows is a thick sugar syrup. From the thread stage all the way up to the hard crack stage, the consistency of this sweet goop is vitally important to the end product. Most home marshmallow-makers aim for the soft ball or firm ball stages, which refer to the consistency a small dollop of boiled sugar exhibits when dropped into a cup of cold water....

But if you’re experiencing cabin fever and want fresh air but don’t want to deal with all the winter gloominess, the easiest hack is to invest in a patio heater. The good news is you don’t even have to break the bank for a reliable one. The 1500W Heater Floor Lamp is on sale for a limited time, so you can enjoy your home al fresco style. Designed to accommodate both indoors and out, this floor lamp helps create a warm and toasty environment for your comfort....

A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan offers some surprising results: when compared with the average grocery store meal, five nights of Blue Apron meals purchased by the research team have a far lower environmental impact—33 percent lower, in fact. Blue Apron did not contribute to the study financially, and was chosen as a representative of meal kits more generally. The study authors state that the company’s packaging practices parallel those of other meal kit services, although may not be exactly the same....

Puckett, 36, known locally as “Oyster Wench,” a single mother with two young children, lives on Block Island, about a dozen miles off the Rhode Island coast. She represents a new generation of ocean farmers, one whose singular connection to the water is coupled with a passion for the environment. She grows shellfish and kelp on her farm, located in the waters of the Great Salt Pond, using sustainable fishing methods that both preserve the ocean’s ecosystems and fight climate change....

The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) came into force in 2018 and since then, they’ve been a major headache for Meta. Amongst other things, it requires organizations to be transparent about why they are collecting data, have a lawful reason to do so, and get clear, affirmative consent users. This is why so many sites inflict large GDPR popups on visitors, and it’s what has caused Meta its latest issues....

The San Pedro River winds from rainforests in Guatemala through the Yucatan Peninsula in eastern Mexico. There, this peaceful river widens into a series of slow-flowing lakes. Along a remote 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch, thousands of red mangroves—trees commonly found along tropical coastlines—line the river’s banks and gentle waterfalls. Unlike mangroves elsewhere, these trees grow in freshwater. This means that many other species can grow with them: orchids, bromeliads and other air and land plants that cannot tolerate the saline conditions where red mangroves are normally found....

You afraid of 50 foot ice spikes? Just wait until you encounter an 11 mile high drop. The place in question is a partially-charted, tiny moon of Uranus called Miranda. It’s about the same size as the famous ocean moon Enceladus, Saturn’s geyser-filled little scamp, but these worlds have vastly different histories. While Enceladus has a rich ocean that tantalizes astrobiologists Miranda is a broken world of deep canyons, high icy peaks, and a terrain unlike any other round body in the solar system....

In 2003, researchers uncovered 18,000-year-old bones of a woman with a skull a third of the size of a human’s on the island of Flores, Indonesia. They subsequently found more remains belonging to up to nine similarly pint-sized prehistoric creatures. Nicknamed after the the J.R.R. Tolkien characters, they stood some 3 and a half feet tall. The origin of these hobbits has been controversial, as claiming they are a different kind of hominid closer to Homo erectus than Homo sapiens throws a wrench in many established theories of human evolution....

A new coronavirus variant, known as C.1.2, has been identified in South Africa On Monday, South African researchers reported that they had detected a new variant of the novel coronavirus “with multiple mutations”, according to Reuters. The variant, which is called C.1.2, was first detected in May in South Africa. Since then, it’s been found in several other pockets throughout the world including in countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia. C....

There weren’t any fully working models for us to play with here at Motorola’s press event, but several hardware-final tablets were on hand playing demo videos of Honeycomb’s interface and features: Specs wise, the Xoom sports a 10.1-inch 1280×800 screen, Verizon 3G onboard (which is actually upgradeable to 4G LTE later in the year), 1080p HD video playback and streaming, front and rear cameras for videochatting, and an SD card slot for additional storage....

Absolutely not, assumed Petr Brož, a geophysicist at the Czech Academy of Sciences. The circumstances required—sediments buried in precisely the right way—were just too unlikely. Plus, would mud even slosh after hitting the frigid surface? After recreating the scenario in a lab, Brož and his team now have their answer: Muddy mixtures on Mars would flow nearly identically to the way lava flows on Earth, although for completely different reasons, they announced in Nature Geoscience this week....