Easy Medium Hard

For a standard movie theater with exit rows on the sides (as opposed to down the middle, as some older theaters have), the best spot is as close to dead center as you can get. “I’ve always felt the obvious best spot to sit in a movie theater is in the center of the room, center with the screen. This way your eyes are more centralized and not straining to catch things on the very left or right side of the image on screen,” says Joe Muto, head projectionist for Nitehawk Cinemas....

Viruses love us. That’s a fact. Every year, run-of-the-mill respiratory diseases like the common cold and the flu infect millions of people, and once in a while, brand new afflictions like the coronavirus dubbed COVID-19 rise up and grab headlines worldwide. While the fatality rate for most of these illnesses is low, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. “One should be aware of one’s surroundings, be aware of the situation, but not be fearful,” says Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa....

1. Buy a specialized printer Let’s start with the simplest method: printing out your snaps on photo paper. You can stick them to the fridge, give them to relatives, or frame them to hang on your wall or prop on your desk. And of course, you can easily make multiple copies and create reprints. We’ve assembled a few ways to transform your favorite photo into a more lasting form, one you can display with pride....

Bees are awesome, and they play an important role in making sure we have food on our tables. But you’ve probably heard these incredibly intelligent insects are in trouble. Pesticides are making these buzzers stupid or even killing them, and urban sprawl means bees have to travel farther from their hives to feed. People have responded to this threat by jumping on the beekeeping bandwagon. The practice of caring and looking after thousands of bees has become popular in recent years, especially in cities, where bee-lovers install hives in their backyards, on their roofs, and even right in their living rooms....

If you want to spend as little time as possible checking email, set up a virtual siphon that will pull messages from all your accounts into one place. Instead of flicking between different apps and devices, get your accounts to pipe emails directly to a single dashboard, ready for reading and sorting. Here’s how to go about it, whether you prefer using your smartphone or your computer. Syncing emails on Android Open the app, then tap the menu button (three horizontal lines, top left), and choose Settings....

We eat, drink, and breathe chemicals safely every day—but sometimes, disaster can ensue when opposites are paired together. And as it turns out, mixing up some of the more dangerous chemicals we can find in our own home has become somewhat of a TikTok trend—with potentially disastrous results. We already know the deadly results of mixing seemingly harmless chemical agents. Back in 2019, a manager at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Burlington, Massachusetts, died after a noxious cloud of gas formed in the restaurant....

When you download the 15th version of Apple’s operating system (it took us about 30 minutes), you’ll have access to Mail Privacy Protection, which is meant to stop people and companies from using invisible pixels to collect information about you. When macOS Monterey comes out later this year, desktop and laptop users will have access as well. This feature is only available in Apple’s built-in Mail app, and won’t affect any email you read in other email apps....

You can access this tool directly from the Stories platform, or you can find more specific moments by diving into your archive. But whichever method you choose, make sure you have the right nostalgic soundtrack to go along with your blast from the past. Instagram will open your device’s camera, but do your best to refrain from taking a selfie. From the menu on the left, tap Create—if you don’t see it, tap the Aa icon....

Copy and Paste just got easier Apple is making a push to make all of your Apple devices more connected, so the company introduced a feature that allows you to quickly switch between your mobile device and computer. The Universal Clipboard is supposed to allow you to copy text, links, or photos from one device and paste them on another. This means you don’t have to email yourself the link or perfect gif to get it from your Macbook laptop to your iPhone, or vice versa....

But when your rain jacket isn’t shedding drops like it used to, zippers are breaking, or tears or punctures are letting in water (or the chill), you might think waiting out the weather or buying a new coat are the only options. Fortunately, that’s not the case: there are ways to care for, repair, and restore your rain gear so you can enjoy the season, no matter the weather. The former keeps you dry while allowing sweat vapor to escape during intense activities like hiking or playing football in the backyard....

Streaming services Several streaming giants offer (almost) all the movies and TV you could possibly want, in return for a monthly subscription fee. These apps beam content straight to your phone for as long as you keep paying your subscription. You don’t, however, get to keep digital versions of the videos—stop paying, and you’ll lose access to these video libraries. The key to watching movies and television shows on your smartphone is installing the right apps....

Vickie Kloeris’ job is to feed those astronauts. As one of NASA’s top food scientists, she manages the agency’s food laboratory as well as the ISS’s food system, making sure everyone onboard has plenty to eat and a varying menu. She’s also spent her fair share of time up new recipes for the space station residents, spending months perfecting a meal that can be freeze-dried and sterilized. But, even as challenging as all that sounds, the space station is practically right in Earth’s backyard–venturing deeper into space will to be a lot more difficult....

Principal study author Sara Lewis, a biology professor at Tufts University, spent most of her career studying the mating rituals of just a few species of firefly. At some point, she says, she and her colleagues had a realization: “We looked around and said, ‘huh, there just don’t seem to be as many fireflies around as there used to be.’” The International Union for Conservation of Nature put together a team of biologists to investigate the bioluminescent bugs, and this new paper is the first fruit of their labors....

What this new paper’s authors found during their studies paints a grim picture: 77 percent of Earth’s landmass and 87 percent of the oceans have been changed somehow by human activities. “In the ocean, areas that are free of industrial fishing, pollution, and shipping are almost completely confined to the polar regions,” they write. On land, vast swaths of space are devoted to human purposes, from city-building to resource extraction....

When we heard a few months back that Hasbro was debuting a new, 6-inch line of toys called the “Selfie Series” that would turn real people into an action figure using a custom, 3D-printed head, we couldn’t wait to see ourselves in miniature. And according to Hasbro president of design and development Brian Chapman, we’re not alone. The demand for a product like that goes back years. “​​We talk to our fans all the time....

In a slightly creepy way, Watson has been watching you. It has been monitoring tens of millions of online conversations on social media, and in the comments–yes, Watson reads the comments–as well as other forums, blogs, and websites. Its goal though is not just to snoop. Watson wants to understand how consumers feel. Watson uses machine learning and natural language processing to determine how much people like or dislike a certain product or brand....

That’s why glacial geologists are now looking underwater to learn more about ice sheets. Just like glaciers have carved the land, leaving behind features like valleys and boulder fields, geologists have suspected that ice shelves along the ocean could do the same to the seafloor. Now, with new sonar technology to map seabeds, it’s possible to see those features. On the Larsen continental shelf off Antarctica, researchers have used underwater drones to image a series of ripples across the seafloor....

However, some scientists think it’s worth at least considering the possibility that technology built by aliens–a swarm of solar collectors, perhaps–could be orbiting and periodically eclipsing the star. The scientists behind the alien hypothesis knew it was a long shot when they proposed it, and since then, telescopes have failed to find any alien signatures in the radio or infrared emissions coming from the star. Now, a study published on the arXiv reports that researchers also haven’t detected any laser pulses coming from KIC 846285....

Although a version of the device was first described last year in The New England Journal of Medicine, its capabilities were then far more restricted than the current iteration, and relied on a patient attempting to vocally speak words which were then translated by a computer system. “Neuroprostheses have the potential to restore communication to people who cannot speak or type due to paralysis. However, it is unclear if silent attempts to speak can be used to control a communication neuroprosthesis,” reads the research group’s paper abstract....