ArcaMax

In its relentless search for ways to weave digital products into people's lives, Big Tech has achieved some big wins. Smart phones are ubiquitous. Apple Watch users talk to their wrists. Artificial intelligence-powered assistants are everywhere.

But convincing people to wear computers on their faces has been a dud. So far, at least.

Augmented...Read more

Instagram is changing the default privacy settings for many U.S. teenagers, part of an effort to keep them safer and give parents more control over how their kids interact online.

The new settings will make teen accounts private by default, limit who those users can send private messages to, and put teens in the “most restrictive” tier when...Read more

As a child growing up in the early 1990s, I remember learning in school about the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels traps heat near the Earth’s surface, like the glass of a greenhouse. I imagined myself on the playground, roasting inside a humid hothouse.

Fast forward 30 years, and the terms have ...Read more

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Tuesday it is seeking more than $600,000 in fines against SpaceX for violating licenses from its Space Coast launch sites.

In a press release, the FAA detailed its proposed civil penalties for a June 18, 2023 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 and a July 28, ...Read more

SpaceX is looking to push one of its most used boosters to its limits with a launch Tuesday evening from Cape Canaveral.

A Falcon 9 rocket flying a booster for a record-tying 22nd time will try and make a recovery landing even though it’s being used to fly its payload, the European Commission’s Galileo L13 satellite, to a medium-Earth orbit...Read more

HAINES, Alaska — In the middle of the fast-flowing Chilkoot River, an Alaska state employee sits on a small perch over a narrow, fence-like structure and stares down into the rush of water.

Eagles look on from the trees overhead as the river thunders around boulders nearby. The worker’s back is turned to a female grizzly bear creeping up ...Read more

An orca has been born to the southern residents: L128, calf of a first-time, 31-year-old mom, L90.

The baby is tiny, with clear fetal folds, making it probably about 3 days old. It was seen for the first time on Sunday, said Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research, which confirmed the birth on Monday.

Mom and baby ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — An industrial chemical used in plastic products has been cropping up in illegal drugs from California to Maine, a sudden and puzzling shift in the drug supply that has alarmed health researchers.

Its name is bis (2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl) sebacate, commonly abbreviated as BTMPS. The chemical is used in plastic for ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If you look up in the Kansas and Missouri skies on Tuesday, Sept. 17, you may be able to catch a glimpse at not only a supermoon — but also a partial lunar eclipse.

A supermoon occurs when the moon is at its closest point to Earth, according to NASA. NASA calls supermoons the “biggest and brightest” full moons of the...Read more

Kids born in 2020 worldwide will experience twice the number of wildfires during their lifetimes compared with those born in 1960. In California and other western states, frequent wildfires have become as much a part of summer and fall as popsicles and Halloween candy.

Wildfires produce fine particulate matter, or PM₂.₅, that ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Madigan Traversi’s world changed in the fall of 2017, but the forces responsible for her transformation had been brewing for a long time.

Late at night on Oct. 8, her family received a robocall about an evacuation warning — not an order — as more than a dozen wildfires tore through eight Northern California counties at once...Read more

After decades of trying to stop Earth from heating up, scientists are exploring how to reverse climate change and maybe even cool the planet back down.

Could clouds be brightened so they reflect more sunlight back into outer space? If lab-grown seaweed is sunk into the ocean, how much carbon dioxide could it absorb? Would drilling holes into ...Read more

Eighteen months later, Anna Holland still can’t stomach the smell of tomato soup.

“I can’t have a tin of it anymore,” said the climate activist, who shocked the art world — and much of the rest of the planet — by throwing Heinz Tomato Soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in the National Gallery in London in October 2022.

Holland ...Read more

SpaceX brought home the four crew members of Polaris Dawn with a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida early Sunday.

The Crew Dragon Resilience, which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, landed at 3:36 a.m. off the coast of the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico.

It marked the end of the five-day orbital...Read more

Any night now, the astrophysicists tell us, a new star will appear in the night sky over Philly and the rest of the world — about as bright as the North Star — the result of a cosmic explosion in a distant constellation millennia ago.

NASA scientist Rebekah Hounsell has called it "a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Plumes of smoke from Southern California’s fires blew across Big Bear on Sept. 11, causing local air quality meters to return off-the-chart readings for particulate pollution.

Officials report air quality on a color-coded scale, in which green indicates “good” and maroon denotes “hazardous” conditions. An air quality ...Read more

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams watched the spacecraft that took them to the International Space Station leave them behind last week as the Boeing Starliner made its return trip to Earth without a crew.

“We’ve got lessons learned that we will go through. We will have discussions. We will be involved with those discussions, and things that ...Read more