Genes inherited from long-extinct human ancestors may be more common than thought, suggesting a Homo sapiens origin story with more than a few evolutionary one-night stands. The latest findings involve genes from Denisovans, a recently discovered member of the Homo genus who lived in central and eastern Asia until 40,000 years ago. Denisovans, humans and [...]
You may have noticed that our weekly Weird Science column has disappeared. What we’re going to do instead is try to incorporate a few stories from the stranger side of science into our regular weekly mix. We’ll kick this off by having a look at what happens when Mozart meets your colon. Colonoscopies are a [...]
Rocksmith is an interesting experiment in mixing rhythm games with instructing players how to play an actual guitar. The first code we were able to test looked good, but it was clear that the game needed to be cleaned up before launch. Now that you can buy the retail experience for the Xbox 360, PS3, [...]
Apple was suspected to be the mysterious buyer of Swedish-based 3D mapping technology company C3 technologies earlier this year, and sources speaking to 9to5 Mac have now confirmed that the company was indeed acquired by Apple. Former top executives, including CEO Mattias Astrom, CFO Kjell Cederstrand, and lead Product Manager Ludvig Emgard, are now reportedly working [...]
Last week’s Battlefield 3 launch had its high and low points, with sky-high consumer interest, but stability issues plaguing many players. EA has announced that the game has sold an estimated 5 million copies worldwide in its first week of availability. That’s a big success by any metric, although we’re curious about the split in [...]
The Kinect for Windows SDK, a beta version of which is already available to developers, is being prepared for a commercial rollout in early 2012. The current beta version is targeted at academics, enthusiasts, and researchers who use the motion-sensing capabilities of the Kinect for Xbox 360 technology to create new applications. Kinect apps have [...]
It may be Halloween, but for thousands of corporate IT users there’s another reason today inspires fear: it’s time once again for the mandatory end-of-month password change. Few common IT policies drive users to distraction as regularly and reliably as the aggressiveness of enterprise password policies. But with more potential threats to enterprise security coming [...]
Quantum mechanics is a realm of weirdness: electrons being linked to each other even though the vastness of the universe might separate them, things being in two places at once, and, of course, knowledge precluding knowledge. This last is the standard bearer of quantum oddity: measuring the momentum of an object precludes precise knowledge of [...]
The scariest movies are those where what they show you is never as scary as what happens in your mind. The visuals and sounds of good horror may stick with us, but it’s the ideas behind them that truly take root in your head and refuse to leave. Fatal Frame 2 excels at everything good [...]
A new AT&T 4G LTE version of the Samsung Galaxy S II will debut next week, Samsung and AT&T announced today. As “one of the first AT&T 4G LTE smartphones,” The Galaxy S II Skyrocket will have a larger display size than the standard AT&T Galaxy S II and a faster dual-core processor, but will [...]