AP Photo/Novosti The Disappearing Mass Housing of the Soviet Union Mark Byrnes Mar 8, 2017 The grim prefab Khrushchyovka helped solve the USSR’s housing crisis after World War II. Now, Moscow plans to demolish 8,000 of them, displacing more than 1.5 million people. Should any be preserved for…

Story highlights Scientists use a new ground radar to locate the spacecraft New technology is crucial to future moon missions (CNN) It made history as India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Then it vanished. Nearly a decade later, NASA has located two unmanned spacecraft orbiting the moon,…

While the Creators Update will include a number of important improvements to Windows 10, the escalation of File Explorer advertising isn’t one of them. Here’s how to turn it off. Note: This tip is derived from the Windows 10 Field Guide , which is now being updated for the Windows 10 Creators…

AMONG the trove of American intelligence agency documents released by Wikileaks this week is one that instructs the country’s spies on protocols to follow while travelling abroad. Some of these are specific to the CIA’s needs. (“Talk to CCIE/Engineering about your planned TDY timeline,” the document…

Residents in a small town northwest of Edmonton say bright pink water coming out of their taps was a bit of a shock. Vicki Veldhuyzen Van Zanten of Onoway says she got a call from a neighbour asking if her water was pink. It wasn’t, but a short time later her daughter called her from the bathroom to…

The Rather Sad Story of the Father of American Photography It’s been a long time since I did a photography history article. I generally prefer the early days of photography. People just were, I don’t know, more back then. There was more lying, backstabbing, more drama, and more originality. You name…

Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick. Former employees have described a hyper-competitive workplace that is hostile to those who don’t play along.Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters David was attending “Uberversity”, the ride-hail company’s three-day orientation for new employees, when he was introduced to…

Hyperloop still feels a little more like science fiction than an actual project, but as new pictures from superfast transportation company Hyperloop One show, the technology is slowly making its way into the real world. The new images give an insight into how construction is progressing on Hyperloop…

H e was greeted like a star philanthropist. The world’s richest doctor had just made a $12 million gift to the University of Utah. Members of the university community were urged to come thank him. And so, a crowd gathered. For months, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong would continue to reap praise for his…

A special version of the new Land Rover Discovery dubbed ‘Project Discovery’ and designed for search and rescue operations is actually being deployed with the Austrian Red Cross – complete with a quadcopter drone that can take off from and land on the SUV, even while it’s moving. Magnets lock the…

This is the story of how River City Media (RCM), Alvin Slocombe , and Matt Ferris , accidentally exposed their entire operation to the public after failing to properly configure their Rsync backups. The data from this well-known, but slippery spamming operation, was discovered by Chris Vickery , a…

Robert Wang was hoping to make it easier for people to make a decent meal, but didn't expect his new product to attract a cult following. Last summer on Amazon Prime Day, the online retailer's global 24-hour annual sale event, one of the top-selling products in the US was a multi-function electric…

Physics Light particles normally do not “feel” each other because there is no interaction acting between them. Researchers at ETH have now succeeded in manipulating photons inside a semiconductor material in such a way as to make them repel each other nevertheless. Two light beams crossing each…

This morning on Twitter, Buzzfeed editor Miriam Elder asks the following question: Possibly stupid question: is the Signal desktop client as secure as the mobile app? — Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 3, 2017 No, this is not a stupid question. Actually it’s an extremely important question, and…

Artist's conception of a terraformed Mars. Credit: Ittiz/Wikimedia Commons NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere This week, NASA's Planetary Science Division (PSD) hosted a community workshop at their headquarters in Washington, DC. Known as the "Planetary Science Vision 2050…

Apis Cor About Blog Sponsorship Media Library Apis Cor robotics in construction Who we are Apis Cor is the first company to develop a spezialised equipment for 3D printing in construction which is capable of printing whole buildings completely on site. ​ ​ Our mission is to create fully autonomous…

From Hannibal Lecter to Walter White, the criminal mastermind has long been a staple of popular culture. Now a recent book by James Oleson, a criminologist based at the University of Auckland, suggests that real-life geniuses do indeed have a penchant for running afoul of the law. In Criminal…

Above: Retro machines won't last forever. The arcade is dead. You already knew that, but that industry’s coffin is about to get another nail. The cathode-ray-tube technology that powered the monitors for nearly every classic arcade game in the twentieth century is defunct. Sony, Samsung, and others…

TalkTalk customers are being targeted by an industrial-scale fraud network in India, according to whistleblowers who say they were among hundreds of staff hired to scam customers of the British telecoms giant. The scale of the criminal operation has been detailed by the three sources, who say they…

2019 Oscars: Here are all the winners Here is the full list of winners from Sunday’s 91st Academy Awards: Feb. 24, 2019 at 11:37 p.m. ET by Marketwatch 2019 Oscars: ‘Green Book’ is surprise best-picture winner The segregation-era road-trip drama “Green Book” was crowned best picture at the Academy…

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers.... I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the…

A rtificial human life could soon be grown from scratch in the lab, after scientists successfully created a mammal embryo using only stem cells. Cambridge University mixed two kinds of mouse stem cells and placed them on a 3D scaffold. After four days of growth in a tank of chemicals designed to…

In 1996, a young graduate student called Richard Watson sat down to read a paper on evolution . The article was provocative. It tackled a long-running problem in evolutionary biology: we do not fully understand how organisms can adapt so successfully to their environments. Creatures do not seem to…

The Land of The Thunder Dragon, as the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan’s full name translates into English, has famously embraced modern life at a considerably slower pace than much of the rest of the world. Television and the internet only arrived in 1999, with mobile phone networks coming four years…

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox . You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here .…

A colored enhanced scanning electron micrograph of Burkholderia pseudomallei . These motile bacteria are the cause of melioidosis, a tropical disease spread through contaminated water and soil. The bacteria can infect the skin, causing inflammation and muscle aches, or the lungs, causing chest pain,…

Quick—which side of your car is your fuel filler on? No running outside to look, that’s cheating, and you might get hurt pulling your pants on. Chances are most of you at the very least had to take a moment to think about this. I suspect you won’t think long about what side your steering wheel is…

Google-owned robotics firm and “nightmare” factory Boston Dynamics has released video of its latest creation: a two-wheeled, four-legged hybrid robot named Handle. The robot can stand on four legs, like Boston Dynamics’ previous creations such as BigDog and Spot . But at the end of its back two legs…

Quantum Lab: Scientists are fabricating quantum photonic circuits—consisting of waveguides and other elements—to manipulate single photons for future quantum communications and processing. Oak Ridge National Laboratory / Flickr J ustin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, certainly raised the…

We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the Moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a Moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and…

A butcher with an Instagram account has achieved the impossible. He’s sexed up sodium chloride. A video of Nusret Gokce slicing and sensually salting a steak, his eyes shrouded behind John Lennon sunglasses, has birthed one of 2017’s first viral images: a curious culinary move whereby Mr. Gokce…

Illustrations by Andrew Rae The Battle for the Soul of San Francisco Healing the Tension Between Wealthy Tech Workers and Their Impoverished Neighbors One day last summer Chirag Bhakta and a friend were walking through the Tenderloin, the San Francisco neighborhood Bhakta has called home all his…

Imagine you are in the middle of your typical day-to-day activities. Maybe you are driving, spending time with family, or working. If you are like most people, your phone is at your side on a daily basis. Little do you know that, at any time, police and law enforcement could be looking at…

Specifically targeting black children for unlawful DNA collection is a gross abuse of technology by law enforcement. But it’s exactly what the San Diego Police Department is doing, according to a lawsuit just filed by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties on behalf of one of the…

Tina Sjogren remembers exactly where she was when she told her husband, Tom, that she wanted to go to Mars: inside the whirlpool on the patio of the Sheraton Gateway Hotel. She gazed up at the stars, as the bubbles rose around them like chlorinated Champagne, and said, “I wanted to go up there so…

Microsoft is sharing some interesting tools with the open source community today. Developers and researchers will be able to take advantage of a new simulator that will let people test and train robots and drones in a virtual environment to prepare them for moving around the real world. A beta…

Foreign students are flocking to the higher education system in the US. A recent study found that in 2011-2012, the number of international students in the US increased by 6.5% over the last year to a record high of 764,495 students. Of these, 56% came from only five countries: China, India, South…

A protester uses her phone during a night of demonstrations over the police shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mike Blake/Reuters Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments George Joseph Feb 8, 2017 Major cities throughout the U.S. have spent millions on mobile…

In a huge win for the environment, India has banned plastic in Delhi. The ban includes bags, cups and cutlery. India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT) introduced the ban following complaints of illegal burning of plastic and other waste at three local rubbish dumps. The ban took effect on the first…