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Boeing reportedly failed to provide a key safety disclosure concerning its 737 Max 8 and 9 jets before one of those planes, the aircraft acting as Lion Air Flight 610, plummeted into the ocean last month.The Wall Street Journal reports that Boeing didn’t provide airlines with information about an automated safety-control feature meant to prevent the plane’s nose from raising too high and stalling. Pilots speaking with the outlet claim they weren’t properly trained on the safety feature, which automatically adjusts an aircraft’s nose downward in the event of disturbance....

It’s barely 10 o’clock in the morning and the beer is flowing for the German bikers. In Stuttgart, Germany, the Indian Motorcycle shop has a bar, and behind the tap is a makeshift tattoo parlor. A biker with sleeve-covered arms is getting some fresh ink on his wrist. Riders mill about in worn leather boots, faded denim, patched vests, and dark shades—their tattoos disappearing under tattered cloth only to reemerge on their necks....

Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, has drawn scientific curiosity for decades. Ever since Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 passed the moon in the 80s, scientists have wondered about the moon-wide ocean that rests beneath an icy exterior. According to a new paper presented at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference, recent analysis suggests that the ocean is approximately a billion years old.“That’s good news for life,” reads the abstract of the latest paper by Marc Neveu and Alyssa Rhoden, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and of the Southwest Research Institute, respectively....

Media Platforms Design TeamLong a mainstay of the enthusiast GPS market, Garmin is expanding into the fitness tracking world with the Vivofit ($130 alone or $170 with a heart-rate monitor). Garmin’s Vivofit resembles the Nike Fuelband, with a thin single-line display wrapped in a rubber wristband. But it’s Vivofit’s secret weapon—a year-plus battery life—that separates it from the herd. Add an always-on display and easy-to-use app software, and the Vivofit is a top contender in the fitness tracker market....

Google’s newest Chrome update concealed a pretty big change to the browser’s login requirements. Under the update’s terms, any user signed into a Google service such as Maps or Gmail will automatically be logged into Chrome, which could mean handing over personal data to the search giant without the user’s permission. According to security researcher Matthew Green, who outlined his experience with the unannounced measure in a lengthy blogpost titled “Why I’m Done With Chrome,” Google stores data from unwitting customers who aren’t notified that they’re logged in to the browser....

True devotees of The Cube have long abandoned the classic Rubik’s brand puzzle for faster, sleeker (and more expensive) ‘speed cubes’ that can twist at the high rates that racers demand. Alternatively, there’s a version that’s much slower, and better yet, it’s free. All you have to do is make it out of paper. Dreamt up by cuber Daniel Stabile who posted a demonstration to YouTube and a how-to to Instructables, the paper cube is fully-functional if not particularly easy to use....

DoNotPay, a consumer advocacy firm known for its legal advice chatbot, has developed a new online tool that helps you automatically sue and block robocallers.The app, Robo Revenge, generates false credit card credentials that you can provide to the robocaller. Through the transaction, DoNotPay gains information about whoever was behind the call.In the end, DoNotPay helps you sue for up to $3,000 per fraudulent call.“Congratulations! You’ve just won a free, all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas for you and a guest!...

An accident at a Russian Army ammunition depot turned catastrophic today as a series of explosions killed one soldier and hurled shrapnel more than nine miles. At least eight others are reported wounded with windows in a nearby town blown out by the shockwave. The incident, still ongoing, is located outside the Siberian city of Achinsk. The explosion generated a mushroom cloud over the blast site and sent shrapnel flying as far as 9....

Hurricane Florence battered the Carolinas and parts of Virginia earlier this month, inundating communities with high floods. The storm’s historic rainfall brought an assault on the region’s infrastructure and killed 44 people, but with the waters finally receding, an unexpected consequence of the tempest has revealed itself.A formerly flooded stretch of the I-40 highway in eastern North Carolina has dried up, giving way to thousands of dead, rotting fish that now litter the road, according to the Charlotte Observer....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamDuring Thursday’s return of Lost for a fourth season, our favorite TV castaways made a call that would change their lives forever. After months stuck on an island inhabited by nefarious monsters, bossy ghosts, the Others and a couple of angry, angry polar bears, Jack Shepherd and Co. are finally getting rescued—thanks to a satellite phone pilfered from short-lived parachuter Naomi.But even after the late rock star Charlie sacrificed himself to turn off the jamming signal, and even after the castaways disabled a recorded radio transmission from longtime island resident Rousseau, they still had trouble: Jack made the necessary call, but the would-be rescuers (sitting on a boat some miles offshore) couldn’t locate them....

The “Trolley Problem” is a famous ethical dilemma about killing one person to save others. A group of MIT researchers recently applied it to the world of self-driving cars, posing a series of questions to more than 2 million online participants from more than 200 countries. The results reveal some regional preferences, but the overall consensus was clear: In the right situations, animals, the elderly, and small groups of people are in a lot of trouble....

Old video games are big business. Websites like Steam and GOG sell them alongside modern games, as do Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. But now a Japanese company has created a device that can play most of your favorite titles in one handy console. Of course, it’s legally shady at best.The Retro Freak, brought to you by Cyber Gadget, appears on the surface to be a retrogamer’s dream. It can play games from 11 systems, including the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and even TurboGrafix....

Researchers from UC San Diego are using vacuum tube technology to develop more efficient computer processors. The research could result in faster microelectronic devices and better solar panels. Their results are published in a paper in the journal Nature Communications.Commonly thought of as a primitive precursor to the modern transistor, vacuum tubes were the building blocks of computers in the early 20th century, and computers built using them filled entire rooms or buildings....

YouTuber Simone Giertz enlisted the help of friends to modify a Tesla Model 3 and turn it into an electric pickup truck.Giertz, a robotics enthusiast and inventor, has been working on this plan for over a year. *Trigger warning: The Tesla gets keyed.In a total boss move, Simone Giertz—who for a long time has wanted to own “an electric pickup truck, more specifically, a Tesla pickup,"—created her very own custom Tesla pickup, which she affectionately named “Truckla....

“For me, the aerial view shows the world from a different, unusual, and revealing perspective,” says German photographer Bernhard Lang. Shot from ultra-light planes and helicopters, Lang’s series of photos presents a captivating look at the enormity of industry, from shipping to mining to automotive, and highlights the footprint each has left on the landscape.In some photos, we see the Opencast Coal Mining Pit of Germany, “one of the largest man-made holes in the world, at nearly 1,500 feet deep, and currently [covering] almost 35 square kilometers,” Lang says....

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be the most powerful space telescope in history when it launches in Spring 2019, is currently undergoing cryogenic tests in a giant thermal vacuum known as Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The telescope has been inside Chamber A since mid-July, and there it will stay while technicians test its systems in space-like conditions for another two months or so....

Fact: There is evidence to suggest an undiscovered planet far out in the solar system, waiting to be discovered. Which is pretty freakin’ cool.Not a fact: The world is about to end and this theoretical world called “Nibiru” has something to do with it.The Planet X apocalypse conspiracy theory is back in the news. Numerologist David Meade, he of several failed attempts to predict the endtimes, has a new interpretation of the Book of Revelation that pins down the rapture to April 23, suggesting that this year’s Earth Day will be quickly followed by End of the Earth Day when Planet X crashes into our world....

Here’s one way to cast your fishing line a little further. Guns.com dug up an oldie from the Popular Mechanics archive in which we covered some seriously ingenious WWII airmen. These guys stationed in the Pacific used their grenade launcher to blast a baited hook and fishing line 200 yards out to sea. PM didn’t say whether they caught anything.The original short piece from the January 1945 Popular Mechanics, “Grenade Launcher Casts Line for Yanks Fishing in Pacific,” reads as follows:Deep sea fishing, wartime style, at an Air Force base in the Mariana Islands, is accomplished by adapting the line-carrying wooden float to a regulation grenade-launching rifle and shooting it out into the surf....

Parmigiani Fleurier is mainly known for making extremely beautiful, extremely expensive watches. Why, then, did they decide to restore a jewel-studded pistol dating back to roughly 1815? Well, for one, it was a chance for the Swiss watchmaking company to show off its restoration skills—by the it got its hands on the pistol, the pistol has already been fiddled with six times, damaging many of the intricate workings of the calvary-style pistol....

A few years ago, researchers at MIT developed a new technology that could detect movement by measuring changes to wireless signals. This device, called Radio Frequency (RF) Capture, could in effect “see through walls” by detecting ripples in Wi-Fi or other wireless signals anywhere in a house. Now, the company Cognitive Systems has created a similar technology to build a new kind of home security system. Instead of using cameras or motion sensors, Aura can detect home intruders by looking at how movement affects wireless signal....