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The oceans are just too big to police—and if you want just one example, consider fishing.Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing nets up to 26 million tons of fish each year, which adds up to almost a quarter of the profits of legal fishing. Powered by a shadow fleet, this multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise hurts legit fishermen and wreaks environmental havoc through overfishing.The vastness of earth’s open waters allow such a black market to thrive....

Introduced in 1959, the IBM 1401 was never the most powerful computer on the market. But historically, it was something more important: It was the first computer that ever made it into medium-sized businesses with a reasonable rental price. Pre-silicon, 1401s offered a magnetic core memory for storage and could hold 16,000 characters. Computer historian Ken Shirriff offers a great lesson in how the old computer worked by printing out a holiday card on one....

Passwords are under attack in a war on multiple fronts. Just today, Microsoft announced the rollout of password-free login using its Microsoft Authenticator app while the digital security company Yubikey announced a new version of its USB security keys that forgo the need for passwords altogether. Neither of these will kill the password, but they are two more shots across the bow. Microsoft’s new password-free login feature works through an app, much in the same way you might use Google Authenticator or text message-based two-factor authentication....

It’s so cold in Florida that iguanas are falling from their perches in suburban trees.Temperatures dipped below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) early Thursday in parts of South Florida, according to the National Weather Service in Miami.That’s chilly enough to immobilize green iguanas common in Miami’s suburbs.Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino tweeted a photograph of an iguana lying belly-up next to his swimming pool. WPEC-TV posted images of an iguana on its back on a Palm Beach County road....

In 2010, Jawbone came out with the Jambox portable Bluetooth speaker and created demand for a product category that we never knew we needed. Yves Béhar’s design was beautiful enough to sit on your bookshelf, while the speaker itself was loud enough to make a patio gathering into an occasion. It’s simple and reliable enough to connect with no dock, wires, or Wi-Fi-handshaking required. Yes, AirPlay and Sonos preserve sound fidelity better than Bluetooth does....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile the breadth of a vehicle’s functionality can be difficult to summarize in a single graphical representation, tires are an entirely different story.Spider charts are seemingly tailor made for illustrating performance parameters like dry handling and rolling resistance, and the representation of Michelin’s new Pilot Sport All Season 3 tires suggests a marked improvement over its predecessors in all but one category. But how do hard numbers like roadholding g-forces and stopping distances translate to seemingly arbitrary spider charts like the one seen here?...

MORE BRAND-NEW REPORTING FROM THE HIGH-TECH SEAS* TECH WATCH: As U.S. Saves Ship, Inside Next-Gen Pirate MatchupFALMOUTH, Mass. – MIT’s latest autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is about to do something a little dumb. The Odyssey IV is bobbing through choppy waters here, and I’m on a boat nearby, holding the joystick that controls it. That seagull sitting quietly in the water nearby is clearly asking for trouble. I turn up the throttle, and Odyssey glides through the waves, nearly all of its mass below the surface....

December 7, 2021: Today marks the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nearly a century after the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched their deadly attack—a move that would spur the U.S. to join the war effort and change the course of history—mysteries surrounding that day remain. To mark this solemn occasion, we’re republishing this article from 2018, which sheds light on the strange events leading up to and following the attack....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday Mazda unveiled the 2014 Mazda 3 five-door to the American media. The best-selling and most important car in Mazda’s lineup, the 3 receives updated exterior styling that brings it in line with the company’s current design themes seen in the CX-5 and Mazda 6. Gone is the 3’s smiley face, traded in for Mazda’s new five-point grille along with angular headlights accented by metal eyebrows. Sporting strong character lines in the front and rear fenders, heavy side sculpting, and a steeply raked A pillar, the 3 now looks like a sprinter set to launch off the starting blocks....

Scientists have shown early success at being able to see through opaque materials and take images. A new article over at Nature details new efforts to go beyond those early studies, all the way to imaging the inside of the human body.It’s something that would be a huge boon to researchers: the ability to gather images far beyond MRI or x-ray quality using only the light in the visible part of the spectrum, in highly focused photon streams....

When reader Jim Romans retired, he needed a project to keep him busy. A lifelong builder and a fan of Humphrey Bogart’s 1943 film Sahara, Jim took on the ambitious project of making an almost-full-scale wood replica of the movie’s famous tank, Lulubelle. The M3 Lee tank model took Jim three years to make, about half of which was spent on “thinking time,” during which he went as far as examining stills of the film in order to get the number of rivets and other details just right....

A new paper describes computer simulations of a hybrid fusion-fission reactor that runs on thorium.Thorium has benefits compared with uranium reaction and has been endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.In the reactor, plasma fusion generates neutrons that fuel subsequent fission.Russian scientists have published a concept for a new kind of nuclear reactor. It’s a hybrid reactor, meaning it includes both fusion and fission, and it runs almost exclusively on thorium instead of more volatile uranium....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamThe Tri-State Area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) is home to one of the largest concentrations of Volvo wagons on the planet. So what better venue than the New York auto show for the Volvo V70 and XC70 wagons to make their North American debuts and Volvo to celebrate its 80th anniversary?Volvo XC70The XC70, now in its third generation, is Volvo’s almost-SUV. The tall wagon still retains the high-riding stance and aggressive looking body cladding of the previous model....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe USS Ranger was a war machine and a movie star. Here, in the civilian-shot drone footage below, you can see the old girl sailing for the scrapyard.Related StoryHere Is the World’s Most Versatile and Badass TruckCommissioned in the late 1950s, the aircraft carrier served in the Vietnam War and up through the Persian Gulf before its 1993 decommissioning. It also appeared in the opening scenes of Top Gun and in Star Trek IV, where it stood in for the USS Enterprise....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 911 transcript is horrifying.“Please help,” a young caller pleads. “My dad just killed my 4-year-old sister. He slit her throat. She’s bleeding to death. Please help!“It’s August 2011 in eastern Pennsylvania, and the plea comes not from a traditional phone call, but rather AT&T’s Internet Relay Service, which allows the deaf to make phone calls from a text-based interface over the Internet. The grisly scene is unfolding in East Allen Township, re sponders are told, and an address appears on their computer screens....

There’s a popular vision of the technopocalypse that goes like this: Skynet (or Siri, or Clippy 2.0) gains sentience. Then, out of self-preservation or existential rage, it hunts humankind to the point of near-extinction.For now, though, robot brains have a much different compulsion. They just can’t stop lovin’ you. Take, for instance, Google’s new “Smart Reply,” a feature rolled out this week in which AI tries to figure out how you’d respond to an email so that it can do it for you....

Media Platforms Design TeamYour story traces the journey of Ben Carlin, an engineer from rural Australia who decided to circle the entire globe in a single vehiclean aquatic jeep. How did you find out about him?A friend and I were on a sailboat, briefly trapped at sea, about a decade ago. It was miserable and boring, and he started telling me about a guy who had done this by choice for seven years of his life, traveling around the world....

Of all the iconic shots in Star Wars, few are as unforgettable as Luke gazing toward the horizon at the two suns of Tatooine. It’s a beautiful image, but have you ever stopped to consider what a planet around twin stars might be like?In this clip, YouTuber EC Henry dug deep into the data to create a shockingly precise model of where each sun would sit in the evening sky.View full post on YoutubeWhat began as an evaluation of the shadows on Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s homestead turned into a cosmological affair....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the many benefits of a raised garden bed is that your plants benefit from good air circulation and at least 6 hours of sun daily. But there are times when the elements can be a little too extreme. A covered support structure positioned over your raised beds protects plants from frost, snow, and extreme temperatures, as well as keeping pests from helping themselves to your prize tomatoes....

Monarch butterflies are struggling. In fact, if we do nothing, they might disappear from the west coast altogether in a few years. A new survey of monarch butterfly populations in California reveals the number of butterflies is dangerously low. If we do nothing, this iconic species could soon be completely wiped out.The survey was conducted by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, along with hundreds of volunteers that turned out on Thanksgiving....