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EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. — We’ve just spent the day in Silicon Valley driving GMC’s new Acadia crossover SUV, a Yukon-sized unibody powered by a 275-hp version of GM’s 3.6-liter V6 and six-speed automatic. Now GMC has the driving impressions embargoed until Sunday, so we can’t tell you what it’s like behind the wheel of this big beast quite yet. But we can tell you what we learned after conversing with one particularly cool (and loose-lipped) GM staffer: GMC will have a Denali version of the Acadia soon....

What is net neutrality?Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (companies like Verizon and Comcast, for instance) should be just that, and no more. They shouldn’t be gatekeepers who judge of which kinds of content should get high speeds and which should get low ones, and they shouldn’t take money from big companies who want to pay more for their websites to go faster.What rules did the FCC actually pass?...

Media Platforms Design TeamBoys in shop class became very enthusiastic over the making of small chestlike boxes, bound with ornamental metal, and adapted them to a great variety of uses. The boxes were designed to suit the taste of the maker and for use as glove, handkerchief, jewelry, treasure, and other boxes.The boxes were lined with silk and finished in wax and varnish, in various stains. Oak was used for most of these, and the metals employed were largely copper and brass, although silver is suitable for small boxes....

You have a supercomputer in your pocket, but chances are you still carry around a different, separate one in your briefcase or backpack. As phones get every more powerful, there’s really no reason for it to be this way. Razer’s Project Linda, announced today at CES 2018, is a tantalizing glance into a world where the two finally converge, even though you might not see it happen any time soon. Project Linda is, on some level, just a phone case....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)It’s already been a big year for Apple. At last month’s major event, the company launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and showed off its Apple Watch that’s slated for early 2015. Today Apple held another gathering, this time at its Cupertino campus, to announce new versions of the iPad, updates to its desktop and mobile operating systems, a few new computers, and have a chat with Stephen Colbert....

How often have you, a mere road-pounding mortal, dreamed of walking into a dealership and riding out on a V4 superbike in all its glory? Unless you’re hiding a time machine in your basement and can hop back to the early 1990s, you’ve had very little choice. Back then V4s were all the rage, but they swiftly vanished.The inline-four has always dominated the mid- to high-end of the sport bike market, but while the I4 re-took the road bike mantle, manufacturers honed their expertise on V4 racing motorcycles throughout the 2000s....

Plants are incredible organisms. They tend to be very simple, only requiring a little CO2, water, and oxygen in order to live, but they’re capable of tremendous diversity and adaptability. Plants can grow big or small, fat or skinny, entirely based on some simple factors like how much light there is.Dr. Joanne Chory, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and HHMI, has made a career out of uncovering these factors, developing them into simple rules, and manipulating them to create big changes in plants....

Now that the kilogram is disassociated from its physical form, it can be measured anywhere. At least that’s the theory behind a prototype of a device called a Kibble, built by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It’s been hypothesized for decades, but now it’s close to reality. They’ve reported on the device, called a Kibble, in detail in the June IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement....

The Soviet Union was first in space, first with artificial satellites and then first with dogged missions, manned missions, womaned missions, and space stations. NASA was unable to catch up until the moon landing, marking a gigantic first that hasn’t been accomplished since. But the Soviets still dreamt big until the very end. Here are five of their most ambitious programs that never quite got as far as they planned.Space ShuttleMedia Platforms Design TeamThe space shuttle was a three-decade workhorse for the American space program....

There’s a mission to turn Mystery Science Theater 3000 into a real Lego set you can build via the Lego Ideas program, which gave birth to cool grassroots ideas like the Women of NASA set.The show and the blocks share a similar DIY ethos. The cult favorite show, which lovingly skewers bad movies with running commentary, started on a low-budget TV channel in Minnesota in 1988. The cult grew into a Comedy Central favorite, and that eventually turned into a Kickstarter which turned into a triumphant return on Netflix....

Hyundai is entering the increasingly crowded world of urban air mobility (UAM) with a new hire from NASA. Jaiwon Shin will be tasked with getting the company up to speed with competitors ranging from Uber to Honeywell, as Hyundai expects the flying car industry represents a global opportunity.While some governments have expressed enthusiasm about the idea, there are many logistical problems that remain at the core.Hyundai is entering the still mostly hypothetical world of flying cars, announcing a new head of its newly formed Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Division....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a foggy morning in half moon bay , about 2 miles from the legendary Mavericks surf break just south of San Francisco. The parking lot is packed with 4x4 pickups and other mud-splattered vehicles outfitted with surfboard and bike racks. I’m led inside the GoPro headquarters by Rick Loughery, the company’s steel-jawed director of communications, who’s wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “manufacturing stoke.” We thread past a cube warren populated by twentysomethings dressed in the wrinkled cotton of passengers who just landed on the red-eye from Reykjavík (which some of the staffers very likely did)....

I’d never sailed before. This wasn’t a problem, however, because we were not sailing. We were hobbling. My new boat, bought for $5,000 from a man who told us only after we’d paid that we had two days to move the boat before he was kicked out of his slip, puttered out of the Alameda Channel and into San Francisco Bay. A 1974 Tartan 34C, No Bubbles fulfilled the promise of its name....

Mathematicians from the University of Sheffield in the U.K. used mathematical models to decipher the best way to survive a zombie apocalypse.The answer, according to math? Domesticate the marauding ghouls. The model the team used is the same one that statisticians use to predict and prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as measles. Put away the chainsaw. Stow your machete. The best zombie-fighting tool in your arsenal may be … math?...

To learn more about the Thanksgiving Day Parade—along with a new test to determine if you’re predisposed to cancer, how they restored Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, and a sweatshirt that makes drinking easier—download this week’s episode of How Your World Works here, and be sure to subscribe and comment on iTunes!Step 1: StorageWorkers at an industrial gas facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, store a mix of gaseous and liquid helium in large cryovessels, which have five layers of antimagnetized steel or aluminum....

Laser attacks against U.S. forces have spread out of Africa into the Pacific. U.S. personnel operating in the East China Sea area have been the victim of blinding laser attacks similar to those that took place earlier this year in Djibouti. The attacks, conducted with nonlethal lasers were reportedly carried out by Chinese nationals.Earlier this year the Pentagon issued a NOTAM, or “Notice to Airmen” warning U.S. pilots of “unauthorized laser activity” resulting in injury to an unspecified number of U....

NASA is still making plans for its next-generation space station, the Deep Space Gateway that will sit in orbit of the moon. As part of that initiative, NASA is asking its commercial partners to develop technologies to pair with the station. One of those potential partner technologies has just been unveiled by Lockheed Martin, which is developing a lunar lander to take future astronauts to the surface of the moon. NASA’s Deep Space Gateway is still several years from beginning construction, and Lockheed’s lunar lander is still in a similar design stage....

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) took pictures of the proposed landing site of India’s Vikram Lander. Scientists were unable to locate Vikram, which experts say had a hard landing, in the images taken by LRO, according to a NASA statement.Vikram dropped out of contact shortly before it was scheduled to land on the lunar surface; Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission specialists have not been able to establish contact.NASA released images taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter today of the Vikram Lander’s crash site....

A few months ago, NOAA launched a new satellite for monitoring weather in the United States. The satellite is called GOES-17, and it’s meant to track weather patterns across the eastern half of the country. The satellite is equipped with high-tech cameras and sensors to measure weather more accurately and precisely than ever before. At least, that was the plan, before an equipment malfunction took part of the craft out of service....

A British satellite has just successfully proven that it can capture space junk using a system both innovative and old-school: nets.RemoveDEBRIS, based out of the University of Surrey and funded by a variety of partners including the European Commission and Airbus, has had the goal of finding a low-cost space junk removal system for years. Back in June, the RemoveDEBRIS system was deployed from the International Space Station. On September 16th, the group began to proceed with in-space testing....