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Twitter is suggesting all users change their passwords as a precaution after a reported glitch caused some passwords to be stored in plain text. If you’ve ever used your Twitter password for another service, you’d be wise to change it in both places. Twitter says there is no evidence of a breach, but the error would have allowed any snoopers inside the system to scoop up unprotected passwords with ease. Typically, passwords are “hashed” before they are stored, a process which transforms them password into a unique series of numbers and letters that can’t be translated back into the actually sequence of numbers and letters you type in....

There’s no better drink on a hot summer morning than a cold glass of iced coffee. The problem is, if you want some smooth, homemade cold brew, you’ll have to have gotten the ball rolling about 12 hours earlier. Unless you get a vacuum-powered machine like Prisma Cold Brew to do the job in mere minutes. If you’re not familiar with cold brew coffee, it’s a simple if time-intensive process. Instead of running hot water through coffee grounds and getting a piping hot caffeine delivery mechanism on the spot, cold brew coffee is made by mixing water and grounds into a slurry and then letting it sit around for hours, generally 12 or more....

Historic finds are common on construction projects in older cities like London or Rome, and the same applies for their smaller neighbors. Oxfordshire is a county in southern England dating back to the 10th century, but a stunning discovery there of 26 human skeletons, some believed to have been part of “human sacrifice,” offers a visceral reminder of how closely modern cities overlap on top of history.The project is meant to protect one of southern England’s cherished natural ecosystems, a chalk stream....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe new Ford Fiesta will soon be joining the ranks populated by the likes of the Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, and Toyota Yaris. And as the B-car segment heats up, an unofficial foot race between the Fiesta and its corporate cousin, the Mazda2, should offer an interesting experiment in shared-platform competition. The Fiesta has moved over 500,000 units globally using the same underpinnings as the Mazda. But it hasn’t been offered in the U....

2015 GMC CanyonPrice: $21,880 Available: NowMPG: 18/26Not everybody wants a full-size truck. There are people, believe it or not, who need a pickup but don’t require 400 horsepower or 12,000 pounds of towing capacity. This fact is illustrated by the second-generation Toyota Tacoma, a 10-year-old design that nonetheless notches consistent six-figure annual sales, its only challenge coming from the equally ancient Nissan Frontier. The market is ripe for some fresh competition, and General Motors is bringing it with the 2015 GMC Canyon and its Chevy twin, the Colorado....

For years, scientists have considered the possibility of exogenesis, the idea that life arrived on Earth from another planet, and not just the building blocks of life, but organisms that were ready to rock and roll when they arrived. It’s a Rube Goldberg scenario, however, dependent on several successful steps. First, life has to evolve on an alien planet. Then it must be blasted into space on a rock, probably from a large impact....

Air tools can get tossed around and damaged when stored in a drawer. A better way to keep them is by making this hanging storage system that uses a standard drawer slide.Start by tracking down some old air fittings and one standard 12-inch drawer slide. Then tack-weld the fittings onto the smaller section of the drawer slide to secure them. Limit yourself to only two or three air fittings per slide to give yourself enough space to easily attach and disconnect the air tools....

Sometime between the 6th and 8th centuries, in the Longobard necropolis of Povegliano Veronese in Veneto, Northern Italy, a medieval man got his arm amputated in a single blow — maybe it was during combat, maybe it was surgical removed, or chopped off as a judicial punishment. In any case: after the amputation, he attached a knife to the stump with a cap, buckle, and leather straps, using his teeth. Not only did he survive the amputation and DIY prosthetic attachment, but he lived on for a very long time....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Phil Derner)Air France on Friday became the first European airline to operate the double-decker Airbus A380 in commercial service, completing its inaugural flight from Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. While Air France is actually the third carrier to operate the world’s largest commercial aircraft on U.S. routes–following Emirates and Qantas–this flight marks perhaps the most politically significant milestone the A380 program has achieved so far, connecting the country where Airbus assembles the aircraft to the home of the manufacturer’s archrival, Boeing....

You’ve just gotten off a long flight and you feel terrible. But it’s not just because you were trapped in a middle seat, because there was a crying baby in the row ahead of you, or because of the jet lag. It’s what you breathed.That’s the conclusion one group of researchers came to after studying the effects of cabin ozone concentration on passengers aboard 83 different domestic and international flights in the United States....

Media Platforms Design Team(Published in the January 2004 issue)More: How to Make Your Appliances Last Forever.If you’re reading this column chances are you have a computer at home connected to the Internet. Are you ready for a refrigerator that’s also connected? And how about an entire network of home appliances, all accessible over the Net, and all talking to each other when you’re not at home.No, it’s not some sci-fi nightmare like Skynet from the “Terminator” movies....

Media Platforms Design TeamBarring a disaster—or a miracle, depending on your viewpoint—the Finnish government later this year will begin the final licensing of the world’s first permanent storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. Located on Olkiluoto Island, just off Finland’s southwest coast, the underground facility known as Onkalo will hold all of the country’s existing waste and all that it expects to produce over the next century. It is designed to keep that waste secure for at least 100,000 years—in part by making humans forget it was ever there....

Update: Google has confirmed that the Lunar XPrize will indeed end without a winner. In a statement issued on Tuesday, XPrize leaders Peter Diamandis and Marcus Shingles had this to say:After close consultation with our five finalist Google Lunar XPRIZE teams over the past several months, we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the Moon by the March 31st, 2018 deadline. This literal “moonshot” is hard, and while we did expect a winner by now, due to the difficulties of fundraising, technical and regulatory challenges, the grand prize of the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE will go unclaimed....

Kayak, Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire—our collective need to feel like we’re not getting screwed over on airfare supports a small industry of companies promising to scour the airlines and deliver to us the best data and lowest prices. Now you can count Google among them, and it just might use its information power to crush the competition.The company announced Google Flights last month with a minimum of fanfare and just updated the service to make it even better....

Eric Berger has a fascinating piece up at ArsTechnica that traces all the steps towards the upcoming Europa mission. While the Europa Clipper is far from a done deal (the New Horizons Pluto flyby was cancelled more than once before launching in 2006), it stands a good chance of exploring this fascinating moon of Jupiter’s, just a shade smaller than our own.So why go to Europa? The ice crust, as revealed by the Voyager missions and nearly-confirmed by the Galileo orbiter, seems to have a salty ocean underneath it....

Media Platforms Design TeamFans gushed over Maker Faire Africa’s debut last year in Accra, Ghana, calling it vivid evidence of Africa’s do-it-yourself spirit. Thousands of craftsmen, students, tinkerers and backyard mechanics turned out for the African incarnation of the DIY festivals that are held worldwide. On folding tables and in vinyl tents, there were displays of homemade robotics, broadcasting equipment, human-powered electricity generators, a bamboo bicycle frame and living room furniture made of empty water bottles....

Now the government is back (at least for the time being), NASA can get back to work on a mission that’s been ongoing for six months: trying to reestablish contact with the Mars rover Opportunity. It’s likely the last attempt that will be made.On January 25, 2019, the same day the government shutdown ended, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab announced that it would be sending new commands to the rover in an attempt to compel to it contact Earth....

A new artificial joint from the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden offers forearm amputees a bodily function many would imagine difficult to live without—wrist mobility.High levels of wrist mobility allow for the hand to carry out many day-to-day functions seamlessly–using a screwdriver, opening a door, turning a page in a book. Current prosthetics offer limited solutions for handling these complex maneuvers.“A person with forearm amputation can use a motorized wrist rotator controlled by electric signals from the remaining muscles....

America’s first offshore wind farm just turned on, but we’re already scheduled to start building a second one. Deepwater Wind, the company behind the country’s first offshore wind farm, has just received regulatory approval to begin construction of the South Fork Wind Farm, a 90 megawatt farm off the coast of Long Island.Offshore wind turbines are a controversial topic in the U.S., with many coastal residents concerned that the turbines could block the view and raise electricity costs....

Following a successful test on Tuesday, North Korean state television has released footage of the country’s 4th of July missile trial launch, complete with a dramatic soundtrack. According to North Korea, the missile reached a height of 1,741 miles which would give it a strike range that includes all of Japan and South Korea while also reaching as far as Alaska. United States officials say the tested missile was mostly likely a two-stage missile, a nut that the North Koreans had until now been unable to crack....