Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, penned an open letter to NASA, asking them to rethink the contract, offering to waive $2 billion dollars of costs. He also filed a complaint to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). “I don’t know if the public is paying attention to this, but the space community sure is and the space community is reacting very negatively,” says Laura Forczyk, owner of aerospace space consulting firm Astralytical....

Last year, for example, a computer scientist at the University of the West of England named Andy Adam­atzky and a team of Japanese researchers built logic gates that ran on soldier crabs. First they constructed mazes that replicated the shape of the wires in a computer’s logic gates. Then they chased two swarms of crabs (inputs) from one end of the gate to the other. When the swarms collided, they combined to form a new swarm (output), which often headed in the direction of the sum of their vectors, demonstrating that a living, somewhat random system can produce useful order....

All park entrances closed and more than 10,000 visitors were ordered to leave. River gauges reached record highs as the water swelled. Throughout the region, towns have been damaged, hit with power outages and water shortages, or cut off by the floodwaters completely. On Wednesday, Montana’s lieutenant governor requested a presidential major disaster declaration. The region has seen floods before, but not of this magnitude, says Sierra Harris, climate change coordinator at the conservation-focused nonprofit Greater Yellowstone Coalition....

At 3:45 UTC, a “ring of fire” will rise in the sky, caused by an annular solar eclipse—a spectacle that only happens once every one or two years when the moon is farthest away in its orbit. The more familiar full solar eclipse happens when the moon is closer to Earth, appearing larger and smothering the sun’s brightness completely. But the smaller, more distant moon in an annular solar eclipse only partially covers the sun, creating a flaming, silhouetted ring....

Most people can probably guess the most significant reasons people gave—embarrassment, not wanting to feel judged or lectured, not wanting a medical intervention that might make things worse, and not wanting the information to appear in their records. “The thing that is so awesome about a primary care provider—the relationship, the trust-building, seeing each other frequently—can also be a hindrance,” says study author Angela Fagerlin, a psychologist at the University of Utah’s Department of Population Health Sciences....

An XXL mouse pad, also occasionally called an “extended” or “ultra-wide” mouse pad, effectively turns the entire area in front of your computer monitors into a giant mouse pad. Instead of having a mouse pad next to your keyboard, the keyboard sits on the mouse pad. If you have any other gear on your desk — microphone, game controller, a notebook, a soda — everything goes on the mouse pad....

Siraj Raval enthusiastically begins his YouTube videos by greeting his audience with the first two words any aspiring coder learns to produce: “Hello world!” A self-described technology activist, Raval has built a YouTube following of almost 700,000 over the past four years with popular videos like “TensorFlow in 5 Minutes,” which explains a popular software platform used in artificial intelligence research, and “How to Make Money as a Programmer in 2018....

Conjuring the dawn of space exploration decades later can be a challenge, but Hollywood had some help in making those films as accurate as possible. NASA is an archival treasure trove for screenwriters and filmmakers looking to produce a project on its missions. The agency’s Bert Ulrich, Multimedia Liaison, Film and TV Collaborations, is the guy you go to if you’re looking to dig into NASA history. As he is for for many productions about space, Ulrich was instrumental in assisting First Man screenwriter Josh Singer and director Damien Chazelle in telling Armstrong’s story with the utmost accuracy....

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… From the moment the opening title scroll comes up, and you see the Star Wars font, and hear the John Williams score, it makes you giddy. I saw Return of the Jedi in the movie theater when I was five years old and since then, I’ve been a lifelong, total Star Wars fan. I was excited for the prequels and enjoyed them when they first came out....

Rain drummed on my tarp shelter, occasionally splashing far enough under the opening to sizzle into the fire. Dinner warmed on that same fire as I fashioned a birch-bark moose call, sewing it into shape with paracord threaded through holes that I punched by the small screwdriver on my multi-tool. I was deep in the heart of remote interior Alaska moose country, float-hunting a remote creek for moose. One of the first items on my gear list for that adventure was a tarp to be used for shelter, meat care, and more....

JBL Xtreme 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker $199 (Was $349) You can get JBL’s extremely powerful Bluetooth speaker for nearly half-off this Black Friday. It has a huge battery life, a reliable Bluetooth connection, and a built-in, multi-colored light display to go with your tunes. Insignia 55″ Class F30 Series LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV $300 (Was $550) This is one of Best Buy’s top TV deals for this year. With 4K resolution and a LED display, you get high-quality viewing every time....

Making coffee at home is also more environmentally friendly than using hundreds of disposable cups over the course of a year. If you’ve been intimidated by the complexity of coffee making in the past, we’ve made sure to highlight coffeemakers that are user friendly. We’ve also found deep discounts on premium models, so if you’re looking to step up to a device that gives you total control over your drink, now’s the time to take advantage of these limited-time Black Friday coffee deals....

The Echo Dot is available for $30 (was $50).The Echo is available for $70 (was $100).The Echo Plus is available for $120 (was $165).The Echo Show is available for $180 (was $230).The Echo Spot is available for $100 (was $130).The Fire TV Cube is available for $80 (was $120). Personal favorite product deal alert. Ultimate Ears’ Wonderboom speaker is on sale for half off—now just $50. It features 360-degree sound, a 10-hour battery life, and an IPX7 waterproof rating, meaning it can withstand heavy splashing and showers....

The life of a car is a dirty one. Most pollutants associated with it come not from driving it but from manufacturing it and producing its fuel, whether gas or electricity. Electric cars, particularly those with large battery systems, might generate greater environmental damage from manufacturing than their reduction in emissions offsets. To tackle the problem at its source, Czinger quit Coda and started Divergent Microfactories, which is reimagining auto manufacturing....

Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, and Delaware have all announced they are ending their school mask mandates—in Connecticut’s case, as early as February 28. New Jersey’s mandate will lift on March 7, and Delaware’s and Oregon’s will end on March 31. Oregon and California are also dropping their general indoor mask requirements, though unvaccinated individuals in California must still wear masks indoors. Individual school districts may choose to keep their own mask mandates, and students in every state will be able to continue wearing masks if they choose to....

There’s still time left to take your pumpkin carving game to JPL levels: Try one of these all-time favorite hacks for Halloween. Oozing Pumpkin With minimal household materials, get maximum gross-out effect: This pumpkin project is basically a grade-school volcano experiment, but with a spooky twist. Adding food coloring, water, dish soap, and baking soda to a grimacing Jack before pouring in the vinegar turns an otherwise boring pumpkin into an oozefest....

Really Big Rockets The successor to the Space Shuttle could be ready for liftoff as early as 2018. When it does take off, NASA’s Space Launch System will be able to carry 70 metric tons of supplies into orbit. Later, it could send payloads of up to 130 metric tons into a trajectory towards Mars. At 382 feet tall, the SLS will eventually be the largest launch vehicle ever built, and even more powerful than the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon....

If you are looking for the best CBD oil for your ailments, you need to know that there are many different strengths and types of products on the market. It’s best to use our list of the 9 strongest CBD oils to determine which brand is right for you. When buying a CBD oil product, whether in a dispensary, local shop, or an online store, it’s important to know what you’re purchasing....

Scientists at Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria have built a tentacle-like robotic finger with gelatin and other materials you can probably find in a shop near you. They cooked the ingredients and then created the finger in a 3D printer. They published their work on February 2 in Science Robotics. You might be used to thinking of robots as rigid constructs of metal, ceramic, and other hard materials. These are the sorts of machines that build cars and make exoskeletons....

Their system is a kind of air scrubbing tower, which takes air and reacts the CO2 out of it by exposing it, in this case, to sodium hydroxide. Then the stuff goes through a few chemical intermediaries eventually leaving separated CO2 that can be piped away, and more hydroxide to feed back into the scrubber. Other air-scrubbers have been developed and researched, notably at Columbia University, also with good results....