3G cellular data is arguably one of the most important technologies of the last two decades. It was the third generation of cellular connection (the G stands for generation) and brought connection speeds that allowed for basic internet browsing and data transfer. It ushered in the age of the smartphone. The first commercial 3G networks launched in the US in 2001. Before that, only 2G GSM connections were available, and they limited data speeds to 64 kbps....

When Is CES 2016? The official dates of CES 2016 are January 6-9. But thousands of attendees arrive to have closed-door meetings, negotiations, discussions, friendly drinks and more in the days preceding the official dates. For about a week, the conference will completely take over the Las Vegas Strip and the surrounding area. Attendees of CES mostly meet at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but many make use of the conference rooms and suites at nearby casinos and hotels....

All that has changed, of course, with game consoles having evolved into all-around entertainment hubs, and games existing as downloadable and constantly updating digital streams divorced of physical media. Each major system now also comes with its own subscription service to further expands your console’s capabilities—but by how much, exactly? Here’s what you get with each of the “big three” subscriptions. Sony certainly didn’t make things easy…or streamlined. There were, at one point, three subscription services available on the PlayStation 4: PlayStaton Now, PlayStation Plus, and PlayStation Vue....

Although WhatsApp is far from the most popular messaging platform in the US, it’s ranked as the unequivocally preferred texting service for rest of the world, with two billion monthly users. WhatsApp first introduced a message “unsend” feature way back in 2017, but at the time users only had a seven-minute window to change their mind about a text. The service later increased that time-cap to the oddly specific one-hour-and-eight minutes, before establishing its new, rounded 60-hour deadline....

In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers gathered broken bits of suspected tusks or teeth from dicynodonts, extremely early mammals, that had been housed at multiple institutions in Africa and the US. They brought the tusk-like remains back to the lab to check out their makeup under the microscope. They wanted to figure out whether the fossilized pieces were in fact tusks or whether they were simply teeth....

In fact, Lee, a Go master, is retiring—and talking about how artificial intelligence is unbeatable. He said: “With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realised that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one,” the Guardian reported, citing the South Korean Yonhap News Agency. Last year, the same team that created AlphaGo (the algorithm that beat Lee, four games to one, in 2016) celebrated something more formidable: an artificial intelligence system that is capable of teaching itself—and winning at—three different games....

White dwarf stars, burnt out cores light enough to avoid collapsing into neutron stars or black holes, pepper the Milky Way. At least some should host exoplanets, considering their previous lives as normal sun-like stars, but no one has ever detected a white dwarf solar system. But now, researchers think they may have found one through careful astronomical detective work. A puzzling chemical footprint many hundreds of lightyears away suggests the presence of a white dwarf that’s feeding on the atmosphere of a nearby planet....

Open-source software is a wonderful thing. It’s what made Android the most popular mobile operating system, and is why Linux quietly powers the internet. Programmers with limited experience (like the copy/paste “script kiddies”) and experienced software engineers alike can toy with functioning code to create new services, which are sometimes open-sourced in turn. But for Google, the second edge of the open-source sword is starting to cut, and on a product that actually makes some cash....

Stratego is a game with two distinct challenges: it requires long-term strategic thinking (like chess) and also requires players to deal with incomplete information (like poker). The goal is to move across the board and capture the other player’s flag piece. Each game takes place over a 10 x 10 gridded board with two 2 x 2 square lakes blocking the middle of the board. Both players have 40 pieces with different tactical values that can are deployed at the start of the game—the catch is that you can’t see what your opponent’s pieces are and they can’t see what yours are....

This was a common sight in 20th-century America, when lead could be found everywhere: In pipes bringing once-clean water to cities and towns. In paints that produced brighter colors and dried faster. In gas, to help the fuel combust more evenly in car engines. In plastic toys, to make them more flexible and resistant to heat. Even after physicians publicized the harms it posed to workers and children during the Industrial Revolution, the heavy metal was considered a versatile material....

There aren’t many lights at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, but one of the few is a potential vaccine. Researchers around the world are rushing to create something that would help us return to normal life, and though most of the best estimates put a vaccine’s release in 2021, the plan may already face a major challenge: Not enough people will even get the vaccine. A new poll run by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that of 1,056 Americans who were randomly surveyed, just 49 percent say they’re planning to get vaccinated if a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available....

At the heart of Tuesday’s launch was the novel recovery attempt. Getting to orbit is expensive work, and the ability to recover and reuse rocket components can lower the costs of each launch. Recovery in this instance was attempted by a Sikorsky helicopter. “At 6,500 ft, Rocket Lab’s Sikorsky S-92 helicopter rendezvoused with the returning stage and used a hook on a long line to capture the parachute line,” Rocket Lab said in a release....

To cope with the crowds, wireless carriers are working with government agencies and adding technicians to monitor networks. In addition, COWS (Cells on Wheels) and COLTS (Cells on Light Trucks) are being herded into the area, adding additional wireless capacity. Companies are also enhancing in-building wireless coverage around the capitol and adding more radio channels to boost cell sites. Still, carriers warn a surge could happen. “Despite all the industry’s efforts to increase network capacity, it’s really important for the public to understand that unusually large crowds can generate congestion and communications delays,” says Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association....

However, even as the streaming giants lose members, there may be something else to watch out for. Niche platforms like Crunchyroll, Shudder, and BritBox are among a few smaller platforms focused on specific categories, in the same vein as cable packages of the pre-streaming era. Anime, horror, and British television found their primary platforms. But the question remains: Where do you go if you want to watch documentaries? Where to watch good documentaries If you want to watch a nature documentary and perhaps enjoy the sound of soothing voices discussing birds, you may want to give the documentary-streaming service MagellanTV a try....

I don’t know about you, but that seems like a lot of bread these days. Back in the heyday of late-’90s dial-up, forking over $100 per month for the Internet would have been laughable. I paid $20 for AOL, which at 56K was as good as it got at home (more or less). A decade later, it costs five times that amount. Why? The answer is a combination of things, one being the proliferation of access points....

Relatively low-cost whole-genome sequencing has been a goal for biotech and health organizations for years. Precision medicine, the field in which treatments for diseases targeted to specific genetic mutations, has become much more feasible and popular in recent years. And despite a huge influx of research funding, scientists are having trouble detangling the knot of genetics to figure out how to treat individual diseases. People who have diabetes, for example, don’t just have a mutation in one gene—they might have 20 mutations, or even 100, that all affect one another, and can vary between individual backgrounds, ages, and lifestyles....

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder where brain activity becomes abnormal due to a sudden change in electrical patterns, causing seizures, periods of unusual behavior, or loss of awareness. Anyone can develop epilepsy at pretty much any time in their life, and more than three million Americans have it, according to the CDC. Around three percent of people with epilepsy, most of which are children or adolescents, have “photosensitive epilepsy,” which can be triggered by certain visual patterns or flashing lights....

Newton had imagined gravity to be a force like any other that pulls on things to get them going. But Einstein wove gravity into very fabric of space and time, molding an invisible landscape of hills and valleys through which objects move. The equations describing this vision, known as the general theory of relativity, have since become a cornerstone of modern physics—opening new doors for understanding everything from how planets and stars move to existence of dark matter and the early days of the universe itself....

Bring Quick Look-esque file previews to Windows with Seer When I first switched to Windows (after many years as a Mac user), I was surprised to find Quick Look was the feature I missed the most. Being able to preview any file with a quick tap on the space bar is so fast and easy that it becomes muscle memory, and losing it feels like losing one of my fingers. Seer is the best Quick Look clone I’ve used: it’s a small app that runs in the background and works pretty much exactly like you’d expect....