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Former NASA astronaut William "Bill" Thornton, who used his own inventions to measure and combat the ill-effects of microgravity while on board two space shuttle missions, has died at the age of 91.

Logicians don't rule the world or get the most done. Could it be that a consistent world view is neither desirable nor achievable? If we abandon the straightjacket of rationality might this lead to a more powerful and exciting future, or is it a heresy that leads to madness? 

This liquid fuel engine is a beast.

A day before the Proud Boys are preparing to join thousands of pro-Trump supporters in Washington for “Stop the Steal” protests, the violent street-fighting group is raking in massive donations from right-wing crowdfunding campaigns designed to fund protective gear, communications equipment, and legal defenses.

This year marks 70 years since Alan Turing published his paper introducing the concept of the Turing Test in response to the question, “Can machines think?” The test’s goal was to determine if a machine can exhibit conversational behavior indistinguishable from a human. Turing predicted that by the year 2000, an average human would have less than a 70% chance of distinguishing an AI from a human in an imitation game where who is responding—a human or an AI—is hidden from the evaluator.

Recently revealed US charges against a China-based Zoom employee for censoring virtual meetings commemorating Beijing’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1989 show how the space for global technology firms to operate in both China and the US is narrowing amid an economic, technological and ideological rivalry between the two countries, according to analysts.

President Donald Trump appeared no closer to signing an end-of-year COVID relief and spending bill Sunday as unemployment aid expired, the government barrels toward a mid-pandemic shutdown and lawmakers implored him to break the impasse he created after Congress approved the deal.

Without federal intervention, as many as 40 million people could be displaced amid an ongoing and still worsening pandemic.

After almost a year of limiting our contact with the people in our lives and humanity in general, it’s hard to imagine a future where we freely move about our cities and towns going to meetings, errands, and social events. And it may be even harder to envision doing so in driverless taxis that look sort of like giant toasters on wheels. But go ahead and fire up your imagination—and your hope for a near future filled with socialization instead of social distancing—because Amazon is doing ju...

Summoned by the actor Kirk Cameron, hundreds of maskless people belted out Christmas carols in a Thousand Oaks parking lot Sunday night in a protest against coronavirus restrictions. Cameron, known for his roles in the sitcom “Growing Pains” and Christian films such as “Mercy Rule,” organized and promoted the event on Instagram, drawing rebukes from many for potentially spreading the coronavirus.

The doomsday machine was never supposed to exist. It was meant to be a thought experiment that went like this: Imagine a device built with the sole purpose of destroying all human life. Now suppose that machine is buried deep underground, but connected to a computer, which is in turn hooked up to sensors in cities and towns across the United States.

Apple Fitness+ will officially debut later today after being announced back in September. Ahead of the launch, a handful of early reviews are now available, and they widely praise the integration with Apple Watch, the variety of the workouts, and more.

A new personality construct has been defined that describes people who persistently see themselves as victims within interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in Personality and Individual Differences.

Timnit Gebru, a star researcher who has criticized the company’s lack of diversity, emailed co-workers that she felt “constantly dehumanized." Her managers, she said, abruptly fired her shortly after.