The idea of a balloon that floats high up above Earth indefinitely is a tantalizing one. Solar power would allow such stratospheric balloons to operate like low-cost satellites at the edge of space, where they could provide communication in remote or disaster-hit area, follow hurricanes, or monitor pollution at sea. One day, they could even take tourists on near-space trips to see the curvature of the planet.

The Amazon HQ2 saga had all the hallmarks of the gaudiest reality TV. It was an absurd spectacle, concluding with a plot twist, which revealed a deep and dark truth about the modern world. Fourteen months ago, Amazon announced a national beauty contest, in which North American cities could apply to win the honor of landing the retailer’s second headquarters. The prize: 50,000 employees and the glory of housing an international tech giant. The cost? Just several billion dollars in tax incentive...

Somewhere deep inside Valve’s labyrinthine compound of Steam-sustaining tubes, wires, and pipes, somebody is thanking their lucky stars for Artem Moskowsky. The self-described “bug hunter” came across a glitch that allowed him to generate thousands of free keys for any game on Steam. A lesser person might have kept that knowledge to themselves. He reported it.

Nicholas Merten, the founder of DataDash, the largest cryptocurrency Youtube channel with over 316,000 subscribers, recently noted that crypto will have “four major cycles” including the “Silk Road phase” from 2011-2013, the “retail speculation” phase from 2016-2017, the “institutional speculation” phase from 2019-2020, and finally the “crypto replaces fiat” phase from 2020-2030. According to Merten, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will “reshape the way we think ...

With his new book, The Creative Spark, Agustín Fuentes, a primatologist and anthropologist currently at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, boldly puts forth the idea that what makes humans special is creativity. The ability of humans to switch back and forth between considering what is, and dreaming of what might be, and to then put these thoughts into actions (often collaboratively), has brought us a very long way from our primate origins to the tool-wielding, world-shaping force of natu...

Holding the opinion that I do still believe Self-Driving or Autonomous Vehicles are a luxury rather than a necessity; vehicle manufacturers continue to make the argument that AI vehicles are superior to non-autonomous vehicles. Though, consider that is the case — in certain situations, if the driver is handicapped, under the influence, or just plain tired, let AI take the wheel (Pathetic Carrie Underwood Pun intended).

I expected a lot of tests to be performed on the Nintendo Switch$299.00 at Amazon this week in the run up to its launch, but a taste test was not one of them. More specifically, those in possession of a Switch and games are tasting the game cartridges. And apparently they taste horrible, to the point where you want to but can't forget the nasty taste left in your mouth.

With Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent focused on developing sophisticated AI-driven systems in the coming decade, the rest of the world can only watch while China builds the computer systems that will run our world in the decades to come.

In Venezuela, the red siskin (Spinus cucullatus), a vibrantly colored red-and-black finch, is inextricably linked with the country’s identity. It is present in poems, paintings, names of streets and sports teams and even graces the back of the 100,000 Bolivar bill, but it is rare in its natural habitat. To help reverse this, the Smithsonian and the Piedra de Cachimbo coffee farmers in northern Venezuela stepped in.

Graham Morant stood to receive A$1.4m (£770,000; $1m) from his wife's life insurance policy.

Facebook has had a turbulent two years. But almost no one in tech thinks Mr. Zuckerberg, the social network’s chief executive, should step down from the company he built.

A law against pretending to be a witch is set to be repealed, but not before two women are charged.

You know the drill: Spring forward, fall back. And the clocks will indeed shortly fall back, bringing Daylight Saving Time to an end on Sunday, November 4.

The Boston Red Sox are World Champions, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-1, to win the World Series in five games.

The location: Causeway Point. The time: 6am. The situation: A 500m-queue made up of more than a thousand people by 11am. What is it about smartphone launches that get Singaporeans out of the door on an early Saturday morning to stand outside a shopping mall? As it turns out, the Huawei Mate 20 series exclusive launch at Causeway Point.

Hurricane Walaka, one of the most powerful Pacific storms ever recorded, has erased an ecologically important remote northwestern island from the Hawaiian archipelago. Using satellite imagery, federal scientists confirmed Monday that East Island, a critical habitat for endangered Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles, was almost entirely washed away earlier this month.

A device which zaps your tongue with electricity sounds more like some cruel and unusual torture method than it does something folks might do for enjoyment. But you’d be wrong — at least when it comes to the electric tongue zapper created by researchers at Meiji University in Japan. They’ve been working on technology they call “unlimited electric gum,” able to electrically simulate flavor sensations when a person chews a stick of specially created “gum.”

A Michigan woman says a pharmacist for a regional supermarket chain denied her medication prescribed to treat her miscarriage because it was against his religious beliefs. The Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter of complaint Tuesday to Meijer, asking the company to require pharmacists to fill patients' prescriptions, regardless of the pharmacists' beliefs, after Rachel Peterson was forced to drive more than three hours to get her medication.

Scientists have heard strange "singing" noises coming out of the ice shelf. The low-frequency noises – which sound a little like moaning when sped up – could help researchers track the ice shelves as they collapse. The singing tones come out of the surface of the massive Ross Ice Shelf when the winds blowing across the snow dunes cause it to vibrate. That means they produce the "tones" almost constantly, and now scientists have found they can listen to them.

It is not enough that we try to limit further global warming – we must also do far more to ensure we survive it. That’s the message from a coalition of major global figures, including former UN head Ban Ki-moon and billionaire Bill Gates. The Global Commission on Adaptation, which is being launched today, says that the impact of global warming is already being felt much sooner and more powerfully than expected. To keep reducing global poverty and maintain economic growth, societies must do m...