Computer viruses have a reputation for destruction. They can erase files, encrypt disks, steal passwords and make a computer unusable. But can malicious software cross the invisible boundary between code and matter and actually break the ma...
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The little hat-and-glasses icon has become shorthand for secrecy. Open an Incognito window in Chrome — or a Private Browsing window in another browser — and it feels as though you have stepp...
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It is one of those rules that millions of Americans seem to remember learning without remembering who taught it: you cannot drive a car barefoot. Maybe a parent said it. Maybe a driving inst...
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Taking a screenshot is one of the smallest computer skills imaginable — right up until you switch from a Mac to Windows, buy a keyboard without an obvious Print Screen key, or need to captur...
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If Mars can come within roughly 55 million kilometers of Earth, why does a spacecraft sent there travel something closer to 480 million kilometers — and spend around seven months doing it? T...
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A newly hatched chick enters the world with an urgent problem. It can walk almost immediately, but walking in the wrong direction could be fatal. In nature, staying near a parent means warmt...
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In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match. The achievement looked like a milestone on the road to machine intelligence: a computer had conquered a game...
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Imagine taking the mass of a mountain and compressing it until its boundary is smaller than an atom. There would be no miniature rocky mountain inside, no visible sphere and certainly nothin...
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Imagine two identical buildings on the same street. One has a broken window that is repaired the next morning. The other has a broken window that remains shattered for weeks. Graffiti appear...
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On an autumn Sunday in the United States, a peculiar national clock starts ticking shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Televisions switch on. Fantasy lineups receive one last nervous inspect...
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