Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

After three British men conspired to detonate liquid explosives aboard a transatlantic flight in 2006—a plan thwarted weeks ahead of its execution—airports have cracked down on items travelers are allowed to carry through security, from bottled water to more recently introduced rules for smartphones and laptops. But a new scanner introduced at New York’s John F.

While the country is in the midst of Amazon’s mid-year discount fiesta and Jeff Bezos enjoys beingcrowned the richest man in modern history, rivals Walmart and Microsoft announced a new five-year partnership in hopes of knocking the online shipping giant down a peg or two.

You’re looking at the center of our galactic home, the Milky Way, as imaged by 64 radio telescopes in the South African wilderness. Scientists released this image today to inaugurate the completed MeerKAT radio telescope. But these scopes form part of an even more ambitious project: the Square Kilometer Array, a joint effort to build the world’s largest telescope, spanning the continents of Africa and Australia.

The last two Blockbuster stores in Alaska are shutting their doors for good next week according to the Anchorage Daily News, which means there is just one remaining relic of the video rental giant still up and operating in the entire United States. The final Blockbuster storefront standing is located in Bend, Oregon.

Sprint, mirroringits competition, has engaged in some grammatical gymnastics with its new unlimited strategy, announcing not one, but two different unlimited plans, each with their ownlimitations. One might almost say they’re not unlimited plans at all, and instead amount to yet another attempt by carriers to squeeze consumers’ wallets.

It was a year ago at this time that Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf gave birth to Iceberg A-68, one of the largest chunks of ice ever recorded. A new timelapse video made from satellite imagery shows the rift, calving, and subsequent journey of the iceberg over the past 12 months. Iceberg A-68 is the sixth largest iceberg ever recorded.

The engineers at Citroën have apparently thrown almost 100 years of French design refinement out the window with a new product you don’t drive, but will improve your motoring experience. The carmaker’s new Seetroën glasses won’t win you any style points, but Citroën claims the glasses will eliminate any motion sickness you’re feeling after wearing them for just 10 minutes.

NASA’s storied Kepler Space Telescope—the craft which has discovered thousands of exoplanets since its launch in 2009—is entering the retirement phase of its lifespan. NASA announced on Friday that Kepler staff had “received an indication that the spacecraft fuel tank is running very low” and “placed the spacecraft in a hibernation-like state in preparation to download the science data collected in its latest observation campaign.

Spend too much time in extreme summer heat and you’ll find yourself doing strange things. A week ago the idea of a gigantic umbrella for my car would have seemed laughable, but after a weekend of climbing in and out of unbearably hot vehicles, the Lanmodo seems like it should be a standard feature on every car.

The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday the “first nationwide undercover action to target vendors of illicit goods” on the dark web, the portion of the internet only accessible via specific software like the Tor network. According to the DOJ, the operation involved at least five federal agencies and entailed Homeland Security Investigations agents posing as money launderers, leading “to the arrest and impending prosecution of more than 35 Darknet vendors.