While children are told stories about elves and reindeer, the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people work year-round to make sure Christmas feels magical. From factory employees in China stringing lights on artificial trees to dock workers unloading containers of toys, this vast labor force ensures Americans can …

Unlike some of the latest consumer drones, which fly almost autonomously, the Asio X requires mostly manual control, and in some very unforgiving locations too, as Astorino points out: “It’s dark, air flow can quickly change within a confined space, and managing a flight path above flowing water in a …

Specs are not bare-bones but are far from luxe; the 14-inch touchscreen has a 2,880 x 1,800-pixel resolution, and the system is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V CPU. That’s a few steps up from the basic processor model, but still a step down from higher-end options you …

The Best Flower delivery service will say what words can’t. Flowers are one of those things I didn’t fully appreciate until adulthood, like accountants or ergonomic office chairs. British Nigerian artist Yinka Ilori said it best: “The beauty of flowers lies in their gentle sequence of life: they bud, bloom, …

Other Instax Cameras and Printers Fujifilm is constantly refreshing its Instax lineup, adding new features like parallax correction and faster USB-C charging, which almost all Instax cameras now offer. In some cases though the company has not stopped selling the old models. In general, we suggest sticking with the latest …

For five minutes, water dribbles through a shower filter into a thick, tamped coffee puck, working its way slowly through the puck but releasing very few drops. Only when I start hand-pumping is the water pushed more quickly through the puck, dribbling out over the course of another minute or …

What is also clear from the documents is that US police are aware of the control corporations have over their ability to acquire vehicle location data, expressing fears that they could abruptly decide to kill off certain capabilities at any time. In a letter sent in April 2024 to the …

Two years ago, astronomers believe they detected a star devouring one of its planets. Now, new observations of the aftermath of same event from the James Webb Space Telescope have suggested a scenario previously only considered in the realms of science fiction: that a planet about the size of Jupiter …

The Leonids’ radiant is the constellation Leo, which rises around midnight local time and is highest in the sky around dawn. The Geminids (December) The Geminids are active from about December 4 to December 17, peaking overnight from December 13 to December 14. They have a sharp peak, so the …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a peak to climb—and then they must develop a strategy to solve it. Classical and quantum researchers compete using different …