“Research shows that consumers say doing laundry takes too much time,” says Allie Chilicki, Consumer Reports’ market analyst for washers and dryers. “Manufacturers have been trying to address this problem with machines that have bigger capacities, shorter speed cycles, built-in pretreat features, or smart technology.” To offer even more convenience, manufacturers are also equipping newer…
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight. But cryptographers love them. That’s because certain hard math problems underpin the security of modern encryption. Any clever trick for solving them will doom most forms of cryptography. Several years ago, researchers found a radically new approach…
Things get extremely complicated when it comes to the many iterations of USB 3.0. Because all the branding has become inconsistent and unhelpful, we recommend ignoring these labels altogether and just searching for the actual speed ratings. The good news is that many USB hub and docking station manufacturers have started to give up on…
Leaks are a constant part of big product news cycles, particularly for companies like Apple. Online soothsayers like Jon Prosser and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman have long predicted the content of upcoming Apple announcements, citing anonymous sources from within the company to glean glimpses of what’s next. They have been correct often enough to become a…
In the immediate aftermath of Anthony Fauci’s tense congressional hearing on Wednesday, where he refused to answer any questions and invoked the Fifth Amendment, MAGA figures and Republican officials appeared to be seeking one thing: jail time for the former White House chief medical adviser. “Why, when Fauci walks off of there today, is he…
In her classic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley imagines a monster that’s reanimated with its piecemeal body sewn together, tendon by tendon. “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials,” Shelley writes. That’s exactly what scrolling through Instagram feels like right now—an ungodly morass of features stitched together. It’s an AI search…
Data centers have caused the demand for gas-fired power in the US to explode over the past two years, according to new research released Wednesday. More than a third of this new demand, the research found, is explicitly linked to gas projects that will power data centers—the equivalent of energy that would power tens of…
While Dolby imposes no hard limit on the number or type of speakers (or subwoofers) you can use in a single FlexConnect system, each manufacturer’s choice of processor determines what’s feasible. What you can’t do is use any other company’s wireless speakers—whether they’re FlexConnect-compatible or not. Naturally, this raises the question of compatibility. When other…
When Edward Warchocki speaks with you, he sounds like a regular guy. “Not super intelligent, but very emotional, very easy to make friends with,” says Bartosz Idzik, the person who created him. But when he doesn’t talk, it’s harder to forget what Warchocki really is: a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot that’s wandering the city streets of…
Organic bedding brand Coyuchi recently launched its own organic mattress, combining cotton, wool, and Dunlop latex atop individually wrapped coils. While Coyuchi’s linen sheets are excellent, I was a little nervous to try the company’s first mattress effort. Bedding is not a mattress, after all, and expertise does not always transfer across endeavors. In this…