The science of how fireflies stay in sync

Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. Scientists have discovered that male fireflies in a South Carolina swamp follow local interaction rules to synchronize their flashing mating displays. The research is being presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver.…

An engineering thesis disguised as a coupe: A history of the Honda Prelude

​Technology like four-wheel steering and variable valve timing debuted in the Prelude.  The Honda Prelude was never simply a car. It was an engineering thesis disguised as a coupe: compact, disciplined, and unapologetically technical. At its best, it distilled Honda’s faith in precision manufacturing and clever packaging into something…

Slay the Spire 2 is a bit too familiar for its own good

Early Access impressions: New characters shine, but it feels like we’ve done this before.  Do you remember the joyful satisfaction you felt when you really started to understand Slay the Spire? This isn’t a totally rhetorical question. If you’re reading this piece about Slay the Spire 2—published roughly a…

Figuring out why AIs get flummoxed by some games

When winning depends on intuiting a mathematical function, AIs come up short. With its Alpha series of game-playing AIs, Google’s DeepMind group seemed to have found a way for its AIs to tackle any game, mastering games like chess and Go by repeatedly playing itself during training. But then…

Supply-chain attack using invisible code hits GitHub and other repositories

Unicode that’s invisible to the human eye was largely abandoned—until attackers took notice.  Researchers say they’ve discovered a supply-chain attack flooding repositories with malicious packages that contain invisible code, a technique that’s flummoxing traditional defenses designed to detect such threats. The researchers, from firm Aikido Security, said Friday that…

Doubling the voltage: What 800 V architecture really changes in EVs

​Confused about electric vehicle voltages? You won’t be after reading this.  For more than a decade, most electric vehicles have shared the same electrical backbone: a battery pack operating at roughly 400 V. It’s the invisible standard behind everything from early compliance cars to today’s bestselling EVs. But over…