News
In 1866 a single undersea cable finally held across the Atlantic, and a message that once took eleven days by ship crossed the ocean in minutes — the moment the world first felt small
8+ hour, 38+ min ago (719+ words) On 27 July 1866, the cable-laying ship Great Eastern reached Heart's Content in Newfoundland with an unbroken telegraph line trailing back across the Atlantic...
In Renens, Switzerland, a company called SWISSto12 is building geostationary satellites the size of an industrial washing machine and a fifth the mass of the multi-ton spacecraft they replace, and this week it raised $70 million on a bet that governments would rather own one outright than lease capacity on someone else's constellation
1+ day, 15+ hour ago (924+ words) The HummingSat is a geostationary communications satellite roughly the size of an industrial washing machine, and it weighs about a ton — around a fifth the mass of the multi-ton spacecraft that have carried the world's television, broadband and telephone traffic…...
Bots have overtaken humans on one of the internet's largest networks — for the first time, agentic AI is pushing web-page requests past the halfway line
1+ week, 2+ day ago (190+ words) For much of the internet's life, you could assume a person sat at the other end of most clicks. That assumption has quietly flipped....
The average American now spends over three hours a day on a phone, checking it nearly 200 times — roughly once every five waking minutes — a rhythm of attention no earlier generation ever knew
1+ week, 2+ day ago (252+ words) Most of us reach for the phone, check it, and put it down again a couple of hundred times a day. Each glance costs a second or two. Added up, it becomes the...
Nearly all of the internet's international data — the messages, calls, and searches that cross continents — travels through fibre-optic cables laid on a seafloor that has never been fully surveyed, running over terrain no human eye has seen
3+ week, 1+ day ago (614+ words) The internet is often described as if it lives in the air. We talk about clouds, wireless networks, satellites, signals and invisible connections. Published June 26, 2026 That seabed is still one of the least directly known parts of Earth. The cables…...
A viral social media stat claims 70% of Gen Z and Millennials can't relax because they were taught rest is wasteful — the number isn't real, but the research behind it is
3+ week, 4+ day ago (522+ words) ...
During the 1859 solar storm, telegraph operators disconnected their batteries entirely — yet messages kept flowing on the storm's own current as sparks showered from the machines and the paper caught fire
3+ week, 5+ day ago (534+ words) On September 2, 1859, telegraph operators George Wood in Boston and Frederick Royce in Portland unplugged their batteries during the Carrington Event and kept sending messages on the geomagnetic current induced by the storm itself — while elsewhere on the network, sparks jumped…...
Brussels just quietly carved out two-thirds of a key satellite band for European operators, and the move is really a direct shot at Starlink's phone-to-satellite ambitions
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (703+ words) Published May 28, 2026 The European Commission moved to reserve two-thirds of a coveted satellite spectrum band for European operators, a decision that directly threatens SpaceX’s direct-to-device plans and Viasat’s existing European Aviation Network while opening a fresh front in the transatlantic…...
In October 1957, Sputnik 1 crossed the sky every 96 minutes while two 1-watt transmitters on 20.005 and 40.002 megahertz sent a beep that radio amateurs around the world could hear on ordinary shortwave receivers
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (750+ words) In October 1957, Soviet engineers designed Sputnik 1's radio transmitters to broadcast on civilian shortwave frequencies, letting ham operators and ordinary listeners worldwide hear the satellite pass overhead every 96 minutes....