All Small Electronics Should Have the Same Charging Port, New E.U. Rule Says

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September 28, 2021

Dear Reader, The European Union has proposed a new rule that would rid people of the tangled mess of charging cables we currently use by requiring all small electronics to switch to the USB-C charging standard. They claim this would also reduce electronic waste—but it might not be in the way we expect.

Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, Technology @sophiebushwick

Electronics All Small Electronics Should Have the Same Charging Port, New E.U. Rule Says In a bid to reduce waste, a proposed regulation would require phones and other small electronics to switch to USB-C By Sophie Bushwick

Engineering Winged Microchips Glide like Tree Seeds The tiny sensors could gather and transmit environmental data as they drift through the air By Nikk Ogasa

Privacy Social Security Numbers Aren't Secure: What Should We Use Instead? The answer is not as simple as replacing each nine-digit number with a longer one By Sophie Bushwick

Transportation 'Self-Driving' Cars Begin to Emerge from a Cloud of Hype Developers try to overcome a multitude of technical challenges before vehicles drive on their own By Steven E. Shladover

Privacy How Facebook Hinders Misinformation Research The platform strictly limits and controls data access, which stymies scientists By Laura Edelson,Damon McCoy

Astronomy The Nail-Biting Journey of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Is About to Begin Before it can study the first stars and galaxies, the observatory must endure a sea voyage, a rocket launch and an all-or-nothing deployment sequence in deep space By Nikk Ogasa

Animals Save the Right Whales by Cutting through the Wrong Noise New noise-cutting tech could pinpoint North Atlantic right whales and other species By Sam Jones

Privacy New Encryption Technique Better Protects Photographs in the Cloud Users can display images as usual, but neither attackers nor tech platforms can see them By Harini Barath

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Health & Medicine, Volume 3, Issue 5

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Despite all the innovation that's made its way into agriculture in recent years, from GPS-guided tractors to genetically engineered seedlings, 85% of all irrigation is still done by releasing vast quantities of water across the surface of a field, pretty much the same way it was handled 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia." Elizabeth G. Dunn, Bloomberg Businessweek

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Meet the World's First Truly Universal Cable There's a new USB. Its mission: to kill proprietary plugs By David Pogue | March 2016

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