Do you have a dusty old PC lying around? Give it a totally new lease on life with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro. This operating system can breathe new life into old computers, and right now it’s only $14.97 (reg. $199) through June 29.

Don’t shell out hundreds of dollars for a new computer—just $15 will make an old device feel brand new. Microsoft Windows 11 Pro can give your PC a total refresh, with an updated, seamless interface, snap layouts, improved voice typing, a more powerful search experience, and your very own AI-powered assistant, Copilot, on your desktop.

Windows 11 Pro is designed for today’s professionals, so you can enjoy updates that will give you a much-needed productivity boost this summer and beyond. Get access to Microsoft Teams, Azure AD, Hyper-V, and Windows Sandbox.

Windows 11 Pro also enhances your online security, offering advanced features like biometric logins, encrypted authentication, and enhanced antivirus protection to help keep your data safe.

This operating system requires 4GB RAM and 40GB of hard drive space to run.

Act fast to outfit your PC with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro for only $14.97 (reg. $199), now through June 29.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

See Deal

The post Your old PC called — it wants Windows 11 Pro for $15 appeared first on Popular Science.

• Visual Intelligence - In ‌iOS 26‌, Visual Intelligence works with screenshots, so you can ask ChatGPT questions about what's on your screen, or search for items in screenshots on Google.


• Messages - The Messages app got a major update, and it supports custom backgrounds, polls, and typing indicators for group texts, and even Live Translation if you're chatting with someone that speaks a different language


• Phone - The Phone app has a feature that will screen your calls, asking callers for their name and reason for calling before they can speak to you. There's also Hold Assist that'll wait for a live agent for you, so you don't need to listen to annoying hold music.


• AutoMix - AutoMix in Apple Music is a new feature that can seamlessly transition from one song to another with time stretching and beat mixing. It's like a DJ in your pocket.


• Visited Places - In the Maps app, there's a new Visited Places feature that keeps track of where you've been. If you're on vacation and visit a great restaurant, but don't happen to remember what it was called, you can check in the Maps app so you can visit again.


• Games - There's an all-new Games app that houses all of your mobile games, and makes it easy to find new ones. It also includes Game Center functionality and features so you can challenge your friends.

• Battery - There's a useful new battery feature that lets you know how long it will be until your phone is fully charged.


• Adaptive Power Mode - Adaptive Power Mode is a new option that can save battery when you're using more battery life on your phone. Maybe you're using Maps more, or taking a lot of photos. It'll let you know your battery usage is up, and will help you trim down features you don't need so that your battery lasts as long as it normally does.


• Alarm Snooze - When you set an alarm, you can now customize the snooze time. No more nine minute snoozes.


• Album artwork - When you play songs from ‌Apple Music‌, Spotify, and other services, album artwork is now full screen on the Lock Screen.


• Spatial Scenes - Spatial Scenes are a fun new Photos feature that takes your 2D images and adds a 3D feel to them.


• Apple Music Translation - When you're listening to a song in ‌Apple Music‌ and there are lyrics in another language, you can now see real-time translations.

iOS 26 has a glassy new ringtone called "ReflectionAlt1-EncoreRemix"

It's not live yet in the beta but it is present in the filesystem. Perhaps an iPhone 17 exclusive? pic.twitter.com/TxEAz9Ro6F

Austin road safety advocates are sounding the alarm about Tesla’s impending launch of self-driving taxis in the Texas capital, reports Aaron Short in Streetsblog USA.

“Musk is releasing a new hazard onto Austin streets, and should halt it immediately,” said Chris Womack, an organizer with ResistAustin. One group of volunteers sought to prove their point by staging a test with an autonomous Tesla Model Y, which failed to stop for a school bus and hit a child-sized dummy placed near the bus — eight times.

“Texas transportation officials say they’re closely supervising Tesla’s robotaxi rollout, which Musk told CNBC would consist of 10 to 20 vehicles.” However, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles does not have direct authority over the vehicles’ operation. Texas has limited regulation at the state level, barring cities from regulating AVs on their own.

A proposed bill could allow the DMV to regulate AVs and require operators to provide information and safety records.

• Austin
• Tesla
• Self-Driving Cars
• Robotaxis
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Autonomous Cars
• Road Safety
• Regulation
• Electric Cars

In a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, Joe DiMento outlines some ways the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) could reduce its massive budget deficit — without cutting service.

It’s a fiscally fraught time. Yet San Franciscans should ask themselves why bus and train service are on the chopping block even as we continue to subsidize the most expensive, inequitable and polluting mode of transportation in the city: the private car.

For DiMento, one of the solutions to the transit agency’s woes lie in the cost of parking. “San Francisco has about 275,500 on-street spaces, but only 10% are metered. The rest are largely free, and permit zones are limited in their geographic coverage.” By adjusting the cost of parking to more closely reflect its actual cost, the agency could significantly reduce its deficit.

Another option for transit funding: congestion pricing. DiMento points to the success of New York City’s program, which despite all the controversy surrounding it has reduced traffic by 13 percent and funded critical MTA projects. 

A third proposed solution: extending the hours for the city’s metered parking spots. “We cannot keep asking transit riders to pay more and get less while car owners enjoy vast subsidies and free rein over public space.”

• San Francisco
• Public Transit
• San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
• MUNI
• Transit Funding
• Fiscal Cliff

• iPhone models:
  
  
  
  • iPhone 8 or later
  
  
  • iPhone SE (2nd generation) or later
  
  
  
  


• iPad models:
  
  
  
  • iPad (5th generation or later)
  
  
  • iPad mini (5th generation or later)
  
  
  • iPad Air (3rd generation or later)
  
  
  • iPad Pro 10.5-inch
  
  
  • iPad Pro 11-inch (all generations)
  
  
  • iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation or later)
  
  
  
  

• AirPods (all models)


• AirPods Pro (all models)


• AirPods Max


• Beats Fit Pro


• Beats Flex


• Beats Solo Pro

• Beats Solo3 Wireless


• Beats Studio3 Wireless


• BeatsX


• Powerbeats


• Powerbeats Pro


• Powerbeats3 Wireless

1. With your AirPods connected and in your ears, start playing audio on your iPhone or iPad.


2. If you have the Music app open and showing the media playback controls, tap your AirPods at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, swipe down for Control Center, then in the audio playback controls panel, tap the icon in the top-right corner representing your connected AirPods.
   
3. Tap Share Audio... below the playback controls.
   
   
4. You should see a prompt on your device's screen offering to Share Audio. Now, bring your friend's AirPods, inside their case, close to your device, and flip the lid open.


5. When your friend's AirPods are detected, tap Share Audio.
   
   
6. Hold the button on the back of the AirPods charging case if requested.


7. When you've successfully connected, the iPhone or iPad hosting the audio controls the volume level on both pairs of headphones, but both people listening can also use any headphone controls they may have to change volume independently.
   

Austin’s Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (CapMetro) is piloting an automated electric bus, which could improve the efficiency of bus yard operations. As Dan Zukowski explains in Smart Cities Dive, “The technology could increase existing bus yard capacity up to 90% while also improving safety for drivers, mechanics and other workers,” according to a press release from engineering services company WSP. 

“CapMetro had planned to fully electrify its transit bus fleet by 2035, but it has encountered setbacks including the bankruptcy of one of its bus suppliers, reliability and range issues and charging capacity at its main bus depot.”

Zukowski adds, “The demonstration bus meets SAE Level 4 driving automation standards, which do not require a human driver but are limited to specific service areas.” The bus was tested in the authority’s North Operations and Maintenance Facility and successfully navigated obstacles and parked at a charging station.

• Austin
• Public Transit
• CapMetro
• Electric Buses
• Autonomous Buses

On December 5, 2020, a small capsule jettisoned from Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft as it made a scheduled flyby over Earth. The payload landed in the Australian outback as planned, capping a 6-year roundtrip journey to survey the asteroid Ryugu. Since then, researchers including a team at Hiroshima University, have analyzed the unprecedented mineral samples collected from the distant space rock. But according to their most recent findings, published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, one of those minerals defies planetary scientists’ previous theories on Ryugu’s creation. The consequences may help clarify the solar system’s evolution, and the surprising complexities inside some of its most primitive asteroids.

To understand Ryugu, it’s important to first understand its origins. Researchers believe the half-mile wide, 496-million-ton rock belongs to a parent body that formed 1.8–2.9 million years after the birth of our solar system. This asteroid family—likely Eulalia or Polana—coalesced from icy mixtures of carbon dioxide and water at the outer edges of the solar system. Over millions of years, radioactive elements decayed and generated heat inside the parent body to likely reach around 122 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s believed that a catastrophic impact with another asteroid created the carbon-heavy Ryugu, which is composed of rocks similar to the CI chondrite meteorites that frequently streak through Earth’s atmosphere.

But while CI chondrites are commonplace, enstatite chondrites are not. These rare asteroids form under extremely high temperature conditions inside the solar system’s inner region. Enstatite chondrites contain different minerals such as djerfisherite, a potassium-laden iron-nickel sulfide. Based on everything scientists know about asteroids, Ryugu shouldn’t include an ingredient like djerfisherite—but it does.

“Its occurrence is like finding a tropical seed in Arctic ice,” said Masaaki Miyahara, a science and engineering associate professor Hiroshima University and one of the study’s co-authors.

Miyahara and colleagues spotted Ryugu’s djerfisherite while using field-emission transmission electron microscopy (FE-TEM) to better understand how terrestrial weathering affected the asteroid’s mineral layers. According to Miyahara, the discovery “challenges the notion that Ryugu is compositionally uniform” and opens new questions about primitive asteroid evolution.

Experts know from past experiments that djerfisherite can be created when potassium-rich fluids and iron-nickel sulfides interact at temperatures over 662 degrees Fahrenheit. Given their understanding of enstatite chondrites, this led Miyahara’s team to two potential explanations.

“The discovery of djerfisherite in a Ryugu grain suggests that materials with very different formation histories may have mixed early in the solar system’s evolution, or that Ryugu experienced localized, chemically heterogeneous conditions not previously recognized,” explained Miyahara.

Early evidence suggests the latter theory is more likely, but researchers can’t be sure solely based on the currently available information. Regardless, the discovery revealed that the solar system’s earliest eras hosted some unexpected deep space interactions. Moving forward, the team hopes to conduct isotopic studies on the samples to narrow down the minerals’ origins. Meanwhile, the sample’s delivery probe Hayabusa2 is currently en route for a 2031 rendezvous with its next asteroid—a small, rapidly spinning rock known as 1998 KY.

The post Deep space asteroid sample contains unexpected ingredient appeared first on Popular Science.

In Springfield, Missouri, tenants of two LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credit) properties — Rosewood Estates and Cedarwood Terrace — are suing past and current owners for illegally exiting the tax credit program without required notice. The lawsuits, led by a tenant union of seniors, working families, and people with disabilities, claim the owners violated Missouri lease provisions and federal rules, putting tenants at risk of displacement.

Despite promises that affordability would remain, the owners quietly used a legal loophole to leave the program. Some residents were misled into moving out, even during a period when evictions and rent increases were restricted. With over 200,000 LIHTC units nationally eligible to exit in the next five years, the case highlights the urgent need for oversight and tenant protections.

The tenants’ legal action seeks to return the properties to the LIHTC program and prevent further unlawful displacement. Their story shows the power of tenant organizing and staying informed about housing rights.

• Tenant Organizing
• Springfield
• Tenants Rights
• Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
• LIHTC