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Tiny Robot's Farewell to Astronaut Friend
Astronaut Koichi Wakata said a gritty goodbye to his little, floating companion Kirobo this week after six months together aboard the International Space Station. If this video does not make you cry,...
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Survivalists Are Using Pinterest to Prepare for the Apocalypse
Pinterest is best known as a destination where people can share affordable wedding ideas, dip recipes, and inspirational quotes pasted over photos of white sand beaches. But a small number of Pinterest...
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Lazycoin: Finally, a Currency for the Rest of Us
1. It seems everyone has a currency these days; so why not humans in close proximity? "Unlike typical currencies, which aim to represent and store value, LazyCoin is a store for non-value: you produce...
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What Do We Save When We Save the Internet?
Think about regret as if it were sin. Some regrets are mild, but acute. The regret associated with choosing the wrong supermarket checkout lane, or buying an outfit that you notice goes on sale the...
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The Trick That Makes Google's Self-Driving Cars Work
Google's self-driving cars can tour you around the streets of Mountain View, California. I know this. I rode in one this week. I saw the car's human operator take his hands from the wheel and the...
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Can Green Diesel Wean the U.S. Off Oil?
When it comes to kicking the United States’s oil addiction by substituting biofuels—mobility methadone—the nation has repeatedly fallen off the wagon. For instance, the U.S. last year was supposed to...
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We're Now Putting Ads on the Moon
Here is a partial list of the trash that humans have left on the moon: more than 70 spacecraft, including rovers, modules, and crashed orbiters; 12 pairs of boots; 2 golf balls; an assortment of empty...
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This Is How People Once Measured the Blueness of the Sky
After their daughter was born, the linguist Guy Deutscher and his wife decided to try an experiment. The new parents taught little Alma all the colors of the rainbow and beyond, in the way most parents...
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The Algorithm That's Hipper Than Any Hipster
1. Your affectation will be automated. "@hipsterbait1 is a bot that lives on twitter and tumblr, it creates ‘hipster bait’ in the form of post-post-ironic t-shirts, mashing up existing cultural...
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How Climate Change Will Destroy Your Country's Credit Rating
We all know that climate change threatens to devastate coastal cities, disrupt food production, and trigger a refugee crisis of untold proportions. It’s also bad for a nation’s credit rating, according...
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The Subway Sandwich Hacker
Is nowhere safe from cybercrime? Of all the places one might expect to be safe from the scourge of hackers, Subway, is quite high on my list. The only fraud I thought occurred in stripmall sandwich...
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Antonin Scalia Totally Gets Net Neutrality
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission proposed new rules to regulate broadband Internet providers. The rules will effectively let big Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon...
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The New Math of Subways
An urban transportation system is a messy, hard-to-track thing. Despite planning surveys and increasing data aggregation, it's hard for the people who run city transit to know precisely what is...
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After the Latest Peril-in-the-Skies Saga, Should You Be Afraid to Fly?
I don't know Kevin Townsend, though I suspect I'd like him if I did. He's been fighting the good fight against the filibuster, and we have tech and other interests in common. Today he put up a riveting...
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Why the Latest Air-Scare Shows How Safe Airline Travel Is, Not How Dangerous
Yesterday I mentioned a widely circulated web account from an author who felt he had narrowly avoided being part of what would have been history's worst airline disaster. Indeed, that was the headline...
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Shanzhai: China’s Collaborative Electronics Design Ecosystem
Cyberspace, both as word and as vision, entered the popular lexicon through William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. But as it turns out, Gibson wasn’t interested in the Internet until he...
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The Most 90s Thing That Could Ever Exist
Wow. Just. Wow. This image is bouncing around on Twitter thanks to Jehan Ranasinghe, who dug this thing up, presumably with a time machine, and then tweeted this picture. Even better, someone has...
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When 'Driver' Goes the Way of 'Computer'
Google has shown off a new driverless vehicle prototype, a cute little thing with no wheel or other control mechanisms. Previously, the company had installed its software and hardware on stock Lexus...
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How Officials Tried to Censor One of the Biggest Stories in the World
Sixty-nine years ago this month, world leaders tried to delay the reporting of one of the biggest stories of the 20th century. They might have been successful, too, if not for one rogue journalist. On...
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The Process By Which Your Online and Offline Identities Are Connected
1. Maybe the most interesting section in the big new Federal Trade Commission report on data brokers is the description of what the companies call "Onboarding." While collaborative targeting allows...
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