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The Surprisingly Savvy Weird Al Internet Machine
Think of legacy media brands (as you probably often do) and some seemingly stodgy names come to mind. Newsweek. The Chicago Tribune. CBS News. These companies and products have largely lost the...
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How the Moon Became a Real Place
On a clear night and with the right telescope, if you know just where to look, you will find the cup-shaped crater called Draper. It's pocked into a vast plain of volcanic moon rock that humans once...
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The 'Facebook Cop' and the Implications of Privatized Policing
When I read, early last week, about the police officer whose salary is currently being paid by Facebook, I was suspicious. The tech company agreed to pay the officer’s salary and benefits, which...
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Why Snapchat Cares Where You Are
When Team Snapchat announced the launch of Snapchat Stories last fall, it expanded the intimacy of the service so that users could “share your day with friends—or everyone.” More recently, though, the...
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Why Are All These Legos Washing Up on the Beach?
If you happen to find yourself strolling on the beach in Cornwall, you might find some man-made detritus along with the expected array of shells and seaweed and sand. You might find some diving...
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Woohoo! Simpsons World Will Transform the Show Into Delicious, Delicious Data
It is basically, if you are a Simpsons fan, like finding a coupon for a hundred free Krusty Burgers, and then finding out that they'll be served to you by Krusty himself. It's like getting a personal...
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Facebook Adds a Read-It-Later Button
About a year ago, Facebook made a big change to its News Feed, the central stream users see when they open the service’s homepage or smartphone app. Into the algorithmic mix of statuses and pictures...
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Computer Engineering: A Fine Day Job for a Poet
What’s a writer to do when writing doesn’t pay the bills? A default option seems to be teaching, but as Jamaal May said in a recent interview, “Being a teacher is not for everyone, and if we had less...
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You Think Your Summer Travel Plans Are Rough? Spare a Thought for People in...
The point of my book China Airborne was that just about everything involving China's potential, and its challenges, could be seen in its ambition to become an all-fronts aerospace power. Chinese...
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California High-Speed Rail: 10 Readers With 10 Views
As a reminder: California's plan to build a north-south High-Speed Rail (HSR) system is the most ambitious and important infrastructure project now being contemplated anywhere in the United States. It...
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Adventures With Technology: Hide and Track
Last month, we made our first official call for pitches and it was a tremendous success. So many great ideas came across the transom. We commissioned 25 and we loved every single one. We learned about...
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How to Invent a Person Online
On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio. Inside was a blank thank-you note and an Ohio state driver’s license. The ID belonged to a...
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What a $120,000 TV Looks Like
Inches: 105. Pixels: 11 million. Aspect ratio: 29 to 1. U.S. dollars: $119,999. Meet the Samsung 05U9500, a television that costs roughly the same as a BMW. Or a two-bedroom house (in many places). Or...
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Smart Things in a Not-Smart World
Quiet. As a city dweller, this word does not mean what I think it means. There's noise everywhere. The thrum of electric motors, power lines, cars, refrigerators, cable boxes. It's other people taking...
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Stop Calling Everything 'Breaking News,' Please (Part 5,264)
This morning, the Associated Press's Twitter account—an account followed by more than 3.5 million people, and a de facto source for news on the Internet—sent out the following tweet: BREAKING: Dutch...
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Where Restaurant Reservations Come From
Here's a crucial piece of social infrastructure that almost no one considers: the restaurant reservation. That is, until a service like ReservationHop comes along. ReservatonHop was a small project to...
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Anti-Surveillance Camouflage for Your Face
The NSA made me slather my face in make-up. Or, it didn’t make me, exactly. But last spring, I found myself wandering around D.C., wearing dazzle camouflage for the first time. It was a sunny Saturday,...
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Why the NSA Keeps Tracking People Even After They're Dead
You may be dead, but the U.S. government won't take you off its terrorist roster. That's according to newly leaked internal guidelines from last year that reveal intimate details regarding the...
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The Secret to That Potato-Salad Kickstarter Campaign's Success
Much has been written about Zack “Danger” Brown’s potato salad Kickstarter, a jokey but earnest request for $10 in donations that brought in more than $50,000. The most common account is that the guy...
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The Cold World
Scientists call the frozen parts of the Earth the cryosphere: the arctic, the Antarctic, tundra permafrost, glaciers high on mountains. Global warming means the ice is slowly melting, but there's a lot...
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