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How to Create a Fake Girlfriend on Instagram, in 8 Easy Steps
Keisuki Jinushi/InstagramThe stereotypical images of Instagram are so stereotypical, at this point, as to be cliches. A trio of glistening clouds presiding over a sun-drenched lake (#vacation). A...
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Elon Musk's Futuristical Napkin Drawing of a Mass Transit System
He already has spaceship and electric vehicle companies, and he'd like to fly to Mars, but Elon Musk has another idea to bring us closer to the comic-book future. The Hyperloop is a pod-based...
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Pneumatic Tubes: A Brief History
Elon Musk is not the first inventor to put his hopes into vacuums. Respect to the Hyperloop, but pneumatic tubes have a centuries-long history -- in both human infrastructure and in the minds of...
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The Sun Rises Again Over Antarctica
The Aurora Australis (IPEV/PNRA-Y Reinert)In May, the 15 humans living at the Concordia Research Station at the southern end of our planet bade farewell to the sun for the night -- a night that would...
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A New Study Says Twitter Can Predict US Elections
While the Indiana University study examined House of Representatives and not presidential candidates, according to its findings, a tweet from John Boehner about Barack Obama would predict the election...
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Engine: The History of a Concept, From 14th-Century Poetry to Google
Was this lady of "great engyn"? (Wikimedia Commons)Engines may be a relatively recent invention, but "engine" the word has been around for quite some time. Here, for example, is the poet John Gower...
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That Time People Sent a Cat Through the Mail Using Pneumatic Tubes
Contents fragile! That white thing getting ready to be whisked away in a tube is, indeed, a cat. (Wikimedia Commons)Before people relied on a theoretical series of tubes for the exchange of...
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How to Build an Ice Wall Around a Leaking Nuclear Reactor
The proposed ice wall around Fukushima (TEPCO)Here's the crazy thing about the plan to build an almost mile long, 90-foot deep, subterranean ice wall around the Fukushima nuclear plant: It's not really...
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When Cars Crash Like Computers
We are currently experiencing a partial interruption and are quickly working to resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience-- car2go Vancouver (@car2goVancouver) August 12, 2013 Yesterday,...
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A Guide to the Web's Growing Set of Free Image Collections
Van Gogh's "Irises," one of the many paintings the Getty Trust made available as free, online, high-resolution images on Monday. (J. Paul Getty Trust)On Monday, the J. Paul Getty Trust launched their...
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A Dispatch From Bradley Manning's Conviction
Bradley Manning by Molly CrabappleThere were two blond heads sitting at opposite tables at the court martial of Pfc Bradley Manning. The lead prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, is nine years older than the...
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The U.S. Company That Makes Almost a Million Dollars Per Worker
What InterDigital makes: Here's an illustration from its patent for "Data transfer between wireless devices." (United States Patent and Trademark Office)You'd be forgiven for not recognizing the name...
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Turning Crude Oil Into the Stuff We Use
Alexis Madrigal explains how energy really works in AmericaRead more Crude oil is far from being one homogenous substance. Its physical characteristics differ depending on where in the world it's...
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Good News, Future Colonists! Mars Meals May Feature Nutella
A team member, leaving the dome, ventures out into the "Martian" landscape. (NASA)On the northern slope of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, on a barren lava field at 8,000 feat above sea level, six...
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What's in Crude Oil—And How Do We Use It?
Alexis Madrigal explains how energy really works in AmericaRead more The petroleum we pump out of the ground turns into a range of useful things: fuel for all forms of transportation, a key ingredient...
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Did the New York Times Website Actually Go Down? Yes
The New York Times website went down about an hour ago, and stayed offline until a few minutes ago. It was very exciting on Twitter. The Wire tracked the outage and reaction in excruciating detail. For...
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Remember That Time the New York Times Published to Facebook?
So the New York Times's main website, nytimes.com, went down this morning, and it only just recently returned. Almost immediately, the newspaper's Twitter feed posted that it would continue updating...
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An Educated Guess About How the NSA Is Structured
But the NSA, with its triple mission -- break codes, secure data, collect signals intelligence -- has not made its structure public. Even by the standards of U.S. intelligence agencies whose existence...
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What Does It Really Matter If Companies Are Tracking Us Online?
APSay you, like me, went to bed a little early last night. And when you woke up this morning, you decided to catch the episode of the Daily Show that you missed. So you pointed your browser over to...
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The Greatest British Work of Literature, Blocked at the Greatest British Library
Researchers study at the British Library in 2011 (Reuters)Two Mondays ago, British author Mark Forsyth sat in the British Library, researching for his new book, and needed to check a quote in Hamlet....
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