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What Is Reddit?
How many times have I found myself at a family dinner or out with friends trying to explain Reddit? More than I care to count, and though I've over time honed my description, I can tell I'm not doing...
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The Hidden World of the Typewriter
Hemingway's 1929 Underwood Standard (James Joiner)The typewriter is, among things, an archetype of today’s computers. But while computers are increasingly products of our disposable consumer culture --...
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What Does 'Open' Mean? One Academic Weighs In
Shutterstock/Kevin GeorgeWhen talking about educational technology, what does the idea of “openness” mean? The word “open” appears in both “open-access publishing” and “MOOCs” (massively open online...
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The Frog That Got Caught in the Crossfire of a Rocket Launch
NASA/Wallops/Mid-Atlantic Regional SpaceportOn Friday evening, NASA's Minotaur V rocket blasted off from its launchpad at a spaceport in Virginia, carrying the LADEE spacecraft on the first leg of its...
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Apple Has Lost Its Touch, Says the Man Who Helped Steve Jobs Design the Mac
Frog design founder Hartmut Esslinger says the Apple of today isn't the Apple he experienced during his close collaboration with Steve Jobs. (AP)Hartmut Esslinger knows a thing or two about industrial...
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Frogs in Space: A Brief History
On Friday, this happened: NASA/Wallops/Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport with Chris HellerThe event -- a frog, taking an unexpected flight via a rocket -- may seem unusual. But #rocketfrog, as the little...
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Travel to the Galapagos, With Google Street View
GoogleIn May, Google sent a team of trekkers to the Galapagos Islands to travel the terrain and dive in the seas, collecting images for its Street View tool. Today, after a few months spent processing...
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The iPhones of Fall
When Apple launched the iPhone 4 in 2010, the company's website featured large images of the device with the text "This changes everything. Again." Change has been a constant refrain in Apple's...
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'We Made It': Humanity Has Arrived at Interstellar Space
An illustration of the positions of the two Voyager spacecraft, with Voyager 1 just outside of the bubble around our sun. (NASA)Thirty-six years ago, from the ground in Florida, Voyager 1 launched into...
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Boldly Going ... Going ... Gone! Why Voyager 1's Entrance Into Interstellar...
This afternoon, NASA made a big announcement: Its Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched from Earth 36 years ago, has entered interstellar space. Nerds the world over -- your correspondent included --...
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What If…? Looking Back at 2 Paths Twitter Didn't Take
The tweet with which Twitter announced its IPO (Reuters)Around 5 pm Eastern today, Twitter announced that it had confidentially filed for its initial public offering (IPO). Rumors of the company’s...
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What's Worse Than an Oil Spill? A Molasses Spill
Elizabeth MilesThousands of fish — gasping desperately, then floating lifelessly — surfaced in Honolulu Harbor this week, suffering from oxygen deprivation caused by a massive molasses spill. This...
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Black T-Shirts: The Original Invisibility Cloaks
Ian BogostWhere are black t-shirts made? I assume that there is a factory is southeast Asia where workers break their hands and backs to churn out identical shirts of various shapes, sizes, and cloth...
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The Message Voyager 1 Carries for Alien Civilizations
Wikimedia CommonsThe year was 1977. Jimmy Carter was president. Rod Stewart topped the Billboard chart with "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)." The economy was recovering from recession. Oil was...
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The Post-Lecture Classroom: How Will Students Fare?
Russell Mumper, Vice Dean of the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, teaches his “flipped” Pharmaceutics class. (Echo360)If college professors spent less time lecturing, would...
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Area Man Attempts to Cross the Atlantic Using Nothing but Helium Balloons
Jonathan Trappe, on a 2012 flight (Facebook)Meet Jonathan Trappe. Trappe is an IT manager by career; by calling, however, he is an adventurer. And a flight enthusiast. And one of the few people in the...
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Tech Tips for the Day: Gmail Fix, Doo.net
1) Gmail de-lobotomization. The Gmail design team is constantly coming up with fritterware "improvements" to the system's look and feel. In the face of most of the changes, all you can do is sigh and...
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What Should a Digital Writing Tool Be?
A man at a writing table, as depicted by an unknown 18th-century American artist (National Gallery of Art)The computer is a writing tool. Tweets, papers, email: They’re all composed in what is, at...
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How to Destroy a Chemical Weapon
A U.N. chemical weapons expert holds a plastic bag containing samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighborhood of Damascus on August 29, 2013....
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The Best Little Detail About the Voyager Mission
The Voyager team in 1972 (NASA)Last Thursday, NASA made a historic announcement: Voyager 1, "the little spacecraft that could," became the first ambassador of human civilization to exit the bubble...
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