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Snowden Leaks Notwithstanding, It's Business as Usual at the NSA Museum
It would be fair to say that media interest in the National Security Agency has never been higher, thanks to Edward Snowden, the IT administrator who leaked thousands of NSA documents to journalists....
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The Astronomical Hijinks of the Shortest Day of the Year
Alexis MadrigalIf you live around latitude 42N—a well-populated latitude in North America and Europe, taking in Boston, Rome, and Vladivostok—today is the day you'll experience the earliest sunset of...
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Why Are Upworthy Headlines Suddenly Everywhere?
These hip young people are probably looking at Upworthy content. (Shutterstock/Halfpoint)I haven’t seen anything like it in a long time. On Facebook, on Twitter, and even sometimes in my email inbox,...
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5 Intriguing Things: Monday, 12/9
From Transitions (Lauren Marsolier)1. The mindbending, unnerving flatness of Lauren Marsolier's digital images.* "We undergo what could be called a gestalt change. These transitional periods often feel...
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'The Mother of All Demos' Is 45 Years Old, Doesn't Look a Day Over 25
On Monday, December 9, 1968, a crowd of 1,000 people—computer professionals, mostly—gathered at the San Francisco Convention Center. They were there for a demo, part of the Fall Joint Computer...
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Editors at the Prestigious Journal Nature Get Serious About Reddit
Nature/Reddit/Rebecca J. RosenNature is one of the world's most prestigious science journals. Reddit is a website teeming with readers. Readers, readers, and more readers clicking on and discussing...
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Thomas Pynchon Could Have Met a Spy in the Virtual World Second Life
A scene from Second Life's Syn City (YouTube)If you've read Thomas Pynchon latest novel, Bleeding Edge, and played around in the virtual world Second Life, you will come away convinced that Pynchon...
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The Year in Facebook: Pope Francis, Royal Baby, and Harlem Shake
ReutersWhat makes something especially shareable online? It’s well-known. It’s well-regarded. It’s a little surprising. It’s a subject, in other words, like ... the Pope. And, indeed, according to a...
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The Carbon Time Bomb in Your Retirement Account
ReutersWill climate change leave your investment portfolio stranded like a polar bear on melting ice floe? If your pension fund or 401(k) manager invests in fossil-fuel companies, it just might. Last...
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This 90-Year-Old Lithuanian Filmmaker Has the Best Website
Jonas MekasEveryone agrees: there is so much crap on the Internet. There's smarm. There's snark. There's faux outrage. And faux outrage about faux outrage. And so on. But there is also filmmaker Jonas...
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Could a $500 Gadget Have Prevented the Metro-North Tragedy?
ReutersInvestigators are still studying what caused the derailment of a Metro-North commuter train on its way to Grand Central Terminal just over a week ago, killing four passengers and injuring 70...
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Now You Can Make Your Own Street View Scenes
Some things are just better in Street View. Sometimes you want not just to see photos, but to interact with them, zooming in and zooming out, and panning up and panning down. Sometimes you want images...
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5 Intriguing Things: Tuesday, 12/10
1. The NSA can look at metadata "three hops" (or "degrees," if you like Kevin Bacon) away from a target phone number. Simple phone-tree models suggest that a single number could yield a three-hop...
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Scientists Develop an Artificial Hand That Can Feel
Over the past few years, artificial hands have come a long way in terms of dexterity. They can grasp, shake hands, point, and, usefully, make the "come hither" gesture. Now, researchers at the...
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This 6-Year-Old Wants to Be an Astronaut, So He's Petitioning the White House...
For half of his life, Connor Johnson has dreamed of being an astronaut. And not just for the adventure of it. Not just for the romance, or the celebrity, or the outfits ... but for the giddy newness...
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'Paint Is Probably the Internet’s Second Favorite Non-Newtonian Fluid to...
There are many good media-producing subsubsubcultures on the Internet. For example, there are people who make slow-motion videos and and there are the people who use the f-word to describe their love...
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JSTOR's Hidden Power
the.Firebottle/FlickrFew people outside of academia had heard of JSTOR, an aggregator and distributor of digital versions of academic journals, until a young activist named Aaron Swartz took his own...
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Germany's Solar Star Fades
No end in sight for California's solar boom. (AP)Home solar installations in the United States hit a record high in the third quarter and that should help the country overtake Germany as a photovoltaic...
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Scientists Find That Polluted Oceans Could Make Fish Anxious
It's okay, Mr. Rockfish -- ocean acidification makes me anxious, too. (Wikimedia Commons)We've known for a while that the ocean is rapidly becoming too acidic for some forms of marine life to survive....
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You Can Now Send Photos Privately Using Twitter
Twitter users can now privately message photos to each other, the company announced today in a blog post. The feature looks pretty straightforward. Using one of the company’s mobile apps, you can send...
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