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5 Intriguing Things: Wednesday, 12/18
1. The TSA says you can bring "some" snow globes on planes this year. Imagine the pile of captured holiday contraband from 2012: World's saddest Pixar movie. "TSA now allows small snow globes in...
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The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android
When Steve Jobs debuted the iPhone in 2007, he derailed Google's two year-old Android project—Google's bid to change the world of cellular software. (Reuters)In 2005, on Google’s sprawling,...
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Someone Had to Invent Karaoke. This Guy Did.
An original Juke 8 (The Appendix)It's hard to imagine, but there was once a time when karaoke didn't exist. Sure, there have long been singalongs and pianomen. And people have made drunken fools of...
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The Industries That Make Us Sweariest: We're Talking to You, Satellite and...
Shutterstock/Sarah Jane TaylorDoing some work on your home before your family comes over for the holidays? You'll need a contractor. Want to make sure you won't miss one of the approximately 5,432...
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An Ode to Winamp
Winamp 2 (Wikimedia)AOL will officially shut down Winamp on Friday, and I’m sad about it. It’s not just because Winamp (with an assist from Mandy Moore) set me on the path that led me to become head of...
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What Color Is the Sun, Really?
What color is the sun? When you're a kid, the answer is obvious: yellow. (Or, if you were a contrarian little kindergartner like myself, it was occasionally pink, occasionally orange, and even more...
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White House Panel's NSA Report: Technology Can No Longer Be King
Digitale GesellschaftThis afternoon the White House released the report of a panel it had convened back in August to review the country's surveillance system. Within the 300-page report are 46...
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Today's Aviation Videos
The image above, the aviation- & retro-California-themed label for one of Hangar 24's popular beers, is the slender-reed connection between where I am at the moment, reporting in Redlands, and the...
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What Transparency Reports Don't Tell Us
A road surveillance camera outside Google's Beijing office (Reuters)There was a time in the not so distant past when hardly any Internet company wanted to release a transparency report—a report that...
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The Latest Weapon in Your Battle for Online Privacy: Duct Tape
Shutterstock/donfiore and The AtlanticDuct tape: You can use it to make wallets. You can use it to remove warts(!). You can use it to hem your pants, to catch pesky flies, to create a makeshift...
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A Beautiful GIF of Earth Rising Over the Moon's Horizon
Yesterday, Reddit user Jeckee posted this short GIF of the Earth as it appears to rise over the moon's horizon: The animation, which comes from this Apollo 10 footage, was just a bit too shaky for...
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It's a Lonely World: The Median Twitter User Has 1 Measly Follower
ReutersThe median Twitter account has only one follower. That’s what Jon Bruner, a data journalist at O’Reilly Radar, found when he algorithmically queried the service about its users at random this...
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And the Space Station Will Be Saved by a Snorkel
Shutterstock/Dudarev MikhailHouston, the International Space Station has a problem. Earlier this month, NASA shared some scary news: The orbiting laboratory—home, currently, to six astronauts—suffered...
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The Ice Buckets of the Stars
Alexis MadrigalHarrison Ford is thinking about the jungle. “If they saw an ice cube, they’d probably think it was a diamond… Ice is civilization,” he says as the messianic know-it-all in The Mosquito...
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Missing Links: Access to Papers' Raw Data Plummets by 17% Each Year
Current Biology via NatureWhere have you stored the records of your life? Some of it, most likely, you've outsourced: your bank statements, your medical records, your grades. Some of it, however,...
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Party Down: 100 Years of the Crossword Puzzle
ReutersThis weekend marks the 100th birthday of the crossword puzzle. On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne published a little diamond-shaped grid, along with 30-odd clues, in the New York World. The...
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'Ants Act as Both a Fluid and a Solid'
John Mooallem's crazy Times Magazine story about crazy ants (yep, "that’s their actual name") has rightfully spawned some public fascination with the insects that are terrorizing large swaths of the...
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Almost Human: The Surreal, Cyborg Future of Telemarketing
Flickr Commons/Edited by Alexis MadrigalThis is a story about how the future gets weird. It's about how humans interact with each other, and machines, and systems that can only properly be called...
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5 Intriguing Things: Friday, 12/20
1. Chinese scientists are working on a thorium-based nuclear reactor. "The technology’s immediate appeal for China, both Chinese and American scientists say, is that thorium reactors have the...
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The Next Big Wave
Surf's up in Spain's Basque country. (Wavegarden)Bruce McFarland’s San Diego office is just a skateboard ride from some of California’s prime surf spots. Right now, McFarland is gazing at the perfect...
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