Space Photos of the Week: Here Comes the Sun
We’re turning the space oddities up to 11 this week, peeping at galaxy mergers, asteroid photobombs, and more. First we’re going to follow the Sun: Charged particles that make up the solar wind create spectacular auroras in Earth’s atmosphere, but they can also fry electronics in GPS satellites. By shining light on how solar wind…
New Balance's Latest Shoes Come With 3D-Printed Soles
If you currently own a pair of running shoes, the odds are that the midsole—the shock-absorbing layer in between the inner and outer soles—is made from molded ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), which is squishy, resilient foam. As a cushioning material, EVA foam isn’t bad. It’s elastic, affordable, and can be dyed a variety of colors.…
Big Data Supercharged Gerrymandering. It Could Help Stop It Too
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices ruled Thursday that the highest court doesn’t have the power to address partisan gerrymandering, the practice in which politicians redraw district maps to help their own party win more elections. In two cases, Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause, the court split along ideological lines 5 to 4.…
How Hackers Turn Microsoft Excel's Own Features Against It
You probably think of Microsoft's classic spreadsheet program Excel as mostly boring. Sure, it can wrangle data, but it's not exactly Apex Legends. For hackers, though, it's a lot of fun. Like the rest of the Office 365 suite, attackers often manipulate Excel to launch their digital strikes. And two recent findings demonstrate how the…
The 20 Most Bike-Friendly Cities on the Planet, Ranked
As trends come and go, simple design stands the test of time. And nowhere is that more evident these days than in urban mobility. With everything from autonomous cars to dockless pogosticks vying to be the next big thing, the bicycle continues to shine as the most efficient, practical, and reliable solution to urban mobility.…
Depth of Field: The Quiet Force of YouTuber Etika's Gaze
What is the weight of a young black man's gaze? Who does it trigger? What does it want to say? What is he trying to say? We will never know for certain what more Desmond Amofah wanted to communicate—this week, the body of the popular YouTube gamer was found in Manhattan's East River—but we can…
Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency Betrays the Company’s True Ambitions
So, imagine there’s this place. You hang out there all the time. Your friends and family are there. It’s got neighborhoods, both big and small. There are businesses there, you get most of your mail there in the form of digital messages. It’s not perfect: Sometimes there’s crime, or that one neighbor who keeps pushing…
A Brief History of Smartphone Notifications
Notifications are, at the most basic level, a method of alerting people to some piece of information, often with some element of urgency. In a pre-internet world they existed as flags on mailboxes or blinking lights on answering machines. Then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, notifications like pulsing BlackBerry LEDs and “You’ve got mail!”…
Netflix Could Never Make Its Own Office
So, The Office is leaving Netflix. You knew this was coming, right? Ever since the streaming wars heated up, and every network/studio/hamster-with-a-YouTube-channel started announcing their plans for a stand-alone service, back-catalog TV shows and movies have become bargaining chips. Netflix wants to keep them and is willing to pay top dollar for the rights to…
Zuckerberg Defends Free Speech, Even When the Speech is False
It wasn’t long after Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival Wednesday that he was heckled by the audience. Facebook’s CEO was talking to Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law School professor who has also served as a Facebook adviser, and discussing the complexities of combatting election interference. One problem, Zuckerberg proclaimed, is…