When a Blog Gets Caught in Your Throat

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 "Let’s get this straight up front: I am now writing a blog post, not blogging a blog," writes Forrest Wickman at Slate, the good people who brought you the great two-spaces-after-a-period debate. Oh yes. Oh yes. They are at it again, this time with a post in which he takes on the matter of what to call this thing we do.

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 21, 2013

Silicon Valley's 'Culture' Is a Cover-up

Despite emotional arguments that the tech world's meritocracy obsession comes with the best intentions, there are increasing calls from actual female and minority start-up employees who suggest very much the opposite. In Silicon Valley, it appears, start-up culture has actually reinforced its own glass ceiling.

Comments | 1,379 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 21, 2013

Dream Robot Doctors Will Even Make Health Insurance Less Painful

Another reason to welcome our inevitable robot overlords: not only will they be doctors, able to operate and save our lives, they will also deal with the insurance hassles. Sign us up!

Comments | 690 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 21, 2013

Horn Rims Won't Make Google Glass Fashionable

Props to Google for working with the hip glasses maker Warby Parker in an attempt to make its wearable A.I. goggles more stylish, but it will take a lot of social acceptance of robot aesthetics before a face-computer looks cool.

Comments | 4,655 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Feb 20, 2013

Google Will Finally Release a Device Apple Doesn't Make: A Touchscreen Laptop

Faced with sluggish Chromebook sales and challenged by surprisingly innovative Windows machines, Google will reportedly release a touchscreen laptop later this year.

Comments | 3,113 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Feb 20, 2013

The Tricked Out Playstation 4 Makes Gaming Even More Overwhelming

On Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. sharp, Sony took the stage to unveil its next generation video game console: the Playstation 4. Nearly two hours later, the company was still describing the thing. No joke.

Comments | 2,758 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 20, 2013

Today in Research

Dolphins Have 'Names' For Each Other

Discovered: Dolphins use unique whistles to call for each other; smoking gives mice Alzheimer's; 80 percent of all farm fertilizer goes toward meat production; golden moles are size queens.

Comments | 2,242 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 20, 2013

Let's Play the PlayStation 4 Expectations Game

Sony is set to unveil the first new PlayStation console in seven years at an event this evening, in hopes of catching up to Microsoft and Nintendo.

Comments | 1,207 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 20, 2013

Things You Can Officially Do with Google Glass

For those not inclined to watch Google's new demo video, here are all the the adventures you can take with this particular gadget of the future.

Comments | 16,898 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 20, 2013

How Yahoo's New Homepage Will Make Yahoo More Money

After months of leaks, Yahoo finally unveiled its new homepage today and though it may not look that different, its new personalized news feed is the most important, and potentially most lucrative, part of the new look.

Comments | 1,168 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 19, 2013

Today in Research

Signs of Life on Mars May Be Doused in Bleach

Discovered: Curiosity will have to dig deeper to find signs of Martian life; how our unstable universe could be replaced; new scorpion found near Tucson; our ape ancestors got drunk, too.

Comments | 4,828 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Feb 19, 2013

Stat of the Day

The Average American Knows 355 More People Than She Has Facebook Friends

In which we finally answer — or try to answer — the key question haunting our modern, hyper-connected condition: how many of your friends don't use Facebook?

Comments | 690 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 19, 2013

How to Avoid Getting Spear-Phished by China's Hackers Who Cracked Apple

From The New York Times and the Defense Department to Facebook and now even Apple, there's one increasingly sophisticated type of spam to watch out for — and here are some tips, just in case the Chinese hacker war hits your inbox next.

Comments | 5,518 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Feb 19, 2013

MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible

Just as the week of the big-brand Twitter hack was getting as old as it was useful to the "victims," the feeds of BET and MTV were "hacked." Except they were stunt-hacked in a pre-planned, inter-office joke that turned into a viral marketing ploy gone bad.

Comments | 2,529 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 19, 2013

Chinese Hackers Got Inside Apple, Too

Following a string of disclosures from big companies that could point to a larger Chinese threat, Apple on Tuesday became the latest to admit that its internal computers had been hacked — and by the same malware malfeasance that got inside Facebook.

Comments | 1,300 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 19, 2013

How China's Top Digital Spies Got Outed by Facebook and Twitter

If it weren't for the strictness of the Chinese government's Internet firewall, security firm Mandiant may never have discovered the identities of the Chinese army's instantly notorious "Comment Crew."

Comments | 1,763 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 18, 2013

Today in Research

Highway Paleontologist Digs Up a New Species of Whale

Discovered: How a California law lead to a whale fossil discovery; over half of moviegoers want to puke while watching 3D films; dogs sniff out other dogs in crowds; tracking climate change through Rock Hyrax urine.

Comments | 5,649 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 18, 2013

All the Rumors About the New Samsung Galaxy S IV

Now that Samsung has its own hype cycle, it seems only fair to keep track of what the tech rumormongers are saying about the upcoming Galaxy S IV.

Comments | 4,311 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 18, 2013

The Pirate Bay Fights Copyright with Copyright

The Pirate Bay — one of the Internet's premier destinations for infringing copyrights — is really mad that someone set up a copycat. So mad that they sued them for violating their copyright.

Comments | 8,599 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 18, 2013

The Least Webby Web TV Is Still Pretty Webby

The winners of yesterday's third annual Streamy Awards, which "honor excellence in original online video programming and those who create it," show that the best of made-for-Web television is still pretty webby.

Comments | 3,966 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 18, 2013

Why Some Scientists Aren't Happy About Obama's $3 Billion Brain Research Plan

Funding-strapped researchers should be rejoicing at Obama's promise to put $3 billion towards mapping the human brain, right? Not according to scientists who say the project lacks clear goals and gobbles up money that could've gone to a lot more smaller studies.

Comments | 8,218 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 18, 2013

The New York Times' Public Editor Finds Both Sides of the Tesla Tiff at Fault

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has published her final word on The New York Times vs. Tesla saga, saying that she does not think writer John M. Broder purposefully sabotaged the Model S test drive. But she isn't letting him off the hook completely.

Comments | 1,309 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Feb 18, 2013

Stat of the Day

The Web's 19 Clicks of Separation

According to the lastest estimate, the Internet consists of trillions of individual pages in hundreds of different languages, but a paper appearing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society argues that it takes no more than 19 clicks to navigate from one page to what it estimates to be the 13,999,999,999,999 other publicly accessible web pages out there.

Comments | 2,414 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Feb 17, 2013

Reddit Talked to a Man in Space on Sunday

Reddit's Ask Me Anything feature is often fun because it enables regular old Redditors to talk to really cool famous people like the president or, as was the on Sunday, an astronaut orbiting the Earth.

Comments | 345 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 15, 2013

Is the Facebook Hack Part of a Bigger Spy Threat?

Facebook announced in a blog post on Friday afternoon that its "systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack" and that "Facebook was not alone," which immediately raised the cyber-espionage question of the moment: Was China behind this one, too?

Comments | 5,014 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 15, 2013

How a Fake Story About Apple's Fake Jobs Turned into the Truth

Until today, when Ars Technica's Jacqui Chang handily debunked the legend, it was common knowledge in the tech blogger world that, in some sort of hazing ritual, Apple put new employees to work on fake products until they could be trusted.

Comments | 2,071 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Feb 15, 2013

Stat of the Day

Asteroid DA14 Came Within 17,500 Miles of Killing People

On Friday afternoon an asteroid known as "2012 DA14" floated by this lonely Earth and, thank God, did not collide with it. But it came close. Not as close as expected, but close.

Comments | 862 Views

By Richard Lawson

Feb 15, 2013

What We Watched

'American Idol': Girls Night Out

Goodbye Hollywood! Idol's grueling second round of auditions ended last night, with twenty men and twenty women being chosen to march bravely to the front lines, where all but one of them will be shot to shreds and blown to smithereens.

Comments | 1,002 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 15, 2013

The @RussiaMeteor War Against Twitter Parody Accounts Is Futile

With an oversaturation of obvious jokes coming from get-followers-quick users who jump on major news events, one comedian's bold move to squat on a newsy handle is, indeed, an heroic gesture. But it's also futile.

Comments | 2,652 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 15, 2013

What Tesla Wants a Model S Test Drive to Look Like

Elon Musk likes CNN's new telling a lot better than the one from The New York Times — perhaps because CNN followed Tesla's exact guidelines instead of, you know, going for a road trip.

Comments | 4,339 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Feb 14, 2013

The FDA Just Approved a Bionic Eye that Lets Blind People See

Imagine telling your grandma in 2003 that within a decade we'd invent a wearable video camera that wirelessly transmits images to your eyeball, effectively allowing the blind to see. She would've laughed you out the door!

Comments | 3,449 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 14, 2013

Today in Research

Synthetic Marijuana May Cause Kidney Damage

Discovered: Fake weed gave lots of people kidney damage last year; the FDA approves artificial sight for the blind; engineering tires from flowers; flushed anti-anxiety meds are making fish jittery.

Comments | 2,931 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 14, 2013

Facebook Wants You to Pay Them for Your Friends' Wall Posts

In the latest rather obvious attempt to monetize every inch of its network, Facebook is now trying to charge you to promote not just your own content — they think you'll pay for your friends' wall posts, too.

Comments | 1,552 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 14, 2013

Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

Elon Musk's long-awaited blog post take-down has arrived with what he claims is the data to prove New York Times reporter John M. Broder committed some sort of journalistic malpractice to run a bad review of the Tesla Model S's range capability.

Comments | 150,013 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 14, 2013

Why America Is Losing the War Against China's Hacker Spies

Chinese hackers are on a digital espionage campaign targeting a vast array of pretty much any major American organization "with intellectual property to protect," and now that there's a rare human side to combatting the malware attacks, we know there's not enough being done to stop the hackers yet.

Comments | 4,800 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 14, 2013

Randi Zuckerberg Says Her Book Will Be a 'Crazy' Look at the 'Front Lines' of Facebook

Taking the next logical step in her quest to gin up as much celebrity as possible for being related to the CEO of Facebook and not much else, Randi Zuckerberg is writing a memoir called Dot Complicated — and her deal with HarperCollins calls for yet another book after that.

Comments | 3,627 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 14, 2013

Today's Best

Five Best Thursday Columns

Gail Collins on preschool promises, Isaac Chotiner on Jonah Lehrer's profitable apology, Stan Chu Ilo on why the next pope should be African, Meghan Daum on Amazon's algorithms of love, and Jonathan Rue on what the U.S. owes its soldiers.

Comments | 690 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 13, 2013

Today in Research

Vain Guppies Only Want to Befriend Fish Uglier Than Them

Discovered: Guppies strive to be the most attractive member of their friend group; the world's most popular painkiller greatly raises heart attack risk; sea slugs have "disposable" penises; skulls reveal violence inflicted upon Stone Age women.

Comments | 1,207 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 13, 2013

Apple Maps Are Stranding Fire Victims, and Apple Isn't Doing Anything About It

Remember when Apple Maps was giving the people of Australia such bad directions that it led them to the middle of the Outback? Well, it's happening again, in a different, possibly life threatening way — not that Apple's going much about it.

Comments | 345 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 13, 2013

Google Flu Trends Wildly Overestimated This Year's Flu Outbreak

Scientific hindsight shows that Google Flu Trends far overstated this year's flu season, raising questions about the accuracy of using a search engine, which Google and the media hyped as an efficient public health tool,  to accurately monitor the flu. 

Comments | 4,121 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 13, 2013

3D Printers Aren't the Manufacturing Cure Obama Is Looking For

In his State of the Union address and his road show to tell a manufacturing plan as a job creator, the president has called 3D printing "the future." But a look at the rapidly growing industry's challenges reveals that it may not be growing as fast as the president would like.

Comments | 4,535 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 13, 2013

The Case for an Apple iWatch

The latest rumors make the smart-watch sound like an impending reality, with a report that Apple has a 100-person design team working on a Dick Tracy-style device. And there's plenty of evidence from growing niche markets that there might be iWatch fever after all.

Comments | 4,138 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

200 Miles in a Tesla Model S Still Seems Far After Tiff with The New York Times

Following a bold accusation from Tesla CEO Elon Musk that a terrible road-trip with the Model S was "fake," New York Times reporter John M. Broder has clarified that he may have made some operator mistakes but did not make anything up about the car's poor performance.

Comments | 4,833 Views

By David Wagner

Feb 12, 2013

Today in Research

Conservatives More Likely to Buy Name-Brand Products

Discovered: Conservatives prefer Kleenex® to tissues; relationship stress makes you susceptible to illness; gene therapy cures diabetes in dogs; warm weather can cloud the mind. 

Comments | 1,897 Views

By Richard Lawson

Feb 12, 2013

The Call Sheet

'The Americans' Is Not Doomed Just Yet

Today in showbiz news: DVR might save FX's new spy drama but not Fox's The Following, Nicolas Cage listens to his agent, and yet another show about Danish murder has been adapted for the American market.

Comments | 12,171 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Apple Is Obama's American Dream Again

With Tim Cook as an official guest, the President will be able to look up into the Capitol's VIP box at an Apple figurehead for his second straight State of the Union — except after the year Apple's had, maybe it won't be such an awkward thumbs-up to China this time.

Comments | 1,035 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Intel's Streaming TV Box Will Offer Its Own New Cable Bundles to Save Us All

The chip-maker has said its Silicon Valley star-studded Intel Media group will build a potentially game-changing set-top box — one that might just end up slashing your cable bill.

Comments | 1,371 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Why Google Pays Apple $1 Billion a Year

Google is expected to pay an estimated $1 billion to Apple in 2014 to keep its search engine as the default on iOS devices because, well, Google makes a huge portion of its mobile revenue from iPhones and iPads — enough to make rivalries disappear.

Comments | 2,158 Views

By Richard Lawson

Feb 12, 2013

The Smart Set

Vivienne Jolie-Pitt's Big Payday

Today in celebrity gossip: Brand and Angie's kid is making big bucks, Justin and Jay-Z head out on the road together, and Kim & Kanye sorta party with Will Smith.

Comments | 4,483 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Fear of a Cord-Never Generation

For years cable and satellite companies have maintained they're not afraid of people canceling their service and watching video over the Internet (i.e. cutting the cord), but the cord nevers — the young people who never sign up for pay-TV service in the first place — are a totally different story.

Comments | 4,656 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Feb 11, 2013

Babies Are Smarter Than You Think

It's always been tough to understand how babies' brains work, since they can't talk and don't take well to being stuffed into an MRI machine. But new technology is changing all that. 

Comments | 4,483 Views

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