Mondays Child on Flickr What's in a name? FireWire's original working title, ChefCat, had come from the name of the cartoon on Teener's favorite coffee cup. But on the eve of Comdex '93, a major computer industry trade show, the engineers put forth "Firewire" as a possible official name. Marketing…

Millions of Italians can now say they own a one-of-a-kind Nutella jar. In February, 7 million jars appeared on shelves in Italy , all of them boasting a unique label design . And here's a weird twist: Every single one of those millions of labels was designed by...an algorithm? Yes, algorithm. The…

This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company. “Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition . “It’s over. The world.” This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for…

It is difficult enough to get one overscheduled rap star in a room during business hours; it’s a herculean task to get ten of them there before noon. On a Monday in April, Vanessa Satten, the editor-in-chief of XXL , the hip-hop magazine, pulled off this feat for the tenth time. The occasion was a…

Dental Work Is So Expensive In The US That Thousands Of Americans Are Going To Mexico To Get It Done Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric doesn’t worry the 600 dentists in Los Algodones or the US “dental refugees” they treat, many of whom voted for Trump. “We’re helping the United States take care of the…

As part of our modern obsession with artisan-everything, today’s pickiest coffee drinkers insist upon a hand-brewed cup made right before their eyes. At the cornerstone of this trend is the undisputed king of pour-over coffee, the Chemex Coffeemaker , which graces the counters of hip homes and cafes…

Vintage and antique enthusiasts Collectors Weekly bring us the story of Peter Schlumbohm, a German-American immigrant who invented the Chemex coffee maker over 70 years ago. The design of the cone-shaped glass carafe remains exactly the same today, with only paper filters needed to make a pot of…

The Stranger I could see Bill's* eyes tracking mine in brief furtive glimpses between scrolling lines of green code. We were 12 years old and seated next to each other at a beige school computer in homeroom. We'd started talking that October, never looking at each other when we did, for no other…

Michael Thevis made his fortune by selling porn to millions of Americans in the 1970s. Then a campaign of bombings, killings, and a prison break brought down his peep-show empire. Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast On Friday, Nov. 13, 1970, Michael Thevis slipped into his office…

The Slatest has moved! You can find new stories here . Slate The Slatest Your News Companion [REDACTED] Photo illustration by Slate . Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images. The Trump administration, acting on the fairly sound logic that its supporters don't care in any way whatsoever about the civic…

For the Rest of Your Life In the summer of 2007, a well-rested man wearing pajamas and a nightcap shaved off his mustache and reintroduced himself to the world. This image shift was likely the decision of market studies predicting that a younger-looking man would sell more mattresses, or, that in…

China’s central bank is testing a prototype digital currency with mock transactions between it and some of the country’s commercial banks. Speeches and research papers from officials at the People's Bank of China show that the bank’s strategy is to introduce the digital currency alongside China’s…

Looking for a new job is getting easier. Google today launched a new jobs search feature right on its search result pages that lets you search for jobs across virtually all of the major online job boards like LinkedIn, Monster, WayUp, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder and Facebook and others. Google…

Earlier this year, Italian food conglomerate Ferrero used an algorithm to redesign the labels for its beloved sweetened hazelnut cocoa spread and sugar blast delivery mechanism Nutella . I know what you’re thinking: another example of data-driven “optimization” encroaching on the art of design. Well…

Though Thom Yorke insists that “OK Computer” was inspired by the dislocation of non-stop travel, it’s now understood as a record about how overreliance on technology can lead to alienation. Photograph by Rex via AP I’ve noticed a nugget of embarrassment buried in the recent avalanche ofcritical…

For six years, I immersed myself in the workings of the adult industry. As editor of the porn blog Fleshbot, I spent hours combing the XXX side of the internet, acquainting myself with all manner of perversions and obscure sex acts. At this point in my career, it’s fairly safe to say that there is…

Audrey Tautou received a camera as a gift for her first communion. As a child, she says, she was inspired by the primatologist Dian Fossey, and imagined herself photographing wild animals in the jungle. “The camera was, for me, more an expression of my desire for adventures,” she says. “It was not a…

TORONTO — As President Trump disrupts alliances across the map, nearly every level of government in Canada has taken on new duties in a quietly audacious campaign to cajole, contain and if necessary coerce the Americans. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s strategy for managing Mr. Trump is unlike…

Photo: JAMES W. MATAITIS BAILEY “I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m not optimistic,” says Vince Staples. Conversations with the Long Beach, California rapper tend to quickly stray into discussions of perspective and experience — Would you believe what you believe if you weren’t who you are? — and ours,…

Finland has been giving 2,000 of its citizens an unconditional income for the last five months and some are already seeing the benefits, reporting decreased stress, greater incentives to find work and more time to pursue business ideas. The scheme is the first of its kind in Europe and sees…

Goldie seemingly spilled the beans in a new interview. There have been whispers that Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja may be the anonymous graffiti artist known as Banksy and Goldie may have confirmed it in a new interview. Appearing on Scroobius Pip’s weekly Distraction Pieces podcast, Goldie said…

https://arstechnica.com/author/aurich-lawson/ A Comcast customer who is dissatisfied with Internet speeds set up a Raspberry Pi to automatically tweet at Comcast each time speeds are much lower than advertised. "I pay for 150Mbps down and 10Mbps up," Reddit user AlekseyP wrote over the weekend .…

After nearly a decade out of the spotlight, the comedian has brought his diabolical level of energy and commitment to a forgettable summer game show. Courtesy ABC If you weren’t around for it at the time, as I was not, you can watchthe original “Gong Show,” the amateur un-talent show that ran on NBC…

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) The third-to-last song on Vince Staples’s Big Fish Theory, released Friday, is called “Party People.” At first blush, the song is strange — which here is not anywhere close to meaning “bad”; it is very, very good in fact — for a few reasons. Vince Staples doesn’t…

(AP Images/Ringer illustration) All week, The Ringer will be celebrating Good Bad Movies , those films that are so terrible they’re endlessly amusing and — dare we say it? — actually good. Please join us as we give the over-the-top action movies, low-budget romance thrillers, and peak ’80s…

Last month Benedict Evans observed that The Best is the Last : A technology often produces its best results just when it’s ready to be replaced — it’s the best it’s ever been, but it’s also the best it could ever be. There’s no room for more optimisation — the technology has run its course and it’s…

A Bay Area food-technology startup says it has created the world’s first chicken strips grown from self-reproducing cells without so much as ruffling a feather. And the product pretty much tastes like chicken, according to people who were offered samples Tuesday in San Francisco, before Memphis…

Courtesy of Photofest From left: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elpidia Carrillo, Carl Weathers and Bill Duke in 'Predator.' In June 1987, 20th Century Fox released Predator . The story, by first-time screenwriters Jim and John Thomas, centered on Maj. Dutch Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger, then still not…

Ten years ago yesterday Amazon evangelist Jeff Barr posted a 222-word post on the Amazon Web Services Blog 1 that opened: Earlier today we rolled out Amazon S3, our reliable, highly scalable, low-latency data storage service. Until then Amazon Web Services had primarily been about providing…

The Vince Staples saga continues. Since signing to Def Jam, the Long Beach artist has released a new record every year, with his debut LP, the critically celebrated Summertime ‘06 (2015), bracketed by two superb EPs, Hell Can Wait (2014) and Prima Donna (2016), the latter the subject last summer of…

Back in 2006, when the iPhone was a mere rumor, Palm CEO Ed Colligan was asked if he was worried: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” What if Steve…

Tag yourself; I'm Spark No. 2943. Bumblebee fights off a Sentinel. Paramount Pictures In the opening scene of Transformers: The Last Knight , we are presented with the spectacle of King Arthur and his knights locked in an existential battle for the survival of human civilization, even though we’re…

Job seekers at an employment fair in San Marcos, Calif. Sandy Huffaker/Corbis, via Getty Images Days have passed since your job interview, and no one’s called or emailed. Later, you learn someone else was hired for the position. You were sure you aced the interview and would advance to the next…

Weird in a World That’s Not | Harper Business | June 2017 | 10 minutes (2,475 words) Long before author Jennifer Romolini’s name appeared high up on the mastheads of publications such as Time Out NY , Tina Brown’s Talk Magazine , and Lucky , and websites like Yahoo Shine , Hello Giggles and…

BuzzFeed News reviewed more than 50 reports of school bullying since the election and found that kids nationwide are using Trump’s words to taunt their classmates. If the president can say those things, why can’t they? Donald Trump’s campaign and election have added an alarming twist to school…

About Last Knight … Forgive me. I was thinking of a more innocent time, 30 years ago, when the most frightening image that mainstream cinema could conjure up was Demi Moore and Rob Lowe getting it on in the shower . Since those days, Hollywood has come up with so many more novel ways in which to…

Parents with small children often have strange little rules that reflect the crushing anxiety of love. Some couples, for example, refuse to take the same flight, lest they both perish, leaving their children as orphans. In our house, we have just one such rule, as promulgated by Mrs. Lewis: NO,…