Retailers are increasingly using customers' personal data to decide how much to charge for products This article titled “Surge pricing comes to the supermarket” was written by Tim Adams, for The Observer on Sunday 4th June 2017 06.00 UTC In 1861 a shopkeeper in Philadelphia revolutionised the retail…

Last December at the wrap party for the second season of “ Master of None ,” the show’s star and co-creator, Aziz Ansari, addressed the cast and crew. But this wasn’t the typical thank-you for hard work. Using what would politely be called a “bathroom word,” he suggested they managed to ruin Season…

The early 80s were a weird time for hip-hop. The genre was new, tons of people loved it, and there was a genuine sense that this was a new, radical artform that would help define the future. That hunch would prove to be true, certainly, but at the time nobody knew quite what that meant. Hell, nobody…

Customers of Pirate Joe’s, the Canadian renegade reseller of groceries from the American chain Trader Joe’s, no longer have a place to buy products like Organic Carrot Turmeric Juice Blend or Quinoa Cowboy Veggie Burgers. Pirate Joe’s , which for more than five years celebrated its status as an…

Founded in 2000, Tellart is a design-driven, future-focused design studio that creates interactive experiences that move between digital and physical spaces. We spoke with Tellart’s head of strategy, Andrew Haarsager, about how 3D printing has found its way to the studio’s design process as well as…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images It was political theater of the best kind. The nature of the events that led ex-FBI Director James Comey to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Thursday are extraordinary. Comey’s testimony of his version of events was even more so.…

Iraqi Kurds have finally set a date for their long-discussed referendum on independence from the rest of Iraq, with the Kurdistan Regional Government calling for a vote on Sept. 25. The decision, announced by KRG president Masoud Barzani on Twitter, and picked up by local and international media, is…

Nineteenth-century retailer John Wanamaker is responsible for perhaps the most repeated line in marketing: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half." Today, marketers are grappling with the Wanamaker Paradox: The more we learn which half of advertising…

Story highlights Six attackers went after two highly symbolic targets US President Donald Trump says, "... states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote" Tehran, Iran (CNN) Iran's Revolutionary Guards say Saudi Arabia supported ISIS in the deadly twin attacks in Tehran…

Illustration: Jim Cooke/GMG Imagine this: You’re out at a bar. Maybe you’re there with some coworkers, and everyone is shaking off that crazy conference call and is starting to get a little loose. You’ve had one drink, and now you’re enjoying another. No big deal. You’re feeling good, and why…

A friend warns me not to turn up to a Danny Brown interview without vinyl or weed. Eager to avoid mistakes of the past (Brown once cut off an interview after the journalist generously offered him a scotch egg), I do exactly that. You see, Danny Brown isn’t your everyday rapper. Volatile and…

Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, and Kelly Rohrbach star in Seth Gordon’s movie. Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn There are so many things you can do with a beach in the movies. You can clear it by shouting, “Shark!” You can storm it in the face of German guns. If you’re Steve McQueen, you can race…

Twitter is full of porn. Automated accounts, some of which are designed to drag you off to a web of dodgy dating sites , overwhelm the social network, constantly clogging up mentions with insincere likes and retweets. But what actually sits behind Brianne's, Helen's, or Christina's account? Thanks…

President Trump said on Thursday that the United States was officially withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, following through on a campaign promise and defying fellow world leaders who had pleaded with him to remain a party to the pact. The move was sure to provoke a sharp backlash from the…

President Trump is a master marketer. Look no farther than the successful branding of his billionaire self as a champion of working-class Americans. In that vein, one line from Thursday’s announcement that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate change accord is a perfect example of…

Macon Blair was terrified. The year was 2013 and he was the unknown star of a movie no one had heard of, made on the cheap, and directed by a guy who hadn’t made anything in six years. Blair was sitting in a vast auditorium in France with hundreds of strangers, seated beside his friend and…

Items for sale at Infinity Photos by Brian Crecente/Polygon, collage by Emily Haasch Media piracy in Cuba isn't just rampant; it's a way of life. Terabytes of data come into the country nearly daily through smugglers, internet connections and satellite feeds, immersing the country and its people in…

A drawer packed with video games from a Havana home Photos by Brian Crecente/Polygon, collage by Emily Haasch Video game arcades are alive and well in Havana, though you might not recognize them. Where arcades in places like North America and Japan are often large expanses of space packed with…

Game collector Gabriel Huie with friend Rafael Rivas Photos by Brian Crecente/Polygon, collage by Emily Haasch Cuba will likely always be a country seeped in the throwback car culture aesthetic of bullet-nosed, tail-finned 1950s classics, lovingly maintained objects of teen angst and tourist…

There’s an unfortunate myth in San Francisco: that Soylent is a healthy, viable replacement for normal food. When I challenge people drinking it on its healthiness, I’m usually met with confusion. Isn’t Soylent good for you? Doesn’t it have all of the vitamins and nutrients you need? Isn’t it well…

Thom Yorke has four words of blunt advice for his younger, twitchier self, that paranoid twentysomething humanoid who made his band’s turn-of-the-millennium masterpieces. “Lighten the fuck up,” Yorke says, laughing hard. Radiohead‘s frontman, who turned 48 in October, is long past his days of hiding…

Amazon’s new bookstore at Columbus Circle has a bewilderingly small selection and, in some sections, seems organized like an ill-advised dinner party. PHOTOGRAPH BY SPENCER PLATT / GETTY On Thursday, Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in New York City, in Columbus Circle. It is…

During a press briefing on 30 May, Sean Spicer said the White House focus was on ‘the president’s agenda’.Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters The White House said on Wednesday it will no longer answer questions about the ongoing investigations into Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia . James Comey…

The Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. Cuban-Americans disproportionately supported President Trump in November. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times WASHINGTON — President Trump is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel…

Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of “GNO,” its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal . On the same day, in an exurb…

Nash’s equilibrium is a simple concept that helps economists predict how competing companies will set prices, how much to pay a much-in-demand employee and even how to design auctions so as to squeeze the most out of bidders. It was developed by John Nash, the Nobel-winning economist and…

What Makes a Design Seem ‘Intuitive’? by Jared M. Spool In a recent usability test, I once again witnessed something I’ve seen a hundred times before: a frustrated user claiming he knows exactly what is wrong with the interface he was fighting with. What was his suggestion? “These guys need to make…

The woman shot dead in the basement of her suburban Connecticut home had struggled with an intruder, her husband told the police just before Christmas in 2015. But over time, the story fell apart as investigators began to rely on a silent witness — a Fitbit exercise tracker that recorded the woman’s…

Automation At Work The McKinsey Global Institute analyzed the work activities of more than 800 occupations in the U.S. to determine what percentage of a job could be automated using current technology. It turns out, a small fraction of jobs are either entirely automatable or entirely robot-proof. 0%…

There’s a battle raging over whether academic research should be free, and it’s overflowing into the dark web. Most modern scholarly work remains locked behind paywalls, and unless your computer is on the network of a university with an expensive subscription, you have to pay a fee, often around 30…

Jordan Wolfson photographed on December 12, 2016, in New York. ©KATHERINE MCMAHON A cataloguing of violence in art might begin with Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s teeming battle scene, The Triumph of Death , and continue on to Caravaggio’s Grand Guignol Judith Beheading Holofernes . From there, you see…

Once upon a time, a child was born into wealth and wanted for nothing, but he was possessed by bottomless, endless, grating, grasping wanting, and wanted more, and got it, and more after that, and always more. He was a pair of ragged orange claws upon the ocean floor, forever scuttling, pinching,…

Visitors to the Whitney Biennial must be at least eighteen years old to put on a headset and watch “Real Violence,” an extremely bloody virtual-reality project by Jordan Wolfson. PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL ORCUTT Jordan Wolfson’s virtual-reality installation at the new Whitney Biennial, “Real Violence,” is…

Ladislav Kasuka was offered money to organize protests against NATO and the pro-Western Ukranian government in Prague. Pavel Horejsi for The New York Times MELNIK, Czech Republic — Working at his computer, as he does most weekends, on an anti-Western diatribe for a Czech website, Ladislav Kasuka was…

Illustration: Getty I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don’t know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus…

American space experts say they believe that Vasily Tsibliyev, the commander of the Mir space station, has been badly shaken by a series of space failures in recent months and is intent on avoiding a risky repair mission. If so, they say, he joins a little-known roster of astronauts who have…