The risk of a "serious cyber attack" on nuclear power plants around the world is growing, warns a report . The civil nuclear infrastructure in most nations is not well prepared to defend against such attacks, it added. Many of the control systems for the infrastructure were "insecure by design"…

A legal, social and biological revolution is taking place worldwide without much serious thinking of the consequences. Consider this: in Britain the House of Commons recently approved the use of “three-parent IVF” to remove defective mitochondrial DNA from babies.[1] Each year in Britain about 100…

By Steven Brill Letter From the Editors Backstage at Johnson & Johnson On May 20, about 100 stock analysts gathered in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to hear good news from top executives at Johnson & Johnson: The company had 10 new drugs in the pipeline that…

(Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images) ID checks were a common response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but they'll soon be obsolete. You won't have to show your ID, because you'll be identified automatically. A security camera will capture your face, and it'll be matched with your name and a whole…

Trade negotiators from the U.S. and its 11 Pacific Rim partners announced their agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) today, concluding the final round of closed negotiations in Atlanta and marking the culmination of seven years of secrecy. Throughout all that time, the U.S.…

In a candid interview, Elon Musk opened up about his demanding schedule. (Wolfgang Kumm/EPA) Elon Musk is a notorious workaholic. As the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla has long made clear, he doesn’t really need much vacation. He’s described lounging on the beach as “the worst,” and something…

Bloomberg Need help? Contact us We've detected unusual activity from your computer network To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot. Why did this happen? Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading.…

How I no longer pay Uber’s surge rates Ariel Michaeli Oct 5, 2015 I’ve been using Uber for quite a while now and one of the things that always turns me off is seeing that little blue lightning. Living in New York City, that little lightning meant I have to hail a cab. The smelly, inconvenient…

(From left): Jo Armstrong, Julie Armstrong, Skylar Armstrong, Amelia Anderson, Nathan Anderson, Westley Armstrong, and Dean Anderson at their home in Tucson, Arizona. Rick Scuteri/AP WASHINGTON (Associated Press) — A college degree practically stamped Andres Aguirre's ticket to the middle class. But…

Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller An advertisement for Rolls-Royce from the late 1950s Very few economists foresaw the great recession of 2008–2009. Why not? Economists have long assumed that human beings are “rational,” but…

‘There are just so many eyes on us’ … Tom Hanks, left, and Steven Spielberg at a Q&A following the Bridge of Spies premiere in New York.Photograph: Rob Kim/Getty Images Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Bridge of Spies , is a historical thriller set during the cold war – but according to its director,…

Smartphone users can do "very little" to stop security services getting "total control" over their devices, US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said. The former intelligence contractor told the BBC's Panorama that UK intelligence agency GCHQ had the power to hack into phones without their owners'…

On Friday, Motherboard reported that the new Reporta app, billed as "the only comprehensive security app available worldwide created specifically for journalists," may not be secure at all. After we published our story, Frederic Jacobs, Open Whisper Systems 's lead developer for their secure…

David Humphrey Sep 28, 2015 I’ve been interested to watch the increasing debate around ad blocking in iOS 9, and especially the heated nature of the discussions, which have been filled with polemic , hand-wringing, and even regret . Apple loves to stir things up, both by shipping and refusing to…

Flint declared a public health emergency this week after a dangerous spike in its water’s lead levels. But parents say they’ve been ‘screaming’ about the issue for months in an area where water prices are among the country’s highest

A single neuron in a normal adult brain likely has more than a thousand genetic mutations that are not present in the cells that surround it, according to new research from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists. The majority of these mutations appear to arise while genes are in active…

When you use a free Microsoft web app such as Outlook.com or OneDrive , or visit your Microsoft account page , an HTTPS request is made to display your profile picture, which seems innocent, until you notice something fishy: a numerical identifier of your account is included in the host name part of…

Cats in medieval Europe mostly had a bad reputation – they were associated with witches and heretics, and it was believed that the devil could transform himself into a black cat. In her article, “Heretical Cats: Animal Symbolism in Religious Discourse,” Irina Metzler looks at how this view of…

In the 1980s, psychiatrist Joel Dreyer was a fixture on Detroit’s WXYZ Channel 7. His commercials promoting his treatment center, InnerVisions, which he named after the Stevie Wonder album, sometimes ran up to five times a day. In one ad, Dreyer blocks a bartender from serving a mug of beer to a…

Remember kindergarten? It’s the only time in school we were offered naps and, if you were anything like me, you didn’t appreciate it AT ALL. My ungrateful five-year-old self was still reminiscing about recess, or scheming about how I’d try and persuade my mom to let me have a cat that week.…

Volunteer grass-roots campaigning in 2016 is going beyond knocking doors. For the Bernie Sanders campaign, it means late-night coding sessions. Coders for Sanders is a group of about 200 programmers, developers and designers that are collaborating on the chat application Slack to develop apps for…

Looking back after spending more than 30 years as a Unix systems administrator, I have to say that's it's been quite a ride. It certainly wasn't 30+ years of doing the same thing. Instead, the technology and the job have gone through incredible changes along the way. There were dramatic improvements…

Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters “The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.” The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but…

Crows are known to behave strangely around their dead: they gather around and squawk loudly nearby. The idea that it is part of some sort of ritual funeral has often been proposed. But what they are actually doing has largely remained a mystery, as scientists had little to rely on except anecdotal…

Kimery Davis When Jessica Elm, a citizen of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, was studying for her master’s degree in social work, she frequently heard about how genes were responsible for the high risk of alcoholism among American Indians. But her own family’s experience — and the research,…

A schoolgirl walks through a Tokyo subway station. Toru Hanai / Reuters Why Are Little Kids in Japan So Independent? Selena Hoy Sep 28, 2015 In Japan, small children take the subway and run errands alone, no parent in sight. The reason why has more to do with social trust than self-reliance. It’s a…

The reason Markus Miele is running uncharacteristically late this afternoon, is that he has been on the telephone to a customer. He may be chief executive of the German domestic appliance company Miele, he may have factories to oversee, meetings to go to, and pricing strategies to discuss, but a…

Enlarge @amlolzz Hackers have published almost 15 gigabytes' worth of password data, donation records, and source code taken during the recent hack of the Patreon funding website . The data has been circulating in various online locations and was reposted here by someone who said it wasn't…

Tech Fix To block ads or not to block ads on your mobile device? That’s the philosophical dilemma facing consumers since Apple added support for ad blockers to its iPhone operating system a couple of weeks ago. To help answer the question, we decided to put multiple ad blockers to the test. Over the…

Joseph, 88, Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand, 2014. (Laurent Kronental) Jacques, 82, Le Viaduc et les Arcades du Lac, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, 2015. (Laurent Kronental) The colossal grands ensembles , or high-rise public housing projects, in Paris and its surrounding banlieues , or suburbs, were…

Jason Zhang, age 22 Photographer: Ka Xiaoxi Emerging from a nightclub near Workers’ Stadium in Beijing at 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday in June, Mikael Hveem ordered an Uber. He selected the cheapest car option and was surprised when the vehicle that rolled up was a dark blue Maserati. The driver, a…

Bernie Sanders raises money in New York last month. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images) First came the big crowds, now comes the big money. At this point, anyone who doesn’t take Bernie Sanders seriously must not be paying attention. Sanders’s campaign announced that it raised an eye-bugging $26…

Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Jamaica Debates Permitting Abortions In Case of Rape, Incest Campaign…

"We don't collect a lot of your data and understand every detail about your life. That's just not the business that we are in," says Apple CEO Tim Cook, shown here at the NPR offices in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Ariel Zambelich/NPR Apple has long touted the power and design of its devices, but…

Patrick Burns Sep 30, 2015 The next phase of the IoT is stuck unless we replace crummy outdated technology How The IoT Was Blindsided Once upon a time, some people in the Defense Department created the internet . Then when that turned out pretty well, some other people decided to try to create a…