Afghans used a generator-powered charging station this month at a camp in Calais, France. The camp's inhabitants hope to cross the Channel to Britain. Credit Peter Nicholls/Reuters BELGRADE, Serbia — The tens of thousands of migrants who have flooded into the Balkans in recent weeks need food, water…

by Thomas R. Wells The internet has made it easier than ever to speak to others. It has empowered individuals, allowing us to publish our opinions without convincing a publishing company of their commercial value; to find and share others' views on matters we concern ourselves with without the fuss…

Way back in 2012, I posted something , talking about how worried I was that a documentary that looked and sounded great seemed to have disappeared. I’d looked far and wide to contact the filmmakers, and nothing. But I wanted to at least put my voice out there, in case they wanted to talk to me.…

G od might just as well have begun with a toaster oven. A few years ago at a yard sale, Nicholas Hud spotted a good candidate: A vintage General Electric model, chrome-plated with wood-grain panels, nestled in an old yellowed box, practically unused. The perfect appliance for cooking up the chemical…

Have you ever done your children's homework for them? Have you driven to school to drop off an assignment that they forgot? Have you done a college student's laundry? What about coming along to Junior's first job interview? These examples are drawn from two new books — How to Raise an Adult by Julie…

After 150 years, America is still haunted by the ghosts of its Civil War, whose story has been romanticized for so long it’s hard to keep the facts straight. In our collective memory of the war, men are the giants, the heroes remembered as fighting nobly for their beliefs. Confederate General Robert…

Clay Shirky Sep 8, 2014 I teach theory and practice of social media at NYU, and am an advocate and activist for the free culture movement, so I’m a pretty unlikely candidate for internet censor, but I have just asked the students in my fall seminar to refrain from using laptops, tablets, and phones…

Before there was a Freddy Krueger, there was the night terror. The horror icon wasn’t born in a boiler room, but he did originate in troubling dreams. A string of real-world deaths inspired the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Witnesses and survivors didn’t report a burn-scarred face or a striped…

More than two decades ago, Peter Brugger, as a PhD student in neuropsychology at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, was developing a reputation as someone interested in scientific explanations of so-called paranormal experiences. A fellow neurologist, who had been treating a 21-year-old…

The inner sanctum of the Bank of England was penetrated by a “powerful criminal network” linked to money laundering, terrorism, and contract killings, according to explosive intelligence that the police and MI5 tried to keep secret. The details of the covert operation – which uncovered a suspected…

Windows' network activity continues to be scrutinized amid privacy concerns. Windows 10 was first put under the microscope with both new and old features causing concern. With its Cortana digital personal assistant, Windows 10 represents a new breed of operating system that incorporates extensive…

Rob Mather – founder and CEO of GiveWell’s top rated charity, Against Malaria Foundation. Photo credit: Andrew Testa. What do leaders in GiveWell’s top-recommended charities have to say about working in non-profits as a career choice? I reached out to leaders at GiveDirectly, Against Malaria…

Eatsa, a fully automated and high-tech fast food restaurant The future is now. Well, it certainly feels that way when you walk through the doors at the flagship location of Eatsa , a new high-tech fast food restaurant that opens today, Monday, August 31st , near San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Eatsa…

As the supply of college grads expands, many are taking jobs that shouldn’t require a degree. Illustration by Leo Espinosa If there is one thing most Americans have been able to agree on over the years, it is that getting an education, particularly a college education, is a key to human betterment…

The master wears an amulet with a blue eye in the center. Before him, a candidate kneels in the candlelit room, surrounded by microscopes and surgical implements. The year is roughly 1746. The initiation has begun. The master places a piece of paper in front of the candidate and orders him to put on…

Whooper swans stabilize their head with a complex neck that's tuned like a car suspension, Stanford engineers have learned. The finding has influenced their design of a camera suspension system that could allow drones to record steadier video. (Photo: Tom Langlands Photography) Stanford Report,…

Posters for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and The Thin Man (1934) There were years when I went to the movies almost every day, sometimes even twice a day, and they were the years between 1936 and the war, around the time of my adolescence. Those were years in…

The fatal shooting of a Texas man by sheriff’s deputies in San Antonio last week was captured on video that appears to show he had his hands up when the officers fired. The Bexar County Sheriff’s department identified the man on Monday as Gilbert Flores, 41. Officials said he was fatally shot on…

Thousands of movies will be removed from Netflix in the US after the streaming service decided not to renew a deal with distributor Epix. Removed titles will include the Hunger Games and Transformers movies. Netflix, which has more than 60 million subscribers worldwide, said it wanted to focus on…

Updated Sept. 3 PASADENA, Calif. — The return to flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, still a “couple of months” away, will also be the first launch of an upgraded version of the vehicle with increased performance, the company’s president said Aug. 31. Speaking at the American Institute of…

We’re in an era of the cult of the entrepreneur . We analyze the Tory Burches and Evan Spiegels of the world looking for a magic formula or set of personality traits that lead to success. Entrepreneurship is on the rise , and more students coming out of business schools are choosing startup life…

Credit Illustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times John Landgraf’s comments arrived like a thunderbolt. There’s a malaise in TV these days that’s felt among executives, viewers and critics, said Mr. Landgraf, the chief executive of FX Networks. And it’s the result of one thing: There is simply…

"CIVILISATION begins," William Faulkner once pronounced, "with distillation." He may have felt differently had he considered Georgian London, a major step back for civilisation by any standards. It was here that the city’s fetid backstreets spawned the Gin Craze, causing decades of soul-searching…

Adam Scourfield / AP Oliver Sacks always seemed propelled by joyful curiosity. The neurologist’s writing is infused with this quality—equal parts buoyancy and diligence, the exuberant asking of difficult questions. More specifically, Sacks had a fascination with ways of seeing and hearing and…

‘The whole campaign to see addiction as a disease is that it works against people’s sense of empowerment,’ says Marc Lewis.Photograph: Tomas van Houtryve/AP F or decades the medical profession has largely treated addiction as as a chronic brain disease. The US government’s National Institute on Drug…

A s a behavioral scientist, Nicholas Epley is a bold explorer. For years he has plumbed the murky river of misunderstanding that runs between people. “There’s more blackness in the mind of another person than we think there is,” Epley says. In his 2014 book Mindwise , Epley demonstrates why our…

What you like on Facebook reveals plenty about you. | Reuters/Robert Galbraith Listen to This Story You are what you "like" on Facebook, a Stanford professor has found. That may be an oversimplification, but according to Michal Kosinski, an assistant professor in organizational behavior at Stanford…

Have you ever thought "Why are the numbers on a telephone keypad arranged the way they are?" “Why are the numbers on a telephone keypad arranged the way they are?” Why are they arranged in a 3x3 grid with the zero below? How did this layout become a standard? Why is this layout subtly different to…

The administration is preparing sanctions against Chinese firms and individuals over cyberespionage. Chinese president Xi Jinping is arriving in Washington for a state visit next month. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (Evan Vucci/AP) The Obama administration is developing a package of unprecedented economic…

Fight back with this simple hack Sharky Laguana Aug 17, 2015 (and when you are done, read the FAQ ) If you subscribe to a subscription music service such as Spotify or Apple Music you probably pay $10 a month. And if you are like most people, you probably do so believing your money goes to the…

Nayu Kim / Flickr Recently, Bic launched a campaign to “save handwriting.” Named “Fight for Your Write,” it includes a pledge to “encourage the act of handwriting” in the pledge-taker’s home and community, and emphasizes putting more of the company’s ballpoints into classrooms. As a teacher, I…

Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi , died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer . Redding also kept a blog, and after his death an essay he wrote about the ad business. " A Short Lesson In Perspective ," has gained a new and…

At 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday there was no more coveted piece of New York City real estate than standing room in the Museum of Modern Art’s Marron Atrium. And so it shall be for the next seven nights as Kraftwerk, the German electronic outfit from the 1970s, plays to a scant crowd of about 450 lucky…

Personal finance is simple, but it isn’t easy. Our greedy brains try to fight us every step of the way—which is why automating your finances is such a great way to save money. Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich , puts everything you need to know in one simple graphic. I Will Teach…

U.S. and British officials decided earlier this year that a hacker needed to die. Junaid Hussain, a British citizen in his early 20s, had risen fast to become a chief in Islamic State’s electronic army. One person familiar with the matter said he hacked dozens of U.S. military personnel and…

Understanding the intent of a cyclist doing a track-stand is a wrinkle for self-driving cars to figure out. (Eric Risberg/AP) Earlier this month in Austin, a cyclist and a Google self-driving car met at a four-way stop. This likely wasn’t the first time a Google self-driving vehicle has encountered…

Chris Parsons/Getty Images Saturday will mark 1,500 days since the Space Shuttle touched down for the final time. Grounding human spaceflights was always supposed to be temporary as we made the necessary transition to a new generation of spacecraft, operated by American commercial carriers.…

Per DATE-ONOMICS, the math here doesn’t work. (iStock) There’s a scene in “ The Fires of Autumn ,” Irene Nemirovsky’s novel set in 1920s France, in which a young war widow named Therese thinks she is being courted for marriage by her childhood friend Bernard — only to discover that he wants nothing…