A screenshot from the forthcoming PC game Space Witch, written, designed and programmed by Keith and Zac Stuart. We can’t work out how to make the witch smaller. That is an actual problem in my life right now. I’m making a game with my nine-year-old son, Zac. We’re using the simple programming tool…

Aaron Swartz found out the hard way that you can't expect justice from the Department of Justice: what should the next Aaron Swartz do when facing decades in prison for information activism? [Ed: please see the bottom of this article for an important clarification] I am among those who have seen the…

Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, the cofounders of Yik Yak. Alyson Shontell/Business Insider Last March, an app called Yik Yak took over Elizabeth Long's high school, Woodward Academy, in Atlanta. Students learned about it during first period. By lunchtime, the school made an announcement: Anyone…

If you fly a drone and post footage on YouTube, you could end up with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration. Earlier this week, the agency sent a legal notice to Jayson Hanes, a Tampa-based drone hobbyist who has been posting drone-shot videos online for roughly the last year. The FAA…

The BBC will be giving away mini-computers to 11-year-olds across the country as part of its push to make the UK more digital. One million Micro Bits - a stripped-down computer similar to a Raspberry Pi - will be given to all pupils starting secondary school in the autumn term. The BBC is also…

How twenty-three innocent Afghani civilians were wiped out by self-deceiving drone operators seven and a half thousand miles away. I n a cold February dawn in 2010, two small SUVs and a four-door pickup truck headed down a dirt road in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. They had set out soon…

In 2006, the tiny Caribbean state of St. Kitts and Nevis was in deep trouble. Its sugar plantations had closed a year earlier, gang violence had given it the dubious distinction of having one of the world’s highest murder rates, and only two governments on Earth were more indebted. A three-hour…

New research shows there is a strong correlation between water fluoridation and the prevalence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, in the United States. It’s the first time that scientists have systematically studied the relationship between the behavioral disorder and…

Using ultrasound waves targeted at the brain, a team of Australian researchers has restored memory to mice with Alzheimer’s disease. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease , a degenerative condition that causes memory loss, behavioral changes, confusion, and disorientation.…

View more from the July–August 2010 Issue Explore the Archive Executive Summary Reprint: R1007B Harvard Business School’s Christensen teaches aspiring MBAs how to apply management and innovation theories to build stronger companies. But he also believes that these models can help people lead better…

The scrub jays of California’s Santa Cruz Island really love a good peanut. “It’s like crack to them,” says Katie Langin , a biologist at Colorado State University who probably knows these birds better than anyone else. Working with Scott Morrison of the Nature Conservancy, Langin started visiting…

It’s easy to spot Columbus. He’s not only the biggest and strongest gnu among the dozens grazing on a South African plain, he also sports a golden-hued coat, a stunning contrast to the gray and black gnus around him. Finding Columbus in the wild would be a stroke of amazing luck. More than 99.9…

Getting ready for launch. Google Google’s plan to deliver Internet service from balloons in the stratosphere has come a long way since being unveiled in June 2013. A single “Project Loon” balloon can now remain in the air for more than six months and provide 4G LTE cellular service to an area the…

Quimby’s Curzi, 35, had moved to Oregon in 2012 from San Francisco after selling a software company he'd helped found a decade earlier. He was fascinated with the games—the ubiquitous, flashing terminals found in bars, delis and even pancake houses—and he played occasionally when out drinking with…

Niels Noordhoek Researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have uncovered more evidence tying the US National Security Agency to a nearly omnipotent group of hackers who operated undetected for at least 14 years . The Kaspersky researchers once again stopped short of saying the hacking collective…

Fred Olsen is reliving the day he ran off to sea. The 86-year-old Norwegian billionaire is showing me around the museum-like headquarters of his business empire when he pauses next to a glass-encased model of the Bruno, the fruit ship he boarded in January 1949, just days after his 20th birthday. As…

My intersectionality will have weirdoes or it will be bullshit. Meredith L. Patterson Mar 23, 2014 All photos: Len Sassaman “You only know a hacker respects you if he’s willing to waste his time shooting holes in your ideas.” — Pablos Holman Let’s start with a thought experiment. Imagine that Japan…

Aby Warburg (second from left) was the spirit behind the iconographic studies that dominated much of twentieth-century art history. Courtesy the Warburg Institute At first, the library of the Warburg Institute, in London, seems and smells like any other university library: four floors of fluorescent…

No, this isn't a make-believe place. It's real. They call it "Ball's Pyramid." It's what's left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is…

“If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old college kid at midterm. He’s wearing sneakers and…

Robert Putnam focusses on the widening gap between rich kids and poor kids. Credit Illustration by Oliver Munday For about a century, economic inequality has been measured on a scale, from zero to one, known as the Gini index and named after an Italian statistician, Corrado Gini, who devised it in…

R ESEARCHERS WORKING with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept . The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a…

If you want to imagine how the world will look in just a few years, once our cell phones become the keepers of both our money and identity, skip Silicon Valley and book a ticket to Orlando. Go to Disney World. Then, reserve a meal at a restaurant called Be Our Guest, using the Disney World app to…

For more videos please subscribe Linghein's Environment Report : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEO... Tianyu Fang & Christopher Linghein "LINGHAN" He ENGLISH SUBTITLES ARE FULLY TRANSLATED For more information: http://www.linghein.me/tr_u/ English Subtitles: FULLY UPDATED Japanese (日本語)…

Prepare to be processed State, like other government agencies, pays internal IT people abysmally compared to the private sector, when the department actually hires them. And that’s not that often—most IT positions in embassies are filled by people from the countries they are in, and Information…

I have a huge sweet tooth. I always have. My friend and fellow graduate student Andrew is equally afflicted, and living in Hershey, Penn., “Chocolate Capital of the World,” doesn’t help either of us. But Andrew is braver than I am. Last year, he gave up sweets for Lent. I can’t say that I’m…

The Director of U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency is worried it’s in danger of losing relevance in an ever-more-digital world. His answer has been to order a sweeping reorganization of the C.I.A. , which would include the creation of a new Directorate of Digital Innovation who would manage a new…

Before Ross Ulbricht has even been sentenced for his conviction last month of running the Silk Road's massive online narcotics operation , his defense team has launched a motion to grant him another trial. And their request is based in part on fresh evidence that the federal government surveilled…

The Globe and Mail Science 500 million years ago, this critter had a really bad day Newsletters Subscribe Register Log in My account My account Site navigation Your reading history Quick links Horoscopes Puzzles Member Benefits Newsletters Podcasts Death Notices (Legacy.com) Customer service My…

It wasn't supposed to be " Leonard Nimoy + Biracial Kids Day " here at Code Switch, but the news takes you where it takes you. BuzzFeed's Leonora Epstein uncovered this blog post from the blog My Star Trek Scrapbook , which features a letter from a 1968 issue of the defunct teen magazine FaVE! In a…

In the world of investing, conscience, it seems, costs nothing. You can have your do-gooder cake and eat it, too. Consider iShares MSCI USA ESG Select Index (symbol KLD ), an exchange-traded fund that tracks an index of companies that it says follow high “environmental, social and governance”…

In the nineteen-seventies, the Internet was a small, decentralized collective of computers. The personal-computer revolution that followed built upon that foundation, stoking optimism encapsulated by John Perry Barlow’s 1996 manifesto “ A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. ” Barlow…

Jon Evans Contributor Jon Evans is the CTO of the engineering consultancy HappyFunCorp; the award-winning author of six novels, one graphic novel, and a book of travel writing; and TechCrunch's weekend columnist since 2010. More posts by this contributor How Netflix is eating the Academy Please stop…

Michelle Bachelet (left) and Camilla Vallejo. (Photo: Wikipedia ) This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com . In 2011, students in Chile made headlines when they launched a nationwide strike lasting almost eight months. The trigger was high tuition costs that…

Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it's rare for that affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier than most. She feeds the crows in her garden - and they bring her gifts in return. Eight-year-old Gabi Mann sets a bead storage container on the dining room table,…

View Images A “were-jaguar” effigy, likely representing a combination of a human and spirit animal, is part of a still-buried ceremonial seat, or metate, one of many artifacts discovered in a cache in ruins deep in the Honduran jungle. An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with…