T he story of Andy Weir is a strange mix of fact and fiction. There’s the fairy tale success of his book, The Martian , which he self-published on his blog for free, intended for the few thousand fans he’d accumulated over years of hobby writing. Some of those fans wanted an electronic book version,…

Forensic scientists in Italy have uncovered a mummy murder mystery. A Renaissance-era warlord who dropped dead in 1329 wasn't killed by a nasty stomach illness, as had been previously suspected; he was actually poisoned, an autopsy of his corpse reveals. Scientists say they've found traces of…

Sign of the Times As products and services advance, plenty of nostalgists believe that certain elements of humanity have been lost. One contrarian argues that being attached to one’s iPhone is a godsend. Credit "You Autocomplete Me ... or Are You Taking Over?" by Kowalskivision The children don’t…

Capitalism doesn't have to be overcome or destroyed. It could just be improved. Here's how. SUBSCRIBE to our channel for new films every week: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 If you like our films take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/all/ Brought to you by…

The best way to defend against malicious hackers is to get ahead of them. That's why Alenka Zajić and Milos Prvulovic, security researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, are working on designing methods to spy on offline computer use by monitoring the low-power electromagnetic frequencies…

“There are but few men who are sufficiently attentive to their own thoughts, and able to analyze every motive or action. Among these, Timothy Dexter was not one.” ~ Samuel L. Knapp ( 1848 ) Lord Timothy Dexter was many things. He was a famed 18th century entrepreneur -- one who made a series of…

Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien. From 2001: A Space Odyssey It was April 1968 and my father was sitting in a theater in Times Square watching 2001: A Space Odyssey , certain that what he was seeing wasn’t just a movie but the future . When it ended, he got up and walked out…

Bodybuilder Ernestine Shepherd, 78, attributes her youthful looks to diet and exercise. But scientists now say they will soon be able to do much more with drugs. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Rex I n Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley, hedge fund manager Joon Yun is doing a back-of-the-envelope…

A new anonymous online drug market has emerged, but instead of using the now infamous Tor network, it uses the little known "I2P" alternative. " Silk Road Reloaded " launched today, and is only accessible by downloading the special I2P software, or by configuring your computer in a certain way to…

I sat across from him and listened. He was trim, tall, bearded (as they all seem to be), a recent transplant, having only lived in Seattle for a year or so and worked at a start-up, after burning out at Amazon (as they all seem to have). He rode his bike around town; he had good taste in food and…

danah boyd Jan 12, 2015 Over the last few days, dozens of people have sent me a link to Andrew Watts’ “A Teenager’s View on Social Media written by an actual teen.” Increasingly, I’m getting uncomfortable and angry by the folks who are pointing me to this. I feel the need to offer my perspective as…

The Vault is Slate ’s history blog. Like us on Facebook , follow us on Twitter @slatevault , and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here . The Twitter feed @bldgblog recently shared some of these images of plans for 18 th -century British forts in the Americas, from…

My goal was to keep this post short. I wanted to, at first, keep it at 140 characters but that felt generally impossible. This line here is already 152. I have mentioned in a few blog posts already that I had planned on quitting Twitter I just wasn’t sure the timing. Well, last night, that moment…

Women at Work Speaking While Female Credit Keetra Dean Dixon YEARS ago, while producing the hit TV series “The Shield,” Glen Mazzara noticed that two young female writers were quiet during story meetings. He pulled them aside and encouraged them to speak up more. Watch what happens when we do, they…

Spotify, the music streaming service that is tipped to be soon in line for an IPO, has today announced that it now has 15 million paying users , and 60 million subscribers overall. To put this into some context, two months ago, the company said it had 12.5 million paying users out of 50 million…

BBC iWonder Open navigator Selling talent What the law says Private matters Around the world Grey areas An ethical maze Which model do you think works best? Where next? Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Transcript (PDF 204 Kb) Presented by Anita Rani Broadcaster In…

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.…

In his Nick Couldry argues that transitions in media infrastructure are facilitating the emergence of a new myth of collectivity: A new myth about the collectivities we form when we use platforms such as Facebook. An emerging myth of natural collectivity that is particularly seductive, because here…

US President Barack Obama has unveiled new proposals on how consumers' personal data is handled. Mr Obama called for legislation that will require firms to inform customers of data breaches within 30 days as well as protect students' information. He said identify theft and other cyber attacks were a…

just. one. little. thing. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be important. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary. It doesn’t have to be new. It doesn’t have to have bells and whistles. It doesn’t have to impress other people. It doesn’t have to mean anything.…

It gets down to well below zero in Oymyakon, Russia, long known as the coldest inhabited place on Earth. If that kind of climate is hard to wrap your brain around, such a temperature is so cold that people here regularly consume frozen meat, keep their cars running 24/7 and must warm the ground with…

A sample version of the city’s new municipal identification card. For generations, the label has been at once exclusive and widely misapplied, available to millions in earnest, but vulnerable to line-blurring by suburban peers who claimed New York City residency without an address to match. Could a…

Diederik Stapel, a Dutch social psychologist, perpetrated an audacious academic fraud by making up studies that told the world what it wanted to hear about human nature. Credit Koos Breukel for The New York Times See how this article appeared when it was originally published on NYTimes.com. One…

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) believe that the development of a quantum hard drive that can store data for up to six hours is a major step towards a secure worldwide data encryption network based on quantum entanglement. Scientists from ANU and New Zealand's University of…

Last year, visitors to the Brant Foundation Art Study Center saw Dan Colen’s “My Old Friend the Blues.” Visits to the center are by appointment. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times The Brant Foundation Art Study Center — a picturesque gallery space inside a converted 1902 stone barn — is just…

Prime Minister David Cameron said he would pursue banning encrypted messaging services if Britain’s intelligence services were not given access to the communications. Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images LONDON — Popular messaging services like Snapchat and WhatsApp are in the cross hairs…

Did you know many African countries continue to pay colonial tax to France since their independence till today! When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a…

Desperate to get their music on the radio at all costs, record labels are employing powerful software to artificially sweeten it, polish it, make it louder — squeezing out the last drops of its individuality Tom Whitwell Jan 9, 2015 Turn the knob, have your perception analyzed T here was once a…

Julie Matthaei and Keith Harrington demonstrated in front of the Sheraton Boston on Friday, Jan. 2 for alternative views in economics, as the Annual Economic Association conference kicked off inside. (Photo courtesy of Kyle Depew) There were leaflets, a manifesto, and this warning: “On campus after…

Hey There, This Is A Branded Short Domain. You might be here by mistake. This Branded Short Domain is currently associated with a Bitly account. Please make sure the link you clicked on or typed contains letters or numbers after the forward-slash (“/”). Want to create your own branded short links…

The author H.M. Ward says she left Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program after two months when her income dropped 75 percent. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times Authors are upset with Amazon. Again. For much of the last year, mainstream novelists were furious that Amazon was discouraging the…

Back when people had to leave the house if they wanted to buy something, the biggest problem in the book business was bookstores. There were not enough of them. Bookstores were clustered in big cities, and many were really gift shops with a few select volumes for sale. Publishers sold a lot of their…

A protest by New Era estate residents: ‘the story of a multinational company with wealth and connections being defeated by a grassroots campaign’. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for the Guardian I njustice is sustained by many things. One is a sense of inevitability: that it’s just one of those…

Max Temkin Jan 1, 2015 It has recently come to my attention that some of you, who I considered friends, have made it t0 the year 2015 without ever having watched my favorite television program, Star Trek: The Next Generation , despite its free availability on the World Wide Web. I get it. The show…

How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 New Steps Backed By Research I don’t wanna. I don’t wanna. I don’t wanna. It’s awful and horrible. I hear it causes cancer. I’ll do it when I feel better. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it when I’m taller. Procrastination plagues us all. We always think there will be…