Credit: ©MICHAEL BLACKBURN/ISTOCKPHOTO Identical twins are identical, right? After all, they derive from just one fertilized egg, which contains one set of genetic instructions, or genome , formed from combining the chromosomes of mother and father. But experience shows that identical twins are…

This was waiting for me in my mailbox (Photo by Juliet Bennett Rylah/LAist) On Black Friday, we told you that 30,000 people may have purchased actual poop in a box . Today, we're pleased to report that it's true: 30,000 Americans bought poop. The offer came from Cards Against Humanity—that filthy,…

The trio responsible for breaking last year's NSA spying scandal have been honored for defending human rights. Prominent Germans praised the work of Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras. Former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden was given the Carl…

The devalued American worker The past three recessions sparked a chain reaction of layoffs and lower pay Play Video Published on December 14, 2014 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Midway through the last game of the 2013 Carolina League season, after he’d swept peanut shells and mopped soda off the concourse,…

On December 11, 1972, Apollo 17 touched down on the Moon. This was not only our final Moon landing, but the last time we left low Earth orbit. With the successful launch of the Orion capsule, NASA is finally poised to go further again. So it’s important to remember how we got to the Moon — and why…

Shell game There would be a number of activities that would be attempted for the first time during this conceptual inspection and rescue mission. —Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report (Appendix D.13) From here, the complexity of the mission begins to ratchet up to maximum. Depending on how…

Isohunt, a website providing access to mostly pirated material, has cloned the database of its competitor, The Pirate Bay, after it was shut down last week. The cloned site is online and fully functioning, according to users. The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited websites, has been closed…

Designing your own narcotics online isn’t just easy—it can be legal too. How do we know? We did it. Mike Power Jan 29, 2014 Illustrations by Tim Marrs AT MIDDAY ON A THURSDAY this past April, a radio call crackled through from an ambulance team to the emergency department of Calvary Hospital in…

Michael Bell Sr. (center) and his family stand near one of the billboards they bought in a campaign to bring awareness to internal police investigations. Bell's son was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wis. Courtesy of the Bell family It wasn't until later that we realized just how little of an…

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, says people will only use technology they can trust and that the only way forward is either through stronger technology or better laws.Photograph: Ted S Warren/AP Imagine this scenario. German police investigating a press leak descend on Deutsche Bank…

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave the toast at The New Republic’s centennial gala in November. Last week, two-thirds of the people on the magazine’s editorial masthead resigned. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY TERESA KROEGER/GETTY Last Friday morning, Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, and Guy Vidra, the…

"Here's at you!" —Philip Sheridan Last week, Franklin Foer resigned his editorship of The New Republic . A deep, if not broad, mourning immediately commenced as a number of influential writers lamented what occurred to them as the passing of a great American institution. The mourners have something…

British aerospace firm Reaction Engines Limited is working on an engine system that will be able to take 300 passengers anywhere in the world in just four hours. Even more impressively, the engine will also be used to fly a plane in outer space, as Business Insider reports . The engine system is…

Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate on September 8, 2014 in support of a pending Constitutional amendment, introduced by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), that would give Congress and individual states the authority to regulate campaign finance and rein in money pouring…

Activists see high dollar limits as a power grab by GOP establishment. Ken Cuccinelli says 'the new limits included in the omnibus only increase political speech for party insiders.' Tea party activists are attacking a campaign finance rider in the $1.1 trillion spending bill that they view as a…

n an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low.

Baseball cap with hidden video camera, bought from a darknet market by the bot. Photographs: !mediengruppebitnik Can a robot, or a piece of software, be jailed if it commits a crime? Where does legal culpability lie if code is criminal by design or default? What if a robot buys drugs, weapons, or…

Seymour Hersh and Laura Flanders on stage at the Logan Symposium.Photograph: Stuart Dredge for the Guardian 2.17pm EST 14:17 Finally, a roll call of “persecuted journalists and hackers” read by actor Francis Magee to finish off the day, and remind the audience that some of the people who couldn’t…

The Orion capsule, atop a Delta IV rocket, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday morning. It landed in the Pacific four and a half hours later, just a mile off target. Credit Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle NASA ’s new Orion spacecraft passed its first flight test on Friday, marking the…

Photo Credit Getty Images Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness. Running may reverse aging in certain ways while walking does not, a noteworthy new study of active older people finds. The findings raise interesting questions about whether most of us need to pick up the pace of our…

LONDON — The court that oversees Britain’s intelligence agencies ruled Friday that electronic mass surveillance of people’s cellphone and online communications, like the Prism program revealed by Edward J. Snowden, is legal. The ruling, on a complaint brought by privacy advocates and rights groups…

Deeplinks Blog by , Andrew Crocker | January 1, 2019 The Long Fight to Stop Mass Surveillance: 2018 in Review EFF is in it for the long run, especially in the important, hard fights for your rights. One of the longest running fights in online civil liberties is over your right to have a private…

For 30 years, Gerald Joyce has been trying to create life. As a graduate student in the 1980s, he studied how the first RNA molecules — chemical cousins to DNA that can both store and transmit genetic information — might have assembled themselves out of simpler units, a process that many scientists…

Travis P Ball/Getty Images for SXSW Glenn Greenwald described Laura Poitras as “Keyser Soze,” someone “at once completely invisible and yet ubiquitous,” while James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, branded her and Greenwald “accomplices” to espionage at a Senate hearing in January.…

New York data blogger Ben Wellington sits next to a fire hydrant Sunday in Brooklyn, N.Y. His investigation into the city's parking ticket data found that two Lower Manhattan hydrants on consecutive blocks in Manhattan generated $55,000 a year for the city — off of cars that appeared to be parked…

Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast When Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic , and TNR’s newly installed CEO, former Yahoo News executive Guy Vidra, visited the storied magazine’s Washington headquarters on Friday morning to meet with the staff, they were…

An English hermitage illustrated in “Merlin: a poem” (1735) (via British Library ) While some gardeners might now throw in a gnome statue among their flowers and shrubberies, back in the 18th century wealthy estate owners were hiring real people to dress as druids, grow their hair long, and not wash…

Lowell, Massachusetts, a former mill town of the red-brick-and-waterfall variety 25 miles north of Boston, has proportionally more Cambodians and Cambodian-Americans than nearly any other city in the country: as many as 30,000, out of a population of slightly more than 100,000. These are largely…

The government's ban on sending books to prisoners in England and Wales is unlawful, the High Court has declared. Under the current rules prisoners are prevented from receiving parcels unless they have "exceptional circumstances", such as a medical condition. Mr Justice Collins said he could see "no…

Meet Molly White, the engineer who helped make it possible In Florida, at the Kennedy Space Center, Molly White is cheering with her sister. Today the two space enthusiasts watched gleefully as the Orion spacecraft rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, circled Earth twice, and splashed down off the…

The Einstein Papers Project , the decades-long effort to compile and preserve the scientist’s professional work and personal writings, is today opening to the public as a free searchable database containing thousands of documents. The launch of the Digital Einstein Papers includes more than 5,000…

Every second or so, Carlos would feel a small “bump” hitting his tummy. It was the beating of his “second heart”. The small mechanical pump was meant to relieve the burden of his failing cardiac muscles, but Carlos (not his real name) disliked the sensation. The beat of the machine seemed to replace…

PUT your foot down in a Tesla Model S and the experience is rather different to other cars. The usual exhaust roar is replaced by a hushed whooshing sound as the car accelerates rapidly—and relentlessly—thanks to the high torque of an electric motor making gear changes unnecessary because there is…

A view of a local village from the mountains in Mongolia. Courtesy of Mitch Moxley Each Friday, Roads & Kingdoms and Slate publish a new dispatch from around the globe. For more foreign correspondence mixed with food, war, travel, and photography, visit their online magazine or follow @roadskingdoms…

On a sunny afternoon in May, 2009, seven astronauts strapped themselves into the space shuttle Atlantis and rocketed toward the heavens. They had a relatively simple, but absolutely vital mission: replacing a camera and other key components of the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope, orbiting some…

Nobody’s willing to say it yet. But after Ferguson, and especially after the Eric Garner case that exploded in New York yesterday after yet another non-indictment following a minority death-in-custody, the police suddenly have a legitimacy problem in this country. Law-enforcement resources are now…

Steve Wozniak Debunks One of Apple's Biggest Myths

(Omnipresenz) At first glance — and even second or third or fourth — Omnipresenz sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi movie, not on a crowdfunding site. The Spanish start-up, quickly dubbed “The Sims for real life” by many a skeptical media outlet, claims to be working toward a world in which…