Mary finished her embroidery, tucking her needle away into its handsome ivory case. Before slipping the case into her sewing kit, Mary held it up to the light of a nearby window, and peered into a tiny glass lens embedded in the ivory. She smiled at the secret photograph of her favorite…

Library of Alexandria, Egypt. Hisham Ibrahim / Getty Images Libraries are at once solitary and social, often serving as cornerstones of communities. Throughout history, their design has developed alongside the democratization of knowledge. A new book, Reflections: Libraries , which was published by…

SOFT POWER For America, the best response to China is to put our own house in order., © M. Garfat/MGP (Feather), © Gino's Premium Images (Leaves), both from Alamy; © Cary Anderson (Wing), © Michael Nolan/SpecialistStock (Eagle'sHead), © Aaron Joel Santos (Bamboo Forest), all from Aurora Photos; ©…

Turning Points Who Should Own the Internet? Credit Alessandro Gottardo Turning Point: The top E.U. court orders Google to grant the “right to be forgotten.'’ It is now a journalistic cliché to remark that George Orwell’s “1984” was “prophetic.” The novel was so prophetic that its prophecies have…

In Mario Kart, comebacks are easy. The farther behind you are in the Nintendo racing videogame, the easier it is to pick up more powerful weapons like the Blue Shell, a homing missile that will help you target and knock out the person in first place. If only the real world worked that way. The…

When in 2012 a computer learned to recognize cats in YouTube videos and just last month another correctly captioned a photo of “a group of young people playing a game of Frisbee,” artificial intelligence researchers hailed yet more triumphs in “deep learning,” the wildly successful set of algorithms…

December 04, 2014 Wyden Introduces Bill To Ban Government-Mandated Backdoors Into Americans’ Cellphones and Computers Electronic Backdoors Trample Privacy Rights and Threaten U.S. Cybersecurity Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today introduced the Secure Data Act to protect…

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Introduction Key findings: For decades, the petrochemical industry spent millions on science seeking to minimize the dangers of benzene, a carcinogen tied to leukemia and other cancers. Benzene, a sweet-smelling component of crude oil, is used to make plastics, lubricants, dyes, adhesives and…

SEOUL (Reuters) - Despite its poverty and isolation, North Korea has poured resources into a sophisticated cyber-warfare cell called Bureau 121, defectors from the secretive state said as Pyongyang came under the microscope for a crippling hack into computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment. A North…

Not long after he purchased The New Republic , Chris Hughes had lunch with me, as he was doing with quite a few journalists around Washington. At one point, he asked me who the best editor had been during my 16 years. I had worked for a half dozen editors, several of them great, but it was an easy…

The U.S. National Security Agency should have an unlimited ability to collect digital information in the name of protecting the country against terrorism and other threats, an influential federal judge said during a debate on privacy. “I think privacy is actually overvalued,” Judge Richard Posner ,…

It was late April when the sole surviving location of Kim's Video & Music announced that it was closing its doors for good. The beloved New York City video store minichain already had dwindled from four branches to one, but the First Avenue location managed to hang on for nearly five years after…

Grace Hilliard and her dog, Lucky, in front of her tent at a homeless camp in the heart of Silicon Valley. The Jungle, as it is known — 68 acres of mismatched belongings, shopping carts, clotheslines and wooden shanties — is widely seen as the nation’s largest such camp. 1 / 9 SAN JOSE, Calif. — The…

A Nook display at a Barnes & Noble store. In 2012, Microsoft invested $300 million for 17.6 percent stake in the Nook e-book reader. When Microsoft invested $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook division in 2012, it appeared that the last big brick-and-mortar bookstore chain had found its savior.…

Sonia Cotelle (left) and Marguerite Perey (second from left) at the Curie laboratory in 1930. Each died from radiation exposure. Credit Musée Curie/ACJC Collection Just after Christmas of 1938, a young woman named Marguerite Perey — then 29, with a plain, open face, her eyes intent upon her work —…

Sign in Amsterdam warning tourists of heroin sold as cocaine. Photo via imgur/reddit . Authorities in the Netherlands are warning Amsterdam tourists about heroin masquerading as cocaine, which has already killed several people and sent a number of others to the hospital. The campaign is striking…

Shopping for electronics, like many things in Tokyo, is an extreme sensory adventure. Every visit, I make a point to spend at least a couple hours wandering the city’s gadget department stores. This time, I braved the nine-story BIC Camera in Tokyo’s Yurakucho neighborhood, along the train tracks…

Go and Swift take another step up the programming-language ladder Scott Rosenberg Dec 4, 2014 Unlisted If you are a very large, rich technology company today, it seems it is no longer enough to have your own humongous data centers, luxurious buses, and organic lunch bars. You need your very own…

Wheat People vs. Rice People Credit Bratislav Milenkovic AMERICANS and Europeans stand out from the rest of the world for our sense of ourselves as individuals. We like to think of ourselves as unique, autonomous, self-motivated, self-made. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed, this is a…

Merkel said that some key services for the digital economy would require reliable transmission quality and should therefore be treated differently than other data. At the Vodafone-hosted Digitising Europe conference in Berlin, she called for a splitting of services, "one for free internet, and the…

D escribing his life, shortly before his death, Newton put his contributions this way: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than…

Illinois has become the third state in the nation to call for a constitutional convention to amend campaign finance law.

A growing number of non-profits are modelling themselves on technology start-ups rather than traditional charities, allowing donors to give direct to a cause Technology 19 November 2014 By Rachel Nuwer No longer needed? (Image: Redsnapper/Alamy) CHASE ADAM, a Peace Corps volunteer, was bumping along…

In the wake of President Obama's recent public endorsement of net neutrality, Gizmodo has released a report highlighting the campaign contributions received by politicians from the nation's four major telecom companies. As per the report, both Democrats and Republicans received over $8 million from…

WASHINGTON -- In Iowa, a television station recently created a new program so it could sell more advertising to political campaigns, party committees and independent groups bombarding voters in this year's battleground states. The advertising crush is being driven in large part by big-spending…

Ayn Rand, the Russian-born American novelist, is shown in Manhattan, N.Y., with the Grand Central Terminal building in background in 1962. Her novel Ideal will be published next year more than 80 years after she wrote it. AP Fans of Ayn Rand rejoice. The New American Library announced today that…

An American Red Cross worker stands on an inundated Brooke Avenue following heavy rains and flash flooding Aug. 13, in Bay Shore, N.Y. Andrew Theodorakis/Getty Images The American Red Cross's CEO, Gail McGovern, has spelled out the organization's promise to donors repeatedly in recent years.…

There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That's the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the…

Do you want to go to the park? Mango Doucleff, of San Francisco, responds to her favorite command by perking up her ears and tilting her head. Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR Scientists — and anyone who lives with a canine — know that dogs pay close attention to the emotion in our voices. They listen for…

Team Peak Performance says that after six days, they "crossed the finish line with 5 members instead of 4 as the 12th top team in the world." Krister Goransson/Peak Performance After a stray dog in Ecuador met a team of Swedish adventure athletes, he grew so attached to the squad that he ran for…

Most sibling relationships are close — two-thirds of people in one large study said a brother or sister was one of their best friends. One thing that can scuttle closeness in adulthood is a parent who played favorites in childhood; this sense of resentment can last a lifetime. During middle age and…

The United States is still the world’s most popular destination for highly skilled professionals. But it doesn’t seem to have quite the allure it used to. In fact, professional migration to the US has declined substantially since 2001, according to a new study (pdf) that used a massive dataset…

April13, 2016 11 min read This story originally appeared on Help Scout The psychology of color as it relates to persuasion is one of the most interesting--and most controversial--aspects of marketing . The reason: Most of today's conversations on colors and persuasion consist of hunches, anecdotal…

Scientists have captured what is believed to be the first photographic evidence of brown bears within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). Camera traps, used by a project assessing radioactive exposure impacts on wildlife, recorded the images. Brown bears had not been seen in the area for more than a…

Houses in Detroit. 62,000 properties are being auctioned off after tax foreclosures, but “having to kick someone out takes all the fun out of owning a home,” says one new owner.Photograph: james cheadle / Alamy/Alamy “Having to kick people out takes all the fun out of owning a house.” Oren…