There’s not much to see when you walk out of the subway station at Hunts Point in the South Bronx. A check cashing outfit, a few auto body shops, a weather-worn sign for Bella Vista Fried Chicken, and a billboard advertising $399 divorces, “no signature needed.” This New York neighborhood has a…

EricaJoy Nov 4, 2014 The prevailing narrative surrounding minorities in tech relates to how beneficial employing minorities can be for a company and/or how detrimental the lack of diverse perspectives can be. I’ve searched for, and have been disappointed to find that few studies have been done on…

In 1998, a man named John Stacks formed a company, Johnny Resin, that sold model kits to a niche audience. His specialty was a line of sculpts bearing the likenesses of actors from 1966’s Batman television series: Adam West, Burt Ward, and an assortment of villains, all in costume. This was a…

Starbucks Days after Apple Pay’s debut at checkout counters across the US, Apple CEO Tim Cook bragged it was already more successful than all other mobile payment services combined. Maybe he meant services offered by companies strictly in the mobile payments business. But it’s hard to believe he…

Two years ago a civil servant in the German town of Menden wrote a farewell message to his colleagues on the day of his retirement stating that he had not done anything for 14 years. “Since 1998,” he wrote, “I was present but not really there. So I’m going to be well prepared for retirement—Adieu.”…

NASA’s recent $6.8-billion concession to Boeing and SpaceX for the privilege of transporting supplies and personnel to the International Space Station has infected Americans with a ‘space fever’ once again, in addition to dispelling any doubt as to the future of the private sector in space. While…

An unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket exploded after liftoff in Virginia last Tuesday. Credit Joel Kowsky/NASA, via Associated Press Space travel has long been the preserve of governments and sci-fi fans, but in recent years a crop of new commercial ventures, often backed by billionaire entrepreneurs,…

They were labelled a waste of time and money, but in 1957 the bulging tips of two exhaust shafts rising above Sellafield arguably saved much of northern England from becoming a nuclear wasteland. The towers of Windscale Piles have been a landmark for decades but soon the last of these Cold War…

We can’t avoid the passing of time, even at the DMV, where time seems to come to a standstill. And daylight savings notwithstanding, time always ticks forward. But why not backward? Why do we remember the past and not the future? For a group of physicists, the answers to these deep and complex…

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock While playing the original versions of classic games on aging original hardware can sometimes be difficult, it's at least typically possible. That's not the case for many online games, which are functionally inoperable once the developer or publisher decides to shut down…

Last month, Toshiba unveiled a prototype robot capable of sign language. But the first thing you noticed likely wasn't its 43 actuators or even its apparently "warm-hearted" personality. The first thing you probably clocked: It's a girl. Called Aiko, the robot has an uncannily realistic face with…

Hundreds of thousands of objects are orbiting in high-velocity swarms around the Earth. Many of these, in the event of a collision, could ignite catastrophic accidents junking the world's orbital telecommunications networks. Australian company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) is leading efforts to track…

Ricky Jay photographed by Richard Avedon in New York City, March 4, 1993. The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened: Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted…

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…

Computers housing the world’s most sensitive data are usually “air-gapped” or isolated from the internet. They’re also not connected to other systems that are internet-connected, and their Bluetooth feature is disabled, too. Sometimes, workers are not even allowed to bring mobile phones within range…

The United States fancies itself the land of redemption, rebirth and reinvention, a place of second chances. But if you really want to wipe the slate clean, try moving to Europe. In May, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that private citizens could force Google to remove search…

After years of debate -- and decades of semi-legal status -- Alaskans will finally be able to light up legally. On Tuesday, voters approved Ballot Measure 2, an initiative legalizing recreational marijuana in Alaska, by about 52 percent in favor to 48 percent opposed, with 100 percent of the state's…

Peter Sunde poses in Västervik Prison.Photograph: Daniel Goldberg for the Guardian T he Västervik prison is as ugly as its surroundings are beautiful. Located a stone’s throw from the water in Gertrudsvik, a few hours drive south of Stockholm, its pale concrete walls rise high above the summer homes…

Modern cars are morphing into mobile data centres - connected, clever and packed full of sensors. But are they also becoming spies in our drives? As they record almost every aspect of our journeys and driving behaviour, interacting with our smartphone apps and sat-nav systems, who will own all the…

Boulder County election official Erin Meyers receives sealed ballots from motorists at a ballot drop-off in front of the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's office, in Boulder, Colo., on Election Day. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) Voters in seven cities and counties in Colorado voted Tuesday to free…

The Mexican military is trying to dismantle an extensive network of radio antennas built and operated by the notorious Zeta drug cartel. But the authorities haven’t had much luck shutting Radio Zeta down. Not only is much of the equipment super-easy to replace. But the cartel has also apparently…

People in China using devices with Apple's mobile operating system could become infected with malicious software if they connected their device to Mac computers with a USB cord. Feng Li/Getty Images Researchers at a Silicon Valley security company said on Wednesday that they had found a new manner…

Story highlights FBI director James Comey defends FBI agent's impersonation of an AP reporter The ruse was used to track down a suspect who made bomb threats against a high school "No actual story was published," he says, and only the suspect was fooled AP executive editor slams FBI's unacceptable…

(Ongoing live-blogging my new book in progress.) When the billionaire entertainment mogul, Sumner Redstone, hung up the phone in Bungalow 8 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he was worried and he was pissed. Pissed, because a CEO he desperately wanted to recruit had turned down an invitation to come to…

Image: Nature Methods Emperor penguins approached by a rover camouflaged with a penguin chick outfit. Advertisement Generally speaking, wild animals don’t like humans all that much. Even animals that aren’t directly threatened by humans (and won’t immediately attempt to flee) get all kinds of…

Strontium atoms floating in the center of this photo are the heart of the world's most precise clock. The clock is so exact that it can detect tiny shifts in the flow of time itself. Courtesy of the Ye group and Brad Baxley/JILA "My own personal opinion is that time is a human construct," says Tom…

In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency visiting the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran noticed that centrifuges used to enrich uranium gas were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery—apparently as much to the Iranian technicians…

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The Obama administration has the opportunity to make its stance on torture clear in the coming weeks. For the first time since the president took office, the White House is sending a delegation to testify before the Committee Against Torture in Geneva in November. In December, back at home, they'll…

http://bsec.org Chris Hedges speaking at the Brooklyn Society For Ethical Culture Charley Horwitz Platform. "The Global Culture of Violence: What Is The Path to Peace and Justice? Sept. 28, 2014. About Chris Hedges from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_He...) Christopher Lynn "Chris"…

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On Tuesday, Michael Dell will present his company’s plan for its shareholder-free future. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times A year after spending $24.9 billion taking his computer company private, Michael S. Dell is gleeful to have his namesake firm to himself. And to be done with Wall Street.…

A scanner the size of an iPhone that you could hold up to a person’s chest and see a vivid, moving, 3-D image of what’s inside is being developed by entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg. Jonathan Rothberg Rothberg says he has raised $100 million to create a medical imaging device that’s nearly “as cheap…

At around 8:30am on the morning Dante Orpilla planned to pay back the woman who had saved his life, he made a phone call. Scenarios about the way things were about to play out had been running through his head all morning, but he kept the conversation short. “If we want to do this,” he said to the…

A woman and a man walk along the painted East Side Gallery, a former part of the Berlin Wall, and are reflected in a rain puddle in Berlin, Germany, 08 July 2014. The weather forecast predicts more rain for the following days. EPA/PAUL ZINKEN It can be hard for visitors to Berlin to imagine where…

Google needs a new mission statement for the next 100 years, according to CEO Larry Page.Photograph: Jacob Silberberg / Reuters/Reuters Google’s chief executive Larry Page has admitted that the company has outgrown its mission statement to “organise the world’s information and make it universally…

REUTERS/ Metropolitan Police Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself? A new buzzword is circulating in…