Emily Lakdawalla ⢠Dec 05, 2012 Now that Casey has explained the budget implications of yesterday's 2020 rover announcement, and The Planetary Society has issued a formal statement , I thought it wa
Most magazine articles do not, as a general rule, inspire impassioned responses. But in 2003, when The Atlantic published a short essay by correspondent Jonathan Rauch on the trials of introversion in
Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and mala
Jeff Sonderman, writing for Poynter : With the benefit of hindsight, there seem to be at least two othermajor lessons from The Daily’s failure: Audience clarity. It was difficult to grasp who exactly
I wouldn’t call myself a calendar power-user. Ever since I started organizing the things I have to do with a system I can trust , I’ve faced a workflow conundrum: is this a task or a calendar event? I
Published in I. M. H. O. · 4 min read · Nov 30, 2012 -- For the past decade, I’ve tried every new social media product to come along but I find myself returning to the two giants of the industry most
Op-Ed Contributor Bad Connections Syracuse SINCE 1974, when the Justice Department sued to break up the Ma Bell phone monopoly, Americans have been told that competition in telecommunications would pr
A few months ago, on Twitter, where it seems all the interesting stuff happens these days, I shared a vintage Haunted Mansion photo I found especially beautiful. It's from 1972 and I can't remember wh
Ultrasonic cleaners work by sending high frequency sound waves through a liquid in some sort of basin. The sound waves cause cavitation bubbles to form on anything you put in the basin, and those bubb
One German genius has engineered a faster, smarter board game. * Photo: Baerbel Schmidt * In 1991, Klaus Teuber was well on his way to becoming one of the planet's hottest board game designers. Teuber
Illustration by Tom Bachtell Brothers and sisters: Before we open our hymnals and sing the many grim verses of “Now Cometh the Hard Part,” the quadrennial post-Election Day dirge, the congregation is
Behind the Wheel | 2012 Tesla Model S One Big Step for Tesla, One Giant Leap for E.V.’s REALITY SHOW Tesla’s second electric model is the stylish Model S, with an E.P.A.-rated range of up to 265 miles
Leif Parsons The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype
I can still remember the satisfaction I took from dragging a crayon against a particularly toothy piece of paper in a coloring book when I was very young. Unlike the cliché, I was trying to stay in th
If the need for a new approach to the American electorate wasn’t clear enough to Republicans on November 6th, it certainly has been since Mitt Romney delivered his graceless coup de grace a few days l
Introduction In April of 1965, Electronics magazine published an article by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. The article and the predictions that it made have since become the stuff of legend, and like
The break up The headline of Apple's press release reads, "Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006." How did it come to this? What's it all mean? Here's how I feel as a Mac enthusiast sin
Opinion The Quiet Ones EVER since I quit hanging out in Baltimore dive bars, the only place where I still regularly find myself in hostile confrontations with my fellow man is Amtrak’s Quiet Car. The
Ducking Google in search engines By , PAOLI, Pa. — N ot far from Valley Forge, around the corner from Bravo Pizza, up the road from Paoli Auto Body, there is an odd-looking office building that resembles a stone castle. An eye doctor is on the first floor. On the second floor is a search engine. The…
A couple of months ago, I decided to start learning Python . I say “start” because, as a hobby to fit in between my personal schedule and work for the site, learning the language is still very much a
To celebrate the publication of The Particle at the End of the Universe , here’s a cheat sheet for you: mind-bending facts about the Higgs boson you can use to impress friends and prospective romantic entanglements. 1. It’s not the “God particle.” Sure, people call it the God particle, because…
I wrote two posts on the topic of WebKit font smoothing before, but unfortunately the situation has grown worse since then. In allowing the designer to pick their own font smoothing mode with the -web
Siri is a promise. A promise of a new computing environment, enormously empowering to the ordinary user, a new paradigm in our evolving relationship with machines. Siri could change Apple’s fortunes like iTunes and App Store…or end up being like the useful-but-inessential FaceTime or the…
"If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it?” —Aidan Smith, Age 8, via his father Jeff Nothing made of matt
Actually Getting Big Things Done is a series of guests posts on how to make things happen from those who know how to… well… actually get big things done. Today’s post comes from Erin Feldman whose blog, adorable drawings and recent ebook, Write Right continue to inform and delight. I’m sometimes…
Siri, as shipped, appears already capable of adding functionality according to which applications are installed on the iPhone. Here’s a screen shot of before and after I removed Apple’s Find My Friends app from my phone. How does it do that? Where’s “Where’s Jason?” gone? I’m busy so I’ve not…
Dan Crow, another former Apple employee from the 1990s, also says Apple has shown itself to be doomed without Steve Jobs, in a piece for The Guardian headlined “ We’ve Passed Peak Apple ”: Why do I th
I was born to young parents who were not ready for a child. They separated when I was five and neither was able to independently care for me. The next few years were a jumbled mess as I moved back and forth between one or the other of my grandparents’ homes, supervised by them and whichever aunts or…
The following was written in August, 2012. It was published a month ago in the first issue of Marco Arment’s iOS-only publication The Magazine . Marco has generously allowed his contributors to retain copyright and the option to share their work on their own sites after a time. If you have an iOS…
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People always seem surprised to find out I use Evernote , despite all of the plain-text tools at my fingertips. I thought I’d offer some explanation as to why and how I use Evernote. The biggest knock
November 7, 2012 The Best When I got back to San Francisco after a three month trip to Southeast Asia last year, I had no possessions. I was living out of hotels. Everything I carried had to fit into
I was on an airplane last night as the election was decided. As the plane landed after midnight on the East Coast, I confess that my hand was shaking as I turned on my phone for the news. I did not wa
Why political journalists can’t stand Nate Silver: The limits of journalistic knowledge October 31, 2012 | Mark | political journalism The more I think about the rift between political journalism and
Mitt Romney has always had difficulty drawing a winning Electoral College hand. Even during his best period of polling, in the week or two after the first presidential debate in Denver, he never quite
Sign Up for Your Weekly Dose of Culture! Travel The Dual Legacy of Artificial Islands: Engineering vs. Ecology Explore the rich history and modern impacts of artificial islands. From ancient civilizat
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