PARIS — In the men’s 100-meter breaststroke final here at the 2024 Olympics on Sunday, eight world-class swimmers glided through a pool … and not a single one would have finished better than eighth at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. In the “Race of the Century” one night earlier, the women’s 400…

Last year we rebuilt our well-loved Stamen basemaps from scratch, re-creating them on a totally new tech stack in partnership with Stadia Maps. This was a bittersweet and challenging process, trying to build new styles that matched the aesthetics of the old maps, while still giving us a fresh start…

We don’t talk a lot in public about the big vision for Tailscale, why we’re really here. Usually I prefer to focus on what exists right now, and what we’re going to do in the next few months. The future can be distracting. But increasingly, I’ve found companies are starting to buy Tailscale not just…

Hunting for Switzerland’s Hidden Mountain Fortresses Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/johnnyharris Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! I went to Switzerland to hunt for bunkers, something I’ve been planning and dreaming about for years. The result wasn’t…

*** http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions *** In the Leidenfrost Effect, a water droplet will float on a layer of its own vapor if heated to certain temperature. This common cooking phenomenon takes center stage in a series of playful experiments by physicists at…

“We were promised the curing of cancer and all we got are so-and-so improvements in five-year cancer survival rates” would be a fair thing to say about progress in biomedical sciences in the last few decades. And cancer is one of the disease areas where we have done pretty well, relatively speaking.…

Editor's Note 1: I have no editor. Editor’s Note 2: I would like to assure new subscribers to this blog that most my posts are not as long as this one. Or as long as my previous one. My long break from posting here means that this piece is a collection of what would’ve normally been a series of…

Adventure is an AttitudeWords & Photography by Rosie Baker The light is blinding. It seems to get brighter still as I climb up towards the welcoming softness of the clouds. I have surely been climbing for hours. Though I am edging closer, I start to show signs of strain. My breath is rapid and…

Annals of Evolution August 8, 2011 Svante Pääbo’s genome-sequencing project hopes to point up the differences that enabled humans, unlike the Neanderthals, with whom they interbred, to build complex societies.Art by ATELIER DAYNÈS; PHOTOGRAPH: S. ENTRESSANGLE The Max Planck Institute for…

Andon (行灯) is a Japanese word that means paper lantern that the Japanese used for lighting since the Edo period. Toyota introduced the Andon Cord concept in its factories following the Toyota Production System. Today, many manufacturers use this invention in their assembly environments. The Andon…

Sometime after midnight on May 26, 2020, a sleek black-and-white speedboat darted through the sea’s waves off the coast of Sweden. The two men on board were barreling toward a set of coordinates in the darkness, armed with navigation equipment, night vision goggles, and fishing rods. The Donousa, a…

At the beginning of the 1980s, my parents had friends with children who lived a comparatively short distance away from us. There was a narrow, overgrown and tree-linked track next to their garden which lead to a more secluded house; in the depths of the undergrowth there was what I remember as a…

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Thinkstock. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. This piece is excerpted from Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy by…

Annals of Medicine Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies. June 23, 2008 Scientists once saw itching as a form of pain. They now believe it to be a different order of sensation.Photograph by Gerald Slota It was still shocking to M. how much a few wrong turns could…

Profiles Breaking the Waves February 2, 2014 For long-distance swimmers like Diana Nyad, the greatest barrier is mental endurance.Photograph by Catherine Opie / Regen Projects The first time Diana Nyad tried to swim around Manhattan, in the fall of 1975, she was pulled out of the East River in the…

ICQ, short for "I Seek You," laid the groundwork for standalone instant messaging clients when it debuted in November 1996. Think about how long ago that was... Microsoft's trailblazing Windows 95 was barely a year old, Nintendo had just introduced the N64, and those with a reason to have a cell…

It’s pricey, it’s portable, its users need it constantly, and retailers love to buy it at a discount. All of which makes it a perfect product to steal. It’s pricey, it’s portable, its users need it constantly, and retailers love to buy it at a discount. All of which makes it a perfect product to…

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for audio stories and much more. Already a subscriber? . She never felt right about sending him to prison. Every year around Christmas, Estella Ybarra would find herself thinking back to December 1990 and that El Paso courtroom, where…

Insys Therapeutics paid millions of dollars to doctors. The company called it a “speaker program,” but prosecutors now call it something else: a kickback scheme. The Baby-Formula Crime Ring It’s pricey, it’s portable, its users need it constantly, and retailers love to buy it at a discount. All of…

It was 6.30am on a Saturday when I found out Fred had died. I was sitting by the window on the second floor of my friend’s home in Brooklyn. I had woken up early, buzzing from the adrenaline of a series of unaccustomed public appearances following the recent publication of my book. Mindlessly, I…

Untangling Threads Back in the fall, I wrote a series of posts on a particularly horrific episode in Meta’s past. I hadn’t planned to revisit the topic immediately, but here we are, with Threads federation with the ActivityPub-based fediverse ecosystem an increasingly vivid reality. My own emotional…

Update: See my daily math streak progress here 👈 I recently passed 100 days of practicing math every single day 💯 I’ve wanted to beef up my math chops for a while, but I needed a good reason that would justify the time investment. Plus, it’s always easier to learn when you have a clear goal and…

[epistemic status: speculative] I. Millgram et al (2015) find that depressed people prefer to listen to sad rather than happy music. This matches personal experience; when I'm feeling down, I also prefer sad music. But why? Try setting aside all your internal human knowledge: wouldn’t it make more…

I’m just so angry. It’s been boiling and bubbling (and toiling and troubling) for awhile now. Not just since a spoilt, sadistic emerald heir stole—and yes, I am using that word; I’m using it deliberately and with fury aforethought—Twitter out from under the people who created it and made it the…

Künstliche Intelligenz ist seit 1½ Jahren in aller Munde. Die Meinungen gehen von «KI wird uns in ein goldenes Zeitalter führen» über «KI ist vollkommen nutzlos» bis zu «KI wird unsere Welt zerstören». Das liege daran, dass wir alle Anwendungen und Entwicklungen in denselben Topf werfen würden, es…

Wandering hand-in-hand through the medieval streets of Bologna, my boyfriend and I were in awe of the sweeping porticoes and distinctive rust-red brickwork of the city. It was our first holiday together. We’d wanted to find somewhere beyond the obvious that would marry our respective interests in…

Buttons feel magical. You press here, and invisible connections make something happen elsewhere. But “magical” is probably not how I’d describe most public drinking fountains. In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices.…

Most days, this column looks at controversies unfolding on other tech platforms. Today, let’s take a look at the one that hosts this publication: Substack. On Tuesday, I told subscribers that we are considering leaving the platform based on the company’s recent statement that it would not demonetize…

«Absolut deckungsgleich mit der Jungen Tat» – wie sich die Junge SVP der rechtsextremen Szene annähert Interne Whatsapp-Chats zeigen: Innerhalb der Jungen SVP wird heftig über die Nähe zur Jungen Tat gestritten. Ein Parteipräsident findet, man vertrete zu Recht «exakt die gleichen Inhalte» wie die…

NewsBooks & CultureFiction & PoetryHumor & CartoonsMagazinePuzzles & GamesVideoPodcastsArchiveShop Newsletter Subscribe » InsideNorth Korea's Forced-Labor Program Workers sent from the country to Chinese factories describe enduring beatings and sexual abuse, having their wages taken by the state,…

There are only a few opportunities to make a living by getting good at creating tables to facilitate high-frequency math that end-users will find entertaining but will have predictable statistical properties at scale. One of them is designing roleplaying games. Seems like an interesting topic but…