CGIIdeas/Commentary | 05/13/2013 11:46 am | I’ve come across people who believe that Max Headroom, the Channel 4 character from the Eighties (pictured at top), was a genuine piece of computer animation. But although he was conceived by the animators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel (of Cucumber Films…

Am Abend des 3. November 2008 beginnen die Erzieher in dem Heim am Waldrand die „Anti-Aggressionsmaßnahme“ mit der 17 Jahre alten Hanna*. Das Protokoll: 19.30 Uhr: Verweigerung von Nahrung und Medikamenten. 20.05 Uhr: Wehrt sich. Kopf wird festgehalten. 20.07 Uhr: Wehrt sich weiter. Hanna werden…

The plummeting cost of the basics of computing—sensors, processors, network connections, batteries—will mean that in the very near future, objects all around us will start to change. They will no longer be just things; they will be connected things. They will be part of the network, our network. Our…

MY BLOG From ‘how to’ articles, expedition dispatches to the stories of the incredible people I learn from along the way. Mt. Everest and K2- A Q and A with Elia Saikaly This interview was initially c

Mit dem Schwein ist es wie mit einem Photon in der Quantenphysik. Indem man es beobachtet, verändert man sein Verhalten. Die Frage lautet: Wie geht es dem Schwein, bevor es zur Wurst wird? Der Stall, in dem die Antwort zu finden ist, steht ziemlich sperrig da im Nieselregen Niedersachsens. Wer…

For Carmen Tarleton, the day started out normally enough. Tarleton, 45, had errands to run, a piano lesson to get to, a house to tidy. Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day, and for the first time in a long time — the first time since the attack five years earlier — she looked forward to spending it with…

How to fix the mess at the top of the world

A lifeguard keeps watch on opening day of the newly renovated McCarren Park Pool on June 28, 2012, in Brooklyn, New York. Mario Tama/Getty Images Slate’s archives are full of important stories. We’re republishing this article for the start of summer. It was originally published June 4, 2013. The new…

I had debated writing something about this, but wasn’t sure if I would or not. Ultimately I decided to do so because I have a platform here, might as well use it. Some of you who follow me on Twitter

Tony Davis was 18 when he took another boy's life in a drive-by shooting. Now he's a middle-aged man worthy of redemption. "Fat Tone" at California's Calipatria prison, December 1993. Courtesy The Atavist The following is an adapted excerpt from Stray Bullet , Gary Rivlin's new Atavist single. Five…

When Jeannie Peeper was born in 1958, there was only one thing amiss: her big toes were short and crooked. Doctors fitted her with toe braces and sent her home. Two months later, a bulbous swelling appeared on the back of Peeper’s head. Her parents didn’t know why: she hadn’t hit her head on the…

Wenn das alles bloß ein Albtraum wäre, flüstert Luhmann manchmal. Ein Albtraum ist nur eine nächtliche Täuschung. Ein Albtraum hat ein Ende. Aber das hier, das ist wahr und wird nie aufhören. Luhmann wird sein Leben, so wie er es kannte, nicht zurückbekommen. Er hat es auf dem Meer verloren, auf 54°…

In late 1992, Quentin Tarantino left Amsterdam, where he had spent three months, off and on, in a one-room apartment with no phone or fax, writing the script that would become Pulp Fiction, about a community of criminals on the fringe of Los Angeles. Written in a dozen school notebooks, which the…

I awoke aboard a boat, just before daybreak, which was weird. The last thing I remembered was being in San Francisco's Moscone Center, wrapping up a four-hour Google I/O keynote liveblogging session.

The Next Facebook Beyond the Address Book It has now been six months since I documented my tenth grade sister’s technology habits . Intrigued by what I learned, I’ve gone on to ask many more “normal” people, of all ages, about the products that they use on a regular basis. This post is an attempt to…

Whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, or Upcoming, the post-purchase story is a similar one. Both sides talk about all the wonderful things they will do together. Then reality sets in. They get bogged down trying to overcome integration obstacles, endless meetings, and stifling bureaucracy. The…

A John lights a cigarette for a young male prostitute in August, 1965 in front of Astor Pharmacy in Times Square. IC Rapoport On a sleepy Sunday morning in late July 1965, Detective 3rd Grade James McDonnell received a call in the upstairs squad room of midtown Manhattan’s 17th Precinct. There was a…

Published inThis Mom’s Life · 6 min read· Apr 5, 2013 -- A few hours after our son was born in January of 2009, requests for photos on Facebook started to come our way: Friends who might not have been on the small, private email list that got the first few images we sent from the hospital wanted,…

News Desk May 14, 2013 Update: The New Yorker is no longer using Strongbox. Aaron Swartz was not yet a legend when, almost two years ago, I asked him to build an open-source, anonymous in-box. His achievements were real and varied, but the events that would come to define him to the public were…

A Reporter at Large The Squid Hunter Can Steve O’Shea capture the sea’s most elusive creature? May 16, 2004 The giant squid has consumed the imaginations of many oceanographers. How could something so big remain unseen for so long—or be less understood than dinosaurs?Illustration by Gerald Scarfe On…

Lowell Jenkins leans back in a rocking chair in his condominium, sixteen floors above the crossroads din of Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto. He is wearing a pink sweater against the threat of April rain, and tapping a pencil on the knee of his new jeans. A mug of black tea sits on the kitchen counter…

Bitcoin. Everybody’s talking about it. What’s true, and what’s hype? Perhaps the only thing that’s clear about Bitcoin is that it’s not going away anytime soon. Who am I to say? I’m not an economist;

Biz & IT Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger Thanks to real-world data, the keys to your digital kingdom are under assault. Dan Goodin – Aug 20, 2012 8:00 pm | 333 Credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Story text Size Width *…

I was wrong. One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.” It’s a been a year now since I “surfed the web” or “checked my email” or “liked” anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I’ve…

It drips on her head most days, says Champaben, but in the monsoon season it’s worse. In rain, worms multiply. Every day, nonetheless, she gets up and walks to her owners’ house, and there she picks up their excrement with her bare hands or a piece of tin, scrapes it into a basket, puts the basket…

It’s hard for me to explain how I got into this situation and in many ways it’s embarrassing. My hope in sharing my story is that someone can learn from it. The first time it felt real I had been waiting for about 3 hours before I started to really get worried. I had told everyone else that I’d be…

18. April 2013Aus Heft 16/2013Wissen Die Zahl Pi ist die älteste Trophäe der Mathematik. Ein Team hat jetzt versucht, sie auf zehn Billionen Nachkommastellen genau zu berechnen. Eine Expedition ins Unbekannte, so spannend wie ein Flug mit der Enterprise. Von: Roland Schulz Sie rückten pünktlich in…

Back in 2004, I was awakened early one morning by a loud clatter. I ran outside, only to discover that a car had smashed into the corner of my house. As I went to speak with the driver, he threw the car into reverse and sped off, striking me and running over my right foot as I fell to the ground.…

By "Yeah, they say three years’ salary." Michael Scott, The Office American males enter adulthood through a peculiar rite of passage - they spend most of their savings on a shiny piece of rock. They c

A professional thinker named Thomas Hobbes got it into our heads for an embarrassingly long time that our ancestors were pitiful, lonely, mean people. Three and a half centuries later Hobbes is still revered for his smarts, even though he’ll always be most famous for that unfortunate soundbyte in…

Biz & IT How I became a password cracker Cracking passwords is officially a "script kiddie" activity now. Nate Anderson – Mar 24, 2013 7:55 pm | 240 Credit: Aurich Lawson Credit: Aurich Lawson Story text Size Width * Links * Subscribers only Learn more At the beginning of a sunny Monday morning…

Amid bank bailouts and global recession, an unknown hacker operating under the false name Satoshi Nakamoto released an open-source code for a global, digital currency in January 2009. Running on a dec

Bitcoin market cap, from http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap 20 min read· Apr 3, 2013 -- A few days ago, the value of all the bitcoins in the world blew past $1 billion for the first time ever. That’s an impressive achievement, for a purely virtual currency backed by no central bank or other…

One of the great things about attending Facebook’s events is that one gets to see Mark Zuckerberg mature as a chief executive and hone his presentation skills. And today, he didn’t disappoint in his a

In 1995, sales of pagers were booming among Japan’s teenagers, and NTT Docomo’s decision to add the heart symbol to its Pocket Bell devices let high school kids across the country inject a new level of sentiment (and cuteness) into the millions of messages they were keying into telephones every day.…

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