2019 May

Flying Car Startup Alaka'i Bets Hydrogen Can Outdo Batteries

Hydrogen fuel cells have had a hard time making inroads as power sources for ground-based electric vehicles, but things are starting to look up for the zero emission propulsion tech. A new air taxi startup, Alaka’i Technologies, this week unveiled a liquid-hydrogen-powered, five-passenger electric aircraft that it claims will be more efficient and powerful than […]

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Ferrari’s 986-HP Hybrid, Disney’s Message to Georgia, and More News

Ferrari unleashed a hybrid supercar, Disney and Netflix are striking back against Georgia's abortion ban, and your constant WebMD-ing is making you sick. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Disney and Netflix may stop filming in Georgia after their abortion ban Netflix already announced its intention to […]

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The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan

The jazz cafe was tiny, with a few polished wood tables, a record collection on display, and two beautiful speakers. The owner, in his 70s, wore a porkpie hat and a sleeve garter. I’d stumbled into this place during a long walk through a stretch of rural Japan. I had a coffee while listening to […]

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The Wagon Wheel Effect Shows the Limits of the Human Brain

Ask any movie nerd about Stagecoach, the 1939 western that launched John Wayne's career, and they'll tell you it's one of the most influential films in cinematic history. But the movie holds another, more esoteric place in the hearts and minds of neuroscientists, for containing an early example of one of the most widely experienced […]

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Don’t Overestimate the ‘Semi’ in Semiautonomous Cars

Tesla may snatch the headlines around the rise of semiautonomous vehicle features that take some of the work off the driver, but its monopoly is unlikely to last: A new report finds that in the first quarter of this year, approximately 7 percent of new cars sold in the US were capable of guiding themselves […]

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Distant Neutron Stars Could Reveal the Quirks of Quarks

Raimond Snellings studies quarks, one of the smallest building blocks of matter. For reasons that physicists don’t fully understand, quarks exist in our universe mainly in groups of threes, to form, for example, protons and neutrons. In his research, Snellings conducts experiments to break up groups of quarks—to figure out why and how they bind […]

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Amazon Debuts a New Echo Show Amid Alexa Privacy Concerns

Amazon has just released another Alexa-enabled home device. It’s the third generation of its countertop smart display, the Echo Show. But today’s launch of this new product coincides with the rollout of something many would consider more valuable: a seemingly more privacy-aware Amazon. The new Echo Show 5—called this because of its 5.5-inch diagonal display, […]

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The Secret to Soap Bubbles' Iridescent Rainbows

If you pay attention, you can see some pretty cool stuff that you might otherwise miss. Have you really looked at a soap bubble? Notice how you can see a bunch of different colors? What about that tiny drop of gasoline in a puddle at the gas station—see the rainbow of colors? Oh, there is […]

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Watch Robert Mueller’s Statement on the Russia Investigation

At 11 am ET on Wednesday, Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller will break his silence, following his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The rare appearance marks Mueller's first public statement since the release of a redacted version of the 448-page report his team spent two years compiling. The report has […]

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Why Women Are Called 'Influencers' and Men 'Creators'

Being a "social media influencer" has nothing to do with the size of your audience or the nature of your work. An influencer used to be someone with a giant, million-plus following to sell things to, but marketers have since expanded the term, piling on prefixes like macro-, micro-, and even nano-influencers, who can have […]

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