NASA is welcoming for-profit companies to space, Californians are slipping out of their measles vaccinations, and we've got some Father's Day gift ideas for you. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute round up as an email every week day? Sign up here! Today's Headlines […]
Read MoreIn the past few years California has gained ground in its fight to protect children from infectious diseases. But new data released this week shows that the state’s vaccination rate declined for the second year in a row. Last fall 94.8 percent of California kindergartners had received all their shots, down from 95.6 in 2016-2017. […]
Read MoreThe Gaewern Slate Mine in Ceredigion, Wales, was once rich in slate, a purplish-gray rock sought for its beauty and durability. It was extracted between 1812 and 1960. But once humans had emptied the mine of everything they wanted, they filled it with everything they didn't: broken washing machines, shot microwaves, and dozens of rusty […]
Read MoreNASA is welcoming for-profit companies to space, Californians are slipping out of their measles vaccinations, and we've got some Father's Day gift ideas for you. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute round up as an email every week day? Sign up here! Today's Headlines […]
Read MoreOn Monday the House Judiciary Committee announced a bipartisan antitrust probe that has Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon in its crosshairs. The news followed reports that the Federal Trade Commission is examining Amazon’s power over online retailing. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos appeared untroubled by that attention […]
Read More“I’d blush if I could.” That was Siri’s programmed response to a user saying, “You’re a slut.” And really, there couldn’t be a more perfect example to illustrate the arguments in a new paper from UNESCO about the social cost of having new digital technologies dreamt up and implemented by teams dominated by men. Who […]
Read MoreWe’re a few minutes into a short drive around Oakland’s Jack London Square neighborhood, a place of wide streets and old warehouses, when we hear a metallic bang behind us. Dhruv Raturi gives me a quizzical look and shrugs. He’s sitting behind the wheel but isn’t working the steering wheel or pedals. The blue and […]
Read MoreThe 2019 World Cup kicks off this Friday at 3 pm ET, when the host nation of France takes on the Korea Republic in the tournament’s opening match. Team USA is on a mission to defend their title, but this is no walk in the park. While the US still fields a strong squad, the […]
Read MoreAmazon’s Alexa is ready to broaden its one-track mind. The virtual assistant can deliver weather forecasts and traffic updates, and tap more than 90,000 additional functions, or “skills,” contributed by outside developers. The catch is that you can generally do only one of those bounteous things at a time. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for […]
Read MoreThe information ecosystem is broken. Our political conversations are happening on infrastructure—Facebook, YouTube, Twitter—built for viral advertising. The velocity of social sharing, the power of recommendation algorithms, the scale of social networks, and the accessibility of media manipulation technology has created an environment where pseudo events, half-truths, and outright fabrications thrive. Edward Murrow has been […]
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