Ever wonder what makes a boomerang fly? World champion thrower Logan Broadbent says it's pretty simple. "Basically the best way to think of it is that each wing is an airplane wing," he says. "The top side is curved and the bottom side is relatively flat and that shape allows the boomerang to generate lift. […]
Read MoreLast year, Microsoft paid $7.5 billion to buy GitHub, the online home of thousands of open source software projects that power apps and sites ranging from Facebook to Walmart.com. The acquisition, along with IBM's $34 billion purchase of open source company Red Hat, proved that open source software can be big business. That's a little […]
Read MoreOver the past week, both Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the same appeal to American nationalism, with differing degrees of subtlety: Breaking up Big Tech will only help China. It’s a politically expedient plea as calls for regulating tech intensify amid growing concern about China’s tech prowess […]
Read MoreWhen the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s, most of the newly independent republics that emerged from the wreckage wanted little to do with their old colonial master. But as the decades passed, nostalgia for the USSR took root in some of these former Soviet satellites. Few pine for a return of the […]
Read MoreI've never seen an episode of Game of Thrones, which, in this case, makes me the perfect critic. I come with no bias, no allegiance, no screwball theories as to how the series finale failed to rise to to the level of its previous seasons (as I've heard). All that I know of Game of […]
Read MoreClick:J27030-29 Greetings all, and welcome to the latest installment of The Monitor, WIRED’s roundup of all things pop culture. What’s in store today? First up, we have a new trailer for the latest Terminator flick. Second, there’s another John Wick movie coming in 2021. Finally, Christoper Nolan keeps adding to the Murderers’ Row of a […]
Read MoreIn the race to develop a technology that, at its root, is about teaching robots how to understand their surroundings, Aurora just bought itself a fresh set of eyeballs. The developer of self-driving car technology announced Thursday it’s acquiring lidar maker Blackmore, whose laser scanning tech offers the unusual and very helpful ability not just […]
Read MoreFaced with escalating accusations of bias from the right and an onslaught of calls to break up Facebook on the left, the social media juggernaut released a data dump Thursday that its leaders hope will help the public better understand how it moderates content—and remind them that the bigger Facebook is, the more it can […]
Read MoreOn Thursday, the Department of Justice unsealed new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Unlike the previous indictment—which focused narrowly on an apparent offer to help crack a password—the 17 superseding counts focus instead on alleged violations of the Espionage Act. In doing so, the DOJ has aimed a battering ram at the freedom of […]
Read MoreNew charges against Julian Assange threaten all of the press, scientists have figured out how to alter emotional memories, and Memorial Day is coming. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Julian Assange's charges put all of the press at risk New charges unveiled by the Justice Department […]
Read More