Apple's New AR Features Are Proof That Wearables Are Coming
In his time on stage at Apple’s annual developer conference yesterday, Craig Federighi did many of the things that people have come to expect of the company’s senior vice president of software engineering. He wore a blue shirt. He said "isn’t that amazing?" a lot. He undertook a demo with an oddly personal touch—in this…
The New Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Trailer Serves Up Big Dinos and Big Questions
It’s hard to believe that when Jurassic World arrived two summers ago, the movie seemed like a Tyrannosaurus-sized risk: The last film in the series, 2001’s Jurassic Park III, was a regrettable, forgettable mishmash of weirdo ideas (like the talking-Raptor dream sequence) and familiar-feeling action scenes, and sent the once-stomping franchise out with a limp.…
With Scorpion, #DrakeSZN Is Back—as Overwrought as Ever
#DrakeSZN, and thus the promise of summer, commenced last Friday. Of late, the music industry has flirted with the idea of thrift, but Drake is a showman with a distaste for restraint: Scorpion, his fifth solo effort, embraces immoderation, a two-disc, 25-track affair that runs an obnoxious 90 minutes in full. It’s a mega-production that…
Online Hate Is Rampant. Here's How to Keep It From Spreading
Back in the last presidential campaign season, reporters on the tech and politics beats began noticing a rise in far-right memes that supported Trump. Memes being memes, these seemed initially like weird, off-color jokes. They wondered: What the hell is going on? Was this shitposting ironic or serious? Or both? Either way, it seemed newsworthy.…
The Oscars' Biggest Win? Acknowledging the Power of Genre Movies.
Of all the faces that smiled from the screen during the 90th Academy Awards’ “In Memoriam” segment on Sunday night, the one that made me sigh the loudest was that of George Romero. The director of such horror classics as Night of the Living Dead died last summer at the age of 77, but I…
Catching Up With Dawn, the Massive Spacecraft Exploring the Asteroid Belt
It’d be hard to invent a more Star Wars-esque spacecraft than Dawn. It’s 65 feet from tip to tip. It’s exploring the asteroid belt. And it’s got an ion drive, for Pete’s sake. But Dawn also has a serious job to do. Launched in 2007, it’s been investigating Ceres and Vesta, two mysterious protoplanets in…
Into the Breach Makes Defeat Feel Deeply Satisfying
There are just three giant robots standing between a posse of massive bugs and the end of the world. At my command, my flagship mech, a brawler, zooms forward, punching one of the massive creatures in its ugly face, sending it careening into the sea. Then more bugs show up, and before I can figure…
Einstein’s Little-Known Passion Project? A Refrigerator
Many people know that work on nuclear weapons enabled the development of the first electronic computers. But it’s no less true that the humble refrigerator, in a roundabout way, enabled the development of the first atom bomb. While reading the newspaper one morning in 1926, Albert Einstein nearly choked on his eggs. An entire family…
The Archaeologists Saving Miami's History From the Sea
This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Hurricane Irma sprinted toward Miami-Dade County, Jeff Ransom couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t just worried about gusts shattering windows, or sheets of rain drowning the highway—that’s far from unusual near his home in Broward County, where extreme weather verges on routine, and patches of U.S.…
While You Were Offline: Twitter Is Sad About McDonald's Changing the Happy Meal
Ever since last week's school shooting in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead, much of the internet's attention has been focused on that tragedy. But that hasn't been the only thing taking up bandwidth. For one thing, there was internet uproar over a New York Times op-ed writer, Mitt Romney making his expected, if not…