Month: March 2019

Power is the most important thing in road bicycle racing like the Tour de France. If you want to move along on a bike at a constant speed, you have to use energy. There are no free rides. But there is one thing that can make a big difference in a rider's energy use—and that's…

The only thing I know about the Freeze is that no one can beat the Freeze (except with a generous head start). And he's awesome. In case you haven't seen, the Freeze is this guy in a turquoise spandex suit that challenges mere mortals to a race in the outfield of the Atlanta Braves SunTrust…

It’s hard to pick which species to save in Brazil right now. Yellow fever is tearing through primate populations, wiping out squirrel and howler monkeys. Poachers are nabbing giant anteaters for meat and blue macaws to sell as exotic pets. But conservation biologist Rogério Zacariotti wants to save a venomous yellow viper—the golden lancehead. But…

During the Cold War, on the vast, barren flatland around Area 51's dried-up Groom Lake, the military developed a stealth spy plane code-named Project Oxcart. Project personnel were sworn to secrecy, but still, US officials worried that the Soviets would find out what they were up to. With good reason: Up above, USSR satellites were…

This story originally appeared on Atlas Obscura and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a choppy voyage to Antarctica in 1928, the crew of the ship that would eventually be rechristened as the Vamar bestowed upon their vessel an optimistic nickname: “Evermore Rolling.” It proved to be a bit of a misnomer. Far…

The Cray-1 supercomputer, the world’s fastest back in the 1970s, does not look like a supercomputer. It looks like a mod version of that carnival ride The Round Up, the one where you stand, strapped in, as it dizzies you up. It’s surrounded by a padded bench that conceals its power supplies, like a cake…

Among the more modern anxieties of parents today is how virtual assistants will train their children to act. The fear is that kids who habitually order Amazon's Alexa to read them a story or command Google's Assistant to tell them a joke are learning to communicate not as polite, considerate citizens, but as demanding little…

If you didn't know it before the Cambridge Analytica debacle, you do now: Your digital habits are dual-use data. One company might analyze them to recommend you TV shows, while another might try to leverage them to influence an election. The first scenario you might be OK with, the other not so much. So, knowing…

Cannabis is a notoriously finicky drug. Take the right amount and you get relaxation or euphoria, but take too much and it’s a long ride of paranoia. Which makes marijuana tricky for casual users, and potentially problematic for new users who want to use cannabis to treat ailments like pain. It's difficult to quantify just…

You could argue that the door handle has had a disproportionate influence on modern robotics. It was the humanoids of the Darpa Robotics Challenge, after all, that were tasked with opening doors, and it was those machines that helped drive robots to where they are now. Today Boston Dynamics posted a video of its SpotMini…