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…
We are living in the midst of a profound technological restructuring of human society. The machines that once only frolicked in science fiction have begun to infiltrate our lives. If you don't already work alongside a robot, you may in the near future. Self-driving cars promise to transform our roads, and the first truly sophisticated…
Click:1.5 ATA Hyperbaric Chamber Forget ruby-encrusted swords or diamond-tipped chainsaws. The scanning probe microscope is, quite literally, the sharpest object ever made. Hidden under its bulky silver exterior is a thin metal wire, as fine as a human hair. And at one end, its point tapers to the width of a single atom. Scientists wield…
This story originally appeared on Undark and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. David Randall and Christopher Welser are unlikely authorities on the reproducibility crisis in science. Randall, a historian and librarian, is the director of research at the National Association of Scholars, a small higher education advocacy group. Welser teaches Latin at a Christian college in Minnesota.…
Yanny or Laurel—could the secret to which word you hear be in your DNA? It’s a notion someone pitched at 23andMe headquarters Thursday, during the consumer genetics outfit’s annual Genome Research Day. (Spoiler: The company is not going to roll out a survey to see if the latest meme has a genetic component.) The event—a…
It’s been a hell of a two days for Boston Dynamics’ fantastical quadruped robot SpotMini. Yesterday, it starred in a new video that may seem, well, a bit ho-hum at first glance—at least compared to the company’s other recent reveals. The robot doesn’t open doors for its friends or fight off a human assailant brandishing…