It sounds like a pretty damn good deal: Pay a hundred bucks for a blood test and get five simple personalized nutrition tips that promise to add years to your life. Sold! I tried it. And I found, as with any data-based health app, its claims need to be taken with a hulking heap of salt.
An impossibly long, single-lane tunnel is your only way into Whittier, and your only way out. Make it to the other end of those dimly lit miles, and you'll find all the ingredients of a city. Except instead of a sprawling, urban center, this town has been scaled to fit almost entirely into one lonely Alaskan tower.
A couple years ago, when a 25-year-old law student in Texas said he was going to 3D-print a gun, nobody took him seriously. Then, he actually did it. And then, a lot of people started doing it. Now, it's so easy that some protestors are going make a gun inside the Texas State Capitol with a special gun machine. This…
The internet has long promised a certain kind of connection between people, one that is now close to being fulfilled: We can reach anyone, at any time, anywhere! But while the web was born in plain text in IRC chat rooms and messageboards, our online conversations were supposed to be multimedia, dynamic, and visual by…
Imagine you're in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Behind you is China, below you are thousands of tons of consumer goods destined for faraway ports, then stores, then maybe a spot beneath a Christmas tree. You are part of a vast economy that supplies the things we buy—a galaxy of cities, systems, and people that is…
Data centers are boring. They have to be; these are spaces of control, consistency, security. You wouldn't expect to find much creativity inside the plain facades of these highly-regulated structures—much less hacked-together experiments involving robotic Blu-ray storage systems and thousands of Mac Minis.
Thanksgiving is almost here, and that means turkey, mashed potatoes, and getting peppered with questions about tech-related news stories because hey, you read a bunch of blogs and you even know what a yik-yak is! It's only a matter of time before they ask you "So what's up with that thing on the internets?"
The Hollywood Sign might be one of the most recognizable things on Earth. In Los Angeles, it’s also one of the most visible. You can see it from a plane as you glide into LAX. You can see it from a car as you drive up the 101 freeway. But a group of people who live near the sign are trying to hide it, even as it looms…
Do you remember the first computer game you played? What about the first program you downloaded? Unless you've just emerged Brendan-Fraser-in-Encino Man-style from the earth, wholly unaware of computers (in which case, I have several questions for you), your early digital distractions are probably years, if not…
The porn of the future is titillating. As virtual reality matures, we'll be aroused in three-dimensional immersive alternative realities, interacting with super-lifelike porn stars customized to our taste. People will look back on our passive and lonely 2D smut and pity us. But… when?
What if you could enjoy the benefits of a bike and the benefits of a car at the same time? Sojourn Labs, a Toronto-based startup, is prototyping a new kind of vehicle built to bridge the gap between bikes and cars, aiming for that happy medium of convenience and safety. The basic idea: A hybrid combining the…
Comcast just put out a blog post about how it actually ("surprise!") supports net neutrality and agrees with President Obama's plan. It overlooked a few important facts, however. So we fixed it. A more accurate version follows below—look for our additions in [italics].
Minutes after President Obama unveiled his plan for net neutrality yesterday, Republicans leaders like Ted Cruz came out swinging. You can chalk up the backlash to more than just partisan spite; Cruz has taken his share of campaign money from telecom giants. And he's far from the exception.
The phone call isn't dead. Despite what many a journalist/blogger/paranoid internet commenter might have you believe, smartphones can indeed still dial out. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not in the process of dying. And if you have even a shred of decency about you, you'll help take it out back Old-Yeller-style…
Yesterday, President Obama gave internet-lovers a virtual exploding fist bump in the form of a powerful statement on net neutrality. More than that, he gave the outline of a plan, and despite what some political opportunists would have you think, it's a good one.
The new movie Big Hero 6 represents the first-ever partnership between Marvel and Disney, two entities known for constructing fantastical universes. So it's not surprising that bringing the story to film also required building an entire city of the future: a blend of Tokyo and San Francisco named San Fransokyo.
It's been exactly 25 years since the wall came down and Berlin—a city that was once the epicenter of a worldwide ideological struggle—took its first, daunting steps toward reunification. Despite all odds, the graft took. And today the scar the wall left is so faint that unless you know what to look for, it's…
Chances are a Bloomberg Businessweek cover has stopped you in your tracks at some point: Maybe it was the brilliant cat hurricane GIF, or airplanes humping mid-air, or the most anti-Apple typography ever slapped over Tim Cook's face. But behind the provocative graphic design is a smart strategy that's changing the way…
Time travel's been one of man's wildest fantasies for centuries. It's long been a popular trend in movies and fiction, inspiring everything from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine to the Charlton Heston shrine that is The Planet of the Apes. And with the opening of Interstellar…
