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Microsoft is a software company. Despite its more recent push into building impressive hardware, it’s made its name with code and services—not phones and laptops. Build 2016, a couple day’s sojourn in San Francisco, showcases what Microsoft does best, giving a glimpse of things coming for Windows users in 2016 and beyond. Last year’s Build…
So, you made one of the biggest commitments of all and got married. Now, how likely is it to stand the test of time? Well, this interactive chart will show you how likely you are to divorce based on your employment status, education, race, and gender. Created by Nathan Yau from Flowing Data, the interactive…
In 2015, the FBI hacked Tor to identify users of child sex websites. But despite requests being made in court, it’s now refusing to reveal the finer points of how it carried out the operation. The original hack saw the FBI seize servers running a pedophile website called Playpen. But rather than shutting it down,…
A cheap USB-C cable can fry your phone or computer. So it’s nice to see that Amazon is taking action, clamping down on the sale of poor-quality USB-C cables that don’t make the grade. Amazon has added “non-compliant” USB-C cables to its list of items that are prohibited for sale on its site, as TechCrunch…
Last week, Microsoft’s AI-based Twitter account Tay was born, swiftly became a ranting racist and then took a well-deserved rest. This morning, though, the bot briefly came back to life—before the account suddenly became protected. Tay started contributing to the hum of Twitter again at around 3am EST. But it seems to have gotten stuck…
What could Spotify do with $1 billion? That’s now a question worth asking, since it’s managed to raise the sum as debt financing to spend on growing the company. The Wall Street Journal reports that the music streaming business has secured the money—as debt rather than equity—with some pretty serious caveats associated with Spotify’s plans…
There is a long-running legal battle between Oracle and Google over the use of Java, an Oracle product, in Android. In the latest court filing, Oracle is shooting for the moon: $9.3 billion in copyright damages from Google. The copyright fight dates back six years, when Oracle first filed suit against Google, for both copyright…
Watch as satellite imagery shows how the windy Ucayali River in Peru changed its course over the span of 25 years. The sharp bends of the original river start moving around and then even merge at some points creating a whole new pathway, while the leftover bodies of water are just put out on their…
You might not know the name Charley Harper, but it’s possible that the midcentury artist’s colorful work introduced you to many wonders of the natural world. Now many of his pieces are available as furniture to bring Harper’s flora and fauna into your living room. Harper’s beautiful illustrations of the animal kingdom appeared in a…
AdrenaCard is meant to help people who are both unfortunate enough to need an epinephrine injection for serious allergic reactions—and human enough that they regularly forget their “epi-pen” when they’re going out. It’s a small epinephrine injector that fits inside a wallet. Most people with serious allergies have had an encounter with epinephrine. When the…
All over the world street artists have become famous by surreptitiously adding swabs of paint or wheatpaste to city walls. But the most remarkable thing about a new mural in Cairo is not only its size—it covers about 50 buildings—it’s that the artist managed to do it in a place that’s not known for encouraging…
A robot anesthesiologist designed by Johnson & Johnson is going off the market. Only three years after approval, the company has stopped production on the Sedasys machine due to poor sales. The Sedasys machine was designed to provide anesthetic to patients undergoing routine surgeries. The American Society of Anesthesiologists was especially alarmed because anesthesiology is…
Do you know where chocolate comes from? Apparently, not from the checkout line at grocery stores! How to Make Everything shows how to make chocolate from scratch, from the fruit of the cacao tree to the fermentation to the sun drying process to making sugar and cocoa butter to the grinding and tempering and molding…
Everyone learns in grade school that you can’t divide by zero, but few of us ever learn (or fully understand) why. The stock answer is that it gives you an answer of infinity. The truth is a bit more nuanced than that, and an old mechanical calculator offers the perfect illustration. Try to divide a…
The Republicans have tried everything to stop Trump. But every time they attack Stubs* he only seems to grow stronger. Allow me to humbly suggest that we’ve finally found Trump’s kryptonite: This elderly Wisconsin woman holding up a meme she printed off the internet. Today groups of protesters gathered in places like Janesville, Wisconsin to…
I like a good strong password just as much as anyone else. But CNBC’s stunty idea for a tool that tested the strength of people’s passwords is one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in days—possibly weeks! A columnist for CNBC’s The Big Crunch tried to make a misguided point about the FBI’s iPhone situation…
Peter Berkowitz is my new favorite guy. The 25-year-old illustrator recently moved to San Francisco and instead of settling for some landlord’s price-gouging, he found some other cool kids who let him build a box in their living room. Peter’s rent is just $400 a month. That sounds good to me! The median rent for…
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) begins the laborious process of making our mobile internet even faster and better. The government is buying underused TV airwaves and selling it to mobile carriers for billions of dollars. These radio waves—also known as spectrum—will shape mobile US connectivity as streaming video continues to swallow up bandwidth across…
It’s the little things that matter. Here’s an in-depth look from CineFix about the little visual cues and tiny details that directors use to influence what we’re watching on the screen. The scenes from movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Inglourious Basterds, and others show how directors like Ang Lee and Quentin Tarantino shape a…
Why is this man on the right, identified as a 26-year-old British hostage named Ben Innes, posing with Seifedeen Mustafa, the man who hijacked an EgyptAir flight today? Nobody knows yet. But if it weren’t for the fake suicide belt, this looks like it’d be a pretty funny buddy comedy. Mustafa’s “suicide belt” turned out…
