We in the San Francisco Bay Area have been choking on smoke from dozens of huge blazes—which have burned over 1.4 million acres, or 2,200 square miles, so far—sparked by a freak system of thunderstorms two weeks ago. But we’re not alone: California’s firestorm is spewing so much smoke, it’s drifting clear across the country,…
In the summer of 2018, a hobby drone dropped a small package near the lip of Stromboli, a volcano off the coast of Sicily that has been erupting almost constantly for the past century. As one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, Stromboli is a source of fascination for geologists, but collecting data…
Scottie Pippen wanted a different seat. “Am I in the back row?” he drawled in his famously beautiful baritone. The third playoff game between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics was about to begin. The former Chicago Bulls small forward was mellow, courteous—and steadfast in his rejection of a subpar vantage point while gracing the…
For decades, Mac users had to worry less about malware than their Windows-using counterparts, but over the last few years that’s begun to change. In an attempt to crack down on growing threats like adware and ransomware, in February Apple began “notarizing” all macOS applications, a vetting process designed to weed out illegitimate or malicious…
For two decades, the artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats has been producing works that explore how we humans perceive ourselves and our place on this planet. He does this through books and exhibits, but mostly through oddball inventions. A camera that takes a single exposure over the course of 1,000 years, so we can…
The days of suit-clad men shouting out orders on the bustling floors of stock exchanges are mostly gone, replaced by windowless rooms full of servers, but the stock market is still a busy place. On the 13 US stock exchanges combined, around 50 million trades happen every day. And yet there’s another digital marketplace out…
One of the perennial highlights of the International Association for Cryptologic Research’s Crypto conference is the “invited talk.” For an hour each year, a prominent scholar shares a big idea or new perspective on the protocols, algorithms, and math problems that underlie cutting-edge encryption. It’s usually a deeply technical bacchanal, but this year was not.…
Control originally presented itself to me as a mystery. It was a new game from Remedy, the favorite development house for those of us unnaturally attached to Alan Wake and Max Payne, and it took place in some kind of shadowy government facility. I remained gracefully unspoiled and uninformed until I launched the game, and…
Apple on Monday announced that its new App Store appeals process, first revealed at WWDC in June, is now live, meaning developers can challenge Apple over whether their app is in fact violating one of its guidelines. In addition to that, Apple says developers can also suggest changes to the App Store guidelines through a…
It’s time to fight with style. 8BitDo has unveiled a new arcade stick that looks like the lovechild of a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Street Fighter V cabinet. The peripheral, which supports PC and Switch, has a bunch of customisation options to suit different players. It has a “universal mounting plate,” for instance, so…
