The Taco truck gets a Nightshade variant now. Steven Pham/Roadshow What do potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants have to do with Toyota? Truth be told, nothing; however, they are all nightshades. Ostensibly taking a cue from this family of plants, the Japanese automaker offers a series of special-edition Nightshade vehicles, and it’s expanding that range…
DetailsSome things that physicists study are harder to measure than others. If you’re looking at the acceleration of a free falling object, it’s pretty easy. Just take a ball and drop it—measure the height and time and you get some nice data. You can even measure the gravitational field without too much difficulty.But what about…
DetailsGene Berdichevsky believes in batteries. As employee number seven at Tesla, he helmed the team that designed the lithium-ion battery pack for the company’s first car, the Roadster, which convinced the world to take electric vehicles seriously. A decade later, EVs can hold their own against your average gas guzzler, but there’s still a large…
DetailsEver since the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, US athletes on the podium have worn Nike. Nike apparel. Nike footwear. Not just on the podium, either; Team USA athletes competing in about half of the events, from track and field to soccer to speed skating, wear a Nike kit. Thanks to a deal…
DetailsLast week, the Kenyan High Court blocked the country’s new digital ID initiative from moving forward in its current form. Other nations’ judiciaries have taken on similar biometric ID programs—the Indian Supreme Court set limits on the subcontinent’s massive Aadhaar program, which has scanned the irises of over a billion people. But never before has…
DetailsWorkplace phones and routers have a long, storied history of very bad vulnerabilities. Now it’s time again to add to the list: Researchers say that a crop of recently discovered flaws in Cisco enterprise products—like desk phones, web cameras, and network switches—could be exploited to penetrate deep into corporate networks. Because Cisco dominates the network…
DetailsThe last three and a half years haven’t been so great for social media platforms. They’ve been accused of fomenting genocide, breaking Western democracies, and abetting mass shooters. The CEOs have sweated in front of Congress, meditated deep in the forests, and deleted the very apps that made them billionaires. Amid this drama, Jeff Weiner,…
DetailsWho’d have thought we’d be discussing alarm clocks again? Of all the gadgets smartphones usurped and sent to the grave, the alarm clock was among the first and most deserving. Yet, here we are. Now, alarm clocks can do more than scream at you and tell time, which—let’s be honest—are pretty first-grade skills. These are…
DetailsTearing across East Africa right now is a plague of biblical proportions: Hundreds of billions of locusts in swarms the size of major cities are laying waste to the crops in their path. It’s the worst outbreak in 25 years in Ethiopia. In Kenya, make that the worst in seven decades.Fueling the locusts’ destruction is…
DetailsMarisol has black crescent-thick eyebrows and a lethal stare that can cut just about anyone down to size. She doesn’t come from much; she lives with her mom, who is a housekeeper, and her brother, who quit school to work as a day laborer, in a converted garage in San Diego. They fled Mexico and…
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