On Wednesday afternoon, veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The Demo-2 mission was going to be the first crewed mission for SpaceX and the first time NASA astronauts have launched from the US in nine years. But the world…
On Twitter, when a simple ha won’t do, there’s always hahahaaaa, haaaahaaaa, or even hahahahahahahahahahahahaha, indicating you’ve just read the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. (Or that you’re a sarcastic talking raccoon.) These are known as stretchable or lengthened words, and now researchers from the University of Vermont have figured out just how pervasive they…
On Tuesday, in this most normal year of 2020, President Donald Trump woke up, hopped on Twitter, and fired off a few tweets amplifying a conspiracy theory that a cable TV host he dislikes had murdered someone decades ago. Later that day, for the first time, Twitter made the momentous decision to flag Trump for…
In a witch’s cauldron, Amazon Game Studios has stirred together contemporary gaming’s most beloved tropes: a rag-tag team of diverse heroes, mining for shiny resources, a fight for survival, sci-fi weaponry, a wild-west alien terrain—all free to play but monetized with a battle pass. The brew is Crucible, and it goes down easy. The magic…
For years, people have been building their own brands and businesses on Instagram—and in turn, have helped Instagram build its business. While the photo- and video-sharing service has happily helped those users monetize their followings, that’s largely happened off-platform. Influencers make deals with brands to create sponsored posts, or set up revenue sharing to recommend…
Google’s Chrome web browser is the world’s most popular way for people to navigate the web. But it’s far from perfect. Google’s dominance in online advertising means it slurps up plenty of your browsing data, which is used to show you the ads that it thinks you’re most likely to click on. WIRED UKThis story…
The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred what’s often called an infodemic, or the alarming spread of harmful information online. But this narrative misses the ways in which the Covid-19 crisis is simultaneously driving groups and individuals to collaboratively generate huge amounts of useful, public knowledge.In a race to create and share resources to weather the pandemic’s…
In the end, it still all comes down to Friends. Nearly a year ago, WarnerMedia clinched the rights to the 1990s sitcom in a deal reportedly worth $425 million. The plan at the time was to nab the show from Netflix, where it had amassed legions of new fans, and bring it to WarnerMedia’s new…
Elenoide the android was made to shake your hand. She looks like a Madame Tussad’s rendition of a prim fifth-grade teacher. She’s dressed in a salmon cardigan with scalloped edges, a knee-length striped skirt, and a wig made of ashy blonde human hair. Her hands are warmed by heating pads hidden beneath the palms. During…
We’re all collectively going kooky as the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus traps us in our homes, but one of the best ways to clear your mind and haul yourself out of a rut is to practice meditation. There are a lot of types of meditation, each with many subtypes: Zen, Vipassana, Samatha, Transcendental, mindfulness, guided meditation, and…
