In early August, a Google engineer named James Damore posted a document titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” to an internal online discussion group. His memo was a calm attempt to point out all the ways Google has gone wrong in making gender representation among its employees a corporate priority. And then, on August 5, the […]
So, what happened last week? Not much; it was just another seven days in which everyone got excited about a movie with sad superheroes, President Trump got lauded for not ruining a former president's funeral, and everyone else awaited the latest from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. That's all pretty standard, right? Toss in the […]
Female scientists were reporting sexual abuse and harassment by professors years before the #MeToo movement exploded in the public eye last fall. From unwanted comments and weird texts to missed promotions and direct assaults, female graduate students and postdocs are often vulnerable while working in male-dominated field camps, laboratories, or remote observatories where there are […]
These days any old schlub can pilot a drone without cratering it, what with good old autopilot tech, but there are drone pilots out there whose abilities push the limits of human cognition. Drone racing is a truly insane endeavor (now with its very own Drone Racing League!)—with human pilots banking around corners and through […]
For all their crustiness about new features, videogame fans seem to have enthusiastically endorsed one particular Newfangled Idea: selfies. Last year, the joyous Spider-Man allowed players to turn Peter Parker's lens on himself, with Spidey throwing peace signs or boastful jumps depending on where the shot was taken.1 Meme fodder, no question; also, as it […]
Is Elon Musk crazy or just awesome? This week, the serial CEO (Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink) posted on Twitter about yet another one of his ventures, the super fast tube-based transportation system called hyperloop. Is this even possible? Let's do some quick calculations. First, what is the speed of sound? I am assuming that Elon is […]
The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones will be bigger, badder, and hairier than ever. No, we're not talking about the saga—we're talking about the furs! Because that's literally all HBO sees fit (ha!) to show us. Earlier today, the studio released a collection of brooding character stills, notable mainly for the fabulous […]
The month-long launch window for NASA’s new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet’s soil—effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It’s also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, […]
This week has been a rollercoaster in the world of videogames. At the top of the news list? One of the biggest names in the industry will be leaving his post mid-April. Also, BioWare's Anthem is awfully buggy (but hopefully getting better) and the Steam store just got a little smaller. Read the full Replay […]
In the past seven days New York decided it didn't want Cynthia Nixon as its governor, Amazon's owner elected to get into the education business, and a series of gas-line explosions hit north of Boston. But on the plus side, we also had Mark Wahlberg’s schedule to look at and a new Dolly Patron/Sia collaboration […]