Jutting out of the Pacific Ocean 375 miles off the coast of Australia is Ball’s Pyramid, the most bizarre island on Earth. It is, as promised, shaped like a skinny pyramid, the remnant of a shield volcano. It is decidedly supervillain-lair-ish. In 2003, scientists scaled its sheer cliffs in search of the only thing more […]
It might be fall, but that doesn't mean there's a new Star Wars movie to look forward to. This year there's no new installment coming in December. Kind of a bummer, no? Yes, yes it is. But! That doesn't mean there's nothing Star Wars-related to tell you about these days. In fact, there's a lot. […]
Fighting game fans, you can probably guess what's leading the pack in this week's installment of Replay: one of the most exciting events in esports history. Alongside that, there's some long-overdue gameplay for Red Dead Redemption 2, along with a real tragedy for the game preservation community. It's not all cheerful this week in games, […]
E. coli might best be known for giving street food connoisseurs occasional bouts of gastric regret. But the humble microbial workhorse, with its easy-to-edit genome, has given humankind so much more—insulin, antibiotics, cancer drugs, biofuels, synthetic rubber, and now: a place to keep your selfies safe for the next millennium. Scientists have already used plain […]
This week is all rumors and magic, as we unpack some unsurprising (if unfounded) news about Nintendo and some legitimately thrilling news from Warner Bros. For fans of legacy franchises, this week's Replay will be exciting and maybe a little bit confusing. Let's go! The Nintendo Switch Might Be Getting an Update Next Year—Try To […]
Digitizing the world's medical records was supposed to make doctors' lives easier and patients' lives longer. But unlike banking and shopping, medicine has had a rough time transitioning to the new digital order. Because health care providers use different systems for their electronic health care records, it’s still difficult for a patient’s data to follow […]
Season 7 of Fortnite arrived yesterday, which means a very special edition of Replay—rather than rounding up news from the wider world of gaming, we're going all in on Epic's battle-royale phenomenon. Put the controller down for a second, would you? Winter Has Come, With a New Frozen Biome Hitting the Map The predictions all […]
I'll be honest—I don't know as much about DC superheroes as Marvel superheroes. Still, I'm pretty excited about the upcoming DC movie Justice League. As a kid, I dressed up as Aquaman; my mother was pretty good at making stuff and so she made costumes for me and my two brothers. The other two costumes […]
For eight months this year, I used a flip phone. For most of those eight months, I hated myself and everyone else. Frankly, I’m embarrassed to write about this semifailed experiment. Disconnection has become the most congratulated, least convincing narrative gimmick of recent times, a widely excusable hypocrisy. A popular Instagrammer leaves the platform, only […]
“Who are we?” That impossible question opened the 2015 public letter announcing a well-heeled SETI project called Breakthrough Listen. Dozens of people—scientists, astronauts, and also a producer, a chess champ, and a soprano—signed the note, which kicked off a $100 million effort by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to catch signals from alien civilizations. That quest, […]
