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Inside Sansar, the VR successor to Second Life

by @thedextriarchy Nov 18, 2016, 2:36pm EST

The door is bright red, perched at the top of a mossy stone staircase in the middle of a floating island. When I approach, a mysterious tune begins emanating from it, as if playing from the other side. Right now, it’s just a simple prop, and there...

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Daydream Nation

by @thedextriarchy Nov 18, 2016, 1:47pm EST

It’s a couple of weeks before the Daydream View headset launches, and at Google’s Mountain View headquarters, the team has filled a room with pieces of its past. The tables are littered with fabric swatches, molded foam shells, and things that...

New, 9 comments

What’s next for Pantsuit Nation, the pro-Clinton Facebook group with over 3 million members?

by Kaitlyn Tiffany Nov 18, 2016, 1:22pm EST

In Hillary Clinton’s concession speech last Wednesday, she thanked supporters, activists, community leaders — and called upon the members of secret Facebook groups to speak out. “I want everybody coming out from behind that,” she said. “And make...

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One patient’s blood might hold a new weapon against HIV

by Rachel Becker Nov 17, 2016, 5:31pm EST

The key to developing a new drug to fight HIV may lie in the blood of a patient whose immune system can control the infection, a new study says. Scientists discovered proteins in the patient’s blood that blocked the virus from infecting immune...

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What does Congress want from smart helmets, HoloLens, and Pokémon Go?

by @thedextriarchy Nov 17, 2016, 3:39pm EST

Yesterday afternoon, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation met with representatives from the world of augmented reality for the first Congressional hearing on the industry. That included general counsel from the...

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Plants can be engineered to help fight the effects of climate change

by @chengela Nov 17, 2016, 2:00pm EST

Good news for those despairing at our rapidly warming planet: we can supercharge plants to help fight the effects of climate change. Scientists have found two ways to make plants better at turning carbon dioxide into energy — and these techniques...

Facebook won’t call itself a media company. What, exactly, is Facebook?

by Catherine Buni Nov 16, 2016, 4:25pm EST

In the days leading up to and following this election, Facebook has been called lots of things — "a website," "an internet company," "a major player in the media universe," "a strange new class of media outlet," a "tech behemoth," a "cesspool of...

New, 19 comments

This temporary tattoo can listen to your heart

by Rachel Becker Nov 16, 2016, 4:15pm EST

A new stick-on wearable sensor uses the symphony of internal rumblings, whooshing, gurglings, and cracklings to help doctors diagnose different conditions. And this souped-up, miniaturized stethoscope could one day be a way for clinicians to...

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A White House position could cost Peter Thiel more than he’s willing to give up

by @russellbrandom Nov 16, 2016, 12:26pm EST

One week after the election, President-elect Trump’s White House staff is still being formed, but one familiar name has already surfaced: Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder has become one of the most controversial figures in Silicon Valley, thanks...

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Facing a Trump administration, NYC may push its immigrant data kill switch

by Colin Lecher Nov 15, 2016, 2:37pm EST

In 2015, New York City launched a municipal identification program with the goal of giving some of the city’s most vulnerable residents access to services that require an ID. Mayor Bill de Blasio gave the plan vocal support, saying the card...

China's right: smartphones are a big reason Trump can't win a trade war

by Vlad Savov Nov 15, 2016, 6:50am EST

Apple can't build an iPhone without China, but China can build hundreds of millions of devices approaching the iPhone's quality without Apple's help.

New, 80 comments

The FBI just got its hands on data that Twitter wouldn’t give the CIA

by @russellbrandom Nov 14, 2016, 5:30pm EST

The FBI has a new view into what’s happening on Twitter. Last week, the bureau hired Dataminr, a Twitter-linked analytics firm, to provide an “advanced alerting tool” to over 200 users. Twitter owns a 5 percent stake in Dataminr and provides it...

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Why GoPro's Karma drone came crashing down

by Ben Popper Nov 11, 2016, 10:45am EST

When GoPro launched its Karma drone earlier this year, it seemed like the perfect fit. The company was founded on action cameras, but had seen sales of its flagship Hero line sink since 2014. Over the same time period, the sale of camera drones to...

New, 25 comments

Suicide hotlines receive record number of calls after the election — many from LGBTQ people

by Rachel Becker Nov 11, 2016, 9:48am EST

Even before the votes were counted on Tuesday night, phone calls were pouring into suicide hotlines across the US in record numbers. Americans, including those in the LGBTQ community, were looking for help coping with feelings of anxiety,...

New, 43 comments

Donald Trump’s anti-immigration stance threatens the heart of American innovation

by @nickstatt Nov 11, 2016, 9:00am EST

President-elect Donald Trump is causing a stir in Silicon Valley. After riding the path to the White House in part thanks to his anti-immigration rhetoric, Trump is now casting a shadow over the tech industry’s use of high-skilled foreign labor....

New, 133 comments

YouTube VR is Daydream's killer app

by Ben Popper Nov 10, 2016, 9:02am EST

There is a thick fog drifting through the woods, obscuring everything more than few feet in front of my face. I can see a crooked sapling, and then behind me I hear the crunching of dry leaves. Turning, I spot several figures lurching slowly...

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Are there more endangered bird species than we think?

by @chengela Nov 9, 2016, 2:00pm EST

Hundreds of bird species around the world are endangered even though they’re not classified as such, according to a new study. Using geographical data, scientists analyzed the habitats of certain birds and concluded that the International Union...

4chan may have brought down pro-Clinton phone lines the day before the election

by @russellbrandom Nov 8, 2016, 11:19am EST

Yesterday, as groups across the country hit the final stretch of their get-out-the-vote campaigns, workers at NextGen Climate noticed some problems with their automated dialer program. As the team started its morning hours, the program used to...

Poaching is on the rise — most illegal ivory comes from recently killed elephants

by @chengela Nov 7, 2016, 3:00pm EST

Almost all the world’s illegal ivory comes from elephants that have been recently killed, researchers say. The new study shows that seized ivory isn’t coming from old stockpiles, but from African elephants that have been poached less than three...

This last-minute voting-machine hack is drawing fire from security experts

by @russellbrandom Nov 7, 2016, 10:52am EST

Friday afternoon, US election officials got an unpleasant surprise. The security firm Cylance released a report disclosing a new attack on the popular Sequoia AVC Edge voting machine, potentially compromising both the machine’s public vote tally...

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You can now calculate how much Arctic sea ice you’re destroying with your CO2 emissions

by Rachel Becker Nov 3, 2016, 2:10pm EDT

The carbon dioxide emissions I produce as an average American destroy about 650 square feet of Arctic sea ice every year. That’s according to a new study that directly links the amount of annual CO2 released in the atmosphere to the amount of...

What does marijuana legalization mean for stoned driving?

by @chengela Nov 3, 2016, 8:00am EDT

Cannabis is becoming more popular across the US. Four states have legalized recreational marijuana and five more, including California, will vote on the issue next Tuesday. This is good news for many, but there is one big downside: legal pot can...

Microsoft Teams leaves the office door open for Slack

by @tomwarren Nov 3, 2016, 7:30am EDT

Microsoft launched its new chat-based Teams app yesterday, and the immediate reaction from many is that Slack is doomed. Some of that was Slack's own fault. In an unusually arrogant move, Slack decided to take out a full-page newspaper ad in The...

New, 41 comments

Is the future of peanut allergy treatment a wearable patch?

by Rachel Becker Nov 2, 2016, 7:19pm EDT

A new skin patch for treating peanut allergies has been getting a lot of online attention over the past few days, and it’s no wonder. For the estimated 3.2 million Americans who are allergic to peanuts, the options are pretty slim when it comes to...

YouTube is still having trouble getting people to pay for YouTube

by @MicahSingleton Nov 2, 2016, 3:40pm EDT

When YouTube Red launched a year ago, the plan was for the service to grow into a competitor against the likes of Netflix and Hulu. Now, less than a year later, subscriber totals show that YouTube still has a long way to go before the public will...

New, 99 comments

Airbnb's Terms of Service just blocked a racial discrimination case

by @russellbrandom Nov 1, 2016, 12:36pm EDT

Today in DC District Court, Airbnb successfully blocked a proposed class action alleging racial discrimination on the company’s platform. The lawsuit alleged systematic discrimination by Airbnb hosts, enabled by various design choices made by the...

New, 14 comments

The first Google Tango phone delivers true augmented reality gaming

by @nickstatt Nov 1, 2016, 9:00am EDT

If it weren’t for Pokémon Go, augmented reality might have stayed another forlorn futurist technology the public paid little attention to. Instead, the AR mobile game from developer Niantic Labs, a former Google subsidiary, catapulted the...

New, 11 comments

How Los Angeles became the heart of immersive horror

by @bcbishop Oct 29, 2016, 3:49pm EDT

Over the past month I’ve been indoctrinated into a cult, had my wife kidnapped by vampires, and been choked to the ground by a mad king while searching for a mystical land called Conscientia. And I did it all within a four-mile radius in Los Angeles.

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Why Vine died

by @CaseyNewton Oct 28, 2016, 12:15pm EDT

The thing about Vine becoming the internet’s premier tool for making short-form videos is that it happened almost completely by accident. Its founders had envisioned their tool for making 6-second clips as a way to help people capture casual...

New, 38 comments

Apple’s MacBook Touch Bar is actually a mini Apple Watch

by @tomwarren Oct 28, 2016, 10:32am EDT

Apple unveiled its Touch Bar addition to the MacBook Pro yesterday. While the company spent time demonstrating its ability to change function keys on the fly, or light up its display with colorful emoji, Apple didn't talk about what's really...

New, 66 comments

The future of PCs and Macs is expensive

by Vlad Savov Oct 28, 2016, 9:02am EDT

The personal desktop computer used to once be an exclusive and expensive machine, though we now know it and its laptop counterpart as a mass-market commodity that most people can afford. This week, however, the companies that defined the personal...

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Imzy, a social network based on kindness, opens its doors to the public

by @thedextriarchy Oct 27, 2016, 5:40pm EDT

Can you make a large online space where people treat each other like human beings, without sacrificing the freedom of anonymity? It’s a question that social networks like Twitter, which just decimated its workforce in a push for profitability,...

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