As reported on The Verge. By Brooke Jarvis I’d been friends with Chris for years when he mentioned, casually, that he’s a father. Or probably is — as a sperm donor, he has no way of knowing when a woman decides to buy what he has to offer, much less where she is, whether she actually got pregnant, or whether her pregnancy was successful. His only information about the status of his paternity comes when he…
As reported on The Verge. By Jesse Hicks Diary of a WIMP at middle age Fifty years ago, the word “computer” had a very different meaning. Prior to World War II, the word referred not to machines, but to people (mostly women in order to save costs) hired as human calculators. During the war, military research spawned mechanical calculators, “computers” such as Colossus and ENIAC; afterward, IBM commercialized equally intimidating, multi-million dollar machines that required their…
As reported on LifeHacker. by Alan Henry When dealing with jerks and trolls both online and off, you have a choice: you can engage and try to get them to see the error of their ways, or you can avoid them, ignore them, and move on with your life. Most of us already know that ignoring jerks is the best way to deal with them, but a new study from Baruch College (CUNY) brings the point…
As reported on Engadget. By Richard Lawler The odds of rising from NBA stat junkie / forum poster to Houston Rockets GM like Daryl Morey did are slim, but thanks to the new NBA.com/Stats page fans have access to more data than ever before. Until now, only league and team personnel have had access to the NBA’s complete official stats — media got access last spring — with box scores that go as far back as its start…
As reported on TechCrunch. by COLLEEN TAYLOR On his current visit to San Francisco, today former United States Vice President Al Gore swung through local PBS radio affiliate KQED for an hour-long appearance on the program Forum With Michael Krasny. It was an interesting and wide-ranging conversation, as Krasny’s interviews often tend to be. But one part in particular was especially interesting from a TechCrunch point of view, when Gore was asked about the environment of corruption, bribery, and lobbying that…
As reported on Engadget. By Zach Honig Thinking about injecting an identification chip in your pooch? If you live in the southern part of the UK, you won’t have a choice. Come 2016, English authorities will require all of the country’s pups to have embedded microchips, so they can be returned to their owners if ever they run astray. The United Kingdom’s Environment Department says some 60 percent of the country’s 8 million dogs already have the…
As reported on Wired. BY SPENCER ACKERMAN For the first time, sailors and Marines are about to bring a 4G LTE network onto two ships, giving communications experts like Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Lakisha Johnson, above, a new means of sharing data, voice and text at sea. Photo: U.S. Navy For the first time, a sailor or Marine on board a ship out to sea can actually use his or her cellphone for something…
As reported on Wired. BY VALENTINA PALLADINO Arcing lines represent each victim’s saga. Image: screenshot Data visualization firm Periscopic has developed a somber but thoughtful graphic showing the number of gun deaths in the United States in 2010 in terms of years of life that could have been. The project, officially launched on Monday, started out as an internal exploration of data for Periscopic co-founders Dino Citraro and Kim Rees and their team, and quickly became a compelling visual…
As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon The computer of Dr. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri has made a rare mathematical discovery — the world’s largest known prime number, 257,885,161 – 1. The integer is more than 17 million digits long, so if you wanted a hard copy to hang on your wall or something it would take more than 13,000 pages of A4 paper. The size of the find crushes the 2009…
As reported on Wired. BY TIM MALY Tower of Civilization, 1939 Los Angeles World’s Fair Courtesy Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical GardensThe 1939 World’s Fair was held in New York but Los Angeles wanted it. The tower would have been 150 feet wide and 1,290 feet tall (the current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa is 2,722 feet). “It would have been the tallest structure in the world at the time,” writes Lubell. “It was going to be…