Can Municipal Broadband Bridge the Digital Divide?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Fed up with overpriced, lousy, or nonexistent broadband service? There may be better choices than private telecom providers.
Facebook Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself
Reading Time: 6 minutes Your online devices may be broadcasting more about you than even your psychiatrist knows — and this private information is being used by people who want your business, your money, your vote, and much more.
How Owning a Boat Can Help You Sleep
Reading Time: 2 minutes Scientists have linked being rocked all night to better sleep, even for grown-ups.
Fighting Algae With Algae — A Problem Solving Itself
Reading Time: 2 minutes It sounds odd, but algae is being harnessed to reduce instances of algal bloom growing in lakes and reservoirs.
Plants Are Being Engineered to Earn Their Keep
Reading Time: 2 minutes Researchers are working on transferring bioluminescence to trees and giving houseplants traits to warn owners of harm. What could possibly go wrong?
We Don’t Know What Our Computers Are Doing
Reading Time: 10 minutes Computers are like a black box — we don’t really know what they’re up to inside. A series of recently discovered vulnerabilities only drives home the point, and further calls into question the US’s reliance on electronic voting systems.
Big Brother at Work: Employee Monitoring in the Analytics Age
Reading Time: 3 minutes Playing upon employers’ desires for greater “employee engagement” and more quantitative rationales for hiring decisions and performance appraisals, a new generation of employee surveillance and analytic technologies is creating advanced ways for managers to pick out the high-performers from the rest of their workforce.
Team Trump’s Hostility Toward Science Is No Hoax
Reading Time: 3 minutes Many Americans only believe in science as long as it doesn’t conflict with their political views. Unfortunately, some of them hold influential positions in government.
The Cruel Cost of Extreme Dog Breeding
Reading Time: 7 minutes You wouldn’t expect to find animal cruelty among those who claim to love animals most—those who proudly breed and show off pets. But show breeders want their dogs to stand out from the crowd. As a result, we are seeing more dogs bred to develop exaggerated features, leaving the animals in chronic pain, or with respiratory issues, heart defects, and even seizures.
Say Hello to Your Future
Reading Time: 3 minutes An Army Brigade Combat Team is made up of about 4,000 soldiers. One general suggests they could get by with 25 percent fewer, making up the difference with…robots.