Spotify’s Success May Be the Real Day the Music Dies
Reading Time: 8 minutes When the music’s over, turn out the lights. (The Doors, 1967, available on Spotify.)
Where There’s Smoke, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Douses the Fire
Reading Time: 8 minutes Posting about sensitive topics on social media is a risky business.
Judgment Days for John Muir and Margaret Sanger
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood of NY dismantle their own Monuments.
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.