Aarian Marshall: Hello. Michael Calore: Given today’s topic, I’m curious to know what is the most unexpected thing you’ve both ordered through a delivery app? Louise Matsakis: So I was on a press trip to China recently, and I was taking notes during an interview, and I got pen all over my white pants. So…
Seventy-five percent of Americans who belong to a membership-based retailer said they buy paper towels there. Name-brand: We found Bounty paper towels at all five stores.• The cheapest picks were Costco ($28.49 for 12 rolls, or 4 cents per square foot), BJ’s ($24.49 for 12 rolls, or 4 cents per square foot), and Sam’s Club…
By beaming an ultra-low-latency live feed from its camera directly into a pair of goggles, a first-person view (FPV) drone puts you right in the cockpit of a small and agile aircraft able to squeak through the smallest of gaps and pull off breathtaking moves like flips, barrel rolls, loops, and vertical plunges. These aren’t…
In a step toward the wider use of gene editing, a treatment that uses Crispr successfully slashed high cholesterol levels in a small number of people. In a trial conducted by Swiss biotech company Crispr Therapeutics, 15 participants received a one-time infusion meant to switch off a gene in the liver called ANGPTL3. Though rare,…
Jim Sanborn couldn’t believe it. He was weeks away from auctioning off the answer to Kryptos, the sculpture he created for the CIA that had defied solution for 35 years. As always, wannabe solvers kept on paying him a $50 fee to offer their guesses to the remaining unsolved portion of the 1,800-character encrypted message,…
Leah Feiger: I do. The last few days, this has popped up. You’re like, “I’ve been hearing them.” It’s like, “Oop, Zoë, your invoice is ready.” And I’m like, “What is happening over there?” Zoë Schiffer: You’ve been hearing them. It’s embarrassing. That is embarrassing. Leah Feiger: It’s kind of wild. No, honestly, if it’s…
As AI increasingly takes over the work of modern programmers, the cybersecurity world has warned that automated coding tools are sure to introduce a new bounty of hackable bugs into software. When those same vibe-coding tools invite anyone to create applications hosted on the web with a click, however, it turns out the security implications…
Up through 2010, you could use your FSA money to purchase medications over-the-counter (OTC). The Affordable Care Act changed that rule, so that starting in 2011, you needed a doctor’s prescription in order to use your FSA for OTC drugs. Thanks to the CARES Act, that’s no longer the case. So you can now use…
One of the purported advantages of self-driving car tech is that every car can learn from one vehicle’s mistakes. Here’s how Waymo puts it on its website: “The Waymo Driver learns from the collective experiences gathered across our fleet, including previous hardware generations.” But in Austin, Waymo’s vehicles struggled for months to learn how to…
More Family Board Games Photograph: Simon Hill There are so many family board games. Here are a few more we liked. Dorfromantik: The Duel for $25: Based on the video game Dorfromantik, which spawned a cooperative board game, this spin-off pits you against another player as you draw tiles to build a landscape and try…