In the early 1970s, people studying general relativity, our modern theory of gravity, noticed rough similarities between the properties of black holes and the laws of thermodynamics. Stephen Hawking proved that the area of a black hole’s event horizon—the surface that marks its boundary—cannot decrease. That sounded suspiciously like the second law of thermodynamics, which…

A friend and MIT grad wrote to me yesterday, “I don’t know if the Media Lab is redeemable at all.” This in the wake of the bombshell Ronan Farrow piece…

Riding an electric bike is a philosophical adjustment. The first time you glide past a long-time bike commuter on their speedy everyday whip, you will feel like a bougie jerk. But no one's stopping them from going electric.If an electric motor gets you outside, reduces fossil fuels, and reduces congestion, I think it's worth it.…

Hello subscribers. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged…

In November 1990, the Womyn of Antioch, a student group at Antioch College, published a list of demands in the campus newspaper, threatening “radical physical action” if those demands weren’t met the following week. Enraged by women’s stories of on-campus rape, they wanted a wholly new code of sexual conduct, one that required verbal consent…

How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, plural. After all, why upgrade every year when next year’s model…

In the ongoing war for control of the digital space that is the modern car, Google just conquered a major swath of territory. This week, it and General Motors announced that the tech giant’s Android operating system will underpin the infotainment systems in GM’s cars, starting with some model year 2022 vehicles.For future Chevy, Cadillac,…

Joichi Ito, the embattled director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, has stepped down according to a statement by MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif. The news was first reported by The New…

No. Why is this even a question? You can't just go and alter the predictions of a model because you expected something different. I’m talking, of course, about that famously doctored map of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path. The chart, dated August 29, included a white “uncertainty cone” around the storm’s anticipated path, which someone later…

Today India attempted to become only the fourth nation to successfully soft-land on the surface of the Moon. That mission appears to have failed, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lander at an altitude of 2.1km above the lunar surface. The space agency has said only that it is…