In 2009, Ying-Hui Fu started getting a flood of emails from people who claimed to only need a few hours of sleep at night. Fu and her colleague and spouse Louis Ptáček, both at the University of California, San Francisco, had just identified a gene mutation that significantly decreased how many hours someone needs to…

It might be time to dig out those old Game Boy cartridges you still have in the attic. Retro console maker Analogue announced today it will release its first handheld device, the Analogue Pocket. The not-a-Game-Boy-but-kind-of-a-Game-Boy device will play cartridges from every generation of Nintendo Game Boy, including the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance,…

In 2019, if a platform exists, it's going to have games on it. They may not be videogames as you generally think of them, but they are games—small, social, ephemeral, and they are everywhere. The latest platform to join the fray? Giphy.Launching Wednesday, the site’s Giphy Arcade is a way for users to create, share,…

Last month, after a fierce lobbying battle, California passed a law that will likely end up mandating that companies in the “gig economy,” such as Uber, treat gig workers as employees. After losing the battle to carve out an exception for Uber drivers, Uber’s general counsel, former Obama official Tony West, announced the company simply…

At Qesem Cave in Israel, Neanderthals or early Homo sapiens appear to have stored marrow-rich deer bones for several weeks, relying on the bones and their outer layer of dried skin and flesh to keep the marrow relatively fresh—like storing leftovers in Pleistocene Tupperware.ARS TECHNICAThis story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for…

Throw your driver’s license out the window. Better yet, don’t get one at all.For nearly a decade, that’s been the message from buzzy transportation companies. In 2011, car-sharing company Zipcar touted a study claiming millennials believe car ownership is difficult. The same year, Zimride, founded by the guys who would later cofound Lyft, was touted…

In the wake of catastrophic wildfires like the one in 2018 that burned the California city of Paradise, wildfire management has become a pressing topic, to say the least. Especially under scrutiny is the US Forest Service’s hundred-year policy of suppressing fire—on the surface it makes sense. Fire burns houses and kills people. It’s a…

The solar system has another interstellar visitor, but there’s no question of this one being an alien spacecraft. It’s a true comet and the first we’ve ever confirmed comes from…

The FrankOne coffee maker, fresh off a successful crowdfunding campaign, is now available for purchase, and I got a chance to test out one of the first run of these…

This morning, the Justice Department announced that it had brought charges against the administrator and hundreds of users of the “world’s largest” child sexual exploitation marketplace on the dark web.…