Last fall, a prolific photographer who asked not to be named noticed a sharp, unexplained drop-off in earnings on his Patreon page, where fans shell out cash for tiered subscriptions to his photos of well-lit nude models. Then, in December, he received an anonymous email with a link to a website called Yiff.Party. When he…

On October 12, 2019, Eliud Kipchoge crossed under a pink finishing arch emblazoned with the time 1:59:40. He had just become the first person to run a marathon in under two hours.For a few hours, this achievement, long unthinkable, was celebrated across the world. Then came the question: What was the deal with his fancy…

The first episode of The Goop Lab, Gwyneth Paltrow’s new Netflix show, opens in Jamaica. The sun beams, the crystalline water sparkles, and a group of Goop staffers sit cross-legged in a circle, like schoolchildren poised for a read-aloud. Then, under the supervision of three “psychedelic elders,” they each drink a mug of psilocybin tea.It’s…

A growing number of startups and full-fledged companies are looking to bring their smart technology into your mouth. A toothbrush that uses AI to monitor your brushing, dental floss as a subscription service, wearables for teeth—oral hygiene is a booming business for tech companies, who see dollar signs every time you flash your pearly whites.…

Richard Dolbeer was once the man to call if millions of blackbirds or fruit bats were ravaging your fields. When he joined the US Department of Agriculture in 1972, Dolbeer chose to specialize in handling what he and his fellow biologists term “human-wildlife conflicts”—situations in which animals wreak havoc in places that Homo sapiens have…

Not long ago, I opened my laptop, dimmed the lights in my room, and clicked play on the YouTube video “ASMR Ear Eating Twins”. To let my imagination drift, I lowered the sound levels and closed my eyes. Doing so, I was told, would help unlock the euphoria I was in search of. For various…

Sharing data during an outbreak is vital for public health. But it can also lead to sensational, and even spurious, research, like a controversial new paper claiming that people probably picked up a novel coronavirus from snakes.One of the many mysteries behind the outbreak of a new respiratory-tract-attacking virus that’s now infected nearly 650 people…

On New Year’s Eve, while the rest of the world was preparing to ring in a new decade, employees of the German energy company EnBW were getting ready to pull the plug on one of the country’s few remaining nuclear power plants. The license to operate the two reactors at the Philippsburg nuclear facility expired…

If a thousand companies make their own smart light bulb, do a thousand companies also have to design a light switch app to control them? Kraftful, a company out of…

Schwark Satyavolu Contributor Schwark Satyavolu is a general partner at Trinity Ventures where he makes early-stage investments in fintech, security and AI. A serial entrepreneur, he co-founded Yodlee (YDLE) and…