While the Nobel prizes can sometimes dive into foundational but seemingly rarified corners of the sciences, Wednesday morning’s announcement of the prize for chemistry reached into billions of people’s pockets—and homes, offices, workshops, cars … pretty much the entire infrastructure of modern life. For their invention of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, key to everything from…

For all the progress humanity has made since Odysseus had a spot of trouble on a long voyage home, life on the high seas remains a largely joyless affair. Twenty-first-century sailors spend weeks away from home. The hours are long, the pay mediocre, the risk of calamity never quite over the horizon. And, researchers have…

Christopher Walken and I were standing on a dark, deserted street in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district at 4 in the morning. This was the summer of 1995, back when workers actually packed meat in the neighborhood, in the midst of a heat wave that would deliver a record-breaking 102-degree day later that afternoon. As the aroma…

On Wednesday and Thursday, high seasonal winds will tear through California, drying out vegetation and fanning wildfires. The conditions could easily spell a devastating, deadly conflagration. In preparation, early Wednesday morning the utility PG&E—whose equipment sparked last year’s Camp Fire, which killed 86 people and destroyed the town of Paradise—will begin preemptively shutting off power…

Ensuring politicians in the 2020 election stay truthful is hard work, so Facebook has decided it’s going to sit this one out. Biden’s campaign team had sent a letter to…

The Richard Branson-backed small satellite launch operation Virgin Orbit wants to be the first to dedicate a mission to bringing commercial CubeSats to the “Red Planet,” the company announced today.…

Pinterest is the latest tech company to introduce a “Lite” version of its mobile application to meet the needs of users in emerging markets. With Pinterest Lite, launched on Monday,…

Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division is pushing to change the law that would allow it to demand information from internet providers that would identify the owners of vulnerable systems, TechCrunch has…

Julie Yoo has joined Andreessen Horowitz as its newest general partner. She will make investments out of the venture capital firm’s bio fund, which closed on $450 million in 2017.…

“If Silicon Valley is going to keep telling itself the story that the only uses of their technology will be the most optimistic, the most hopeful, the most salubrious, the…