Silicon Valley’s #MeToo Moment Didn’t Change Anything
Despite tech’s reckoning with equality over the past few years, the industry’s storied history of inequality carries on. A small sampling: Only 11% of executive positions in Silicon Valley are held by women, and women make up only 9% of partners at the top 100 venture capital firms.
Toyota To Build Prototype City Of The Future
Toyota revealed plans to build a prototype “city” of the future on a 175-acre site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. Called the Woven City, it will be a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
Unfold: The App That Lets You Create Beautiful Stories
Unfold is an app and toolkit for storytellers. It’s used by celebs, influencers and other Instagram power users. Create beautiful and engaging stories from minimal and elegant templates. The app is available for iOS and Android.
Remembering The Nucleon, Ford’s 1958 Nuclear-powered Concept Car That Never Was
Nearly 30 years before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, engineers at Ford designed and made a 3/8 scale model of a car, which it said would be powered by a nuclear reactor in the trunk.
Freemium Love: Tech Transforms Dating In San Francisco
Tracking relationships with customer relationship management software. Automating Tinder date-hunting with chatbots. ‘Homeless’ camping dates. Techies are putting their stamp on San Francisco’s dating scene.
How The “IKEA Effect” Explains Today’s Startups
Having customers do most of the work, feel great about it, and at the same time perceive they have attained value for their money is the Holy Grail in business. Ikea gets it–and so do many of today’s hottest startups.
iPhones Are Being Turned Into Ultrasound Devices To Diagnose Patients
The world’s first handheld ultrasound device, Butterfly iQ, will give hope to 4.7 billion people who don’t have access to medical imaging, revolutionizing modern medicine. Butterfly Network founder Dr Jonathan Rothberg invented the tool, a battery-operated device the size of an electric shaver that diagnoses abnormalities within seconds.
The Million-Dollar Hacker
Tommy DeVoss used to break into websites illicitly. But after serving time for his crimes, he now uses his skills to earn an honest living. Through arrangements known as bug bounty programs, companies pay him to find security holes in their systems. He’s now earned more than $1 million in this emerging profession.
How IKEA Became Sweden’s National Brand
In 1950, Ingvar Kamprad began selling furniture. Seeing the logistical difficulty of shipping large items far away, Ingvar decided to flat-pack the furniture, which also reduced the chance of damage during transport. The company created a catalog that customers could browse through and order with from afar.
How The Mast Brothers Fooled The World Into Paying $10 A Bar For Crappy Hipster Chocolate
While customers can’t get enough of the company’s bearded, Brooklyn hipster founders, and their brilliantly marketed, $10 “bean to bar” chocolates, a term reserved for chocolate that has been produced entirely under the maker’s control, from the cocoa bean to the wrapped bar, chocolate experts have shunned them.
The Story Behind An Identify Theft
Lurking behind a simple email in our inbox is a network of fake websites, letterbox companies and more than 100 victims around the world. We untangled a web of fake accounts and followed the digital breadcrumbs back to two Danish fraudsters. This is how we tracked them down, step by step.
Is The Cruise Industry Finally Out Of Its Depth?
The question is whether the coronavirus will dent, deflect or alter what has been a phenomenon of our times, the many-times multiplication of ship sizes, of passenger numbers and of profits, generated by an industry that manufactures its own version of reality, then shapes the places that its ships visit in the image of that reality.
How A Single Mom Created A Plastic Food-Storage Empire
The story of Tupperware is a story of innovation and reinvention: how a new kind of plastic, made from industrial waste material, ended up a symbol of female empowerment. The product ushered women into the workforce, encouraging them to make their own money, better their families, and win accolades and prizes.
Hard Truths: Will Museums’ Digital Plans Make Curators Obsolete?
As art institutions continue to raise ticket prices and roll out blockbusters, we may come to see shows that will be curated entirely by optimized algorithms. What happens when a museum becomes curator-less? Will this be the end of art history as we’ve known it, or the dawn of a techno renaissance?
Speedgate, The Sport Invented By Artificial Intelligence
A team of designers in Portland, Oregon, tasked their artificial intelligence system with building a new team sport for us humans. The result of that pet project, Speedgate, is being heralded as the first viable AI-created field game. It has since become an indie sports phenomenon, with proposed leagues in more than 50 countries worldwide.
How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter
In April 2014, a public relations firm representing the Saudi Embassy asked Ahmad Abouammo, part of Twitter’s global media team, to verify an account belonging to a Saudi news personality. This request for a blue checkmark opened the door to a working relationship with the country’s government.
How Shenzhen Is Fueling Ethiopia’s Burgeoning Startup Scene
As Shenzhen companies look to Africa for new consumer markets, African entrepreneurs are turning to Shenzhen for manufacturing partners to turn their ideas into reality. How the movers and shakers in Ethiopia’s burgeoning tech startup scene are tapping into the open source manufacturing ecosystem of China’s most entrepreneurial city.
New Earth Surveillance Tech Is About to Change Everything, Including Us
New high-resolution satellites, AIs, and data tools are going to let us study Earth, and ourselves, in greater detail than ever before. That’s going to come with “unthinkable” problems.
‘Canada’s Warren Buffett’ Drives His Own Pickup Truck
Jim Pattison roars through rural Saskatchewan in his silver pickup truck, barreling down the prairie road that runs arrow-straight to the horizon. Tossed into the back seat is a sleeping bag and crimson pillow—the unlikely berth for Canada’s self-made billionaire when he can’t find a motel.
How Psychology Is Just Catching Up With The Effects Of Online Hate
Lindsay Ellis is a video essayist. She makes videos commenting on films, TV shows, and other media. More than 860,000 people subscribe to her YouTube channel. But there is also this difficult aspect to what Ellis does: online hate.
Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.
With more than 9 billion gigabytes of information traveling the internet every day, researchers are constantly looking for new ways to compress data into smaller packages. Cutting-edge techniques focus on lossy approaches, which achieve compression by intentionally “losing” information from a transmission.