technology-and-philosophy
This Coal Exec is Pleading Guilty to Conspiracy After His Mine Blew Up 29 People
2010 was a brutal year for fossil fuel industry workers. The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 rig workers, and an accident at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch claimed the lives of 29 coal miners. The fallout to the disaster, caused by an...
A Little Lesson in Knowledge, Courtesy of an Island that Disappeared (If It Ever Even Existed)
Can a place be "undiscovered"? Wrap your brain around this: for the past few days geographers, Internet speculators and conspiracy theorists have been making much ado about a place that scientists exists according to Google, even if scientists who have...
Enough with the Sad Subway Porn. Here's Proof that Mass Transit is Not Hell on Wheels
Despair, ye riders of mass transit! Don't you know that subways and buses are dreary, cramped mobile compounds, the movers of the poor and downtrodden? No wonder everyone is so taken with images like these, "Michael Wolf's fine portraits":http://photo...
Angry Celebrities Aside, Facebook's Promoted Posts Are Its Path to Redemption
Facebook has been getting a lot of flack lately over EdgeRank, its algorithm that decides who will see your latest post show up in their Newsfeed. After the formula was rejiggered in September, some have seen their reach plummet as much as 50 percent...
Stalin Built the World's First Offshore Oil Rig Into an Entire Floating City
Today, Neft Daslari is a crumbling dystopia, a vast series of oil platforms slowly being eaten by the waves of the Caspian Sea. Like all good dystopias, it was once an industrial marvel—a veritable floating oil city, home to 5,000 workers, a movie...
War Propaganda Now Comes in Realtime: Israel Just Live-Blogged a Brutal Gaza Bombing
Following days of mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel today launched a brutal, tightly orchestrated assault on Hamas that killed nine people and wounded 40 others. Among the dead was Ahmed al-Jabari, the org's military chief. It was the largest...
Egypt Loves Internet Porn, But Just Banned It
Backed by "Pure Net," a Salafist Muslim grassroots organization, conservative Egyptian public-prosecutor Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud has decided it's time to finally "enforce":http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/12/egypts_ominous_attack_on_porn...
John McAfee, Silicon Valley's Greatest Villain, Is Trapped in Paradise
Forget Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks high horse, and Hollywood victim Kim Dotcom and his attempts to rebrand himself as an Internet freedom crusader. This is John McAfee, the perfect anti-hero. This is the man whose name we know because of the anti...
This Facial Recognition Tech Will Let Stores Quietly Track and Share Your Shopping Habits
Hey look, big brother's coming to Wal-Mart. The Japanese company NEC has designed "affordable facial recognition tech":http://www.diginfo.tv/v/12-0209-r-en.php to be deployed in big box stores; it's supposed to "gather consumer data" to help owners...
The Evolution of Eco-Horror, from Godzilla to Global Warming
Eco-horror has been around forever, and the premise propelling the genre couldn't be simpler or more primal: man tampers with nature—or worse, ruin nature—and nature straight-up ends man. Films adhering to that golden formula first started cropping up...
How to Eliminate Airplane Boarding Lines: Use Math
There's nothing like the airport to remind us that, despite college degrees, fancy shoes, or six-figure incomes, we need to be handled like cattle in order for the system to flow smoothly. We queue to get your ticket, wait patiently in security lines...
The Best Video Evidence Yet That Apple is a Cult
Yeah, it's a familiar refrain by now; Apple is a cult. Its shiny products and aesthetic inspire slavish devotion amongst fans, its Stores are bastions of eerily synchronized helpfulness, and workers are willing to accept lower wages and fewer benefits...