beyond-the-internet
How Tracking Cell Phones Is Aiding the Fight Against Malaria
By tracking the movements of cell phone users in Kenya for nearly one year, between 2008 and 2009, scientists fleshed out travel patterns of a disease that killed about 665,000 people the following year – "mostly in Africa":http://www.who.int...
Brains, Brains, and More Brains: A Dispatch From the World's Largest Neuroscience Conference
If ever in an intimate moment of self-reflection you have considered just what is going on in your head when you wonder why you think, feel and act the way you do, then you should be here in New Orleans. At the annual conference for the Society for...
Motherboard TV: We Talked To Steve Jobs Through A Psychic Medium
It's been exactly a year since California Governor Jerry Brown declared "October 16 to be Steve Jobs Day":http://mashable.com/2011/10/15/steve-jobs-day-california-october-16-stanford/. It apparently was a one year-only holiday, but it still stands as a...
Why Steve Jobs Started the Patent Wars
Steve Jobs loved being first. Throughout his life, he generally had the vision and capacity to make that happen. It’s no surprise then that his fingerprints are all over the brewing patent war, the one that has engulfed tech firms around the world...
My Life Online: The Real-Life Humans Behind YouTube's "Reply Girl" Phenomenon
What's striking is just how natural the "reply girl" phenomenon is. Some video becomes popular -- could be a way-cool internet cat, music video, or the video below, produced by Motherboard's Vice big sister, about said phenomenon -- and it's garnering...
Guess How Much of All Internet Traffic Is Totally Fake
The answer is 10 percent, according to a new 20 month study from web ad company Solve Media. Ten percent of all online traffic comes courtesy of bots, not humans. Which is mostly interesting in that not only is it not terribly surprising...
Are We Still on Talking Terms? A Case for Landlines
Here I am, in present day Astoria, Queens, on my landline. There are no tricks in this image, no filters, only a bit of cropping. I'm on my "AT&T trim-line 210":http://www.amazon.com/AT-Corded-Phone-Black-Handset/dp/B00005MITU/ref=pd_cp_e_0. It's no...
Cell Phone's Dead
A few months ago, I received a call from Johnny Carson, a man for whom I was once privileged to work. There was no doubt that it was Johnny because as my iPhone trilled its canned, bluesy theme, the screen lit up with the contact photo I had once...
How Many Nerds Does it Take to Break an iPhone 5?
There couldn't be anything more satisfying than being Greg Packer last Friday, the first to walk away from Apple's 5th Avenue store with a fresh iPhone 5. Opening that box, I imagine a small string of Packer's drool collecting in a puddle on the device...
Eric Schmidt Laughs at Apple Users' Puny Maps: "But What Do I Know?"
I guess this is what happens when you go around pissing people off. Now that 100 million iPhone and iPad users "have updated":http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381840/iphone-5-sales-five-million/in/3081013 to the new iOS 6 operating system (an...
The Most iPhones Ever Is Still Not Enough
Apple sold five million iPhones over the weekend, a record breaking number that eclipsed the 4S sales record by a solid million phones. But for the largest company in the world, breaking old records is no longer enough. Indeed, for many, the weekend...
This One Graph Sums Up Fox News' Incredible Climate Change Bias
Fox News still goes by the tagline "Fair and Balanced," which company uses to suggest that somehow Fox is showing viewers the side of the story the rest of the mainstream media is (probably maliciously) hiding. But when it comes to climate change, Fox...