My favorite thing about the internet is that everybody can find like-minded people. No matter how niche your hobby, or how obscure your kink, there’s a community out there for you. The logical consequence of that is that shit on the web gets real weird, real fast. I’m not judging – it is, in fact, my second favorite thing about the internet. The hub of a lot of the internet’s weirdness is, obviously, Reddit. Its sprawling ecosystem of subreddits is a beautiful reflection of the human condition.
By: Todd Feathers Driven to cyberspace by the pandemic, courts across the country purchased chatroom-like tools designed to help people resolve disagreements without the need for a full-on lawsuit, judge, or hearing. Online dispute resolution, as it’s known, had already been growing in popularity as a means to make often costly, slow-moving court processes more efficient. The tools, pioneered by eBay and PayPal, were designed to settle millions of disputes in their own businesses quickly and wit
While I’m convinced 2011 will ultimately go down in history as the year the groundbreaking motion picture “Cowboys & Aliens” was released, it bears mentioning that it was also the year in which the first commercial quantum computer officially went online. You can dispute whether Daniel Craig’s turn as an alien-fighting gold thief with amnesia is worthy of such high praise, but there’s no debating that D-Wave’s a bonafide pioneer in the world of quantum computing. Dubbed the “D-Wave One” (two yea
The question I am always asked when I mention anything related to solar energy is this: why isn’t the technology as ubiquitous as the sun? So today I am excited to share the news that solar-power transport company Sono Motors is deploying its tech on a bus for the first time — in partnership with the Münchner Verkehrsgesellschaft (Munich Transport Company, MVG). You probably know Sono Motors from its work building Sion, the solar electric car. The Sono solar technology replaces traditional pain
Imagine you’re talking to someone and they have a big green piece of something they ate for lunch in their teeth. Do you tell them? Whether you do might depend on who they are (you might be more likely to tell your best friend than a work colleague) and perhaps your own personality too. There’s no doubt many of us avoid giving feedback. It can feel awkward to tell somebody they have something in their teeth, or elsewhere. In a recent pilot study, less than 3% of people told a researcher they had
Last night, Apple took a massive tiny step toward allowing developers to include links to their sites in the apps — but this is just for ‘reader’ apps. This isn’t a surprise, though. The firm announced this change last year to close the Japan Fair Trade Commission’s (JFTC) investigation that looked into the antimonopoly practices of Apple. The Cupertino-based company considers any app that provides digital content a reader app. Think of magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, or video. So Ne
President Joe Biden is thinking about invoking the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to boost US production of critical EV battery minerals. The act grants the president emergency powers to alter domestic manufacturing policy in times of crisis. According to sources familiar with the matter and the Intercept, which first reported the draft of the executive order, the White House is considering adding minerals such as lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt, and manganese to the list of items covered b
This article was originally published on Built In by Jamie De Langhe. History, art, English, the humanities: These are the backgrounds of approximately half the people I’ve worked with at both Etsy and Slack. My co-workers have been creators, analytical thinkers and researchers. They look at complex problems and find novel solutions, taking products to a whole new level. Even Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s founder, was a philosophy major with aspirations to one day become a professor. But somethin
If you’re looking for technology with a fast time to market, you can exclude most vehicles and mobility tech. And if you’re waiting for a ride in a hyperloop? Don’t hold your breath. I’ve been writing about hyperloop tech for nearly ten years. Much of the innovation is happening behind the scenes. It’s partnerships and pathways, rules and regulations, and in the case of tech — it’s most often R&D in stealth mode. Every so often, a company will send over illustrations or videos made in CGI of w
WhatsApp voice notes are useful when you want to send some explanation or rant about a bad date to a friend, and you’re too tired to type all of that. But creating and listening to these notes has been a sucky experience — until now, at least Last night, WhatsApp said that it’s going to roll out a bunch of features over the next few weeks that can turn voice notes into a pleasant experience. There are two things I’m most excited about: out-of-chat playback and remember playback. Here’s how it wo