The modern world hurts my brain. Let’s take the news that Apple enables users to store their COVID vaccination certificates in the Wallet and Health apps as an example. When I first heard about it, I was pumped. Flashing my QR code to enter a restaurant or grab a coffee would be far simpler if it sat in my Apple Wallet. Friends, the time I’d save! But, of course, the world had something to say about that. While putting my digital certificate of vaccination in an easy-to-access place is cool… is
After its introduction in 2014, Apple Pay has made spending seamless for swathes of people. Now, the company wants to move to the other side of the aisle. This time, to accept payments. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is planning to introduce a new feature in the coming months that will let merchants accept card payments directly through their iPhones. In short, it wants to make its device a payment terminal or a point of sale (POS) machine. How will it work? The report noted that this
Earlier this year, a viral article on Fast Company gained attention around the world. In the piece, entitled ‘How to spot a toxic culture by reading between the lines of a job ad’, writer Stephanie Vozza discussed how to interpret some of the key phrases company’s use to get down to what the work culture is really like. For example, if a job advertises free snacks, meals and drinks, could that mean that you’ll be expected to work long hours and not leave the office during lunchtime? Or, if a bus
To cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half within a decade, the Biden administration’s goal, the U.S. is going to need a lot more solar and wind power generation, and lots of cheap energy storage. Wind and solar power vary over the course of a day, so energy storage is essential to provide a continuous flow of electricity. But today’s batteries are typically quite small and store enough energy for only a few hours of electricity. To rely more on wind and solar power, the U.S. will need more ov
Sony has had a rough few days. The Japanese tech giant has lost a whopping US$14 billion (£10 billion), or about 9% of its total value, since rival Microsoft’s announcement that it is purchasing popular videogames maker Activision Blizzard for nearly US$70 billion. While some of Sony’s loss is arguably due to short-term panic selling across the wider market, the company is clearly in a corner. PlayStation is Sony’s largest, most profitable, and fastest-growing business, and the loss of a key sup
It’s not often that the sudden appearance of a new impact crater on the Moon can be predicted, but it’s going to happen on March 4, when a derelict SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into it. The rocket launched in 2015, carrying Nasa’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) probe into a position 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, facing the Sun. But the expended upper stage of the rocket had insufficient speed to escape into an independent orbit around the Sun, and was abandoned without an
Can you believe Makayla was dropped from Bama Rush? Do you think Couch Guy was cheating? Did you see Gabby Petito’s last post before she went missing? If you don’t spend much time online, you may not recognize these names. But on TikTok, their stories became sensationalized, memeified, hashtagged and rehashed. The most recent is “#WestElmCaleb.” Women took to TikTok to share their experiences of being peppered with affection, strung along and ultimately ghosted by a New York City-based designer
The only difference between science fiction and science is patience. Yesterday’s mainframes are today’s smartphones and today’s neural networks will be tomorrow’s androids. But long before any technology becomes reality, someone has to dream it into existence. The worlds of science and technology are constantly in flux. It’s impossible to tell what the future will bring. However we can make some educated guesses based on recent breakthroughs in the fields of nuclear physics, quantum computing, r
The runaway anti-work train had a brutal crash on Fox New this week. The driver of the mangled vehicle was Doreen Ford, a moderator of the wildly popular r/rantiwork subreddit. The sub had exploded from 180,000 subscribers in October 2020 to almost 1.7m this month. That growth was dramatically stalled by Ford’s appearance on Fox. The interview was an obvious setup. A right-wing network had found an ideal target to denigrate a leftist movement: a 30-year-old dog walker who works 20 hours a week a
Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi just announced their common Alliance 2030 roadmap — we’re talking about 35 new EVs, fresh factories, and eye watering investments. But there’s one bit of news that’s more important than the rest. And you guessed it: there’s gonna be an electric Nissan Micra. I can barely compose myself. The 2008 Nissan Micra is the best car ever — and I can’t wait for the new one. No, you’re crying. I bought mine back in 2013, when the Harlem Shake was still a thing. My uni social