Scientists are discovering how chemicals can affect the way memories are formed, paving the way for a future where it could be possible to forget anything we wanted by taking a single pill: This isn’t Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style mindwiping. In some ways it’s potentially even more effective and more precise. Because of […]
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A look at which alternative energy initiatives succeeded, which ones failed, and whether there’s hope for a rebound: In 2005, VC investment in clean tech measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The following year, it ballooned to $1.75 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association. By 2008, the year after Doerr’s speech, […]
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Self-driving car technology is advancing rapidly. But how comfortable can we get with the idea? Beyond bureaucracy, there are deeper legal questions. Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, which is studying the legal framework for quasi-autonomous vehicles, notes how active the liability landscape already is […]
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It’s a Facebook game called Cow Clicker, and it’s unlike anything Bogost ever made before, a borderline-evil piece of work that was intended to embody the worst aspects of the modern gaming industry. He meant Cow Clicker to be a satire with a short shelf life. Instead, it enslaved him and many of its players […]
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The transformation required a radical, stealth operation. The company’s more than 12,000 leaders, the emcees who guide the local meetings, were put on PointsPlus so they’d have it mastered before the switch. This meant they were practicing one program while preaching another. Meanwhile, marketing and brochures needed to be updated, new smartphone apps, calculators, and […]
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Bitcoin was drawing the kind of attention normally reserved for overhyped Silicon Valley IPOs and Apple product launches. On his Internet talk show, journo-entrepreneur Jason Calacanis called it “a fundamental shift” and “one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in 20 years in the technology business.” Prominent venture capitalist Fred Wilson heralded “societal upheaval” […]
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Bezos: If you go back to 1999, it’s hard to remember how effervescent the bubble was. People who really didn’t have any passion for technology or the Internet were giving up their careers as doctors and mining Internet gold. And when the bubble popped, a meaningful fraction of our people left. They realized they didn’t […]
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In a secluded area on the ground floor, six brave young men (three Russians, an Italian, a Frenchman, and a Chinese national) are simulating a mission to Mars. For 520 straight days—that’s more than 17 months—the volunteers will be sequestered in a tubular steel stand-in for a spacecraft whose 775-square-foot living area is so cramped […]
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To many, Milner’s success is not just too much and too fast in a land of too much and too fast but … but … and here people start to petulantly phumpher … somehow unfair: Here’s an outsider who has handed out money at outrageously founder-friendly terms—paying huge amounts for relatively small stakes, essentially buying […]
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Harmon calls his circles embryos—they contain all the elements needed for a satisfying story—and he uses them to map out nearly every turn on, from throwaway gags to entire seasons. If a plot doesn’t follow these steps, the embryo is invalid, and he starts over. To this day, Harmon still studies each film and TV […]