Forget Elon Musk's Batteries—Let's Fix the Grid With a Rock-Filled Train on a Hill
The Advanced Rail Energy Storage is a 19th century solution for a 21st century problem.
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Ketamine Stirs Up Hope—and Controversy—as a Depression Drug
The next big depression treatment might be ketamine, but how best to use it remains unknown.
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The Most-Cited Authors on Wikipedia Had No Idea
How a climate study by three Australians came to dominate the online encyclopedia.
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The Second Coming of Ultrasound
It’s how thousands of expectant parents see their baby’s face for the first time. And one day soon, it may be how doctors cure disease.
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The Epic Untold Story of Nike’s (Almost) Perfect Marathon
Nike's quest to break the two-hour marathon did not go as planned. But when you're pushing the limits of human performance, nothing ever does.
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The Astounding Engineering Behind the World's Largest Optical Telescope
To build the world’s biggest telescope, you first need to cast, shape, and polish the world’s biggest mirrors.
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Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue
In his new book, Tim O'Reilly identifies the first case of AI run amok—and it's not what you think.
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Were US Diplomats in Cuba Victims of a Sonic Attack—or Something Else?
It was either a new, sci-fi sound gun or something else. Here’s a hypothesis for the something else.
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The Post-Antibiotic Era Is Here. Now What?
The war of resistance might be lost, but computational modeling is helping doctors and scientists predict and contain new bacterial threats.
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How Peter Thiel's Secretive Data Company Pushed Into Policing | Backchannel
A Backchannel investigation reveals the difficult issues police and communities face when they adopt the secretive firm’s data-scooping software.
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I Drove a Tesla Model 3. Here’s What You Need to Know
The company delivered the first 30 of its new "affordable" car on Friday.
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A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field | WIRED
On a warm morning in early spring, June Huh walked across the campus of Princeton University. His destination was McDonnell Hall, where he was scheduled to…
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One Man’s Quest to Make 20-Year-Old Rum in Just Six Days
From the outside, the Lost Spirits Distillery is just another boxy, early-20th-century building along the frayed edge of downtown Los Angeles. At first the…
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Meet the Nerds Coding Their Way Through the War in Afghanistan | WIRED
A disembodied voice sounded over a loudspeaker. “Incoming. Take cover,” it warned to anyone within earshot. Then, the sirens began to wail. Erin Delaney assumed…
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The Race To Build An AI Chip For Everything Just Got Real
Getty Images Yann LeCun once built an AI chip called ANNA. But he was 25 years ahead of his time. The year was 1992, and LeCun was a researcher at Bell Labs,…
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece
With the Netflix reboot here, let's take a look back at what made the original so great.
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The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding
What if we regarded code not as a high-stakes, sexy affair, but the equivalent of skilled work at a Chrysler plant?
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The Man in the Zebra Suit Knows the Secret of the Stripes
Tim Caro has spent 20 years trying to figure out why zebras have stripes. And he finally has an answer.
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Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive
We are far better equipped to take on the challenges we face than at any time in human history.
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Barack Obama Talks AI, Robo Cars, and the Future of the World
The president in conversation with MIT's Joi Ito and WIRED editor-in-chief Scott Dadich.
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Adam Savage’s Tools
1” square steel heavy square Great for small construction, allows a square non sticky edge to use as a square guide, can be used with styrene, balsa, etc. 12” steel straight edge. 36” collapsable straight edge Just a really cool straight edge, it’s like a tape measure but reverse sprung. This is the only one…
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It’s Really Hard to Make Money as an Olympian
While the Olympics will propel many athletes to the pinnacle of human possibility, it won't necessarily help their earning potential.
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Thirty Years Later, Newt Remembers Filming Aliens
Carrie Henn now has a nine-year-old of her own, but she still remembers forging a bond with Sigourney Weaver.
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You Won’t Live to See the Final Star Wars Movie
If the people at Disney have anything to say about it, the past four decades of Star Wars were merely prologue.
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Renewables Aren't Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future - Wired Science
Coal supplies over 40 percent of global electricity needs, and that percentage is going up. The only real question is how to minimize the damage. Dan Winters Proof that good things don’t always come in nice packages can be found by taking the fast train from Beijing to Tianjin and then driving to the…
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The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit | Magazine
Videogame designer Ian Bogost meant Cow Clicker. to be a satire with a short shelf life. Instead, the hit game enslaved him for more than a year.
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The Meteor Farmer [longform.org]
Using a souped-up metal detector, a shovel, and a treasure map, Steve Arnold combs the flat Kansas wheat fields for rocks from outer space.
