The limits of the search giant's philosophy
When I saw that Google had introduced a “Classic Papers” section of Google Scholar, its search tool for academic journals, I couldn’t help but stroke my chin professorially. What would make a paper a classic, especially for the search giant? In a blog post introducing the feature, Google software engineer Sean Henderson explains the company’s rationale. While some articles gain… read more
What if The Atlantic owned a train car? I wondered. Amtrak, I had just learned on the internet, allows owners of private railcars to lash onto runs along the Northeast Corridor, among other routes. “We should have a train car,” I slacked an editor. Moments later, it appeared on my screen, bright red with our magazine’s logo emblazoned in white,… read more
“Oh,” I slacked my Atlantic colleagues earlier this week, beneath a screenshot of a pop-up note that Slack, the group-chat software we use, had presented to me moments earlier. “A fresh, more focused Slack,” it promised, or threatened. On my screen, the program’s interface was suddenly a Grimace-purple color. I sensed doom in this software update. Slowly, over the days… read more
At high noon on an early-spring day in 2017, six steers doomed to die escaped their slaughterhouse and stormed the streets of my city. The escape became a nuisance, then a scene, then a phenomenon. “Man, it was crazy!” one onlooker told the local alt-weekly. “I mean, it was fucking bulls running through the city of St. Louis!” What seemed… read more
Twitter has begun allowing its users to showcase NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, as profile pictures on their accounts. It’s the latest public victory for this form of … and, you know, there’s the problem. What the hell is an NFT anyway? There are answers. Twitter calls NFTs “unique digital items, such as artwork, with proof of ownership that’s stored on… read more
Updated on February 4, 2022 at 11 a.m. ET. Wordle! It’s a word game people are playing online. Each day, the game offers one new puzzle: Guess a five-letter English word correctly in six or fewer tries. After each guess, the game tells you which letters are correct, which are wrong, and which are the right letters in the wrong… read more
Every day, the mail still comes. My postal carrier drives her proud van onto the street and then climbs each stoop by foot. The service remains essential, but not as a communications channel. I receive ads and bills, mostly, and the occasional newspaper clipping from my mom. For talking to people, I use email and text and social networking. The… read more
Hey, I made you a tool to put words between buns.
It occurred to me one summer day: It’s really nice when word are typeset between buns. I remarked upon this fact on social media: The specimens in that tweet were hand-crafted, of course. It’s easy enough to do in software like Adobe Illustrator, but time consuming too. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why so few sets of words find… read more
Google and Facebook are easy scapegoats, but companies have been collecting, selling, and reusing your personal data for decades, and now that the public has finally noticed, it’s too late. The personal-data privacy war is long over, and you lost.
A barista gets burned at work, buys first-aid cream at Target, and later that day sees a Facebook ad for the same product. In another Target, someone shouts down the aisle to a companion to pick up some Red Bull; on the ride home, Instagram serves a sponsored post for the beverage. A home baker wishes aloud for a KitchenAid… read more
Shared, electric motor scooters are racing to catch up with Bird, Lime, and other kick-scooter brands, as tech companies attempt to reinvent urban mobility. But can these vehicles ever find a place in America?
When King Carlos III commissioned the Puerta de Alcalá in the 1770s, the city of Madrid was already almost a thousand years old. The gate, designed in the neoclassical style popular during that era, predates more well-known triumphal arches in Europe, like the Arc de Triomphe and the Brandenburg Gate. At the time, the gate connected to the city’s medieval… read more