Awesome Science Stuff That Happened Today [Sep 12]

It was a great day for science-loving geeks everywhere. Today’s big haps, in no particular order: Soccer gets a newer, creepier bioengineered makeover Photo: John O’Shea Synthetic soccer balls are so last century. (Replace “soccer balls” with “footballs” if you’re not American.) After making waves at last year’s Abandon Normal Devices festival with his throwback […]


Programming a Core Subject from Grade 1 in Estonia

Imagine a world where learning the language of computers was a fundamental subject in our education alongside mathematics, languages and sciences. If you think about it, that is actually the world we live in today: programming pervades almost every profession out there to some extent or another, and having a basic understanding of how software […]

Anti-Copyright Bots Shut Down the Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards are an annual awards ceremony honoring the very best in written science fiction and fantasy in different categories. The Hugo is named after Amazing Stories founder Hugo Gernsback The awards are presented each year by the World Science Fiction Society at the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon). In more recent years, the […]

Only 16% of Americans Understand “The Cloud”

That’s right. A stunningly low proportion of only 16% Americans know what “the cloud” is, according to a national survey conducted by Wakefield Research, commissioned by Citrix. Other stunning statistics to come out of the survey are as follows: 29% of correspondents responded with a reference to an actual cloud, the sky or something related […]

At Least 14 million Americans Still Can’t Get Broadband

The official figure for the proportion of US homes without broadband access has dropped by more than a third in the space of a year. But the Federal Communications Commission notes the apparent drop may be partly due to improved data collection. The official figure for the number of Americans without adequate access is 19 […]

Apple’s “most valuable company” status questioned

There are plenty of reports today that Apple is now officially the most valuable company in history. However, there are at least three other claimants to the crown, depending on the methodology. The claims are based on market capitalization, which is the number of shares in a company that could conceivably be bought and sold […]