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5 Intriguing Things Feat. Climate Confidential

February 27, 2014

Meet today's guest MCs, Climate Confidential. They're a journalistic supergroup who have formed their own subscription news organization with the aid of a...

5 Intriguing Things

February 26, 2014

1. Monsanto, DuPont, and Deere are stoked about big data. "'I see it as another potential transformation of the company,' says Robert Fraley, chief...

5 Intriguing Things

February 25, 2014

Hi there. I make it a rule not to spam this list with my stories. However, rules are made to be broken. I wrote about the saga of California's water and...

5 Intriguing Things

February 24, 2014

1. ARPA-E's new RANGE program, which is funding a bunch of new battery concepts. "Let’s look at a couple projects in this portfolio using solid-state...

5 Intriguing Things

February 21, 2014

1. You see, it's just like Klout, which is obviously a perfect representation of the underlying social world, but used for police targeting. "Wernick...

5 Intriguing Things

February 20, 2014

1. Paleontologists discovered a snake that was more than 42 feet long, the largest in the fossil record. "The scientists estimate the snake lived 58 to 60...

5 Intriguing Things

February 19, 2014

1. Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism. "We are only learning to speak of immeasurable qualities through videogames. It’s a slow and collective process...

5 Intriguing Things

February 18, 2014

1. A reason to be bearish about the future of face computers. "I would not use Glass while driving, but I did use the turn-by-turn directions app while my...

5 Intriguing Things

February 14, 2014

1. Making noise as a political act. "The Symposium on Obfuscation will bring together experts from a variety of backgrounds who study, script and design...

5 Intriguing Things

February 13, 2014

1. Private investigator and grinder hero Jay J. Armes was one of People magazine's 25 Most Intriguing People in 1975. "The seeds of discord had been...

5 Intriguing Things

February 12, 2014

1. IS THIS RADIOHEAD APP THE FUTURE OF MUSIC? (Just kidding. But it is conceptually fascinating.) "PolyFauna is an experimental collaboration between us...

5 Intriguing Things

February 11, 2014

1. They should definitely put huge robots in it. "Google is taking over the lease at the airfield that houses Hangar One — the giant eight-acre aircraft...

5 Intriguing Things

February 10, 2014

1. Sad: we launched a spacecraft in 1978 that is now returning to Earth, but we've lost the technical ability to communicate with it. "Communication involves...

5 Intriguing Things

February 7, 2014

1. Stanford's president points out a failing of the term MOOC. "Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, may be higher education’s current fad but they fail on...

5 Intriguing Things

February 6, 2014

1. Air Sex. It's a thing. Apparently. "He did have kind words for the depictions of air sex, a sport whose best performances are not mere re-creations of...

5 Intriguing Things

February 5, 2014

1. Last April, some unknown force carried out a seemingly professional attack on a California power grid substation, knocking out 17 transformers with...

5 Intriguing Things With Guest MC Hilary Mason

February 4, 2014

Greetings from the capital of the United States, where I'll be for the rest of the week. Today's links are brought to you by data scientist and hacker Hilary...

5 Intriguing Things

February 3, 2014

1. The NSA was working the Copenhagen climate talks, says yet another Snowden document. "It remains unclear precisely when the NSA began to target the summit...

5 Intriguing Things

January 31, 2014

1. Five of Satya Nadella's 25 tweets. He's expected to be named Microsoft's new CEO any minute now. "HTML5 - what fun! Bing on Yahoo! Bing IT On! azuring...

5 Intriguing Things

January 30, 2014

1. Someone died in the sixth century. More than 1,400 years later, a scientist discovers the body and sequences the DNA of the organism that killed the...

5 Intriguing Things

January 29, 2014

1. If you, like me, have heard of "designer drugs" but don't really understand the details, read this. To understand exactly how access to designer drugs has...

5 Intriguing Things: Community Edition 1

January 28, 2014

Editor's Note: We've talked about how we're building an island community in the stream of the Internet, right? OK, well, we are. Welcome. Try the coconuts,...

5 Intriguing Things

January 27, 2014

1. Online reputation systems in the so-called sharing economy don't seem to be working very well. "Reputation systems are like the recommendation systems...

5 Intriguing Things

January 24, 2014

1. The people of Burlington, Vermont want to create a more 'local,' non-commercial Internet. "Local, though, can be a funny concept when it comes to the...

5 Intriguing Things

January 23, 2014

1. The world's largest windfarm, located where the Thames flows into the North Sea, imaged from a satellite. "The wind farm became fully operational on April...

5 Intriguing Things

January 22, 2014

1. The logistics of smuggling sperm out of a Gaza prison. "How could the semen be taken out of the prison, as Israel doesn't allow physical contact between...

5 Intriguing Things: Submergence Special Edition

January 21, 2014

Last week, I read a stunning novel called Submergence by J.M. Ledgard. It is so good that I'm devoting today's 5 Intriguing Things to links about the themes...

5 Intriguing Things

January 17, 2014

1. Drone strikes will stay within the CIA, says Congress. "An effort by President Obama to transfer America’s lethal, highly classified drone program from...

5 Intriguing Things

January 16, 2014

1. The company that hoovers up all the prescription-drug data, then sells it to pharma companies. "IMS Health Holdings Inc. says it pulled in nearly $2...

5 Intriguing Things

January 15, 2014

1. The Blackphone, a privacy-first device, was announced today by a team including Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP. "It has the features necessary to do all...

5 Intriguing Things (With Special Guests, Model View Culture)

January 14, 2014

Editor's note: I'm not the only one who has intriguing things to share. So from time to time, I'll pass the mic to guest editors for one edition. Our first...

5 Intriguing Things

January 13, 2014

A programming note: Google sent my last newsletter into spam folders across the Internet and they stuck a scary note on top of the email saying, "Be careful...

5 Intriguing Things

January 10, 2014

1. Perhaps the strangest thing about Bitcoin is that its made chip development more exciting than it's been since Bob Noyce was still at Intel. "At the heart...

5 Intriguing Things (Though Perhaps 7 Today)

January 9, 2014

1. The wardrobes of Songyang, some kind of parable about e-commerce. "In the town of Songyang, a significant number of members of the local community have...

5 Intriguing Things

January 8, 2014

1. A site that catalogs the code that appears in movies and on TV, then explains what it really is. The lesson? Most code on is gibberish. "The whole intro...

5 Intriguing Things

January 7, 2014

1. What Greyhound, which is celebrating its centennial, meant to America. "It was during these decades—from the 1930s through the 1950s—when Greyhound was...

5 Intriguing Things

January 6, 2014

1. For the last century, the hue of movie posters has gotten more blue and less orange, according to this data analysis. "This does appears to be a steady...

5 Intriguing Things

January 3, 2014

1. An epic poem constructed from descriptive phrases in NYT obits. "Children’s Book Author Singer of ‘The Birds and the Bees’ Scrappy Leader of Firefighters’...

5 Intriguing Things

January 2, 2014

1. You must watch the demo of Structure, a 3D scanner for the iPad that looks amazing. It has begun shipping to its Kickstarter backers. "The magic of 3D...

5 Intriguing Things

December 31, 2013

1. What wearables might do to our ideas about phones, according to one glasshole's honest confession. "Glass kind of made me hate my phone — or any phone. It...

5 Intriguing Things

December 30, 2013

1. Why (and how) governments leak. "The leak laws are so rarely enforced not only because it is hard to punish violators, but also because key institutional...

5 Intriguing Things

December 27, 2013

1. A consumer can now purchase high-resolution video from space. It's watching the individual cars that will freak you out. "With our ability to capture up...

5 Intriguing Things

December 24, 2013

1. Politwoops has been tracking the tweets politicians delete for a whole year now. "As 2013 winds down and Washington retreats to spend the holidays with...

5 Intriguing Things

December 23, 2013

1. So, so, so much data is being collected about each and every one of us. Now what? "A Senate committee released a report this week that goes to great...

5 Intriguing Things

December 20, 2013

1. Chinese scientists are working on a thorium-based nuclear reactor. "The technology’s immediate appeal for China, both Chinese and American scientists say,...

5 Intriguing Things

December 19, 2013

1. Strategies for making people love robots. "People also want to protect robots. One study monitored people watching a robot being abused. Adults, knowing...

5 Intriguing Things

December 18, 2013

1. The TSA says you can bring "some" snow globes on planes this year. Imagine the pile of captured holiday contraband from 2012: World's saddest Pixar movie....

5 Intriguing Things

December 17, 2013

1. The HAPIfork has begun shipping. "Eating too fast leads to poor digestion and poor weight control. The HAPIfork, powered by Slow Control, is an electronic...

5 Intriguing Things (New and Improved!)

December 16, 2013

1. China landed the Jade Rabbit rover on the moon. If you're under the age of 37, this is the first time in your life that photos are being sent back from...

5 Intriguing Things

December 13, 2013

Emojis by Kyle M.F. Williams 1. The Emoji Art and Design Show, featuring 5IT favorites Cara Rose DeFabio and Fred Benenson, opened in New York at Eyebeam...