5it

5 Intriguing Things

December 12, 2013

1. Autonomous tractors are being deployed on our nation's farms. "The 'go to here' feature has proven to be very beneficial for the farmers. Users can...

5 Intriguing Things

December 11, 2013

1. A robot telemarketer who denies she is a robot. "Over the course of the next hour, several TIME reporters called her back, working to uncover the mystery...

5 Intriguing Things

December 10, 2013

1. The NSA can look at metadata "three hops" (or "degrees," if you like Kevin Bacon) away from a target phone number. Simple phone-tree models suggest that a...

5 Intriguing Things

December 9, 2013

From Transitions (Lauren Marsolier) 1. The mindbending, unnerving flatness of Lauren Marsolier's digital photography.* "We undergo what could be called a...

5 Intriguing Things

December 6, 2013

1. 'Crazy ants' (this is their real name) are overwhelming swaths of Texas. They horrify us because we see in them "the impression of life caught up in a...

5 Intriguing Things

December 5, 2013

1. The "not-too-distant" future of television. "What remains of live programming is reserved for sports programming, breaking news stories, talent contests,...

5 Intriguing Things

December 4, 2013

1. Google has quietly acquired seven small robotics companies in an effort to do for humanoid robots what the company did for autonomous cars. "A realistic...

Five Intriguing Things

December 3, 2013

1. The drone of the future. "It isn’t the law that is struggling to catch up to drone technology; it’s us. Like it or not, the NextGen computerized...

5 Intriguing Things

December 2, 2013

1. China launched a vehicle, the Chang'e-3, to the moon. "The Rover will be the first spacecraft in 37 years to make a soft landing on the Moon after...

5 Intriguing Things

November 28, 2013

The Princess Elisabeth (René Robert/IPF) 1. Contemporary architecture in Antarctica. "Belgium's Princess Elisabeth is the first zero-emission station in...

5 Intriguing Things

November 27, 2013

And the earthlings gathered around their spacecraft and called it good. 1. Kepler the Planet Hunter may yet live! "The approach is already in the process of...

5 Intriguing Things, Frankenturken Edition

November 26, 2013

1. Meet the Chicken of Tomorrow! Courtesy of the poultry journalism historian, Emily Pawley. "Yes, sir, make mine chicken. The chicken of tomorrow that is!...

5 Intriguing Things

November 25, 2013

Sure, the sun looks friendly now (NASA). 1. It's Monday, so let's consider what it will look like when our planet, like every other planet harboring life,...

5 Intriguing Things

November 22, 2013

Jonas Wood, Shane Campbell Gallery. 1. Jonas Wood's paintings at Chicago's Shane Campbell Gallery are a playful exercise in seeing the world as a screen. The...

5 Intriguing Things Like a 12,597-Painting Homage to Blade Runner

November 21, 2013

1. Swedish artist Anders Ramsell made 12,597 tiny paintings into a 35-minute homage to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. "Never before has someone made a...

5 Intriguing Things: Fritz Kahn, Stuxnet, McLuhan's Son, Hard Ware, The Drop

November 20, 2013

1. Fritz Kahn's remarkable 20th-century infographics. "In 1933, the Nazis chased Kahn out of Germany. His books were burned, banned, and put on the “list of...

5 Intriguing Things: Supercomputers, Digital Labor, Sexttering, Wolfram, E-Discovery

November 19, 2013

The road to 33 petaflops (Enbiggen). 1. After years and years of American dominance, the Tianhe-2, a Chinese machine, sits atop the world's supercomputer...

5 Intriguing Things: Mars, Stakhanovitism, Marmots, OutKast, Apple

November 18, 2013

1. NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission today. "Mars is a complicated system, just as complicated as the Earth in its own...

5 Intriguing Things

November 15, 2013

Martha Rosler, Photo-op from House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, New Series, collage, 2004 1. Why cutting and pasting doesn't provide the satisfaction of...

5 Intriguing Things

November 14, 2013

1. The Smithsonian is releasing 3D scans of its objects — like Amelia Earhart's flight suit — so you can print them at home. "Curators and educators can use...

The Botany of Empire and Emoji

November 13, 2013

1. Mapping New York's languages, we see more Portuguese than one would expect. "We have visualised the geography of about 8.5 million geo-located tweets...

5 Intriguing Things

November 12, 2013

Make my day (InMoov). 1. Meet InMoov, an open-source 3D printed life-size humanoid robot project. Some assembly required. "This is going to be interesting....

5 Intriguing Things

November 11, 2013

1. A fun, beautiful timelapse of Hong Kong's (insanely long) outdoor escalator system. Read about it here. 2. These analysts say the "facial recognition...

5 Intriguing Things

November 8, 2013

1. The last page of Randi Zuckerberg's book.2. The sonic war on birds and other crop stealers."A Bird Gard can also play species-specific distress calls. Got...

IPOs and Meerkat Wrestling

November 7, 2013

1. There have been 120 IPOs in 2013. The average one has gone up 21.8 percent. In 1999-2000, the average newly listed company popped 64.4 percent. 2. Listen...

They Cloned John Muir's Sequoia (And 4 Other Intriguing Things)

November 6, 2013

1. Analyst Benedict Evans lays out the 73-slide case for the end of the Internet, media, and technology industries as we've known them. "Mobile is eating the...

5 Intriguing Things Like a Dog in an MRI Machine

November 5, 2013

1. People are putting dogs in MRI machines to determine if they love us like we love them. But will they love robots, too? "But [Emory University's Gregory]...