The craze for cryptocurrency can be explained by a host of factors: the allure of getting rich quick; the attraction of off-the-grid accountancy for malefactors like tax evaders and drug dealers (though Bitcoin is traceable); the glamour of the new. Despite blockchain currencies’ wild volatility thus far, I’d still posit that the more underlying attraction is to a reliable store of value. Bitcoin investors may not recognise their motivation as such, but the impulse behind computer-generated ...

The age of the B-list superhero is upon us. This weekend, DC Entertainment's "Aquaman" hit the coveted $1 billion mark in global box-office receipts after less than a month — with Marvel Cinematic Universe's "Black Panther" already topping that watermark in 2018. Taken together, those 2 films underscore how the next wave of superhero movies are being steadily reshaped by lesser-known heroes who are resonating with audiences, in the process becoming vanguards of th...

More than half of people who take medical cannabis for chronic pain say they’ve driven under the influence of cannabis within two hours of using it, at least once in the last six months, according to a new study. One in five of them said they’d driven while ‘very high’ in the past six months, researchers from the University of Michigan Addiction Center report in the journal Drug & Alcohol Dependence .

Like many, I’ve been watching the developments in Boca Chica, Texas, with great interest. SpaceX, one of Elon Musk’s companies, is building the “Starship Hopper,” a shorter and simpler version of a spacecraft that could revolutionize space travel. Seeing images of the mostly complete test vehicle, clad in shiny stainless steel, makes me feel like a kid again. These are exciting times to be alive. We are at the beginning stages of the electric car revolution. We have access to much of the...

Google (Alphabet Inc.) has reportedly blacklisted keywords mentioning Ethereum (ETH) on its advertising platform Google Ads, smart contract auditing startup Decenter tweeted on Jan. 10. The official Google Ads account replied to the tweet stating that cryptocurrency exchanges targeting the United States

On Jan. 1, just two days before Coachella co-founder Paul Tollett was set to announce Kanye West as one of the stars headlining the desert festival, West sprung a last-minute surprise on the concert promoter. Instead of performing on the main Coachella stage, West asked Tollett to construct a giant, custom-built dome in the middle of the festival grounds. The dome would be designed by West collaborator and set designer John McGuire.

To say that Mike Posner's career is unpredictable is an understatement. In 2010, his debut song, "Cooler Than Me," hit the charts worldwide, and to date has sold more than two million copies in the United States. But not long after the success of that hit, Mike Posner's career stalled, so he decided to take that time to co-write with other artists like Justin Bieber, the producer Avicii and Maroon 5.

A British hacker whose cyberattacks took the nation of Liberia offline has been jailed for almost three years. Daniel Kaye launched a series of attacks on Liberian cell phone operator Lonestar in October 2015, which became so powerful they knocked out the west African country's internet the following year. Kaye, 30, had been hired to carry out the attacks by a senior employee at rival operator Cellcom, Britain's National Crime Agency said in a statement, although there is no suggestion...

Maintained a 7 day login streak 100/100 times! Congratulations TNY on this achievement!

Oh Costco, you’ve truly outdone yourself this time. The wholesale store just figured out a way to make sure you will never run out of mac and cheese again: sell it in a 27-lb. tub. You read that correctly, 27 lbs. That’s as much as about 100 baseballs, half a bale of hay or your average 3-year-old child. The Chef’s Banquet Macaroni and Cheese Storage Bucket now sold at Costco holds 180 servings of the fan-favorite meal.

If there’s one thing holding us back from exploring space, it’s fuel. It’s bulky. It’s heavy. And probes must carry their own supply. When that runs out, their lights go out. But what if every asteroid represented a potential pit-stop? The issue of powering craft through space won’t go away. Solar panels can provide all the electricity a space probe needs. But, if it wants to move, it must also have a propellant.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is beginning another six-year term in office as the country is plagued by a crippling economic crisis and mass exodus. Violence, hunger, medicine shortages, along with mass inflation has resulted in millions leaving Venezuela resulting in one of the biggest mass displacements in the history of Latin America. Mr Maduro, 56, was re-elected in May 2018 in a poll boycotted by the majority of the opposition paired with international scepticism over the vote.

Astronomers have revealed details of mysterious signals emanating from a distant galaxy, picked up by a telescope in Canada. The precise nature and origin of the blasts of radio waves is unknown. Among the 13 fast radio bursts, known as FRBs, was a very unusual repeating signal, coming from the same source about 1.5 billion light years away.

New research sheds light on how the desire to hide one’s imperfections from others can lead to alcohol-related problems. The findings appear in the Journal of Research in Personality. “Broadly speaking, perfectionism is a risk factor for a lot of psychopathology, specifically anxiety, depression, and eating disorders,” said study author Sean P. Mackinnon of Dalhousie University.

This month, we are all tentatively dipping our toes into the New Year, wondering what horrors and highlights might await us in 2019 — the year that served as a setting, you may remember, for Blade Runner, Akira, and Running Man, three of the most iconic future-casting movies ever made and now divergent choose-your-own-dystopia visions of the years ahead (perhaps some more plausible than others).

The family of a Florida man who died in a high-speed accident involving a Tesla has sued the automaker, alleging that his Tesla's battery was defective and that the company was negligent when it removed a speed governor on the car. According to the lawsuit, Edgar Monserratt v. Tesla—which was filed Tuesday in Broward County court—Monserratt's 18-year-old son was a front-seat passenger in a 2014 Tesla S being driven by another person, Barrett Riley.

If a future of relentless fires, droughts, superstorms and rising sea levels makes you feel like you need a strong caffeinated beverage, there is some bad news: climate change is coming for the world’s coffee beans. Greg Meenahan, the partnership director at the non-profit institute World Coffee Research, puts it this way: “Demand for coffee is expected to double by the year 2050 and, if nothing is done, more than half of the world’s suitable coffee land will be pushed into unsuitability d...

Increasing the yield of crop plants is a major facet of increasing food security, and one way to do this is from understanding plant biology which begins with the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis, popularly termed as the “green engine of the earth”, is the process by which plants convert light energy into chemical energy that is later released to fuel the plant activities such as growth. If we want to keep the planet and its growing population running in a sustainable way, we will ...

Reddit user MC_Pitman has spent the past year revamping terrain generation in Minecraft and, judging by the results in the image above (make sure you click in the top-right to go full screen), it's time well spent. The aim of the project was to make terrain regeneration look "more natural and realistic...more like a generated landscape than a bunch of individual biomes", they said on Reddit.

Serial phone leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer has partnered with Indian tech site Digit to release some new renderings claimed to be of the next-generation...

There is a tendency for institutions that missed the warning signs before the last financial crisis to over-cook their doomsayer’s warnings as they consider the potential for another one. The International Monetary Fund leads a group of gloomy forecasters that worry about the stability of the global economy amid rising debt levels and slowing GDP growth. How long, they ask, can the expansion seen since the last crash go on before another recession hits?

Anne ‘Honey’ Langtree was unique in music in the 60s. She was a drummer. Honey has died after a battle with breast cancer at the age of 75.

2018 was a year that started off with a lot of promise for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, but it turned into a protracted nightmare after a few short months. Nocoiners once again come out of the woodwork to declare that Bitcoin is dead and that all the cryptocurrency nonsense is over, once and for all. However, Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings has a different take on where cryptocurrency is headed in 2019 and beyond.

Picture a system that makes decisions with huge impacts on a person’s prospects – even decisions of life and death. Imagine that system is complex and opaque: it sorts people into winners and losers, but the criteria by which it does so are never made clear. Those being assessed do not know what data the system has gathered about them, or with what data theirs is being compared. And no one is willing to take responsibility for the system’s decisions – everyone claims to be fulfilling the...

CES 2019 is upon us, and The Verge is headed back to Las Vegas to bring you all of the news from the gadget-filled electronics show next week. This year’s conference is shaping up to be more of an iterative event; we should see plenty of improvements to existing services and products like PCs and smart home devices, but no major overhauls or groundbreaking gadgets are expected this time around. Expect to see more folding phones, more devices with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant built in, and...