To feed the world in 2050 we need to build the plants that evolution didn’t
Synthetic biology can help agriculture adapt to a changing world. ShutterstockWe need to revolutionise agriculture in the next 30 years. In 2050 we may have almost 10 billion people to feed. Farmland is already degraded by existing agriculture, and climate...
Legion’s Noah Hawley Will Direct the Next Star Trek Film
It looks like Star Trek 4 isn’t quite dead yet. Deadline (via io9) reports that Noah Hawley, director of Lucy in the Sky and creator of FX’s Legion is in “final talks” to write and direct the next installment of...
Why Tokenized Projects Are Building on Bitcoin
Bitcoin is something you hodl. Ethereum is something you build on. At least that has long been the official narrative, with projects favoring dedicated smart contract networks over Bitcoin for spinning out dapps and second layer solutions. Like all crypto...
Make the study of economics “more sexy”: Chris Bowen
Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen, who has previously been shadow treasurer and before that treasurer, wants the study of economics made “more sexy” to attract more students, especially women, to study it. And he thinks young people’s concerns about climate change...
Sleeps With Monsters: Optimism and (Game)Change
When I first heard about L.X. Beckett’s debut novel, the near-future science fiction sprawling cross between espionage thriller, family saga and romance that is Gamechanger, I wasn’t that excited. The cover copy is decidedly bland compared to the contents—so I...
Instead of showing leadership, Twitter pays lip service to the dangers of deep fakes
Neural networks can generate artificial representations of human faces, as well as realistic renderings of actual people. ShutterstockFake videos and doctored photographs, often based on events such as the Moon landing and supposed UFO appearances, have been the subject of...
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Series Is Getting a Second Season
Amazon’s upcoming Middle-earth series is still years away from debuting on the company’s streaming service, but it’s already granted the series an early second season renewal, according to Deadline. The news isn’t a huge surprise: when Amazon initially acquired the...
Don’t (just) blame echo chambers. Conspiracy theorists actively seek out their online communities
The term illuminati has been used since the late 15th century, and applied to various groups since then. It's often discussed by conspiracy theorists, and is heavily referenced in pop-culture. Lettuce./Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDWhy do people believe conspiracy theories? Is it...
Researcher Breaks Mimblewimble, Deanonymizing 96% of Grin Transactions
The Mimblewimble privacy technology used by cryptocurrencies such as Beam and Grin is broken. That’s the claim of researcher Ivan Bogatyy who has published a report documenting his findings. In it, he reveals how he was able to deanonymize 96%...
Marvel’s Runaways Gets Season 3 Trailer, Cancelletion
We have some good news and bad news for Runaway fans. Bad news? The series will end with its upcoming third season. Good news? Hulu has just released a trailer for that final season. The series is based on the...
‘I’m Leaving It to the Artists to Create This Thing’: Swizz Beatz on His Mysterious New App for Letting Creatives Sell Their Own Art
No Commission, the nomadic art fair and music festival founded by Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean that lets artists keep 100 percent of the proceeds from their sales, is on hiatus this year. But the esteemed hip-hop producer and art patron will still...
Humans light 85% of bushfires, and we do virtually nothing to stop it
It’s hard to comprehend why someone would deliberately light a bushfire. Yet this behaviour regularly occurs in Australia and other countries. We would go a long way to preventing bushfires if we better understood this troubling phenomenon. Experts estimate about...
Watchmen Offers Us a Squid Pro Quo
This week’s Watchmen, “Little Fear of Lightning”, gives us backstory on Looking Glass, as well as a LOT of worldbuilding. It’s my favorite episode so far. Last Week, On Watchmen: So let me begin with a confession: I utterly missed...
Turn down for what? Why you turn down the radio when you’re trying to park your car
When you're looking for a destination, you might need to cut down the volume ShutterstockYou’re driving down an unfamiliar street on a clear spring evening. You’ve been invited to a friend of a friend’s party, at a house you’ve never...
IRS Dispels Crypto Tax Confusion
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cleared up some confusion about how cryptocurrency transactions are taxed, particularly regarding like-kind exchanges and promotional airdrops. As the tax agency intensifies its enforcement efforts, more people are seeking the best tax software...
The main problem with virtual reality? It’s almost as humdrum as real life
Virtual horse racing, at a real racecourse? Zero points for imagination. Rachel Grey/AAP ImageJust a few years ago, virtual reality (VR) was being showered with very real money. The industry raised an estimated US$900 million in venture capital in 2016,...
Bitcoin Cash Community Funds Eatbch Trip to Ghana
This week members of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community donated funds to Eatbch South Sudan volunteer Thiong Deng so he could spread the word about the benefits of BCH at the Young African Leaders Summit. According to Deng, his journey...
The Mandalorian′s Werner Herzog Would NOT Let Them Take [REDACTED] Away From Him
Don′t you dare try to take [AWESOME NEW CHARACTER] away from Werner Herzog! Disney dropped the second episode of The Mandalorian on Disney+ today, and we got a bit more of a sense of what the show’s titular character is...
The Crypto Companies Reinventing the Wallet
You wouldn’t think there was much to improve about cryptocurrency wallets. Save for a few UX improvements here and there, what’s to reinvent? A surprising amount, it turns out. This year has seen a resurgence in wallet investment and innovation,...
Why Did the US Deny Kurdish Artist Zehra Doğan’s Visa? She Doesn’t Know—and She’s Not the Only One Affected
The Kurdish artist and journalist Zehra Doğan, who was imprisoned for nearly three years for making art that offended the Turkish government, was denied entry to the US last month when she attempted to attend the opening of a show at the Drawing...