It used to be that when you got together with friends to play a game of cards, you opened a new deck (or an old one that’s been used many, many times), and played the old standbys like poker, euchre, rummy or one of the other many possibilities out there. …

  Your heating and cooling system is the biggest energy hog in your home, accounting for almost half your total energy costs.[1] The money you spend on utilities rises dramatically in the summer and winter months when temperature control sees the highest use. Winter can be especially problematic, as heating …

Google’s line of Pixel phones is known mostly for what they take away. They proudly ship with stock Android rather than the “optimized” variants that companies like Samsung ship. They receive regular security updates to ensure fewer long-lasting security bugs, though Google has taken steps to improve the update situation …

Any time a new product launches, you can guarantee that related forums will carry at least a certain load of problem posts from end users whose initial experience with the device is anything but good. It can be genuinely difficult to parse out what constitutes a ‘real’ problem as opposed …

When Red announced its first smartphone with a holographic display, it raised a lot of eyebrows. Red is a company known for its cameras, not its smartphones. It promised a cutting-edge holographic display and debuted with an aggressive PR pitch that saddled the phone with impossibly high promises. Red promised …

Apple flew from Cupertino to Brooklyn (my hometown!) to take over the entire block surrounding BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for the introduction of some new Macs and iPad Pros. The new Macs, in particular, were long-awaited — the Mac lineup, taken in sum total and aside from the …

Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists have uncovered a 1,700-year-old floor mosaic at the city of Lod (ancient Lydda). The newly-discovered mosaic floor of a Roman-era villa. Image credit: Niki Davidov, Israel Antiquities Authority. In 1996, a routine archaeological inspection carried out in Lod and the subsequent rescue excavations, directed by the …

Microbial communities associated with indoor dust abound in the built environment. The transmission of sunlight through windows is a key building design consideration, but the effects of light exposure on dust communities remain unclear. In a new study published in the journal Microbiome, scientists found that in dark rooms 12% …

Today, fewer than 4,000 free-ranging tigers survive in the wild, covering only 7% of their historical range. Efforts to protect these animals have been stymied by uncertainty about whether they comprise six, five, or two subspecies. Now, researchers who’ve analyzed the complete genomes of 32 representative specimens confirm that tigers …

On October 28, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the Brazilian elections, after one of the most polarizing campaigns of the last decades. For months before the result, the economy was destabilized by an unpredictable race during which Mr. Bolsonaro was stabbed during a rally and the main challenger, center-left candidate …