Category: author_name|Andrew Tarantola
Hitting the Books: Social media’s long, pointless war against sex on the internet
From the moment that people started getting nasty with Johannes Gutenberg’s newfangled printing press, sexually explicit content has led the way towards wide-scale adoption of mass communication technologies. But with every advance in methodology has invariably come a backlash — a moral panic here, a book burning there, the constant…
Read More
Water recycling technologies developed for space are helping a parched American west
Whether you live in the rapidly drying American West or are aboard the International Space Station for a six-month stint, having enough water to live on is a constant concern. As climate change continues to play havoc on the West’s aquifers, and as humanity pushes further into the solar system,…
Read More
Add ‘Diplomacy’ to the list of games AI can play as well as humans
Machine learning systems have been mopping the floor with their human opponents for well over a decade now (seriously, that first Watson Jeopardy win was all the way back in 2011), though the types of games they excel at are rather limited. Typically competitive board or video games using a…
Read More
Hitting the Books: How Dave Chappelle and curious cats made Roomba a household name
Autonomous vacuum maker iRobot is a lot like Tesla, not necessarily by reinventing an existing concept — vacuums, robots and electric cars all existed before these two companies came on the scene — but by imbuing their products with that intangible quirk that makes people sit up and take notice.…
Read More
Black market fears are hampering cannabis waste recycling efforts in California
As American cannabis has grown from cottage industry to $25 billion-a-year commercial enterprise that employs 428,059 folks nationwide, the product that weed has become now often bears little resemblance from the product that used to be sold raw. Flower, once delivered in sandwich bags, now arrives wrapped in child-safety-locked, plastic-lined…
Read More
Adaptive ‘high-definition’ headlights are just around the corner for American drivers
The first headlights to adorn automobiles weren’t all that much better than squinting real hard and hoping any cows in the road had the good sense to move out of your way. The dim light cast by early kerosene oil and acetylene gas lamps made most travel after dark a…
Read More