What's New

An electric car is a demanding thing. Sure, it doesn’t need gasoline or oil or nearly as much maintenance as a machine propelled by explosions, but dumping the internal combustion engine in favor of a battery and motors brings up a slew of fresh issues. Key among them, of course, is efficiency—the more miles you can squeeze from each kilowatt-hour, the better. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

That Johannes Gutenberg guy was on to something. He may not have been the first person to print texts on paper using movable type—systems in China and Korea predated his—but his printing press made it faster, and cheaper, to create a record of a thought. One by one, those thoughts spread across Europe, philosophy and science and poetry. They might have been a cause of the Renaissance, or simply a symptom, but ideas grew legs they'd never had before. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It was a rough week for Tesla’s share price. After bouncing back from a major dip it took when the Securities and Exchange Commission threatened to sue CEO Elon Musk, and him then agreeing to settle, it’s been on a new downward slide. And it seems to be because of Musk’s tweets, as usual. This time he appears to attack the SEC (calling it the Shortseller Enrichment Commision), and reserves his real ire for short sellers of Telsa stock themselves, as usual. https://twitter. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Early last year, Scott Blew was standing in line at a food truck in Los Angeles when he caught the glare of Fox News on a television out of the corner of his eye. This is ridiculous, he thought. He couldn’t even escape the deluge of the news, or the ubiquity of screens, on a jaunt outdoors to get lunch. You could consciously choose to put your phone away, to step away from your laptop, but then some other screen would pop up elsewhere, whether you liked it or not. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Approaching an 85-mph corner at 150 mph, I’m glad my stomach is calm and my bladder is empty. The Audi R8 GT4 race car has a surprising number of nooks and crannies to hold and hide any substances that may escape my body, and my brain has enough to think about already without working a hefty cleaning bill into my finances. I need all the mental bandwidth I can get because I’m tearing around the 24 turns of Southern California’s Thermal Club circuit. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Not sure what your curb has done for you lately? Not to worry. Your answer is arriving now, in the form of an equation devised by Uber and meant to help cities evaluate how efficiently they’re using this increasingly contested space. After years of neglect and scorn, this strip of urban infrastructure, long the sole domain of the meter maid, has gotten incredibly crowded. Bike- and scooter-share companies would love to park their wares there. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Department of Transportation is getting a little more creative about how it defines “driver,” Secretary Elaine Chao announced Thursday. In the third version of the department’s official stance on self-driving, the department said it would “adapt the definitions of ‘driver’ and ‘operator’ to recognize that such terms to not refer exclusively to a human, but may in fact include an automated system. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We need to change the way we talk about videogame studios. But even more than that, we need to change the way we talk about them when they close. In the past year, according to PC Gamer, 10 major game studios have closed, each employing anywhere from a dozen employees to hundreds. From Capcom Vancouver, the developers of the Dead Rising series, to Visceral, an EA subsidiary responsible for the Dead Space games and working on a highly anticipated Star Wars open-world game, studios keep shuttering. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The slow motion legal showdown between the feds, the state of California, and its climate-minded allies is on. While President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency works to roll back clean car regulations, California’s Air Resources Board convened late last week to pass a series of measures that confirm its determination to reduce vehicle emissions in the state, and its willingness to lead the fight—no matter what the federal government says. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Cruise, the self-driving car arm of General Motors, has an unexpected new ally in its bid to keep its corporate master at the forefront of an industry enduring its greatest period of change in generations: Honda. In a deal announced today, the Japanese automaker will help San Francisco-based Cruise and its Detroit owner develop and mass produce a new sort vehicle for a world in which human drivers are no longer needed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Snapchat launched in 2011, the app seemed like a flash-in-the-pan teen messaging fad. Its signature function—sending photo and video messages that would self-destruct after viewed—echoed the fugitive thrill of passing notes. Correspondences vanish before meddling grown-ups have time to intervene. That's changed in the past few years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When @sweden began its grand experiment in 2011, Twitter had never seemed more full of possibilities. In New York, Twitter served as a digital bulletin board to organize protesters at Occupy Wall Street. In the Middle East, tweets served as the roots of the Arab Spring. Companies signed on to engage with customers; celebrities made accounts to grow their fanbases. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first novel by YouTube star Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, is about a young woman named April who becomes an internet celebrity after posting video of a mysterious alien robot. She quickly discovers that being famous has a lot of downsides—something Green and his friends have learned the hard way. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There aren’t many ways to make traffic jams productive. You can make phone calls, listen to audio books, or practice your calming breathing exercises. But none of them help you escape the reality of being trapped in a metal box, surrounded by thousands of other metal boxes, all performing a dance forwards, slowly, foot by foot, across the asphalt. A Saudi Arabian inventor, Nasser Al Shawaf, decided he wanted the ability to do something useful with his hours in the car every day: exercise. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In early August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a fateful tweet: “Am considering taking Tesla public at $420. Funding secured.” On Saturday, two days after the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk for “false and misleading” statements made on Twitter, Musk, Tesla, and the feds reached a compromise—a settlement. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The irony of Elon Musk’s latest legal drama is grim. He wanted to take the car maker Tesla private, because he hates the bureaucracy, red tape, and regulation that comes with being a company owned by shareholders, traded on the stock market. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Amazon’s Forever debuted earlier this month, it announced itself with a kernel of discord hidden within. Viewers reaching the show’s sixth episode found it stripped of its main characters—June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen), a married couple trapped in unchanging circumstances—and instead angling its view in a different direction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What would it take for you to give up your car? An all-access pass to a bicycle, maybe, plus some safe lanes to ride it in? A smartphone, stocked with apps for cheap ride-hail services? A competent public transit system? A chauffeur, willing to drive you around instead? Lyft, the ride-hail company that has always said that its goal is to get more Americans out of their personal cars, would like to find out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a white and grey laboratory, where neat runs of orange cables on the walls provide a relief of color, a three-bladed propeller spins on the front of a Cessna “Iron Bird” test frame. It’s eerily quiet, free of the buzz you expect from a propeller-propelled aircraft. Just the whoosh of air, like a ceiling fan spinning at full speed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the early ’00s, few web endeavors seemed less bound for long-term glory than CollegeHumor.com. The site launched in 1999 as a video and sight-gag repository “dedicated to grinding your academic efforts to a halt.” Early on, that meant lots of bro-friendly distractions, like photos of students passed out on lawns/), naughtily titled JPEGs, and video series like “Husky Dave the Fat Guy”. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The arrival of iOS 12 means you can now use Apple's long-awaited suite of Screen Time tools. The new features, which appear under Settings > Screen Time, are designed to give you a better idea of how you're spending time on your phone and limit the time you spend on certain apps. It’s all part of a greater push by tech companies to mitigate the ways personal devices are engineered to be addictive, by creating all kinds of new “digital wellness” features. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Ole Kirk Kristiansen imported a newfangled contraption called a plastic-injection-­molding machine to Denmark in 1946, people thought he’d lost his mind. Kirk Kristiansen was a master carpenter who made wooden toys sold under the brand name Lego (abbreviated from leg godt, Danish for “play well”). The machine cost nearly 7 percent of the company’s annual revenue, but Kirk Kristiansen reckoned there was no limit to what he could manufacture with the new technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Cycle commuting is hot. Warm, at least. Depending on where you’re living. Each year, the League of American Bicyclists, a nationwide cycling advocacy organization, takes a look at the annual commuting numbers out of the American Community Survey. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Peter F. Hamilton, one of Britain’s leading science fiction authors, has been hard at work on his massive seven-volume Commonwealth series since 2003. His new novel Salvation, about a world where teleportation is cheap and easy, is a major change of pace. “It’s something I wanted to do as a writer, just to keep fresh,” Hamilton says in Episode 327 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon is all-in on Alexa, and this week, it revealed a new set of voice-enabled products ranging from a a wall clock to a doodad that goes in your car. The star and symbol for this bold new wave of Alexa devices? The AmazonBasics Microwave. At a glance, it looks identical to every other 700W microwave, but it has some new tricks. By touching the Alexa button on it, you can ping a nearby Echo speaker, which will let you tell the microwave what you want to cook. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Smash! Bang! Success! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the arm of the Department of Transportation charged with reducing the number of Americans killed on the road, yesterday released the results of the crash test for the Tesla Model 3: five stars in every category. The perfect score is a welcome ray of sunshine during a (tweet)stormy stretch for Tesla—just yesterday, Bloomberg reported the automaker’s supply chain manager has left the company. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Of the many acronyms engineers spend their lives internalizing, few are more valuable than KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Constrain the problem, reduce the variables, and make life as easy as possible when designing novel systems—like, say, a self-driving car. The world is a messy, complicated place. The less of it you need to solve, the closer you are to having a working product. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A handful of years ago, a small pharmaceutical company quietly acquired the rights to an old but commonly used antibiotic. Few noticed until last week, when the new owner did something that’s recently become common in the world of pharmaceuticals: It abruptly raised the price. A lot. The manufacturer is called Nostrum Laboratories, and the drug for which it hiked the price—by more than 400 percent—is called nitrofurantoin. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon is hosting a hardware launch event this morning at its Seattle headquarters, and has invited the press into the Spheres, Amazon’s urban botanical gardens, to show off the new products. It’s widely expected that Amazon will announce several new Alexa-equipped hardware products or device partnerships, adding to an already expansive line of Echos and other smart devices. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Far-right YouTube is the internet age equivalent of conservative talk radio: It’s a place for ultra-conservative commentators to react vehemently, personally, emotionally to the news of the day and the creeping horrors of American progressivism. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In downtown Chicago, near where the river meets the lake, the city gets a bad case of Escheritis. The streets double—sometimes triple!—into three dimensions, dropping below each other and folding around the basements and sub-basements of skyscrapers, cutting across the river on bridges hanging below other bridges, and eliding into drivable strata in ways that cities generally promise not to do. In Chicago, the multi-level streets of Wacker, Lake Shore Drive, Michigan Ave. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

WIRED ICON Anne Wojcicki, cofounder and CEO of 23andMe NOMINATES Keller Rinaudo, cofounder and CEO of Zipline Keller Rinaudo began his career as the cocreator of Romo, a tiny toy robot. But for the past five years his work has been, well, bloodier. His company, Zipline, uses autonomous planes to deliver medical supplies—vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and blood—to hard-to-reach places. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How true does my online persona have to be? I like to be really curated. But my significant other is very honest. Too honest if you ask me. Who’s right? Should we be our raw authentic selves, or strike a pose? This feels like a quintessential dilemma of the digital age, but artists and philosophers have been grappling over this one for centuries, really. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Changing notions of what customers want from cars have pushed automakers to do plenty of weird things. They’ve unmoored the driver’s seat from the left side of the car, revived the rotary engine, and turned windshields into screens. BMW, though, is most likely the first to put down carpeting in the cabin of a cargo jet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As Japan entered the 1960s, everything seemed to be in motion. Construction swept through Tokyo as the city prepared to host its first Olympic Games. The TÅkaidÅ Shinkansen, the original bullet train, sped along the southern coast of Honshu. More cars filled the roads. The only thing not moving, it seemed, were people’s legs. Prosperity fostered convenience, which encouraged inactivity—or so a doctor reportedly told the founder of Yamasa Tokei Keiki. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Every hurricane season, news reports divide the country’s coast into two camps. You’ve got the leavers, who brave miles-long traffic jams as they make for higher ground. And the stayers, defiantly boarding up windows, stockpiling provisions, and kicking back on their couches—that’s how their parents and grandparents did it, anyway. Like most dichotomies, it’s a false one. It ignores a third group: Those who want out and can’t. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Of the many challenges facing the nascent flying car industry, few turn more hairs gray than power. A heavier aircraft needs more power, which requires a bigger battery, which weighs more, thus making a heavier aircraft. You see the dilemma. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Wednesday, Apple introduced not one but three new phone models to the world: the iPhone Xs, Xs Max, and Xr. They all seem fine. But take note of what Apple took away. As of this week, it no longer sells the iPhone SE. Which in turn means the age of small smartphones has officially come to an end. When Apple debuted the iPhone SE in 2016, it was remarkable not just for its diminutive 4-inch screen size, but for its amped-up capabilities even given those constraints. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In today’s transportation landscape, opening the Lyft app on your phone is a sign of intent. It means that wherever you’re going, you’ve decided you won’t be biking, or walking, or taking the bus. Maybe you’ll share the ride with a stranger, but you’re definitely making the trip in a car. Lyft cofounder and president John Zimmer is trying to rejigger that timeline. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2012, North Carolina legislators passed a bill that barred policymakers and developers from using up-to-date climate science to plan for rising sea levels on the state’s coast. Now Hurricane Florence threatens to cause a devastating storm surge that could put thousands of lives in danger and cost the state billions of dollars worth of damage. The hurricane, which is expected to make landfall on Friday, is shaping up to be one of the worst storms to hit the East Coast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you've been to a club, festival, pool party, or bar mitzvah in the past few years and taken a peek at the DJ booth, you've seen somebody using Traktor. The widely beloved app, made by the Berlin company Native Instruments, lets a performer seamlessly mix together tracks from their MP3 library to make a non-stop, fluidly changing DJ set. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Snap's camera-enabled Spectacles get an update today with two new styles of frames. The new sunnies look less like the circular Spectacles of yore, and more like something a knock-off Anna Wintour might wear, were she interested in being on the other side of the paparazzo's lens. They come with all the capabilities of Snap’s second generation Spectacles: improved image quality, dual microphones, and water-resistant frames. A button on the left side controls video and still photo capture. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Of the growing numbers of US car buyers who go for SUVs and pickups, most do it because they look good, they have a nice high seating position, and they’re handy for that odd weekend they hit up Home Depot. Their cars will never get really dirty, or make use of their improved ground clearance, and off-road capabilities. There exists, however, a smaller class of buyers who really need those capabilities—and then some. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The thing to remember about Elon Musk smoking a blunt with Joe Rogan is not that he took just one hit, or that he didn’t seem to know what a blunt was, or that he whiffed on an opportunity to show off just how useful his “not a flamethrower” can be. It’s that it came 130 minutes into his two-and-a-half-hour interview with Rogan, for the former Fear Factor host’s podcast, livestreamed on YouTube. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Government sclerosis is no match for the hot take industrial complex. Since President Trump ordered the Department of Defense to prepare for a sixth military branch in June—an order that has stalled, since it requires congressional approval—the debate over this proposed Space Force has become so clouded by partially-informed, mostly-partisan rhetoric, there’s barely enough light for an honest appraisal. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus, is a big fan of science fiction, and includes an entire chapter about it in his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. “Today science fiction is the most important artistic genre,” Harari says in Episode 325 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you are, say, over the age of three, chances are someone has told you not to climb into a van, parked in an alley, with a bunch of strangers. But this was for science, mom, and the very nice trio that beckoned a reporter within turned out to be rather entrepreneurial spirits, who just want to create a good night’s sleep. A good night’s sleep in any context, really, but especially for the 23 passengers they hope to pack into bus rollicking down a California freeway. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Adam Fincham is trying to make waves with a Tupperware full of agave and an avocado. Internal waves, specifically—the kind that exist in stratified fluid. Fincham is standing at a metal chef’s table in the kitchen at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, in toasty Lemoore, California. A chef is in the kitchen preparing salmon grain bowls for the assemblage of pro surfers hanging around outside, but Fincham is intent on his own concoction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

To commemorate Nike’s 30th anniversary of its iconic “Just do it” campaign, the sportswear goliath on Monday released a series of striking black-and-white ads featuring tennis champion Serena Williams, pro-skateboarder Lacey Baker, and NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. Its most controversial placard, though, was a close-up image of former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick overlaid with the message: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Because I work from home, and because my dogs are the best dogs, we are in contact all day, every day. We're a three-headed, ten-legged Hydra, rotating around each other as we move from my office to the living room to the kitchen. Whatever I do, they're usually there too—whether that's sleeping at night, pacing around my living room, or feeding my kids. And unfortunately, whatever happens to me, usually happens to them too. Last night, a friend saw my dogs after a long absence. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices