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When Ole Witt showed up at the police department in Jaipur, India asking if he could take some pictures of the office, an official in charge told him it would be no problem—Witt would just need to wait a few minutes. Until then, he could take a seat. Maybe have a chai. "In the end," Witt says, “He made me wait 14 hours." Thankfully, that impressive display of slow-moving bureaucracy was precisely what Witt had come to photograph. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

OnePlus is an odd duck in the smartphone business. It tends to make one phone at a time with a simple and clear goal: to pack all the latest trends and tech into an Android phone that costs about $500. It doesn’t waste time developing a ton of custom features, like LG’s crazy AI-powered camera, nor does it make any effort to woo U.S. wireless carriers. If you want a OnePlus phone, you have to buy it unlocked, directly from OnePlus. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The sun has burned through the early morning marine layer, and the breeze is gentle and warm enough for me to abandon my hoodie. It looks like a perfect day to head out onto the Pacific Ocean. But as soon as we exit the harbor walls at Marina Del Rey, near Los Angeles, the 29-foot sport-fishing boat starts to heave. “We have some great waves out here today,” says Kelsey Albina, one of my guides for the day. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You don’t look for the essence of a city in its monuments or its museums. You look for it in its streets, where the covenant at the core of urban life—the sharing of space—plays out. For the past century, the personal car has dominated that arena, shaping the streets and environments around it. Roads are straight and wide for faster travel; intersections are regulated to protect distracted humans; businesses are located near open spaces for better parking. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, the Senate voted 52–47 to revive an Obama administration rule ensuring equal treatment for online traffic—the so-called “net neutrality” rule recently erased by the Trump FCC. But the vote wasn't really about "net neutrality." Instead, it was a deeply political, bipartisan call—three Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, signed on—for internet freedom writ large. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Two years later, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what was so enjoyable about the first Deadpool movie. Was it the action? The fourth-wall-breaking? The swearing? The cocaine and masturbation jokes? Well ... yes. A hard-R bloodbath that gleefully polluted the pristine sea of squeaky-clean superhero movies, Deadpool went on to make more than $783 million worldwide at the box office. It was the kind of success that guarantees a sequel. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Among the (many, many) things you probably do not know about juggling is the fact that it is, at times, a physically grueling act. It's something I certainly failed to appreciate before meeting Alex Barron. We recently met at a squash court in Burbank, California so I could watch him practice his craft. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Recording a phone call used to require an external gadget that connected a digital recorder to a desk phone's base and handset. It's still one of the most reliable ways to capture a conversation, but it's not exactly convenient. These days, smartphone apps and cloud services make recording phone calls easy and convenient—whether you want to save a conversation with grandma, or a particularly candid conversation with a White House official. There are a couple of ways you can do it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the past six months, on a patch of desert ranchland outside Marfa, Texas, one man's mysterious vision has been taking shape. First, nine massive chunks of quarried black marble were trucked in from northern Mexico and craned into a circular formation, echoing Stone and Bronze Age erections in the British Isles. Next, one of the megaliths, the "king stone," was outfitted with a state-of-the-art solar array; at the same time, the other eight were carved to integrate LED lights and speakers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The modern car has a problem. Over the past decade, automakers have raced to offer their smartphone-addled customers a bonanza of features: navigation, texting, phone calls, satellite radio, Bluetooth, ways to check tire pressure and oil temperature, suspension settings, charging status, and more. Then they try to stick all those things into an interface whose users are usually pretty busy—driving the 2-ton metal boxes that kill nearly 40,000 people in the US every year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Between Silicon Valley’s disruption-happy tech giants and Detroit’s suddenly totally on board automakers, it’s easy to think of America as the center of the self-driving universe. And so it seems a bit backwards that Audi has decided to release the world’s most capable semiautonomous driving feature in … Europe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What’s the shiniest, most exciting new technology for transportation? Well, there are plenty of candidates! We’ve got the self-­driving car and drones big enough to carry people. Elon Musk is getting ready to bore hyperloop tunnels. When it comes to moving humans around, the future looks to be merging with sci-fi. But from where I stand, the most exciting form of transportation technology is more than 100 years old—and it’s probably sitting in your garage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I never should have started watching Westworld. Not because I didn’t think it’d be good. An HBO show based on a Michael Crichton idea starring Evan Rachel Wood with all kinds of artificial intelligence? Sign me up! The problem wasn’t that Westworld wouldn’t be enjoyable, it was that it’s the kind of show that invites obsession. The kind that presents Big Questions—that never get answered. I worried, essentially, that it was going to be the next Lost. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first time I wore the HTC Vive, it was like putting on a century-old metal diving suit. It was a heavy, hideous-looking 3D-printed early unit with a thick bundle of cords streaming out the back. It was so delicate that one of the developers had to hold the cables them so I could walk around without breaking it (or myself). Looks aren’t everything, though. That prototype Vive sent me down to the bottom of the ocean to walk around for the first time and let me stare a blue whale in the eye. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Friday, for the first time in four years, Amazon has raised the price of its Prime benefits program. What once cost $99 annually now costs $119 for new members; existing Prime subscriptions will get bumped whenever they renew, starting June 16. But while nobody likes a 20 percent hike, it's a good reminder that Amazon Prime is as worth it as you want it to be. If past is prologue, the price change won’t inspire many people to cancel their Prime accounts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you were asked to name the craziest thing that ever happened to an Aston Martin inside a laboratory, you’d likely invoke some witty repartee between James Bond and Q. But that’s only because you don’t know how Aston’s engineering department developed the roof for the 2018 DB11 Volante. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Wind is the worst. It messes up hair, it blows stuff in eyes, and most famously and rudely of all, one time it made a bridge in Washington twist and undulate until it exploded. Alright, maybe that was the fault of the engineers, not the wind. But still, strong gusts have the potential to threaten many technologies, including a new one: drones. If you’ve ever taken a quadcopter out on a windy day, you know the struggle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2014, a Rolling Stone poll declared Bob Dylan’s "Masters of War" the best protest song of our time. Recorded in April of 1963, during that fierce spell of racial and economic tumult, Dylan, in his folksy pragmatism, rages against the Cold War and the military industrial complex. "You play with my world/ Like it’s your little toy," he sings. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Everyone from the ACLU to the Koch brothers wants to reduce the number of people in prison and in jail. Liberals view mass incarceration as an unjust result of a racist system. Conservatives view the criminal justice system as an inefficient system in dire need of reform. But both sides agree: Reducing the number of people behind bars is an all-around good idea. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

TickTock has run out of time. Don’t fret if you don’t know what that is—after all, the startup launched just a year ago. But in that time the company cycled through four different consumer robot concepts in the hopes of shaping the future of the home, moving beyond simpleton Roombas to truly intelligent machines. After TickTock's collapse, though, co-founder and ex-Googler Ryan Hickman is talking candidly about what it’s like to build an unwanted robot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s not even that good a play on words: May the Fourth Be With You. That’s all it takes to have a holiday? A pun? The joke at least has been around almost as long as Star Wars itself; official Star Wars doctrine traces the etymology to an ad congratulating Margaret Thatcher on the day she won the election to become Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, just two years after the first movie premiered. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week was so busy that we barely got to talk about failed Senate candidate Roy Moore filing a lawsuit claiming sexual misconduct allegations against him threw off his 2017 campaign. There also wasn't much time to talk about Stormy Daniels suing President Trump for defamation, or Paul Ryan’s surreal war with the House Chaplin, or even the fact that there’s a volcano erupting in Hawaii. Seriously. It’s been a helluva week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Westworld watchers, we knew this moment was coming. The second season's third episode, "Virtù e Fortuna," opens not in Westworld but in an India-themed park. Where Westworld is an emblem of the colonization of Native American land, this park represents Britain's takeover of the subcontinent, and the racial-social hierarchy is clearly encoded: Women in saris and men in turbans—the hosts—walk amidst people dressed in turn-of-the-20th-century British garb. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The month-long launch window for NASA’s new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet’s soil—effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It’s also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, and it may not be the last. InSight isn’t a rover, like Curiosity or Opportunity, but a stationary lander. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Toys and Star Wars are inextricably linked forever and ever. Star Wars creator George Lucas famously waived part of his directing fee and retained the insanely lucrative rights to Star Wars merchandise in a deal that has gone down in history as a catastrophic blunder on the part of 20th Century Fox. The studio was skeptical this oddball space movie would resonate with audiences, even if its critters, spaceships, and memorable villains seem like obvious toys in hindsight. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If what technologists say is true, then at some point in the not-so-distant future we'll be unburdened of our phones and will experience augmented reality through smart glasses instead. For now, though, we're still standing en masse, pointing our phones at an unremarkable wall at a convention center in San Jose, California, all for the chance to see a simple AR animation. That's how the future was being represented this week at F8, anyway. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Few things in this world are as exhausting as interacting with humans. You’ve got to maintain eye contact (ugh) and watch for subtle body language (ugh) and pay attention the whole time (ugh). And if you think that’s tough, wait until you start interacting with robots, which aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer just yet. It’s going to be hell. That is unless, of course, a particular breed of roboticist can get humans and machines to form a strange new kind of bond. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last weekend Avengers: Infinity War made more than $640 million at the global box office—and at least $258 million of that came from domestic theaters, a number that easily bests previous record holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is relevant for two reasons: One, holy crap that’s a lot of money. Two, it means we can finally talk about this movie freely since pretty much anyone who wanted to see it has now done so, apparently. That’s good; there’s a lot to discuss. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This afternoon, Elon Musk will get on the phone with Tesla's investors. He will field their questions about Model 3 production numbers, cash flow, the possibility of profitability, maybe even where he sleeps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Close observers of Apple’s networking products—surely they exist—know that the company hasn’t updated its Airport line of Wi-Fi routers since 2013. That’s so many iPhones ago! This week, the company made it official: It will no longer churn out Airport Express, Extreme, or Time Capsule routers. Rather than mourn the end of an era, take the chance to give your home Wi-Fi a boost with one of these newer, better alternatives. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Each time a volunteer editor adds a new fact to one of Wikipedia's over 44 million articles, they're required to cite where they learned it. The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the encyclopedia, became interested in what kinds of sources editors rely on the most. A recent study conducted by the organization revealed something fascinating: A single academic paper, published by three Australian researchers in 2007, has been cited by Wikipedia editors over 2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Some movies are obvious hits. Like, for example, Avengers: Infinity War, which made a record-breaking $258 million at the domestic box office last weekend, filling seats and the pockets of Marvel Studios parent company Disney. But not every summer—or spring, or fall—blockbuster has the benefit of 10 years and 18 movies of built-up audience goodwill. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mary Rickert’s short story collection You Have Never Been Here is one of the most disturbing books of recent years, with many of the stories touching on the abduction or victimization of children. Unsurprisingly, Rickert says she has a longstanding interest in true crime stories. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Don’t look now, but the next computing platform is coming. It won't be a phone, or a laptop, or a miniputer you wear on your wrist. It will be a pair of glasses that upend the way you communicate, find information, and view the world around you. Want a glimpse of that future? Take a look through Snap’s Spectacles. Hold up. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the world of automotive propulsion, the hierarchy of complication goes something like this: Pure electric cars are simple; internal combustion engines, with many more parts and those explosions, are complex. Hybrids, which make the two work in concert, are extra complex. Honda’s Clarity Plug-In Hybrid calls for a new category: so-complex-it-makes-your-head-spin. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Kratos, the star of the God of War series of action games, is a bad man. Devised as an ersatz Achilles edgy enough for gaming in the mid-00s, all anger and very little pathos, the one-time god and long-time god-killer is one of the biggest dicks in the medium. He had a family, once; he murdered them. He was a womanizing, cruel, monstrous hero. Over three games, he single-handedly slaughtered the entire Greek pantheon, destroying everyone and everything who got in his way. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Am I enjoying these Beats too much? I’ve asked myself that question a few times in the last couple weeks. For years, I’ve listened to audiophiles rail against Beats by Dre headphones, saying they were all style, no substance. For the money, they just didn’t sound very good and put too much emphasis on a bass-heavy sound. Sure enough, the first thing I noticed about the Beats Studio3 Wireless was that low, heavy sound signature. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

While Google rightly gets a lot of flack for its scattered approach to messaging, its to-do list offerings have been a close second for sprawling, scrambled efforts. There's Google Keep, a note-taking app; Google Reminders, which nag you about Calendar events, email follow-ups, or Keep notes; and Google Tasks, which originated in Gmail nearly a decade ago as a stripped-down to-do list feature. None of these services have historically played particularly nice together. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the second season of Handmaid’s Tale, everything is different. It has to be. For one, the first season's plot burned through almost all of its source material, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel of the same name. For another, the inaugural season was filmed during the 2016 election cycle—a time when many thought America might be on the way to its first female presidency—and Season 2 was written and filmed entirely during the administration of President Donald Trump. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s a tedious task you've been putting off for what could be years. But the moment has come: You're going to clean your computer inside and out. That means scrubbing down those keys and wiping the fossilized fingerprints off your screen. It also means deleting all the files you secretly downloaded when you were trying to figure out how to make a GIF, and finally tidying up your feeds on social media. You Will Need Before doing anything, you need to turn off your device. Unplug it as well. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Fake news is hardly new news, but over the past couple years it's found a new home across social media and other news aggregators. And, perhaps, not surprisingly, people's trust of the news isn't at an all-time high. But people have also started paying more attention to the news, at least in the US. The Pew Research Center reports that last year more Americans followed the news "very closely" than the number of people who said they did in 2016. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A favorite motif of Westworld is the shattering of its heroes. Bernard isn’t only a thoughtful-yet-murderous host, he’s Arnold! Then there’s gallant, love-struck William—oh wait, he’s the Man in Black! Sweet, all-suffering Dolores—crap, she’s also the crazy killer Wyatt. Season 2 of the futuristic drama is no different. But this time the reversal is on a grander scale. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nestled among giant fish tanks at the California Academy of Sciences, there's a black box—just big enough to hold six aquariums and maybe five humans. What it lacks in size, though, it makes up for in preciousness: Running here is a experiment that could help save corals from annihilation. The corals in these tanks are reproducing sexually. Which is weird, because even out in the wild, coral spawning is a fragile process, easily disrupted by changes in temperature and acidity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The duck face, the fish gape, the smize—these are just a few of the time-honored poses that celebrities, influencers, and the Instagram-happy masses have relied upon to create perfect selfies. But a lot has changed since the early aughts, when people first started training their smartphone lenses on themselves. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Facebook is massive. Six million advertisers use Facebook's vast data holdings to perfectly target ads reaching more than 1.4 billion daily (and 2.1 billion monthly) active users, amounting to almost 40 percent of the global internet population. That enormous user base forms a castle wall around Facebook’s core ad business, because few other companies can promise the same level of return for ad spends. It's trendy this month to call on the US government to rein in Facebook. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a hallway of an engineering building at Stanford University, some devilish researchers have built a sprawling obstacle course. To make it through, competitors have to wind over sand, through a door, up some steps, and finally, through a forest of small pillars. Sounds like the Rube Goldbergian machinations of an grad student with too much time and Red Bull on their hands, but no: This is a robot training ground. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you've seen old-timey photos of aviation in the early decades of the jet age and wondered where all the glamour went, you've been flying economy. When airlines change the back of the plane, it's usually to pack in more passengers or install something you can give them money to enjoy. For those who turn left as they board, life aloft is swankier than ever. But last week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, economy fliers got a bit of good, if not quite glamorous, news. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Most people spend very little time thinking about the terms of service that govern life online. The agreement appears in a flash, we affirm that "I agree to the terms of service," and then it's all quickly forgotten. Until, of course, something goes wrong. Last week, when Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to defend Facebook, more than one senator pointed to the company's terms of service. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you're in the mood for shopping, this is a great, great week. Especially if you're awaiting a juicy tax refund, why not treat yourself to something you probably need? Nintendo's Labo kits come out this Friday and are currently available for pre-order. You can learn more about the kits, which we love, and how to order them, here Our friends at TechBargains have also found our favorite robot vacuum, the iRobot Roomba 690, on sale. Read on for more great tech deals. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tell people you’re vacationing in a trailer (or a caravan, if you’re in Europe), and you might get a snobbish raised eyebrow. Tell them you’re striking out for freedom in an Airstream, and you’ll get envious glares. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices