Top Reads
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How a Career Con Man Led a Federal Sting That Cost Google $500 Million
For three months, the operation plodded along. Whitaker and the agents worked 10-hour days and blew through their budgets. Reich wasn’t satisfied. There are, and have long been, strong First Amendment protections for Internet service providers, users, and third-party publishers—and Reich was concerned that Google could claim a free speech defense. Nobody had ever launched an investigation like this before; he and the Feds had to exhaust every possible option, fend off any likely objection. That’s why the phone conversations had to…
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Top 10 Computer Tricks Every Geek Should Know
We've talked before about the things every computer user should know how to do, but we geeks are special: we want to go above and beyond, to explore every nook and cranny of our system and make…
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In the Programmable World, All Our Objects Will…
The third and final stage is to build applications on top of these connected objects. This means not just tying together the behavior of two or more objects—like the sprinkler and the moisture sensor—but creating complex…
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The Scientific 7-Minute Workout
Fitness Tracker Marathon, half-marathon, 10k and 5K training plans to get you race ready. The Well Quiz: Gulp! How much do you know about the amazing things that go on in your gut?
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Dead Man’s Float
Illustration by Dienststelle 75 (Photo: Angie Smith (Ash); Michael Price (Seth and Filomena Tobias); Henry Arden/Zefa/Corbis(Body)) It ended in the pool. The whole tragic cartoon. That…
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A House Divided
At apartheid’s end, the dorms of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein were integrated.At first it went well, then the students chose to resegregate. A story of the…
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How To Listen When Someone is Venting
Even the most level-headed among us deal with anger and frustration at some point. A common reaction? Venting. We've all done it. But what's the best way to handle being on the receiving end of…
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Greetings from Gun Valley
LENNY LARIVEE has spent 68 percent of his 69 years on this planet doing the same thing: making guns. And he’s made them all for one company, Savage Arms in Westfield, just off Exit 3 on the Mass. Pike. He’s tall and bald, with…
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Don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown
Dan Brown's new novel will no doubt be a bestseller, to the annoyance of critics Photo: AP Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million h
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How Can I Make My PowerPoint Presentations…
Dear Lifehacker, I have been tasked to make a slideshow for an event at work. I don’t want to make a generic PowerPoint with just boring text or pictures. What are some ways I can enhance the…
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Welcome to Google Island
I awoke aboard a boat, just before daybreak, which was weird. The last thing I remembered was being in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, wrapping up a four-hour Google I/O keynote liveblogging…
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10 Things You Should Always Haggle For
There are times when you should always haggle, like when you're at a flea market or purchasing a new car. But there are other, less obvious situations where your bargaining chops may come in handy.…
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Tail wagging
Two months ago, Jony Ive was interviewed in the London Evening Standard. It makes for interesting reading (despite the awful title). Our industry is in the throes of an aesthetic shift. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the stitched…
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Over the Line
May/ June 2013 Over the Line Why are U.S. Border Patrol agents shooting into Mexico and killing innocent civilians? By John Carlos Frey
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A 75-Year Harvard Study Finds What It Takes To…
Flickr/taylor.f11In June 2009, The Atlantic published a cover story on the Grant Study, one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of human development. The project, which began in 1938, has…
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Cover Story: Daft Punk
Daft Punk started working on Random Access Memories in 2008, playing almost everything on their own and making loops, just like they had done before. But it didn't feel right. “It became clear…
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How a Bitcoin Transaction Actually Works
At this point, you probably have a working understanding of what bitcoins are (at the very least your handle of bitcoins is like how you can kinda, sorta explain why the sky is blue to a kid). But…
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My Medical Choice
MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the…
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Them and Them
From top, Students at Spring Valley High School. A Hasidic man walking in Ramapo. (Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine) One morning in June 2005, a team of…
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Strongbox and Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz was not yet a legend when, almost two years ago, I asked him to build an open-source, anonymous inbox. His achievements were real and varied, but the events that would come to define him…