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Perfection often requires iteration. Even after releasing a product, designers, programmers, and engineers will continue to reinvent subsequent generations. But sometimes they get it right the first time. These items [...]

Like people, cars die. But they won't be buried. U.S. scrappers recycle some 13 million autos each year. Their journey begins at salvage yards, where massive machinery reduces mountains of [...]

Javon Frazier, the founder of Maestro Media, launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for a card game called The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls Requiem. Frazier needed significant capital for the campaign and decided to pull all the money out of his house, which initially shocked his wife but she eventually agreed. The campaign raised $6.7 million in 30 days, making it one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns ever. Frazier's decision to start his own business allowed him to spend more time with his family and be more involved in his children's lives. [Extracted from the article]

Hate and harassment flourish in online comment sections. To keep these digital forums open, Jigsaw--a division of Google's parent company, Alphabet--built Perspective, a machine-learning system that scores readers' written thoughts [...]

WHEN YOU REALLY NEED TO NAVIGATE THROUGH DARKNESS YOUR PHONE'S WIMPY FLASHLIGHT JUST WONT CUT IT. THE REAL DEAL WILL LAST LONGER AND SHINE BRIGHTER. For charging The Coast Polysteel [...]

COVID-19 IS POISED TO enter the history books as a catastrophic pandemic. While combating a new disease is difficult, we can't blame this outbreak's losses on the pathogen's novelty alone. [...]

YOU TYPE ALL DAY, BUT A GOOD PEN OFFERS A CONNECTION TO THE WRITTEN WORD THAT YOUR KEYBOARD LACKS. THESE EIGHT HAVE YOU COVERED FOR VARIOUS TASKS. For every day [...]

MEASURED EDGE TO EDGE, the universe as we know it stretches some 93 billion light-years across. That unfathomable expanse contains 2 trillion galaxies, each shining with millions of stars and [...]

IN THE 58 YEARS SINCE ALAN Shepard became the first American to orbit Earth, NASA has deemed just one watch tough enough to wear in open space. The Omega Speedmaster [...]

ON THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII, A FUNGUS CALLED CERATOCYSTIS is murdering 'ohi'a trees--at least i million in the past eight years. Local forest experts had no idea how to [...]

ON MARCH 18, 2018, ELAINE HERZBERG, 49, WAS crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. Although she [...]

PROFESSIONAL CAVING MEANS ENTERING A WORLD MORE DANGEROUS THAN ANY WELL-TROD TOURIST CAVERN. THIS BURLY GEAR WILL KEEP YOU SAFE AS YOU VENTURE INTO THE DARK. 1 Headgear The tough [...]

THE WORLD'S PRICIEST COFFEE BEANS MAKE A LONG TRIP FROM PANAMA'S MOUNTAINS TO YOUR MUG. TREAT THEM-OR YOUR REGULAR DAILY BLEND-WITH RESPECT BY ASSEMBLING A WELL-ENGINEERED BREWING KIT Beans Klatch [...]

THE BIG BANG WASN'T A SOLITARY EXPLOSION THAT ended in a minute: It was a long, simmering process that, over millennia, led to the birth of the universe as we [...]

SLEEPING BY YOUR SMARTPHONE PROBABLY ISN'T HELPING YOU get solid shut-eye--notifications can be so tempting. Consider charging your device far from your pillow and placing this simple analog alarm clock [...]

MOST LIGHTNING JUST bounces around within its cloud of origin. But the rogue charges that escape are enough to dazzle observers, inspire awe and fear (which is fair--the zaps do [...]

WHEN YOU'RE CLIMBING A STEEP, rocky trail on the side of a mountain, a bulky pack catching on branches or scraping against boulders will slow your ascent. Lightweight, space-saving camping [...]

Changing lanes is simple for human drivers. Not so for autonomous cars. Instead of gray matter and muscle memory, self-driving vehicles make decisions using programming, artificial intelligence, and onboard perception [...]

YOU CAN PILOT THE PARROT MAMBO drone with boring, old manual controls, but unlike other drones, this quadcopter can carry out missions you design in advance. Programming it helps pint-size [...]

STANDING ON YOUR PEDALS AND HUFFING and puffing up a hill is totally unnecessary in the lithium-ion era. E-bikes--basically standard two-wheelers with motors and batteries squirreled away in their frames--put [...]

Byline: Rob Verger {'id':'19821','type':'widget','widget':'video','ratio':'16by9','autostart':'1'} Ganhuyag Chuluun Hutagt, the former vice minister of finance of Mongolia, doesn't have a mailing address for his home in Ulaanbaatar, the country's capital. Instead, he [...]

KOLIN POWICK, CLIMBING CATEGORY DIRECTOR AT BLACK DIAMOND EQUIPMENT A portaledge is like a cot designed to hang off a cliff thousands of feet above the ground. Rock climbers sleep [...]

DESPITE GRAVITY'S EFFORTS TO KEEP HUMANS GROUNDED, the lure of exploring and conquering massive walls draws climbers upward. A little training and the right gear go a long way toward [...]

OCEANS COVER ROUGHLY 70 PERCENT OF THE PLANET, AND that water teems with life. Exploring this other world requires special equipment. You can rent the big stuff like an air [...]

YOU CAN MEASURE BAMBOO'S GROWTH SPURTS IN FEET PER day. That rapid expansion makes it a sustainable substitute for the less-earth-friendly materials such as the plastic, metal, and wood we [...]

YOUR MONTHLY UTILITY BILLS GIVE A BIG-PICTURE LOOK AT the resources your home drinks up. They won't tell you, though, that a leaky toilet is hemorrhaging water or your 'sleeping' [...]

YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO WEAR THAT PAIR OF BLOWNout Converse All Stars to amble anywhere farther than the corner store. For long treks, the proper footwear will support your [...]

THERE'S AN IRONY AT THE HEART OF the Swiss Federal Railways' famously precise train-station clocks: Each second hand takes just 58.5 ticks to move around the dial. When the paddle-shaped [...]

A COOL BREEZE CAN INSTANTLY take the edge off a sweaty day. Indoors, a fan is a perfect substitute--throw a bowl of ice in front of it, and you've got [...]

SUPERCELL THUNDERSTORMS ARE GIANT TEMPESTS with powerful rotating updrafts at their cores--and one out of every four or five spawn tornadoes. Most of these twisters are little, but some can [...]

FOR MOST OF US, AN ELABORATE DOOMSDAY BUNKER IS OVERKILL. But, when facing down a tornado, hurricane, blizzard, or whatever Mother Nature flings at you, a little preparation can save [...]

Byline: Rob Verger It's late June, but it's chilly in Asella, Ethiopia--the city is higher in altitude than Denver--and the patients in the hospital are wrapped in blankets. Dr. Mulu [...]

Byline: Rob Verger In a simple home in the village of Mosebo, Ethiopia--an earthen floor and walls made of wood and mud--a woman sat on a mattress on the floor [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Any interest in a free Ferrari? Michael Flynn, an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center, wants to give you one. But there's a catch: You need to [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kigali, Rwanda-The faces of those killed 20 years ago during Rwanda's genocide are captured in photographs on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. Over a period [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Washington, D.C.--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic principals leave a news conference last week in which they pushed for an increase in the nation's minimum [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Killeen, Texas-Melissa Phillips and others walk in a memorial for the victims of a shooting at Fort Hood earlier this month. On April 2, Specialist Ivan A. [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Herat, Afghanistan-Women lined up to vote in Afghanistan's presidential election on April 5. Turnout was high--about 7 million people participated--and although some polling stations were targeted and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Cairo-An Egyptian soldier, armed with rubber bullets, takes aim at one of the protesters demonstrating against the sentencing of 529 people to death in Minya for taking [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Oso, Wash.-A rescuer wades into the floodwaters on Route 530 a week after a devastating mudslide engulfed an entire community. More than 20 people were killed, and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Pohang, South Korea-South Korean landing craft run a gantlet of fire and smoke during military exercises with the U.S. Monday. North Korea commenced its own drill that [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Moscow-Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to an attentive military audience at the Kremlin. On Monday he announced he would pull some Russian troops away from the Ukrainian [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Moscow-Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the Interior Ministry March 21 after signing legislation that absorbed Crimea into the USSR. Earlier in the week, in an emotional and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-After weeks of uncertainty, Monday brought a grim announcement from the prime minister of Malaysia: Flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8, terminated 'in the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kunduz province, Afghanistan-This group campaigns for Ashraf Ghani, a frontrunner in the Afghan presidential election scheduled for April 5. He'll going up against Abdullah Abdullah, Zalmai Rassoul, [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Amsterdam-Shadowed by Secret Servicemen President Barack Obama arrives at Schiphol Airport to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague earlier this week. The crisis over the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Caracas, Venezuela-A protester in the capital runs to dispose of a gas canister in the ongoing battle between demonstrators and security forces. On Monday, a National Guard [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Aleppo, Syria-This devastating scene in the al-Sukari district is the result of barrel bombs deployed by forces aligned with the Syrian government, according to opposition forces. Earlier [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-A woman in the Malaysian capital leaves a note in honor of the 239 people aboard Flight MH370, which disappeared from radar screens on the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Goncharovskoye, Ukraine-An old-fashioned Soviet-style 97 percent of Crimeans who went to the polls Sunday voted to become part of Russia, and the international response was swift: Both [...]