Practical Magic

Mergers work great when an open company buys a secretive one—but if the secretive guys are in charge, the whole thing usually blows up.

Facebook made over $500 million just by using a 30-year-old psych trick to change how their video algorithm works.

Buying refurbished electronics might actually be worse for the planet because most people just buy them *in addition* to new ones anyway.

Talking to an AI about your to-do list is way better at stopping procrastination than just using a regular old planning app.

Countries tried to use trade taxes to dodge the new 15% global corporate tax, but some tiny, boring customs laws just blocked them.

Giving electric cars a fancy green license plate works just as well at selling them as giving people thousands of dollars in cash.

You can actually guess how well a company's stock will do just by looking at how bright the streetlights are around their headquarters.

There’s no such thing as a 'best time to post' on social media—every group has its own weird, unique rhythm for when they're actually paying attention.

Scientists just sent secret codes from Tokyo to Paris using matching DNA strands, and it's basically impossible to hack.

You can now use a banana or a teddy bear as a digital puppet to make professional 3D animations.

Computers are about to lose that annoying 'loading' lag by using laser light patterns the second they make a move.

There’s a new lens-less camera that can see 'invisible' light to find hidden cracks or see right through glare.

AI is now 'growing' custom, snowflake-shaped crystals that could make our electronics and chemistry way more advanced.

A new microscope can see into light’s 'blind spots' to watch living cells in 3D for the first time.

Your standard Wi-Fi can now track you through a building with insane accuracy without even knowing the floor plan.

New AI can 'think' while you're still talking, just like a person preparing their next sentence.

New math shows that in competitive games, faking like you're on someone's side is the best way to steal their secrets.

Mathematicians found a new type of 3D surface that can collapse into a flat strip for easy carrying.

We’ve figured out how to turn a passing comet into an interstellar spaceship using just four small engines.

The specific 'rhythm' of how a nurse types in records can predict if an ICU patient will make it.

Working out between 7 and 8 AM is way better for your heart than exercising at any other time.

Giving AI chatbots human faces actually makes people more likely to believe the sexist things the AI says.

Looking at 15 years of search data, it turns out Ramadan significantly boosts the mental health of entire countries.

High heels only make women look better until they start walking—then the benefit disappears unless they're pros.

Italy is the world's biggest loser when it comes to soccer talent, losing billions to Latin American teams.

If you add more parking restrictions, people actually start using e-scooters way more.

Most 'green' trade deals are being signed in places where trade in eco-friendly goods isn't even growing.

Letting neighbors trade solar power can actually make the local grid more likely to crash in the summer.

Regulators can be a lot nicer to banks if they just promise to audit them more often.

You can predict traffic with 90% accuracy just by looking at a map, so we don't really need all those sensors.

The stock market loves when IT companies use AI, even though it’s killing off 70% of entry-level jobs.

Kazakhstan's welfare system makes it mathematically pointless for people with mental health issues to ever get a job.

Almost all the difference in poor infrastructure happens within city neighborhoods, not between them.

Making paid sick leave mandatory actually leads to fewer accidents and safety issues at work.

Solar farms in Sweden can grow 400 times more saffron than traditional open fields.

Giving every teacher the same raise is a really inefficient way to make schools better.

A country's AI power is actually limited by the 'glue' holding the chips together, not the chips themselves.

You can get drivers to change their habits way faster if you charge them for 'safety' instead of 'traffic.'

The most effective way to fix elderly care is to stop micromanaging caregivers and just pay them if the patient stays alive.

Scientists are basically plumbing actual sunshine through silver pipes to grow veggies in windowless basements, ditching the LED bulbs.

A new VR headset uses mirrors to kill the lag that makes you want to puke.

New AI can peer into a computer chip's microscopic guts to find "spy tech" hidden by sketchy manufacturers.

Researchers built a "ghost mode" for robots that calculates the exact path to sneak around without being seen.

If you teach AI to look at medical scans like they're ripples of light, it gets way better at spotting cancer—no matter what hospital gear you’re using.

A new bit of code fixes airport gridlock in 10 seconds, while the "pro" software usually sits there spinning its wheels for an hour.

Scientists made a "nuclear foam" fuel as light as air that could actually get us into deep space in a hurry.

Doctors are starting to think of disease as a "physics fail" where your cells just forget how to move together in a crowd.

If you add DNA to a liquid, you can make it swirl and churn in tiny pipes where turbulence is supposed to be impossible.

Scientists found a way to flip a material’s electrical switch just by squeezing it, no battery required.

Scientists figured out how to make heat move faster than the theoretical "speed limit" it's supposed to have.