Waymo, the Alphabet self-driving car company that was spun out of Google, is picking up speed. The company’s autonomous vehicles just drove 8 million miles on public roads. What’s more, it took the company just one month to go from 7 million miles to 8 million miles driven. “We’re driving now at the rate of... Continue Reading →

It may soon be possible for parents to edit the genes of their children before they're born, changing their DNA in ways that could affect their health and enhance their senses, strength, or even intelligence. The situation is so close to becoming reality, in fact, that genetic experts have pushed in recent years for more... Continue Reading →

A great deal has been written in recent years about the perils of automation. With predicted mass unemployment, declining wages, and increasing inequality, clearly we should all be afraid. By now it’s no longer just the Silicon Valley trend watchers and technoprophets who are apprehensive. In a study that has already racked up several hundred... Continue Reading →

Bob Lutz is a former Marine who worked for Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, and BMW, usually as the resident "car guy" — a product guru who could guide the bean counters toward automotive glory and gruffly greenlight amazing machines. Now semi-retired, Lutz is partnered with designer Henrik Fisker at VLF Automotive, a maker of exotic,... Continue Reading →

Petco has launched a new kind of pet store that offers a suite of services, such as grooming, training, and veterinary care, at deep discounts for a monthly fee. The store, called PetCoach, is like a cross between Amazon Go, Amazon's cashierless convenience stores, a veterinary hospital, and a grooming salon. Shoppers can pay $9... Continue Reading →

After designing an incredibly cheap home, the 20K Initiative is now working with Fannie Mae and others to redesign mortgages and the other factors that make home ownership so expensive. When architecture students at Auburn University’s Rural Studio first started working on the 20K initiative in 2005, they had a straightforward–if ambitious–goal: to design a... Continue Reading →

Typically, engineers want to get bugs out of their creations. Not so for the U.K. engineering firm (not the famed carmaker) Rolls-Royce — it’s looking for a way to get bugs into the aircraft engines it builds. These “bugs” aren’t software glitches or even actual insects. They’re tiny robots modeled after the cockroach. On Tuesday,... Continue Reading →

After years on the fringe, Medicare for All is becoming a central plank of the Democratic Party. Dozens of Congressional Democrats are set to announce the formation of an official Medicare For All Caucus on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the plan. The caucus is expected to have over 60 founding members, or... Continue Reading →

Former President Barack Obama came out in support of an economic policy that is far to the left of anything being proposed by most sitting U.S. politicians. While delivering remarks Tuesday at the 16th annual Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, Obama appeared to endorse the idea of creating a universal basic income, the policy where... Continue Reading →

One of the abiding realities of our political era is a major generational split anchored on the right by disproportionately conservative seniors and on the left by disproportionately progressive millennials and post-millennials. This is often thought of as a perfectly natural, even inevitable, phenomenon: Young people are adventurous, open to new ways of thinking, and... Continue Reading →