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The darkness came unexpectedly. One second my father was walking my 7-year-old brother and my 10-year-old self past a bodega in New York City; the next, a shadow descended. The noise of the city stopped. A taxi pulled up nearby and parked in the middle of the road. Feet clacked on the sidewalk once and fell silent. I gripped my brother’s hand and pulled him close. My dad turned around and stared a...

Allow me to introduce you to "the bothie." It's not a selfie, nor a normal photo (which all the cool kids call a "youie" ), but a hybrid of the two. It's a composite shot from both cameras on your phone, showing both you and whatever else is out there. It's a bothie. Crazy idea? Maybe. And yet, if history is any indication, you'll scoff at the bothie now and then while you're not looking they will...

You probably don't have a landline phone, because it's not 1995. But you miss it sometimes, don't you? Knowing where the phone was all the time, having something anyone could pick up and use, avoiding the rock-paper-scissors over who has to waste their cell phone battery calling Dominos. Earlier this year at its developer conference , Google promised to turn its Home smart speaker into a sort of f...

Ah, the late 1960s. LBJ occupied the White House. The Beatles ruled the charts. And Ford spent its summer vacations in France, settling a grudge with Ferrari by dominating the 24 Hours of Le Mans after the Italian outfit flaked on a deal to become part of the American automaker. Ford's GT40 won the legendary endurance race—over which Ferrari had long ruled—every year from 1966 to 1969. Half a cent...

The "smart home" has not yet distinguished itself. Sure, you might dim your lights with an app; you might even talk to your large appliances. But despite years of promised ubiquity, the connected home has yet to cleave with mainstream reality. It's too expensive, too futzy, too filled with interoperability landmines. You know who can fix that? Ikea. In fact, it's already started to. Ikea's current...

New Zealand's South Island spans 58,000 square miles of breathtaking, verdant terrain. But nothing on the ground surpasses what's in the sky. The region is home to the largest dark sky observatory in the world, glittering with millions of stars and spectacular views of the Milky Way. Photographer Paul Wilson lives on South Island and is an ardent star gazer. He spends countless hours traveling to...

In the very first episode of Game of Thrones in 2011, the very first scene at Winterfell was about the children: Septa Mordane praising Sansa for her elegant embroidery; Bran trying and failing to land an arrow in a target while his brothers laughed; Arya showing him up from twice the distance, hitting the bullseye with a cocky smile. When news arrived that a deserter had been captured—running fro...

Seeing a six-foot sand tiger shark suddenly appear right in front of you would surely make your heart skip a beat or two. But Tanya Houppermans, who nabbed this incredible shot 15 miles off the coast of North Carolina coast, says it was no big deal. With a smooth flick of its tail, the shark moved along, its beady black eyes set on bigger fish. “You would think it got a smorgasboard of food it can...

A gadget's only as good as its internet connection. Few things drive you crazier than a stuttery PUBG session or an episode of Game of Thrones streaming one. Halting. Word. At. A. Time. You probably don't think much about your router, though. And yet, by the time you've connected a family's worth of phones and tablets—plus your laptop, Roku, Xbox, smart fridge, doorbell, and thermostat—you've stre...

The perfect city bike would be comfy and safe to ride and it would look sharp. Bonus points if it's super-low maintenance and doesn't require you to constantly fiddle with the chain and the shifters. Such bikes exist, but not if you're on a budget. Bikes quickly get pricey once you start adding features that make them lighter, safer, and less fussy. But I've got some good news: I think I've found...

Here are a few of the places I've played Mario Kart in the last two weeks: On the couch. In bed. On the train. In an Uber. On a plane. In a Vegas hotel. At the dog park. In a weirdly long line at Trader Joe's. And, of course, on the toilet, more times than I'm proud of. In every case, all I had to do was whip out my Nintendo Switch, press a button or two, and head off to the animated races. Like m...

When the Justice League crew took the stage at Comic-Con International’s Hall H on Saturday—minus Henry Cavill, whose Superman is technically dead—they did so to a standing ovation, with the loudest screams reserved for Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman. But as the banter started and the footage rolled, there was one thing missing: their director. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

When David Ayer strode across the stage of Hall H yesterday, he didn't sit down behind the placard with his name on it. He didn't stand at the long table, applauding the audience and waiting for the cast and producers of his new movie, Bright. No, the director walked past all that, straight to the lectern at the other end of the stage. He hugged the actor Terry Crews, who was there to moderate the...

Earlier today, the White House announced that financier Anthony Scaramucci (also known as "The Mooch") would fill the role of White House communications director, a job that's been open since Mike Dubke resigned in May. And with former Press Secretary Sean Spicer's resignation just hours after, Scaramucci, new to the field, will have his work cut out for him. Especially since it he and the preside...

Push notifications are ruining my life. Yours too, I bet. Download more than a few apps and the notifications become a non-stop, cacophonous waterfall of nonsense. Here's just part of an afternoon on my phone: "Hi David! We found new Crown jewels and Bottle caps Pins for you!" "Everyone's talking about Bill Nye's new book, Everything All at Once. Read a free sample." "Alex just posted for the firs...

Amazon's Alexa has plenty going for it. Developers have trained the virtual assistant with over 10,000 “skills”—apps you talk to instead of tap—to do everything from hailing a Lyft to checking your stock portfolio. At home, Alexa can control the lights, set timers, play your local NPR station, and generally achieve that Jarvis-level assistance that feels so much like the future. Learn more about y...

Not even wine snobs are as hardcore as coffee snobs. To pour a great glass of wine, you need a corkscrew and some money. To pour a great cup of coffee, you need beans, gear, time and patience. There is a process, you see. It is complex and requires study. Any gray areas must be marked off as personal territory and argued over. Nothing unleashes righteous indignation in otherwise pleasant people mo...

The biggest trend in the e-bike industry today is the “S-pedelic.” If you’re still riding a beach cruiser, here’s the intel: “Pedelic” is shorthand for “pedal electric cycle,” which means that the rider’s expended energy is assisted by a small motor. Add that “S” prefix and things change drastically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The seventh season of Game of Thrones opens in its most infamous locale: The Twins. This was the place where the story shattered—where the rules of Westeros, the rules of hospitality, the rules of fantasy stories themselves sheared away from themselves like a great wall of ice and floated away into the sea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like many cyclists who consider themselves purists, I’ve had difficulty wrapping my brain around the increasing popularity of e-bikes: Worldwide sales tallied 36 million units in 2016. German postal workers use e-bikes on their routes, and in the US, major bike manufacturers like Specialized, Cannondale, and Trek have introduced a surprising array of motorized options, from off-road fatties to com...

So you got yourself a brand new Amazon Echo Dot. Congratulations! You'll get along great with it. But before you start yelling at your shiny new toy, take a quick look at the full range of what it can do for you. It's more than you might have imagined. The tips and tricks below also mostly work for, well, any Alexa-powered device. There are a ton of them out there, and while they may not be as puc...

Streaming killed the music gadget years ago. Just up and drove a stake through its silicon heart as listeners traded 99-cent song downloads for $10 monthly subscriptions to all-you-can-listen services. OK, maybe you have some Baby Driver-induced nostalgia for an iPod. But when was the last time you ripped a CD, or dropped 15 bucks on an album? Even the idea of choosing 5,000 songs to carry with yo...

In the kitchen, people have an amazing tolerance for imprecision. Ovens might say 400 degrees, but many regularly veer 20 degrees above or below that mark, if it’s calibrated correctly in the first place. On the stovetop, we don’t even have the specificity of degrees. Turn the dial up to “high” or “medium-low” or just “seven,” even though every manufacturer has a different standard for what that p...

How do you turn a smartphone-photo devotee into a bona fide camera nerd? You give them smartphone-style touchscreen controls on an excellent camera that connects to their mobile for easy sharing. This strategy—compress the complexities of a high-end camera into a smartphone-style interface—has shaped Leica 's playbook for its T-series cameras, the first of which arrived three years ago . Today Lei...

Last week might have seemed like a short one thanks to the Fourth of July holiday, but as anyone who has ever been online knows, the internet doesn't sleep. So even while you were taking it easy, something was happening on social media. Like what? For one, everyone was talking about the photos that came out of President Trump's meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel at the G20 summit. Learn...