Signal · dispatches
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Reporting on the systems, tools and people quietly deciding what the next decade runs on.
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Learning Lessons: What Honesty Can Teach Us About Astronomy
A famous cosmology result was announced, celebrated, and then dismantled by the people who made it. That sequence is the discipline working, and it…
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They Pass the Bar Exam. They Cannot Finish the Grid.
A benchmark made of coloured squares has become the most awkward number in machine learning. Its author says the scores are climbing for the…
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Is Elon Musk Right About us Living in a Simulation?
The simulation argument is older, stranger and more careful than its most famous advocate makes it sound. The interesting question is not whether it…
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Architecture Styles For the Artsy & Famous College Kids
Nobody chooses a university for its buildings and everybody performs a taste in them by week three. A field guide to the four campus…
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Triple Double Lyrics: Competing With the Generation Finest
A fan-built scoring system borrowed from basketball is quietly reshaping how a generation of rappers writes, and how their audience argues. Not everyone thinks…
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The Dawn of Augmented Reality is Upon Us, Brace Yourselves
The optics finally work, the weight is almost bearable, and the batteries still are not. A look at what the current crop of augmented…
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Space XYZ Aims to Deliver Humans to Mars by 2024
The crewed landing target was 2024. It is now August 2025, nobody has left low Earth orbit, and the company has quietly rebuilt its…
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Should we be Excited about Space Engineers
Ten years of voxel welding produced the most quietly influential building game on the market. Its successor has to answer a question the original…
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Pre-alpha Gameplay Footage of Star Wars: Battlefront
Six minutes of unfinished footage, watched frame by frame by an audience that has learned to read placeholder assets like a weather map. What…
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Indie Week: Closer Look at FPS ‘Insurgency’
Indie Week visits the shooter that removed the crosshair, the ammo counter and the killcam, and found an audience by trusting them with almost…
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