Should the government break up Facebook? Experts disagree.

Despite being free to users, Facebook has a monopoly on our speech, our data, and our lives.

(Photo: Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia Commons)
  • Experts, among them Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, argue the company has become a monopoly and should be broken up.
  • Others argue Hughes ad his supports have misread Facebook's position in the market.
  • Despite these disagreements, a consensus agrees that Facebook and other Silicon Valley titans need to be better regulated.
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Politics & Current Affairs

Wireless movement-tracking system could collect health and behavioral data

Radio-frequency signals can be used to track peoples' movements in their own homes.

We live in a world of wireless signals flowing around us and bouncing off our bodies. MIT researchers are now leveraging those signal reflections to provide scientists and caregivers with valuable insights into people's behavior and health.

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Technology & Innovation

Researchers successfully sent a simulated elementary particle back in time

Don't start investing in flux capacitors just yet, though.

Photo source: Geralt / Pixabay
  • The second law of thermodynamics states that order always moves to disorder, which we experience as an arrow of time.
  • Scientists used a quantum computer to show that time travel is theoretically possible by reverting a simulated particle from an entropic to a more orderly state.
  • While Einstein's general theory of relativity permits time travel, the means to achieve it remain improbable in nature.
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Surprising Science

Why eating ice cream is linked to shark attacks

Why are soda and ice cream each linked to violence? This article delivers the final word on what people mean by "correlation does not imply causation."

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  • Ice cream consumption is actually linked to shark attacks.
  • But the relationship is correlative, not causal.
  • It's pretty stunning how media outlets skip over this important detail.
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popular

How Spotify manipulates your emotions and sells your data

A new book on the music distribution service claims it is.

Spotify logo on an android mobile phone. (Photo by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
  • Spotify Teardown claims that the streaming service is sending (and receiving) much more than music.
  • The authors contend that the service is engaged in emotional manipulation given their playlist emphasis.
  • Music is only the surface layer of a much larger data collection and advertising infrastructure.
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Technology & Innovation