Mike Murphy

Google searches are like a stream of consciousness. We plug every idle curiosity, every thought, and every question into the search engine. Google has always kept careful record of these searches, which helps sell ads. But Google also keeps an audio log of the questions you ask its voice search function, OK Google, and now you can listen to those recordings online.

Robots seem to be getting more advanced every day. They can run on their own in the forest, find their way around your house as they clean it, and even build IKEA furniture (sort of). But one thing they’re still terrible at is staying upright.

In the prophetic 1997 film “Face/Off,” John Travolta figures that the only way to avoid going back to prison was to surgically replace his face with that of Nicolas Cage’s. Although medical science has not really gotten to the point where that isn’t still completely laughable, a new technology out of Stanford University is getting us closer.

If there were a metal as light as a feather, would you fly in a plane made out of it? Airplane manufacturer Boeing announced last week that it’s working on a new type of metal structure, called a microlattice, so light that it can be displaced with a breath of air.

This message will self-destruct. Actually, it won’t, but if the Pentagon has its way, tomorrow’s drones will.

In the future, your wearables might be a bit harder to spot than an Apple Watch or Google Glass. In a patent awarded Oct. 13, Google outlined a design for a wearable communication device, replete with sensors, memory and a microprocessor, shaped like a contact lens.

One of the most quintessentially British cars will soon be driving into the 21st century. At a Bloomberg conference in London Monday (Oct. 12), Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said that the car company is working on an all-electric version of its Rapide sports car, which it plans to have available by the end of 2017. And it’s going to be a beast.

Twitter today (Oct. 13) announced that it will be laying off 336 employees—about 8% of its workforce—as the social network struggles with slowing user growth and a lagging stock price.

Steve Jobs died four years ago this past Monday. Today (Oct. 9), a movie based on the most complete biography of the former Apple CEO’s life was released in the US. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, famed for making films and TV shows involving smart people talking while walking around corners, said at a press interview Monday that he didn’t want to make a standard biopic of Jobs’ life. “I didn’t want to do just the greatest hits,” he said.

Come Christmas time, hundreds of thousands of Americans will be excitedly tearing off the wrapping paper on their new drones. But what will they really have just been given?

There were supposed to be more of us using 3D printers by now, but the concept has been slow to materialize. And MakerBot, the company that was supposed to bring 3D printing into the home, is suffering for it.

You know what’s cooler than a single emoji to express emotion? Seven emoji to express emotion.

Space: the final frontier for masonry.

Yesterday, at a massive event in midtown Manhattan, Microsoft introduced a new way to make smartphones feel like full-fledged computers, and a new flagship tablet, the Surface Pro 4. It bills the Pro 4 as “the tablet that can replace your laptop.” But near the end of the event, in a sort of “one more thing” moment, the company introduced Surface Book—Microsoft’s first laptop.

At a massive event at New York’s main post office building (that’s about to become a train station), Microsoft today (Oct. 6) announced a range of new products, including new computers, wearables, and phones. The company announced that its newest operating system, Windows 10, has been installed on over 110 million devices. Microsoft introduced nearly that many devices today, and Quartz rounded up everything the company showed off.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today (Oct. 6) it was fining aerial photography company SkyPan $1.9 million for unauthorized flights by its drones over Chicago and New York City between 2012 and 2014.

Humans are quite feeble. We break easily, and just about every part of us deteriorates as we age. But the Pentagon’s research division, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), hopes to fix that. Today (Oct. 5), the agency said it had selected seven research facilities—including MIT, Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University—to study how to make the human body heal itself using nerve stimulation.

Apple cares a lot about design. It has pages and pages of specifications on how to design apps for its software; it’s even rebranded third-party products’ packaging to look more Apple-like for its own stores. Today (Oct. 5), the company started selling lugs for its Apple Watches—the bit that connects the smartwatch to its strap—that companies can use if they want to sell their own Watch straps. In typical Apple fashion, the standards for putting the lugs together are exceedingly detailed.

One of today’s biggest computing innovations relies on a throwback to the 1990’s. New research from the University of Oxford shows that scientists have created an ultra-fast memory chip that uses light to store information, as CDs and DVDs do.

A variation on surge pricing—Uber’s model that raises the price of taxi rides when demand is high—could be coming to Disney’s theme parks. The Wall Street Journal reports (paywall) that the entertainment company is looking into the possibility of bringing “demand-based” pricing to its US theme parks, in an effort to cut back on congestion at the parks.

The US congress in 2012 mandated that the Federal Aviation Administration have regulations in place for how to integrate drones into US airspace by Sept. 30, 2015. It’s now October, and no such regulations are on the books. But the FAA expects over one million drones will be sold as Christmas presents this holiday season.

There are few things more routine in American football than scoring the extra-point kick after a touchdown. At 20 yards out from the goal posts, the kick has long been a given for teams—only eight were missed in the entire 2014 season—and the National Football League wants to reintroduce some drama. The league made a few changes to the rules this season to make the extra point a little less routine, and after just three weeks, it’s already having an impact.

LinkedIn sends its users a lot of emails. An email it sent out Friday afternoon (Oct. 2) to US users, however, might be one actually worth opening. The company sent out a message detailing that it had agreed to pay $13 million in compensation to LinkedIn members who felt that too many emails had been sent out on their behalf by the company.

There’s a moment relatively early on in Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” when it becomes clear just how alone Matt Damon is.