How to ensure your electric vehicle is powered by renewable energy

EVStory

By Brady Jones Medill Reports Driving an electric vehicle plays a critical role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but the impact of this reduction gets diminished if the electricity comes from fossil fuels. The sources of electricity used to power your car must be green too and several choices are available to make that happen. […]

City Pop and the rise of Internet Music

DJVIEGAS - MEDILL NEWSMAKERS - CITY POP Feature

By Daniel Viegas Medill Reports Music is never something created within a vacuum. Time and place are the cornerstones for the very essence of a musical genre. These, along with culture, identity, politics and society all formulate trends within the musical space. Yet, the world no longer quite holds the same boundaries it once did. […]

Facing inevitable data breaches and new privacy laws, companies shift focus to response

digital padlock overlayed onto cryptographic numbers

By Tyler Sonnemaker Medill Reports The number of data breaches has skyrocketed in recent years, with high-profile incidents involving major companies such as Facebook and Uber, financial institutions and government agencies. According to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center, 1,579 incidents — involving nearly 179 million records — occurred in 2017 alone. That […]

Traffic never jams at Chicago’s busiest internet intersection

350 East Cermak Road data center

By Tyler Sonnemaker Medill Reports Remember when you used to order DVDs from Netflix and discs would arrive within a week or two? When you added a movie to your queue, Netflix would locate a physical copy in one of its distribution centers, load the DVD on a truck and then ship it to your […]

Multiple federal agencies hit by wave of possible Iran-linked cyberattacks

By Tyler Sonnemaker Medill Reports The Department of Homeland Security last week instructed all federal civilian agencies to take immediate actions to address “significant and imminent risks to agency information and information systems” resulting from an ongoing wave of cyberattacks. In an emergency directive issued Jan. 22, DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it […]

Tracked and hacked: Why every internet user should care about cybersecurity and digital privacy

smartphone

By Tyler Sonnemaker Medill Reports Consider all the digital devices you use. Smartphones and tablets. Smart TVs and speakers. Wi-Fi routers and cable boxes. Wearable technology and health trackers. Video game systems. Wireless connections to printers, refrigerators, thermostats, home security systems and other smart appliances. Even cars with onboard computers. If it’s connected to a […]

New funding pushes lab-grown meat closer to reality

Mosa Meat

By Brady Jones Medill Reports Netherlands-based Mosa Meat announced Tuesday that it had secured €7.5 million in new funding to support its efforts to produce the world’s first lab-produced commercial meat product, prompting them to predict the culinary revolution could appear on the market by 2021. The funding, which equates to roughly $8.7 million, came […]

Poised for the prowl: Black Panther’s box office attack continues

By DeForest Mapp Medill Reports Superhero King T’Challa led the multitudes  to “Black Panther” for two consecutive weekends. The blockbuster topped attendance at any other movie with a domestic gross of $400 million and shattered previous earnings records for a film that showcased a majority African American cast. “Black Panther” made gold for a Marvel gamble that debuted on […]

VR expands the limits of Chicago comedy and improv

ioTheater

By Grace Austin Virtual reality is arriving on to the Windy City’s sketch scene, as iO Chicago launched pioneering technology designed to bring the outside viewer into the decidedly low-tech, interactive form of comedy. In a cozy theater in Goose Island last Sunday, amongst a small but warm crowd of about 20, ceiling microphones and […]

Transparent wood: A better window than door

By Mariah Quintanilla People have long used wood to build shelter, make furniture or stoke a campfire. The one thing we’ve never been able to do is see through it—until now. In two separate studies published this year, researchers from the University of Maryland and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden devised a […]