"Without San Francisco, Star Wars wouldn't exist," says David Reat, the culture studies director of the architecture department at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde. SFGate reports: Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, where his father expected him to run the family stationery store once he turned 18, but Lucas instead left for Los Angeles,...

Science Alert reports that a team of researchers found "that changes in glucose metabolism could help cancer grow by temporarily disabling a gene that protects us from tumors called BRCA2." The team first examined people who inherited one faulty copy of BRCA2. They found that cells from these people were more sensitive to methylglyoxal (MGO), which...

From the Washington Post's "Technology 202" newsletter: As tech giants move toward a world in which chatbots supplement, and perhaps supplant, search engines, the Microsoft executive assigned to make sure AI is used responsibly said the industry has to be careful not to break the business model of the wider web. Search engines citing and linking...

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal: Drunken-driving deaths in the U.S. have risen to levels not seen in nearly two decades, federal data show, a major setback to long-running road-safety efforts. At the same time, arrests for driving under the influence have plummeted, as police grapple with challenges like hiring woes...

A "string of legal victories" by America's market-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission "has jolted some of crypto's biggest players," reports Politico — even as they're seeking more credibility with U.S. lawmakers: Judges have recently rebuked claims that the SEC lacks authority to police the market. Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, lost...

"What if the big tech companies achieved their ultimate business goal — maximizing engagement on their platforms — in a way that has undermined our ability to function as an open society?" That's the question being asked by Chuck Todd, chief political analyst for NBC News: What if they realized that when folks agree on a solution to a problem,...