Blog
A Tricky New Way to Sneak Past Repressive Internet Censorship
All over the world, walls are going up around the internet.For years, autocratic regimes have been in a race to heighten those walls, as their citizens develop taller and taller ladders. The more they filter and block, the more their citizens come up with clever...
How ChatGPT Can Help You Do More With PDFs
If your PDFs aren't hosted online, then AskYourPDF can upload them for you, and you can then submit queries through ChatGPT. You can ask for specific details from specific sections, get overviews and summaries, get certain sections rewritten, and generally do anything...
Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Gen USB-C Review: New Port and Adaptive Audio
Unless you’ve got a thing for port-snooping, Apple’s new USB-C-enabled AirPods Pro look just like the old ones. That’s fine. Well-heeled iPhone owners still want a pair to silence the world around them between calls on their iPhone 15 Pro. New features like Adaptive...
In the War Between Harassment and Censorship, No One Wins
One of the most prominent victims of the GamerGate harassment campaign took out a restraining order against their ex-partner, whose false accusations lent fire to the movement. The restraining order did nothing to meaningfully resolve the abuse, yet even if it had...
How to Set Up Your New iPhone (2023)
If you're unfamiliar with the process, don't worry, it's very easy. During setup, you'll be asked if you want to transfer your number from your old iPhone. Once you agree, it will take a minute or two to activate cellular data on your new iPhone, and you're good to...
I Failed Two Captcha Tests This Week. Am I Still Human?
“I failed two captcha tests this week. Am I still human?”—Bot or Not?Dear Bot,The comedian John Mulaney has a bit about the self-reflexive absurdity of captchas. “You spend most of your day telling a robot that you’re not a robot,” he says. “Think about that for two...
How Elon Musk and Tesla Helped Spark the UAW Auto Strikes
Elon Musk hasn’t been sighted at the picket lines in Missouri, Ohio, or Michigan, where autoworkers are striking against the Big Three US carmakers. Yet the influence of Musk and his non-unionized company Tesla have been everywhere since the United Auto Workers called...
The Mysterious ‘Warming Hole’ in the Middle of the US
Last month, a strange atmospheric phenomenon spread over the central United States: a brutal, self-perpetuating “heat dome.” Hot air descended onto the region, sucking the moisture out of soils and plants, and raising ground temperatures higher and higher. On August...
How a ‘Digital Peeping Tom’ Unmasked Porn Actors
Over 15 years on Facebook, he had befriended hundreds of women. The first person he got a hit for was a near stranger he had met one time at a club while on vacation. They had become Facebook friends and then never interacted again. “It turned out she shot porn at...
There’s an Alternative to the Infinite Scroll
Sometime in the summer of 2020, I noticed an occasional, searing pain shooting up my right forearm. It soon became clear this was a byproduct of a gesture that had become as commonplace as breathing or blinking that season, if not long before: scrolling. This was how...
Crispr Pioneer Jennifer Doudna Has the Guts to Take On the Microbiome
OK, you’ve lost me. What do you mean by “bring in a molecule”?It literally just means allowing a molecule into a cell. And if that molecule is a gene editor, then it can edit genes. So we’re really at the early days of trying to figure out, for all the microbes in the...
A New Proof Moves the Needle on a Sticky Geometry Problem
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.In 1917, the Japanese mathematician Sōichi Kakeya posed what at first seemed like nothing more than a fun exercise in geometry. Lay an infinitely thin, inch-long needle on a flat surface, then rotate it so...
ChatGPT Isn’t Coming for Your Coding Job
Software engineers have joined the ranks of copy editors, translators, and others who fear that they’re about to be replaced by generative AI. But it might be surprising to learn that coders have been under threat before. New technologies have long promised to...
You Need to Update Google Chrome or Whatever Browser You Use
China-linked hackers are increasingly moving beyond espionage and into the disturbing world of power grid attacks. Threat researchers at security software firm Symantec this week released new evidence that the Chinese hacking group known as APT41 infiltrated the power...
The Auto Strike Threatens a Supply Chain Already Weakened by Covid
In addition to making everyone an epidemiologist, the Covid-19 pandemic schooled the public on the world-spanning network of manufacturers, assemblers, and shippers behind just about every consumer good that arrives on your doorstep. Or driveway. Car prices soared as...
Welcome to Halal Hinge
Swoosh. Ping. Slow and studied scrolling. Typing with the index finger. My mother is on the prowl for a man. Not for herself, of course, but for any of her three daughters, all of whom have the great misfortune of being single in their late twenties and early...
Insiders Reveal Major Problems at Lab-Grown-Meat Startup Upside Foods
In an interview with AgFunderNews published in June, Upside chief operating officer Amy Chen confirmed that its whole-cut chicken product was still being made in 2-liter roller bottles. Upside's website—which includes a page dedicated to explaining the production of...
Will the Real David Sosa Please Stand Up?
In the coming weeks, the US Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a pending case that includes an amicus brief filed by David Sosas. Plural. The David Sosas who signed the brief include “David Sosa, age 32, from Iredell County, North Carolina; David Sosa, age 51,...