We classify people in all sorts of ways. Some categories are based on a person's beliefs: A theist, for instance, is a person who believes in one or more gods. Some categories are based on behavior: A vegetarian, for example, is a person who doesn't eat animals. And some categories seem to straddle…

When Elon Musk unveiled his idea for the Hyperloop in August of 2013, no one seemed sure what the next step would be. The Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO dropped a 57-page alpha white paper on us, noting he didn’t really have the time to build a revolutionary transit system that would shoot pods full of…

Now that the secret back room dealings are done and the latest budget bill passed Congress (of course, at the 11th hour), we can see the thumbprints of Wall Street once again. Actually, more than thumbprints, Citigroup actually wrote part of it . They managed to gut “Section 716” of Dodd-Frank.…

The coastal city of Buenaventura is Colombia's most violent city. There, two rival gangs — La Empresa and Los Urabeños, both successors of paramilitary groups — fight for control, with the city's 400,000 residents caught in the middle. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, more than…

Nonemployed A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times…

Between foreign hackers and the National Security Agency (NSA), how is an innocent Internet user supposed to browse the web free of government surveillance? Eric Schmidt , the executive chairman of Google , has an answer: Use incognito mode in Chrome. Except that’s wrong—completely, absolutely…

The ruble plummeted into a freefall, losing as much as 19 percent as panic swept across Russian financial markets after a surprise interest-rate increase failed to stem the run on the currency. The ruble sank beyond 80 per dollar, a record low, before rebounding after Economy Minister Alexei…

Sony and Aaron Sorkin both got it wrong. There are journalism ethics to mining emails hacked by someone else. But the question is not whether or not to mine them, but rather how. Journalists generally agree that it’s appropriate to use ill-gotten information in the public interest, whether it’s the…

In August 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat paid a secret visit to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to meet with King Faisal. Sadat was preparing for war with Israel, and he needed Saudi Arabia to use its most powerful weapon: oil. Until then, King Faisal had been reluctant for the Arab members of OPEC…

A woman walks in front of Sony's headquarters in Tokyo on Jan. 22, 2009. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Reddit has banned individual user accounts, deleted posts, and banned a subreddit after receiving "less than a handful" of takedown requests for data leaked as part of the massive Sony Pictures hack. Sony's…

Hatred is described by its developer as a “genocide crusade” and features the motiveless killing of civiliansPhotograph: public domain Controversial mass-shooting game Hatred has been removed from Steam , the biggest digital gaming download site. The project, developed by Polish studio Destructive…

One week into her new job as Detroit’s chief information officer, Beth Niblock had to deal with a pressing issue she probably hadn’t anticipated. A hacker froze a city database containing the personal information of 1,700 current and former employees of Detroit’s fire and EMS department, and…

Should States Spend Billions To Reduce Class Sizes?

THE BIG KILL New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals

The U.S. is lagging its competitors in the quality of its Internet access, and the people in charge are hearing excuses. It’s time to debunk the myths. Susan Crawford Dec 16, 2014 Unlisted Back in 2001, then newly minted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman (and now top cable industry…

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Deeplinks Blog by , Andrew Crocker | January 1, 2019 The Long Fight to Stop Mass Surveillance: 2018 in Review EFF is in it for the long run, especially in the important, hard fights for your rights. One of the longest running fights in online civil liberties is over your right to have a private…

Everyone seems to be eager to pin the blame for the Sony hack on North Korea. However, I think it’s unlikely. Here’s why:1. The broken English looks deliberately bad and doesn’t exhibit any of the classic comprehension mistakes you actually expect to see in “Konglish”. i.e it reads to me like an…

by apendleton and Bob Lannon technology policy investigations Dec 16, 2014 1:23 pm Share This: Editor’s note: Never in a million years would we have guessed at the response that this post would have generated. There is clearly a lot at stake about the future of the Internet. We understand the…

Update, 12/18: More Peter Singer on the fallout from the Sony hack—"This will be a case study I can guarantee will be both used and misused in everything from legislation to cybersecurity sales pitches." It's been a big day for news surrounding the massive, ongoing Sony hack saga. First, major movie…

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel The Verge When you're the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company at age 23, you need to grow up quickly. Just three years ago, Evan Spiegel was a senior at Stanford University. Today, he runs a mobile application worth $10 billion, Snapchat. Spiegel turned 24 in June. Going…

Google is proposing to warn people their data is at risk every time they visit websites that do not use the "HTTPS" system. Many sites have adopted the secure version of the basic web protocol to help safeguard data. The proposal was made by the Google developers working on the search firm's Chrome…

Leo Sharp. Credit Eugene Richards for The New York Times The Lincoln pickup truck with Iowa plates was hurtling down Interstate 94, headed for Detroit. A dozen D.E.A. officers in unmarked cars were scattered along a 70-mile stretch, from Kalamazoo to Jackson, Mich. From on-ramps and overpasses, they…

Science & Tech By A laboratory at Stony Brook University , working with designer Dann Roosegaarde , has developed a glowing plant by merging luciferin–which is the chemical that enables fireflies to glow–with a simple plant. The result is a plant, in dirt, that glows. Naturally. And it is awesome .…

ICANN — the organization responsible for allocating IP addresses and domain names for the internet — has been hacked. The US-administered non-profit has said that its internal systems were breached following a spear phishing attack in late November. Employees were tricked into giving up their…

Following the news in 2014 is a bit like flying a kite in flat country during tornado season. Every so often, a whirlwind of outrage touches down, sowing destruction and chaos before disappearing into the sky. These conditions are hardly new. Over the past decade or so, outrage has become the…

Mike Chen Dec 16, 2014 Unlisted Hardware To Space My colleagues and I just 3D-printed a ratcheting socket wrench on the International Space Station by typing some commands on our computer in California. We had overheard ISS Commander Barry Wilmore (who goes by “Butch”) mention over the radio that he…

The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

Things can go wrong when you book an Airbnb listing: the host leaves town without arranging a key exchange, or the cleaning service never showed up between guests. At a normal hotel, you’d call the front desk. With an Airbnb, you call the company’s customer experience team. Airbnb’s virtual…

More than 200 journalists are imprisoned for their work for the third consecutive year, reflecting a global surge in authoritarianism. China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2014. A CPJ special report by Shazdeh Omari Published December 17, 2014 The Committee to Protect Journalists…

I n 1841, an invasive water mold began to infect the world’s potatoes. Starting from Mexico, the infectious agent of blight traveled up through North America, then crossed the Atlantic. Eventually it reached Ireland, where, as the journalist Charles Mann described it, “four out of ten Irish ate no…

In 1992, Juan Rivera was arrested for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Waukegan, Illinois. On the night of the murder, Rivera was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet in connection with unrelated burglary charges, and this bracelet showed he’d been at home. Yet, based on a tip, police…

Paper Dresses and Psychedelic Catsuits: When Airline Fashion Was Flying High

REUTERS/Kacper Pempel German researchers have discovered security flaws that could let hackers, spies and criminals listen to private phone calls and intercept text messages on a potentially massive scale – even when cellular networks are using the most advanced encryption now available. The flaws,…