Secrets of the Little Blue Box
How phone phreakers, many of them blind, opened up Ma Bell to unlimited free international calling using a technical manual and a toy organ.
Technology
Is Substack the Media Future We Want?
The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "We Only Wanted Their Happiness"
Children with internet implants.
Hippie Inc: How the Counterculture Went Corporate
Half a century on from the summer of love, marijuana is big business and mindfulness a workplace routine. Nat Segnit asks how the movement found itself at the heart of capitalism
The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret
How killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.
The Body Pullers of Syria
Thousands of bodies are buried in shallow graves around Raqqa, Syria. One group is using Facebook and Google Earth to identify human remains and rebury them where they belong.
Playboy Interview: Steven Jobs
Steve Jobs, age 29.
"It’s often the same with any new, revolutionary thing. People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It’s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things. It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they’re rare."
Shutting Themselves In
When Japanese men in their teens and twenties shut themselves in their rooms, sometimes for a period of years, one way to lure them out is a hired “big sister.”
The Quest to Preserve Stephen Hawking’s Voice
How a Silicon Valley team helped rebuild his distinctive robotic sound.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Bespoke"
The pros and cons of computerized boyfriend models; reposted in honor of the late fabulist Zachary Doss.
Mother Earth Mother Board
A 42,000-word, 3-continent spanning “hacker tourist” account of the laying of the (then) longest wire on earth.
The House That Spied on Me
Once I made my home smart, what would it learn and whom would it tell?
Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook—and the World
How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all.
Inside North Korea's Hacker Army
The lives of programmers sent abroad by Pyongyang to make money by any means necessary.
Estonia, the Digital Republic
Tech takes over the post-Soviet nation.
In Chatlogs, Celebrated Hacker and Activist Confesses Countless Sexual Assaults
“I have drunkenly sexually assaulted or raped women—the exact number of which I am currently determining.”
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Bespoke"
The pros and cons of computerized boyfriend models.
Where's _why? : The Disappearance of One of the World’s Most Beloved Computer Programmers
On the mysterious disappearance of a beloved coding legend (and his code) with stops along the way for a short history of programming languages, an ethnography of code-based communities, and an inquiry into what it means to “die young without artifact.”
Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-Up
One of the most valuable cars in the world crashes going 200 mph on the Pacific Coast Highway. Its owner claims to be an anti-terrorism officer. In fact, he’s a former executive at a failed software company—and a career criminal. The unraveling of an epic con.
What an Immigrant Murder in Kansas Says About America
Olathe, Kansas, became a global magnet for tech talent, thanks to plentiful jobs, cheap housing, and good schools. Then someone opened fire on a pair of Indian-born engineers.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Signal"
A mystery unfolds in an English mansion.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Exist West [Excerpt]"
An excerpt from Hamid's latest novel: a man and a woman caught in between escape and uncertainty.
The Trolls Among Us
Inside the real lives of people who came early to intentionally provoking, confusing, and generally screwing with strangers online.
An IM Infatuation Turned to Romance. Then the Truth Came Out.
He was an 18 year old Marine bound for Iraq. She was a high school senior in West Virginia. They grew intimate over IM. His dad also started contacting her. No one was who they claimed to be and it led to a murder.
Black Arts
The Academy of Art University in San Francisco is very profitable for the family who runs it. But not so much for the students who attend in hopes of becoming artists.
