A profile of Christopher Soghoian whose “productions follow a similar pattern, a series of orchestrated events that lead to the public shaming of a large entity—Google, Facebook, the federal government—over transgressions that the 30-year-old technologist sees as unacceptable violations of privacy.”
How phone phreakers, many of them blind, opened up Ma Bell to unlimited free international calling using a technical manual and a toy organ.
The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize.
Children with internet implants.
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
How killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.
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.
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."
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.”
How a Silicon Valley team helped rebuild his distinctive robotic sound.
The pros and cons of computerized boyfriend models; reposted in honor of the late fabulist Zachary Doss.
A 42,000-word, 3-continent spanning “hacker tourist” account of the laying of the (then) longest wire on earth.
Once I made my home smart, what would it learn and whom would it tell?
How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all.
The lives of programmers sent abroad by Pyongyang to make money by any means necessary.
Tech takes over the post-Soviet nation.
“I have drunkenly sexually assaulted or raped women—the exact number of which I am currently determining.”
The pros and cons of computerized boyfriend models.
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.”
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.
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.
A mystery unfolds in an English mansion.
An excerpt from Hamid's latest novel: a man and a woman caught in between escape and uncertainty.
Inside the real lives of people who came early to intentionally provoking, confusing, and generally screwing with strangers online.
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.
