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How to Check if a Site Is Safe From 'Heartbleed'
This post follows one a few hours ago about the Heartbleed security failure, and for safety's sake it repeats information I have added to that post as an update. Point 1: If you would like to test to...
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The 'Coffeesheds' of San Francisco
1. MIT geographers map the coffeesheds of San Francisco. "This map shows the location of every independent coffee shop in San Fracisco and the walking-shed community associated with it... In the final...
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What's Closer to Texas Than Texas Is to Itself?
This map shows (roughly) how large the Lone Star State is. Points in the map’s red section are closer to somewhere in Texas than the opposite sides of Texas are to each other. That’s right: You can be...
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The Nun Who Got Addicted to Twitter
“My superior is a gamer." Sister Helena Burns said, laughing. "You know you’re a media nun when your superior is a gamer." You might not expect nuns to be experts on Twitter, Facebook, and...
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'This Email Will Self-Destruct After You Read It'
There are, we often hear, several simultaneous Big Battles taking place on—and for—the Internet. Mobile web versus native apps! Open versus walled! Regulated versus free! We are, right at this very...
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Heartbleed Update: Sites That Tell You Which Passwords You Should Bother to...
[Update: see bonus xkcd link below.] For background, see this early Heartbleed dispatch on general principles of password hygiene, and this one on a range of test utilities to check whether possibly...
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Hacking the Political Platform: Why One Candidate Is Using Github
New Jersey’s second district lies vast across its south. Atlantic City to the Delaware River, cranberry bogs and the Pine Barrens: Where the state’s other districts have been gerrymandered into twiddly...
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Fly'n'Drive Notes From All Over
Scene 1, from China this week. Thanks to many people there who sent me this news item and asked whether I had missed my historic chance: A mysterious and debonair foreigner lands a plane on a road in...
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Google, Powerbroker
1. Google figured out how to hack Washington: spend lots of time and money. "The behind-the-scenes machinations demonstrate how Google — once a lobbying weakling — has come to master a new method of...
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Behind the Machine's Back: How Social Media Users Avoid Getting Turned Into...
Social media companies constantly collect data on their users because that's how they provide customized experiences and target their advertisements. All Twitter and Facebook users know this, and there...
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The First Emoticon May Have Appeared in ... 1648
A dedicated poetry reader appears to have discovered a smiley face in a poem from 1648, a find that would extend the pre-history of the emoticon back by about 200 years. Editor Levi Stahl, publicity...
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If Doctors Don't Like Electronic Medical Records, Should We Care?
Dr. David Blumenthal, who now is head of the Commonwealth Fund, has been a friend since we both were teenagers. It was a sign of his medical / tech / policy skills that the newly arrived Obama...
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This Crazy Purple Cube Is 1 Giant Step for Space Agriculture
Today, if all goes according to plan, a SpaceX Dragon capsule will launch from Cape Canaveral, bound for the International Space Station. The capsule will be delivering supplies—2.5 tons of them—to the...
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Takeoff and Landing, From Inside the Cockpit
On Wednesday night of this week, Deb Fallows and I are doing a program at Washington's historic Sixth and I synagogue, in conversation with the Atlantic's editor-in-chief James Bennet. We'll be talking...
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The (Unintentional) Amazon Guide to Dealing Drugs
One day, some drug dealer bought a particular digital scale—the AWS-100— on the retail site, Amazon.com. And then another drug dealer bought the same scale. Then another. Then another. Amazon's...
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18% of Americans Know They've Had Personal Information Stolen Online
1. Pew says roughly a fifth of US Internet users have had an account compromised or personal information stolen. Yeesh. "18% of online adults have had important personal information stolen such as...
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Scientists Discover How to Generate Solar Power in the Dark
The next big thing in solar energy could be microscopic. Scientists at MIT and Harvard University have devised a way to store solar energy in molecules that can then be tapped to heat homes, water or...
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This Sun-Powered Furnace Can Reach 3,000 Degrees
The gargantuan, century-old U.S. Steel mills of Gary, Indiana, fueled the rise of smokestack America in the 20th century, their blast furnaces forging heavy metal for millions of carbon-spewing cars....
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Fraud, Failure, and Frustration: This Is the Story of America's First Energy...
George Shoemaker knew it was time to run. Despite his willingness to give away his product simply for the cost of its transport, a group of angry Philadelphians had obtained a warrant for his arrest....
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When Your Hearing Aid Is an iPhone
The world is loud. As a partial result of this, the typical human aging process involves hearing loss that ranges from mild to severe. And though that loss can be a big problem—"blindness separates...
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