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A Master Key to the Ultimate Dumb Device
Lock-in. That's what we call it when you're dependent on a specific vendor for particular services. When you buy a single-serving coffee machine boasting convenient, mess-free coffee inserts, like...
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When Women Code
Code builds things: websites, games, this story you're reading. But what code hasn't built, as the tech industry proves again and again, is gender parity among the coders themselves. That's the central...
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The Unbelievable Power of Amazon's Cloud
On Thursday, we’ll finally get a sense of the true scope of one of the most important businesses for the Internet. Amazon is due to announce the size of its Web Services product. Amazon Web Services...
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How Robbers Got Cops to Pay Ransoms
In Lincoln County, Maine, Sheriff Todd Brackett reached a decision that cut against his every instinct as a longtime cop: He agreed to pay a ransom to a robber. The details come from an NBC affiliate's...
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23 Seconds of Wonder
I've watched this 23-second time lapse of Chile's Calbuco volcano erupting probably 23 times by now. It's stunning, all peach-toned and billowy. Like a violent sunrise—clouds piling six miles skyward;...
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Updating Facebook to Say 'I'm Safe'
Four hours after learning about Saturday's devastating earthquake in Nepal, I received a Facebook notification I had never seen before: Sonia, a journalist friend based in northern India, was "marked...
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What Good Is a Video You Can't See?
Soon, thousand of police officers across the country will don body-worn cameras when they go out among the public. Those cameras will generate millions of hours of footage—intimate views of commuters...
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What to Say When the Police Tell You to Stop Filming Them
First of all, they shouldn’t ask. “As a basic principle, we can’t tell you to stop recording,” says Delroy Burton, chairman of D.C.’s metropolitan police union and a 21-year veteran on the force. “If...
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'Thank God for Cellphone Video Cameras'
On Monday night, William Murphy, Jr., held a press conference in a West Baltimore church. Murphy is a long-time Baltimore lawyer—he cameoed as himself on The Wire—and he is now the attorney to the...
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Facebook Is Eating the Internet
Facebook, it seems, is unstoppable. The social publishing site, just 11 years old, is now the dominant force in American media. It drives a quarter of all web traffic. In turn, Facebook sucks up a huge...
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Long Live Secrets on the Internet
The advice column, as a format, is widely believed to have started in 1691, in a periodical called the Athenian Mercury. In the magazine's six-year run, it published thousands of questions and...
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The Labyrinth Revival
When Nelson Aponte, a 37-year-old prisoner serving 10 to 12 years for larceny in Hampshire County Jail, in Massachusetts, registered for a class on labyrinths three years ago, he was skeptical, to say...
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The Big Money in Police Body Cameras
Body cameras are a tool of citizen surveillance and of public accountability. They’re endorsed by police reformists and police chiefs, and, above all, by the White House, which has pledged $75 million...
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The Questions People Asked Advice Columnists in the 1690s
In a story about the origins of confessional apps like Whisper and the now-defunct Secret, I recently mentioned The Athenian Mercury, a British periodical of the 1690s that is widely credited with...
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The Onion Is Not a Joke
The Onion had a problem: it fell behind the times. The mock newspaper hadn’t printed an issue on actual paper since 2013, and in the period since, it never redesigned its website. As the media world...
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Last Meals of the Famous
Before Napoleon Bonaparte uttered his last words ("France, l'armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine") and perished on the windswept island of Saint Helena at the age of 51, he reportedly treated himself to a...
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The Internet Mapmakers Helping Nepal
The night after the earthquake hit Nepal, people feared to sleep in their homes, worrying about powerful aftershocks toppling the few buildings left standing. They slept instead in tents, in the street...
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The Scientist Who Told Congress He Could (Literally) Make It Rain
Why does it rain? Why does water, condensed into droplets, fall from the sky at particular moments, in particular places? For a long time—until, pretty much, the 19th century—people believed that rain...
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Film the Police
Last month, video footage emerged that appeared to show something illegal: A U.S. marshal approached a woman who was filming him on duty, snatched her smartphone, and smashed it on the ground. That...
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Can Music Be Used as Medicine?
“Because you listened to Drake, how about Future next?” Pandora, Spotify, and other music-streaming services try to predict what users might like to listen to, based on their tastes and what’s popular...
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