Facebook’s Encryption Makes it Harder to Detect Child Abuse
In 2018, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 18 million reports to their CyberTipline, constituting 45 million images depicting child sexual abuse. Most of these children were under the age of 12, and some were as young as a few months old. Since its inception in 1998, the CyberTipline has […]
Prepping Bees for Mars, New Google Shortcuts, and More News
Scientists are raising interplanetary bees and Google is speeding up your keys, but first: a cartoon about obsessive Instagrammers. Here’s the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines Bees, please: Stop dying in your Martian simulator […]
GDPR Fines Haven’t Rocked the Data Privacy World—Yet
When it launched, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became bigger than Beyoncé. Since then, some of the hype around the law has waned, but there’s still one thing that gets people excited: fines. Under the law, data-protection regulators across Europe have boosted powers to punish companies and organizations who are found in breach of […]
Google Enlists Outside Help to Clean Up Android’s Malware Mess
Android has a bit of a malware problem. The open ecosystem’s flexibility also makes it relatively easy for tainted apps to circulate on third-party app stores or malicious websites. Worse still, malware-ridden apps sneak into the official Play Store with disappointing frequency. After grappling with the issue for a decade, Google is calling in some […]
‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Didn’t Need an Exploding Airplane
The latest Terminator movie, Dark Fate, struggles to give satisfying emotional arcs to its large cast of characters. Writer Sara Lynn Michener says it doesn’t help that a large chunk of the movie is wasted on a bombastic action sequence set aboard an exploding cargo plane. “I think there’s this idea with, especially, male directors […]
The EPA’s Anti-Science ‘Transparency’ Rule Has a Long History
Sometimes a bad piece of legislation doesn’t die, it just returns in another form—call it a zombie bill. In this case, the zombie is a bill that morphed into a proposed rule that would upend how the federal government uses science in its decisionmaking. It would allow the US Environmental Protection Agency to pick and […]
The Real ID Is Nearly Here, and You Can’t Fly Home Without It
Thanksgiving travel is the stuff of suffering: the crowding, the stress, the weather-induced delays, and, at least for some, dinner with the whole family. But come next year, your trip home, or anywhere else on a commercial airplane, may well demand something even worse: a trip to the DMV. As of October 1, 2020, the […]
Meet the Elite Shot-Putter Chasing a World Record
If you’ve ever tried your hand at shot put, you know it’s tougher than it looks. The metal ball, called a shot, is deceptively heavy for its size. At 16 pounds, it’s the weight of a bowling ball crammed into a package about the size of a softball. To throw it effectively you have to […]
What We Get Wrong About ‘People of Color’
So why is it that we refuse to actually say what we mean? “What does irritate me is when it is employed to essentially erase black people as if that term is interchangeable with black. It’s not.” Michael Arceneaux The phrase itself has experienced an interesting trajectory, historically speaking. Early on, identifying nonwhites conveyed a […]
Scott Adams Has Some Ideas for a Calmer Internet
After expressing support for Donald Trump in 2016, Dilbert creator Scott Adams estimates that he lost about 30 percent of his income and 75 percent of his friends. He says that that level of political polarization has created a climate of genuine fear. “People will come up, and they’ll usually whisper—or they’ll lower their voice, […]