When San Francisco cybersecurity company HackerOne got serious about its written communications, its concerns went far beyond pesky split infinitives. For example, much of its messaging is aimed at hackers—not online criminals, but the kinds of ethical geeks who bristle at the use of the term “hacker” to describe the bad guys. To make sure it didn’t inadvertently tick off this critical audience through any sloppy phrasing or poor word choices, the company gave more th
At the Regional Perinatal Center in Kharkiv, Ukraine, women give birth in a newly made labor room set up in the hospital’s basement, sheltered from air raids. But not all children are able to shelter there. Premature babies require lifesaving equipment like incubators, which are housed aboveground in the children’s intensive care unit and cannot be moved. To provide these babies with critical care, nurses stay with them in that room aboveground, even during bombings. Soon, though,
Outer space continues to get more and more dangerous and more “congested, contested, and competitive” than at any point in history. In 1976, for example, only about 750 satellites were in orbit around the earth; as of January 5 this year, there were 12,480, with tens of thousands more expected in the years to come. SpaceX alone has been granted licenses to launch 12,000 more Starlink satellites over the next five years as part of its megaconstellation efforts. Other companies and c
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Hello! In this post I’m sharing resources to help you stay focused and get more done:
5 simple tools to help you focus on what matters to you. 2 plug-ins to block social media distractions. Some excellent recent books on how and why to avoid time-sucking distractions.
Self Control Download this free, open-source Mac app. Then pick a list of
If you’re running Google’s Chrome web browser—or a Chrome-infused browser such as Microsoft Edge—there’s a nearly endless supply of helpful add-ins to bolster your browsing experience. Some are bad, some are good; some are simple, some are complex. And then there’s a handful of extensions that are a Goldilocks-style just-right mix of utility and simplicity. Here are four of my favorites, each of which does one thing and does it really well. Dark Reader:
Sooner or later, every tech giant decides to get into the retail business. There’s Apple, of course, whose 500-plus stores rank among its greatest, most disruptive successes. But also Microsoft (twice). And Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Sony. And now, Meta. On Monday, the company formerly known as Facebook is opening its first Meta Store, a retail outlet open to the public. It’s located in Burlingame, California, on the campus of the company’s 17,000-employee Reality Lab
When Tom Shen and Kenny Leung quit their tech jobs—as senior consultant at IBM and business strategist at Facebook, respectively—to launch a direct-to-consumer company in 2019, they had no idea that just a few months later, they’d run a thriving luxury makeup-brush brand with waitlists of customer names numbering into the thousands. Today, the duo run Rephr, a crowdsourced, pay-what-you-want beauty tools and skincare company that they continue to scale and iterate by leverag
When you hear the word “nanomedicine,” it might call to mind scenarios like those in the 1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage.” The film portrays a medical team shrunken down to ride a microscopic robotic ship through a man’s body to clear a blood clot in his brain. Nanomedicine has not reached that level of sophistication yet. Although scientists can generate nanomaterials smaller then several nanometers – the “nano” indicating one-billionth of a
On Thursday, major internet service providers (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, et al.) dropped a lawsuit challenging a California law requiring broadband networks to treat traffic and content from all websites and services equally. The ISPs’ legal challenge had already lost three times in California Federal courts. Network neutrality proponents are calling the abandonment of the suit a huge win for digital rights and the open web. The ISP trade groups revealed their decision in a brief filed Wedn
2021 was a roller coaster of a year for Apple when it came to privacy. The company hit highs with new privacy features like Hide My Email and Private Relay. Unfortunately, it also took a beating on the privacy front in two instances. When it announced plans to detect images of child sexual abuse on iPhones, privacy experts called the technology “dangerous,” and one that could possibly be exploited by authoritarian governments. (Apple ultimately stopped talking about