Indice dei contenuti per March 2020 in WIRED

THE QUANTUM CON Have you ever really looked at a photon? Part wave, part particle, all perfection. Yet they bring out the worst in some people, who bring out the worst in me. Let’s start with the obvious: Photons, in all their quantum quintessence, can improve the security of internet connections. Anybody can poke around standard-issue encryption keys undetected, but when the 1s and 0s are hooked into specific photons, that snooping triggers telltale state changes—revealing the presence of a hacker! Clever, right? What’s less clever, and more maddening, are the ways companies overhype this style of quantum cryptography. They witter of an “unbreakable” and “unhackable” internet. I like quantum engineering projects as much as any midichlorian-blooded nerd, but a cybersecurity panacea? Au quantraire! The suggestion turns me into Schrödinger’s…

AER CABLE KIT The Law of Cables is clear: Place them next to each other and they will become tangled. Aer’s ballistic nylon case has two compartments with a bevy of pockets, pouches, and elastic strips to eliminate cord chaos. When it’s time to travel, toss it in your carry-on. OXO GOOD GRIPS SWEEP & SWIPE LAPTOP CLEANER Oxo’s dual-purpose cleaner has two ways to make your laptop less disgusting. The soft brush plumbs the crevices of your keyboard to sweep out crumbs, then retracts with a snap for easy storage. Flip the device around and use the microfiber pad to wipe all the gunk and fingerprints off your screen. MUJI DESK BROOM SET WITH DUSTPAN The Japanese home-goods brand Muji excels at designing elegant implements for your desktop. This…

OVER THE COURSE OF FIVE DAYS IN EARLY JANUARY, THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY BRINGS ITS DOG AND PONY SHOW TO LAS VEGAS. IT’S A TIDAL CRUSH OF GADGETS—–TENS OF THOUSANDS OF WHIRRING CONTRAPTIONS COMPETING FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE MEDIA, DEALMAKERS, AND TECHNOPHILES. FOR A PRODUCT TO STAND OUT AMONG THE THICKET OF LITHIUMION-FUELED GEWGAWS, IT NEEDS SOMETHING SPECIAL: A SMART DESIGN, SOME NEW MATERIAL, AN UNBEATABLE VALUE. THIS YEAR A HANDFUL OF PRODUCTS GOT OVER THAT HIGH BAR. 1 SAMSUNG GALAXY CHROMEBOOK BEST LAPTOP The sleek, 2.3-pound aluminum body of the Galaxy Chromebook signals it’s a high-end machine—as does the $1,000 price tag. But it has features you wish your work laptop had: USB-C ports, SD card reader, built-in stylus, and up to 1 TB of storage. The gorgeous…

On a warm Saturday evening in late May, Derek Murphy, wearing cargo shorts and a polo shirt, sat on his living room floor, his back against the couch, his legs stretched out, his computer on his lap. A baseball game was on the television, but Murphy, 49, wasn’t paying much attention to it. He was too busy scrolling through hundreds of photos and combing over data on his computer. Occasionally he’d stop to sip from a can of diet soda. During the week, Murphy, who lives outside of Cincinnati, worked as a data analyst for a health insurance company. But in his free time, he pursued an unusual hobby: exposing cheaters in endurance races. Four years earlier, Murphy had started a website called Marathon Investigation, and recently he’d been looking…

—@milked_ via Twitter Honorable Mentions: SMELT DECOMMISSIONED WEAPONS INTO MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. @CASINCLAIR VIA TWITTER // CLIMATE APP TRACKS LOCAL CO2 LEVELS. @BIG_BIG_LOVE_ VIA INSTAGRAM // GLOBAL ORAL HISTORY KEEPS MEMORIES ALIVE. @JOHNKELLYBABB VIA INSTAGRAM // SAVE THE WORLD BY PLANTING TREES. LÍLÁ TÜCKÉR VIA FACEBOOK //REDISTRIBUTE MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO THE UNDERINSURED. @JESMAKES VIA INSTAGRAM // COMMUNITY-BASED RENEWABLE ENERGY POWER GRIDS. @UNIQUETOYBOX VIA TWITTER// DIGITAL DEMOCRACY WITH BACKING IN BLOCKCHAIN. @JACKRANADO VIA TWITTER // LIFE AFTER DEATH—DONATE YOUR DNA. @BEYOND_MIKE VIA INSTAGRAM Each month we publish a six-word story—and it could be written by you. Submit your story on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, along with #WIREDBACKPAGE. We’ll pick one to illustrate here. Your next assignment: IN SIX WORDS, SAVE THE PLANET.…

Karma, Courage, and Sustainabetty are special heifers. They have uninterrupted views of Rotterdam harbor, poop on a poop deck, and walk that gangplank to a pasture. They and 31 other Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows clomped aboard the world’s first floating dairy farm last May. “It’s the best milk in the world,” says Peter van Wingerden, founder of the Dutch property development company Beladon, which built the barge. In 2012, hearing that floods from Hurricane Sandy had crippled New York City’s food distribution system, he imagined that waterborne urban farms could boost food security. Why Rotterdam? A quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level. Why 1,500-pound bovines? “If we could put big animals inside the city on a floating barge, we could do anything.” Getting a green light required years of answering…

TO ANYONE WHO happened to be looking up that morning, perhaps from the deck of a boat off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the plane would have appeared to be on an extremely alarming trajectory. It rocketed into the cloudless late-summer sky at a 45-degree angle, slowed momentarily and leveled out, then nosed down toward the ocean, plunging 17,000 vertical feet in a matter of seconds. At the last moment, it leveled out again and began another climb, looking for all the world as though it were being piloted by a hopelessly indecisive hijacker Onboard the plane, the mood was euphoric and a little hysterical. The main cabin had been converted into a kind of padded cell, lined with soft white tiles in lieu of seats and overhead bins.…

In 2012, Chad Reynolds found himself on a South Carolina beach at midnight. He was there for a destination wedding, sitting on the sand with friends, when he decided to wade into the ocean alone. As he floated in the dark water, he had what he describes as his first real conversation with God. What was he doing with his life? he asked. Why wasn’t he with someone? Why did he feel so empty? Reynolds, a 36-year-old designer and startup founder from Cincinnati, Ohio, had been fending off burnout, in fits and starts, for years. He’d started a company designing websites for movies and other products right out of college, and managed to land big clients like Warner Bros. But he worked relentlessly, rarely taking vacations, ignoring his health, and…

I first met Mark Zuckerberg in March 2006. ADAPTED FROM FACEBOOK: THE INSIDE STORY, BY STEVEN LEVY, TO BE PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 25, 2020, BY BLUE RIDER PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN PUBLISHING GROUP, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC. COPYRIGHT ©2020 BY STEVEN LEVY At the time, I was the lead tech writer at Newsweek and was working on a story about what we were calling Web 2.0—the notion that the next stage of the internet would be a joyful, participatory creation of individuals. I’d heard about a social networking startup that was spreading like kudzu on college campuses. I wanted to learn more about it, perhaps give it a name-check in the story. Luckily, Zuckerberg, its cofounder and CEO, was scheduled to appear that month at PC Forum,…

Remember when Wikipedia was a joke? IN ITS FIRST DECADE OF LIFE, THE WEBSITE appeared in as many punch lines as headlines. The Office’s Michael Scott called it “the best thing ever,” because “anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject—so you know you are getting the best possible information.” Praising Wikipedia, by restating its mission, meant self-identifying as an idiot. That was in 2007. Today, Wikipedia is the eighth-most-visited site in the world. The English-language version recently surpassed 6 million articles and 3.5 billion words; edits materialize at a rate of 1.8 per second. But perhaps more remarkable than Wikipedia’s success is how little its reputation has changed. It was criticized as it rose, and now makes its final ascent to … muted criticism. To…