pillar:systems
The Commons That Learned To Lock
There is an old way to read the internet, with no account and no adverts. On 13 November, Reddit switches it off. Machines with a contract stay inside.
Dr. Leo R. Yamas
From The Apex, everything is visible.
pillar:achievement
The Law That Requires A Human
California has made it illegal for software to fire a worker on its own. Somebody even had to write down that clicking approve is not the same as looking.
pillar:tech
The Fourteen Quiet Years
Last week, websites all over the world went offline because of a flaw in PHP. The flaw had been there since 2012. The danger was old. Only the knowing was new.
pillar:think
The Slope You Were Standing On
Six months ago I compared your attention span to a goldfish. Last week I wrote about a robot learning a factory job. No week between felt like a turning point.
pillar:tech
The New Apprentice
A new worker has started at a factory in Belgium. It is slow, someone has to watch it, and it should work alone by next summer. It is also a robot.
pillar:tech
The Typo That Kept You Safe
For twenty years, bad spelling was your best defence against fake emails. Now the fakes are flawless, and they open nearly a quarter of investigated break-ins.
pillar:tech
The Discovery Nobody Made
Nine hundred and fifty AI agents searched the genes of viruses for twenty-one hours and found an enzyme system nobody had seen. Nobody knows what it does yet.
pillar:systems
The Cost Of Asking
She qualifies. The money is hers, and the rules say so in writing. She is on page four of the form, and she is not going to finish it. Nobody refused her.
pillar:achievement
The Boring Fix
Sugar, salt and clean water, mixed by a parent in the dark. Deaths of children from dehydration fell from five million a year to under half a million.
pillar:tech
The Rung That Was Removed
The worst job in your profession is gone and nobody held a funeral, because nobody ever liked it. It was also the only place the profession made new people.
pillar:think
The Certainty You Started With
There is a subject you were once certain about. You learned more, and now you are less sure. Nothing was taken from you. The subject simply grew edges.
pillar:systems
The Apology That Explains Nothing
Mistakes were made. Read it again — there is nobody in that sentence. That is not clumsy writing. It took four drafts to get the person out of it.