Topic

Technology & Innovation

A collection of 132 issues

An Onion for Uncle Sam: The Unlikely Naval Project That Built the Anonymous Internet

To protect its spies online, the U.S. Navy created a powerful anonymizing tool. The only problem? A network of only spies is easy to spot. Their radical solution was to release it to the world, creating the foundation for the anonymous web we know today.

Technology & Innovation Military Technology & Strategy Media & Censorship

The Airports and Oases Built Entirely on Trash

Faced with a crisis of space, nations like Japan and Singapore are not just burying waste—they are building new land from it. These offshore islands are feats of engineering that turn incinerator ash into some of the world's most valuable real estate.

Technology & Innovation Environment & Climate Geography & Places

The Love Letter That Brought the Digital World to its Knees

In May 2000, an email with the subject 'ILOVEYOU' unleashed one of history's most destructive computer worms, causing up to $15 billion in damages. The culprit was quickly identified but never punished, revealing a shocking global blind spot where technology had outpaced the law.

Technology & Innovation History Law, Crime & Justice

You Don't Glow in the Dark: The Unsettling Difference Between Irradiation and Contamination

Getting an X-ray doesn't make you radioactive, but what if radioactive dust got on your coat? The distinction between being exposed to radiation and being contaminated by it is the critical, often misunderstood, factor in how radiation actually spreads.

Science & Nature Medicine, Psychology & Health Technology & Innovation

How a 17-Syllable Poem Became a Spammer's Worst Nightmare

In the early 2000s, a company named Habeas armed tech giants with a strange weapon against spam: copyrighted poetry. By embedding haikus in email headers, they turned a technical problem into a legal one, allowing them to sue spammers for copyright infringement.

Technology & Innovation Law, Crime & Justice Oddities & Curiosities

An Impossible Object Made Real: The World's First Visible Time Crystal

Once a purely theoretical concept, physicists have created the first time crystal large enough to be seen with the naked eye. This bizarre state of matter, which appears as a steadily blinking spot, reveals a structure that repeats in time, not just space.

Science & Nature Inventions & Discoveries Technology & Innovation

The Soil and the Silicon: Our Last Best Hope Against Superbugs

To combat drug-resistant superbugs, scientists are turning to two unlikely allies: the earth beneath our feet and the artificial minds in our computers. By using AI to scan millions of compounds and exploring soil for novel bacteria, we are finally discovering entirely new classes of antibiotics.

Medicine, Psychology & Health Technology & Innovation Science & Nature

The Paper Google: How a Utopian Dream to Catalog All Knowledge Was Destroyed by War

In 1895, two Belgian idealists set out to catalog all human knowledge on 12 million index cards. Their 'paper Google' was designed to foster world peace, but this analog precursor to the internet met a tragic end when the Nazis ransacked their archives.

History Inventions & Discoveries Technology & Innovation

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