The Outline
Adrianne Jeffries
Newsweek’s headquarters just got a visit from the police
Cops came to the headquarters of Newsweek and IBT Media at 7 Hanover Square this morning.
The popularity of Microsoft’s Surface is the least realistic thing on TV
The hybrid tablet/laptop device has seemingly replaced all computers in the alternate universe of Hollywood.
Google is jeopardizing African-American literature sites
The search engine keeps making websites redundant by providing answers to queries directly on Google.com.
Why did Google think LaVar Ball founded the NBA?
The search engine continues to produce errors in its attempt to provide quick and easy answers to queries.
This is the best list of cybersecurity predictions for 2018
If you want to know what cyber threats we will face in the next year, look no further.
The fight for net neutrality is a test of our broken democracy
Americans overwhelmingly support net neutrality. We are watching the telecom lobby overrule them.
But it’s not over yet.
Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be
The cryptocurrency was supposed to replace the finance industry. Instead, it has replicated it.
Uber’s disastrous head of security will probably get another awesome job soon
Joe Sullivan paid off hackers to cover up a data breach rather than disclose it to regulators and the public. What else has he been up to?
Strangers are looking at your data for pennies
A bunch of apps are uploading detailed receipts for transcription by remote workers.
YouTube just took down the creepy kids’ channel Toy Freaks
Toy Freaks, formerly a YouTube-verified channel that had more than 7 million subscribers, “has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
Why is this company tracking where you are on Thanksgiving?
A data collection service called SafeGraph collected 17 trillion location markers for 10 million smartphones during the holiday last year.
Going rogue in Silicon Valley
Tech companies have a history of giving low-level employees high-level access.
WikiTribune is already biased
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is launching a “neutral news service.”
Facebook exec: ‘Just not true’ that we listen to your phone’s mic
The social network is still beating back the rumor that it eavesdrops in order to serve more personal ads.
The IRS is basically ignoring the equity crowdfunding boom
Startup investment on crowdfunding platforms largely goes untaxed.
Why is Google hiding view counts for Google Doodles?
View counts are public for everything on YouTube with one prominent exception.
Google asks the dumbest questions
The new Pixel 2 ad asks whether the Earth is flat — a question the search engine flubbed not too long ago.
The Daily Stormer just lost its new .cat domain
The white nationalist website tried to align itself with the Catalonian independence movement and got rejected.
It’s worse than you think
The Equifax breach shows the dystopian gap between wealth and competence in America.
For the love of god, not everything is about cats
The foundation that administers the .cat domain for Catalonians just got raided by the Spanish police, but all the media wants to talk about is cats.
Netflix, Microsoft, and Google just quietly changed how the web works
The organization that sets standards for the web just failed to beat back a stupid, greedy technology.
That study on artificially intelligent “gaydar” is now under ethical review
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is reviewing a controversial study after a backlash from scientists and LGBTQ advocates.
No mercy for Equifax
The Equifax breach that affected 143 million Americans is a reminder of the shadowy power wielded by the big three credit bureaus.
I now have equity in an alt-right Twitter clone
What now?
Mic’s drop
How Mic.com exploited social justice for clicks, and then abandoned a staff that believed in it.
Squarespace is dropping Richard Spencer’s think tank and other “alt-right” websites
The hosting service has given multiple sites 48 hours to find a new hosting provider.
Six states have introduced bills to shield drivers who hit protestors
None of them have passed. Swipe or scroll for more.
You can’t boycott Google
Trying to pressure Google by boycotting its products is futile.
I finally got an iPhone and I hate it
Why does Tim Cook want to treat me like a child?
The app where Silicon Valley talks shit
It’s called Blind.
How to prank the rich and powerful without really trying
The so-called “Email Prankster” has fooled the likes of Eric Trump and Anthony Scaramucci.
Voting machines are frighteningly easy to hack
Hackers at DEF CON cracked into electronic voting machines that are being used in elections today.
This guy hunted Wi-Fi hackers using a giant backpack made out of radios
It’s an extreme version of what hackers call wardriving.
“Worse than death:” The far-future dystopia of genome hacking
This scientist’s thought experiment will give you nightmares.
Ethereum hacking continues to be extremely lucrative
Only in the cryptocurrency world could you steal $32 million and never get caught.
Trump just barred transgender people from military service
The president’s tweets shifted the news cycle from the GOP health care bill failure.
These workers are signing up to get a microchip implant for their company
The technology will allow for contactless logins and purchases at the office.
Who will own the n-word?
People are rushing to file offensive trademark applications, but for different reasons.
Health care CEOs get paid so much it will make you sick
The country’s most influential health executives have no incentive to change the status quo.
How a VC-funded company is undermining the open-source community
A San Francisco startup called Kite is being accused of underhanded tactics.
Here’s what 26 publicists said when asked about BuzzFeed’s story asking publicists about R. Kelly
A meaningless journalistic exercise.
We probably waste billions of dollars throwing out “expired” prescription drugs
An investigation from ProPublica shows how wasteful expiration dates can be.
The top ethics official in the U.S. has resigned because of Trump
Walter Shaub says the Trump administration is trampling on ethics rules.
Why are all my friends buying an overhyped digital currency?
My friends are investing in Ethereum and it’s stressing me out.
Can small businesses survive on the internet?
Hype Machine, a small but beloved music streaming site, attempts a comeback without selling out.
Pandora is melting down
The internet radio pioneer hasn’t turned a profit in 17 years.
Apple’s ‘Planet of the Apps’ is even worse than you thought
Here is what you get when you watch a reality show made by the world’s most valuable tech company.
How A p p l e stops l e a k s
The most valuable company on Earth is serious about stopping leaks, according to a recording of an internal presentation titled “Stopping Leakers - Keeping Confidential at Apple” obtained by The Outline.
The Travis Trap
Venture capitalists want to invest in manic, headstrong sociopaths. Uber’s Travis Kalanick did not disappoint.
Google is perpetuating a very bad definition of ‘eugenics’
Eugenics was ‘perverted’ by the Nazis, according to Oxford Dictionaries and by extension, Google.
Why the latest NSA leak didn’t make a dent
Russia hacking U.S. election infrastructure seems like it would be a big deal.
The NYT crossword is old and kind of racist
Who is the New York Times crossword talking to?
This scientist is afraid her gene-editing invention will be used for evil
Microbiologist Jennifer Doudna is credited with pioneering a precise gene editing technique.
Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the Guardian, needs new glasses
Three newspapers withdrew their endorsements after a Republican candidate attacked a reporter in Montana
Dubai has a robot cop now
The emirate’s first law enforcement android will start patrolling the streets this week.
Chelsea Manning is being released today
The whistleblower leaked video of a U.S. military strike that killed two Reuters journalists to WikiLeaks.
UK tabloids doxxed the ‘hero’ hacker who stopped a global cyberattack
The 22-year-old is now an unwilling celebrity.
A crime livestreaming app is the latest to rip off Snapchat
The much-maligned Citizen, formerly known as Vigilante, is producing live true crime television.
Republicans are here to disabuse you of the notion that elected representatives actually read bills
“That’s why we have staff.”
A YouTube family accused of child abuse has hired a crisis PR firm
The couple behind the DaddyOfive channel is in damage control mode.
Wired’s fake trend story failed on so many levels
A pointless article in ridiculous packaging shows the publication is out of touch with tech.
Machine learning is racist because the internet is racist
Deep learning algorithms are often trained on data from the web, and their biases are getting hard to ignore
Chipotle got hacked!
Federal law hasn’t caught up with the increase in big data breaches.
Google finally realized that racist search results are a problem
And did something about it.
Hawaii’s online gaming curse
The island’s physical isolation adds milliseconds of latency to an internet connection. In competitive eSports, milliseconds matter.
How Google eats a business whole
Google’s Featured Snippets are not only often wrong, they’re also damaging to small businesses that depend on search traffic.
This film about Facebook porn and violence moderators is dark
These are the real people keeping the internet nice and clean for you.
We found out what camera Kendrick Lamar used to make a tiny planet
It’s expensive, but not wildly so.
Cartoonists are making art to support a refugee cartoonist
An award-winning Iranian cartoonist who goes by Eaten Fish has been detained since 2013.
This artist programmed a computer to tell her what art to make
It's done by an algorithm, so you know it's good.
Mark Zuckerberg will meet you soon
The billionaire CEO is keeping his promise to visit real America, with dispatches from seven states so far.
The Republican Party is dying in Hawaii
Beth Fukumoto was a leader in the GOP. Now because of Trump, she’s becoming a Democrat.
Google’s featured snippets credit a scam artist with inventing email
A litigious opportunist is on a campaign to convince the world he invented email, and Google got duped.
What’s better than a Nokia 3310? A gold Nokia 3310 with Vladimir Putin’s face on it
$1,700 to play “Snake” and honor the Russian president
Google’s featured snippets are worse than fake news
The highlighted answers given prime placement over search results are often shockingly bad.
J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots
One satellite data startup shows how the company’s traffic has decreased along with its stock price.
Programmers are confessing their coding sins to protest a broken job interview process
“Whiteboard” interviews are widely hated. They also discriminate against people who are already underrepresented in the field.
This is not a story about a man who walks to work
It’s about the living wage in America.
A list of absurd newspaper slogans
Pick your favorite.
Owning a cat won’t make you crazy
New research shows that having a pet cat is not correlated with psychotic symptoms, contradicting previous findings.
Researchers are trying to map the dark web economy to the real world
Two academics at the Oxford Internet Institute are gearing up to find out where the dark web trade physically happens.
So far, internet-connected kids’ toys are a privacy disaster
Does that doll really need Bluetooth?
New Zealand may be the tip of a submerged continent
Some geologists are pushing for Zealandia to be recognized as the youngest geological continent.
Fake news means something different in the realm of science
But here are some things that could help.
Why the notion of “race” persists in science
A call for the profession to “move past the use of race as a tool for classification in both laboratory and clinical research” is making slow progress.
There are people who want to make gene editing a human right
Biohackers push back as the scientific establishment charts a course through the ethics of genetic interference.
Stalkscan makes it easy to do highly specific searches on Facebook
A Belgian white hat hacker made the site to show how much of your Facebook activity is actually public.
Scientists are squabbling over the best way to protest
Scientists are getting their helixes in a twist over the details of a planned march.
Tesla employee who spoke out about working conditions: “Elon Musk is a visionary”
Tesla’s CEO accused a worker who called for unionization of being on the UAW’s payroll. Jose Moran says he just wants to improve working conditions at the plant.
Tesla workers are talking about unionizing
An employee cited injuries and low pay as reasons.
Maybe it’s time for Jack Dorsey to pick a company
And it should probably be Square.
Grey Gardens is for sale for $19.995 million
A piece of film history is on the market.
Internal documents show TSA has no scientific basis for its behavior detection program
Documents obtained by the ACLU show that the agency knew its $1.5 billion program was pseudoscience.
Listen to judges grill a Justice Department attorney over Trump’s travel ban
A hearing in an appellate court did not appear to go well for the White House.
How many solidarity safety pins have been sold on Etsy?
The social justice movement has expanded from safety pin jewelry to decals and shirts.
Some things you should know about refugees...
The answers aren’t as obvious as they might seem.
Where the refugees go
America’s refugee cities are now in Middle America.
How hyper-targeted psychometric data may have helped Trump win
Granular personality data might have been the key to the candidate's unexpected victory.
Why we exclude prisoners from the unemployment rate
It gives an incomplete picture of the economy, but it’s tradition.
The Whitehouse.gov reset broke Wikipedia links en masse
Here’s what editors are doing about it.
USDA research arm rescinded a gag order after public criticism
Confusion in transition
Prisoners aren’t counted in the unemployment rate
Here’s how they would impact the economic measure.
What is the unemployment rate?
More than 14 million Americans aren’t working when they want to be.
Trump appears to be muzzling scientists just like Canada did
It’s starting with the USDA.
People keep falling for this murder-for-hire dark web scam
Don’t hire an assassin on a darknet market. It’s immoral, and also fake.
Will Julian Assange keep his promise?
The WikiLeaks founder said he would agree to extradition if Chelsea Manning were granted clemency.
The big Inauguration Day protest has no clear message
Being incoherent makes it easier for the incoming administration to dismiss protesters as losers.
The Music Genome Project isn’t done
Pandora is still betting that humans know music better than machines. How’s that working out?
A microbiologist is injecting himself for DIY gene therapy
The scientist couldn't get a trial sponsored, so he made himself the guinea pig.
An NYPD captain made stupid comments about rape
The police department and city are now scrambling to do damage control.
Who is Michael Fish and why are Brexiters suddenly talking about him?
The weather forecaster is a very old meme.
Everyone in the bitcoin media probably owns bitcoin
Reporters traditionally aren’t supposed to have a financial stake in their subject.
Why did it take 40 years for this morning sickness drug study to be published?
One doctor is questioning whether Diclegis, the only drug approved for morning sickness by the FDA, actually works.
Figure 1, the Instagram for doctors, made a calendar
The social network of gross-out medical imagery has an official calendar of “visually striking images.”
We were promised robot suitcases
The first widespread consumer robot may be the self-driving suitcase rather than the self-driving car.
There were only nine coal mining deaths in 2016 (so far)
The record low is due to better safety and fewer mining jobs.
Artificial intelligence is creeping into the insurance industry
But what does that really mean?
North Korea has executed 340 people since 2011
Many of them in public.
There could be 500,000 undiagnosed HIV cases in Russia
That's on top of the one million already diagnosed, according to one expert.
Why Oakland said no to predictive policing software
The risk of racial bias and eroding community trust was too great.
A violent passenger inspired Korean Air to add more male flight attendants
The airline is making changes after public criticism.
Internet drugs may be no purer than street drugs, Dutch study says
A Netherlands study is the first to show that, contrary to popular belief, the internet’s drugs aren’t necessarily safer.
Snopes in the spotlight
The fact-checking site has a lot of work to do.
There is now independent public evidence of Russia hacking the DNC
The government has been saying this for weeks. A cybersecurity firm now backs that up independently.
It’s hard to prove libel when everything’s a joke
Twitter’s reputation for tomfoolery makes it tougher to prove a tweet meets the legal standard.
In which we try to rebrand the dongle
The computer pluggable is becoming unavoidable. Can we at least give it a better name?
Fast food ads work really well on kids prone to obesity
A study measured the brain response in children with an obesity risk gene as they watched TV.
Cannibalism book author felt pressure to eat a placenta
Bill Schutt doesn't want to spoil anything, but he really, really liked it.
Historian collects names of 20,000 people sterilized under California's eugenics program
Alex Stern estimates about 300 men and 500 women are still alive.
The nation is rapidly running out of whipped cream
A deadly explosion at a nitrous oxide plant put a major dent in supplies.
12 percent of Americans are on antidepressants
And our mental health isn't getting any better.
How everyone is spinning Facebook’s fake news news
Find your truth.
A computer scientist laid out the ethical risks of AI
And somehow didn’t mention Westworld.
Jimmy Kimmel’s fee for hosting the Oscars is surprisingly low
But you can’t put a price on exposure to an audience of 34 million.
Yale psychologist says America has too much empathy
Paul Bloom's new book is about the dark side of empathy.
Reasons to be skeptical of Silicon Valley’s "Never Again" pledge
The techie pledge against building a (hypothetical) Muslim registry is optimistic.
The Green Party’s recount campaign failed to change the election results
Only one of three states got a recount.
Forget the cloud — it’s all about “the edge”
New trends like the Internet of Things are forcing internet infrastructure to change again.
It’s really hard to make money off virtual reality
A developer wrote about the struggles of turning a profit on an indie VR game.
Bill Gates founded a coalition around a big bet on clean energy
Breakthrough Energy Ventures has a 20-year time horizon.
Reindeer are shrinking
Reindeer on the Arctic islands of Svalbard have gotten smaller on average due to climate change.
The neural network that writes SEO-packed articles for Google
Spam is getting so advanced.
Reddit CEO reflects on why he edited user comments that criticized him
It didn't go well.
How the Venezuelan government gets into the Christmas spirit
The government has been cracking down on anything that looks like profit-seeking.
Obama orders report on Russian interference in 2016 election
It is unclear if the results will be made public.
Ronald B. Smith was executed in Alabama
The convicted murderer had appealed his sentence to the US Supreme Court.
After a temporary stay, Ronald Smith was executed in Alabama
His case opened up questions about methods of lethal injection and judicial override.
New research into light therapy could be a breakthrough for Alzheimer’s treatment
The results of a study on mice are very promising.
Passport photo checker insists Asian man’s eyes are closed
Facial recognition software is racist.
Activists want Wal-Mart to step up security
The retailer sees a violent crime a day.
Hear people die
Meet the community that wants to hear death as it happens.
Pizzagate conspiracy theorists feel camaraderie
A Washington Post story sums up the history of the faux controversy.
Out West #8: Violent Ends
We made it.
Samsung left no space for the Galaxy Note 7's battery to expand
Two engineers tore down the phone and found evidence of a "super-aggressive" manufacturing process.
What’s going on with Jill Stein’s recount campaign?
A recount is happening in Wisconsin and Michigan, but looking less likely in Pennsylvania.
Born to die: The Teddy Flood story
Westworld’s Teddy Flood has died a thousand times.
'Earth Observation' is a booming industry
Worth $3.5 billion by 2024.
Is it fair to ask tech companies if they would build a database of Muslims?
The Intercept's adversarial journalism is forcing Silicon Valley to take a stand.
Four new elements were officially added to the periodic table
Meet Og, Ts, Mc, and Nh.
Christmas music written and sung by a computer program
Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to it.
Out West #7: The Ribbon Cutting Theory
Who is dead, and who will die?
Branded emoji are coming to your texts
A startup is launching a platform that lets brands design their own emoji.
There is still no evidence that Russia hacked the election
The Russian hacker conspiracy theory is weak, but the case for paper ballots is strong.
Out West #6: The Complete Timeline
It's all coming together.
It would be very, very hard for Russia to hack the U.S. vote
Our chaotic system makes this kind of hack next to impossible — but we should still #AuditTheVote.
How to die while taking a selfie
Researchers in India published a thorough look at "killfies."
The fake organs surgeons use to practice on are getting really good
University of Rochester's Medical College has artificial kidneys that "bleed," and more.
Edward Snowden's mini-mea culpa for telling people to vote third party
The NSA whistleblower was taken in by the polls, just like the rest of us.
Out West #5: The Real Brain Theory
Everyone is a host.
Out West #4: Ford is a Host
People are hosts and hosts are people.
Out West #3: The Maze
The one with the orgy scene
Westworld is happening in multiple time periods
A video explainer to help you understand what's going on in the hit HBO show
Out West #2: The No Arnold Theory
We know who the Man in Black is.
Out West #1: The Multiple Theresas Theory
There's a new podcast in town.
The Great Barrier Reef is 25 million years old and dying
Scientists called an obituary premature, but the reef is clearly not doing well.
Land it on mars
Elon needs your help.
Apparently everything that happens is good for bitcoin
Bitcoiners use Deutsche Bank troubles, and everything else, to proselytize for bitcoin.
One Supreme brick costs $70 to $1,000, depending
The free market struggles to accommodate a novel good.
