The undercurrents of the future. The OneZero team at @Medium publishes stories about tech and science from Debugger, Future Human, and our namesake publication.
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Mar 2, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: In 2015, the Chinese government announced the “Xueliang Project,” or Sharp Eyes, a surveillance program with an ambitious goal to cover every inch of public space in the country.
As of the end of 2020, reports indicate it's getting very close.
onezero.medium.com/chinas-sharp-e…
"Sharp Eyes" is a reference to a quote from Mao Zedong, who once wrote that “the people have sharp eyes” when looking out for neighbors not living up to communist values.
The program relies in large part on reports from residents.
We’re past the point of no return on global warming, scientists warn. read.medium.com/flDQU1Z
Earlier this year, the Earth saw a huge dip in carbon emissions as nations around the globe locked down to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
It offered a glimpse into what the world might look like if we took drastic steps to slow the spread of global warming.
Nov 10, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The ad-dominated internet is the only internet many of us have ever known.
A potential collapse of this bubble could usher in many possible futures, either deepening existing problems or creating new opportunities. read.medium.com/FVZnXxw
.@parismarx considers three very different future scenarios.
1. A further monopolized internet
"The collapse of Facebook and Google’s business models would also leave an opening for other monopolies to eat into their market share.” read.medium.com/FVZnXxw
Sep 1, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Technology gave us the dream of a cocooned future.
Patricia Crowther's monumental discovery would come to be known as the Everest of cave exploration.
Little did she know, it would eventually be used to make one of the first computer games. read.medium.com/3fPCddd
A ragtag group of caving enthusiasts spent nearly 20 years investigating potential links between Kentucky’s Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, trying to prove a fabled theory from one of Mammoth’s first mappers, an enslaved guide named Stephen Bishop.
A deadly mosquito-borne illness is brewing in the Northeast. read.medium.com/eHDespw
There is no vaccine or known treatment for the virus, and while transmission is rare, the infection is around 400 times deadlier than the flu.
"Every video call to someone you wish you could see in person but can’t is a memento mori of a world that’s been shattered and can’t be revived..." read.medium.com/Dk0McN3
It’s not just technical hiccups that cause Zoom burnout.
We’re also fatigued by the depressing thoughts that come to mind every time an online conversation substitutes for one we’d prefer to have in person, writes @EvanSelinger. read.medium.com/Dk0McN3
Apr 28, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
NEW: The CEO of Banjo, a surveillance firm that sells to law enforcement agencies nationwide, was once actively involved in white supremacist groups, and participated in a shooting of a synagogue in his youth, documents show. read.medium.com/5Cyn0Hl
In magazine profiles and on conference stages, Damien Patton, the 47-year-old CEO of the surveillance startup Banjo, often recounts a colorful autobiography.
Patton’s story and public persona are compelling. They are also incomplete. read.medium.com/5Cyn0Hl
Apr 23, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: In the future, widespread antibody testing could lead to "immunity certificates," which would let people who have already been exposed to the virus return to public life.
But the hope may be dashed by significant scientific and ethical concerns. read.medium.com/NL26fGA
Diagnostic testing is already extremely limited in the U.S., to say nothing of antibody testing.
Experts worry that antibody testing isn’t guaranteed to prove immunity, and if it does, the resulting immunity passports could be used to discriminate.
The videoconferencing market is saturated with big names.
Yet somehow, over the last few weeks, Zoom has become synonymous with videoconferencing. read.medium.com/cbnFuIe
"When I ask people why they use Zoom, I repeatedly hear the same thing: It’s easy to get started. Even Zoom’s competitors say this." — @Simon_Pittread.medium.com/cbnFuIe
Apr 8, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Our government runs on a 60-year-old coding language, and now it’s falling apart. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
Despite its age and that many programmers have moved onto C and Java, COBOL is still a widely used programming language.
Today, nearly half the world’s banking systems run on it, per Reuters, and more than 80% of card-based transactions use the code. read.medium.com/7QgPLvQ
Mar 17, 2020 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
NEW: Here's an exhaustive analysis of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates' email campaigns.
In an election marked by a crowded field and a lack of certainty, there were a few consistent patterns. read.medium.com/GmeAppx
Using @chrisgherbert’s repository of campaign messages politicalemails.org, @ozm analyzed 2,749 emails the archive gathered from Democratic primary candidates in a three-month period ending March 3, Super Tuesday.
Meet Whit Diffie, the man who invented public key cryptography.
This is the untold story of the man that made mainstream encryption possible. read.medium.com/UOFJD7Q
In honor of longtime tech journalist @StevenLevy’s new book, 'Facebook: The Inside Story,' we share an excerpt of an earlier Levy book, ‘Crypto.’
It’s about a man who ran in the opposite direction of Facebook’s data exploitation and privacy breaches. read.medium.com/UOFJD7Q
Jan 21, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
EXCLUSIVE: We finally figured out who makes wikiHow’s bizarre art. read.medium.com/uJ9KaNC
There’s a conspicuous difference between wikiHow and your average wiki: the site’s infamous, pallid, anime-adjacent illustrations.
The site’s anarchic aesthetic has inspired plenty of internet tributes, such as the popular r/disneyvacation. read.medium.com/uJ9KaNC
Jan 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: The U.S. military is developing facial recognition technology that reads heat emitted by faces.
The tech would work in the dark and across long distances, according to contracts posted on a federal spending database. read.medium.com/9IYcoGi
Facial recognition is already employed by the military, which uses the technology to identify individuals on the battlefield.
But existing tech typically relies on images generated by standard cameras, such as those found in iPhone or CCTV networks. read.medium.com/9IYcoGi
Nov 26, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In 1972, a photo of Lena Söderberg ran as the centerfold in an issue of Playboy.
The following year, engineers at USC used the picture to test a new piece of image-compression software. It worked.
Decades later, the "Lena" image has persisted in labs. read.medium.com/TJdh1wh
"At the peak of Lena’s popularity, the strongest argument in favor of using the image in research was that so many others had done the same.” — @corinnepurtillread.medium.com/TJdh1wh
Nov 18, 2019 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
In December 2011, a horrific car accident left Jason Esterhuizen completely blind.
Now part of a small clinical trial, he received an experimental brain implant called the Orion.
He says it let him see his birthday candles for the first time in years. read.medium.com/Ed0NW7l
From the outside, the Orion basically looks like a pair of sunglasses.
Implanted in the brain, however, is a postage stamp-sized chip containing 60 electrodes that sits on the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information: read.medium.com/Ed0NW7l
Nov 8, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
EXCLUSIVE: Ambrosia, the much-maligned startup selling blood transfusions from young donors, is back up and running. read.medium.com/mhryYso
Jesse Karmazin, the CEO and founder of Ambrosia, told @ozm that the company had resumed giving customers transfusions of plasma, the colorless liquid part of the blood, from young donors about a month ago. read.medium.com/mhryYso
Sep 13, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
1/ Some Microsoft employees are anonymously adding their salary information to a private spreadsheet in an effort toward greater pay transparency. Here are 4 takeaways, based on a leaked copy of the document we received. onezero.medium.com/leak-of-micros…2/ Seniority at Microsoft is supposedly ranked on a scale from level 59 to 80. An employee is hired onto one level and can be promoted onto another. Those levels determine pay more than any other factor—including years of experience and time at the company.
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