Michael Segal, for Nautilus:
The problem was that Theranos’ technology was never close to ready. In a series of devastating articles published in the Wall Street Journal starting in 2015, reporter John Carreyrou reminded us that unicorns are usually found only in fairy tales.
Jun 7, 2018
Jeff Tollefson, for Nature:
Depending on a variety of design options and economic assumptions, the cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere ranges between US$94 and $232. The last comprehensive analysis of the technology, conducted by the American Physical Society in 2011, estimated that it would cost $600 per tonne.
Jun 7, 2018 Climate Science
In the 1990s, Theresa Duncan and collaborators made three videogames that exemplified interactive storytelling at its very best.
Two decades later, the works (like most CD-ROMs) have fallen into obscurity, but they remain as luminous and compelling as ever. This online exhibition—copresented by Rhizome and the New Museum as part of First Look: New Art Online—brings them back, making them playable online.
Jun 6, 2018 Art Online Games
Bastiaan Ekeler:
The bird shots actually show some surprisingly creamy bokeh for a 2-bit, 14 kilopixel image, there might be some portrait session in this camera’s future.
Jun 3, 2018
Catalin Cimpanu, for Bleeping Computer:
Some of the recent additions to the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) web standard are so powerful that a security researcher has abused them to deanonymize visitors to a demo site and reveal their Facebook usernames, avatars, and if they liked a particular web page of Facebook.
Information leaked via this attack could aid some advertisers link IP addresses or advertising profiles to real-life persons, posing a serious threat to a user’s online privacy.
Jun 2, 2018
Melissa McEwen, for Quartz:
It turns out I wasn’t alone. Developers all over the U.S. had encountered the practice, spending anywhere from a few hours to over three days working on their unpaid interview assignments. In a talk given at PyCon last year, software developer Susan Tan said she spent as long as 32 hours on homework, only to be rejected because it was missing a feature not even stated in the original requirements.
May 30, 2018
The open source version of Klaro can be downloaded for free and used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. It is fully functional and contains all client-side features of the commercial editions. If you run a small website and agree to Klaro’s manual configuration and monitoring, the open source version offers you a free way to make your website compliant with the law and to protect the privacy of your visitors and users.
May 29, 2018 GDPR Open Source Privacy Websites