A new survey shows that life is getting dicey for election workers — In late 2008, I travelled around the country reporting a story about electronic voting machines. Back then, there was widespread distrust of the machines. Many people worried they were hackable, and that someone could rig an election. That included Democrats who worried about an inside job, because the Republican CEO…

They’re idiotic, selfish forms of noise pollution that do nothing to deter crime — I recently brought my car — a 2010 Hyundai Elantra — into the shop to have the air conditioner repaired. “While you’re at it,” I told them, “please disconnect the car alarm.” My car alarm had, I’d discovered, begun malfunctioning and going off for no reason. Here in Brooklyn where…

I bring you the finest reading material every week in my Linkfest — Friday! The week is nearly done. And so, thus, are you. Stop working, folks. You can pretend to toil while you flip open dozens of tabs, filled with the Internetal delights of my weekly Linkfest — the best online reading, collected by moi pour vous. 1) ♾️ The “infinity roof” of Daoming Town Daoming Town in Sichuan Province…

It transforms your bike into a machine for hauling tons of stuff — When it comes to cycling, I’m not a big gearhead. I don’t ride an expensive cycle; I have an entry-level one that’s pretty heavy, actually. I don’t wear cycling shoes that clip into the pedals. …

Vulnerability. — By now you may have read the viral Washington Post story about “The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life”. If you haven’t, go read it! It’s quite fascinating. The tl;dr is that Google engineer Blake Lemoine became convinced that LaMDA — one of Google’s massive…

Real physics are a lovely thing when you’ve got a human body — See that big old brick of plastic above? It’s a mid-90s Mac Powerbook, and it was the first laptop I ever owned. It wasn’t a particularly powerful machine. The processor ran at 33 MHz, (roughly 100X less speedy than the Macbook Pro I’m typing on now), and it sported only…

My weekly Linkfest, with the finest reading on the Internet — Friday! The week’s nearly over. No need to work any more. I found you oodles of fantastic reading in this Linkfest, so you can end out the week with some brain food. Let’s begin … 1) 🦑 The eerie glory of nighttime deep-sea marine life Scientific American has a fascinating story about the nightly “vertical migration” of deep-sea creatures —…

I get clarity — and a big-picture view — when I’m on two wheels — Three months ago I wrote about how cycling improved my mental health. As I noted, going for a ride nearly always makes me feel better: If I were worried? A brisk ride would part the clouds. If I felt pissy, it’d expel the yellow bile. If I were blocked or…

I bring you the finest reading on the Internet, every week — Tuesday’s done! You deserve a break. Which is why I have carefully scoured the backrooms of the Internet to find the finest reading material, in my weekly Linkfest. Let’s begin … 1) 🕹️ Moody photos of present-day retro arcades Video-game arcades make for inherently dramatic photos: The chiaroscuro of faces in a darkened room, lit up as they…