Computer viruses have a reputation for destruction. They can erase files, encrypt disks, steal passwords and make a computer unusable. But can malicious software cross the invisible boundary between code and matter and actually break the ma...
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You type a search into Google, press Enter, and nothing happens. The page spins. Gmail refuses to load. Drive throws an error. Within seconds, one of the internet's most common diagnostic qu...
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It is one of those rules that millions of Americans seem to remember learning without remembering who taught it: you cannot drive a car barefoot. Maybe a parent said it. Maybe a driving inst...
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Artificial intelligence used to be the sort of technology most people encountered without thinking about it. It filtered spam, ranked search results, recommended movies and helped cameras re...
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You are almost asleep when the floor seems to disappear. For a fraction of a second, your body feels as though it has stepped off a ledge. A leg kicks, an arm jerks or your whole torso jumps...
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Dog owners become experts in noticing small mysteries. One week the mystery is a dog that seems unable to stop licking its front paws. The next it is the same animal stepping onto the lawn a...
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A newly hatched chick enters the world with an urgent problem. It can walk almost immediately, but walking in the wrong direction could be fatal. In nature, staying near a parent means warmt...
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On the evening of May 17, 1884, New Yorkers witnessed a sight strange enough to compete with the bridge beneath it. A procession of circus animals moved across the East River from Manhattan...
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When a tropical system appears in the Atlantic, the urge to watch it move across a map can become almost compulsive. A disturbance off Africa becomes a colored area on an outlook. A few days...
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Few English words have traveled as far politically as “woke.” Depending on who says it, the word can mean alert to racial injustice, broadly progressive, excessively politically correct, per...
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