“The cloud” may be the most successful disappearing act in modern technology. Upload a photograph and it seems to float away. Stream a film and it arrives from nowhere. Ask an AI system a question and an answer materializes on a glass scree...
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You mention hiking boots over dinner. The next morning, an advertisement for hiking boots appears on your phone. You never remember searching for them. The coincidence feels too precise, and...
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Ask a child to draw the Sun and there is a good chance they will reach for a yellow crayon. Search for a Sun emoji and you will find the same convention. For centuries, artists have painted...
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Look up from a truly dark place and the Milky Way appears as a pale river of light crossing the sky. That glow is produced by stars so numerous and distant that most cannot be distinguished...
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Imagine falling feet-first toward a black hole. At first, if the black hole were isolated and you began far enough away, the experience would not feel supernatural. You would be in free fall...
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A bitcoin cannot be held in your hand. It does not represent a legal claim on a company, pay a dividend or give its owner a stream of rental income. There is no warehouse containing one bar...
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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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The internet has produced plenty of suspiciously convenient health claims, but few are as appealing as this one: every time you fart, you supposedly burn 67 calories. Repeat the process ofte...
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Taking a screenshot is one of the smallest computer skills imaginable — right up until you switch from a Mac to Windows, buy a keyboard without an obvious Print Screen key, or need to captur...
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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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