You may have seen the recent headlines about how a company called Niantic Spatial is using a database of real-world locations that was originally compiled by players of the mobile game Pokemon Go — a game that launched about a decade ago and quickly became an obsession for tens of millions
In 2016, staff at both the U.S. and Canadian embassies in Cuba started reporting a host of unusual physical symptoms: severe headaches, nausea, muscle aches, nose bleeds, etc. Adults and children were both affected to varying degrees. Many of those who reported these symptoms said they heard high-pitched noises,
I came across a maxim many years ago in a blog post written by Chris Dixon, a startup guy who is now a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley VC outfit. In 2010 Dixon wrote: "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy," a
The term "prediction market" sounds so scientific, doesn't it? Like "derivatives," the financial instrument they resemble. On platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, people place a bet on the likelihood of certain outcomes, whether political or sporting or anything else (want to bet on whether
It's the kind of headline that might seem either like a hypothetical philosophical concern, or a deeply worrying revelation, depending on how you feel about AI: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently said the company is "no longer sure whether Claude is conscious." On the one hand,
If you watched the Super Bowl last weekend and are either located in the United States or have access to the American commercials, you might have seen a heartwarming ad for a new feature of Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, called Search Party. The ad shows people putting up
As usual, the past week or so has been filled with the usual insanity on the part of Homeland Security, who keep finding new ways to surveill and harass and in some cases execute American citizens — something I've been following and writing about here from time to time,
As I wrote in a previous edition of Torment Nexus, the Australian law banning kids under 16 from using social media is the first of its kind, but it was not the last by any means. The French parliament just voted to pass a similar law, and Malaysia's
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for The Torment Nexus called "The social web is dying. Is that a good thing? in which I looked at the decline of what we used to call social networking back in the day, or "micro-blogging" even further back
Last March — which feels like a hundred years ago now — I wrote a post titled "Be careful what you post on social media: They are listening," in which I looked at how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of Homeland Security had become a kind of secret police
I got an unusual email the other day from someone representing the Oxford Union, a fairly prestigious student-run debating society based (not surprisingly) at the University of Oxford in England. The Union was founded by students in 1823 and, despite the name, is separate and distinct from the actual student
Australia recently became the first country in the world to ban kids under 16 from using social media — the result of a law that was passed last year but didn't take effect until this month — but it is unlikely to be the last. Malaysia recently announced that it