Best Technology Articles & Videos on the internet • Discoverology

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Read the best tech articles from around the internet, or watch the most insightful technology videos from platforms like Youtube, Vimeo or leading tech publishers like The Verge, Wired, Fast Company, Techcrunch and many more.

Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.

Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.

Explainers Science Tech

With more than 9 billion gigabytes of information traveling the internet every day, researchers are constantly looking for new ways to compress data into smaller packages. Cutting-edge techniques focus on lossy approaches, which achieve compression by intentionally “losing” information from a transmission.

Inside A Pro-Trump YouTube Disinformation Network That Spans Vietnam To Bosnia

Inside A Pro-Trump YouTube Disinformation Network That Spans Vietnam To Bosnia

Apps Politics Tech

YouTube removed at least 20 channels posting false or divisive content to generate ad dollars. The channels used voice-over actors to read scripts. A sampling of recent clips included: “BREAKING: Trump Just Made One Bold Move – Obama Must Scream”; and “They Did It! – Supreme Court Ends It For Dems.”

Hyperloop Explained

Hyperloop Explained

Design Innovation Tech Videos

Billed as the fastest way to cross the surface of the earth, Hyperloop represents the greatest leap in transport infrastructure for generations. The concept promises to slash journey times between major cities from several hours to a matter of minutes.

How Ads Follow You Around The Internet

How Ads Follow You Around The Internet

Explainers Tech Videos

You’ve seen the pop-ups: “This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Please accept cookies.” Without cookies, the online world we know today couldn’t exist. But that world relies on advertising, which gives three kinds of companies a strong incentive to track your online behavior.

Uber Wars In Argentina

Uber Wars In Argentina

Apps Long Reads Tech

Since Uber arrived in Argentina in 2016, taxi drivers have come out in force, torching ride-share cars, beating drivers, and shaming passengers. There have been more than 1,041 fights — that have been reported to police, anyway.

Virginia Mori

Inspiration
Virginia Mori
The Web We Have To Save

The Web We Have To Save

Long Reads Media Tech

In the past, the web was powerful and serious enough to land me in jail. Today it feels like little more than entertainment. The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

The Lie That Helped Build Nintendo

The Lie That Helped Build Nintendo

Business History Tech Videos

In 1981, a young Swede called Owe Bergsten strolled through Singapore to pass the time before his flight home. Passing a camera shop, he spotted a two-button LCD game called ‘Fire RC-04’ in the window. The story of a man, a lie, a video game handheld, and a business empire.

No, You Don’t Really Look Like That

No, You Don’t Really Look Like That

Explainers Tech

Every digital camera uses algorithms to transform the different wavelengths of light that hit its sensor into an actual image. What makes the iPhone XS’s skin-smoothing remarkable is that it is simply the default for the camera. Snap a selfie, and that’s what you get.

Panasonic Develops World’s first UHD HDR Virtual Reality Glasses

Panasonic Develops World’s first UHD HDR Virtual Reality Glasses

Innovation Tech

Panasonic launched a new type of virtual reality headgear with the world’s first HDR-compatible VR eyeglasses. The company’s VR eyeglasses are the first to feature High Dynamic Range (HDR) and are much more compact compared to what is currently on the market from the likes of Oculus and HTC.

Silicon Valley Is Listening To Your Most Intimate Moments

Silicon Valley Is Listening To Your Most Intimate Moments

Life Tech

For $12 an hour, “data associates” listened to snippets of random conversations and jotted down every word on their laptops. Amazon would only say the work was critical to a top-secret speech-recognition product. The clips included recordings of intimate moments inside people’s homes.

Matt Rota

Inspiration
Matt Rota
I Lost My Life To Airbnb

I Lost My Life To Airbnb

Life Tech

I had been living in Rome but moved to Chicago five years ago. Obsessively renting out my home was the only way I could make it in the gig economy. When I found myself sleeping on the subway, I realized I’d gone too far.

The Productivity Paradox

The Productivity Paradox

Business Economics Tech

Higher productivity means the expectation of rising wages and abundant job opportunities. In a time of Facebook, smartphones, self-driving cars, and computers that can beat a person at just about any board game, how can the key economic measure of technological progress be so pathetic?

The Start-Ups Building ‘Dark Kitchens’ For Uber Eats And Deliveroo

The Start-Ups Building ‘Dark Kitchens’ For Uber Eats And Deliveroo

Business Food Innovation Tech

Venture capitalists have all aligned on the best solution: kitchens that only serve delivery customers, known as “cloud”, “ghost” or “dark” kitchens, that use a combination of advanced food preparation, underused real estate and algorithm-driven optimisation to lower overheads and increase output.

How Slack Ruined Work

How Slack Ruined Work

Apps Business Tech

Slack is a particularly “scary offender” in stopping people getting their work done because it encourages them to be constantly distracted. It’s scary because messenger-based systems directly tap into how humans seek to reward themselves, and the long term result is unhealthy.

Big Tech Takes Aim At The Low-Profit Retail-Banking Industry

Big Tech Takes Aim At The Low-Profit Retail-Banking Industry

Business Economics Innovation Tech

After years of timidity Big Tech, with its billions of users and gigantic war chest, at last appears serious about crashing the fintech party. Amazon and Apple introduced a credit card. Facebook announced a new payments system and Google said it would start offering current (checking) accounts in America.

Joseph Ford

Inspiration
Joseph Ford
How Big Tech Plans To Profit From The Pandemic

How Big Tech Plans To Profit From The Pandemic

Long Reads Tech

As the coronavirus continues to kill thousands each day, tech companies are seizing the opportunity to extend their reach and power. Towards a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone.

How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter

How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter

Apps Politics Tech

In April 2014, a public relations firm representing the Saudi Embassy asked Ahmad Abouammo, part of Twitter’s global media team, to verify an account belonging to a Saudi news personality. This request for a blue checkmark opened the door to a working relationship with the country’s government.

You’re Tracked Everywhere You Go Online. Use This Guide to Fight Back.

You’re Tracked Everywhere You Go Online. Use This Guide to Fight Back.

Apps Tech

I recently did an online privacy checkup: Google was sharing my creditworthiness with third parties. If you would like Hearst, the publishing giant, to stop sharing your physical mailing address with third parties, you have to mail a physical letter with your request to the company’s lawyers.

The Story Behind An Identify Theft

The Story Behind An Identify Theft

Crime Tech

Lurking behind a simple email in our inbox is a network of fake websites, letterbox companies and more than 100 victims around the world. We untangled a web of fake accounts and followed the digital breadcrumbs back to two Danish fraudsters. This is how we tracked them down, step by step.

How To Tell If You’re Talking To A Bot

How To Tell If You’re Talking To A Bot

Apps Explainers Tech

It’s important not to be swayed by fake accounts or waste your time arguing with them, and identifying bots in a Twitter thread has become a strange version of the Turing test. Advances in machine learning hint at how bots could become more humanlike.

Where The Bodies Are Buried

Where The Bodies Are Buried

Crime Tech

Mexico’s drug war has left tens of thousands of casualties in secret graves. Now, the mothers of the missing are digging them up, armed with iron rods and quadcopter drones.

Credit Card Companies Are Tracking Shoppers Like Never Before

Credit Card Companies Are Tracking Shoppers Like Never Before

Business Tech

Transactions have given rise to a complex data-selling ecosystem. At the heart of it are credit card processing networks, including Visa, American Express, and Mastercard, the latter of which took in $4.1 billion in 2019 for services that include marketing analytics as well as fraud detection.

The Soviets’ Unbreakable Code

The Soviets’ Unbreakable Code

History Tech

Created at the end of World War II and introduced in 1956, the Fialka replaced the Albatross, a Soviet cipher machine that was itself more complex than the Enigma. By the 1970s, Fialka encryption machines had been widely adopted by Warsaw Pact and other communist nations, and they remained in use until the early 1990s.

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