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I encrypted a one-megabyte log before compressing it. Gzip made it bigger

I made a log file whose contents would bore even the machine reading it. The same 59-byte line appeared over and over until the file reached exactly 1 MiB:

compressioncryptographyexperiments

Your personal AI assistant has people in it who never signed up

Imagine asking an AI assistant to arrange dinner. It checks your calendar, reads a message from your partner, notices your friend's food allergy in an old email, and writes to the restaurant. One...

How animated stripes made the same progress bar feel 11% faster

A progress bar has one honest job: tell you how much work remains. It also has a second, slightly suspicious job: persuade you that waiting is going well. Those jobs get along until the bar races to...

Almost no Stone Age rope survived. One ivory tool shows what we're missing

Sort a Stone Age campsite by what can survive 35,000 years, and the durable pile will look familiar: stone, bone, teeth and ivory. The other pile contains cord, bags, handles, wooden tools, hides and...

A smart thermostat files a support ticket about a ghost

Speculative fiction. At 2:13 every morning, the upstairs hallway became eleven degrees colder. The thermostat noticed first. Thermostats notice temperature with the joyless devotion of a hall...