Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i WIRED

As it did for all of us, 2020 changed Bill Gates’ plans. Forgoing his usual agenda of global travel, meetings with world leaders, and speaking at prestigious venues, Gates has been at home. But he’s more in demand than ever. That’s because, for many years, his foundation has been making huge investments in vaccines, treatments, and testing. In 2015 he now-famously warned us of a coming pandemic. Since it arrived, he’s become one of our most credible voices on the matter. He also became a target of the plague of misinformation afoot in the land. He and I connected in mid-August—remotely, of course—to talk about the new coronavirus. Gates didn’t hide his disappointment in the US for failing both to prepare before a pandemic hit and to adequately test for…

Apple Security Research Device Yup, it’s an iPhone. But it’s not just any iPhone. This fall, Apple is shipping a more hackable version of the iPhone to vetted security researchers worldwide. (Whitehats, apply now!) What can experts do with a more permeable iPhone? One of the iPhone operating system’s security hallmarks is a design that keeps apps siloed and prevents them from accessing data and other resources they don't need. But these walls create their own security issues, making it more difficult for researchers to trace the path of an attack and find potential vulnerabilities for Apple to fix. Researchers have relied on DIY hacks to sidestep these restrictions for years, but the Security Research Device dissolves the barriers for real. It’s a big step, but ever-cautious Apple will only…

Albert Einstein kept a portrait of the 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday on his wall, alongside a picture of Isaac Newton. Genius recognizes genius: Faraday’s many discoveries led to electric motors, to electricity being put to practical use in technology, and to the concept of electromagnetic fields in physics. Faraday also figured out that an enclosure made of a mesh of conductive metal can absorb and redistribute electromagnetic interference. It is this work that’s honored every time someone slips a cell phone into a pouch coated with metal, made for the specific purpose of preventing signals from getting in or out. The low-tech hack shields phones from digital buttinskies by blocking cellular signals, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, RFID, and Bluetooth. Privacy-craving citizens can put their phone into a Faraday pouch like this…

It was not the first time Dana DeBeauvoir had moved a room full of men. At 9 o’clock in the morning on August 8, 2011, she adjusted a pair of half-frame reading glasses on the end of her nose, got up behind a tabletop podium in a downtown San Francisco hotel, and set out to enlist some of her most bitter adversaries in a dare. “I really appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today,” she began in a warm tone of Southern geniality, flashing a wide, radiant smile. DeBeauvoir (pronounced day-buv-WAH) introduced herself as the chief clerk and election administrator of Travis County, Texas, better known as the home of Austin. She was dressed in a dark tailored jacket and ruffled blouse, with nails polished in her favorite candy-apple…

Democracy is not partisan. That’s where I begin this conversation. Who I choose once I’m inside the voting booth is my business. Ensuring my ability to get inside is the responsibility of government. I’m a progressive Democrat in part because I want the system to be fair. We should not be guaranteed victory, but we should be guaranteed access. Anyone who believes in our democracy should hold that to be a good. We’re becoming more aware of the challenges that millions of Americans have long faced when it comes to voter suppression. The pandemic has exposed even more cracks in the process. Right now, the overarching challenge is that we have this discordant set of rules that allow each state to determine how safe or how dangerous voting should be.…

When I go to the doctor, they ask what I do, and when I tell them, they start complaining to me about the software at the hospital. I love this, because I hate going to the doctor, and it gives us something to talk about besides my blood pressure. ■ This is a pattern in my life: When I’m asking at the library reference desk, chatting with the construction contractor with her iPad, or applying for a loan at the bank, I just peer over their shoulder a bit while they’re answering a question—not so much to be intrusive—and give a low little whistle at the mess on their screens. And out pours a litany of wasted hours and bug reports. Now I’ve made a friend. ■ Good software makes…

Please don’t complain to me about literally anything if you’ve touched human flesh since March. Being very single, I have not, and my Grubhub guy doesn’t want a hug. So I am doomed, instead, to online dating in the context of a pandemic. Let me walk you through the torture. It starts typically enough, with endless scrolling through profiles of now-offensively-irrelevant travel photos. No one asks “How’s it going?” anymore; the new opener is “Picked up any new hobbies?” I can’t help but respond: “No, unless you count screaming into the void.” If they find me cute-funny, we arrange a FaceTime or Zoom, the latter being preferable for its “Touch up my appearance” feature. We talk and misread glitching, pixel-blurred facial cues and, if all goes tolerably, make it to…

OBJECTIVE Every device on your network is bombarded 24/7 with malware, banner ads, pop-ups, and activity-tracking scripts. All that extra cruft slows down your browsing. But with a bit of tinkering, you can program a tiny and cheap Raspberry Pi computer to block this noisome dross. Follow these instructions to install the free program Pi-hole, which checks all incoming data against blacklists of your choosing before deciding whether the packets should be passed on to your devices. It’s more efficient than a standard ad blocker; the filtering works across every device on your network, banishing ads, trackers, and malicious code from phones, iPads, PCs, game consoles, Rokus, and even smart TVs. STEP BY STEP WHAT YOU’LL NEED → Raspberry Pi ($35) with the free Raspberry Pi OS software installed →…

By now, the Kremlin has meddled in so many elections around the world that the immune system of global democracy has gotten at least a little wise to its threats. Here are some lessons that other countries can teach us in the age of Russian mayhem. —Andy Greenberg When in Doubt, Go Analog In 2017, spooked by stories about Russian hacking in the US election, Dutch TV broadcaster RTL investigated the Netherlands’ software system for counting paper ballots and found it riddled with security flaws. “The average iPad is more secure than the Dutch electoral system,” said one security researcher. So in a dramatic move just six weeks before a big election, the country decided to count all the votes manually—a slower but far more secure option. Get Physical Authentication…

Late last October—before health officials in central China began racing to contain a mysterious outbreak of viral pneumonia, before DIY hand sanitizer tutorials flooded YouTube, before nearly 200,000 people in the US had died of Covid-19—legislators in Pennsylvania came together for a rare moment of bipartisan collaboration. For the first time since 1937, Republicans and Democrats passed a series of broad electoral reforms. Their constituents, long bound by some of the most restrictive voting rules in the nation, would now enjoy some of the most flexible. Like millions of other Americans, Pennsylvanians would be able to vote by mail without providing a reason for doing so. “ We were certainly preparing for a surge in mail-in ballots, just because people could do it now,” says Kenneth Lawrence Jr., who oversees…

In the second half of 2016, two roads diverged in an online wood. Each wound through a universe populated by fabulous creatures. One was delightful. The other was morbid. One knew it was fantasy. The other was deadly serious, and some who ventured there ended up spoiling for civil war, committing violent crimes, and brandishing knives, guns, and bullwhips against their phantoms. ■ The wise and good chose Pokémon Go, while the foolish and furious chose what came to be called QAnon. Or maybe it was just an accident. Maybe it didn’t matter what kind of person you were before you entered. After you were in, you were in; your reality became significantly augmented, not to say distorted or even obliterated. And while QAnon is the subject now of much…

MASK UP, BE SAFE Facial-recognition tech can see around hoodies or big shades, so pair them with a face covering. Plus, you’ll get protection against coronavirus particles and tear gas. There are makeup tutorials online for edgy face paint intended to trick face-recognizing algorithms, but these designs are unproven. Also, it’s probably easier for humans to track you if you look like a member of Insane Clown Posse. DRESS TO UNIMPRESS Make yourself less memorable to both humans and machines by wearing clothing as dark and pattern-free as your commitment to privacy. Clothing search is a common feature of video surveillance software; it helps analysts track a person across different camera feeds. In other words, don’t be the only search result for “chartreuse pants.” Also, keep the rad tats and…

Three months before Election Day, James Barnes teleconferenced into a strategy meeting about how, exactly, to persuade people not to vote for Donald Trump. The 32-year-old wore his hair loosely gathered in a man bun and had the sober expression of someone who, as a hazard of his occupation, thinks about the president nearly all the time. Other faces popped up on his monitor, offering glimpses into millennial apartments, until someone started a screen share. They were here to review a series of video testimonials by conservatives who had decided to oppose Trump. Barnes and his colleagues wanted to know which ones resonated most with prospective voters on Facebook. Were testimonials from men or women more effective? Midwesterners or Southerners? How many viewers made it past the first 15 seconds?…

One day in early June 2018, Sara-Jayne Terp, a British data scientist, flew from her home in Oregon to Tampa, Florida, to take part in an exercise that the US military was hosting. On the anniversary of D-Day, the US Special Operations Command was gathering a bunch of experts and soldiers for a thought experiment: If the Normandy invasion were to happen today, what would it look like? The 1944 operation was successful in large part because the Allies had spent almost a year planting fake information, convincing the Germans they were building up troops in places they weren’t, broadcasting sham radio transmissions, even staging dummy tanks at key locations. Now, given today’s tools, how would you deceive the enemy? Terp spent the day in Florida brainstorming how to fool…