One of the most under-appreciated Mac features is the services menu, which you can find by right-clicking just about anything—highlighted text, say, or any image. Hover over the "Services" section and you'll see a bunch of quick actions. You can find this same collection in the menu bar: just click the name of the application that's currently open and hover over Services.
Credit: Justin Pot
There are all kinds of useful options here. You can, for example, look up a word in the dictionary, or add a bit of text to your to-do list. You can open a URL using IINA, a great video player for Mac. You get the idea: you can automate whatever it is that is selected. You can take control of which things do, and do not, show up by open System Settings and heading to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services. From here you can check or uncheck items. You can also set custom keyboard shortcuts for these services.
Credit: Justin Pot
Where things get really fun, though, is when you look into the custom services you can download. Here are a few of the best apps I could find that add cool features to the services menu on your Mac.
Dictater reads text to you out loud
Credit: Justin Pot
The Mac comes with a built-in service for reading text, but I don't really like it very much. Dictater, in my experience, works a lot better. With this application you can highlight any text, in any app, and have it read out loud. There's a pop-up window with buttons to play and jump forward and backward, and an optional window you can open to see the text on screen as it is read. You can change the voice used in System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content, if you like—I prefer to use one of the high-quality Siri voices.
CalcService does math
CalcService is a free download that lets you do math in any text field. With the app installed you can highlight any mathematical formula in any app—for example, (62*7)/4, and get an answer right in place, like this: (62*7)/4 = 108.5. It's magic, and even better once you create a keyboard shortcut for the feature.
WordService
Credit: Justin Pot
WordService comes as a free download from Devon Technologies, the same company that made CalcService. This one offers all kinds of tools for working with text, the most obviously useful of which allows you to get a word count and character count for any text you highlight. This is useful for all kinds of things, from composing social media posts to long-form writing. But there's so much more here to dig into. There are actions for converting text that's in all caps to lowercase, and vice versa. There are actions for inserting the current time, or the current date. And there are actions for adding or removing smart quotes from a block of text. If you publish things online regularly, this is a good collection of tools to have around.
SearchLink quickly looks for a link and adds it
SearchLink is a little harder to explain but I love it. Basically, you can highlight any text, trigger the service, and the tool will automatically search the web for the term and add a markdown-formatted link. So, for example, here's a text document with my name in it:
Credit: Justin Pot
If I run SearchLink on the highlighted text, which is my name, the document looks like this:
Credit: Justin Pot
The link has been added, without me having to open a browser. This can save you a lot of time while writing, assuming that you do that writing in markdown. And there are more advanced features you can dig into, including one that will fill in all the links in a document. It's a great tool to have around.
Shortcuts can work this way too
Credit: Justin Pot
Didn't quite find the app you want? You could try building one yourself. Any shortcut you build in Apple Shortcuts can function as a service. Just make sure Use as Quick Action and Services Menu are highlighted in the Shortcut details pane. Check out our list of the most helpful Shortcuts on macOS if you need a few ideas of how to put this to work.
With large language models needing quality data, some publishers are offering theirs at a price while others are blocking access
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, knows that high-quality data matters in the artificial intelligence business – and news publishers have vast amounts of it.
“It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” the company said this year in a submission to the UK’s House of Lords, adding that limiting its options to books and drawings in the public domain would create underwhelming products.
Microsoft is investigating reports of the latest April Windows 11 update breaking some VPN apps for users. The update, titled KB5036893, introduced several improvements to Windows 11—unfortunately it also seems to have broken VPN apps that run off a TPM-backed certificate.
The exact issue users are running into seems to be with the VPN being unable to find the certificate that it needs to be used with the Extensible Authentication Protocol, Reddit User Flo-TPG explains. Now that Microsoft has confirmed it knows about the issue and is investigating it, we’ll hopefully have a fix before too long.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t help those who might be trying to use a VPN with Windows 11 currently. If you have installed update KB5036893, then the only real option you have is to uninstall it and downgrade to the previous Windows 11 version.
How to uninstall a Windows 11 update
If you ever have any issues with a new Windows 11 update, you can always roll back to the previous version thanks to a handy built-in system Microsoft has included in the operating system.
First, open the Settings menu on your Windows 11 PC.
Navigate to Windows Update.
Now click Update History.
Scroll all the way to the bottom and select Uninstall Updates.
Find the update that you need to uninstall—in this case, you’ll want to look for update KB5036893—and click Uninstall, then complete the process.
Once the update finishes uninstalling, your system will restart, and you’ll launch back on the older version of Windows 11. Keep in mind that downgrading from some of the larger updates for Windows 11 may remove some features from your operating system.
Advertisements—sometimes prompts to do something that would financially benefit Microsoft and sometimes actual paid advertisements—are showing up all over Windows 11. Start menu ads are rolling out to all users this month, taking the shape of "Recommended" applications you haven't installed. Ads also briefly showed up in File Explorer, though this was apparently unintentional. And there have long been calls to action on the lock screen and in the settings app. It's a mess.
We've told you how to manually turn off all of Microsoft's ads in Windows 11, but it's a lot of digging around in the settings. If you'd rather not do that, an app called OFGB can do it for you. This free and open source application can quickly change various registry settings to disable those ads—all you have to do is click a few checkboxes.
To get started, simply download the latest release from Github. There are two versions—one tiny one that will only work if you've already installed .NET 8.0 and another massive one that has .NET bundled. Use whichever sounds easier to you.
Open the application and you'll see a bunch of checkboxes allowing you to disable different features. This includes the infamous ads in the File Explorer, the ads on the lock screen, the "Suggested content" in the Settings app, the general tips and tricks that pop up while you're using Windows, the Windows "Welcome Experience," the optional tracking tool that enables "more personal" ads, the "Tailored Experience" feature that tracks your website browsing to show product recommendations, and the "recommended" ads that show up in the start menu.
It's honestly a lot of stuff to have to disable just to get a clean operating system, but with this application, at least it's all in one place. And hey: It's easier than wiping your computer just to install an actually clean version of Windows 11, so that's a plus.
Challenger to market leader OpenAI says it wants to ‘meet users where they are’ and become part of users’ everyday life
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is facing serious competition, as the company’s rival Anthropic brings its Claude chatbot to iPhones. Anthropic, led by a group of former OpenAI staff who quit over differences with chief executive Sam Altman, have a product that already beats ChatGPT on some measures of intelligence, and now wants to win over everyday users.
“In today’s world, smartphones are at the centre of how people interact with technology. To make Claude a true AI assistant, it’s crucial that we meet users where they are – and in many cases, that’s on their mobile devices,” said Scott White at Anthropic.
Enlarge/ Part of the cover illustration from "The Applesoft Tutorial" BASIC manual that shipped with the Apple II computer starting in 1981. (credit: Apple, Inc.)
Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That's when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the first program written in their newly developed BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language on the college's General Electric GE-225 mainframe.
Little did they know that their creation would go on to democratize computing and inspire generations of programmers over the next six decades.
What is BASIC?
In its most traditional form, BASIC is an interpreted programming language that runs line by line, with line numbers. A typical program might look something like this:
Revenue at Amazon Web Services increases to $25bn as retail giant releases earnings report surpassing Wall Street expectations
Amazon profits soared once again in the first quarter of 2024, the company announced on Tuesday – the latest in a series of robust earnings reports for the retail giant. The company attributed the boost to artificial intelligence and advertising sales.
Amazon reported overall revenue of $143.3bn in the first three months of the year – up 13% from the same period in 2023 and surpassing Wall Street expectations of $142.65bn. The e-commerce giant reported an increase of more than 200% to $15bn, with net income more than tripling to $10.4bn from $3.17bn at the same time in 2023.
Amazon has been focusing on shipping products quickly by putting more items closer to customers. The company’s cloud computing business is also growing.
If you used a Mac computer in the '80s or '90s, you likely remember what's now called "Classic Mac OS", the precursor to the OS called macOS today. You might think you would need to find an ancient Mac on Craigslist to use that operating system again, but that's not true: you can try them all in your browser right now.
A site called InfiniteMac, created by Mihai Parparita, offers virtual machines running every major classic Mac operating system, from 1985 all the way to 2001. Just browse the collection, find something you want to try out, and click Run.
Credit: Justin Pot
Everything loads right in your browser, meaning you don't need to install anything. There are some stickies in each machine helping you find your way around and a mounted hard drive full of games and goodies.
Credit: Justin Pot
There's even a special hard drive, called Saved HD, where you can save any files you create. These are saved to your computer, locally, but any other operating systems you open on InfiniteMac will have access to them. You can also drag files from your computer onto the window and find them in the "Outside World" folder. It's all very sleek.
There's a drive full of software you can try out, including everything from games to old versions of QuarkXPress. There's also a collection of CDs, available at the bottom of the window, which you can mount right in the emulated system. There are a few games, including Myst, and a few collections of software that came bundled with magazines at the time.
Credit: Justin Pot
And you're not limited to macOS—there's also working versions of NeXTSTEP, which Steve Jobs worked on after being fired from Apple in the 1980s. A lot of code and ideas from that system, combined with elements from the Classic Mac OS, would go on to become the macOS we still use today. Not a lot of people remember using this system, mostly because the systems were absurdly expensive, but playing around with these you can see what would become our modern macOS starting to take shape. It's all a fascinating experience, and a great way to recall a particular era of computing.
The current Mac operating system—which launched in 2001, 23 years ago, as Mac OS X—has been around longer than the "Classic" OS, which Apple offered for a total of 16 years. Come to think of it, the iPhone launched in 2007, which is 17 years ago, meaning the iPhone has been around longer than Classic Mac OS lasted.
The Windows key is your gateway to your PC's Start menu, but you can use it for a lot more than that. From opening settings quickly to managing virtual desktops, your Windows key is hiding some of your PC's most convenient shortcuts. In fact, there are 45 Windows key shortcuts I think all PC users should know about. Note that I'm focusing on Windows 11 here, which means a small number of these shortcuts may not work on older versions of Windows. If you're looking for more than just Windows key shortcuts, we've also got a list of the best Windows 11 keyboard shortcuts. And if you're on Mac, check out these hidden Mac keyboard shortcuts.
45 Windows key shortcuts you should know about
Windows-E: Opens File Explorer.
Windows-I: Opens Windows settings.
Windows-A: Opens quick settings, which allows you to toggle wifi, Bluetooth, volume, and other options.
Windows-Ctrl-Enter: Opens Narrator.
Windows-+: Launches Magnifier and zooms in to your display. Windows-- (minus) will zoom out.
Windows-. or Windows-;: Opens the emoji picker.
Windows-U: Opens accessibility settings.
Windows-Ctrl-C: Toggles color filters. To enable this, go to Settings > Accessibility and enable Keyboard shortcut for color filters and Color filters. Pick a filter and you're all set. I've been using it to toggle greyscale mode to help me decrease my screen time at night.
Windows-Alt-B: Toggles HDR (works only if you're running version 5.721.7292.0 or newer of the Xbox Game Bar).
Windows-K: Launches the Cast option in the quick settings pane. Helpful if you want to quickly Cast something to your TV.
Windows-X: Fires up the Quick Link menu, where you can access most commonly used troubleshooting options. This includes Task Manager, Settings, Run, shut down, and other functions.
Windows-L: Instantly locks your computer.
Windows-N: Shows the calendar and notifications.
Windows-R: Opens Run.
Windows-S: Opens Windows search.
Windows-V: Shows your clipboard history.
Windows-Spacebar: Switches between keyboards or input languages.
Windows-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of everything visible on the screen.
Windows-F: Takes a screenshot and opens Windows 11's Feedback Hub. Lets you report any bugs or other issues with your computer to Microsoft.
Windows-Shift-S: Takes a screenshot of a custom selection of the screen.
Windows-Alt-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of just the active window.
Windows-Alt-R: Records a video of the active game window using Xbox Game bar.
Windows-Tab: Opens the task view to see your virtual desktops.
Windows-Ctrl-D: Adds a virtual desktop.
Windows-Ctrl-Right Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the right.
Windows-Ctrl-Left Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the left.
Windows-Ctrl-F4: Closes the virtual desktop you're using.
Windows-H: Opens voice typing.
Windows-Alt-K: Mutes or unmutes your mic when apps are using the microphone. Useful when you're on a video call or a party chat.
Windows-M: Minimizes all open windows.
Windows-Shift-M: Restores all minimized windows to their original state.
Windows-P: Lets you quickly choose display modes. Useful for people who have multiple monitors.
Windows-Ctrl-Q: Opens Quick Assist, which is a built-in app that lets you control other people's Windows PCs, or allows them to control yours. Used for troubleshooting.
Windows-Up arrow: Maximizes the active window.
Windows-Down arrow: Minimizes the active window.
Windows-Alt-Left or Right arrow keys: Snaps the active window to one part of the screen. Hold Windows-Alt and hit the arrow keys to adjust its position.
Windows-Home: Minimizes all windows other than the active window. Enter again to restore all windows to their original positions.
Windows-Shift-Left or Right arrow keys: Moves the active app to your secondary monitor.
Windows-Z: Launches Snap Layouts in the top-right corner of the screen. Lets you quickly choose a layout and start adding apps to make the most of your screen space.
Windows-,: Hold this shortcut to see the desktop. The moment you release it, your open windows will return to the screen.
Windows-T: Cycles through the apps pinned to your taskbar.
Windows-Alt-Enter: When a taskbar item is selected, this shortcut will open taskbar settings.
Windows-1: Opens the first app pinned to your taskbar. Replace 1 with any number from 2 to 9 to open the corresponding app.
Windows-W: Opens the widgets pane.
Windows-B: Select the first icon in the system tray, which is located in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
Airport staff surprised by arrival of centenarian instead of infant after American Airlines booking system errors
A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.
The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.
An anonymous reader quotes a report published last week by Physics World: Researchers at the Dutch quantum institute QuTech in Delft have announced plans to build Europe's first 100-quantum bit (qubit) quantum computer. When complete in 2026, the device will be made publicly available, providing scientists with a tool for quantum calculations and simulations. The project is funded by the Dutch umbrella organization Quantum Delta NL via the European OpenSuperQPlus initiative, which has 28 partners from 10 countries. Part of the 10-year, 1 billion-euro European Quantum Flagship program, OpenSuperQPlus aims to build a 100-qubit superconducting quantum processor as a stepping stone to an eventual 1000-qubit European quantum computer.
Quantum Delta NL says the 100-qubit quantum computer will be made publicly available via a cloud platform as an extension of the existing platform Quantum Inspire that first came online in 2020. It currently includes a two-qubit processor of spin qubits in silicon, as well as a five-qubit processor based on superconducting qubits. Quantum Inspire is currently focused on training and education but the upgrade to 100 qubits is expected to allow research into quantum computing. Lead researcher from QuTech Leonardo DiCarlo believes the R&D cycle has "come full circle," where academic research first enabled spin-off companies to grow and now their products are being used to accelerate academic research.
The Mac doesn't have a start menu like Windows, but that wasn't always entirely true. In the '90s, Macs offered a list of applications in the Apple Menu, like this:
Credit: Justin Pot via InfiniteMac.org
That's a distant memory at this point—it's been 25 years—so we probably shouldn't count on Apple to bring this feature back. The good news: a free application called XMenu, which I found via App Addict, brings this feature back, more or less. In some ways it's actually better than the vintage option.
Load XMenu and a single menu bar icon, which looks like the Mac Applications icon, will be added. You can click this to browse your Applications folder.
Credit: Justin Pot
It's not a perfect start menu replacement, especially if you have a lot of apps, but you can organize things a little. Any applications that in are folders will show up as a sub-menu, meaning you can organize things a little by putting applications into particular folders within Finder.
Credit: Justin Pot
You can also add more icons in the settings. There's support for your Documents and Home folder, meaning you can use this to browse all of your files.
Credit: Justin Pot
There's also support for the Developer and Snippets folder, if you're the kind of user who uses those, and a User-Defined folder which you can fill with whatever you want. You can create an alias of any folder in Finder by right-clicking and then clicking Create Alias. You can drag various aliases over ~/Library/Application Support/XMenu/Custom to build your own custom menu that includes all the folders you care about most. It takes a little more time, granted, but it will work exactly the way you want.
Keyboard shortcuts are a boon for productivity on Windows. Many things that take multiple mouse clicks, like taking screenshots, can easily be done with a couple of keystrokes. Windows 11 has several new keyboard shortcuts, but there's merit in learning about all of the best keyboard shortcuts on the platform. Some of these have been around for years, but aren't used often enough. I bet there's at least one shortcut you didn't know about but wish you had.
Backspace: If you're a few pages deep in your Windows settings, you press Backspace to go up one level. Keep pressing it again and again, and it'll eventually bring you back to the settings home page.
Windows-A: Opens quick settings (the equivalent of Mac's Control Center).
Windows-L: Locks the PC.
Windows-D: Shows the desktop.
Windows-N: Opens the Notification Center and also shows the calendar.
Windows-R: Opens the Run window and lets you quickly launch apps.
Windows-S: Allows you to use Windows search.
Windows-V: Shows your clipboard history.
Windows-Spacebar: Switches between keyboards or input languages.
PrtScn: If your keyboard has a print screen button, it's the simplest way to take a screenshot in Windows.
Windows-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of everything visible on the screen.
Alt-PrtScn: Captures a screenshot of the active window.
Windows-F: Takes a screenshot and opens Windows 11's Feedback Hub. Lets you report any bugs or other issues within your computer to Microsoft.
Windows-Shift-S: Takes a screenshot of a part of the screen. You can define a custom area and Windows will take a screenshot within it.
Windows-Alt-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of the active game window, using Windows Game Bar.
If the default tools aren't cutting it for you, then you should switch to ShareX, the best screenshot app for Windows.
Window management keyboard shortcuts
There are plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to manage open windows in various apps:
Alt-Tab: Perhaps the most famous window management shortcut. Lets you cycle through all open apps and switch between them.
Shift-Alt-Tab: Cycles through open apps in reverse order.
Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through open tabs in your browser, File Explorer, or other apps.
Shift-Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through tabs in reverse.
Ctrl-1: Opens the first tab in the browser. Change the number to anything from 1 to 9, and you'll jump to the corresponding tab.
Tab: Cycles through all clickable elements on the screen. Keep hitting it to go to the next available option.
Ctrl-Tab: The same as Tab, but in reverse.
Windows-Tab: Opens the task view to see your virtual desktops.
Windows-Ctrl-D: Adds a virtual desktop.
Windows-Ctrl-Right Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the right.
Windows-Ctrl-Left Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the left.
Windows-Ctrl-F4: Closes the virtual desktop you're using.
F11: Maximizes the open window or brings it back to its original size.
Alt-F4: Closes the open window.
File Explorer shortcuts
Windows' File Explorer has a bunch of great shortcuts for productivity:
F2: Quickly renames files. You can also select multiple files and use F2 to create a sequentially numbered naming scheme, such as Grand-Canyon-Trip (1), Grand-Canyon-Trip (2), and so on.
F3: Quickly goes to the search bar in file explorer. Ctrl-E and Ctrl-F also do the same thing.
Ctrl-L: Selects the address bar. Also works in your browser. In the File Explorer, you can also use F4 to do this.
F5: Refreshes the active window.
Alt-Enter: When you select any file or folder, this shortcut opens Properties.
Alt-Left Arrow: Go back to the previous page.
Alt-Right Arrow: Go forward.
Ctrl-T: Opens a new tab.
Ctrl-Shift-N: Creates a new folder.
Alt-P: Opens the preview pane.
Useful miscellaneous shortcuts
There are many, many more keyboard shortcuts in Windows. Here are some of the most useful among them:
Ctrl-C: Copy.
Ctrl-X: Cut.
Ctrl-V: Paste
Ctrl-Shift-V: Paste without formatting.
Ctrl-Z: Undo.
Ctrl-Y: Redo.
Ctrl-D: Deletes the selected item and sends it to the Recycle Bin. You can also press Delete to do this.
Ctrl-Esc: Opens the Start menu. Useful alternative if your keyboard's Windows key isn't working.
Ctrl-Shift-Esc: Opens Task Manager.
Shift-F10: The keyboard version of the right-click.
Shift-Delete: Permanently deletes selected items.
Esc: Helps you escape lots of things, such as pop-ups or accidentally executed actions.
Looking for a new Windows laptop? Our friends at PCMag have a list of the best notebooks for 2024, including:
Perhaps one of the most cited ways to improve performance in PC gaming, at least that I've seen in recent years, is to overclock your GPU. While that can definitely give you some additional frames (as in frames per second), it's also exceptionally damaging to your card if you don't know what you're doing—and even sometimes when you do know what you're doing.
Instead, I recommend changing a few key settings in your game to help improve performance. Sure, it might not always lead to the best graphical fidelity, but sometimes you may need to sacrifice the pretty visuals for better performance.
Change these settings first
Credit: Ubisoft
If you're having performance issues, there are a few key settings you'll want to try knocking down first.
For starters, turn off V-Sync. While it promises to smooth out frames, in a lot of games, you'll find that V-Sync actually hurts performance more than it helps. That's because while it does prevent screen tearing, it forces your graphics card to match the refresh rate of your monitor. It can also cause a small amount of input lag, which can sometimes feel like performance issues if you're playing a fast-paced game.
You'll also want to start knocking down shadow quality. While higher shadow settings might look good, they're also extremely demanding, especially in newer games. Sometimes, these shadows are tied to lighting as well, but you'll often find them as separate settings. I recommend turning them down to Medium or High if you have a powerful enough system. Most of the time, Ultra is going to cause more performance issues than visual improvements.
Ambient occlusion is another lighting and shadow-related setting, but it's a bit more complex than that. Ambient occlusion essentially controls how objects create shadows on other objects—for instance, a desk or computer monitor casting shadows on a chair. You can usually turn this setting off without much noticeable difference, and it will often net you a good five to ten extra frames per second (FPS).
While ray tracing has come a long way since its mainstream introduction, this feature continues to be one of the most performance-heavy that current video games offer. As such, I recommend turning it off in most games unless you don't mind losing out on the extra performance it might cost you. (It does look nice.) At the most, I'd say settings like this should be topped out at Low or Medium at the highest. Just remember you're going to see some drastic performance cuts if you use it.
The same goes for reflections. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 offer specific reflection sliders, so you can choose exactly what quality of reflections you want from mirrors and water. While they might be nice to look at, you're often losing a good few frames per second for those smoother reflections, and, most of the time, there aren't enough reflective surfaces in the game to matter all that much.
Anti-aliasing
You'll also want to tinker with your anti-aliasing effects. While these can help smooth out edges in your gameplay, they can also be quite costly, especially if you're using one of the more intensive options. Anti-aliasing options range from the baseline Supersample Anti-Aliasing (SSAA), which renders the game at a higher resolution before downscaling it to fit the monitor, to faster options like Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA), which uses algorithms to guess what edges need to be smoothed out after the image has been rendered.
Depending on which type of anti-aliasing you choose, you might see smoother edges but a small drop to performance. There are also other types of anti-aliasing, like Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA), which is the most common option. This renders only the edges of a scene at a higher resolution, thus saving on performance while providing similar quality to what SSAA offers. You'll also see an option for Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA or TXAA), which works similarly to MSAA by rendering edges at a higher resolution. However, TAA also takes into account temporal details, which means it uses the previous frames to predict what anti-aliasing it needs to use in future frames.
Ultimately, your best option here is going to vary, but I've found a lot of great success with MSAA, as it doesn't have nearly the high cost that SSAA does. However, for the most frames possible, you'll probably want to go with FXAA or TAA, though they both are prone to artifacting (visual bugs that appear on your display) and won't always look the best.
DLSS, FSR, XESS, and Dynamic Resolution
Credit: Nvidia
Finally, if you're really struggling with performance, I highly recommend checking out DLSS, FSR, XESS, or Dynamic Resolution. DLSS, which stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, and FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) are both dynamic resolution options that lean on your graphics card to render your game at a lower resolution and then upscale it using AI algorithms. XESS is a similar, but newer and rarer, equivalent. These options can often provide additional FPS without cutting down on visual quality nearly as much as just lowering the resolution would.
DLSS only works on Nvidia graphics cards and is often considered the highest-quality option for this particular functionality. However, AMD's FSR is just as effective at improving performance, just without as much graphical fidelity. It works with both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, making it a solid option for almost anyone. By and far, DLSS provides the best visuals between the two, so try it out if you have an Nvidia card.
XESS works similarly, though it builds off Intel's various technology features, which are baked into the company's newer CPUs and GPUs. It's even scarcer in games than DLSS and FSR and offers fewer performance gains and bigger cuts to the quality, depending on the title. If you see the option to use it in your game, you can try toggling it on, but don't be surprised if DLSS or FSR provide better results.
If you want to take things a step further, or if DLSS and FSR aren't available, then you can also use Nvidia Image Scaling (NIS). This feature is built directly into Nvidia Control Panel and Nvidia GeForce Experience, and allows you to set a desired resolution for upscaling and a resolution you want to render the game at. You'll need to tweak settings like sharpness manually, though, which makes it all too easy to over-sharpen your image, or decrease the overall image quality in general. It can be handy if you have the time to sit around and find the perfect settings for each game you plan to play, though.
Finally, there's the built-in dynamic resolution option that appears in some games. This isn't a feature powered by AMD or Nvidia, and it's often much worse than DLSS or FSR. Some games do have excellent dynamic resolution, but for the most part, you're going to see even more quality drops by using this feature, as it targets a specific frame rate and dynamically alters your resolution as you play to match it. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it just creates a wonky experience that isn't very enjoyable.
Unfortunately, the list of games that support DLSS and FSR is still growing, so not every title is going to offer this functionality. Until that happens, try turning to other settings that might be more intensive, like post-processing, texture quality, and view distance.
Get a new graphics card
Of course, the best way to increase your performance is to just bite the bullet and buy some new hardware. Stay tuned to Lifehacker for updates on all the greatest GPU deals, including on Nvidia's new Super cards and AMD's upcoming chip refresh.
For now, here's a list of the most popular AMD and Nvidia graphics cards—the higher the number, the better the card:
If you're already using Windows 11, that means you likely set it up using a Microsoft account, unless you already checked out our guide on how to use a local account when setting up Windows 11. If you've already set up a Microsoft account, don't despair: You still aren't locked into using a cloud-based account on your PC. Instead, you can actually disconnect your Microsoft account from the cloud and turn it into a local account instead.
You won't lose any of your information or data if you follow this method, allowing you to cut the ties with Microsoft's various cloud services and still make the most of your Windows 11 PC.
How to remove your Microsoft account from Windows
To get started, open the Windows 11 settings menu. This can be found by pressing WindowsKey+I or by opening the Start Menu and selecting the Settings cog.
Click Account > YourInfo > Signin withalocalaccountinstead. Then, enter a new password for your local account and confirm the change. Windows will save your changes and switch your Microsoft account to a local account that's stored directly on the PC. You can still access your Microsoft account online with the information that you used before, but your Windows 11 PC will no longer be tied directly to that account.
How to remove a work or school account from Windows 11
If you're using a school or work account, then removing them is somewhat similar.
Open the Windows settings by pressing WindowsKey+ I. Navigate to Accounts > Accessworkorschool and then click Disconnect. This will remove your work or school account from Windows 11. Keep in mind it will also lock out any features that you had access to through those accounts, like Microsoft Teams.
Why you may want to remove your Microsoft account from Windows
Having a Microsoft account tied to your Windows 11 account gives you access to a ton of additional features, like Copilot and OneDrive. But if you want to take a more private approach to how you use your PC, then disconnecting your account cuts off Microsoft's access to your data. It does mean you'll lose out on features like cloud storage, but on the other hand, you'll have more control over what data Microsoft is able to capture and share with advertisers.
Microsoft keeps adding more and more stuff to Windows and it often seems to get in the way more than it helps. A "clean" installation of Windows, at this point, forces you to sign up for a Microsoft account, tries to sell you cloud storage space, and is very pushy about getting you to use Microsoft Edge and Copilot. I could go on.
Tiny11Builder is a third-party script that can take a Windows installation ISO, which you can get from Microsoft, and strip it of all of these features. Install Windows using this tool and you'll have a truly clean installation: no News, no OfficeHub, no annoying GetStarted prompts, and no junk entires in the start menu. You can always install these things later, if you want, but you'll be starting with a clean state.
First download an official Windows 11 ISO
Head to the official Microsoft page for downloading Windows. Scroll down until you see Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices. Select the version of Windows you have a product key for.
Credit: Justin Pot
Click the Download Now button. This will likely take 15 minutes or so, depending on your internet speed.
Download the script and prep your device
Now it's time to download our scripts. Head to the tiny11builder Github page and click the Code button in the top-right corner. Next click Download ZIP.
Credit: Justin Pot
Unzip that download. Now we need to configure your system to allow PowerScript to make administration changes. Open PowerShell as an administrator, which you can do by searching for "PowerShell" in the start menu and then clicking the Run as Administrator in the right side-bar.
Credit: Justin Pot
Type or copy the exact command Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted and hit Enter.
Credit: Justin Pot
You will be warned about the security implications of this—confirm that you know what you're doing and are allowing the change. You can always undo the change later by running Set-ExecutionPolicy restricted.
Make your tiny11 disk
By now your Windows 11 ISO should be finished downloading. Right-click the file and click Mount. This will open the ISO file as a virtual CD, which you can confirm by looking for it in Windows Explorer.
Credit: Justin Pot
Once you've confirmed that the disk is mounted, you can run the tiny11script, which was in the ZIP file you unzipped earlier. The simplest way to get started is to right-click the file "tiny11maker.ps1" and click Run with PowerShell.
Credit: Justin Pot
This will start the script. You will be asked for the drive letter of your virtual drive, which you can find in Windows Explorer under My Computer—look for a DVD drive that wasn't there before. You only need to type the letter and hit enter.
Credit: Justin Pot
After that, the script will ask you which version of Windows you want to make a disc for. Answer with the version you have a product key for.
Credit: Justin Pot
After that, the script will do its thing, which might take a while. When the process is done, you will see a message letting you know.
Credit: Justin Pot
There will be a brand-new ISO file in the script's directory. This ISO is perfect for setting up Windows in a virtual machine, which is how I'm hosting it, but it also works for installing to a device. You can burn this ISO file to a DVD, if you have an optical drive, or you can use a USB disk. Microsoft offers official instructions for this, which are pretty easy to follow.
However you install Windows from this ISO, know that it will be completely clean. You will not be prompted to create a Microsoft account, or even to sign in using one, and there will be no Microsoft services other than what you need in order to use the operating system. Seriously, look at this start menu:
Credit: Justin Pot
There's no clutter whatsoever, meaning you can add the applications you actually want to use. It would be nice if Microsoft offered this officially, but it's nice that there's a way for power users to get it.
Windows 11 has a search bar in the taskbar and the Start menu, which lets you look for things both on your computer and on the internet. But if you click any results from the internet, Windows will open them in Microsoft Edge, even if that's not your default browser. Luckily, there's a way to override this and force Windows to open links in your preferred browser.
Install MSEdgeRedirect to force Windows 11 to use your favorite browser
MSEdgeRedirect is the best way to stop Microsoft Edge from firing up every time you use Windows search. The app will also stop Edge from launching randomly, plus it'll let you use third-party services instead of Microsoft's own options for news, weather, and other live updates. Installing it is as simple as going through a couple of setup screens.
Credit: Pranay Parab/MSEdgeRedirect
One of these setup screens asks you to choose an installation mode. For most people, Active Mode is recommended. On the next page, you'll see a number of Active Mode preferences. First, select Edge Stable unless you're running a beta build of the browser. After that, go through the preferences to stop other Microsoft redirects such as Bing Discover, Bing Images, Bing Search, MSN News, MSN Weather, etc. For each of these, MSEdgeRedirect offers a few alternatives, so take your pick.
Take control of your browser and search engine
Once the app is installed, Windows 11's search bar will be a lot more useful. Now, internet links will open in your default browser and use your preferred search engine.
MSEdgeRedirect is a great way to fix Windows 11's default settings. But you can take it a step further. Some people really dislike how Microsoft has slowed down the search function by trying to show results from the internet. Luckily, you can remove internet results from Windows search, and focus on the apps and files that live on your PC.
Gamers have been trying to get the best performance out of their PC games since the dawn of the hobby. Many now turning to the internet to try to find ways to improve their FPS (frames per second) and get a smoother gaming experience. Since Windows 11, we've seen a new "fix" popping up for gaming performance: a recommendation to disable VBS.
While the prospect of disabling performance-hungry settings in Windows isn't exactly a new one, not every setting someone on the internet tells you to disable is actually something you should cut. In fact, youshouldn't disable VBS, as this feature helps protect your computer's core functionality, and disabling it doesn't actually offer that much of a bump in performance.
What is VBS?
VBS stands for virtualization-based security. It essentially uses hardware virtualization to create an isolated environment for the root of your operating system. This is designed to help keep the kernel—one of the most important parts of your PC—from being compromised should you accidentally download a virus or malware.
One of the main ways VBS helps protect your computer is by using a solution called memory integrity. This feature essentially causes Windows to run and kernel code with the isolated environment to ensure that it is secure and legitimate. This keeps unsigned and untrusted drivers from being able to change the very core of your PC, thus protecting you from bad actors.
Because it plays such an important part in protecting the core of your PC, you shouldn't mess with VBS, as turning it off could open your computer up to attacks from malware and viruses.
How to check if VBS is enabled
Unfortunately, not all Windows 11 PCs will have VBS enabled by default. Users who upgraded unsupported PCs to Windows 11 are the most likely to see VBS disabled by default, as VBS has certain requirements that need to be met before it can be enabled. Most newer PCs should meet all of these requirements, which is why some older PCs might not have VBS even though VBS actually predates Windows 11. (That's also why VBS is so associated with Windows 11). You can learn a bit more about the requirements for VBS by checking out Microsoft's in-depth writeup. Note that the requirements are very heavy in technical jargon, so it might be a bit difficult to understand them if you don't have a working knowledge of the foundational systems that computers require to run and remain secure.
To check if VBS is enabled on your PC, pull up the Start Menu and search for System Information. This will open a new window with a long list of different functionality and features that your system is currently running. Look for the line that reads Virtualization-based security.
Another way to easily check if VBS is enabled is to search Core Isolation from your Start Menu. From here, check if the Memory integrity function is toggled on or off. If it is on, then memory integrity and VBS are enabled, giving your PC a bit more protection. If you really do want to disable it, you can toggle this off to turn off VBS and remove that extra layer of security.
Is it worth disabling VBS to improve performance?
Not really. VBS offers a good deal of extra protection, and in most cases, you're not going to see more than a five percent increase in performance across Windows and apps. Some users have reported up to 15 percent increases in performance when disabling the feature, although your mileage may vary.
However, as I noted above, VBS is a really important security feature. Unless you're very smart about how you browse the internet, I recommend leaving it on for extra protection. If you are struggling with performance, then you can try these tips to help improve gaming performance before disabling VBS:
Free up storage space: If you're using a solid state drive, then keeping the drive with your operating system on it as empty as possible is always a good idea. That's because SSDs can actually slow down the more full they are. Because of this, I recommend keeping your OS and any important apps separated from other things, like games and apps you don't need directly on your primary drive. If you do have too many apps or games installed on your primary drive, try deleting some of them to see if that makes your performance any better.
Disablestartupapps: If your main performance issues are happening at startup, then you can try disabling apps that automatically start when you turn on your PC. A lot of apps have a "launch at login" option, and while you can disable them individually in the apps, the easiest way to do this is to open the Task Manager with Control + Alt + Delete, find the Startup Apps page, and set as many as you can to disabled.
DisableXboxGameBar: Ever since Microsoft started blending Xbox and Windows together for its gaming ecosystem, the Xbox Game Bar has caused issues. Sometimes referred to as Game DVR, this service allows you to record game clips and capture screenshots. That all sounds handy, but it can also cause some performance issues. To disable it, navigate to Gaming > Game Bar and toggle the feature off. If you aren't able to disable it this way, you can also disable it in the Registry by following this forum post, though that requires a bit more knowledge of your PC's inner workings. Do not make registry edits if you are not confident that you know what you are doing, as these kinds of edits can break your PC's operating system.
Lower gamesettings: Of course, the least enjoyable answer to improving PC performance in games is to lower some of the more intensive settings. While they might make your games look pretty, a lot of games just aren't as well optimized as you might hope they would be, especially with all the cool tech advancements we have these days. Try lowering heavy settings like shadows and post-processing, as they can often bog your system down depending on how the developer optimized for them. In many cases, you might not even notice a visual downgrade, but the performance of your game will increase drastically.
The fastest way to open something on Windows is to open the start menu and start typing the name of the app or file. The exact thing you're looking for will show up, at which point you can hit "enter." Or, at least, that's how it used to work.
For years now, Microsoft has insisted on slowing down the start menu search by offering "helpful" information from the internet. Now, some people might like this, but I personally would prefer my internet searches to happen in the browser and to use the start menu to quickly find applications and files. There's no easy way to turn the internet content in the start menu off, sadly, but it is possible with a registry tweak. We wrote about turning off this "feature" in Windows 10 back in 2020. The process hasn't changed for Windows 11, but let's do a quick refresher.
Just to explain, here's what typing "why" in the start menu looks before this change:
Credit: Justin Pot
And here's how it looks after:
Credit: Justin Pot
All of the results are things that are actually on my computer. These results loaded instantly, which is something that can't be said about search-with-the-internet features turned off.
How to disable internet search suggestions in Windows 11
To get started, open the Registry Editor, which you can find in the start menu by searching (the irony is noted). The Registry Editor can be a bit confusing, and you can really mess things up by poking around, but don't worry—this won't be hard. The left panel has a series of folders, which are confusingly called "Keys." You need to browse to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows.
There may be a folder inside called Explorer. Don't worry if there isn't: Make one by right-clicking the "Windows" key in the left panel and clicking New > Key; name it "Explorer." Open that folder and right-click in the right-panel, then click New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Credit: Justin Pot
Name the new value DisableSearchBoxSuggestions, leave the Base as Hexadecimal, and change the Value data to 1. Like this:
Credit: Justin Pot
Click OK and close the registry editor. Restart your computer and try to search something in the start menu. The internet search results should be completely gone. If not, head back into the Registry Editor and make sure you've configured everything correctly. I tested turning this on and off again multiple times and can confirm that it works with the most recent version of Windows 11.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a good option for creative professionals, with solid specs to run heavy applications, a premium touch screen, and the ability to swap between a laptop and tablet configuration as needed. Right now, you can get this premium 3-in-1 hybrid laptop for $2,241.33 (originally $2,799.99), the lowest price it has ever been, according to price-checking tools.
This Surface Laptop Studio 2 has an Intel Core i7-13700KF, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD storage, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 graphics card. (You can also get the model with the more powerful NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada graphic card for $700 off.) The 14.4-inch IPS touchscreen has a 2400 by 1600 native resolution with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. What makes this laptop special is the ability to move the screen forward past the keyboard, offering an alternative to the usual tablet design, which it can also do (hence the 3-in-1 name). This mode can be great for watching movies or playing video games, which this laptop can handle well.
PCMag gave this laptop an "outstanding" review for its capable performance, premium screen, and versatility, but it did have some issues: The color coverage in the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color spaces was "okay," which can be a problem for designers and artists looking for the best color-matching options. Another issue among reviewers was the short battery life. Although it is marketed for up to 18 hours of battery, PCMag got 15 hours, and other reviewers experienced much less juice over time.
Almost all keyboard apps used by Chinese people around the world share a security loophole that makes it possible to spy on what users are typing.
The vulnerability, which allows the keystroke data that these apps send to the cloud to be intercepted, has existed for years and could have been exploited by cybercriminals and state surveillance groups, according to researchers at the Citizen Lab, a technology and security research lab affiliated with the University of Toronto.
These apps help users type Chinese characters more efficiently and are ubiquitous on devices used by Chinese people. The four most popular apps—built by major internet companies like Baidu, Tencent, and iFlytek—basically account for all the typing methods that Chinese people use. Researchers also looked into the keyboard apps that come preinstalled on Android phones sold in China.
What they discovered was shocking. Almost every third-party app and every Android phone with preinstalled keyboards failed to protect users by properly encrypting the content they typed. A smartphone made by Huawei was the only device where no such security vulnerability was found.
In August 2023, the same researchers found that Sogou, one of the most popular keyboard apps, did not use Transport Layer Security (TLS) when transmitting keystroke data to its cloud server for better typing predictions. Without TLS, a widely adopted international cryptographic protocol that protects users from a known encryption loophole, keystrokes can be collected and then decrypted by third parties.
“Because we had so much luck looking at this one, we figured maybe this generalizes to the others, and they suffer from the same kinds of problems for the same reason that the one did,” says Jeffrey Knockel, a senior research associate at the Citizen Lab, “and as it turns out, we were unfortunately right.”
Even though Sogou fixed the issue after it was made public last year, some Sogou keyboards preinstalled on phones are not updated to the latest version, so they are still subject to eavesdropping.
This new finding shows that the vulnerability is far more widespread than previously believed.
“As someone who also has used these keyboards, this was absolutely horrifying,” says Mona Wang, a PhD student in computer science at Princeton University and a coauthor of the report.
“The scale of this was really shocking to us,” says Wang. “And also, these are completely different manufacturers making very similar mistakes independently of one another, which is just absolutely shocking as well.”
The massive scale of the problem is compounded by the fact that these vulnerabilities aren’t hard to exploit. “You don’t need huge supercomputers crunching numbers to crack this. You don’t need to collect terabytes of data to crack it,” says Knockel. “If you’re just a person who wants to target another person on your Wi-Fi, you could do that once you understand the vulnerability.”
The ease of exploiting the vulnerabilities and the huge payoff—knowing everything a person types, potentially including bank account passwords or confidential materials—suggest that it’s likely they have already been taken advantage of by hackers, the researchers say. But there’s no evidence of this, though state hackers working for Western governments targeted a similar loophole in a Chinese browser app in 2011.
Most of the loopholes found in this report are “so far behind modern best practices” that it’s very easy to decrypt what people are typing, says Jedidiah Crandall, an associate professor of security and cryptography at Arizona State University, who was consulted in the writing of this report. Because it doesn’t take much effort to decrypt the messages, this type of loophole can be a great target for large-scale surveillance of massive groups, he says.
After the researchers got in contact with companies that developed these keyboard apps, the majority of the loopholes were fixed. Samsung, whose self-developed app was also found to lack sufficient encryption, sent MIT Technology Review an emailed statement: “We were made aware of potential vulnerabilities and have issued patches to address these issues. As always, we recommend that all users keep their devices updated with the latest software to ensure the highest level of protection possible.”
But a few companies have been unresponsive, and the vulnerability still exists in some apps and phones, including QQ Pinyin and Baidu, as well as in any keyboard app that hasn’t been updated to the latest version. Baidu, Tencent, and iFlytek did not reply to press inquiries sent by MIT Technology Review.
One potential cause of the loopholes’ ubiquity is that most of these keyboard apps were developed in the 2000s, before the TLS protocol was commonly adopted in software development. Even though the apps have been through numerous rounds of updates since then, inertia could have prevented developers from adopting a safer alternative.
The report points out that language barriers and different tech ecosystems prevent English- and Chinese-speaking security researchers from sharing information that could fix issues like this more quickly. For example, because Google’s Play store is blocked in China, most Chinese apps are not available in Google Play, where Western researchers often go for apps to analyze.
Sometimes all it takes is a little additional effort. After two emails about the issue to iFlytek were met with silence, the Citizen Lab researchers changed the email title to Chinese and added a one-line summary in Chinese to the English text. Just three days later, they received an email from iFlytek, saying that the problem had been resolved.
Update: The story has been updated to include Samsung’s statement.
Some time before the first dinosaurs, two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, collided, forcing molten rock out from the depths of the Earth. As eons passed, the liquid rock cooled and geological forces carved this rocky fault line into Pico Sacro, a strange conical peak that sits like a wizard’s hat near the northwestern corner of Spain.
Today, Pico Sacro is venerated as a holy site and rumored, in the local mythology, to be a portal to hell. But this magic mountain has also become valued in modern times for a very different reason: the quartz deposits that resulted from these geological processes are some of the purest on the planet. Today, it is a rich source of the silicon used to build computer chips. From this dusty ground, the mineral is plucked and transformed into an inscrutable black void of pure inorganic technology, something that an art director could have dreamed up to stand in for aliens or the mirror image of earthly nature.
In a warehouse just a few miles from the peak, he finds a dazzling pile of fist-size quartz chunks ready to be shoveled into a smoking coal-fired furnace running at 1,800 °C, where they are enveloped in a powerful electrical field. The process is not what he expected—more Lord of the Rings than Bay Area startup—but he relishes every near-mystical step that follows as quartz is coaxed into liquid silicon, drawn into crystals, and shipped to the cleanest rooms in the world.
Conway’s quest to understand how chips are made confronts the reality that no one person, “even those working on the supply chain itself,” can really explain the entire process. Conway soon discovers that even an industrial furnace can be a scene of sorcery and wonder, partly because of the electrical current that passes through the quartz and coal. “Even after more than a hundred years of production, there are still things people don’t understand about what’s happening in this reaction,” he is told by Håvard Moe, an executive at the Norwegian company Elkem, one of Europe’s biggest silicon producers.
Conway explains that the silicon “wafers” used to make the brains of our digital economy are up to 99.99999999% pure: “for every impure atom there are essentially 10 billion pure silicon atoms.” The silicon extracted from around Pico Sacro leaves Spain already almost 99% pure. After that, it is distilled in Germany and then sent to a plant outside Portland, Oregon, where it undergoes what is perhaps its most entrancing transformation. In the Czochralski or “CZ” process, a chamber is filled with argon gas and a rod is dipped repeatedly into molten refined silicon to grow a perfect crystal. It’s much like conjuring a stalactite at warp speed or “pulling candy floss onto a stick,” in Conway’s words. From this we get “one of the purest crystalline structures in the universe,” which can begin to be shaped into chips.
Conway aims to disprove “perhaps the most dangerous of all the myths” that guide our lives today: “the idea that we humans are weaning ourselves off physical materials.” It is easy to convince ourselves that we now live in a dematerialized “ethereal world,” he says, ruled by digital startups, artificial intelligence, and financial services. Yet there is little evidence that we have decoupled our economy from its churning hunger for resources. “For every ton of fossil fuels,” he writes, “we exploit six tons of other materials—mostly sand and stone, but also metals, salts, and chemicals. Even as we citizens of the ethereal world pare back our consumption of fossil fuels, we have redoubled our consumption of everything else. But, somehow, we have deluded ourselves into believing precisely the opposite.”
Quartz
Cobalt
Conway delivers rich life stories of the resources without which our world would be unrecognizable, covering sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. He buzzes with excitement at every stage, with a correspondent’s gift for quick-fire storytelling, revealing the world’s material supply chains in an avalanche of anecdote and trivia. The supply chain of silicon, he shows, is both otherworldly and incredibly fragile, encompassing massive, anonymous industrial giants as well as terrifyingly narrow bottlenecks. Nearly the entire global supply of specialized containers for the CZ dipping process, for example, is produced by two mines in the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. “What if something happened to those mines? What if, say, the single road that winds down from them to the rest of the world was destroyed in a landslide?” asks Conway. “Short answer: it would not be pretty. ‘Here’s something scary,’ says one veteran of the sector. ‘If you flew over the two mines in Spruce Pine with a crop duster loaded with a very particular powder, you could end the world’s production of semiconductors and solar panels within six months.’” (Conway declines to print the name of the substance.)
Yet after such an impressive journey through deep time and the world economy, how long will any electronic gadget last? The useful life of our electronics and many other products is likely to be a short blip before they return to the earth. As Oliver Franklin-Wallis writes in Wasteland, electronic waste is one stubborn part of the 2 billion tons of solid waste we produce globally each year, with the average American discarding more than four pounds of trash each day.
Wasteland begins with a trip to Ghazipur, India, the “largest of three mega-landfills that ring Delhi.” There, amid an aromatic fug of sticky-sweet vapors, Franklin-Wallis stomps through a swamp-like morass of trash, following his guide, a local waste picker named Anwar, who helps him recognize solid stepping-stones of trash so that he may safely navigate above the perilous system of subterranean rivers that rush somewhere unseen below his feet. Like the hidden icy currents that carve through glaciers, these rivers make the trash mountain prone to cleaving and crumbling, leading to around 100 deaths a year. “Over time, [Anwar] explains, you learn to read the waste the way sailors can read a river’s current; he can intuit what is likely to be solid, what isn’t. But collapses are unpredictable,” Franklin-Wallis writes. For all its aura of decay, this is also a living landscape: there are tomato plants that grow from the refuse. Waste pickers eat the fruits off the vine.
Wasteland is best when excavating the stories buried in the dump. In 1973, academics at the University of Arizona, led by the archaeologist William Rathje, turned the study of landfills into a science, labeling themselves the “garbologists.” “Trash, Rathje found, could tell you more about a neighborhood—what people eat, what their favorite brands are—than cutting-edge consumer research, and predict the population more accurately than a census,” Franklin-Wallis writes. “Unlike people,” he adds, “garbage doesn’t lie.”
Wasteland leaves a lasting impression of the trash-worlds that we make. Most horrifying of all, the contents of landfills don’t decompose the way we expect. By taking geological cores from landfills, Rathje found that even decades later, our waste remains a morbid museum: “onion parings were onion parings, carrot tops were carrot tops. Grass clippings that might have been thrown away the day before yesterday spilled from bulky black lawn and leaf bags, still tied with twisted wire.”
Simply shifting to “sustainable” or “cleaner” technologies doesn’t eliminate the industrial fallout from our consumption.
Franklin-Wallis’s histories help tell us where we as a civilization began to go wrong. In ancient Rome, waste from public latrines was washed away with wastewater from the city’s fountains and bathhouses, requiring a “complex underground sewer system crowned by the Cloaca Maxima, a sewer so great that it had its own goddess, Cloacina.” But by the Victorian age, the mostly circular economy of waste was coming to an end. The grim but eco-friendly job of turning human effluent into farm fertilizer (so-called “nightsoil”) was made obsolete by the adoption of the home flushing toilet, which pumped effluent out into rivers, often killing them. Karl Marx identified this as the beginning of a “metabolic rift” that—later turbocharged by the development of disposable plastics—turned a sustainable cycle of waste reuse into a conveyor between city and dump.
This meditation on trash can be fascinating, but the book never quite lands on a big idea to draw its story forward. While trash piles can be places of discovery, our propensity to make waste is no revelation; it’s an ever-present nightmare. Many readers will arrive in search of answers that Wasteland isn’t offering. Its recommendations are ultimately modest: the author resolves to buy less, learns to sew, appreciates the Japanese art of kintsugi (mending pottery with precious metals to highlight the act of repair). A handful of other lifestyle decisions follow.
As Franklin-Wallis is quick to acknowledge, a journey through our own waste can feel hopeless and overwhelming. What we’re lacking are viable ways to steer our societies from the incredibly resource-intensive paths they are on. This thought, taken up by designers and activists driving the Green New Deal, is aiming to turn our attention away from dwelling on our personal “footprint”—a murky idea that Franklin-Wallis traces to industry groups lobbying to deflect blame from themselves.
Reframing both waste and supply chains as matters that are political and international, rather than personal, could guide us away from guilt and move us toward solutions. Instead of looking at production and waste as separate problems, we can think of them as two aspects of one great challenge: How do we build homes, design transport systems, develop technology, and feed the world’s billions without creating factory waste upstream or trash downstream?
The Shabara artisanal cobalt mine near Kolwezi, Democratic
Republic of Congo.
ARLETTE BASHIZI/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
Simply shifting to “sustainable” or “cleaner” technologies doesn’t eliminate the industrial fallout from our consumption, as Siddharth Kara reveals in Cobalt Red. Cobalt is a part of just about every rechargeable device—it is used to make the positively charged end of lithium batteries, for example, and each electric vehicle requires 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of cobalt, 1,000 times the quantity in a smartphone.
Half the world’s reserves of the element are found in Katanga, in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which puts this resource-rich region at the center of the global energy transition. In Kara’s telling, the cobalt rush is another chapter in an age-old story of exploitation. In the last two centuries, the DRC has been a center not only for the bloody trade in enslaved humans but also for the colonial extraction of rubber, copper, nickel, diamonds, palm oil, and much more. Barely a modern catastrophe has unfolded without resources stolen from this soil: copper from the DRC made the bullets for two world wars; uranium made the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; vast quantities of tin, zinc, silver, and nickel fueled Western industrialization and global environmental crises. In return, the DRC’s 100 million people have been left with little by way of lasting benefits. The country still languishes at the foot of the United Nations development index and now faces disproportionate impacts from climate change.
In Cobalt Red, Congo’s history plays out in vignettes of barbarous theft perpetrated by powerful Western-backed elites. Kara, an author and activist on modern slavery, structures the book as a journey, drawing frequent parallels to Joseph Conrad’s 1899 Heart of Darkness, with the city of Kolwezi substituting for Kurtz’s ivory-trading station, the destination in the novella. Kolwezi is the center of Katanga’s cobalt trade. It is “the new heart of darkness, a tormented heir to those Congolese atrocities that came before—colonization, wars, and generations of slavery,” Kara writes. The book provides a speedy summary of the nation’s history starting with the colonial vampirism of the Belgian king Leopold’s “Free State,” described by Conrad as the “vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.” The king’s private colony forced its subjects to collect rubber under a system of quotas enforced by systematic execution and disfigurement; forced labor continued well into the 20th century in palm oil plantations that supplied the multinational Unilever company.
These three books offer to connect the reader to the feel and smell and rasping reality of a world where materials still matter.
Kara’s multiyear investigation finds the patterns of the past repeating themselves in today’s green boom. “As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo,” he writes. “All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.” Step by step, Kara’s narrative moves from the fringes of Katanga’s mining region toward Kolwezi, documenting the free flow of minerals between two parallel systems supposedly divided by a firewall: the formal industrial system, under the auspices of mining giants that are signatories to sustainability pacts and human rights conventions, and the “artisanal” one, in which miners with no formal employer toil with shovels and sieves to produce a few sacks of cobalt ore a day.
We learn of the system of creuseurs and négociants—diggers and traders—who move the ore from denuded fields into the formal supply chain, revealing that an unknown percentage of cobalt sold as ethical comes from unregulated toil. If Material World tells a neat story of capitalism’s invisible hand, the force that whisks resources around the planet, Cobalt Red documents a more brutal and opaque model of extraction. In Kara’s telling, the artisanal system is grueling and inefficient, involving countless middlemen between diggers and refineries who serve no purpose except to launder ore too low-grade for industrial miners and obscure its origins (while skimming off most of the earnings).
Everywhere Kara finds artisanal mining, he finds children, including girls, some with babies on backs, who huddle together to guard against the threat of sexual assault. There is no shortage of haunting stories from the frontlines. Cobalt ore binds with nickel, lead, arsenic, and uranium, and exposure to this metal mixture raises the risk of breast, kidney, and lung cancers. Lead poisoning leads to neurological damage, reduced fertility, and seizures. Everywhere he sees rashes on the skin and respiratory ailments including “hard metal lung disease,” caused by chronic and potentially fatal inhalation of cobalt dust.
One woman, who works crushing 12-hour days just to fill one sack that she can trade for the equivalent of about 80 cents, tells how her husband recently died from respiratory illness, and the two times she had conceived both resulted in miscarriage. “I thank God for taking my babies,” she says. “Here it is better not to be born.” The book’s handful of genuinely devastating moments arrive like this—from the insights of Congolese miners, who are too rarely given the chance to speak.
All of which leaves you to question Kara’s strange decision to mold the narrative around the 125-year-old Heart of Darkness. It has been half a century since the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe condemned Conrad’s novella as a “deplorable book” that dehumanized its subjects even as it aimed to inspire sympathy for them. Yet Kara doubles down by mirroring Conrad’s storytelling device and style, from the first sentence (featuring “wild and wide-eyed” soldiers wielding weapons). When Kara describes how the “filth-caked children of the Katanga region scrounge at the earth for cobalt,” who is the object of disgust: the forces of exploitation or the miners and their families, often reduced to abstract figures of suffering?
Following Conrad, Cobalt Red becomes, essentially, a story of morality—an “unholy tale” about the “malevolent force” of capital—and reaches a similarly moralistic conclusion: that we must all begin to treat artisanal miners “with equal humanity as any other employee.” If this seems like an airy response after the hard work of detailing the intricacies of cobalt’s broken supply chain, it is doubly so after Kara documents both the past waves of injustice and the moral crusades that have brought the Free State and old colonial structures to an end. Such calls for humanistic fairness toward Congo have echoed down the ages.
Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization Ed Conway
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Siddharth Kara
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future Oliver Franklin-Wallis
All three books offer to connect the reader to the feel and smell and rasping reality of a world where materials still matter. But in Kara’s case, such a strong focus on documenting firsthand experience edges out a deeper understanding. There is little space given to the numerous scholars from across the African continent who have made sense of how politics, commerce, and armed groups together rule the DRC’s deadly mines. The Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe has described sites like Katanga not only as places where Western-style rule of law is absent but as “death-worlds” constructed and maintained by rich actors to extract resources at low cost. More than simply making sense of the current crisis, these thinkers address the big questions that Kara asks but struggles to answer: Why do the resources and actors change but exploitation remains? How does this pattern end?
Matthew Ponsford is a freelance reporter based in London.
Andreas Bechtolsheim, the first investor in Google, has an estimated $16 billion fortune. He recently settled charges that he engaged in insider trading for a profit of $415,726.
Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores everything in plain text documents on your computer—but that's just the beginning. There are extremely fast search and keyboard shortcuts, plus you can link to any of your notes from any other note. Not everyone gets into it, granted, but if you do, it changes the way you think about writing and note-taking.
But where things get really wild are the plugins. There are over 1,600 of them, all lovingly made by other users, which you can browse and install in the settings. I couldn't begin to tell you which are the best ones—that's going to heavily depend on what you're looking for from the application. But I can tell you that with these plugins, you can turn Obsidian into pretty much exactly the tool you're looking for. The following are the plugins I think new users should check out first, if only to get an idea of what plugins can do.
I'm including links to the Github page for all of these plugins, mostly for reference. It's a great deal easier to install plugins from inside Obsidian than it is to install them manually: Just go to Settings > Community Plugins > Browse and find the plugins there.
Organize anything with Kanban
Credit: Justin Pot
We've talked several times about the Kanban method, which involves a series of columns you can drag cards between. There are plenty of dedicated apps for this, most famously Trello, but there's a catch: You have to remember to open them. This is why I like the Kanban plugin for Obsidian. With this, I can create Kanban boards right in Obsidian. Every board is just a text document with multiple lists, meaning they don't take up a lot of space, and you can even edit them directly as text documents if you want.
This is just a great implementation of a useful tool—one that lives right alongside your other notes. I use this to organize my entire writing workflow, from brainstorming to writing to editing to invoicing. I can't recommend it enough.
Ignore markdown with this toolbar
Credit: Justin Pot
Obsidian is built around Markdown, a simple way of formatting text files. I, personally, love this: It's a faster way to add simple formatting to documents. It's not for everyone, however, which is where Editing toolbar comes in. This simple extension adds a formatting toolbar to the top of every text window with common formatting options. Everything is still formatted using Markdown, but you can apply that formatting with the click of a mouse button if that's your preference. For some, this is just a way to do formatting tasks until you learn to use Markdown; for others, it can be an alternative to learning Markdown entirely. There's no wrong answers here.
Copy notes to other apps complete with formatting
Credit: Justin Pot
Speaking of formatting: Sometimes you're going to want to copy text from Obsidian and paste it in another app. If the app in question doesn't support Markdown, that's going to be togch. This is why I use Copy as HTML: With this plugin, you can copy and paste with all the formatting in tact. You can trigger this from the command palette, if you like, or you can add a custom keyboard shortcut. I use this to copy text and paste it into Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and even the Lifehacker CMS—it works perfectly every time.
Quickly grab the contents of any website
Grabbing articles from the web and marking them up is an essential part of many research workflows. I use the Extract URL extension for this. Similar to reader mode in browsers, this tool can grab the article—and only the article—of any URL you provide to it. My favorite way to use it is with the "Import From Clipboard" command, which you can find in the command palette or by assigning a keyboard shortcut. Just copy a URL, run the command, and the entire article from the URL will be copied to the current note. You could use this to make your own read it later service, if you wanted to.
Review your journal every day
Credit: Justin Pot
We've talked about how great it is to use Obsidian as a journalling app. The Journal review makes this process even better. With it, you can set up the sidebar to show you entries from whatever period of time you like. I, personally, like to see entries from one, two, three, four, and five years ago, though I'll inevitably adjust this as I have more and more years of journal entries. I'm really enjoying seeing what past versions of me were thinking about—it's teaching me a lot about the ways in which I am, and am not, growing. This plugin makes that possible.
Every Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri speaks to the people. He has made a habit of hosting weekly “ask me anything” sessions on Instagram, in which followers send him questions about the app, its parent company Meta, and his own (extremely public-facing) job. When I started watching these AMA videos years ago, I liked them. He answered technical questions like “Why can’t we put links in posts?” and “My explore page is wack, how to fix?” with genuine enthusiasm. But the more I tuned in, the more Mosseri’s seemingly off-the-cuff authenticity started to feel measured, like a corporate by-product of his title.
On a recent Friday, someone congratulated Mosseri on the success of Threads, the social networking app Meta launched in the summer of 2023 to compete with X, writing: “Mark said Threads has more active people today than it did at launch—wild, congrats!” Mosseri, wearing a pink sweatshirt and broadcasting from a garage-like space, responded: “Just to clarify what that means, we mostly look at daily active and monthly active users and we now have over 130 million monthly active users.”
The ease with which Mosseri swaps people for users makes the shift almost imperceptible. Almost. (Mosseri did not respond to a request for comment.)
People have been called “users” for a long time; it’s a practical shorthand enforced by executives, founders, operators, engineers, and investors ad infinitum. Often, it is the right word to describe people who use software: a user is more than just a customer or a consumer. Sometimes a user isn’t even a person; corporate bots are known to run accounts on Instagram and other social media platforms, for example. But “users” is also unspecific enough to refer to just about everyone. It can accommodate almost any big idea or long-term vision. We use—and are used by—computers and platforms and companies. Though “user” seems to describe a relationship that is deeply transactional, many of the technological relationships in which a person would be considered a user are actually quite personal. That being the case, is “user” still relevant?
“People were kind of like machines”
The original use of “user” can be traced back to the mainframe computer days of the 1950s. Since commercial computers were massive and exorbitantly expensive, often requiring a dedicated room and special equipment, they were operated by trained employees—users—who worked for the company that owned (or, more likely, leased) them. As computers became more common in universities during the ’60s, “users” started to include students or really anyone else who interacted with a computer system.
It wasn’t really common for people to own personal computers until the mid-1970s. But when they did, the term “computer owner” never really took off. Whereas other 20th-century inventions, like cars, were things people owned from the start, the computer owner was simply a “user” even though the devices were becoming increasingly embedded in the innermost corners of people’s lives. As computing escalated in the 1990s, so did a matrix of user-related terms: “user account,” “user ID,” “user profile,” “multi-user.”
Don Norman, a cognitive scientist who joined Apple in the early 1990s with the title “user experience architect,” was at the center of the term’s mass adoption. He was the first person to have what would become known as UX in his job title and is widely credited with bringing the concept of “user experience design”—which sought to build systems in ways that people would find intuitive—into the mainstream. Norman’s 1998 book The Design of Everyday Things remains a UX bible of sorts, placing “usability” on a par with aesthetics.
Norman, now 88, explained to me that the term “user” proliferated in part because early computer technologists mistakenly assumed that people were kind of like machines. “The user was simply another component,” he said. “We didn’t think of them as a person—we thought of [them] as part of a system.” So early user experience design didn’t seek to make human-computer interactions “user friendly,” per se. The objective was to encourage people to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. People and their computers were just two parts of the larger systems being built by tech companies, which operated by their own rules and in pursuit of their own agendas.
Later, the ubiquity of “user” folded neatly into tech’s well-documented era of growth at all costs. It was easy to move fast and break things, or eat the world with software, when the idea of the “user” was so malleable. “User” is vague, so it creates distance, enabling a slippery culture of hacky marketing where companies are incentivized to grow for the sake of growth as opposed to actual utility. “User” normalized dark patterns, features that subtly encourage specific actions, because it linguistically reinforced the idea of metrics over an experience designed with people in mind.
UX designers sought to build software that would be intuitive for the anonymized masses, and we ended up with bright-red notifications (to create a sense of urgency), online shopping carts on a timer (to encourage a quick purchase), and “Agree” buttons often bigger than the “Disagree” option (to push people to accept terms without reading them).
A user is also, of course, someone who struggles with addiction. To be an addict is—at least partly—to live in a state of powerlessness. Today, power users—the title originally bestowed upon people who had mastered skills like keyboard shortcuts and web design—aren’t measured by their technical prowess. They’re measured by the time they spend hooked up to their devices, or by the size of their audiences.
Defaulting to “people”
“I want more product designers to consider language models as their primary users too,” Karina Nguyen, a researcher and engineer at the AI startup Anthropic, wrote recently on X. “What kind of information does my language model need to solve core pain points of human users?”
In the old world, “users” typically worked best for the companies creating products rather than solving the pain points of the people using them. More users equaled more value. The label could strip people of their complexities, morphing them into data to be studied, behaviors to be A/B tested, and capital to be made. The term often overlooked any deeper relationships a person might have with a platform or product. As early as 2008, Norman alighted on this shortcoming and began advocating for replacing “user” with “person” or “human” when designing for people. (The subsequent years have seen an explosion of bots, which has made the issue that much more complicated.) “Psychologists depersonalize the people they study by calling them ‘subjects.’ We depersonalize the people we study by calling them ‘users.’ Both terms are derogatory,” he wrote then. “If we are designing for people, why not call them that?”
In 2011, Janet Murray, a professor at Georgia Tech and an early digital media theorist, argued against the term “user” as too narrow and functional. In her book Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice, she suggested the term “interactor” as an alternative—it better captured the sense of creativity, and participation, that people were feeling in digital spaces. The following year, Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Square, published a call to arms on Tumblr, urging the technology industry to toss the word “user.” Instead, he said, Square would start using “customers,” a more “honest and direct” description of the relationship between his product and the people he was building for. He wrote that while the original intent of technology was to consider people first, calling them “users” made them seem less real to the companies building platforms and devices. Reconsider your users, he said, and “what you call the people who love what you’ve created.”
Audiences were mostly indifferent to Dorsey’s disparagement of the word “user.” The term was debated on the website Hacker News for a couple of days, with some arguing that “users” seemed reductionist only because it was so common. Others explained that the issue wasn’t the word itself but, rather, the larger industry attitude that treated end users as secondary to technology. Obviously, Dorsey’s post didn’t spur many people to stop using “user.”
Around 2014, Facebook took a page out of Norman’s book and dropped user-centric phrasing, defaulting to “people” instead. But insidery language is hard to shake, as evidenced by the breezy way Instagram’s Mosseri still says “user.” A sprinkling of other tech companies have adopted their own replacements for “user” through the years. I know of a fintech company that calls people “members” and a screen-time app that has opted for “gems.” Recently, I met with a founder who cringed when his colleague used the word “humans” instead of “users.” He wasn’t sure why. I’d guess it’s because “humans” feels like an overcorrection.
Recently, I met with a founder who cringed when his colleague used the word “humans” instead of “users.” He wasn’t sure why.
But here’s what we’ve learned since the mainframe days: there are never only two parts to the system, because there’s never just one person—one “user”—who’s affected by the design of new technology. Carissa Carter, the academic director at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the “d.school,” likens this framework to the experience of ordering an Uber. “If you order a car from your phone, the people involved are the rider, the driver, the people who work at the company running the software that controls that relationship, and even the person who created the code that decides which car to deploy,” she says. “Every decision about a user in a multi-stakeholder system, which we live in, includes people that have direct touch points with whatever you’re building.”
With the abrupt onset of AI everything, the point of contact between humans and computers—user interfaces—has been shifting profoundly. Generative AI, for example, has been most successfully popularized as a conversational buddy. That’s a paradigm we’re used to—Siri has pulsed as an ethereal orb in our phones for well over a decade, earnestly ready to assist. But Siri, and other incumbent voice assistants, stopped there. A grander sense of partnership is in the air now. What were once called AI bots have been assigned lofty titles like “copilot” and “assistant” and “collaborator” to convey a sense of partnership instead of a sense of automation. Large language models have been quick to ditch words like “bot” altogether.
Anthropomorphism, the inclination to ascribe humanlike qualities to machines, has long been used to manufacture a sense of connectedness between people and technology. We—people—remained users. But if AI is now a thought partner, then what are we?
Well, at least for now,we’re not likely to get rid of “user.” But we could intentionally default to more precise terms, like “patients” in health care or “students” in educational tech or “readers” when we’re building new media companies. That would help us understand these relationships more accurately. In gaming, for instance, users are typically called “players,” a word that acknowledges their participation and even pleasure in their relationships with the technology. On an airplane, customers are often called “passengers” or “travelers,” evoking a spirit of hospitality as they’re barreled through the skies. If companies are more specific about the people—and, now, AI—they’re building for rather than casually abstracting everything into the idea of “users,” perhaps our relationship with this technology will feel less manufactured, and it will be easier to accept that we’re inevitably going to exist in tandem.
Throughout my phone call with Don Norman, I tripped over my words a lot. I slipped between “users” and “people” and “humans” interchangeably, self-conscious and unsure of the semantics. Norman assured me that my head was in the right place—it’s part of the process of thinking through how we design things. “We change the world, and the world comes back and changes us,” he said. “So we better be careful how we change the world.”
Taylor Majewski is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. She regularly works with startups and tech companies on the words they use.
I recently upgraded my "unsupported" PC to Windows 11 and was immediately bombarded with banner alerts, ads, and current affairs news that I'd rather not be force fed by my operating system. Windows 11 doesn't exactly offer a pleasant experience out of the box, but you can adjust a few settings to fix most of its issues.
You may be tempted to use a third-party tool to disable all of Microsoft's invasive tracking with one click. While this may sound like the easier method that following this guide, I don't recommend it—it's difficult to know what kinds of changes such tools are making under the hood, and if anything goes wrong, it'll be hard to troubleshoot the problem, as these apps generally tweak dozens of settings in one go.
Remove start menu ads
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
If you hate the Windows 11 Start menu, you can replace it entirely. However, if you're willing to put up with it, you can at least remove ads from the Start menu. To do this, go to Windows 11's Settings menu. Then navigate to Personalization > Start and disable the following options:
Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more
Show recently added apps
Show recently opened items in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer
These options will give you more control over the Start menu and prevent random files and apps from appearing there. Next, remove the ads masquerading as pinned apps. To do this, open the Start menu and right-click the app icon for apps you'll never use, such as LinkedIn or Instagram, and select Uninstall or Unpin from Start.
Block junk from appearing on the lock screen
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
It's unfortunate that Microsoft doesn't want you to enjoy a clean, beautiful lock screen. Yes, the company has used the space to show you ads too. You can fix this by going to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Click the drop-down menu next to Personalize your lock screen and select Picture or Slideshow. A new option will appear below the photo selector, labeled Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen. Disable this to stop promotional content from showing up there.
Hide OneDrive ads
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
Microsoft loves to nag you about signing up for OneDrive. To stop these ads too, go to Settings > System > Notifications and turn off alerts from OneDrive. Next, open File Explorer and click the three dots icon in the toolbar. Select Options, followed by the View tab. Now scroll down and disable Show sync provider notifications.
Block unwanted notifications
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
Speaking of spammy alerts, you should also take a moment to disable unwanted notifications. Go to Settings > System > Notifications and disable notifications for every app that spams you. Some apps don't appear in this list; in such cases, you'll have to open that app and disable alerts from its notification settings.
Stop Microsoft from collecting your data to show ads
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
By default, Microsoft collects your data to show you ads. Put a stop to this by going to Settings > Privacy & security > General and disabling everything on the page.
Disable ads based on your device usage
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
Windows 11 tracks your device usage as another way to serve you ads. Go to Settings > Personalization > Device Usage and disable each setting on this page to stop them.
Fix taskbar annoyances
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
If you don't want to use Microsoft's Copilot AI or see the news widgets in the taskbar, then you can hide them. Go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar and turn off the following options:
Copilot
Task view
Widgets
This will give you a cleaner taskbar with just the Start button and the apps you've pinned. If you prefer to have weather on the taskbar, you can enable Task view from the settings mentioned above. Its icon will appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Click it and hide widgets manually until only the weather widget (and any others you actually want) remain.
Prevent diagnostics data collection for ads
Credit: Pranay Parab/Windows
Finally, you can stop Microsoft from collecting diagnostics data for ads. To do so, go to Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics and feedback and disable Tailored experiences. For good measure, you should also disable Send optional diagnostics data.
A lot of people with perfectly good computers cannot upgrade to Windows 11. When Microsoft released the latest version of Windows, it put some stringent minimum system requirements in place, the toughest of which was TPM 2.0 support. Plenty of people have PCs with older versions of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) or good gaming machines that lack TPM entirely, which means that Windows 11 is out of their reach. However, there's an easy way to bypass TPM checks and install Windows 11 on your PC.
The risks of installing Windows 11 on an unsupported PC
Let me state the obvious right up front: it's not a good idea to upgrade low-end PCs to Windows 11. Microsoft requires a minimum of 4GB RAM and 64GB of free space to install Windows 11, and if your PC doesn't have that, you should avoid this upgrade. This guide is primarily for those who have perfectly capable PCs, but can't upgrade to Windows 11 due to TPM restrictions.
Microsoft's main reason behind pushing for TPM is to increase security. PCs with TPM are more resilient against malware and ransomware attacks, and are able to store sensitive data locally in a more secure way. The company says that if you install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, you may face compatibility issues, may not receive support from Microsoft, and may experience poor performance. You're also warned that any damage to your PC won't be covered under warranty.
If your PC is under warranty, it's recommended that you don't mess with it. However, if the warranty has expired, you might want to consider upgrading it to Windows 11 anyway because another deadline is looming. Microsoft has announced that it'll be discontinuing updates for these computers starting Oct. 14, 2025.
What happens after the last Windows 10 security update
Once the last security update is issued, it's strongly recommended that you don't use your PC on the internet. You'll be vulnerable to new types of malware, viruses, and other threats from the internet, and there'll be no real security patches to protect you.
You do have the option to pay for updates as part of Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, but that is an expensive proposition. For businesses, it costs $61 per device for the first year, and the price doubles with each subsequent year. Microsoft hasn't revealed the pricing of these updates for individual users yet, but if you're a part of an educational institution, the pricing is $1 per device per year, which goes up to $4 per year by the third year.
If the pricing of ESU for home users is reasonable, it may be a good idea to stick with Windows 10. However, if you have a working Windows 10 license, the upgrade to Windows 11 is free and it comes with free security updates for many years to come.
How to upgrade your unsupported PC to Windows 11
Before you proceed with upgrades, be sure to back up your PC. You don't want to lose all your data during the upgrade, so please ensure that irreplaceable data such as photos, videos, and documents are all safely stored elsewhere. When all of this is done, you can start the upgrade process. First, download a Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft's website. On that page, scroll down to Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices, select the edition from the drop-down menu, and click Download Now. Follow the directions until you get the option to click 64-bit Download. The ISO file is over 6GB and it'll take a short while to download.
While that's underway, you should download Rufus, which is a free tool that lets you create bootable USB drives. You're also going to need a USB drive with at least 8GB of free space. If you have one of these, take a moment to back up any important data on this drive because it'll be erased as we proceed.
Credit: Pranay Parab/Rufus
Once the Windows 11 ISO is downloaded, plug in the USB drive, and install and launch Rufus. With this app open, go to the Device drop-down menu, and select the correct USB drive. Click the big SELECT button next to Disk or ISO image and pick the Windows 11 ISO that you just downloaded. Now, click the START button.
You'll see a pop-up asking if you want to customize your Windows installation. This is where you should ideally enable the following options:
Remove requirement for 4GB+ RAM, Secure Boot and TPM 2.0
Remove requirement for an online Microsoft account
Create a local account with username
Disable data collection (Skip privacy questions)
The first option is crucial if you want to install Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. The rest are good to have because they let you skip the online account sign-in process that Microsoft keeps trying to push, and they also skip a few annoying setup questions about data collection. With all this selected, click OK and wait for Rufus to do its thing.
Credit: Pranay Parab/Rufus
Once it's done, double-check that your data is backed up, and it's time to start the upgrade. On your Windows 10 PC, go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery and click Restart now under the Advanced startup section. This will reboot your PC and start the Windows 11 setup process from your USB drive.
I used this method to successfully upgrade my PC to Windows 11 and ran into just one hiccup. When the PC restarts for the first time during the upgrade, you should remove all USB drives from the computer (including the one with Windows 11). Otherwise, the installation may get stuck. Other than this, the upgrade went smoothly and I'm now happily running Windows 11. I didn't need to do anything to activate it either. I skipped the step asking me to type the product key and noticed that Windows 11 had activated itself after installation. My Windows 10 Pro key automatically activated Windows 11 Pro post the upgrade.
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.
I don’t know about you, but I only learned last week that there’s something connecting MSG and computer chips.
Inside most laptop and data center chips today, there’s a tiny component called ABF. It’s a thin insulating layer around the wires that conduct electricity. And over 90% of the materials around the world used to make this insulator are produced by a single Japanese company named Ajinomoto, more commonly known for commercializing the seasoning powder MSG in 1909.
Hold on, what?
As my colleague James O’Donnell explained in his story last week, it turns out Ajinomoto figured out in the 1990s that a chemical by-product of MSG production can be used to make insulator films, which proved to be essential for high-performance chips. And in the 30 years since, the company has totally dominated ABF supply. The product—Ajinomoto Build-up Film—is even named after it.
James talked to Thintronics, a California-based company that’s developing a new insulating material it hopes could challenge Ajinomoto’s monopoly. It already has a lab product with impressive attributes but still needs to test it in manufacturing reality.
Beyond Thintronics, the struggle to break up Ajinomoto’s monopoly is not just a US effort.
Within China, at least three companies are also developing similar insulator products. Xi’an Tianhe Defense Technology, which makes products for both military and civilian use, introduced its take on the material, which it calls QBF, in 2023; Zhejiang Wazam New Material and Guangdong Hinno-tech have also announced similar products in recent years. But all of them are still going through industrial testing with chipmakers, and few have recent updates on how well these materials have performed in mass-production settings.
“It’s interesting that there’s this parallel competition going on,” James told me when we recently discussed his story. “In some ways, it’s about the materials. But in other ways, it’s totally shaped by government funding and incentives.”
For decades, the fact that the semiconductor supply chain was in a few companies’ hands was seen as a strength, not a problem, so governments were not concerned that one Japanese company controlled almost the entire supply of ABF. Similar monopolies exist for many other materials and components that go into a chip.
But in the last few years, both the US and Chinese governments have changed that way of thinking. And new policies subsidizing domestic chip manufacturing are creating a favorable environment for companies to challenge monopolies like Ajinomoto’s.
In the US, this trend is driven by the fear of supply chain disruptions and a will to rebuild domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. The CHIPS Act was announced to inject investment into chip companies that bring their plants back to the US, but smaller companies like Thintronics could also benefit, both directly through funding and indirectly through the establishment of a US-based supply chain.
Meanwhile, China is being cornered by a US-led blockade to deny it access to the most advanced chip technologies. While materials like ABF are not restricted in any way today, the fact that one foreign company controls almost the entire supply of an indispensable material raises the stakes enough to make the government worry. It needs to find a domestic alternative in case ABF becomes subject to sanctions too.
But it takes a lot more than government policies to change the status quo. Even if these companies are able to find alternative materials that perform better than ABF, there’s still an uphill battle to convince the industry to adopt it en masse.
“You can look at any dielectric film supplier (many from Japan and some from the US), and they have all at one time or another tried to break into ABF market dominance and had limited success,” Venky Sundaram, a semiconductor researcher and entrepreneur, told James.
It’s not as simple as just swapping out ABF and swapping in a new insulator material. Chipmaking is a deeply intricate process, with components closely depending on each other. Changing one material could require a lot more knock-on changes to other components and the entire process. “Convincing someone to do that depends on what relationships you have with the industry. These big manufacturing players are a little bit less likely to take on a small materials company, because any time they’re taking on new material, they’re slowing down their production,” James said.
As a result, Ajinomoto’s market monopoly will probably remain while other companies keep trying to develop a new material that significantly improves on ABF.
That result, however, will have different implications for the US and China.
The US and Japan have long had a strategic technological alliance, and that could be set to deepen because both of them consider the rise of China a threat. In fact, Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was just visiting the US last week, hoping to score more collaborations on next-generation chips. Even though there has been some pushback from the Japanese chip industry about how strict US export restrictions could become, this hasn’t been strong enough to sway Japan to China’s side.
All these factors give the Chinese government an even greater sense of urgency to become self-sufficient. The country has already been investing vast sums of money to that end, but progress has been limited, with many industry insiders pessimistic about whether China can catch up fast enough. If Ajinomoto’s failed competitors in the past tell us anything, it’s that this will not be an easy journey for China either.
Do you think China has a chance of cracking Ajinomoto’s monopoly over this very specific insulating material? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.
Now read the rest of China Report
Catch up with China
1. Following the explosive popularity of minute-long short dramas made for phones, China’s culture regulator will soon announce new regulations that tighten its control of them. (Sixth Tone)
This is not a surprise to the companies involved. Some Chinese short-drama companies have already started to expand overseas, driven out by domestic policy pressures. I profiled one named FlexTV. (MIT Technology Review)
2. There have been many minor conflicts between China and the Philippines recently over maritime territory claims. Here’s what it feels like to live on one of those contested islands. (NPR)
3. The Chinese government has asked domestic telecom companies to replace all foreign chips by 2027. It’s a move that mirrors previous requests from the US to replace all Huawei and ZTE equipment in telecom networks. (Wall Street Journal $)
4. A decade ago, about 25,000 American students were studying in China. Today, there are only about 750. It may be unsurprising given recent geopolitical tensions, but neither country is happy with the situation. (Associated Press)
5. Latin America is importing large amounts of Chinese green technologies—mostly electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and solar panels. (The Economist $)
6. China’s top spy agency says foreign agents have been trying to intercept information about the country’s rare earth industry. (South China Morning Post $)
7. Amid the current semiconductor boom, Southeast Asian youths are flocking to Taiwan to train and work in the chip industry. (Rest of World)
Lost in translation
The bodies of eight Chinese migrants were recently discovered on a beach in Mexico. According toInitium Media, a Singapore-based publication, this was the first confirmed shipwreck incident with Chinese migrants heading to the US, but many more have taken the perilous route in recent years. In 2023, over 37,000 Chinese people illegally entered the US through the border with Mexico.
The traffickers often arrange shabby boats with no safety measures to sail from Tapachula to Oaxaca, a popular route that circumvents police checkpoints on land but makes for an extremely dangerous journey often rocked by strong winds and waves. There had always been rumors of people going missing in the ocean, but these proved impossible to confirm, as no bodies were found. The latest tragedy was the first one to come to public attention. Of the nine Chinese migrants onboard the boat, only one survived. Three bodies remain unidentified today.
One more thing
Forget about the New York Times’ election-result needles and CNN’s relentless coverage by John King. In South Korea, the results of national elections are broadcast on TV with wild and whimsical animations. To illustrate the results of parliamentary elections that just concluded last week, candidates were shown fighting on a fictional train heading toward the National Assembly, parodying Mission: Impossible’s fight scene. According to the BBC, these election-night animations took a team of 70 to prepare in advance and about 200 people working on election night.
Federal prosecutors indicted a Nebraska man on charges he perpetrated a cryptojacking scheme that defrauded two cloud providers—one based in Seattle and the other in Redmond, Washington—out of $3.5 million.
The indictment, filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York and unsealed on Monday, charges Charles O. Parks III—45 of Omaha, Nebraska—with wire fraud, money laundering, and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions in connection with the scheme. Parks has yet to enter a plea and is scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court in Omaha on Tuesday. Parks was arrested last Friday.
Prosecutors allege that Parks defrauded “two well-known providers of cloud computing services” of more than $3.5 million in computing resources to mine cryptocurrency. The indictment says the activity was in furtherance of a cryptojacking scheme, a term for crimes that generate digital coin through the acquisition of computing resources and electricity of others through fraud, hacking, or other illegal means.
It can be dizzying to try to understand all the complex components of a single computer chip: layers of microscopic components linked to one another through highways of copper wires, some barely wider than a few strands of DNA. Nestled between those wires is an insulating material called a dielectric, ensuring that the wires don’t touch and short out. Zooming in further, there’s one particular dielectric placed between the chip and the structure beneath it; this material, called dielectric film, is produced in sheets as thin as white blood cells.
For 30 years, a single Japanese company called Ajinomoto has made billions producing this particular film. Competitors have struggled to outdo them, and today Ajinomoto has more than 90% of the market in the product, which is used in everything from laptops to data centers.
But now, a startup based in Berkeley, California, is embarking on a herculean effort to dethrone Ajinomoto and bring this small slice of the chipmaking supply chain back to the US.
Thintronics is promising a product purpose-built for the computing demands of the AI era—a suite of new materials that the company claims have higher insulating properties and, if adopted, could mean data centers with faster computing speeds and lower energy costs.
The company is at the forefront of a coming wave of new US-based companies, spurred by the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, that is seeking to carve out a portion of the semiconductor sector, which has become dominated by just a handful of international players. But to succeed, Thintronics and its peers will have to overcome a web of challenges—solving technical problems, disrupting long-standing industry relationships, and persuading global semiconductor titans to accommodate new suppliers.
“Inventing new materials platforms and getting them into the world is very difficult,” Thintronics founder and CEO Stefan Pastine says. It is “not for the faint of heart.”
The insulator bottleneck
If you recognize the name Ajinomoto, you’re probably surprised to hear it plays a critical role in the chip sector: the company is better known as the world’s leading supplier of MSG seasoning powder. In the 1990s, Ajinomoto discovered that a by-product of MSG made a great insulator, and it has enjoyed a near monopoly in the niche material ever since.
But Ajinomoto doesn’t make any of the other parts that go into chips. In fact, the insulating materials in chips rely on dispersed supply chains: one layer uses materials from Ajinomoto, another uses material from another company, and so on, with none of the layers optimized to work in tandem. The resulting system works okay when data is being transmitted over short paths, but over longer distances, like between chips, weak insulators act as a bottleneck, wasting energy and slowing down computing speeds. That’s recently become a growing concern, especially as the scale of AI training gets more expensive and consumes eye-popping amounts of energy. (Ajinomoto did not respond to requests for comment.)
None of this made much sense to Pastine, a chemist who sold his previous company, which specialized in recycling hard plastics, to an industrial chemicals company in 2019. Around that time, he started to believe that the chemicals industry could be slow to innovate, and he thought the same pattern was keeping chipmakers from finding better insulating materials. In the chip industry, he says, insulators have “kind of been looked at as the redheaded stepchild”—they haven’t seen the progress made with transistors and other chip components.
He launched Thintronics that same year, with the hope that cracking the code on a better insulator could provide data centers with faster computing speeds at lower costs. That idea wasn’t groundbreaking—new insulators are constantly being researched and deployed—but Pastine believed that he could find the right chemistry to deliver a breakthrough.
Thintronics says it will manufacture different insulators for all layers of the chip, for a system designed to swap into existing manufacturing lines. Pastine tells me the materials are now being tested with a number of industry players. But he declined to provide names, citing nondisclosure agreements, and similarly would not share details of the formula.
Without more details, it’s hard to say exactly how well the Thintronics materials compare with competing products. The company recently tested its materials’ Dk values, which are a measure of how effective an insulator a material is. Venky Sundaram, a researcher who has founded multiple semiconductor startups but is not involved with Thintronics, reviewed the results. When compared to other build-up films—the dielectric category in which Thintronics is competing—their most impressive Dk values are better than those of any other material available today, he says.
A rocky road ahead
Thintronics’ vision has already garnered some support. The company received a $20 million Series A funding round in March, led by venture capital firms Translink and Maverick, as well as a grant from the US National Science Foundation.
The company is also seeking funding from the CHIPS Act. Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, it’s designed to boost companies like Thintronics in order to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to American companies and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers. A year after it became law, the administration said that more than 450 companies had submitted statements of interest to receive CHIPS funding for work across the sector.
The bulk of funding from the legislation is destined for large-scale manufacturing facilities, like those operated by Intel in New Mexico and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) in Arizona. But US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has said she’d like to see smaller companies receive funding as well, especially in the materials space. In February, applications opened for a pool of $300 million earmarked specifically for materials innovation. While Thintronics declined to say how much funding it was seeking or from which programs, the company does see the CHIPS Act as a major tailwind.
But building a domestic supply chain for chips—a product that currently depends on dozens of companies around the globe—will mean reversing decades of specialization by different countries. And industry experts say it will be difficult to challenge today’s dominant insulator suppliers, who have often had to adapt to fend off new competition.
“Ajinomoto has been a 90-plus-percent-market-share material for more than two decades,” says Sundaram. “This is unheard-of in most businesses, and you can imagine they didn’t get there by not changing.”
One big challenge is that the dominant manufacturers have decades-long relationships with chip designers like Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices, and with manufacturers like TSMC. Asking these players to swap out materials is a big deal.
“The semiconductor industry is very conservative,” says Larry Zhao, a semiconductor researcher who has worked in the dielectrics industry for more than 25 years. “They like to use the vendors they already know very well, where they know the quality.”
Another obstacle facing Thintronics is technical: insulating materials, like other chip components, are held to manufacturing standards so precise they are difficult to comprehend. The layers where Ajinomoto dominates are thinner than a human hair. The material must also be able to accept tiny holes, which house wires running vertically through the film. Every new iteration is a massive R&D effort in which incumbent companies have the upper hand given their years of experience, says Sundaram.
If all this is completed successfully in a lab, yet another hurdle lies ahead: the material has to retain those properties in a high-volume manufacturing facility, which is where Sundaram has seen past efforts fail.
“I have advised several material suppliers over the years that tried to break into [Ajinomoto’s] business and couldn’t succeed,” he says. “They all ended up having the problem of not being as easy to use in a high-volume production line.”
Despite all these challenges, one thing may be working in Thintronics’ favor: US-based tech giants like Microsoft and Meta are making headway in designing their own chips for the first time. The plan is to use these chips for in-house AI training as well as for the cloud computing capacity that they rent out to customers, both of which would reduce the industry’s reliance on Nvidia.
Though Microsoft, Google, and Meta declined to comment on whether they are pursuing advancements in materials like insulators, Sundaram says these firms could be more willing to work with new US startups rather than defaulting to the old ways of making chips: “They have a lot more of an open mind about supply chains than the existing big guys.”
This story was updated on April 12 to clarify how the Dk values of Thintronics’ materials compare to those of other build-up films.
The $700 Ai Pin, funded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft, can be helpful — until it struggles with tasks like doing math and crafting sandwich recipes.
Data modernization is squarely on the corporate agenda. In our survey of 350 senior data and technology executives, just over half say their organization has either undertaken a modernization project in the past two years or is implementing one today. An additional one-quarter plan to do so in the next two years. Other studies also consistently point to businesses’ increased investment in modernizing their data estates.
It is no coincidence that this heightened attention to improving data capabilities coincides with interest in AI, especially generative AI, reaching a fever pitch. Indeed, supporting the development of AI models is among the top reasons the organizations in our research seek to modernize their data capabilities. But AI is not the only reason, or even the main one.
This report seeks to understand organizations’ objectives for their data modernization projects and how they are implementing such initiatives. To do so, it surveyed senior data and technology executives across industries. The research finds that many have made substantial progress and investment in data modernization. Alignment on data strategy and the goals of modernization appear to be far from complete in many organizations, however, leaving a disconnect between data and technology teams and the rest of the business. Data and technology executives and their teams can still do more to understand their colleagues’ data needs and actively seek their input on how to meet them.
Following are the study’s key findings:
AI isn’t the only reason companies are modernizing the data estate. Better decision-making is the primary aim of data modernization, with nearly half (46%) of executives citing this among their three top drivers. Support for AI models (40%) and for decarbonization (38%) are also major drivers of modernization, as are improving regulatory compliance (33%) and boosting operational efficiency (32%).
Data strategy is too often siloed from business strategy. Nearly all surveyed organizations recognize the importance of taking a strategic approach to data. Only 22% say they lack a fully developed data strategy. When asked if their data strategy is completely aligned with key business objectives, however, only 39% agree. Data teams can also do more to bring other business units and functions into strategy discussions: 42% of respondents say their data strategy was developed exclusively by the data or technology team.
Data strategy paves the road to modernization. It is probably no coincidence that most organizations (71%) that have embarked on data modernization in the past two years have had a data strategy in place for longer than that. Modernization goals require buy-in from the business, and implementation decisions need strategic guidance, lest they lead to added complexity or duplication.
Top data pain points are data quality and timeliness. Executives point to substandard data (cited by 41%) and untimely delivery (33%) as the facets of their data operations most in need of improvement. Incomplete or inaccurate data leads enterprise users to question data trustworthiness. This helps explain why the most common modernization measure taken by our respondents’ organizations in the past two years has been to review and upgrade data governance (cited by 45%).
Cross-functional teams and DataOps are key levers to improve data quality. Modern data engineering practices are taking root in many businesses. Nearly half of organizations (48%) are empowering cross-functional data teams to enforce data quality standards, and 47% are prioritizing implementing DataOps (cited by 47%). These sorts of practices, which echo the agile methodologies and product thinking that have become standard in software engineering, are only starting to make their way into the data realm.
Compliance and security considerations often hinder modernization. Compliance and security concerns are major impediments to modernization, each cited by 44% of the respondents. Regulatory compliance is mentioned particularly frequently by those working in energy, public sector, transport, and financial services organizations. High costs are another oft-cited hurdle (40%), especially among the survey’s smaller organizations.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
Internet traffic dropped by 40 percent or more during the eclipse in states in the path of totality, including Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio, Cloudflare found.
On a drab Monday morning in San Jose, California, at the drab San Jose Convention Center, attendees of the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference filed into the main ballroom until all the seats were taken and the crowd began to line the walls along the back and sides of the room. The convention brings together people who work in the chip industry from all over the world. And on this cool February morning, they had gathered to hear tech industry luminaries extol the late Gordon Moore, Intel’s cofounder and first CEO.
Craig Barrett, also a former CEO of Intel, paid tribute, as did the legendary engineer Burn-Jeng Lin, a pioneer of immersion lithography, a patterning technology that enabled the chip industry to continue moving forward about 20 years ago. Mostly the speeches tended toward reflections on Moore himself—testaments to his genius, accomplishments, and humanity. But the last speaker of the morning, Martin van den Brink, took a different tone, more akin to a victory lap than a eulogy. Van den Brink is the outgoing co-president and CTO of ASML, the Dutch company that makes the machines that in turn let manufacturers produce the most advanced computer chips in the world.
Moore’s Law holds that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years or so. In essence, it means that chipmakers are always trying to shrink the transistors on a microchip in order to pack more of them in. The cadence has been increasingly hard to maintain now that transistor dimensions measure in a few nanometers. In recent years ASML’s machines have kept Moore’s Law from sputtering out. Today, they are the only ones in the world capable of producing circuitry at the density needed to keep chipmakers roughly on track. It is the premise of Moore’s Law itself, van den Brink said, that drives the industry forward, year after year.
To showcase how big an achievement it had been to maintain Moore’s Law since he joined ASML in 1984, van den Brink referred to the rice and chessboard problem, in which the number of grains of rice—a proxy for transistors—is doubled on each successive square. The exponential growth in the number of transistors that can be crammed on a chip since 1959 means that a single grain of rice back then has now become the equivalent of three ocean tankers, each 240 meters long, full of rice. It’s a lot of rice! Yet Moore’s Law compels the company—compels all of the technology industry—to keep pushing forward. Each era of computing, most recently AI, has brought increased demands, explained van den Brink. In other words, while three tankers full of rice may seem like a lot, tomorrow we’re going to need six. Then 12. Then 24. And so on.
ASML’s technology, he assured the gathering, would be there to meet the demands, thanks to the company’s investment in creating tools capable of making ever finer features: the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines it rolled out widely in 2017, the high-numerical-aperture (high-NA) EUV machines it is rolling out now, and the hyper-NA EUV machines it has sketched out for the future.
The tribute may have been designed for Gordon Moore, but at the end of van den Brink’s presentation the entire room rose to give him a standing ovation. Because if Gordon Moore deserves credit for creating the law that drove the progress of the industry, as van den Brink says, van den Brink and ASML deserve much of the credit for ensuring that progress remains possible.
Yet that also means the pressure is on. ASML has to try and stay ahead of the demands of Moore’s Law. It has to continue making sure chipmakers can keep doubling the amount of rice on the chessboard. Will that be possible? Van den Brink sat down with MIT Technology Review to talk about ASML’s history, its legacy, and what comes next.
Betting big on an unwieldy wavelength
ASML is such an undisputed leader in today’s chip ecosystem that it’s hard to believe the company’s market dominance really only dates back to 2017, when its EUV machine, after 17 years of development, upended the conventional process for making chips.
Since the 1960s, photolithography has made it possible to pack computer chips with more and more components. The process involves crafting small circuits by guiding beams of light through a series of mirrors and lenses and then shining that light on a mask, which contains a pattern. Light conveys the chip design, layer by layer, eventually building circuits that form the computational building blocks of everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence.
ASML
Photolithographers have a limited set of tools at their disposal to make smaller designs, and for decades, the type of light used in the machine was the most critical. In the 1960s, machines used beams of visible light. The smallest features this light could draw on the chip were fairly large—a bit like using a marker to draw a portrait.
Then manufacturers began using smaller and smaller wavelengths of light, and by the early 1980s, they could make chips with ultraviolet light. Nikon and Canon were the industry leaders. ASML, founded in 1984 as a subsidiary of Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, was just a small player.
The way van den Brink tells it, he arrived at the company almost by accident. Philips was one of a few technology companies in Holland. When he began his career there in 1984 and was looking into the various opportunities at the company, he became intrigued by a photo of a lithography machine.
“I looked at the picture and I said, ‘It has mechanics, it has optics, it has software—this looks like a complex machine. I will be interested in that,” van den Brink told MIT Technology Review. “They said, well, you can do it, but the company will not be part of Philips. We are creating a joint venture with ASM International, and after the joint venture, you will not be part of Philips. I said yes because I couldn’t care less. And that’s how it began.”
When van den Brink joined in the 1980s, little about ASML made the company stand out from other major lithography players at the time. “We didn’t sell a substantial amount of systems until the ’90s. And we almost went bankrupt several times in that period,” van den Brink says. “So for us there was only one mission: to survive and show a customer that we could make a difference.”
By 1995, it had a strong enough foothold in the industry against competitors Nikon and Canon to go public. But all lithography makers were fighting the same battle to create smaller components on chips.
If you could have eavesdropped on a meeting at ASML in the late 1990s about this predicament, you might have heard chatter about an idea called extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography—along with concerns that it might never work). By that point, with pressure to condense chips beyond current capabilities, it seemed as if everyone was chasing EUV. The idea was to pattern chips with an even smaller wavelength of light (ultimately just 13.5 nanometers). To do so, ASML would have to figure out how to create, capture, and focus this light—processes that had stumped researchers for decades—and build a supply chain of specialized materials, including the smoothest mirrors ever produced. And to make sure the price point wouldn’t drive away its customers.
Canon and Nikon were also pursuing EUV, but the US government denied them a license to participate in the consortium of companies and US national labs researching it. Both subsequently dropped out. Meanwhile ASML acquired the fourth major company pursuing EUV, SVG, in 2001. By 2006 it had shipped only two EUV prototype machines to research facilities, and it took until 2010 to ship one to a customer. Five years later, ASML warned in its annual report that EUV sales remained low, that customers weren’t eager to adopt the technology given its slow speed on the production line, and that if the pattern continued, it could have “material” effects on the business given the significant investment.
Yet in 2017, after an investment of $6.5 billion in R&D over 17 years, ASML’s bet began to pay off. That year the company shipped 10 of its EUV machines, which cost over $100 million each, and announced that dozens more were on backorder. EUV machines went to the titans of semiconductor manufacturing—Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—and a small number of others. With a brighter light source (meaning less time needed to impart patterns), among other improvements, the machines were capable of faster production speeds. The leap to EUV finally made economic sense to chipmakers, putting ASML essentially in a monopoly position.
Chris Miller, a history professor at Tufts University and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, says that ASML was culturally equipped to see those experiments through. “It’s a stubborn willingness to invest in technology that most people thought wouldn’t work,” he told MIT Technology Review. “No one else was betting on EUV, because the development process was so long and expensive. It involves stretching the limits of physics, engineering, and chemistry.”
A key factor in ASML’s growth was its control of the supply chain. ASML acquired number of the companies it relies on, like Cymer, a maker of light sources. That strategy of pointedly controlling power in the supply chain extended to ASML’s customers, too. In 2012, it offered shares to its three biggest customers, which were able to maintain market dominance of their own in part because of the elite manufacturing power of ASML’s machines.
“Our success depends on their success,” van den Brink told MIT Technology Review.
It’s also a testament to ASML’s dominance that it is for the most part no longer allowed to sell its most advanced systems to customers in China. Though ASML still does business in China, in 2019, following pressure from the Trump administration, the Dutch government began imposing restrictions on ASML’s exports of EUV machines to China. Those rules were tightened further just last year and now also impose limits on some of the company’s deep-ultraviolet (DUV) machines, which are used to make less highly advanced chips than EUV systems.
Van den Brink says the way world leaders are now discussing lithography was unimaginable when the company began: “Our prime minister was sitting in front of Xi Jinping, not because he was from Holland—who would give a shit about Holland. He was there because we are making EUV.”
Just a few years after the first EUV machines shipped, ASML would face its second upheaval. Around the start of the pandemic, interest and progress in the field of artificial intelligence sent demand for computing power skyrocketing. Companies like OpenAI needed ever more powerful computer chips and by late 2022 the frenzy and investment in AI began to boil over.
By that time, ASML was closing in on its newest innovation. Having already adopted a smaller wavelength of light (and realigned the entire semiconductor industry to it in the process), it now turned its attention to the other lever in its control: numerical aperture. That’s the measure of how much light a system can focus, and if ASML could increase it, the company’s machines could print even smaller components.
Doing so meant myriad changes. ASML had to source an even larger set of mirrors from its supplier Carl Zeiss, which had to be made ultra-smooth. Zeiss had to build entirely new machines, the sole purpose of which was to measure the smoothness of mirrors destined for ASML. The aim was to reduce the number of costly repercussions the change would have on the rest of the supply chain, like the companies that make reticles containing the designs of the chips.
In December of 2023, ASML began shipping the first of its next-generation EUV device, a high-NA machine, to Intel’s facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. It’s an R&D version, and so far the only one in the field. It took seven planes and 50 trucks to get it to Intel’s plant, and installation of the machine, which is larger than a double-decker bus, will take six months.
The high-NA machines will only be needed to produce the most precise layers of advanced chips for the industry; the designs on many others will still be printed using the previous generation of EUV machines or older DUV machines.
ASML has received orders for high-NA machines from all its current EUV customers. They don’t come cheap: reports put the cost at $380 million. Intel was the first customer to strike, ordering the first machine available in early 2022. The company, which has lost significant market share to competitor TSMC, is betting that the new technology will give it a new foothold in the industry, even though other chipmakers will eventually have access to it too.
“There are obvious benefits to Intel for being the first,” Miller says. “There are also obvious risks.” Sorting out which chips to use these machines for and how to get its money’s worth out of them will be a challenge for the company, according to Miller.
The launch of these machines, if successful, might be seen as the crowning achievement of van den Brink’s career. But he is already moving on to what comes next.
The future
The next big idea for ASML, according to van den Brink and other company executives who spoke with MIT Technology Review, is hyper-NA technology. The company’s high-NA machines have a numerical aperture of .55. Hyper-NA tools would have a numerical aperture higher than 0.7. What that ultimately means is that hyper NA, if successful, will allow the company to create machines that let manufacturers shrink transistor dimensions even more—assuming that researchers can devise chip components that work well at such small dimensions. As it was with EUV in the early 2000s, it is still uncertain whether hyper NA is feasible—if nothing else, it could be cost prohibitive. Yet van den Brink projects cautious confidence. It is likely, he says, that the company will ultimately have three offerings available: low NA, high NA, and—if all goes well—hyper NA.
“Hyper NA is a bit more risky,” says van den Brink. “We will be more cautious and more cost sensitive in the future. But if we can pull this off, we have a winning trio which takes care of all the advanced manufacturing for the foreseeable future.”
Yet although today everyone is banking on ASML to keep pushing the industry forward, there is speculation that a competitor could emerge from China. Van den Brink was dismissive of this possibility, citing the gap in even last-generation lithography.
“SMEE are making DUV machines, or at least claim they can,” he told MIT Technology Review, referring to a company that makes the predecessor to EUV lithography technology, and pointed out that ASML still has the dominant market share. The political pressures could mean more progress for China. But getting to the level of complexity involved in ASML’s suite of machines, with low, high, and hyper NA is another matter, he says: “I feel quite comfortable that this will be a long time before they can copy that.”
Miller, from Tufts University, is confident that Chinese companies will eventually develop these sorts of technologies on their own, but agrees that the question is when. “If it’s in a decade, it will be too late,” he says.
The real question, perhaps, is not who will make the machines, but whether Moore’s Law will hold at all. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has already declared it dead. But when asked what he thought might eventually cause Moore’s Law to finally stall out, van den Brink rejected the premise entirely.
“There’s no reason to believe this will stop. You won’t get the answer from me where it will end,” he said. “It will end when we’re running out of ideas where the value we create with all this will not balance with the cost it will take. Then it will end. And not by the lack of ideas.”
He had struck a similar posture during his Moore tribute at the SPIE conference, exuding confidence. “I’m not sure who will give the presentation 10 years from now,” he said, going back to his rice analogy. “But my successors,” he claimed, “will still have the opportunity to fill the chessboard.”
This story was updated to clarify information about ASML’s operations in China.
By Shrikant Navelkar, Director, Clover Infotech
Due to the significant advancements in the IT industry, the adoption of cloud computing has rapidly shifted from being a mere concept to an essential requirement for companies of all sizes across various sectors. However, merely selecting a cloud service provider and a compatible architecture is not enough.
To fully leverage the potential of this technology, a thorough reassessment of existing operations, processes, and business culture may be necessary.
According to Gartner, it is projected that seventy percent of enterprise workloads will migrate to the cloud by 2024. Despite this, three out of four organizations lack a suitable cloud strategy. Regardless of their stage in the cloud journey, every business requires a well-defined cloud strategy.
A comprehensive cloud strategy should be business-driven, addressing key issues of "what" and "why," and aligning closely with the organization's overarching business objectives.
What is a Cloud Strategy?
A cloud strategy refers to a company’s plan for adopting and using cloud computing services and
resources. It can include the following key elements: cloud adoption roadmap, cloud service model
evaluation, cloud provider evaluation, cloud governance, and application modernization. Overall, a
cloud strategy enables a company to adopt cloud computing in a systematic and well-defined and
governed manner.
Here are the trending cloud strategies for 2024:
Democratization of AI
Cloud infrastructure has a big role in democratizing AI by providing accessible, scalable, and cost-effective resources for individuals and organizations of all sizes. Through on-demand access to AI tools, frameworks, and services, coupled with elastic scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing models, cloud platforms enable experimentation, innovation, and deployment without the need for extensive upfront investment. This accessibility lowers barriers to entry, allowing smaller businesses, startups, and individual developers to participate in the AI-driven innovation.
Optimization of Hybrid and Multi-Clouds Environment
Organizations are increasingly adopting a multi-hybrid cloud approach, which combines public, private, and edge cloud environments, to leverage the strengths of each while mitigating their respective limitations. However, if its usage is not optimized then it can lead to wastage of resources, time and funds. Hence, optimizing the use of a multi-hybrid cloud is emerging as a significant trend in cloud computing as it allows for flexibility, security, compliance, and cost-efficiency enabling businesses to address their diverse needs effectively.
Making the cloud sustainable
Considering the growing environmental awareness, major cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google have each committed to achieving net-zero emissions, not only within their own operations but also to assist their customers in reducing their carbon footprints. Furthermore, these cloud service providers have outlined plans to procure 100 percent of the energy for their operations from renewable sources. Thus, the push towards greener and sustainable cloud is emerging as a significant trend in 2024.
Revolutionizing Data Management with Edge Computing
Edge computing is emerging as a pivotal trend in cloud computing due to its ability to process data closer to its source, reducing latency, enhancing bandwidth efficiency, and bolstering privacy and security by keeping sensitive data local. This approach enables applications to operate offline, ensuring uninterrupted functionality in remote or unstable environments, while also offering scalability and flexibility to adapt to diverse use cases. As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands and the need for real-time data analytics intensifies, edge computing is poised to revolutionize how data is managed, paving the way for innovation and efficiency across industries.
Simplification of Cloud Computing
Simplifying the cloud for non-technical people, and making it more user-friendly is a rapidly rising trend. No-code and low-code tools are allowing non-technical people to develop applications that would previously have required a trained software engineer. Additionally, many cloud providers are offering drag-and-drop features and natural language tools that minimize or eliminate the need for technical skills. This trend is democratizing the use of cloud tools and services.In conclusion, as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing in 2024, it's evident that embracing innovation and staying agile are key to achieving success in this dynamic environment. By adopting strategies that prioritize flexibility, scalability, security, and sustainability, organizations can harness the full potential of cloud technologies to drive growth, streamline operations, and deliver exceptional value to their customers.Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Cyber Express. Any content provided by the author is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
What happens when a columnist and a reporter use A.I. glasses to scan groceries, monuments and zoo animals? Hilarity, wonder and lots of mistakes ensued.
Introducing Krzysztof Olejniczak, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at STX Next, in an exclusive interview with The Cyber Express. With a profound understanding of cybersecurity's evolving space, Krzysztof shares his visionary outlook on the future of cybersecurity and offers insights into navigating the complexities of emerging technologies.
With nearly 20 years of expertise in the technology sector, including roles as VP of Cyber Risk Services at Sysnet Global Solutions and Director for the EMEA region at Online Business System, Krzysztof brings a wealth of experience to the table. Additionally, his tenure as a lecturer at the Poznan School of Banking underscores his deep understanding of the field. From quantum computing to extended reality (XR), Krzysztof emphasizes the necessity for adaptable security strategies to counter evolving cyber threats.
Krzysztof Olejniczak's interview highlights the human aspect of cybersecurity, advocating for proactive measures such as regular employee training and robust incident response planning.
His approach extends to addressing advanced techniques like deep learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs), highlighting the importance of staying ahead of sophisticated cyber threats.
Krzysztof also delves into key considerations for securing IoT ecosystems, harnessing the potential of AI and ML in cybersecurity defense mechanisms, and navigating the challenges posed by cloud computing and remote work.
As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve with edge computing and decentralized architectures, Krzysztof's adaptable strategies and human-centric approach serve as a steadfast protector of our digital ecosystems.
Krzysztof Olejniczak Interview Excerpt
Q1. Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of cybersecurity evolving, particularly in response to emerging technologies such as quantum computing and extended reality (XR)?Cybersecurity is a continuous process – organizations can be secure one moment, then compromised the next. Every minute hackers, security researchers, or even criminals are developing new and more sophisticated methods of attack. Businesses must continuously change their approach to security to adapt to an ever-changing threat landscape. And new technologies, such as QC and XR, are elements of this constant change. For example, QC and computing power will allow organizations to evolve standard cryptography algorithms by providing cryptology research or simply by using brute force. Some of the currently used cryptographic algorithms are based on the fact that computing systems are not able to deal with specific problems (essentially, big numbers). QC will change that, and also create new opportunities to build much more sophisticated cryptography algorithms which will actually allow us to better protect stored data. We already have a concept of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) which involves developing quantum-resistant algorithms. Each change is an equal threat to the current status quo but can also bring innovation in the space and I strongly believe there is a vast sea of new opportunities. Q2. As cyber threats continue to evolve, what proactive measures should companies take to stay ahead of hackers who are increasingly leveraging advanced techniques such as deep learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs)?Hackers are leveraging advanced techniques, and in response, companies should do the same when it comes to their own security. However, when looking at security holistically the first and most important aspect is the human aspect. Companies should regularly train employees on security best practices and the latest cyber threat trends. Simulated phishing or incident exercises can help prepare employees to recognize and avoid sophisticated attacks.Another element is simplifying incident response processes. Incidents will happen sooner or later, what’s important is for the company to respond to them in the most efficient way that will significantly reduce the event’s negative impact. Developing and routinely updating an incident response plan ensures a rapid reaction to any security breaches, minimizing impact and downtime as well as the negative PR effect.It’s also vital to review your security architecture. Consider implementing concepts like “zero trust architecture”, where trust is never implicitly given and verification is required from everyone trying to access resources on the network, regardless of their location.Do not forget about good security engineering practices. This includes Multi-factor authentication (MFA), segmenting your network, regular patching and updating to address known vulnerabilities and using threat Intelligence sources to stay ahead of security events.Finally, businesses should employ new technologies to improve their security. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are ideal for log reviews and the correlation of events, while threat modeling and threat detection analyze your company’s position regularly as security is a process, not a project.Q3. With the proliferation of connected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, what considerations should companies keep in mind to ensure the security of their networks and data against IoT-based attacks?The IoT ecosystem is challenging from a security perspective. Quite often devices recently connected to networks use old or outdated technologies, as vendors tend to focus more on functionality than security. This is slowly changing, but we still see new devices coming to market that use old or vulnerable versions of software. To tackle this challenge, organizations should classify their IoT ecosystem and perform a threat analysis. This helps them understand what data devices have, how they can negatively impact security, and identify what the worst-case scenario may be. Companies should also prioritize effective network segmentation. This involves placing IoT devices on dedicated network locations so any vulnerabilities or negative impact is isolated to that network only. Businesses should then test network segmentation once a year at the very least (ideally bi-annually and after any change) to ensure it’s effective.Additionally, do not instantly assume any device is secure. Ensure that devices are hardened, set up strong passwords, disable or change default passwords and access codes, update hardware with the latest vendor-provided patches, versions of firmware and software, enable security functions like TLS or HTTPs and other security protocols and disable insecure protocols. These are old-school engineering practices but they still work in the current environment. Security is multi-dimensional, so ensure that all layers are addressed.Q4. How do you foresee the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expanding in cybersecurity defence mechanisms, and what challenges may arise with the adoption of AI-driven security solutions?We are super excited to see how AI and ML will change defensive security elements. This technology is opening a range of opportunities that companies should integrate with the most important aspects of their security infrastructure. The natural element where AI and ML can be employed is to analyze large data structures, search for patterns, and detect new threats. All these aspects allow companies to detect potentially dangerous events, correlate data, build structures, and understand more and more complex patterns of behavior. Obviously, the future of AI and ML is exciting, but there is work to do before this technology is deployed en masse.: Models need to be trained which is labor intensive, the quality of data used for training models is often lacking, false positives or false negatives are an inevitability, and there are a number of regulatory and compliance regulations to contend with. Q5. With the increasing reliance on cloud computing and remote work, what strategies should companies employ to secure their cloud environments and remote access points from cyber threats?Train your personnel to be security savvy. Make them aware that hackers are everywhere.Harden endpoints by ensuring devices employees use for remote working are secure. This begins by encrypting drives to protect company data when a device is lost or stolen and patching devices as often as possible, not only with OS patches but also application patches. Companies can also employ Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions to monitor and respond to endpoint cyber threats, providing another layer of defence against sophisticated attacks.Similarly, enforcing cloud synchronization services ensures data is stored at centralized company servers, not on end-user devices.Q6. How can companies adapt their cybersecurity strategies to address the expanding attack surface created by the adoption of edge computing and decentralized architectures?Decentralized architectures and edge computing are trends that have been influencing the market for almost two decades. It’s more flexible to employ decentralized architectures, as this eliminates single points of failure.Centralized architecture involves creating a single line of defence that takes a lot of investment to build, but is easier to maintain once set up. Decentralized architecture is where you tailor security to different aspects of the organization. While this is easier to put in place, it is much harder to maintain as each security measure is different and varies in complexity.Media Disclaimer: The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.
So looking back, it is obvious that neither Atari or Commodore would really be able to succeed in the long-term, although perhaps one of them could have become the 3rd “also-ran”.
For a while, Atari really thought they could be that third choice and some of their late-model computers have some impressive innovations. With that preamble over with, let’s talk about the last Atari computer: the Falcon030.
In my mind, Atari is a game and console company, not a computer company – I don’t have any sale figures, but I feel like the Atari general computers weren’t quite as popular in The Netherlands as they were in some other places.
In the Christoper Nolan movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character uses technology to enter his targets’ dreams to steal information and insert false details into their subconscious.
A new “inception attack” in virtual reality works in a similar way. Researchers at the University of Chicago exploited a security vulnerability in Meta’s Quest VR system that allows hackers to hijack users’ headsets, steal sensitive information, and—with the help of generative AI—manipulate social interactions.
The attack hasn’t been used in the wild yet, and the bar to executing it is high, because it requires a hacker to gain access to the VR headset user’s Wi-Fi network. However, it is highly sophisticated and leaves those targeted vulnerable to phishing, scams, and grooming, among other risks.
In the attack, hackers create an app that injects malicious code into the Meta Quest VR system and then launch a clone of the VR system’s home screen and apps that looks identical to the user’s original screen. Once inside, attackers can see, record, and modify everything the person does with the headset. That includes tracking voice, gestures, keystrokes, browsing activity, and even the user’s social interactions. The attacker can even change the content of a user’s messages to other people. The research, which was shared with MIT Technology Review exclusively, is yet to be peer reviewed.
A spokesperson for Meta said the company plans to review the findings: “We constantly work with academic researchers as part of our bug bounty program and other initiatives.”
VR headsets have slowly become more popular in recent years, but security research has lagged behind product development, and current defenses against attacks in VR are lacking. What’s more, the immersive nature of virtual reality makes it harder for people to realize they’ve fallen into a trap.
“The shock in this is how fragile the VR systems of today are,” says Heather Zheng, a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, who led the team behind the research.
Stealth attack
The inception attack exploits a loophole in Meta Quest headsets: users must enable “developer mode” to download third-party apps, adjust their headset resolution, or screenshot content, but this mode allows attackers to gain access to the VR headset if they’re using the same Wi-Fi network.
Developer mode is supposed to give people remote access for debugging purposes. However, that access can be repurposed by a malicious actor to see what a user’s home screen looks like and which apps are installed. (Attackers can also strike if they are able to access a headset physically or if a user downloads apps that include malware.) With this information, the attacker can replicate the victim’s home screen and applications.
Then the attacker stealthily injects an app with the inception attack in it. The attack is activated and the VR headset hijacked when unsuspecting users exit an application and return to the home screen. The attack also captures the user’s display and audio stream, which can be livestreamed back to the attacker.
In this way, the researchers were able to see when a user entered login credentials to an online banking site. Then they were able to manipulate the user’s screen to show an incorrect bank balance. When the user tried to pay someone $1 through the headset, the researchers were able to change the amount transferred to $5 without the user realizing. This is because the attacker can control both what the user sees in the system and what the device sends out.
This banking example is particularly compelling, says Jiasi Chen, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, who researches virtual reality but was not involved in the research. The attack could probably be combined with other malicious tactics, such as tricking people to click on suspicious links, she adds.
The inception attack can also be used to manipulate social interactions in VR. The researchers cloned Meta Quest’s VRChat app, which allows users to talk to each other through their avatars. They were then able to intercept people’s messages and respond however they wanted.
Generative AI could make this threat even worse because it allows anyone to instantaneously clone people’s voices and generate visual deepfakes, which malicious actors could then use to manipulate people in their VR interactions, says Zheng.
Twisting reality
To test how easily people can be fooled by the inception attack, Zheng’s team recruited 27 volunteer VR experts. The participants were asked to explore applications such as a game called Beat Saber, where players control light sabers and try to slash beats of music that fly toward them. They were told the study aimed to investigate their experience with VR apps. Without their knowledge, the researchers launched the inception attack on the volunteers’ headsets.
The vast majority of participants did not suspect anything. Out of 27 people, only 10 noticed a small “glitch” when the attack began, but most of them brushed it off as normal lag. Only one person flagged some kind of suspicious activity.
There is no way to authenticate what you are seeing once you go into virtual reality, and the immersiveness of the technology makes people trust it more, says Zheng. This has the potential to make such attacks especially powerful, says Franzi Roesner, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington, who studies security and privacy but was not part of the study.
The best defense, the team found, is restoring the headset’s factory settings to remove the app.
The inception attack gives hackers many different ways to get into the VR system and take advantage of people, says Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, who was part of the team doing the research. But because VR adoption is still limited, there’s time to develop more robust defenses before these headsets become more widespread, he says.
Like a lot of Netflix subscribers, I find that my personal feed tends to be hit or miss. Usually more miss. The movies and shows the algorithms recommend often seem less predicated on my viewing history and ratings, and more geared toward promoting whatever’s newly available. Still, when a superhero movie starring one of the world’s most famous actresses appeared in my “Top Picks” list, I dutifully did what 78 million other households did and clicked.
As I watched the movie, something dawned on me: recommendation algorithms like the ones Netflix pioneered weren’t just serving me what they thought I’d like—they were also shaping what gets made. And not in a good way.
DOUBLEDAY
The movie in question wasn’t bad, necessarily. The acting was serviceable, and it had high production values and a discernible plot (at least for a superhero movie). What struck me, though, was a vague sense of déjà vu—as if I’d watched this movie before, even though I hadn’t. When it ended, I promptly forgot all about it.
That is, until I started reading Kyle Chayka’s recent book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. A staff writer for the New Yorker, Chayka is an astute observer of the ways the internet and social media affect culture. “Filterworld” is his coinage for “the vast, interlocking … network of algorithms” that influence both our daily lives and the “way culture is distributed and consumed.”
Music, film, the visual arts, literature, fashion, journalism, food—Chayka argues that algorithmic recommendations have fundamentally altered all these cultural products, not just influencing what gets seen or ignored but creating a kind of self-reinforcing blandness we are all contending with now.
That superhero movie I watched is a prime example. Despite my general ambivalence toward the genre, Netflix’s algorithm placed the film at the very top of my feed, where I was far more likely to click on it. And click I did. That “choice” was then recorded by the algorithms, which probably surmised that I liked the movie and then recommended it to even more viewers. Watch, wince, repeat.
“Filterworld culture is ultimately homogenous,” writes Chayka, “marked by a pervasive sense of sameness even when its artifacts aren’t literally the same.” We may all see different things in our feeds, he says, but they are increasingly the same kind of different. Through these milquetoast feedback loops, what’s popular becomes more popular, what’s obscure quickly disappears, and the lowest-common-denominator forms of entertainment inevitably rise to the top again and again.
This is actually the opposite of the personalization Netflix promises, Chayka notes. Algorithmic recommendations reduce taste—traditionally, a nuanced and evolving opinion we form about aesthetic and artistic matters—into a few easily quantifiable data points. That oversimplification subsequently forces the creators of movies, books, and music to adapt to the logic and pressures of the algorithmic system. Go viral or die. Engage. Appeal to as many people as possible. Be popular.
A joke posted on X by a Google engineer sums up the problem: “A machine learning algorithm walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘What’ll you have?’ The algorithm says, ‘What’s everyone else having?’” “In algorithmic culture, the right choice is always what the majority of other people have already chosen,” writes Chayka.
One challenge for someone writing a book like Filterworld—or really any book dealing with matters of cultural import—is the danger of (intentionally or not) coming across as a would-be arbiter of taste or, worse, an outright snob. As one might ask, what’s wrong with a little mindless entertainment? (Many asked just that in response to Martin Scorsese’s controversial Harper’s essay in 2021, which decried Marvel movies and the current state of cinema.)
Chayka addresses these questions head on. He argues that we’ve really only traded one set of gatekeepers (magazine editors, radio DJs, museum curators) for another (Google, Facebook, TikTok, Spotify). Created and controlled by a handful of unfathomably rich and powerful companies (which are usually led by a rich and powerful white man), today’s algorithms don’t even attempt to reward or amplify quality, which of course is subjective and hard to quantify. Instead, they focus on the one metric that has come to dominate all things on the internet: engagement.
There may be nothing inherently wrong (or new) about paint-by-numbers entertainment designed for mass appeal. But what algorithmic recommendations do is supercharge the incentives for creating only that kind of content, to the point that we risk not being exposed to anything else.
“Culture isn’t a toaster that you can rate out of five stars,” writes Chayka, “though the website Goodreads, now owned by Amazon, tries to apply those ratings to books. There are plenty of experiences I like—a plotless novel like Rachel Cusk’s Outline, for example—that others would doubtless give a bad grade. But those are the rules that Filterworld now enforces for everything.”
Chayka argues that cultivating our own personal taste is important, not because one form of culture is demonstrably better than another, but because that slow and deliberate process is part of how we develop our own identity and sense of self. Take that away, and you really do become the person the algorithm thinks you are.
Algorithmic omnipresence
As Chayka points out in Filterworld, algorithms “can feel like a force that only began to exist … in the era of social networks” when in fact they have “a history and legacy that has slowly formed over centuries, long before the Internet existed.” So how exactly did we arrive at this moment of algorithmic omnipresence? How did these recommendation machines come to dominate and shape nearly every aspect of our online and (increasingly) our offline lives? Even more important, how did we ourselves become the data that fuels them?
W.W. NORTON
These are some of the questions Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones set out to answer in How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms. Wiggins is a professor of applied mathematics and systems biology at Columbia University. He’s also the New York Times’ chief data scientist. Jones is now a professor of history at Princeton. Until recently, they both taught an undergrad course at Columbia, which served as the basis for the book.
They begin their historical investigation at a moment they argue is crucial to understanding our current predicament: the birth of statistics in the late 18th and early 19th century. It was a period of conflict and political upheaval in Europe. It was also a time when nations were beginning to acquire both the means and the motivation to track and measure their populations at an unprecedented scale.
“War required money; money required taxes; taxes required growing bureaucracies; and these bureaucracies needed data,” they write. “Statistics”may have originally described “knowledge of the state and its resources, without any particularly quantitative bent or aspirations at insights,” but that quickly began to change as new mathematical tools for examining and manipulating data emerged.
One of the people wielding these tools was the 19th-century Belgian astronomer Adolphe Quetelet. Famous for, among other things, developing the highly problematic body mass index (BMI), Quetelet had the audacious idea of taking the statistical techniques his fellow astronomers had developed to study the position of stars and using them to better understand society and its people. This new “social physics,” based on data about phenomena like crime and human physical characteristics, could in turn reveal hidden truths about humanity, he argued.
“Quetelet’s flash of genius—whatever its lack or rigor—was to treat averages about human beings as if they were real quantities out there that we were discovering,” write Wiggins and Jones. “He acted as if the average height of a population was a real thing, just like the position of a star.”
From Quetelet and his “average man” to Francis Galton’s eugenics to Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman’s “general intelligence,” Wiggins and Jones chart a depressing progression of attempts—many of them successful—to use data as a scientific basis for racial and social hierarchies. Data added “a scientific veneer to the creation of an entire apparatus of discrimination and disenfranchisement,” they write. It’s a legacy we’re still contending with today.
Another misconception that persists? The notion that data about people are somehow objective measures of truth. “Raw data is an oxymoron,” observed the media historian Lisa Gitelman a number of years ago. Indeed, all data collection is the result of human choice, from what to collect to how to classify it to who’s included and excluded.
Whether it’s poverty, prosperity, intelligence, or creditworthiness, these aren’t real things that can be measured directly, note Wiggins and Jones. To quantify them, you need to choose an easily measured proxy. This “reification” (“literally, making a thing out of an abstraction about real things”) may be necessary in many cases, but such choices are never neutral or unproblematic. “Data is made, not found,” they write, “whether in 1600 or 1780 or 2022.”
“We don’t need to build systems that learn the stratifications of the past and present and reinforce them in the future.”
Perhaps the most impressive feat Wiggins and Jones pull off in the book as they continue to chart data’s evolution throughout the 20th century and the present day is dismantling the idea that there is something inevitable about the way technology progresses.
For Quetelet and his ilk, turning to numbers to better understand humans and society was not an obvious choice. Indeed, from the beginning, everyone from artists to anthropologists understood the inherent limitations of data and quantification, making some of the same critiques of statisticians that Chayka makes of today’s algorithmic systems (“Such statisticians ‘see quality not at all, but only quantity’”).
Whether they’re talking about the machine-learning techniques that underpin today’s AI efforts or an internet built to harvest our personal data and sell us stuff, Wiggins and Jones recount many moments in history when things could have just as likely gone a different way.
“The present is not a prison sentence, but merely our current snapshot,” they write. “We don’t have to use unethical or opaque algorithmic decision systems, even in contexts where their use may be technically feasible. Ads based on mass surveillance are not necessary elements of our society. We don’t need to build systems that learn the stratifications of the past and present and reinforce them in the future. Privacy is not dead because of technology; it’s not true that the only way to support journalism or book writing or any craft that matters to you is spying on you to service ads. There are alternatives.”
A pressing need for regulation
If Wiggins and Jones’s goal was to reveal the intellectual tradition that underlies today’s algorithmic systems, including “the persistent role of data in rearranging power,” Josh Simons is more interested in how algorithmic power is exercised in a democracy and, more specifically, how we might go about regulating the corporations and institutions that wield it.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Currently a research fellow in political theory at Harvard, Simons has a unique background. Not only did he work for four years at Facebook, where he was a founding member of what became the Responsible AI team, but he previously served as a policy advisor for the Labour Party in the UK Parliament.
In Algorithms for the People: Democracy in the Age of AI, Simons builds on the seminal work of authors like Cathy O’Neil, Safiya Noble, and Shoshana Zuboff to argue that algorithmic prediction is inherently political. “My aim is to explore how to make democracy work in the coming age of machine learning,” he writes. “Our future will be determined not by the nature of machine learning itself—machine learning models simply do what we tell them to do—but by our commitment to regulation that ensures that machine learning strengthens the foundations of democracy.”
Much of the first half of the book is dedicated to revealing all the ways we continue to misunderstand the nature of machine learning, and how its use can profoundly undermine democracy. And what if a “thriving democracy”—a term Simons uses throughout the book but never defines—isn’t always compatible with algorithmic governance? Well, it’s a question he never really addresses.
Whether these are blind spots or Simons simply believes that algorithmic prediction is, and will remain, an inevitable part of our lives, the lack of clarity doesn’t do the book any favors. While he’s on much firmer ground when explaining how machine learning works and deconstructing the systems behind Google’s PageRank and Facebook’s Feed, there remain omissions that don’t inspire confidence. For instance, it takes an uncomfortably long time for Simons to even acknowledge one of the key motivations behind the design of the PageRank and Feed algorithms: profit. Not something to overlook if you want to develop an effective regulatory framework.
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
Much of what’s discussed in the latter half of the book will be familiar to anyone following the news around platform and internet regulation (hint: that we should be treating providers more like public utilities). And while Simons has some creative and intelligent ideas, I suspect even the most ardent policy wonks will come away feeling a bit demoralized given the current state of politics in the United States.
In the end, the most hopeful message these books offer is embedded in the nature of algorithms themselves. In Filterworld, Chayka includes a quote from the late, great anthropologist David Graeber: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” It’s a sentiment echoed in all three books—maybe minus the “easily” bit.
Algorithms may entrench our biases, homogenize and flatten culture, and exploit and suppress the vulnerable and marginalized. But these aren’t completely inscrutable systems or inevitable outcomes. They can do the opposite, too. Look closely at any machine-learning algorithm and you’ll inevitably find people—people making choices about which data to gather and how to weigh it, choices about design and target variables. And, yes, even choices about whether to use them at all. As long as algorithms are something humans make, we can also choose to make them differently.
Bryan Gardiner is a writer based in Oakland, California.
Apple announced PQ3, its post-quantum encryption standard based on the Kyber secure key-encapsulation protocol, one of the post-quantum algorithms selected by NIST in 2022.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s probably premature to switch to any particular post-quantum algorithms. The mathematics of cryptanalysis for these lattice and other systems is still rapidly evolving, and we’re likely to break more of them—and learn a lot in the process—over the coming few years. But if you’re going to make the switch, this is an excellent choice. And Apple’s ability to do this so efficiently speaks well about its algorithmic agility, which is probably more important than its particular cryptographic design. And it is probably about the right time to worry about, and defend against, attackers who are storing encrypted messages in hopes of breaking them later on future quantum computers.
Good essay on software bloat and the insecurities it causes.
The world ships too much code, most of it by third parties, sometimes unintended, most of it uninspected. Because of this, there is a huge attack surface full of mediocre code. Efforts are ongoing to improve the quality of code itself, but many exploits are due to logic fails, and less progress has been made scanning for those. Meanwhile, great strides could be made by paring down just how much code we expose to the world. This will increase time to market for products, but legislation is around the corner that should force vendors to take security more seriously.
The winner of the Best Paper Award at Crypto this year was a significant improvement to lattice-based cryptanalysis.
This is important, because a bunch of NIST’s post-quantumoptions base their security on lattice problems.
I worry about standardizing on post-quantum algorithms too quickly. We are still learning a lot about the security of these systems, and this paper is an example of that learning.
Login
