The Rise and Fall of Silk Road
A long look at the infamous online marketplace for illegal goods, starting with a DEA raid on a grandpa in Utah who had just taken receipt of $27,000 of cocaine. http://www.bit.ly/wired-silkroad
Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook – and the World
A piece examining the series of challenges Facebook has faced as it struggles to manage the intended and unintended consequences of its huge scale and the reach it has into many parts of its users’ lives.
It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech
A special issue of Wired contains several strong pieces looking at the complex freedom of speech trade-offs required in the new information era. Pieces include – the web infrastructure company Cloudflare being embroiled in a free speech debate when offering services to far-right extremists, Reddit as a case study for civil discourse online, a startup making smartphone-neutralising pouches, six stories of censorship, and a look at a database of extremists called Whack-a-Mole.
The Hotel Room Hacker
A piece about a hacker who exploited a vulnerability in hotel room locks and went on a spree of burglaries.
Process of Elimination
A look at the work and mission of scientists and conservationists proposing gene editing techniques to control animal population, and the potential ramifications of adopting their methods outside the laboratory.