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Mathew Ingram
@mathewi@journa.host
mastodon 4.7.3I write about technology and culture from my kayak somewhere in Canada
8335 Followers
514 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 07, 2022
Is there a new quantum processor or is Microsoft lying?
Microsoft keeps claiming that it has built a processor around a theoretical quantum particle, and physicists keep saying it is full of you-know-what
https://mathewingram.com/work/2026/07/01/is-there-a-new-quantum-processor-or-is-microsoft-lying/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social
If I knew any shopping mall developers I would tell them to give over some space where all those stores used to be to a video game parlor for old guys who used to play Quake and Unreal Tournament and have some time to kill
Not enough shootings in the US so the animals are getting in on it now
A teenager fixed a 35-year-old problem with oxygen sensors
A Kitchener, Ont., teen has won the best project award for innovation at the Canada-Wide Science Fair. Eigenpulse: Eliminating Demographic Bias in Pulse Oximetry and Remote PPG from First Principles was the name of the project by Gurnoor Kaur, a Grade 11 student at Cameron Height Collegiate Institute in Kitchener. The judges at the Edmonton competition say the 17-year-old's work fixes a 35-year-old problem in…
Data center criticism is based on bad science and scare quotes
A lot of the arguments against data centers that are based on water consumption or power usage tend to collapse on closer inspection
American farmers grow more food than the country eats, export 20% of the surplus, and we the buyers throw out another third of what’s left. Farmers collect $1.85 billion a year from the federal government to keep a Kentucky-sized 40,000 square miles of farmland intentionally idle https://blog.andymasley.com/p/data-center-land-use-issues-are-fake
For the record, here are the only places you are allowed to listen to something from your phone's speaker:
1) Outside, far away from me
2) In the bathroom with the door closed
End of list.
Notice what is not on this list:
1) The fucking bus
2) The fucking subway
3) The fucking shopping mall food court
Walking through Turin in Italy I spotted this on a rootfop downtown and I need to know the story behind it. Any Torino residents out there have info? Based on the railing, it is the size of a human being
He was renovating his basement and found an underground city
In 1963, a Turkish resident who simply wanted to expand his house ended up making an unexpected and monumental discovery. While knocking down a wall in his basement, he found a mysterious room—then another, and another. Without realizing it, he had uncovered the entrance to Derinkuyu: an underground city capable of housing up to 20,000 people beneath Cappadocia. The part that extends below ground level is, on…
Bobby Brown fried chicken in cocaine when he was 10
Brown says he was unaware his mother sold cocaine to support the family and while away, he decided to fry chicken, a meal his mother taught him to cook. He grabbed a bag of what he believed was flour to coat the chicken. His mother would later return, elated he took initiative to cook dinner, but soon realized he mistook the bag of cocaine for flour.
Are we having the wrong nightmares about AI?
There are lots of potential nightmares when it comes to artificial intelligence. In a recent Torment Nexus I wrote about how the U.S. government seems hell-bent on using AI to engage in mass surveillance of American citizens (and probably lots of other people as well) and also to pilot autonomous murder drones. Obviously both of these things would be bad, especially given the fact that AI models love to hallucinate or…
He ran an $11M fraud scheme from prison and just escaped
A Georgia man convicted of leading an $11 million fraud scheme while in custody through contraband phones is now on the run after officials say he escaped from a federal prison camp. The United States Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other law enforcement agencies are searching for 34-year-old Arthur Cofield. According to authorities with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Cofield was…
Tools I use and love: Raindrop
I like to save things. Particularly interesting websites and news articles. Some of them are just for my personal use (projects I want to work on, etc.) and some are for inclusion in one of my newsletters: either When The Going Gets Weird, which is a daily collection of interesting and/or weird news stories and links, or The Torment Nexus, which is a weekly…
A Masonic lodge in France harbored a mafia hit squad
Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads. Thirteen of the defendants face life imprisonment. Those in the dock include four military personnel from France's foreign intelligence service (DGSE), two police officers, a retired domestic intelligence officer, a security guard and two business…
Climbing Everest has become a magnet for insurance scams
In Nepal, helicopter rescue on high altitude is, by any measure, a genuine lifesaving operation. At high altitude, where oxygen thins and weather changes without warning, the ability to airlift a stricken trekker to Kathmandu within hours has saved countless lives. But threaded through that legitimate system, exploiting its urgency, its opacity, and its distance from oversight, — is one of the most sophisticated…
The rise and fall of the world’s only female yakuza gangster
In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of Japan’s feared and rule-bound criminal underworld. She must have defeated many male gangsters.
Kentucky cops arrest man for riding a horse while drunk
The driver, Kentucky cops say, had just left a liquor store, smelled of alcohol, and was found “partially slumped over” the controls of his brown vehicle. As a result, Jorge Hernandez, 48, was arrested for galloping under the influence (GUI) through a residential neighborhood in Bowling Green. According to an arrest report, an officer spotted the sagging Hernandez atop a horse around 6 PM Thursday.
Definitely a headline I never thought I would read, let alone type
Beekeeper jailed for opening the hives to protect a neighbor
A beekeeper has been jailed for six months after she set swarms of her insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to carry out an eviction at a friend’s house. Rebecca Woods insisted she only released her truckload of hives to allow the bees to enjoy the “lovely, flowering landscape” near the home of an elderly friend and cancer patient. But a district court in Springfield, Massachusetts, heard that Woods, 59,…
Anthropic’s new Mythos model: Dangerous or over-hyped?
Anthropic says its new model is too dangerous to release. Is it overselling it as a marketing effort, as some critics claim? Possibly. But it could also actually be dangerous
When a bra maker got the job of making the first NASA spacesuit
In 1966, when seamstresses at the International Latex Corporation arrived at its new Apollo Suit shopfloor in Frederica, Delaware, they were essentially “taught to sew again from scratch.” And for good reason: Compared to the company’s bras and girdles, the craftsmanship needed to fashion a spacesuit was, in every sense, out of this world. The journey to this point had been improbable for a company whose…
Using AI to write isn’t always wrong and other heresies
If you use AI to help with your writing, are you a talentless hack? Perhaps. But I don't think the connection is as direct as some would like to make it. It's just a tool, and it can be used for good or ill
Two hikers found a can with $300,000 in gold coins inside
A field in an overgrown Czech Republic forest has, for nearly 100 years, served as the hiding place for a secret stash of nearly 600 gold coins and other precious metal goods tucked into a stone wall. But the cache of treasure is hiding no more. Two hikers traversing the Krkonoše Mountains (Giant Mountains) came across the small aluminum can, which had been hidden in a crevice in the wall, and opened it up to…
When a fake Cartier and a fake Rockefeller went into business
That fall, with her sights set on even bigger targets, Bartzen headed to Palm Beach and began hanging around with someone who appeared to be a genuine member of the scion class: a much younger man who introduced himself as Matthew Rockefeller. Suddenly, Bartzen and Global Passion Projects, to which Rockefeller signed on, took on a new gloss. Rockefeller, who is 39, told potential event partners that he ran…
Italian photographer made a pinhole camera out of pasta
Berlin-based Italian photographer Paride Ambrogi recently combined two of his loves, photography and pasta, in a brilliant, possibly tasty way. Ambrogi made the Ravihole Camera, a working pinhole camera made entirely from fresh pasta dough. Ambrogi made the Ravihole as part of a workshop on fresh-filled pasta in Hamburg, Germany. Alongside the pasta workshop, Ambrogi and his fellow Italian friends who live in…
He was the most successful double agent of all time
Juan Pujol was born in Barcelona in 1912 to a family of moderate means and liberal political beliefs. The onset of war in 1939 convinced him that he should make a contribution to the good of humanity. He decided contact the British authorities and offer to spy against Germany. Each time his approaches were rebuffed. In contrast, Pujol had no difficulty making contact with German Intelligence in Madrid, sayinghe was a…
Will AI destroy jobs or create jobs? Yes
Will AI wipe out entire categories of jobs? In all likelihood yes, but it will also transform others, and probably create new categories of work that we can barely even imagine. It’s not a zero-sum game.
Where do I want her to hurry to?
By Marie Howe
What it’s like to suffer from locked-in syndrome
There is one time of day when Dawn Faizey Webster can feel normal. It’s after dinner, once she has been changed into her pyjamas and she is lying in bed, watching television. After a certain amount of time or a certain number of episodes, Netflix, the ever-considerate streaming service, asks its viewers “Are you still watching?” If you don’t respond by pressing a button on the remote, it assumes you’ve nodded off and…
Should Niantic's past with the CIA make us concerned about what it's planning to do with the virtual world created by 30 billion data points accumulated through Pokemon Go?
CIA officer says he stopped Iran from getting the nuclear bomb
Chalker told me that he wanted to repair his reputation. He had always been an American patriot, he insisted, and to prove it he was willing to talk publicly, for the first time, about his years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had “prevented Iran from getting a nuke.” He insisted that he had helped obtain pivotal information that laid the groundwork for more than a decade of American…
Social media may be bad for you but the remedy could be worse
Some might be celebrating two recent legal rulings ordering Meta to pay for its flawed products, but the result of those cases could turn out to be far worse for both the internet and for free speech
Quadruple amputee cornhole pro shoots man while driving
A noted professional cornhole player who is a quadruple amputee is behind bars after authorities said he shot and killed a front seat passenger Sunday night while he was driving in Maryland. Dayton Webber, 27, was behind the wheel when he opened fire on Bradrick Michael Wells during an argument as they were traveling in a car in the town of La Plata, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
In this week's Torment Nexus newsletter: are we having the wrong nightmares about AI? https://torment-nexus.mathewingram.com/are-we-having-the-wrong-nightmares-about-ai/?ref=the-torment-nexus-newsletter
Amelia Earhart sent distress signals that were ignored
Dozens of previously dismissed radio signals were actually credible transmissions from Amelia Earhart, according to a new study of the alleged post-loss signals from Earhart's plane. The transmissions started riding the air waves just hours after the pilot sent her last in-flight message. The study, presented by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, sheds new light on what may have…
Russian hitman busted because he used Google Translate
When Denis Alimov passed through the arrivals hall of El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá on the morning of February 24, 2026, he had the outward appearance of a middle-aged Russian tourist escaping Moscow's harsh winter: a salt-and-pepper goatee, a light travel bag, a connecting flight from Istanbul, and a reservation at a Cartagena beach resort. Within minutes, Colombian migration officers had him in…
Only scientists and the military can visit this tiny Brazilian island
Ilha da Queimada Grande, to give it its Portuguese name, is a lump of rock sitting 33km off the Brazilian mainland. It has come to be known as Snake Island because of the thousands of venomous snakes that occupy its 43 hectares. The golden lancehead is a species of pit viper found nowhere else in the world. It has been evolving in isolation since rising sea levels cut it off from the mainland 11,000…
If you’re looking for mathewingram.com I have some bad news
It's likely that not many people care about this, but I am writing this on my WordPress.com blog — which I normally use as a backup to my blog at mathewingram.com/work — because the machine hosting that blog (and my photo server and my Plex instance and a bunch of other things) got hacked by ransomware a few days ago. I am currently in the process of either trying to restore it or wiping it and starting again,…
https://mathewingramblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/03/if-youre-looking-for-mathewingram-com-i-have-some-bad-news/
His obsession with jewelled eggs destroyed his family
When I was growing up, my mother used to refer to the egg as “your father’s ego”, while to the rest of the world it was known as the Argyle Library Egg by Kutchinsky. I felt a mix of pride and bafflement towards my father’s creation. I was thrilled to take its Guinness World Records certificate to school to show my friends, but I didn’t understand why anyone would want an egg that big which wasn’t made out of…
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He said he was kidnapped and forced to play football for his life
Mauricio Morales was leading a group of migrants he had found at a bus station through Mexico City’s San Rafael neighborhood. They had just crossed a busy boulevard and were making their way down a side street when the five large utility vans lurched to a stop in front of them. Men with machine guns, wearing tactical gear, spilled out and started barking orders and threats.
20th anniversary International Journalism Festival in Perugia