Day: February 26, 2020

The outbreak of the coronavirus — and Covid-19, the disease it causes — in mainland China has provoked a response the likes of which the world has never seen. Hundreds of millions of people in the country have had their travel restricted; many have not even been allowed to leave their homes. All of this is aided by the vast Chinese surveillance state.

Meanwhile, though the number of new cases in China dropped to 406 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 78,000, China is ramping up capacity to treat tens of thousands of sick people, with new hospitals …

As any new parent will tell you, baby monitors are important. They let you keep a close eye on your most precious cargo as it rolls around in the crib and they even let you talk to the little tyke. But you might not be your baby’s only audience.

Some smart baby monitors have crucial security flaws that allow hackers to take over, sometimes watching and even interacting with your child. The popular iBaby family of internet-connected cameras recently joined this club when a cybersecurity company found vulnerabilities in its M6S model. As of the time of this post, …

Are we more likely to click on the first result on Google than the second?

Are we more likely to eat a big meal if we use a big bowl?

Are we more likely to apply to a top college if we get a personalized admissions packet?

All of these questions have been explored in the research literature on behavioral “nudges,” or methods for slightly changing the environment to change people’s behavior.

The term was popularized in a 2008 book by University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions …

On Monday, Iranian Deputy Health Minister Iraj Hairichi went on television to tell reporters that the government had the nation’s coronavirus outbreak completely under control. The sweat pouring down his face during the announcement, while jarring, could’ve been the result of stress.

But on Tuesday, a dark irony came to light. Hairichi wasn’t just stressed — he had contracted coronavirus.

That development underscores the Iranian regime’s troubling mismanagement of the outbreak inside the Islamic Republic, which as of Tuesday had seen 95 reported cases, including 16 deaths. The outbreak was first identified days after authorities there said they …

The Democratic presidential debates, like all presidential debates, have mostly taken place in an alternative universe where the president’s powers are absolute, and so the argument revolves entirely around electability, differences between the proposed agendas of the candidates running to win the White House, and decades-old votes that supposedly reveal their true values.

But at Tuesday’s South Carolina debate, the reality of the situation the next president will face occasionally broke through, though never very clearly, nor for very long.

Every Democratic candidate running for president is proposing a sweeping legislative agenda, which means the actual constraint, if any of …

Candidates on the debate stage were markedly rowdier on Tuesday — and they weren’t the only ones. Throughout the night, the audience seemingly was, too.

In moment after moment, including when Sen. Bernie Sanders pressed former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg on the overwhelming support he receives from billionaires, the audience responded effusively with boos. Notably, in several instances, the reaction seemed to favor Bloomberg, who was once again confronted by multiple candidates over issues including “stop and frisk” and alleged sexist comments.

The apparent support for Bloomberg from the crowd raised questions about whether there was an outsized …