Author: Taylor Lowery

There’s something almost surreal about how big things are right now. In rural Virginia, on the edges of Shanghai, and in the flatlands of Frankfurt, huge buildings are being built that are climate-controlled, have no windows, and are buzzing with electricity, but no one seems to notice. The race to build these data centers has become one of the most important geopolitical stories of the decade. It’s hard to fully understand the numbers. By the beginning of 2025, 122.2 gigawatts of IT power had been installed in data centers around the world. About 44% of that comes from just the…

It takes a certain amount of confidence, or maybe stubbornness, to raise prices on a line of products that was meant to help people who couldn’t afford your main line. That’s exactly what Apple did in February: they quietly stopped making the iPhone SE and put out the $599 iPhone 16e in its place. That’s a 40% rise from where the SE was. There is still no clear answer to the question of whether that choice was brave or a mistake. The iPhone 16e isn’t a bad phone. That should be said right away. The A18 chip inside powers Apple’s…

Most people have been in the situation where they should have coverage and then seen that signal bar go away completely. A trail in the mountains, a stretch of highway through the plains, and a village on the coast where the closest cell tower is sixty miles away. That blank signal bar was just the price of going anywhere interesting for most of the last 30 years. It looks like Starlink Mobile has decided that answer is no longer good enough. It’s been quiet, but SpaceX’s satellite internet division has built what it calls the world’s largest and only satellite-to-mobile…

There’s something slightly unsettling about seeing a dead actor in a new movie. The face looks good. The voice is close enough to hear. But that person hasn’t been seen in years. In a room full of servers, an algorithm filled in the blanks. It’s no longer science fiction. The choice is in the name of business, and it’s becoming one of the most complicated legal cases Hollywood has seen in a long time. The issue became much more important during the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023, when actors took to the picket lines to voice a concern that had seemed…

There is an empty warehouse on the edge of a busy business area. There are no signs or storefronts, and the smell of garlic doesn’t reach the street. It doesn’t look like anything important from the outside. One hundred meals are made every night inside for at least four “restaurants,” but none of them have a dining room, a hostess stand, or even a single table. The kitchen is dark. It’s likely that you’ve already bought something from one. The idea behind it is pretty simple: a commercial kitchen that only takes delivery orders and doesn’t have a storefront that…

A person with glaucoma recently got an injection in one eye somewhere in Boston. In ophthalmology, eye injections are common, so that fact alone makes it sound normal. That being said, this shot was different. It carried a gene therapy that was meant to do more than just treat illness; it was also meant to slow down or stop the aging process in cells that received it. Based on what happens over the next six months, it could be one of the most important events in recent medical history. Life Biosciences, the company behind it, is one of many new…

What if there was a bandage that did more than just cover a wound? Keeps track of swelling. At 3 a.m., they notice something strange and quietly write it down. There is no need for a charger, battery, or screen. A tiny piece of fabric with sensors that are so small you can hardly see them. They get their power from the heat of your skin. It sounds like an idea from a meeting to pitch science fiction stories. For years, researchers at UC Berkeley have been working on this kind of technology. They’ve even given it a name that…

When you’re checking your bank balance on a crowded train and just a beat too late realize that the person behind you is looking over your shoulder, it makes you feel uneasy. It’s something most people have felt. A quick tilt of the phone, the screen going dark, and maybe a hand cupped together. For years, these makeshift solutions have been used to protect mobile privacy in public places. It looks like Samsung has had enough of that. The company just released a new feature for its new Galaxy S26 Ultra called Privacy Display. The idea behind it is pretty…

The word “chokepoint” was used to describe the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the oil fields of the Persian Gulf for many years. Each country built a navy around those passages. They fought a war over them. At some level, the whole structure of 20th-century foreign policy was based on the idea that “whoever controls the oil controls the room.” That sense of logic is still there. A piece of silicon about the size of a thumbnail is now sharing space with it. It’s smaller, stranger, and in some ways much more dangerous. “Chips are the new oil”…

When Apple revealed the iPhone 17e on March 2, 2026, consumers were halted in their tracks by the price point. Six hundred bucks. Not $799, not the $699 that some analysts had anticipated due to component cost pressures, but $599—with 256 gigabytes of base storage, which is twice as much as the previous low-cost model came with. Market analysts and component suppliers were conducting the same calculations on the day Apple made the announcement: how did they arrive at that conclusion and what does it signify? The most intriguing part is the chip decision. The A19, the same silicon generation…