2026-02-01 03:00:06
Hi everyone,
Michael Reilly here. As March draws to a close—and we wrap up the month with an investigation into how NYC’s AI-powered bot tells people to break the law—I’ve been asking around the newsroom to find out what else has captured my colleagues’ interest and fascination over the last month. Below you’ll find an eclectic mix of the things that we read, play, listen to, and otherwise feed our brains with when we’re not heads down doing the journalism we love (because we’re journalists, you’ll find a healthy dose of that as well).
\ Our hope is this enriches your weekend and gives you some cool new stuff to check out—as well as a greater sense of who we are.
\ 📚 Means of Control Reporter Byron Tau has been breaking stories on the massive ecosystem of shadowy data brokers that collect our personal data—such as our precise movements—using our phones. In his book, Tau tells the fascinating story of this industry’s origin and how it fueled government surveillance, bypassing constitutional protections.—Jon Keegan
\ 🎙️ Who Trolled Amber? I’ve been bingeing the “Who Trolled Amber?” podcast by Tortoise Media over the past few weeks. It’s a fascinating deep-dive into the role that bots played in the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trials, including who may be behind the efforts and whether this kind of thing is limited to just celebrity cases.—Malena Carollo
I’ve been eagerly awaiting L.A. based singer-songwriter Rosie Tucker’s latest record UTOPIA NOW! On this record, Tucker reflects the queasy joys and banal horrors in our hyper connected lives. Opening track lyrics such as “I hope no one had to piss in a bottle at work to get me the thing I ordered on the internet” and “They’re gonna turn the moon into a sweatshop” have stuck and will resurface for years.—Mohamed Al Elew
\ 📚 Not the End of the World. Staring directly into the face of our current climate emergency can turn anyone into a doomer—passively watching the world sink into CO2-choked oblivion with a resigned shrug. But in her new book, “Not The End of the World,” Hannah Ritchie, an editor at Our World In Data, runs the numbers and comes to a revolutionary conclusion: In many ways, things are, in fact, getting better. It’s not just that Ritchie separates meaningful environmental interventions (like consuming less meat) from those that are largely cosmetic (like consuming food produced locally). It’s that, by highlighting ongoing environmental success stories, which are shockingly myriad, the book provides both a clearly visible path forward and a ray of hope that, as a species, we have the ability to follow that path into the future.—Aaron Sankin
\ 📰 Who’s Behind All the ‘Pussy in Bio’ on X?I admit I clicked as fast as I could on this profane headline from Intelligencer. The story’s about pornbots, but it’s also a peek into the ways spammers skirt automated content moderation.—Soo Oh
\ There’s a great story this month out of Frontier, the Oklahoman investigative journalism nonprofit, and ProPublica. They unspooled how four murders in the state are connected to illegal cannabis sales and Chinese mobsters. According to a state law enforcement official quoted in the story, Chinese organized crime outfits have “taken over marijuana in Oklahoma and the United States.” The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics claims that a group crowdfunded weed ventures in the state through invites on WeChat.—Ese Olumhense
\ 🕹️ Balatro: Addictive and enthralling, this new video game ditches all the boring parts of poker (gambling, bluffing, lack of jokers) and adds endless ways to modify a standard 52-card deck (wild cards, tarot cards, business cards) in pursuit of ever-higher chip counts. Sorry poker purists, I can’t hear your objections over the sound of my game-winning five-of-a-kind.—Joel Eastwood
\ 📰 The Groundwater Crisis. There is a shocking lack of data on one of Earth’s most important resources: groundwater. In this article, researcher Nick Dudley Ward details why it is essential that we work to fill in these massive data gaps and outlines researchers work toward a national groundwater database in New Zealand.—Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett
\ 📚 The Anxious Generation. Ok, so psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book just came out this week and I have not actually had a chance to read it. But I wanted to include it on this list because it focuses on something that as a parent I’m preoccupied with: how is technology—and smartphones and social media in particular—affecting the lives of young people? And what are the mechanics of these effects? Given his track record, I’m expecting nothing less than a fascinating read.—Michael Reilly
\ 📰 Suicide Mission. In American Prospect, Moe Tkacik has been covering Boeing’s recent unraveling, which includes the story of John Barnett, a former employee who became a prominent whistleblower before he was suddenly found dead. Tkacik’s reporting documents the engineering-hostile culture that eroded the foundations of Boeing’s success and provided a stark lesson in the perils of cavalier technology development. —Ryan Tate
\ Enjoy!
\ Sincerely,
\ Michael Reilly
Managing Editor
The Markup
Credits
\ Also published here
\ Photo by Romain HUNEAU on Unsplash
\
2026-02-01 02:00:03
If you’re working in a pure Linux environment, processes are generally left alone once they’re launched. A running process will rarely be killed unless there’s a serious reason, such as a crash, a security violation, or explicit user intervention. This is largely because traditional Linux systems often run on machines with abundant resources: constant power supply, ample memory, and significant CPU capacity.
\ Android, however, operates in a very different world.
Android is built for mobile devices, where resources are inherently limited. Battery life, memory, CPU usage, and network consumption must all be carefully managed. Unlike servers or desktops that run continuously and have generous hardware, mobile devices must balance performance with efficiency to preserve battery and ensure a smooth user experience.
\ Security and privacy also play a much larger role on Android. Mobile devices are deeply personal: they have cameras, microphones, sensors, and location data that can reveal sensitive information about users. Because of this, Android must maintain stricter control over what processes are running and when.
\ As a result, Android does not treat process death as an exceptional event; it is a normal part of the system’s behavior.
On Android, a process can die for more reasons than just user action. While users can explicitly terminate an app by swiping it away from the recent apps screen, the system itself can also decide to kill a process when necessary. This system-initiated termination is what we refer to as process death.
\ The Android operating system aims to manage this invisibly. Ideally, processes are killed only when doing so does not disrupt the user’s experience. To achieve this, Android continuously evaluates how important each running process is to the user at any given moment.
\ This evaluation is governed by the process importance hierarchy.
The process importance hierarchy defines five key states a process can be in. The lower a process ranks in this hierarchy, the more likely it is to be killed when system resources are under pressure.
\ Let’s walk through these states from most important to least important.
Foreground processes are the most critical and least likely to be killed.
\ A process is considered foreground when it is actively visible to the user and required for what the user is currently doing. Android strongly prioritizes keeping these processes alive.
\ A process can be in the foreground in three main scenarios:
The most common case is when an activity is visible on the screen, and the user is actively interacting with it. In lifecycle terms, the activity is in the resumed state.
A process is also considered foreground when it is executing code inside a broadcast receiver. Broadcast receivers allow apps to respond to system-wide events such as changes to airplane mode or connectivity. While the receiver is actively processing the broadcast, the process is treated as foreground.
Services have lifecycles just like activities. If a service within a process is actively executing one of its callbacks, the system treats that process as highly important and keeps it alive.
Visible processes perform work the user is aware of, even if the user is not directly interacting with them.
\ A common example is an activity that is still partially visible but no longer in the foreground. For instance, when a system permission dialog appears on top of your app, the underlying activity is still visible but paused. In lifecycle terms, the activity is in the paused state rather than stopped.
\ Another major case is a foreground service. Foreground services must display a persistent notification and perform user-facing tasks. A music streaming app like Spotify is a classic example; the user may not be interacting with the app UI, but they expect the music playback service to remain alive.
\ A more niche example includes services tied to visible system features, such as live wallpapers. Even though the app itself is not open, the user is aware of the feature and expects it to function.
\ Visible processes are still unlikely to be killed, but unlike foreground processes, termination is possible under extreme resource pressure.
Imagine a permission dialog is displayed on top of your app. If the underlying activity’s process is killed while the dialog is still visible, the area behind the dialog may briefly turn black. Once the user responds to the permission request, the activity is recreated, and the result is delivered to the new process.
\ This scenario is rare on modern devices, but it highlights why developers must be prepared for unexpected process death.
Service processes host background services that are not running in the foreground and do not show a notification. These services are not visible to the user but are still expected to perform meaningful work, such as syncing data with a remote server.
\ If a background service runs for an unusually long time, say, 30 minutes or more, the system may deprioritize it. This doesn’t guarantee termination, but it significantly increases the likelihood of the process being killed under memory pressure.
A background process occurs when an app is no longer visible. For example, when a user presses the home button and leaves an app, its process transitions to the background.
\ Android does not immediately kill background processes because users often return to apps shortly after leaving them. Restarting a process is expensive, so keeping background processes alive can improve perceived performance.
\ However, background processes sit low in the importance hierarchy. When resources are scarce, Android will look to background processes first when deciding which ones to terminate.
Empty processes are at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
\ These processes have no active components, no running activities, services, or receivers. They exist mainly as cached containers that could be reused more quickly if the app is relaunched.
\ Since users are neither aware of nor dependent on these processes, the system kills them first when reclaiming resources.
Understanding the process importance hierarchy is not just an academic exercise; it directly impacts day-to-day Android development.
\ Android developers must assume that a process can be killed at any time. By knowing where your app’s process sits in the hierarchy, you gain insight into how likely it is to survive under system pressure and how defensive your code needs to be.
\ This awareness is essential for building resilient apps that handle configuration changes, process death, and lifecycle events gracefully without compromising the user experience.
2026-02-01 01:00:07
The Rust Security Response WG was notified that the Rust standard library did not properly escape arguments when invoking batch files (with the bat and cmd extensions) on Windows using the Command API. An attacker able to control the arguments passed to the spawned process could execute arbitrary shell commands by bypassing the escaping.
\ The severity of this vulnerability is critical if you are invoking batch files on Windows with untrusted arguments. No other platform or use is affected.
\ This vulnerability is identified by CVE-2024-24576.
The Command::arg and Command::args APIs state in their documentation that the arguments will be passed to the spawned process as-is, regardless of the content of the arguments, and will not be evaluated by a shell. This means it should be safe to pass untrusted input as an argument.
\ On Windows, the implementation of this is more complex than other platforms, because the Windows API only provides a single string containing all the arguments to the spawned process, and it's up to the spawned process to split them. Most programs use the standard C run-time argv, which in practice results in a mostly consistent way arguments are split.
\
One exception though is cmd.exe (used among other things to execute batch files), which has its own argument splitting logic. That forces the standard library to implement custom escaping for arguments passed to batch files. Unfortunately it was reported that our escaping logic was not thorough enough, and it was possible to pass malicious arguments that would result in arbitrary shell execution.
Due to the complexity of cmd.exe, we didn't identify a solution that would correctly escape arguments in all cases. To maintain our API guarantees, we improved the robustness of the escaping code, and changed the Command API to return an InvalidInput error when it cannot safely escape an argument. This error will be emitted when spawning the process.
\ The fix will be included in Rust 1.77.2, to be released later today.
\
If you implement the escaping yourself or only handle trusted inputs, on Windows you can also use the CommandExt::raw_arg method to bypass the standard library's escaping logic.
All Rust versions before 1.77.2 on Windows are affected, if your code or one of your dependencies executes batch files with untrusted arguments. Other platforms or other uses on Windows are not affected.
We want to thank RyotaK for responsibly disclosing this to us according to the Rust security policy, and Simon Sawicki (Grub4K) for identifying some of the escaping rules we adopted in our fix.
\ We also want to thank the members of the Rust project who helped us disclose the vulnerability: Chris Denton for developing the fix; Mara Bos for reviewing the fix; Pietro Albini for writing this advisory; Pietro Albini, Manish Goregaokar and Josh Stone for coordinating this disclosure; Amanieu d'Antras for advising during the disclosure.
The Rust Security Response WG
\ Also published here
2026-02-01 01:00:02
Metrics show patterns but fieldwork reveals reality. By meeting users where they live and work designers uncover real constraints informal workflows and decision logic. This article shares a practical framework for running UX fieldwork in emerging markets and turning insights into product strategy
2026-02-01 01:00:00
"Speed" in data engineering is a trade-off, not a single metric. To build effective systems, you must distinguish between two competing concepts: - Data Latency (Freshness): How long it takes for an event to reach your report. - Query Latency (Responsiveness): How long a user waits for a dashboard to load. The Conflict: Optimizing for real-time freshness often slows down query performance because the system can't pre-calculate data. Conversely, pre-calculating data for "snappy" dashboards usually requires batching, which makes data older. The Bottom Line: Reducing latency has exponential costs. Success isn't about being the "fastest"; it's about choosing the right trade-offs between freshness, responsiveness, and budget based on specific business needs.
2026-02-01 00:09:18
:::info Astounding Stories of Super-Science March, 1932, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The Affair of the Brains - Chapter I: Off to the Rendezvous
By Anthony Gilmore
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:::tip Hawk Carse himself goes to keep Judd the Kite's rendezvous with the sinister genius Ku Sui.
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Though it is seldom nowadays that Earthmen hear mention of Hawk Carse, there are still places in the universe where his name retains all its old magic. These are the lonely outposts of the farthest planets, and here when the outlanders gather to yarn the idle hours away their tales conjure up from the past that raw, lusty period before the patrol-ships came, and the slender adventurer, gray-eyed and with queer bangs of hair obscuring his forehead, whose steely will, phenomenal ray-gun draw and reckless space-ship maneuverings combined to make him the period's most colorful figure. These qualities of his live again in the outlanders' reminiscences and also of course his score of blood-feuds and the one great feud that shook whole worlds in its final terrible settling—the feud of Hawk Carse and Dr. Ku Sui.
Again and again the paths of the adventurer and the sinister, brilliant Eurasian crossed, and each crossing makes a rich tale. Time after time Ku Sui, through his several bands of space-pirates, his individual agents and his ambitious web of power insidiously weaving over the universe, whipped his tentacles after the Hawk, and always the tentacles coiled back, repulsed and bloody. An almost typical episode is in the affair which followed what has been called the Exploit of the Hawk and the Kite.
It will be remembered—as related in "Hawk Carse"1—that Dr. Ku laid a most ingenious trap for Carse on the latter's ranch on Iapetus, eighth satellite of Saturn. Judd the Kite, pirate and scavenger, was the Eurasian's tool in this plot, which started with a raid on the ranch. The fracas which followed the Hawk's escape from the trap was bloody and grim enough, and resulted in the erasure of Judd and all his men save one; but the important thing to the following affair was that Judd's ship, the Scorpion, fell into Carse's hands with one prisoner and the ship's log, containing the space coordinates for a prearranged assignation of Judd with Ku Sui.
All other projects were postponed by the Hawk at this opportunity to meet Dr. Ku face to face. The trail of the Eurasian was the guiding trail of his life, and swiftly he moved along it.
There was work to be done before he could set out. Three men had emerged alive from the clash between the Hawk and the Kite: Carse himself, Friday, his gigantic negro companion in adventure, and a bearded half-caste called Sako, sole survivor of Judd's crew. Aided sullenly by this man, they first cleaned up the ravaged ranch, burying the bodies of the dead, repairing fences and generally bringing order out of confusion. Then, under Carse's instructions, Friday and the captive brigand tooled the adventurer's own ship, the Star Devil, well into the near-by jungle, while the Hawk returned to the Scorpion.
He went into her control cabin, opened her log book and once more scanned what interested him there. The notation ran:
"E.D. (Earth Date) 16 January, E.T. (Earth Time) 2:40 P.M. Meeting ordered by Ku Sui, for purpose of delivering the skeleton and clothing of Carse to him, at N.S. (New System) X-33.7; Y-241.3; Z-92.8 on E.D. 24 January, E.T. 10:20 P.M. Note: the ship is to stand by at complete stop, the radio's receiver open to Ku Sui's private wave (D37, X1293, R3) for further instructions."
He mulled over it, slowly stroking his flaxen bangs. It was a chance, and a good one. Judd's ship would keep that rendezvous, but it would sheathe the talons of the Hawk. This time a trap would be laid for Ku Sui.
\ The plan was simple enough, on the face of it, but the Eurasian was a master of cunning as well as a master of science, and high peril attended any matching of wits with him. Carse closed the log, his face bleak, his mind made up. A shuffle of feet brought his gaze up to the port-lock entrance.
Friday, stripped to shorts, a sweat-glistening ebony giant, stood there. Shaking the drops of steaming perspiration from his face, he reported:
"All finished, suh—got the Star Devil in the jungle where you said to hide her. An' now what? You still figurin' on keepin' that date with Dr. Ku in this ship?"
Carse nodded, absently.
"Then where'll we pick up a crew, suh? Porno? It's the nearest port, I reckon."
"I'm not taking any crew, Eclipse."
Friday gaped in surprise at his master, then found words:
"No crew, suh? Against Ku Sui? We'll be throwin' our lives——"
"I've lost enough men in the last two days," Carse cut in shortly. "And this meeting with Dr. Ku is a highly personal affair. You and I and Sako can run the ship; we've got to." One of the man's rare smiles relaxed his face. "Of course," he murmured, "I'm risking your life, Eclipse. Perhaps I'd better leave you somewhere?"
"Say!" bellowed the negro indignantly.
The Hawk's smile broadened at the spontaneous exclamation of loyalty.
"Very well, then," he said. "Now send Sako to me, and prepare ship for casting off."
But as Friday went aft on a final thorough inspection of all mechanisms, he muttered over and over, "Two of us—against Ku Sui! Two of us!" and he was still very much disturbed when, after Carse had had a few crisp words with the captive Sako, telling him that he would be free but watched and that it would be wise if he confined himself to his duties, the order came through to the engine room:
"Break ground!"
Gently the brigand ship Scorpion stirred. Then, in response to the delicate incline of her space-stick, she lifted sweetly from the crust of Iapetus and at ever-increasing speed burned through the satellite's atmosphere toward the limitless dark leagues beyond.
The Hawk was on the trail!
\ Carse took the first watch himself. Except for occasional glances at the banks of instruments, the screens and celestial charts, he spent his time in deep thought, turning over in his mind the several variations of situation his dangerous rendezvous might take.
First, how would Ku Sui contact the Scorpion? Any of three ways, he reasoned: come aboard from his own craft accompanied by some of his men; stay behind and send some men over to receive the remains of the Hawk—for either of which variations he was prepared; or, a third, and more dangerous, direct that the remains of Carse be brought over to his ship, without showing himself or any of his crew.
Whatever variations their contacting took, there was another consideration, Carse's celestial charts revealed, and that was the proximity of the rendezvous to Jupiter's Satellite III, less than three hundred thousand miles. Satellite III harbored Port o' Porno, main refuge and home of the scavengers, the hi-jackers, and out-and-out pirates of space, so many of whom were under Ku Sui's thumb. Several brigand ships were sure to be somewhere in the vicinity, and one might easily intrude, destroying the hairbreadth balance in Carse's favor….
There was peril on every side. The Hawk considered that it would be wise to make provision against the odds proving too great. So, his gray eyes reflective, he strode to the Scorpion's radio panel and a moment later was saying over and over in a toneless voice:
"XX-1 calling XX-2—XX-1 calling XX-2—XX-1 calling XX-2…."
\ After a full two minutes there was still no answer from the loudspeaker. He kept calling: "XX-1 calling XX-2—XX-1 calling XX-2—XX-1 calling——"
He broke off as words in English came softly from the loudspeaker:
"XX-2 answering XX-1. Do you hear me?"
"Yes. Give me protected connection. Highly important no outsider overhears."
"All right," the gentle voice answered. "Protected. Go ahead, old man."
The Hawk relaxed and his face softened. "How are you, Eliot?" he asked almost tenderly.
"Just fine, Carse," came in the clear, cultured voice of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, probably the greatest scientific mind in the solar system, Ku Sui being the only possible exception. He spoke now from his secret laboratory on Jupiter's Satellite III, near Porno, this transcendent genius who, with Friday, was one of Carse's two trusted comrades-in-arms. "I've been expecting you," he went on. "Has something happened?"
"I'm concerned with Ku Sui again," the Hawk told him swiftly. "Please excuse me; I have to be brief. I can't take any chances of his hearing any of this." He related the events of the last two days: Judd's attack on the Iapetus ranch, the subsequent fight and outcome, and finally his present position and intention of keeping the rendezvous. "The odds are pretty heavily against me, M. S.," he went on. "It would be stupid not to admit that I may not come out of this affair alive—and that's why I'm calling. My affairs, of course, are in your hands. You know where my storerooms and papers are. Sell my trading posts and ranches; Hartz of Newark-on-Venus is the best man to deal through. But I'd advise you to keep for yourself that information on the Pool of Radium. Look into it sometime. I'm in Judd's ship, the Scorpion; our Star Devil's on Iapetus, hidden in the jungle near the ranch. That's all, I think."
"Carse, I should be with you!"
"No, M. S.—couldn't risk it. You're too valuable a man. But don't worry, you know my luck. I'll very likely be down to see you after this meeting, and perhaps with a visitor who will enable you once again to return to an honorable position on Earth. Where will you be?"
"In eight Earth days? Let's make it Porno, at the house you know. I'll come in for some supplies and wait for you."
"Good," the Hawk said shortly. "Good-by, M. S."
He paused, his hand on the switch. There came a parting wish:
"Good luck, old fellow. Get him! Get him!"
The Master Scientist's voice trembled at the end. Through Ku Sui he had lost honor, position, home—all good things a man on Earth may have; through Ku Sui he, the gentlest of men, was regarded by Earthlings as a black murderer and there was a price on his head. Hawk Carse did not miss the trembling in his voice. As he switched off, the adventurer's eyes went bleak as the loneliest deeps of space….
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:::info About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.
This book is part of the public domain. Astounding Stories. (2009). ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE, MARCH 1932. USA. Project Gutenberg. Updated JAN 5 2021, from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29310/pg29310-images.html
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.
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