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Stories From Beyond: The Articles We Loved in 2019
OneZero staffers select their favorite reads from around the web
Looking for something to read? We hope you’ll keep your eyes trained on OneZero… most of the time.
As readers ourselves, we’d like to highlight some of our favorite technology and science stories published elsewhere throughout 2019. Some of these inspired our own coverage, others simply delighted us, and all of them expanded our understanding of the world around us.
Take some time over the holidays to explore these for yourself. (Might we suggest the Save to Medium feature?) And follow OneZero for great reads every day.
How Algorithms Know What You’ll Type Next
By Wessel Stoop and Antal Van Den Bosch for The Pudding
Explaining how an algorithm works, using words alone, can be tedious, boring, and confusing. So instead of just telling, “visual essay” site The Pudding uses interactive elements to show the reader how text predictors work, how they are personalized, and how the output depends heavily on the data set they’re drawing from. The resulting article is fun and enlightening, without requiring any technical expertise to understand.
— Will Oremus, Senior Writer
The Climate Crisis Has Sparked a Siberian Mammoth Tusk Gold Rush
By Sabrina Weiss for Wired
There were several stories this year about Siberia’s mammoth ivory rush — a bizarre industry borne out of climate change — but this one was the most in-depth. Weiss introduces us to “ice ivory” miners in Russia who are exhuming dead mammoths from the melting permafrost for their tusks. Their bounty is then sold to customers in China who treat it no differently than ivory from near-extinct elephants. The story reveals the unsettling supply chain behind a product that would likely not exist without climate change. In addition to being a fascinating read, it’s also a depressing reminder that even extinction itself can be commodified.
— Sarah Emerson, Staff Writer
