How to Be More Anonymous Online - WIRED | Critical Infrastructure Is Sinking Along the US East Coast - WIRED | What Is Qi2? The Wireless Charging Standard Goes Magnetic in 2024 - WIRED | Why Everyone Is Obsessed With the Kid Who Beat 'Tetris'

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How to Be More Anonymous Online - WIRED (No paywall)

At this stage of the internet, being totally anonymous across your entire online life is incredibly hard to achieve. Phones, SIM cards, browsers, Wi-Fi networks, and more use identifiers that can be linked to your activity. But there are steps you can take to obscure your identity for everyday browsing.

If you’re looking to be truly anonymous or to protect your identity for a specific purpose—such as whistleblowing or activism—you should consider your threat model and individual security situation. But many of the changes you can make, which are listed below, are straightforward switches that can stop you from being tracked as much and apply to most people.

For the most anonymity, the Tor Browser is best. Downloadable in the same way as any other browser, it encrypts your traffic by sending it through a number of servers and also deploys anti-censorship, anti-fingerprinting, and other privacy measures. Because of its advanced protections, however, Tor can sometimes be slower than other browsers. Several privacy-focused browsers such as FireFox, the Mullvad Browser, and Brave offer enhanced protections against trackers and offer further customizable privacy settings.

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Critical Infrastructure Is Sinking Along the US East Coast - WIRED (No paywall)

Unless you’re sinking into quicksand, you might assume that the land beneath your feet is solid and unmoving. In actual fact, your part of the world may well be undergoing “subsidence,” which is where the ground collapses as sediments settle or when people over-extract groundwater. New York City is sinking, too, due to the weight of all those buildings pushing on the ground. In extreme cases, like in California’s agriculturally intensive San Joaquin Valley, elevations have plummeted not by inches, but by dozens of feet.

Last year, scientists reported that the US Atlantic Coast is dropping by several millimeters annually, with some areas, like Delaware, notching figures several times that rate. So just as the seas are rising, the land along the eastern seaboard is sinking, greatly compounding the hazard for coastal communities.

In a followup study just published in the journal PNAS Nexus, the researchers tally up the mounting costs of subsidence—due to settling, groundwater extraction, and other factors—for those communities and their infrastructure. Using satellite measurements, they have found that up to 74,000 square kilometers (29,000 square miles) of the Atlantic Coast are exposed to subsidence of up to 2 millimeters (0.079 inches) a year, affecting up to 14 million people and 6 million properties. And over 3,700 square kilometers along the Atlantic Coast are sinking more than 5 millimeters annually. That’s an even faster change than sea-level rise, currently at 4 millimeters a year. (In the map below, warmer colors represent more subsidence, up to 6 millimeters.)

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What Is Qi2? The Wireless Charging Standard Goes Magnetic in 2024 - WIRED (No paywall)

It's ironic, but we here at WIRED have long been fans of wireless charging. Not having to fumble with cables is nice! Most wireless charging devices these days follow the Qi (pronounced chee) standard, which has taken its time reaching ubiquity (the user experience has not always been great). The Wireless Power Consortium, which manages the charging protocol, announced the next-generation version called Qi2 in early 2023, and we're finally starting to see devices supporting it. It promises perfect alignment, with the potential for accessories to bridge the Android and iPhone divide.

Qi2 is the new open wireless charging standard from the Wireless Power Consortium, and it brings important upgrades over the original Qi standard. The headline is the Magnetic Power Profile (MPP), which is based on Apple’s MagSafe technology. (Apple was involved in developing the Qi2 standard.) This allows Qi2-branded devices to add a ring of magnets to ensure perfect alignment with chargers and allow for faster charging speeds.

The existing, non-magnetic wireless charging Extended Power Profile (EPP) has also been updated to comply with Qi2. This means that devices without magnets will be branded Qi and will still work with Qi2 chargers. Qi2 is also fully backward compatible, so you can charge an older Qi Android phone or MagSafe iPhone on a Qi2 charger. You can also use any Qi chargers to charge Qi2 devices, though they will charge at slower speeds.

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Why Everyone Is Obsessed With the Kid Who Beat 'Tetris' - WIRED (No paywall)

A 13-year-old kid has seemingly beat Tetris. Long believed impossible or a myth, the magical feat took place on December 21 and apparently shocked even the player, Willis Gibson, who reached level 157 and launched the heretofore unseen “kill screen,” where the game crashes and there’s nothing left to play. “Oh my god,” Willis says repeatedly in a video he posted of his success this week. “I’m going to pass out.”

Under any other circumstances, this would have simply elicited a “Hey, cool!” response. “Kid beat Tetris” is the kind of thing that would pop up on Boing Boing or X, and elicit a smile and a share with the group chat. This week, though, Gibson’s story took off. It got covered on CNN, NPR, and The New York Freaking Times. Maya Rogers, the CEO of Tetris, congratulated Willis, known as “Blue Scuti,” in a statement to the Associated Press, saying his “monumental achievement” defied “all preconceived limits of this legendary game.”

On this point, she is right. Ever since Nintendo brought Tetris from Russia to the rest of the world, the game has been a bit of a cultural obsession. Over the holidays, stores were selling Tetris waffle-makers. Apple’s 2023 Tetris movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but had fans seeing falling blocks in their dreams once again. Interest in the game, now four decades old, isn’t, I believe, what’s driving the fascination with Gibson’s victory. I think it’s a deep desire for some kind of wonder.

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