Ethics & Morality — Posts

59 posts on "Ethics & Morality" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• Google uses AI and Wolbachia bacteria to fight deadly mosquitoes — Google combats deadly diseases by releasing millions of AI-sorted, bacteria-infected male mosquitoes designed to crash local mosquito populations.
• Bambu Lab vs. the open-source community: a fight over who controls — Bambu Lab's push to lock its printers to official software has triggered a fierce backlash from open-source developers and right-to-repair activists,…
• An Island Experiment in AI Governance and Digital Twins — British startup Sensay is launching a social experiment on a tropical island, using AI digital twins of historical figures to govern a new state.
• The Price of Security: Redefining Professional Independence — A personal journey of leaving a grueling job highlights why true independence is about self-determination and embracing the unknown.
• What freedom really means, and where we actually find it — A Passover reflection on the deeper meaning of freedom, beyond economic independence and control over one's fate.
• China approved a commercial brain implant for paralysis — the West is — While technologies like Neuralink await lengthy FDA approval, China has commercially cleared an invasive brain implant that restores movement to paralyzed
• Why Musk's controversial xAI moves may follow a familiar playbook — The Tesla-to-xAI money flows look like investor betrayal, but Musk's Solar City precedent suggests a ruthless rebuild strategy rather than a bailout.
• Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: a $200M contract and a question of who — After Anthropic refused to lift Claude's safety restrictions for the Pentagon, losing a $200M contract, the clash raises hard questions about corporate…
• A train to Jerusalem and what divides us less than we think — A personal essay on a train ride to Jerusalem that weaves together strangers, scorched landscapes, and a question about what holds Israeli society…
• Why Nokia got Asus and Acer banned from selling PCs in Germany — A Nokia patent lawsuit over HEVC video decoding reveals the licensing chaos behind modern video codecs and why the industry is moving to AV1.
• How Nvidia quietly sought pirated data from Anna's Archive to train — An internal Nvidia email revealed the company pursued access to Anna's Archive's illegal dataset for AI training, exposing the ethical compromises driving
• How data center water use compares to the beef industry — A breakdown of xAI's Colossus 2 data center water consumption against hamburger production figures challenges the assumption that AI infrastructure is…
• When crypto thieves knock on the door: the rise of physical robbery — As cold wallets and stronger cybersecurity close digital attack routes, criminals are turning to physical home invasions to steal crypto — with over 200…
• Fear of firing, hunger for pay — and how to strip employers of their — Building a year-long cash cushion and embracing frugality can quietly shift the power balance in any career negotiation.
• How stolen Motorola technology helps China track Tibetan refugees in — Stolen Motorola source code, surveillance cameras, and economic incentives have turned Nepal into a Chinese-operated tracking ground for Tibetan exiles.
• Biological mini-brains as computers: inside FinalSpark's experiment — Swiss startup FinalSpark grows human brain cells on electrodes and trains them with dopamine to perform computing tasks at roughly one-millionth the…
• How to collect a stubborn debt without threats or pleading — Five practical rules for freelancers dealing with non-paying clients, drawn from a firsthand account of calm, persistent debt collection that worked.
• How a Chinese entrepreneur seized millions of IP addresses meant for — A single entrepreneur obtained roughly 10 million IPv4 addresses allocated to Africa and now leases them globally, leaving the continent short of a…
• GTA 6's staggering budget and what it reveals about the games — With an estimated $2 billion development budget and forecasts of $7 billion in profit within two months of launch, GTA 6 is a case study in betting…
• How a $10,000 card-shuffling machine became the tool of a global — Federal charges against 31 suspects across 11 countries detail how the DeckMate 2 shuffler was compromised via its USB and network ports to signal winning
• How an SS7 security flaw became a tool for tracking and killing — A shell-company operation exploited a decades-old flaw in the SS7 telecom protocol to sell real-time phone location tracking to corrupt regimes, with…
• A free WordPress plugin for Israel's privacy banner requirement — Responding to Israel's updated privacy law and the lack of local tools, the author built a free WordPress plugin that adds a customizable privacy notice…
• Pig butchering on a massive scale: the $15 billion Bitcoin seizure — The U.S. Justice Department seized $15 billion in Bitcoin tied to a Cambodian forced-labor fraud network running large-scale pig butchering scams.
• What I chose to ignore this year, and why it mattered — A Yom Kippur reflection on tuning out divisive noise and carrying a more intentional mindset into the new year.
• A comfortable job can quietly cost you your ambitions — A well-paying, comfortable workplace can lull personal ambitions to sleep just as surely as a toxic one — and is harder to recognize as a threat.
• Smarter but weaker: the evolutionary trade-off driving human decline — As cognitive gains push physical capabilities into decline, the piece argues we are heading toward a future where survival depends on machines fused with…
• Why Catalan police are taking a close look at Google Pixel owners — Because Pixel phones are the only devices that run the privacy-hardened GrapheneOS, Catalan police now treat ownership as a potential red flag in…
• Fake plant seeds generated by AI are selling online for real money — Scammers are using AI-generated plant images to sell seeds for species that never existed, earning thousands of dollars and eroding trust in real…
• Apple I: the garage-built computer now selling for nearly a million — A look at the Apple I's origins, design philosophy, and how a machine that sold for $666 became a collector's item fetching nearly $1 million at auction.
• A gold Lego brick worth $15,000 and the decline of workplace loyalty — A rare 14-karat gold Lego brick once given to 25-year employees serves as a lens for examining how job tenure shrank and workplace loyalty transformed.
• The children's uranium kit from the 1950s that became one of — The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab sold radioactive ore samples and a Geiger counter to children in the early 1950s, with fewer than 5,000 units made…
• Your employer owes you nothing emotionally — your colleagues are a — A clear-eyed argument for separating the cold logic of employment contracts from the genuine human relationships that make work worth showing up for.
• Robotic sculpture and the question of what human artistry still means — As Monumental Labs deploys autonomous robotic arms to carve stone, the post asks whether machine-made sculpture can ever carry the same weight as a…
• What it means to be Israeli: grief and joy, division and belonging — A reflection on the Israeli paradox of mourning and celebration, arguing that living between extremes is itself a source of national resilience.
• Owning vs. licensing: how the digital age redefined what you actually — From a Nintendo Switch button to HDMI cables, the licensing model Bill Gates pioneered has quietly eroded what consumers actually own when they pay for a…
• A composer's lab-grown brain cells are making music in a gallery — Organoids grown from composer Alvin Lucier's blood cells now generate sound from electrical signals, raising questions about authorship and what art…
• The skydiver who seeded 100 million trees over the Amazon — Brazilian skydiving record-holder Luigi Cani spent five years planning a single jump that scattered 100 million tree seeds over the Amazon, with satellite
• The Jiangsu shipyard and the cost of erasing the individual — A viral clip of thousands of workers flooding out of a Chinese shipyard becomes a meditation on what dictatorships erase — and what democracies must…
• Sound weapons in Serbia: the wave physics behind a crowd's sudden — An explanation of how phased speaker arrays use constructive interference to produce dangerously intense sound, illustrated by reported use against…
• CRISPR gave a female mosquito a male proboscis and ended her ability — Using CRISPR gene editing, researchers altered the proboscis of a female mosquito to resemble a male's, stripping her of the ability to bite and draw…
• Colossal Biosciences raises $200 million to bring back the woolly — The Texas startup is editing African elephant DNA with CRISPR to resurrect extinct species, drawing both excitement about reproductive medicine and…
• Remote lung surgery in China: surgeon operated from 5,000 km away — A Chinese surgeon removed a lung tumor from 5,000 km away using robotic arms, demonstrating real-time remote control — while raising valid questions about
• A brain implant built from the patient's own neurons aims to outdo — Science, founded by Neuralink's former president, is developing brain implants grown from a patient's own stem cells, potentially reducing rejection risk…
• The everyday ghosting most people never think twice about — A short reflection on why closing the loop with salespeople and service providers, even with a simple no, is a matter of basic respect.
• A hyperrealist sculpture of a homeless man in a Zurich luxury hotel — A Zurich luxury hotel placed a hyperrealist homeless figure by artist Duane Hanson near its reception to provoke reflection on social inequality.
• The LAPD's patrol robot looks like it came straight from a video game — The LAPD's new autonomous patrol robot bears a striking resemblance to drones from Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, raising familiar questions about government…
• After restoring power post-typhoon, electrical engineers got a hero's — Residents of Hunan lined the streets to cheer the electrical crews who restored power after a typhoon — a small reminder of what gratitude looks like in…
• Cryonics for $220,000: Tomorrow Bio's bet on coming back to life — Tomorrow Bio fills bodies with antifreeze and stores them in liquid nitrogen, wagering that future technology will one day reverse death.
• Serbia's lithium protests expose the environmental cost of the EV — As automakers celebrate Rio Tinto's renewed lithium mining license in Serbia, mass protests highlight the ecological destruction that fuels the green…
• The heroes among us: what wartime courage teaches about everyday — Reflecting on recent acts of selfless heroism, the piece calls on us to appreciate the quiet, giving people in our lives while we still can.
• Modern slavery: how Asian crime cartels recruit workers for online — A Wall Street Journal investigation into the story of Billy from Ethiopia exposes a vast forced-labor industry running online scams across lawless corners
• A question about your epitaph that reorders your priorities — Drawing on Israeli dark humor and a lifelong question about legacy, a personal essay arguing there is no reason to choose between passion, income, and…
• Ordained at 29 with no plans to serve: a rabbi's certificate and a — An Israeli tech entrepreneur reflects on earning a municipal rabbinical ordination after seven years of study — a credential he will shelve while building
• Roblox is bringing ads to its virtual world, with an age restriction — Roblox plans to place in-world billboard ads restricted to users 13 and older, opening a new revenue stream for brands targeting the next generation of…
• Why shouting at a client never works — and what does — From difficult clients to public protests, the author argues that shouting entrenches positions rather than changing them, and that calm reasoning…
• Fear and dreams: the two tools used to control people — A sharp look at how fear and desire are weaponized to manipulate people, and why healthy skepticism is the most effective defense.
• The 1970s alliance behind South Africa's ICJ case against Israel — South Africa's lawsuit against Israel at the Hague stems from lingering resentment over Israel's military cooperation with the former Apartheid regime.
• Why Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI may have real strategic logic — Beyond the public spectacle, Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI may be aimed at securing historical credit, source code access, or compensation for his…
• Ramadan through the eyes of an Israeli father — An Israeli manager reflects on the painful contradiction between his respect for a Muslim colleague and the fear Ramadan stirs in him as a parent living…