Digital Stories Wins a Prestigious Award… for Storytelling
For the fifth time, Digital Stories is among the big winners of Bulgaria’s most hotly contested and well-established journalism competition, the Web Report awards, organized for the seventh year running by the news portal Dir.bg. The honor means a great deal because of the respected jury and the stiff competition: 230 pieces of journalism were entered. Digital Stories has been among the winners every single year since the project began, and this year the award comes in the True Stories category for “Jesus: The Programmer Who Came Out of the Ghetto,” while a second piece, “How to Generate Yourself an Influencer,” was one of the three nominees in the Technology and Innovation category.
62How Did We Break the Conversation Online?
Never before have we been able to talk about the things that matter, hear the smartest people and debate them the way we can online today, and yet… we spend our time looking for something to fight about. Here is a small experiment, garnished with eight things to think about, that follows a single article about covid on its journey through social media. A reflection on where we have ended up.
63The Wanderer Who Toppled a Government (Without Meaning To)
Can we change the world around us—our country, the world—simply by writing online about what moves us? We can, and here is the strongest proof I have ever come across. Meet Chergar, the legendary anonymous blogger whose satirical mystifications became part of Bulgaria's digital folklore, and one of whose texts ended up, entirely against his intentions, bringing down the Bulgarian government.
64Buying Eternal Youth
Forty-six-year-old Bryan Johnson has already spent more than $4 million to make his body work like an 18-year-old's. He claims it is working. He puts everything into it, going as far as infusing himself with blood plasma from his own son. He believes he is the most measured human being who has ever lived, and that his experiment will change the life of everyone who wants to live long. In other words, everyone. Dream or utopia? An obscene waste of money or an idea that could change our evolution? Genius or sheer madness?
65ChatGPT vs. the Champions: The Last One Wins!
Do you know which place in Bulgaria had the highest average IQ on March 16, 2024, between noon and 6 p.m.? ChatGPT couldn't even guess. But I know the answer. No, it wasn't the National Assembly, Bulgaria's parliament. Eighty people had gathered in a restaurant in Plovdiv for an intellectual contest, many of them familiar to anyone who follows trivia, quizzes and television knowledge games. Split into 10 teams, they faced one another and, at the same time… the aforementioned ChatGPT. No fewer than 33 of them had won the show The Last One Wins on BNT 1 at least once (myself included). Almost all of the most popular contestants, with impressive tallies of victories, took part. The rest of the 80 who joined the club were contestants on the show and fans of quizzes as a format. What kind of unusual contest was this? Who turned out to be the big winner? What is the future of intellectual games in our battle (or encounter) with technology? Why would anyone today need to know and remember facts that are an arm's length away online?
66Pavel Durov: The Better Zuckerberg
If there is Gandalf and Gandalf the White, why not Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg the White? Telegram founder Pavel Durov is a strange bird: a billionaire born in 1984 like the father of Facebook, but a Latin-speaking philologist and alleged hacker who built an app that promises security instead of manipulation. Two children, or none at all? What is his next big project, and does he fear artificial intelligence? Durov is one of those figures who make today’s tech world far more exciting…
67The Programmer Who Chose to Become a Babysitter
Programming, and a future in the much-vaunted IT sector, is as tempting as ever. Our guest today spent 20 years as a programmer, long before it became fashionable, until he realized he was tired of computers and happiest among children. So, defying every stereotype, Bogdan decided to earn his living as a babysitter.
68What Should the Next Digital Story Be?
Can you think of a story that deserves to be told? Let me know, and if your idea becomes a piece here, you'll get a personal gift. Digital Stories turns three today! It's time to take stock of what has been achieved so far, time for you to have your say, and finally, time… for some unexpected news.
69Tetris: The Soviet Game That Has Been Making Legends for 40 Years
Almost 40 years on, the original Tetris has finally been beaten! The triumph of a likable 13-year-old kid turned all eyes back to the good old classic contest from the days when computer games were a perfect feast for the senses, and to the story of how the game everyone knows was born and became a legend, with its fascinating sides and its dark secrets.
70The Unseen Code
“In the software world, people with visual impairments can find exceptionally good professional opportunities,” says today’s guest—and he proves it with his own example. For two decades Ismail Ismail has been building websites with open-source platforms and championing accessibility in the Bulgarian WordPress community, and now he has set out on the path of classical programming. Open your senses to a rather unexpected… point of view.
71“The Computer Will Be Like Bread!” How Bulgarian Sci-Fi Writers Saw the 21st Century
What will the future look like? What would life in the 21st century be, seen through the telescope of Bulgarian journalists and science fiction writers of the 1980s? Ahead lie five brilliant insights, five dashed hopes and five… particularly interesting and important reasons to stop and think.
72Fifteen Years Without Money: Is Mark Boyle Happy?
Just imagine living a whole week without money. None at all—no cards, no banknotes! Now picture a month, a year. Today's hero has managed it for 15 whole summers, and seven years ago he gave up modern technology too; he says he has never been happier. Could you imagine tomorrow without money and without technology? What else does Mark Boyle have to tell us?
73Mitnick, the Mythical Hacker
As a boy, Kevin Mitnick was curious, but puzzles and chess left him cold; he preferred a rather different kind of problem… Before he even came of age, he was convicted of hacking, a crime that at the time didn't even exist in the law books. Soon he would become the most wanted hacker, “Public Enemy No. 1” (according to the New York Times) and the FBI's greatest challenge. Only to land in prison again, and to walk out as the savior of companies from online criminals. A life like a movie, you'll say. And films have indeed been made about his life, but… only about part of it. In July 2023, Kevin Mitnick passed away, seemingly having finally found happiness, though he narrowly missed living to see his first child. The man who coined the term “social engineering,” the teacher of today's hackers and of today's cybersecurity specialists alike, lived his life like a movie worth watching from beginning to end. The way he himself would have told it—the most wanted and most talked-about hacker in history…
74Paul Allen: The Other Face of Microsoft
Two kids become friends over their shared fascination with computers. Then they start their first company together. Less than a decade later, that same company is the first giant of the modern computer age. And while we know a great deal about one of those kids, who for a long time was the richest man on the planet, the story of the other is far less familiar. None other than the computer specialist Paul Allen, the “godfather” of Microsoft, turned out to be the owner of the most expensive private art collection ever sold. And this happened in November 2022, four years after he left this world. A connoisseur of art, a man smitten with sports, a huge donor to scientific research. He is also the rich man who awakened the modern interest in spaceflight. At just 29 he learned that he had a deadly illness, and he decided to live the rest of his life the way he had always dreamed. There is a lot we can learn from the story and the worldview of this unconventional figure. And, even more, we can ask ourselves what today’s tech world would look like if its other leaders shared his outlook.
75The Boy Who Saved the Internet—and Went to Prison
May 12, 2017, the day that could have put an end to the internet. The computers of Britain's National Health Service begin to collapse one after another. They stop working, and an unambiguous message appears on the screen: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted! Send between $300 and $600 in bitcoin to the following address to unlock the machine…” The WannaCry virus, which entered Bulgarian meme folklore under the absurd translation Искаплаче (Iskaplache, “wants-to-cry”), becomes the most powerful cyberattack in human history. In a single afternoon it causes between $4 billion and $8 billion in damage. What's more, because of how and how fast it spreads, it threatens to infect every device connected to the internet within a day. It is stopped, in a most unexpected way, by a likable curly-haired Briton of Jamaican descent. At just 22, he becomes a celebrity in the cyberworld. Until, a few months later, he ends up in an American prison facing charges that could bring him decades behind bars. The story of Marcus Hutchins is something between The Count of Monte Cristo and Crime and Punishment for the digital age. About the rise and fall of the boy who saved the internet (and thousands of lives) before he came face to face with the mistakes of his past…
76The Programmer Who Deleted 11 Lines and “Broke” the Internet
March 23, 2016, could have been an apocalyptic day in the history of the digital world, one unlikely ever to be repeated. Netflix, Facebook and Spotify were just a few of the countless sites that suddenly turned out to be… impossible to maintain and update. Why? Twenty-eight-year-old programmer Azer Koçulu had simply deleted 11 fateful lines of computer code. But how can an unknown programmer block the sites of global giants? Why, in today's strange online world, do enormous multibillion-dollar projects unexpectedly turn out to rest on the shoulders of volunteer enthusiasts? And what made Azer so angry that he unleashed the butterfly effect in its most terrifying form? Sometimes the smallest, seemingly harmless lines of code change the whole program…
77Tsvetomil and the Algorithm: Poems Come to Life
Can poems be painted? Are humans and algorithms rivals in this task, or is it time they joined forces to create the next forms of art? Open your senses to an emotional experience in which human and computer, side by side, challenge both your senses and your feelings…
78Gone in 60 Seconds: The Person and the Profile
How important is your profile on your favorite social network? And what would happen if everything it holds vanished in a second, with no chance of getting it back? Here is an especially important first-person story about how easy it is to lose… yourself online.
79The Man Who Became a Domain, and the Trouble with Files
Kim Dotcom is not a website, nor the next heir to the North Korean dynasty or to the Kardashian clan—though yes, that is also the name of his website, and his life is a roller coaster: hacker, mega-successful entrepreneur, multimillionaire, and then a criminal doing everything in his power to escape American justice, with a stint as a champion of online freedom somewhere in between. It is time for one of today's most colorful and least-known digital stories, as unexpected, instructive, vivid and dynamic as its protagonist. And for an important lesson about where and how we store our data.
80Universe 25: Of Mice and Men
Four pairs of mice are released to live as they please. With an abundance of food and water, far from danger and disease. Ready to conquer a vast territory… A mouse paradise! They start breeding like rabbits. Their numbers soar, doubling every 55 days. By all appearances they are living their best lives and savoring every moment. A year later, 620 mice live in “paradise”! Until suddenly something inexplicable happens: many of the rodents turn aggressive and start wounding each other for no reason. Then the males grow lazy and indifferent, and the population of the mouse kingdom imperceptibly begins to shrink… until it all ends in total collapse. Could this be a sign of where the natural course of our own life here on Earth is heading? Researcher John Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment, carried out half a century ago, has become a huge source of reflection from the 1970s right up to the age of Facebook.
