The Download: dodging China’s porn ban, and a crypto fraud first
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Chinese gamers are using a Steam wallpaper app to get porn past the censors
If you have been on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform, you might have noticed an anomaly on the chart of the top 20 most popular apps: Wallpaper Engine. The software lets you download animated and interactive wallpapers for your machine’s monitor.
So why does this seemingly obscure wallpaper app rank alongside global blockbuster franchises like Counter-Strike or Dota?
The epiphany will come when you begin to read Wallpaper Engine’s reviews. More than 200,000 of them are written in Chinese. And these reviews almost all talk about one thing: porn. Or more specifically, about using the software as a cloud drive and a video player for exchanging adult-only content.
Online porn is banned in China, so people there have to get creative to access it. Steam is one of the only popular global platforms still available in the country, and its community features, international high-speed servers, and increasingly hands-off approach when it comes to sexual content have made it an inevitable choice. Chinese users now make up at least 40% of Wallpaper Engine’s global user base, MIT Technology Review estimates.
However, they’re afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether. Read the full story.
—Zeyi Yang
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The US has charged people in the first crypto insider trading case
A former product manager at Coinbase, his brother, and their friend, are accused of wire fraud. (NBC)
+ That’s bad news for Coinbase. (Quartz)
+ Investors are still doing crypto deals—they’re just raising the bar for who gets funding. (The Information $)
+ Extreme heat in Texas is stirring opposition to energy-guzzling crypto miners. (NBC)
+ A blockchain-based carbon offset company started a forest fire in Spain. (Vice)
+ Crypto is weathering a bitter storm. Some still hold on for dear life. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Amazon now wants to be your doctor, too 
It’s planning to acquire primary care and telehealth company One Medical for nearly $4 billion. (Recode)
+ Nervous? You should be. (WP $)
3 The US has reported its first polio case in a decade
The unvaccinated young adult who contracted it has now developed paralysis. (AP)
+ Biden has tested positive for covid. (NYT $)
4 Facebook is going to shove more videos into people’s feeds
Its midlife crisis continues. (The Verge)
+ Snap reported earnings so bad yesterday that they wiped $69 billion from social media company stocks. (Bloomberg $)
5 Inside Ukraine’s open source war
Digital networks are helping Ukraine resist the Russian invasion. (FT $)
+ Activists are targeting Russians with open-source “protestware”. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Health researchers are struggling to adjust to a post-Roe US
Bans and legal uncertainty are already making it harder for them to do their jobs. (Nature)
+ Embryonic research may become a whole lot more difficult. (Wired $)
+ YouTube has pledged to do more about abortion misinformation. (NBC)
+ As women’s choices disappear, more men are getting vasectomies. (Vice)
+ Big Tech remains silent on questions about data privacy in a post-Roe US. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Authors are using AI to help write their stories 
And they’re facing a whole lot of controversy along the way. (The Verge)
+ A college kid’s fake, AI-generated blog fooled tens of thousands. This is how he made it. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Now there might be too many computer chips
Factories have rapidly ramped up production over the past few months, and now sales of gadgets are slowing. (WSJ $)
9 How living on Mars time forces you to slow down 
A NASA engineer explains what it’s like to work in another planet’s timezone. (NPR)
10 Use the summer slowdown to fix your inbox
A few minutes of organizing now can save you hours of stress down the line. (WP $)
Quote of the day
“These are things from the past.”
—Silvia Giuliano, 45, sums up the general mood in Europe as she points to stickers instructing people to maintain a distance of one meter on the floor of a bookstore in Rome, the New York Times reports.
The big story
The therapists using AI to make therapy better
December 2021
Therapy can have mixed results, but at its best, it can be utterly transformative. What’s crucial is delivering the right words at the right time—and that can be fiendishly difficult to figure out. Several tech start-ups are determined to try anyway, using natural-language processing to identify which parts of a conversation between therapist and client—which types of utterance and exchange—seem to be most effective at treating different disorders.
The aim is to give therapists better insight into what they do, helping experienced therapists maintain a high standard of care and helping trainees improve. Amid a global shortfall in care, an automated form of quality control could be essential in helping clinics meet demand.
And ultimately, the approach may reveal exactly how psychotherapy works in the first place, something that clinicians and researchers are still largely in the dark about. Read the full story.
—Charlotte Jee and Will Douglas Heaven
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you absolutely cannot trust badgers.
+ A fun interview with Jack White about his music and his cool new blue hair.
+ This YouTube collection lets you take a virtual tour around some of the most amazing places around the world.
+ Is that mysterious pink hue in the sky caused by aliens? No, someone forgot to shut the curtains in the local cannabis plant.
+ I think I am ready for this jelly.
