Sophia Lewis

The F.B.I., working with other countries, disrupted a Russian hacking operation that infiltrated more than 1,000 home and small-business internet routers in the United States and around the world, the Justice Department announced on Thursday.Russian intelligence, collaborating with cybercriminals, created a botnet, or a network of private computers infected with malicious software, to spy on military and security organizations and private corporations in countries like the United States.Using a court order, the F.B.I. secretly copied and deleted stolen data and malware from hacked routers. Doing this stopped Russia’s ability to use the routers without affecting how they function, officials said.…

Another month, another try at the moon.A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early morning hours of Wednesday. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.It is also the latest private effort to send spacecraft to the moon. Earlier attempts have all ended in failure. But the company in charge of the latest effort, Intuitive Machines of Houston, is optimistic. “I feel fairly confident that we’re going to be successful softly touching down on the moon,” said Stephen…

In the darkest moments of a family tragedy, when the playwright Mona Pirnot couldn’t find the strength to verbalize her feelings to her boyfriend or her therapist, she tried something a little unorthodox: She typed her thoughts into her laptop, and prompted a text-to-speech program to voice them aloud.It was a coping mechanism that also sparked a creative pivot: Pirnot’s then-boyfriend, now-husband, Lucas Hnath, is also a playwright, with a longtime interest in sound and a more recent history of building shows around disembodied voices. His last play, “A Simulacrum,” featured a magician re-creating his side of a conversation with…