The heatwave currently blanketing two-thirds of the United States with record-setting temperatures is straining the nation's power system. On Monday, Con Edison, New York City's power provider, urged residents to conserve electricity. It reduced power voltage to the borough of Brooklyn by 8 percent as it made repairs; it did the same to areas in the boroughs of Staten Island and Queens yesterday. Thousands also lost power as the grid could not handle the strain. Comparable outages have been felt around much of the East Coast and Midwest including in the states of Virginia and New Jersey.

Artists and criminals are often the first to push the boundaries of technology. Barrett Brown is a criminal who has actually helped inspire art -- the TV show Mr. Robot. Its protagonist is a hacktivist -- a hacker that breaks into computer systems to promote a cause. Brown served time for being part of Anonymous, a group that hacked a private security firm to reveal secrets. He had spent years in a prison cell thinking about what he might do when he got out.