Living

There's always a pause after someone asks, "Can I have your number?" Someone's silently wondering if complying will mean trouble. What if you didn't have to worry about about that?  Enter the Burner App. For $1.99 per use, iPhone owners can get a disposable, short-term phone number to use for business, pleasure or any combination of the two. From within the app, you choose an area code and ask for a number.  But like a prepaid phone card, when the time expires, no more calling. The number is "burned," or quarantined for two weeks before being recirculated. Fresh Burner numbers are good for talk and text for seven days. During that week, you get up to 20 minutes of talk and 60 texts. You can add time to a burned number, too. An additional 30 days, 50 voice minutes and 150 texts costs about $2.50. Burner requires you to have a phone plan in order to get a temporary line.  Nefarious deeds aside, burnable phone numbers can be useful when conducting transac...

How close does a video call come to replicating actual human contact? What if that call is the only contact you have with the outside world while in prison—does that change the calculus at all? Apparently so, for inmates in the District of Columbia Department of Corrections. The department's installed 108 video units, split between its jails and a Video Visitation Center at the District of Columbia General Hospital. That seems like a net positive on the surface, but it's actually a contentious topic: The District of Columbia made the switch on July 25 to video visitation, a growing trend in the corrections field. To proponents, the video systems provide a more convenient, safer, thriftier alternative to in-person visits. Some jurisdictions even make money, by charging for the video visits. Critics, including prisoner advocates and corrections officers concerned with how prisoners fare once they are released, fear that the video visits allow less meaningful contact with family ...