   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S48Good news for clumsy divers: Physics holds the key to less-painful belly-flops   We've all had the misfortune of botching a dive into the pool and ending up in a painful belly-flop—or perhaps we've done it deliberately to show off and instantly regretted that decision. Hitting the water in that body position can feel like hitting concrete and lead to bruising or (if one is falling from a greater height) internal injuries. While the basic physics is well-understood, scientists are always looking for greater insight into the phenomenon in hopes of finding novel ways to ameliorate the impact.
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S30Why Generative AI Investments Are Surging in the U.S.  Business leaders are exploring more use cases of AI as adoption reaches a critical threshold, according to a new study by Wharton’s Stefano Puntoni.Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in November last year, there has been a wave of ground-breaking generative AI launches. Companies like Microsoft are developing new AI tools, providing productivity-enhancing software that potentially empowers millions of workers to automate tasks like document and email generation or spreadsheet creation.
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S31Paul Hawken: Regeneration can restore a broken world  A frog and a mockingbird changed Paul Hawken's life, kindling a devotion to protect and restore nature. Now, as one of the world's preeminent environmentalists, he advocates for regeneration — a calling and action plan for the world to come together to end the climate crisis in one generation and put life at the center of every decision we make.
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S17Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S37Elon Musk Announces Grok, a 'Rebellious' AI With Few Guardrails .jpg) Last week, Elon Musk flew to the UK to hype up the existential risk posed by artificial intelligence. A couple of days later, he announced that his latest company, xAI, had developed a powerful AIâone with fewer guardrails than the competition.The AI model, called Grok (a name that means "to understand" in tech circles), "is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don't use it if you hate humor!" reads an announcement on the company's website. "It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems."
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S8S47S20The goats fighting fires in Los Angeles  It's a typical Los Angeles scene: the Pacific Ocean sparkling under a crystal-clear, bright blue sky, with miles of golden sandy beaches stretching as far as the eye can see. There's also a herd of goats precariously perched on a clifftop, enjoying the multimillion-dollar view.These aren't just any goats, though – they're California's new secret weapon in the fight against wildfires, and they're being put out to graze across the state.
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S46The "Nietzsche Thesis": Why we don't really care about truth  At the end of his life, Herman Melville (author of Moby-Dick) wrote a book called The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. The novel is set aboard a steamboat and is a collection of vignettes involving conmen, cheats, and chumps. In Melville’s world, people are divided into three kinds: trusting dupes, suspicious cynics, and hustlers. You do not have to read The Confidence-Man to know how it ends — the gullible come last. They get chewed up and spat out. Any dupe with money will, you can be sure of it, soon be poor.Humans lie all of the time. You’ve probably lied quite recently, considering most of us lie around 30 times a day. Lying is one of the most important tricks we have to get an advantage over each other. And so, human communication often involves a kind of arms race. People will try to deceive you, and you will develop tools to call their bluff. People will try to sell you something, and you will learn to smell a rat.
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S24Climate Benefits of Hydrogen Are at Risk as Fossil Fuel Industry Pressures Mount  Rigorous standards are required to scale hydrogen as a clean energy solution; otherwise, it will be a costly, polluting diversionHydrogen can play a critical role in the clean energy transition. However, hydrogen is not, and never will be, the core of the clean energy economy. Despite that, the littlest molecule has lately claimed the largest space in seemingly every climate conversation—and is increasingly grabbing an outsized share of climate funding, too.
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S2S36Volvo's New 'Budget' EV Is All About Gen Z  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDRemember when Volvo was just a “safe” brand? Boxy, sturdy, reliable, and utterly sensible? For many, this image may still be the predominant view of the carmaker. But in truth that was many years ago. For some time now, though, Volvo has been keen to be seen as a premium marque. Indeed, this was clear a decade ago when it poached Bentley’s interior design head.
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S32 Is technology our savior -- or our slayer?  When it comes to technology, we're often presented with two contrasting visions of the future: one where technology fulfills all our desires, and another where it leads to chaos and conflict. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin is here with a more radical vision of the future — one where humanity isn't saved or slayed by technology, but rather uses it to uplift ordinary people and make things like health care and housing for all a reality.
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S21Plastic or paper? The truth about drinking straws  You've probably had this problem: you order a smoothie to sip with your lunch, a morning iced coffee or your Friday night cocktail, and it arrives with a brightly-coloured tube of paper sticking out the top. After a few slugs, however, the tube quickly flops in on itself, forcing you to take it out and leave it on the table in a wet, pulpy mess.Paper straws have become almost ubiquitous in bars and fast-food outlets as the hospitality industry has rushed to ditch plastic in response to a consumer backlash. But while they may not linger in the environment for 300 years or so like those made of plastic, paper straws leave a lot to be desired.
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S26The Search for New Psychedelics  As companies join the hunt, can the field of mind-altering synthetic substances stay true to its original pioneering spirit of wonder, curiosity and connection?Rachel Nuwer: When someone says psychedelics, what comes to mind? Maybe “magic mushrooms” or LSD? Or if you’re a real aficionado, maybe you think of more obscure substances such as dimethyltryptamine, also called DMT, or 4-Bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine, also called 2C-B.
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S38OpenAI Wants Everyone to Build Their Own Version of ChatGPT  OpenAI’s ChatGPT became a phenomenon thanks to its wide-ranging abilities, such as drafting college essays, writing working computer programs, and digging up information from across the web.Now the company aims to further widen the range of tricks up ChatGPT’s sleeve by making it possible for anyone to build a custom chatbot powered by the technology—without any coding skills. OpenAI suggests people might want to build custom bots to help with specific problems or interests in their life, such as helping someone learn the rules of a board game, teach their kids math, or help design stickers using AI-generated art.
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S40Big Tech Ditched Trust and Safety. Now Startups Are Selling It Back As a Service  Massive layoffs across the tech sector have hit trust and safety teams hard over the past year. But with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and more than 50 elections taking place in the next 12 months, experts worry that a nascent industry of startups created to keep people safe online won’t be able to cope.The cuts made headlines a year ago, when X (then Twitter) fired 3,700 people—including hundreds in trust and safety roles. Since then, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon have made similar cuts. The layoffs at X inspired other platforms to do the same, argues Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, founding director at tech policy think tank the Tech Global Institute and a former member of Meta’s policy team. “In many ways, Twitter got away with it,” she says. “That’s given the other companies the confidence to say, ‘You know what? It’s OK. You can survive and not face a terrible consequence.’”
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S28How Consumers Will Keep Powering GDP Growth  The U.S. could end 2023 with 2.5% to 3% GDP growth, on the back of rising consumer spending and stable interest rates, says Wharton’s Nikolai Roussanov.The U.S. consumer continues to be king, driving the forecast-defying GDP growth rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of this year, more than double the 2.1% growth in the second quarter. That consumption-led growth was powered by consumers dipping into their savings more than the (relatively slower) growth in personal incomes or credit card borrowings. “The consumer is doing the job of keeping the economy going,” Wharton finance professor Nikolai Roussanov said on the Wharton Business Daily radio show that airs on SiriusXM.
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S3430 Essential Home Repair Tools You Should Have  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDNobody ever lounged around while waiting for a home repair person. Nail-biting impatience is more comnmon. How long will they take? When will they get here? What will it end up costing?
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S39First-Gen Social Media Users Have Nowhere to Go  A golden age of connectivity is ending. “I deleted my Facebook years ago, spend at least three to six months off Twitter every year, and Bluesky invites are just sitting in my inbox,” a friend tells me when I ask how her relationship to social media has changed in recent times. “I basically only use [Instagram] Stories and almost never post on the grid. I do it once a week so I can get away with saying ‘Free Palestine’ without the algorithm punishing me. I refuse to get any more accounts. I’m over it.”This is how it goes now, in what is being christened the twilight of an era of social media that redefined community building and digital correspondence. For many first-gen social media users—millennials between the ages of 27 and 42—there is a developing sentiment that the party is over.
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S29Scaling Up: Lessons from Amazon's Growth  Amazon’s success makes scaling up look easy, but Wharton’s Gad Allon explains how complicated it is for firms to align timing, leadership, and strategy to achieve growth.Amazon’s incredible growth over the years has made it a textbook example of what it means for a business to scale, going from a scrappy startup in Jeff Bezos’ garage to a multinational corporation with more than 1.5 million employees.
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S3S10S4S45AM or PM: When is the best time to exercise?  A key part of starting to exercise is choosing when to work out. Morning, afternoon, or evening: Which time is best? Scientists have studied this dilemma extensively.For novice exercisers, morning workouts are often the most dreaded. Trading a cozy, nurturing bed for a sterile, unforgiving fitness center can be a rude awakening to say the least. But morning workouts have their advantages. Challenging the body triggers the release of endorphins, uplifting one’s mood following exertion. These chemicals, along with a few others, boost energy levels, alertness, and focus, which can make you more productive and attentive at work.
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S11Research: A Growth Mindset Can Boost Support for Increasing the Minimum Wage  In the U.S., the value of the federal minimum wage has declined to record lows due to rising inflation. Recent research sheds light on a new factor that may contribute to people’s opinions for or against raising the minimum wage: a growth vs. fixed mindset. The authors hypothesized that decision-makers’ mindsets about intelligence — specifically the belief that abilities are stable (i.e., a fixed mindset) rather than the belief that abilities can grow and develop over time (i.e., a growth mindset) — might contribute to people’s opposition to increasing low-wage workers’ compensation. This held true in correlational and experimental studies, and this pattern held among those who identified as “liberal” or “conservative,” as well as across the social class and income spectrum. While mindsets are just one of the many systemic and psychological factors that contribute to support for or against raising the minimum wage, these findings suggest that grassroots advocates, managers, and business and political leaders seeking support for increasing low-wage workers’ wages may want to consider invoking the growth mindset about intelligence.
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S16Should I Change My Last Name?  If you’re engaged, this question is probably going to come up. Have you ever thought about what you would do (if you have plans to marry), or reflected on the decision you made (if you’re already married)? To what extent did your professional accomplishments and aspirations factor into your decision to keep or change your last name?
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S33The Best Theragun (and Other Great Massage Guns)  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDMassage guns, also known as percussive therapy devices, help relax and soothe sore muscles, whether you’re an athlete or just hunching over a desk all day. Theraguns (made by Therabody) tend to be some of the most popular. We’ve tested and like the entire range, but they’re expensive. There are plenty of Theragun alternatives out there for hundreds of dollars less. In this guide, you’ll find a mix of both for all budgets—plus helpful information from a physical therapist and athletic trainer on how these devices can help our bodies. These are our favorite massage guns.
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S15How Leading Consultancies Can Better Manage AI Risk  In an age when AI-powered tools are reshaping industries, consultancies are embracing the potential of AI copilots to revolutionize their services. From PwC’s ChatPwC to McKinsey’s Lilli, KPMG’s KymChat, and more, the surge of AI integration echoes historical inflection points like the internet’s global connectivity and the industrial revolution’s manufacturing shifts. As AI copilots redefine work processes and business competition, questions arise about responsible innovation. Will this AI arms race drive equitable practices or lead to hasty shortcuts? The answers lie in collaborative initiatives, much like Big Tech’s voluntary AI commitments, which offer a roadmap for consultancies to harness AI’s potential while ensuring ethical conduct. Through transparent reporting, collaborative risk management, and shared best practices, the consultancies can navigate the AI revolution responsibly, shaping the trajectory of business and society in a meaningful and lasting way.
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S19Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?  The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
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S27New Climate Compensation Agreement Raises International Tensions  A U.S. push for voluntary payments in high-stakes negotiations over a global fund for climate disasters has raised tensions ahead of the upcoming COP28 climate summitCLIMATEWIRE | Negotiators struck a fragile agreement Saturday over the outlines of an international fund for climate-ravaged countries after hours of acrimonious haggling foreshadowed likely divisions at the global climate talks later this month.
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S23Elephantnose Fish 'Sees' by Doing an Electric Boogie  The goofy-looking elephantnose fish “sees” its environment in three dimensions by creating a weak electric field and doing a little shimmyBats and dolphins are deservedly famous for their echolocation, but the elephantnose fish has a different superpower sense—electrolocation. And now new research suggests this bizarre-looking creature has to do an underwater jig to create the three-dimensional electric map it uses to “see” its surroundings.
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S43S65Trump Plots Against His Enemies  This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Donald Trump often says outlandish things, but he is not bluffing about his plans to jail his opponents and suppress—by force, if necessary—the rights of American citizens.
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S67S25Training Bartenders, Barbers and Divorce Attorneys as Counselors Could Reduce Gun Suicides  Some of the tens of thousands of suicide deaths in the U.S. each year would not have happened if people in the community had been schooled to provide advice about gun safetyHistorically, suicide prevention has focused on the mental health risk factors that might lead an individual to want to die. But while such an approach is intuitively appealing, it isn’t working. That is the opinion of Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center. In 2022 the gun suicide rate in the U.S. reached an all-time high: it increased by 1.6 percent from a year earlier and resulted in 26,993 deaths. Our history of leaning on risk factors hasn’t made us any better at predicting who will die, Anestis says.
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S18Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language  The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S7S57Donald Trump's Gift to Adam Schiff  This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.Representative Adam Schiff was mingling his way through a friendly crowd at a Democratic barbecue when the hecklers arrived—by boat. Schiff and two other Senate candidates, Representatives Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, convened on the back patio of a country club overlooking the port of Stockton, California. Schiff spoke first. “It’s such a beautiful evening,” he said, thanking the host, local Democratic Representative Josh Harder.
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S50S63How Is Child Marriage Still Legal in the U.S.?  This past spring, as part of my work teaching international relations, I oversaw a team of students assigned to create a first-of-its kind, comprehensive report on the status of women in the United States. Four of the students working on the project were from other countries—Afghanistan, Bolivia, Nepal, and Nigeria—and many of the findings pierced their idea of America as a nation that protects women and girls. One issue stood out among the rest: child marriage.USAID officials have declared child marriage a human-rights violation. Last year, the agency laid out a “roadmap” to end child marriage worldwide by 2030. And yet only 10 U.S states ban marriage under age 18 without exception. Five states have no minimum age of marriage as long as parental and/or judicial consent is given. The rest of the states allow child marriage with age limits—usually 16 to 17, though sometimes younger—as well as parental and/or judicial consent.
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S58Introducing: 'How to Keep Time'  Co-hosts Becca Rashid and the Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost examine our relationship with time and what we can do to reclaim it.Why can it feel like there’s never enough time in a day, and why are so many of us conditioned to believe that being more productive makes us better people? On How to Keep Time, co-hosts Becca Rashid and the Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost talk with social scientists, authors, philosophers, and theoretical physicists to learn more about time and how to reclaim it. How to Keep Time launches in December 2023.
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S13To Put Your Company Values into Action, Create Working Agreements  Eighty percent of employees work for organizations that have stated values, but only 23% agreed that they could apply those values to their everyday work. The authors explore that disconnect and present a more effective, alternative way for leaders to foster shared understanding, language, and accountability in their organizations: working agreements. Working agreements take implicit practices, behaviors, values, and beliefs, and make them explicit, clear, and actionable. They help teams build three key components that drive effective collaboration: shared language, understanding, and accountability.
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S51Google's "Web Integrity" Android API could kill "alternative" media clients  Google is killing off its proposal for "Web Environment Integrity API" as a new web standard, though Android phones may still have to deal with it. According to Google's proposal document, the primary goal of the project was to "allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack"—basically Google wanted a DRM gatekeeper for the web. The project got widespread coverage in July and was widely panned.
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S66Why we're hopeful about mental health videos on TikTok | Psyche Ideas  is professor of psychology at the City College of New York and professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is completing a book about memoirs that reflect upon experiences in therapy. He writes the monthly online newsletter Mental(izing) Health.is a clinical research assistant for the Gunderson Personality Disorders Institute at McLean Hospital in Boston.
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S14The Dangers of Becoming Too Dependent on a Single Customer  In managing customer relationships — or relationships with any key stakeholders — it is critical to manage the balance of power between the company and any one customer. This can be done by diversifying the customer base, understanding (and be willing to use) customer pressure points, and (in the case where a company is locked into a single key relationship) to ensure that the customer is as dependent on the company as the company is dependent on the customer.
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S56"I cannot wait to possess you": Reading 18th century letters for the first time  University of Cambridge historian Renaud Morieux was poring over materials at the National Archives in Kew when he came across a box holding three piles of sealed letters held together by ribbons. The archivist gave him permission to open the letters, all addressed to 18th century French sailors from their loved ones and seized by Great Britain's Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).
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S41Apple's Newest MacBook Pro Wins on Performance, Battery Life, and Looks  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDWhile it’s the second update to the MacBook Pro line this year, this fall’s crop has been hotly anticipated, thanks to the launch of the latest from Apple’s in-house silicon production, the M3 CPU. And much like the prior upgrade (which introduced the M2 Pro and M2 Max CPUs), this new revision is almost entirely about power under the hood rather than cosmetics. Can a world-class laptop get any better in the space of just a few months? Let’s find out.
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S35Johnny Cash's Taylor Swift Cover Predicts the Boring Future of AI Music  When Texas-based copywriter Dustin Ballard released a cover of Aqua’s 1997 Europop hit “Barbie Girl” this summer using an AI-generated version of Johnny Cash’s voice, he was surprised by its reception. “I actually expected more of a backlash,” he says. Earlier this fall, when he followed up with AI Johnny Cash singing Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” the feedback was unexpectedly positive once again. “This is hauntingly beautiful,” the top comment reads. Media coverage skewed glowing. “It absolutely slaps,” Futurism wrote.This was not precisely the intended reaction. Riling people up with weird mashups is Ballard’s thing; he describes the goal of his musical project, “There I Ruined It,” as “ruining as many beloved songs as possible.” In essence, he’s a novelty song-collager going viral for bits like Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” recreated with Super Marios Bros. sound effects, and a rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” as a bluegrass tune. Imagine if Girl Talk made an album inspired by Weird Al Yankovic but didn’t try his best. That’s the vibe. Ballard has been doing this since 2020—it’s a pandemic boredom side project that blew up, not his main source of income—and recently, some of his biggest hits have used AI.
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S62The Democrats' Most Surprising Southern Foothold  If Governor Andy Beshear can stave off his Republican challenger, Democrats will retain the most powerful job in one of the nation’s reddest states.The GOP controls nearly everything in Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump carried by 26 points in 2020. Republicans hold both U.S. Senate seats and five of Kentucky’s six House seats; they dominate both chambers of the state legislature.
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S49Google ends deal to build 15,000 Bay Area homes due to "market conditions"  Google has ended an agreement with a developer to build 15,000 homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, including affordable housing, as it continues a string of cost-cutting moves to reduce real estate costs. Google said it is "looking at a variety of options" to provide housing despite ending the development deal but didn't offer specific details on its plans.
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S59These Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse.  Researchers in Australia assigned more than 1,000 young teenagers to one of two classes: either a typical middle-school health class or one that taught a version of a mental-health treatment called dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT. After eight weeks, the researchers planned to measure whether the DBT teens’ mental health had improved.The therapy was based on strong science: DBT incorporates some classic techniques from therapy, such as cognitive reappraisal, or reframing negative events in a more positive way, and it also includes more avant-garde techniques such as mindfulness, the practice of being in the present moment. Both techniques have been proven to alleviate psychological struggles.
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S22S9S61Even the Oppressed Have Obligations  After the Hamas attack on Israel October 7, an old, bad argument resurfaced. In the streets of New York, London, and Paris, and on American college campuses, protesters who consider themselves leftists took the position that oppressed people—Palestinians in this case, but oppressed people more generally—can do no wrong. Any act of “resistance” is justified, however cruel, however barbaric, however much these protesters would rage against it if it were committed by someone else.I remember the same argument from the days of the Algerian struggle for independence from France, when the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched terrorist attacks against European civilians. The movie The Battle of Algiers shows a bomb being planted in a café where teenagers met to drink and dance. This really happened, and figures as eminent as Jean-Paul Sartre defended such attacks. Killing a European, any European, the famous writer announced, was an act of liberation: “There remains a dead man”—the victim—“and a free man”—the killer.
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S12What the Next Generation of Project Management Will Look Like  Traditional project management skills, such as project governance or project management methodology, aren’t sufficient to meet changing organizational needs. Gartner recently surveyed 373 project management leaders to identify the “next generation” skills — from organizational awareness to financial acumen — that have a disproportionate impact on performance. They also identified three future-focused project manager roles: the teacher, the fixer, and the orchestrator — all of which highlight the uniquely human aspects of project management that go beyond performing discrete, repetitive tasks.
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S44Finding the secret of human existence in an atom-smasher  According to Fermilab’s Bonnie Fleming, the pursuit of scientific understanding is “daunting in an inspiring way.” What makes it daunting? The seemingly infinite number of questions, with their potentially inaccessible answers.In this episode of Dispatches from The Well, host Kmele Foster tours the grounds of America’s legendary particle accelerator to discover how exploring the mysteries at the heart of particle physics help us better understand some of the most profound mysteries of our universe.
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S70S5S54Supermassive black hole found only half a billion years after Big Bang  Researchers combing through some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe have found one that appears to have an actively feeding central black hole. Based on the amount of radiation it's emitting, the researchers estimate that it accounts for roughly half of the mass of the entire galaxy it's in—an astonishingly high fraction compared to modern galaxies.
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S64AI Search Is Turning Into the Problem Everyone Worried About  There is no easy way to explain the sum of Google’s knowledge. It is ever-expanding. Endless. A growing web of hundreds of billions of websites, more data than even 100,000 of the most expensive iPhones mashed together could possibly store. But right now, I can say this: Google is confused about whether there’s an African country beginning with the letter k.I’ve asked the search engine to name it. “What is an African country beginning with K?” In response, the site has produced a “featured snippet” answer—one of those chunks of text that you can read directly on the results page, without navigating to another website. It begins like so: “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter ‘K.’”
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S53S60Nikki Haley Offers an Alternate Reality  In New Hampshire, Republican voters weary of Donald Trump’s histrionics and legal troubles saw a cool, calm candidate they liked.For some Republican voters, to attend a Nikki Haley campaign rally is to dive headfirst into the warm waters of an alternate reality—a reality in which Donald J. Trump is very old news.
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S52OpenAI introduces GPT-4 Turbo: Larger memory, lower cost, new knowledge  On Monday at the OpenAI DevDay event, company CEO Sam Altman announced a major update to its GPT-4 language model called GPT-4 Turbo, which can process a much larger amount of text than GPT-4 and features a knowledge cutoff of April 2023. He also introduced APIs for DALL-E 3, GPT-4 Vision, and text-to-speech—and launched an "Assistants API" that makes it easier for developers to build assistive AI apps.
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S69A Starfish 'Body' Is Just One Giant Head, Study Finds /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/82/98/8298ef07-c99c-4da4-8195-d721ff9e7fe7/low-res_gene_expression_patchwork_from_the_paper.png) Genes associated with the torso are largely absent in a species of starfish, upending how scientists perceive these creaturesSea stars are among the world’s most bizarre marine creatures. They have no blood and no brains. They eat by vomiting their stomach out of their mouth and engulfing prey within it. They move around on thousands of tiny tube feet. And many have the extraordinary ability to regenerate lost body parts—some can even form an entirely new sea star from a single “arm” and part of the central disk.
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S55S42WeWork Just Filed For Bankruptcy  WeWork has filed for bankruptcy. The move comes as the company is squeezed by mounting debts, high interest rates, and an increasing number of people working from home.WeWork filed for Chapter 11 protections, the company announced Monday night. The process allows a company to continue operating as it reorganizes. WeWork locations overall will remain open, the company says, and the process affects only locations in the US and Canada, as it also plans to file for similar protections there.
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