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 S37'Super Mario RPG' Is Still One of Nintendo's Best, Most Bizarre Games   There's a scene early in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars where Mario, alongside his new friend Mallowâa "frog" who looks like a cotton candy cloud wearing pantsâis hunting down a thief. Toad, faithful servant of the Mushroom Kingdom, reports a sighting, then scoffs at the question of why he didn't stop the thief himself: "Because I forgot my bazooka at home! Sheesh."It would be a throwaway line (Toad's big gun never materializes) if it didn't set the tone so efficiently for the playful, sometimes absolutely unhinged, experience of Super Mario RPGâa rare case of a wildly loved yet never remade game Nintendo is finally bringing to Switch almost 30 years after its initial release. Today, the game remains wonderfully unchanged and shockingly funny, a testament to how special it was then and still is now in the era of Nintendo's mainstream achievements.
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S38The Best MagSafe Power Banks for Your iPhone  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 WIREDLonger battery life has consistently topped the polls of what people want in their next iPhone. Smartphone stamina has improved over the years, and so have cameras, games, and everything else, causing us to spend more time than ever tapping those screens and running the battery down. Faster charging helps, and wireless chargers and 3-in-1 charging systems make it easier to stay topped up throughout the day, but it’s still possible to run out of juice before the day’s end.
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S24Did 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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S18What CEOs Need to Know About the Costs of Adopting GenAI  CEOs must not overlook the intricacies of genAI costs. CEOs must integrate the multifaceted costs into their strategic vision, acknowledging nuances such as inference cost, fine-tuning cost, prompt engineering cost, cloud expenses, talent costs, and operation costs. Additionally, CEOs need to be vigilant about often overlooked expenses, including infrastructure overhaul, data security, and ethical considerations. Integrating cost control into decision-making processes, utilizing comprehensive monitoring dashboards, and empowering teams through strategic talent management are indispensable strategies. As CEOs navigate this dynamic landscape, a balanced approach that harmonizes innovation with fiscal prudence is the key to a sustainable and impactful GenAI journey.
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S11S48Why zero-point energy is a scam  “A fool and his money are soon parted” is a proverb that dates back to at least the 16th century. Scammers and conmen are always looking for an angle to fleece the gullible, including the use of realistic sounding pseudoscientific babble.Look at my email inbox. I am told that my life will be improved by the manipulation of my aura or that crystal channeling will align my chakras or something. Then there are the utterly ineffective homeopathic remedies. But these are small potato scams, merely asking me to buy something. Even if they were successful, they wouldn’t deplete my bank account too much.
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S50The strange persistence of first languages  Several years ago, my father died as he had done most things throughout his life: without preparation and without consulting anyone. He simply went to bed one night, yielded his brain to a monstrous blood clot, and was found the next morning lying amidst the sheets like his own stone monument.It was hard for me not to take my father’s abrupt exit as a rebuke. For years, he’d been begging me to visit him in the Czech Republic, where I’d been born and where he’d gone back to live in 1992. Each year, I delayed. I was in that part of my life when the marriage-grad-school-children-career-divorce current was sweeping me along with breath-sucking force, and a leisurely trip to the fatherland seemed as plausible as pausing the flow of time.
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S51The 13th-century nun whose heart was dissected in search of a crucifix  In an abbey in a small Italian town, a fresco shows a haggard Christ shoving the end of his cross into a woman’s chest. Perhaps half the cross has been mysteriously absorbed into her body; she calmly gazes upward, guiding it inward with gentle hands. This is Saint Clare (Santa Chiara) of Montefalco, abbess in the late thirteenth century. The painting depicts a vision she had, one she recounted so often that, upon her death, her fellow nuns decided to actually cut open her heart in search of the cross of which she had spoken so frequently.This dissection represents an early entry in what would become a tradition of performing autopsies to consider an individual’s sanctity, according to historian Simon Ditchfield. The stones formed inside organs, revealed after death, served as “potential markers of sanctity in early modern Italy,” explains historian Jetze Touber.
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S49Is the Universe fine-tuned for life? Here are 3 answers  If you follow the writings and ideas of many theoretical physicists and scientific magazines and publications, you surely have come across a statement that goes somewhat like this: “The Universe is fine-tuned for life. If you look at the constants of nature, like the mass of the electron and the quarks, the strength of the gravitational or strong nuclear force, and many other constants that physicists use to describe natural phenomena, you realize that their values are such that, if tweaked by even a tiny bit, life in the Universe wouldn’t be possible. So, the universe, or the constants of nature, must be fine-tuned for life to be here.”It is common to hear that we live in a “Goldilocks Universe,” perfectly tuned for life to exist. Once you frame the story this way, there are three possibilities: (1) It’s just an accident — that is, the Universe is what it is, and we are the ones who tell the story by measuring the constants of nature; (2) there is a “fine-tuner,” and what you call this “fine-tuner” is up to you, be it God or panpsychism (see my conversation last week with philosopher Philip Goff), and the Universe’s purpose is to have intelligent life; or (3) we live in a multiverse, and our Universe just happens to be the one where things work out for life to exist. In other words, if you don’t want God, you had better embrace the multiverse.
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S4213 Best Deals at Target's Black Friday Sale  The Halloween candy has barely been eaten, but early Black Friday deals are already popping up across retailers. That includes Target, everyone's favorite store to peruse while you're supposed to be running errands. Thankfully, the store is offering a holiday price match guarantee from October 22 to December 24, so you don't have to worry that something will get cheaper during actual Black Friday. Make sure you keep your receipts!We've rounded up Early Black Friday Mattress Deals, Best Deals from Best Buy. Check our Black Friday shopping tips for more advice.
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S32U.S. and China Reach New Climate Agreement  China and the U.S. agreed to new greenhouse gas reduction commitments ahead of upcoming climate talks, but the relationship between the world’s top two emitters remains “challenging”Smoke billows from smokestacks and a coal fired generator at a steel factory in the industrial province of Hebei, China.
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S25Japan's ancient art of taiko drumming  Taiko may simply mean "drum" or "the art of Japanese drumming" in Japanese, but these wooden, barrel-shaped instruments symbolise the powerful, rhythmic and dynamic energy of Japanese percussion. They have also been a vital part of Japanese culture for millennia, as they were used to initiate religious ceremonies, set the marching pace for feudal troops and call soldiers to the battlefield since as early as 10,000 BC. To experience taiko is to witness lively shouts and choreographed movements from performers that mirror those of various Japanese martial arts.Here, however, blind content maker Lucy Edwards learns the art of taiko and proves that its beauty can be felt and heard just as powerfully as it can be seen.
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S41Google's New Titan Security Key Adds Another Piece to the Password-Killing Puzzle  Passwords are a woefully insecureâand frustratingâauthentication technology, but after decades of digital use, they're ubiquitous. Recently, though, the global tech industry has been working to promote a simpler and more secure alternative known as passkeys. Along with its other initiatives to champion the login tech, Google announced today that it is launching a new version of its Titan hardware authentication keys that can store passkeys directly on the device.For most people on most accounts, passkeys are managed directly from a smartphone or laptop. But for anyone seeking an alternative, either because they prefer a stand-alone key for ease of use or because they want maximum security separation, storing passkeys on a hardware token is a valuable option. The new Titan keys are available now and can store more than 250 unique passkeys. They are replacing Google's existing USB-A and USB-C Titan devices.
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S52S35Why you should ditch deadly fossil-fuel appliances  In the US, people spend the overwhelming majority of their time inside buildings that burn fossil fuels, which are bad for both the environment and human health. (Think: breathing in air pollution from gas stoves, furnaces and water heaters.) If we're going to fix this problem, we need to retrofit millions of buildings with all-electric equipment, says energy upgrader Donnel Baird. Hear about his ambitious plan to rip the fossil fuel infrastructure out of aging buildings and upgrade it with smarter, cleaner, healthier technology.
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S40Norway's Privacy Battle With Meta Is Just Getting Started  Norway is doubling down in its long-running fight against Meta over users’ data. The country’s privacy watchdog, Datatilsynet, says it is already investigating the company’s new ad-free subscription model, less than a week after the service was launched across Europe.Meta started rolling out its new model last week, giving Facebook and Instagram users who live in the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland the option to opt out of seeing ads in exchange for €9.99 ($10.50) a month. Meta has said that subscribers’ personal information will not be used for ads on Facebook and Instagram. But Line Coll, director of Norway’s data protection regulator, argues the new model is not a win for privacy. Subscribers might not see ads anymore, she adds. “But Meta will still track you, they will still collect the data. From a data protection perspective, that blows my mind.”
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S36Your company is wasting time -- here's how to stop it  The vast majority of our time at work is spent trudging through redundant and outdated workflows, says operations visionary Salvatore Cali. Laying out the most common time-wasting pitfalls, he urges policy leaders and businesses to reevaluate what they ask of both employees and consumers. "By rethinking the true purpose of each task, you will discover what is waste and what is the real gold of your company: the creation of value," says Cali.
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S23Message 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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S34Assessing the Value of NFL Head Coaches  Wharton’s Cade Massey, Adi Wyner, and Eric Bradlow speak with Eric A. Eager, vice president at SumerSports, about the value of NFL coaches and how much they really impact the game.©2023 Knowledge at Wharton. All rights reserved. Knowledge at Wharton is an affiliate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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S17S15To Prove Your Company Isn't Greenwashing, Endorse Smart Regulation  Whether you call it propaganda or greenwashing, companies have long used marketing to tout the good they do for the environment while obfuscating any negative externalities of their businesses. However, thanks to the rise of the internet and social media and the proliferation of data on ESG performance, consumers (and employees) are now acutely aware of whether organizations are actually practicing what they preach. Conversations with advocates, regulators, consumers, and executives suggest that the most powerful way for businesses to prove they do so is to support meaningful regulations to ensure that their entire sector or industry will do the right thing. This includes exiting lobby groups that fight against such measures, communicating more regularly with regulators, and endorsing and advocating for more science-backed regulation.
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S22Taupo: 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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S26Orce, Spain: The site of Europe's earliest settlers  Nestled in the heart of the High Plateau of Grenada in southern Spain, the 1,300-person town of Orce is surrounded by a tapestry of dry badlands, deep canyons and crystal-clear reservoirs that extend as far as the eye can see. Few travellers venture to this remote corner of Andalusia, but those that do are granted a fascinating glimpse into Europe's past.If you take the winding road 140km north-east from Grenada, past the serrated ridges of the Sierra de Huétor Park and the arid steppe plains of the Sierra de Baza Park to Orce, you'll soon discover that this unassuming hilltop hamlet guards a unique secret: it is believed to contain the remains of the earliest humans on the continent. In fact, the archaeological discoveries in this rural region not only reveal glimpses of where Europeans came from, but how different the natural world was when humans first stepped foot on the continent.
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S45Can technology save astronomy from light pollution?  For nearly all of human history, once the Sun went down and the sky darkened, so long as you had a clear, moonless night, you’d be greeted with a spectacular, thrilling night sky: with thousands of stars, a clear view of the Milky Way, and several faint, fuzzy nebulae all visible to your naked eye. If each of us were to look up at a clear, moonless sky tonight, however, most of us would only see a few dozen stars, with the rest being washed out by a triumph of modern technology: nighttime lighting. Furthermore, even those of us with access to darker, more rural skies are subject to a rising type of novel light pollution: pollution from light reflected off of satellites, which continuously streak through the sky in tremendous numbers.While this is a troubling situation that disrupts the behavior of humans and all animals, it affects astronomers more than most, as the field of astronomy relies on being very sensitive to faint objects in the night sky; more light pollution of all types, including from bright satellite streaks, means lower-quality science for all. Just as a new era of ground-based astronomy is about to open up — with the Vera Rubin Observatory, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope all nearing completion — this worsening set of problems threatens astronomy as we know it. Given that the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit is scheduled to increase even further and that nighttime skies are getting brighter at a rate of nearly 10% per year, it’s unreasonable to count on environmental regulation as a workable solution. But three plausible technological solutions might help astronomers, both amateur and professional, find a way to still explore, photograph, and understand the Universe.
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S29S20Pakistan's lost city of 40,000 people  A slight breeze cut through the balmy heat as I surveyed the ancient city around me. Millions of red bricks formed walkways and wells, with entire neighbourhoods sprawled out in a grid-like fashion. An ancient Buddhist stupa towered over the time-worn streets, with a large communal pool complete with a wide staircase below. Somehow, only a handful of other people were here – I practically had the place all to myself.I was about an hour outside of the dusty town of Larkana in southern Pakistan at the historical site of Mohenjo-daro. While today only ruins remain, 4,500 years ago this was not only one of the world's earliest cities, but a thriving metropolis featuring highly advanced infrastructures.
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S10S39The QAnon Shaman Isn't Even the Most Extreme Candidate in His Race for Congress  The man who became a figurehead of the January 6 Capitol riot is planning to run for Congress in Arizona, and he may not even be the most extreme candidate on the ballot.Jacob Chansley, a January 6 rioter known as the QAnon Shaman who wore face paint and horns to breach the Capitol, pleaded guilty to taking part in the riot. Last week, Chansley filed a statement of interest to run for a seat in Arizona's 8th congressional district. Chansley, who has lived in the district for 30 years, tells WIRED that he is running his campaign single-handedly and does not plan to accept PAC money. Though he's not eligible to vote under Arizona law because he is still serving part of his sentence, Chansley is able to run for Congress.
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S21A new life for London's lost rivers  Though most visitors to London think only of the River Thames, the city is a myriad of waterways. Old maps show a skein of rivers and brooks that provided "blue corridors" traversing the city for centuries, providing both sources of food and recreation. But as London boomed, these waterways faded from consciousness – encased by walls, turned into polluted backwaters or simply covered over to run unseen beneath busy streets.But these "secret" rivers are imprinted on London's geography. Marylebone started life as St Mary by the bourne (an old name for a watercourse, in this case the Tyburn); while Bayswater, Knightsbridge, Westbourne and Holborn are all named by waterways that ran through them. Deptford was the site of a deep ford over the Ravensbourne, while Wandsworth is named after the River Wandle. East Ham and West Ham get their names from an old word for an area between rivers (hamm) – in their case, the Lea and the Roding. And while Britain's leading newspapers have left Fleet Street, the River Fleet still runs beneath.
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S44Parental Advisory: This Chatbot May Talk to Your Child About Sex and Alcohol  Parenting in 2023 requires talking with your kids not just about the hazards of the internet and social media but also the artificial intelligence spreading rapidly into just about every app or online service. Common Sense Media, the nonprofit that rates movies and other media for parents, is trying to help families adapt to the age of AI. Today it launched its first analysis and ratings for AI tools, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Snapchat’s My AI chatbot.My AI received one of the lowest scores among the 10 systems covered in Common Sense’s report, which warns that the chatbot is willing to chat with teen users about sex and alcohol and that it misrepresented Snap’s targeted advertising. Common Sense concludes there are “more downsides to My AI than benefits.”
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S13S68Has Alcohol Left Humanity Better or Worse Off?  Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, I asked readers, “Are humans better or worse off for having beer, wine, and spirits? Or, if you'd prefer introspection, how about you personally?” Several of you pointed out that humanity benefited greatly from alcohol in bygone eras when there was a dearth of clean water. But today we’ll focus on the modern era.
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S8S12How Paternity Leave Helps Dads' Brains Adapt to Parenting  Parenting is not as “instinctual” as previously believed. While decades of research have focused on the maternal brain, revealing fascinating changes that train the brain for the demands of keeping a small human alive, new research on the paternal brain shows similar changes. And these changes happen even though fathers do not have the physical experiences of pregnancy, birth, and the related hormone shifts. In other words, paternity leave = a free brain-training program for dads. According to the authors, a short-term time investment in spending engaged time with their new baby has the potential to pay a lifelong dividend in dad instincts. If we want to see greater gender equality, we need to not just focus on women’s participation in the professional world — we need to encourage more men to participate in the caregiving world.
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S27Is Snoozing the Alarm Good or Bad for Your Health?  New research suggests that hitting the snooze button to squeeze in an extra five or 10 minutes of sleep may actually be good for youWhen the alarm goes off in the early morning, it’s tempting to hit the snooze button and curl back under the warm covers for a few more minutes of slumber. This repeated postponing of the buzzer is often thought of as a bad habit—one that creates not only a lazy start to a day but also a fragmented sleep pattern that’s detrimental to health. Now, however, a growing body of recent research is contradicting this notion.
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S55S43YouTube Shorts Challenges TikTok With Music-Making AI for Creators  TikTok’s tools for adding music to short videos helped turn short-form video into a phenomenon. Now Google is giving some YouTube Shorts creators an AI feature called Dream Track that can generate songs, including lyrics, melody, and accompaniment, in the styles of seven different artists including Charlie Puth, Demi Lovato, Sia, and T-Pain with a tool called Dream Track.To whip up a 30-second clip with Dream Track a creator just has to enter a prompt, such as “a ballad about how opposites attract, upbeat acoustic,” then select which artist the song should be styled on.
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S53S31The Worst Wildfires Are Started by People. Here's How  Flames consumed multiple homes as the Caldor Fire pushed into the Echo Summit area in California on August 30, 2021.On a sweltering summer day in 2021, fire suddenly swept through drought-dried underbrush and leaped across treetops in California's Sierra Nevada. A local father and son, charged with starting the 222,000-acre Caldor Fire with their target-shooting equipment, are among the thousands of humans accused of igniting nearly all the state's forest fires since 2000. In addition to executives of utility companies, whose faulty electrical equipment has contributed to the state's largest and deadliest wildfires, the list allegedly includes dirt bikers who remove spark arresters and couples celebrating anniversaries with sky lanterns. “It's human recklessness in one form or another,” says Craig Thomas, founder of the nonprofit Fire Restoration Group.
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S69The Future of Obesity Drugs Just Got Way More Real  A wild idea recently circulated about the future of aviation: If passengers lose weight via obesity drugs, airlines could potentially cut down on fuel costs. In September, analysts at Jefferies Bank estimated that in the “slimmer society” obesity drugs will create, United Airlines could save up to $80 million in jet fuel annually.In the past year, as more Americans have learned about semaglutide, which is sold for diabetes under the brand name Ozempic and for obesity under the name Wegovy, hype has become completely divorced from reality. For all the grand predictions, just a fraction of Americans who qualify for obesity drugs are on them. With a list price of roughly $1,350 a month, Wegovy is far too expensive, under-covered by insurance, and in limited supply to be a routine part of health care.
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