   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S17The Best Apps for Your Foldable Phone   If you're in the market for a new smartphone, you could choose one of the best folding phones—like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 or the Google Pixel Fold—rather than opting for a traditional single-screen model. The foldable form factor is getting more popular, even though it comes at a price premium. However, you get two screens rather than one, and (with a book-style foldable) the larger display opens out to something approaching tablet size.Are there apps that take advantage of that extra space though? Apps that aren't afraid to expand to take up the extra room? Sure, but they're mostly big names you know already. These are our favorite ones so far—and they're all on Android of course, while we wait for a folding iPhone that may never come.
Continued here
|
| ? |
 |
S1
| ? |
|
S2
| ? |
|
|
| ? |
|
|
|
S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10Taupo: 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.
Continued here
|
S11Message 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.
Continued here
|
S12Did 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.
Continued here
|
S13How New Zealand is reducing methane emissions from farming  The young bull's head disappears into a plastic green hood. He scoops up a mouthful of dried pellets, chews, flicks his ears, and exhales. The hood is attached to a contraption on wheels that looks a bit like a high-tech mobile pizza oven.But the only thing cooking up here is a precise measurement of methane, a highly potent gas that has a global warming impact 84 times higher than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period.
Continued here
|
S14How Britain's taste for tea may have been a life saver  Tea has been many things in its time – a global commodity, a comforting beverage, and even, in the eyes of some Bostonians 250 years ago this week, a symbol of oppressive politics. But one role you might not have attributed to tea is that of a life-saving health intervention.In a recent paper in the Review of Statistics and Economics, economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.
Continued here
|
S152023 Ripple Rewind  From evolving workplace trends to achieving your goals, Wharton professors explain this year’s key research insights.In this special episode, listen to curated excerpts from this year’s Ripple Effect podcast, where Wharton professors discuss a range of trending business topics.
Continued here
|
S16This Sony OLED Is the Most Stunning TV Money Can Buy  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 WIREDSony’s A95K TV (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was a breakthrough in picture quality, becoming an instant hit with critics and videophiles everywhere. Part of the first generation of QD-OLED TVs, which marry a layer of quantum dots with a more traditional OLED display to boost brightness and color volume, the A95K and Samsung’s 2022 S95B both helped push OLED technology into a new era of performance.
Continued here
|
S18The Best Travel Mugs to Keep Drinks Hot or Cold  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 WIREDIf it isn't wine or whiskey, you shouldn't be drinking it at room temperature. Even river water on a warm day of hiking is refreshingly cooler than the ambient air temperature. Lukewarm coffee is a great way to get your whole day off to rough start, and nobody daydreams about relaxing by the pool with a tepid glass of 70-degree water by their side.
Continued here
|
S19Keep an Eye on Fido With These Pet Cameras  Our furry friends are important members of the family, and leaving them at home while we go out to do people things can be hard. However, pet cameras—specifically designed to keep watch over dogs and cats—can make the human's absence from the home less stressful for both parties. If you've considered getting a pet camera, there's no better time than now.Read our Best Indoor Security Cameras, Best Outdoor Security Cameras, Best Dog Tech and Accessories, Best Dog Beds, and Best Cat Tech and Supplies guides for more.
Continued here
|
S20The Best Bluetooth Speakers to Take Your Tunes Anywhere  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 WIREDThe best Bluetooth speakers still have a place near and dear to our hearts, even as we've seen better (and more portable) smart speakers creeping into the universe. It's fun and easy to ask an Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker to play your favorite track or tell you the weather, but smart speakers require stable Wi-Fi and updates to work. By (mostly) forgoing voice assistants and Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth speakers are more portable, with the ability to venture outside of your house and withstand rugged conditions like the sandy beach or the steamy Airbnb jacuzzi. They'll also work with any smartphone, and they sound as good as their smart-speaker equivalents.
Continued here
|
S21Suckup software: How sycophancy threatens the future of AI  If you wanted to make a quick buck in sixth-century Athens, you could do worse than denounce someone for smuggling figs. These informers — sykophantes, literally “those who showed the figs” — stood to gain financially from the courts, whether or not the report was true, thanks to an aggressive ban on the export of all crops but olives. According to Robin Waterfield, a classical scholar and the author of Why Socrates Died, this is where we get the term “sycophant,” someone who sucks up for personal gain.Today, the term appears mostly in politics, but according to a recent paper by researchers at Anthropic — the AI startup founded in 2021 by a handful of former OpenAI employees, which has since raised over $6 billion and released several versions of the chatbot Claude — sycophancy is a major problem with AI models.
Continued here
|
S22How Microsoft's cybercrime unit has evolved to combat increased threats  Governments and the tech industry around the world have been scrambling in recent years to curb the rise of online scamming and cybercrime. Yet even with progress on digital defenses, enforcement, and deterrence, the ransomware attacks, business email compromises, and malware infections keep on coming. Over the past decade, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has forged its own strategies, both technical and legal, to investigate scams, take down criminal infrastructure, and block malicious traffic.
Continued here
|
S23America's Peace Wave  Rents, average monthly temperatures, grocery prices—most things in American life seem to be rising these days.But not everything. In 2023, murder rates in the United States dropped at an astonishing rate, probably among the highest on record. That’s according to data gathered by Jeff Asher, an independent criminologist, from cities with publicly available numbers. In the sample of 175 cities, murder is down by an average of almost 13 percent this year.
Continued here
|
S24The Postal Service Wasn't Built for Boxes  Packages are bringing in much-needed revenue, but the agency can’t be saved without Congress.You might have read the recent news report that Amazon now delivers more packages than established companies including UPS and FedEx—the latest sign of the e-commerce company’s dominance. But if you read closely, you also saw that the U.S. Postal Service still handles more parcels (about 7 billion a year) than any of these companies, and in fact delivers hundreds of millions of packages for them.
Continued here
|
S25The Myth of the Unemployed College Grad  A bachelor’s degree continues to be a great investment. Why does the media keep suggesting otherwise?Perhaps no puzzle has consumed the American media more in the past few months than the chasm between official measures of the economy and how average people feel about it. Inflation is down, and wages are up—yet voters remain gloomy. Young people are, at least by some measures, the most pessimistic. They think the economy is bad and getting worse. Why? The answer has major implications, not least on the outcome of the next presidential election. You can’t blame the media for being so eager to figure it out. But pundits and reporters might want to look harder at their own penchant for writing stories that make the economy look worse for young people than it really is, including, above all, by incorrectly declaring that college diplomas aren’t what they used to be.
Continued here
|
S26A Young-Adult Blockbuster With Staying Power  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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elise Hannum, an assistant editor at The Atlantic who has written about Snoopy as the hero Gen Z needs and the joy of watching awards-show speeches.
Continued here
|
S27Bored  When the poet and novelist Margaret Atwood was a child, she spent much of each year in the forests of northern Quebec. Her father was an entomologist—he kept an insect lab up there—and the family went along with him to the freezing wilds without electricity. “Places choose you,” the adult Atwood once said when asked how she decided where to locate a story. In a sense, that was also true of her early life. Her father chose the place, or the place chose her; she certainly didn’t choose it herself. What young person does?Reading Atwood’s poem “Bored,” I imagine her in this period: a typical tween who “could hardly wait to get / the hell out of there.” She’s rolling her eyes about holding logs to saw, carrying wood, sitting in a boat. I’ll admit, I don’t really know if Atwood was writing about that time of her life. But I do know that she published this poem in 1994 after her father died in 1993, and here her memory feels saturated with grief. She’s gripped with the regret that so many of us know: What felt unbearably mundane in the moment reveals itself later to be precious, if only because it passed in the company of a loved one.
Continued here
|
S28Why Isn't the Government Doing More About the Housing Crisis?  The Department of Housing and Urban Development should consider doing some housing and urban development.The Department of Housing and Urban Development is the agency responsible, one would imagine, for housing and urban development. Over the past two decades, America has done far too little urban development—and far too little suburban and rural development as well. The ensuing housing shortage has led to rising rents, a surge in homelessness, a decline in people’s ability to move for a relationship or a job, and much general misery. Yet the response from the federal government has been to do pretty much nothing.
Continued here
|
S29The Curious 'SNL' Return of Kate McKinnon  When Kate McKinnon departed the Saturday Night Live stage in May 2022, along with a slew of others including Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant, the clock immediately began counting down to her return. Davidson had the honor of being the first among that departing cohort to host, earlier this season, but McKinnon got her chance last night, closing out the year with SNL’s annual Christmas episode. As she discovered, it’s one thing to steal the scene and quite another to steer the show.“I’ve always felt more comfortable in a weird costume,” she admitted in her opening monologue, referring to the many oddball personalities she played on SNL. Since leaving, she jokingly confessed, she’s been struggling to figure out who she is apart from those roles, quipping, “I’ve been trying to assemble a human personality.” (Her spin as Weird Barbie in the blockbuster Barbie film perhaps complicated that effort.) Indeed, McKinnon’s turn—well earned after 11 seasons that made her one of the show’s longest-running female cast members, and easily one of its most popular—revealed the disparity between the spotlight of hosting and the camouflage of ensemble comedy. McKinnon didn’t seem entirely comfortable breaking away from the unity of the cast to assertively claim the audience’s attention. It made for a night that was less a victory lap than a reminder of the delights of collaborative live performance.
Continued here
|
S30S31Madhur Jaffrey: The woman who gave the world Indian food  At a spirited 90 years of age, Madhur Jaffrey takes centre stage on the streaming platform MasterClass, her screen presence marked by a shiny bob, smoky-lined eyes, vivid red lips and a trove of lively, endearing anecdotes from her rich life. A true polymath, Madhur is more than a versatile actress whose cinematic impact has spanned several decades, she's a culinary chronicler and food icon. With over 30 cookbooks to her name, spanning the flavours of India, Asia and global vegetarian cuisine, as well as many television cookery shows (including on the BBC), Madhur Jaffrey is a household name for anyone with a taste for South Asian cuisine.As Indian-born Nobel Laureate and cookbook author Abhijit Banerjee shared during this year's annual HC Mahindra Lecture at Harvard University, "While I could cook many Western dishes, I did not know how to cook Indian food. My first step was smart – to buy her [cookbook], An Invitation to Indian Cooking, and follow it with a certain amount of diligence. And that's how I learned to cook Indian food."
Continued here
|
S32Brack: a fruit cake to celebrate Women's Christmas  Twelfth Night is the last great frolicking feast of Christmas. It's the day decorations are taken down and stored away – woe betide anyone who takes them down sooner, tempting bad luck for the coming year. Across the British Isles, 6 January is most associated with this hand-me-down piece of folklore, rather than the arrival of the Three Kings to Bethlehem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the baby Jesus.On the south-western edge of Ireland, in Cork and bordering parts of Kerry, Twelfth Night is still celebrated in style, and exclusively by women. It's a night for soaking up the last vestiges of Christmas spirit in rambunctious merriment rather than a staid religious observance.
Continued here
|
S33S34Coming of Age While Confronting Arab Stereotypes, in "Simo"  Simo, a typical teen-ager, lives in the shadow of Emad, his older brother, and their domineering dad, in the suburbs of Montreal, where the family emigrated from Egypt. One night, Simo impersonates Emad in a live-stream gaming session. That simple act leads to serious consequences, when a racist false accusation escalates and puts his brother at risk.Bold cinematography and a soundtrack of throbbing Egyptian rap beats set the scene and compound a sense of social alienation that affects these men yet strengthens the family. "Drawing heavily from my own life experiences, I couldn't ignore the elephant in the room," the film's writer and director, Aziz Zoromba, says, regarding "the stereotypes associated with being an 'Arab' in the West."
Continued here
|
S35The Chancellor of Berkeley Weighs In  When Carol Christ first joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, more than fifty years ago, she remembers a new colleague giving her a half-joking piece of advice: don’t bother preparing the last three weeks of your class, because you’ll never get to teach them—the students will all be out on strike. Protest has been part of her experience at Berkeley throughout her career there, first as an English professor (she specializes in Victorian literature) and later as an administrator; apart from an eleven-year stint as the president of Smith College, in the early two-thousands, the university has been her professional home. She assumed its top leadership role—chancellor—in 2017, and announced last summer that she would retire in 2024.The job of heading a college or university has rarely come under greater public scrutiny than in the past two months. Since the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel and the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza, campuses across the country have seen a wave of protests—and accompanying accusations of both Islamophobia and antisemitism. There have been demonstrations, open letters, official statements, follow-up official statements, confrontations, threats, anger, and fear. At Cornell, campus police placed the Center for Jewish Living under guard; at Columbia, the administration disbanded pro-Palestinian student groups. At Berkeley, students organized a mass walkout on behalf of Palestine. During the walkout, a student carrying an Israeli flag was allegedly hit with a water bottle, an incident that’s now among the campus conditions cited in a lawsuit alleging antisemitism at the law school. Earlier this month, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T, and the University of Pennsylvania testified before Congress in a hearing titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.” Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Trump-aligned Republican, went viral with her questioning, in which she pushed the presidents to say whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated their institutions’ rules. Their responses, which parsed definitions of protected speech, inspired widespread outrage. Liz Magill resigned as president of Penn a few days later. Claudine Gay faced calls to step down as president of Harvard, but maintained the governing board’s support.
Continued here
|
S36Netflix Just Quietly Released the Weirdest Apocalypse Show of the Year  After The Last of Us changed the way we see the apocalypse, this series is for the rest of us.Would you quit your job and see the world? Would you reject society and move into a cabin with all your favorite books? Would you just want to spend that time with your loved ones? For a lot of people, myself included, the question is so overwhelming to fathom, the true answer is... probably nothing out of the ordinary. When they say, “Live every day like it’s your last,” that could just mean following your normal routine — why make a big deal out of something inevitable?
Continued here
|
S3730 Years Ago, a Brilliant Capcom Platformer Redefined an Iconic Hero  A little robot person travels across various platforms and themed levels to take on a series of metallic bosses. That could describe pretty much any Mega Man game. But in December of 1993, Capcom decided to push the franchise forward with its boldest sequel yet.At first glance, Mega Man X doesn’t look too different from the franchise’s prior X-less entries on the Nintendo Entertainment System. And considering how beloved those early games are, Mega Man X could’ve very easily taken a “If it ain't broke, don’t upgrade it” route. But Mega Man X, the first game in the series to debut on the Super Nintendo, made a variety of integral changes that would culminate in one of the most iconic side-scrolling platformers of all time.
Continued here
|
S38'Percy Jackson' Nails a Technical Challenge that Star Wars and Marvel Both Failed  A good franchise needs to be built on good source material. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has Marvel Comics, contemporary Star Wars has the original films and non-canon books and comics... and Percy Jackson and the Olympians has the books by Rick Riordan. The series, about an alternate America populated with creatures and characters from Greek mythology, is set to make a big splash on Disney+, which is apt for a story about the son of Poseidon. Also apt is the choice of Dan Shotz and Jon Steinberg, both alumni of the hit pirate drama Black Sails, as showrunners. For them, Percy Jackson has the potential to be the start of a universe. “I think it’s a great big story, and the canvas just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Steinberg tells Inverse. “The deeper you get into it, the idea that maybe we will be able to make more of that story real and bring it to a bigger audience is pretty exciting.”
Continued here
|
S39The Ultimate Guide to Trading With Friends in 'Pokemon Scarlet and Violet'  As an intrepid trainer and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, your ultimate goal is to catch every single pocket monster in existence. But the truth is that catching them all isn’t exactly an option. Not only are some Pokémon exclusive to Scarlet or Violet, but others might not be in the current games at all — or only on rare occasions. That’s where trading Pokémon comes in. And if you’re wondering how to trade with your friends in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet we’ve got you covered. Here’s everything you need to know.First, you will need to unlock the ability to trade. This is done at the same time you unlock all of the other multiplayer functions once you reach the first Pokémon Center at Los Platos. You’ll just need to approach the center to unlock all online features. However, it’s also worth noting you will need a Nintendo Switch Online Membership to trade with another player.
Continued here
|
S4050 Bougie Things for Your Home That Are Surprisingly Under $30 on Amazon  Bougie on a budget sounds like an oxymoron, but this list proves that items with surprisingly high-end vibes can cost less than $30. From decor to spruce up spaces around your home to functional finds that you soon won’t be able to live without (like a lighter that works in the wind and rain), scroll on for a variety of elevated home products with rave reviews.These watering globes will keep your plants hydrated when you forget to or are unable to water. The set comes with three bird-shaped glass globes that can each hold enough water to keep your greenery watered for up to two weeks. “These lovely glass watering birds exceeded my expectations,” wrote one fan.
Continued here
|
S4160 Dope Things That Are Only $25 On Amazon Prime  The only thing better than finding something dope on Amazon is finding it for a low price. Everything on this list can be on your doorstep fast with Prime. Don’t miss the gnome-shaped cheese knife, tray that defrosts meat in half the time, and sushi-shaped magnets that will motivate you to check your to-do list. You won’t believe how budget-friendly everything is — nothing costs more than $25.The smooth metal of this massage roller ball will feel like a dream on sore muscles after being kept in the freezer. Since it is corrosion resistant, it can also be used with essential oils.
Continued here
|
S42Rick and Morty Are About to Face Their Greatest Fear in the Season 7 Finale  After two of the most bombastic Rick and Morty episodes ever — Morty’s quest with Ice-T and then one with Bigfoot in Valhalla — Season 7 is about to wrap things up with Sunday’s big finale. With Rick Prime defeated and Evil Morty MIA, there’s no telling what might happen next.Here’s everything you need to know about Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 10, including the release date and time, episode title, teaser trailer, and more.
Continued here
|
S43How to Change Clothes in 'Pokemon Scarlet and Violet'  Becoming a Pokémon master is great, but what’s the point if you can’t do it in style? Like in most recent games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet lets you buy and change your character's clothing. There are a lot of options in both the main game and its DLC, but if you’re wondering how to get started here’s what you need to know about clothes in Pokémon Violet and Scarlet.There are clothing shops located in Mesagoza, Levicia, and Cascarrafa. You can see the specific shops marked on your map when you are in the area (a t-shirt icon shows where you can purchase clothing).
Continued here
|
S44How to Use Battle Caps in 'Pok  If you want the best team possible in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, you’ll need to pay attention to IVs and stats. And in that case, you need to be aware of Bottle Caps. Here’s everything you need to know about this crucial item in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.Bottle Caps can be purchased for $20,000 at the Delibird Presents store, found in most of the main cities within the game. However, it won’t show up as an item in these shops until after you’ve defeated six gyms in Pokémon Violet and Scarlet. Once that’s done, you can buy as many of them as you want.
Continued here
|
S45S46S47S48S49S50S51S52S53S54Why Do We Give Gifts? An Anthropologist Explains This Ancient Human Behavior  The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Have you planned out your holiday gift giving yet? If you’re anything like me, you might be waiting until the last minute. But whether every single present is already wrapped and ready, or you’ll hit the shops on Christmas Eve, giving gifts is a curious but central part of being human.
Continued here
|
S55Netflix's Big Data Dump Shows Just OK TV Is Here to Stay  Netflix just did the unthinkable: It released viewership numbers. After years of withholding information on how many hours subscribers spent watching its shows and movies, on Tuesday the streaming giant released a huge trove of data. It covers 18,000 titles, breaking them all down by how many hours viewers have watched of each during the period of January to June 2023. The winner, with 812 million hours viewed? The Night Agent.This bodes well for The Night Agent and maybe less good for people drawn to Netflix’s more esoteric fare. Because while the first season of Sex/Life—a steamy, soapy show about hooking up with a hot former lover—scored 126 million hours viewed, the first season of Sex Education—a warm, funny show about teenagers learning about intimacy and boundaries—landed just south of 28 million. The streaming giant was quick to point out that “success on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes” and isn’t determined by this stat alone. Although, on a call announcing the numbers co-CEO Ted Sarandos put it somewhat differently: “This is the data we use to run the business.”
Continued here
|
S56The iPhone's Notes App Is the Purest Reflection of Our Messy Existence  In 1994, French artist Jean-Marc Philippe conceived of a spacetime capsule named KEO. This satellite would launch into space and orbit the Earth while carrying samples of our dirt, air, and water. Philippe also envisioned that it would have billions of personal messages on CD-ROMs, a collection so vast it would be able to represent every stratum of human life. The satellite would travel around the globe for 50 millennia before it would return to the planet's surface, a ghost from the past reminding Earth's current inhabitants (whoever they are) of what we felt, what we thought, and who we were.KEO never actually launched. But if such a project were to be undertaken today, I would propose that every Earthling who owns an iPhone should download the current contents of their Notes app onto thumb drives and put them on the rocket.
Continued here
|
S57The Best Smart Christmas Lights to Make Your Home Merry and Bright  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 WIREDEvery year, the only smart device my husband asks about is something for the Christmas tree. But instead of grabbing whatever smart plug I had on hand, I came back with an armload of smart string lights we could use instead of our fake tree's built-in lights—and for decorating all over the house too. It was overkill, judging by his look of horror, but all in the name of research!
Continued here
|
S58Google Just Denied Cops a Key Surveillance Tool  A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek, previously linked to the infamous Russian military hacking unit Sandworm, took credit this week for a disruptive attack on the Ukrainian internet and mobile service provider Kyivstar. As Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has dragged on, inflicting what the World Bank estimates to be around $410 billion in recovery costs for Ukraine, the country has launched an official crowdfunding platform known as United24 as a means of raising awareness and rebuilding.Kytch, the small company that aimed to fix McDonald’s notably often-broken ice cream machines, claims it has discovered a “smoking gun” email from the CEO of McDonald’s ice cream machine manufacturer that Kytch's lawyers say suggests an alleged plan to undermine Kytch as a potential competitor. Kytch argues in a recent court filing that the email reveals the real reason why, a couple of weeks later, McDonald’s sent an email to thousands of its restaurant franchisees claiming safety hazards related to Kytch’s ice-cream-machine-whispering device.
Continued here
|
S59Gifts for People Who Just Need a Good Night's Sleep  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 WIREDBetween anxiety and insomnia, I've always had trouble sleeping, and I'm not alone. Chances are, you or someone you know is not getting enough sleep, and that can have a serious impact on your health. In the past few years, a few of us on the Gear Team have worked tirelessly to transform our bedrooms into the comfiest, coziest places possible to help coax ourselves into that ever-elusive restful night of sleep.
Continued here
|
S60The Startup That Transformed the Hack-for-Hire Industry  If you work at a spy agency tasked with surveilling the communications of more than 160 million people, it’s probably a good idea to make sure all the data in your possession stays off the open internet. Just ask Bangladesh’s National Telecommunication Monitoring Center, which security researchers found connected to a leaky database that exposed everything from names and email addresses to cell phone numbers and bank account details. The data was likely just used for testing purposes, but WIRED confirmed at least some of the data is linked to real people.A fight is brewing in the United States Congress over the future of a powerful surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is set to expire at the end of the year. With the December 31 deadline quickly approaching, members of Congress and civil liberties groups are criticizing Section 702 for enabling the “incidental” surveillance of Americans’ communications and “abuses” by the FBI. While a privacy-preserving update to the program has been introduced in Congress, some 702 critics remain concerned that lawmakers will push through reauthorization using other, “must-pass” legislation.
Continued here
|
S61Tiny biobots surprise their creators by healing wound  Tiny “biobots” made from human windpipe cells encouraged damaged neural tissue to repair itself in a lab experiment — potentially foreshadowing a future in which creations like this patrol our bodies, healing damage, delivering drugs, and more.The background: In a study published in 2020, researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) harvested and incubated skin cells from frog embryos until they were tiny balls.
Continued here
|
S62S63S64Photos of the Week:  Swimming during a heat wave in Sydney, a sky-high interactive experience in New York City, extensive tornado damage in Tennessee, scarce resources and destruction in the Gaza Strip, ice-skating at a former coking plant in Germany, snowfall in northern China, a Santa Run in Germany, and much more A motorcyclist, Helton Garcia, dressed as Santa Claus, rides his motorcycle before handing out gifts to children in a rural school in Santo Antonio do Descoberto, Goiás, Brazil, on December 10, 2023. #
Continued here
|
S65Why Is the NBA Letting Josh Giddey Play?  The Oklahoma City Thunder player is getting lighter treatment than others suspected of misconduct off the court.The NBA has shown in the recent past that it is willing to discipline players just for tarnishing its brand. So the league’s remarkably passive stance on Josh Giddey, a 21-year-old Oklahoma City Thunder guard, seems strangely out of place.
Continued here
|
S66The Forgotten Tradition of Clemency  Minnesota reformed its system for granting mercy to those in prison. The federal government should take note.The governor, attorney general, and chief justice of the state supreme court sat atop a wide dais at the front of the Minnesota Senate hearing room on a warm day in June of 2019. One by one, petitioners for clemency—almost always without a lawyer—came to the podium and made their pitch for a pardon, which would erase many effects of their criminal convictions. One man with a long-ago, minor drug offense told the three officials, who comprise the Board of Pardons, about his 16 years of sobriety and desire to hunt with his son. An immigrant from Laos was supported by his wife, who had been the victim of his crime. Another man sought a pardon so he could adopt a stray dog. When each petitioner finished, the board discussed the case and voted as the petitioner listened intently.
Continued here
|
S67How Gas Prices Get in Our Heads  The price of gasoline plays an outsize role in shaping consumer sentiment—with big implications for the current “vibecession.”One of the defining characteristics of the second half of 2023 has been the gloominess of American consumers. Even as the economy remained unexpectedly robust—growing at a 5.2 percent clip in the third quarter—and inflation cooled, consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index dropped steadily from the summer through the fall, and its rating hit a low of 61.3 in November.
Continued here
|
S68The Fate of Your Holiday-Season Returns  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.When my colleague Amanda Mull “ventured into the belly of the holiday-returns beast,” she learned that somewhere in the midst of a complex system of transporters, warehousers, and resellers, a guy named Michael has to sniff the sweatpants.
Continued here
|
S69The Sound of Cruelty  The Zone of Interest is an eerie and restrained study of the Holocaust that never shows a single frame of the atrocity.Jonathan Glazer’s new film, The Zone of Interest, begins with a black screen that lingers for at least a full minute. There’s music in the form of a groaning score, as well as a smattering of noises—faint whispers, rustling leaves—that can be heard through the discordant notes. Otherwise, though, nothing appears.
Continued here
|
S70Biden's Domestic, Foreign, and Familial Issues  President Joe Biden faced a convergence of issues this week—domestic, foreign, and familial.The Biden administration’s request for additional aid for Ukraine has stalled as House and Senate Republicans are prioritizing negotiations over border-security policies. Tensions between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza have spilled into the open. And Hunter Biden, the president’s only surviving son, defied a congressional subpoena and instead offered again to testify in public in front of the Republican-led House committees investigating him. All of this comes as the House voted along party lines to officially open its impeachment inquiry into the president.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
