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 S583 rules to express your thoughts so that everyone will understand you   Maybe this sounds familiar: You’re expressing a difficult idea, thought, or feeling, and at the moment, it seems to be going well. Your audience is nodding at the appropriate beats. Your cadence has an uncharacteristic flow and eloquence. You even snuck in the world profligate and are 90% sure you used it properly. (Well, 80% sure. Definitely going to look it up later.) You take a deep breath, ask what everyone thinks, and realize that you’re getting the look. You know the one: mouths slightly agape, heads tilted in anticipation, and a squint like everyone just endured the world’s most strenuous eye exam. Everyone is more confused now than before you began talking.
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S70Israel Killed My Family, but Not My Hope  Although I’ve lost many relatives, I still believe Palestinians and Israelis can embrace a different path.On July 1, 2005, as I was getting into a taxi leaving my family’s home in Gaza City and heading to the United States as a 15-year-old exchange student, I poked my head out of the car’s window and told my dad to keep my room nice for when I came back. He replied, “Inshallah, it’ll be better than when you left it.”
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S57The "rulers cannot rule" phenomenon and how to avoid it  The British sitcom Yes Minister is about a member of the British government who is trying to do their job at the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs. This minister, Jim Hacker, has his ideas, plans, and instructions. He’s by no means incompetent, but he is guilty of being blown about too easily. And the wind in Yes Minster is in the form of Sir Humphrey Appleby.Appleby is a seasoned civil servant. He’s the kind of well-educated and well-connected bureaucrat who has seen scores of ministers come and go. What happens, then, is that whenever Hacker presents a new idea or gives an instruction, Appleby will obfuscate and manipulate the matter. “Very good minister,” Appleby will say, “but have you thought of this and that?” He will confuse his bosses with polysyllabic and breathless legalese, generously seasoned with Latin or Greek. He will hope to dizzy his listeners with his honed bureaucratic babble so that he will, in the end, get his own way.
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S671D Pac-Man is the best game I've played in 2024 (so far)  When looking back at the short history of video game design, the '90s and '00s transition from primarily 2D games to primarily 3D games is rightly seen as one of the biggest revolutions in the industry. But my discovery this week of the one-dimensional, Pac-Man-inspired Paku Paku makes me wish that the game industry had some sort of pre-history where clever 1D games like this were the norm. It also makes me wish I had been quicker to discover more of the work of extremely prolific and clever game designer Kenta Cho, who made the game.
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S46No, COVID mRNA Vaccines Won't Damage Your DNA  You have a “better chance of becoming Spider-Man” than being harmed by DNA from COVID vaccinesFlorida's surgeon general Joseph Ladapo (left) speaks during a press conference in 2022. Ladapo has called for halting the use of COVID mRNA vaccines over unsupported safety concerns.
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S38Domestic workers in South Africa say they're forced to work extra hours for free  Christolina Uhlaleleni Ndlovu had worked as a domestic worker in Johannesburg’s Soweto township for over five years when she first heard about SweepSouth, an on-demand cleaning app, in 2021. Hoping to find better work, Ndlovu joined the app almost immediately and took the five-day mandatory training and entrance test.Within the first two weeks, Ndlovu booked several gigs where clients paid her generous tips, something she had never experienced before. “At most, I would get home at 3 p.m. after starting work at 8 a.m.,” Ndlovu told Rest of World. “My future on the gig looked bright. Money was flowing in every week. For the first time in months, things stabilized.”
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S59Why the U.S. scored a "D" for human rights in a new report  Americans like to think their country is exceptional — an unequaled bastion of freedom and opportunity. However, when it comes to human rights, a new report suggests the United States is anything but exceptional. Compiled by the Global Rights Project (GRIP) at the University of Rhode Island and the CIRIGHTS data project, the 2023 GRIP Annual Report assesses and ranks 195 countries on their dedication to 25 individual human rights. These are divided into four categories: Unfortunately, the report showed that countries generally don’t respect human rights: 60% of nations received a score of less than 60 out of 100, corresponding to an “F” letter grade.
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S54To Beat Russia, Ukraine Needs a Major Tech Breakthrough  “Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” Ukrainian general Valerii Zaluzhnyi admitted late last year. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”That blunt assessment from the Ukrainian commander in chief, made in a November interview with The Economist, prompted waves of enormous pessimism. Headlines around the world seized on the idea that the war had essentially ended. Ukraine had fought valiantly—and lost.
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S61All Science journals will now do an AI-powered check for image fraud  On Thursday, the research publisher Science announced that all of its journals will begin using commercial software that automates the process of detecting improperly manipulated images. The move comes many years into our awareness that the transition to digital data and publishing has made it comically easy to commit research fraud by altering images.
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S36The powerful women of an ancient empire  The raiders came from the north. They came on horseback, the skilled bowmen shooting powerful arrows with expert precision. They ruined and burned the crops, which the Han Chinese villagers living on China's northern frontiers in about 200 BCE tended to with great attention. The Han Chinese called the invaders "Xiongnu", which meant "fierce slave", a pejorative term aimed to emphasise the barbarians' "inferiority".In reality, however, the Xiongnu outperformed their Chinese neighbours in military expertise and political organisation. Comprised of different ethnic tribes, the Xiongnu were the world's first nomadic empire, well-organised and formidable enough to cause so much trouble to the Han Chinese that the latter eventually resolved to build the Great Wall of China. More interestingly, behind the fierce bowmen, it was the powerful Xiongnu women who helped hold the empire together.
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S56How much energy does the Sun produce?  When it comes to planet Earth, the most important source of light, heat, and energy actually comes from beyond our world. It’s the Sun that is the driver of the Earth’s energy balance, rather than the internal heat given off by the planet itself from sources like gravitational contraction and radioactive decays. The energy from the Sun keeps temperatures from freezing all across the planet, providing us with temperatures that allow liquid water on Earth’s surface, and that are essential to the life processes of nearly every organism extant on our world today.And yet, it’s only within the last 200 years that humanity has even understood how much energy, overall, the Sun actually produces. Considering all of the scientific advances that came afterward, including the development of stellar, quantum, and nuclear physics, as well as the understanding of the subatomic fusion reactions that power the Sun, it might seem like a trivial matter to simply answer the question of “How much energy does the Sun produce?” But looks can be deceiving. If you didn’t already know (or hadn’t already googled) the answer to that question, how would you figure it out? Here’s how humanity did it.
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S40Did Neurons Evolve Twice?  Tracing the history of the earliest animals offers clues to whether the birth of the neuron was a one-time eventThe human brain's billions of neurons represent a menagerie of cells that are among both the most highly specialized and variable ones in our bodies. Neurons convert electrical signals to chemical signals, and in humans, their lengths can be so tiny as to span just the tip of a sharpened pencil or, in some cases, even stretch the width of a doorway. Their flexible control of movement and decision-making explains why they are so key to survival in the animal kingdom.
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S48The vital data you flush down the toilet  "Everybody pees and poops — and we know that urine and stool contain a rich source of information on our health," says data detective Newsha Ghaeli. Exploring the growing field of wastewater epidemiology, she shows how studying sewage can (anonymously) reveal a lot about the collective well-being of our cities — leading to real-time quality-of-life improvements like tracking pandemics, updating social policies and much more.
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S62S66How to avoid the cognitive hooks and habits that make us vulnerable to cons  It's one of the most famous experiments in psychology. Back in 1999, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris conducted an experiment on inattentional blindness. They asked test subjects to watch a short video in which six people—half in white T-shirts, half in black ones—passed basketballs around. The subjects were asked to count the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. Halfway through the video, a person in a gorilla suit walked into the midst of the players and thumped their chest at the camera before strolling off-screen. What surprised the researchers was that fully half the test subjects were so busy counting the number of basketball passes that they never saw the gorilla.
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S51Skullcandy's Kilo Is a No-Frills Shower-Friendly Speaker  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 WIREDBluetooth speakers have become so ubiquitous and affordable that you no longer need to rely on one or even two speakers to meet all your mobile audio needs. These days, there’s a Bluetooth speaker for nearly any use case, from boom boxes to power your backyard barbecue to ultra-portable models. Plus, the ever-important shower speaker for jamming while you clean up.
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S41Real Climate Solutions Will Take Real Leadership  As we careen on a climate catastrophe, the COP28 conference has witnessed world leaders’ failure to avert clear disaster for humanityThe United Nations Climate Change Conference ended last month, and its small successes could barely mask its failure to face a worsening climate catastrophe. COP28 highlights included more than 120 countries pledging to triple their renewable energy capacity by 2030 and several countries pledging a total of $700 million to a loss and damage fund compensating vulnerable communities after climate disasters. Nearly 200 countries agreed to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
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S33Taupo: 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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S45Adventures of a Bone Hunter  Annie Montague Alexander went on paleontology expeditions most women could only dream of in the early 1900sBy Katie Hafner, Carol Sutton Lewis, Alexa Lim, Elah Feder & The Lost Women of Science Initiative
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S63S39Scientists Finally Invent Heat-Controlling Circuitry That Keeps Electronics Cool  A new thermal transistor can control heat as precisely as an electrical transistor can control electricityFrom smartphones to supercomputers, electronics have a heat problem. Modern computer chips suffer from microscopic “hotspots” with power density levels that exceed those of rocket nozzles and even approach that of the sun’s surface. Because of this, more than half the total electricity burned at U.S. data centers isn’t used for computing but for cooling. And many promising new technologies—such as 3-D-stacked chips and renewable energy systems—are blocked from reaching their full potential by errant heat that diminishes a device’s performance, reliability and longevity.
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S35Did 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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S68S30A Guide for Getting Stakeholder Buy-In for Your Agenda  You may be an expert at running your business unit or leading your team. But do you know how to advance your agenda across an organization, particularly if you have an idea that will impact its strategic direction? This article offers four key domains you can focus on to ensure you’ve prepared an agenda-setting mission: adopting an enterprise perspective, leveraging your strategic mindset, cultivating stakeholder awareness, and considering your personal motives and risks. Each domain consists of questions to ask yourself to more deeply explore what you want to accomplish and who you have to influence in order to do so.
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S20S32A Simple Hack to Help You Communicate More Effectively  Using a structured approach when communicating can help you prioritize what you need to convey. In this article, the author introduces his “What, So What, Now What” framework. Much like the Swiss Army knife, known for its versatility and reliability, this structure is flexible and can be used in many different communication situations. The structure is comprised of three simple questions: 1) What: Describe and define the facts, situation, product, position, etc. 2) So What: Discuss the implications or importance for the audience. In other words, the relevance to them. 3) Now What: Outline the call-to-action or next steps such as taking questions or setting up a next meeting.
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S47College Football Championship Preview  Wharton’s Cade Massey and Shane Jensen speak with Bill Connelly, ESPN college football analyst, about the recent college football playoff games, as well as the upcoming National Championship game.©2024 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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S34Message 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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S53The Man Who Made Robots Dance Now Wants Them to Think for Themselves  Anyone currently worrying about artificial intelligence taking over the world may want to swing by the Boston Dynamics AI Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While walking around, they’d see that the robots that might lead a future uprising are still trying to tie their shoelaces, metaphorically speaking.The Institute’s founder and executive director, Marc Raibert, has built some of the world’s most famous robots at his previous venture, Boston Dynamics. The company, acquired by Hyundai in 2020, has developed legged machines capable of running, leaping, and of course dancing with spryness that can veer into the uncanny.
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S15Reclaiming Your Turf After Maternity Leave  We’d all like to believe that when we return from maternity leave, our bosses, colleagues and subordinates will welcome us back, and maybe even demonstrate some patience and supportiveness. Unfortunately, that’s not always what goes down. Too often, bosses are insufficiently empathic and organizations do not provide enough flexibility. However, in my own experience, both as a new mother in the corporate world, and as an executive coach who has worked with women who are ascending to senior leadership positions over the last twenty years, I have found that it is peer relationships that are often the toughest to navigate.
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S52A Gel Injected Into the Scrotum Could Be the Next Male Contraceptive  Vasectomies are on the rise, but not all men are ready to commit to a permanent form of birth control. While the surgery can sometimes be reversed, it's expensive and doesn’t always work. What if there was another option?Virginia-based biotech company Contraline is testing a new type of male contraceptive akin to a vasectomy but made to be fully reversible. Today, the company announced that surgeons in Australia have safely performed the procedure on 23 men in an early-stage trial.
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S37Tetris: How a US teenager achieved the 'impossible' and what his feat tells us about human capabilities  In the dying days of 2023, US teenager Willis Gibson – online handle "Blue Scuti" – "beat" the Nintendo Entertainment System version of the video game Tetris, which was first released in 1989.The original Tetris designers thought it couldn't be done – the game is designed to play endlessly. The pieces fall faster and faster until a player is overwhelmed. To beat the game, a player has to achieve scores so high that the game's memory banks overload and it crashes. Victory is achieved because the computer simply cannot continue.
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S60Qualcomm's XR2+ Gen 2 SoC sets up a wave of Apple Vision Pro competitors  The Apple Vision Pro is coming out sometime in early 2024, and since it is a VR/AR headset that runs iOS apps, Team Android would like to have a competitor available. Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm vaguely announced a mixed-reality partnership a year ago, which would have Qualcomm building chips, Google building software, and Samsung shipping products. Step 1 of this partnership has been announced: The Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ SoC, which will power many of these headsets from Samsung and others.
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S49My Parents' Dementia Felt Like the End of Joy. Then Came the Robots  When my mom was finally, officially diagnosed with dementia in 2020, her geriatric psychiatrist told me that there was no effective treatment. The best thing to do was to keep her physically, intellectually, and socially engaged every day for the rest of her life. Oh, OK. No biggie. The doc was telling me that medicine was done with us. My mother's fate was now in our hands.My sister and I had already figured out that my father also had dementia; he had become shouty and impulsive, and his short-term memory had vaporized. We didn't even bother getting him diagnosed. She had dementia. He had dementia. Weâmy familyâwould make this journey solo.
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S25S24S26S50Cruise Was Asked to Ground Robotaxis on Halloween to Keep Kids Safe  A week before Halloween last year, city of Austin employee Rachel Castignoli sent a polite but firm email to a government relations staffer at self-driving vehicle developer Cruise. “We would like you to not operate between 5 pm and 9 pm on Halloween,” she wrote in bold text highlighted in yellow, documents obtained by WIRED through a public records request show. More children are killed by vehicles on Halloween than on any other night of the year, she wrote, and the city wanted to limit traffic—regardless of whether software or a human was behind the wheel. “Please acknowledge receipt of this email,” Castignoli concluded, also in bold, adding “Thanks!”Castignoli’s email is an example of the strange position of officials in some US cities chosen by Cruise and rivals such as Alphabet’s Waymo as testing grounds for self-driving taxi services. Castignoli works for Austin’s Transportation and Public Works Department, which like local agencies around the country, is responsible for what happens on city streets, setting speed limits and traffic restrictions.
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S31How to Red Team a Gen AI Model  Red teaming, a structured testing effort to find flaws and vulnerabilities in an AI system, is an important means of discovering and managing the risks posed by generative AI. The core concept is trusted actors simulate how adversaries would attack any given system. The term was popularized during the Cold War when the U.S. Defense Department tasked “red teams” with acting as the Soviet adversary, while blue teams were tasked with acting as the United States or its allies. In this article, the author shares what his specialty law firm has discovered what works and what doesn’t in red teaming generative AI.
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