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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
S1Research: When Overconfidence Is an Asset, and When It’s a Liability - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)   What happens to people who are overconfident? Are they generally rewarded, promoted, and respected? Or do we distrust them and avoid collaborating with them? Our research suggests it may depend on how they express confidence. One way people express confidence is verbally — with specific expressions of confidence in their judgments. Another way is nonverbally, as body language and tone of voice can make one appear confident. In a series of studies, researchers found that overconfidence hurt one’s reputation — but only if the person expressed confidence verbally. Those who expressed confidence nonverbally weren’t penalized.
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S2S3Hackers Found a Way to Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds - WIRED (No paywall)  When thousands of security researchers descend on Las Vegas every August for what's come to be known as “hacker summer camp,” the back-to-back Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, it's a given that some of them will experiment with hacking the infrastructure of Vegas itself, the city's elaborate array of casino and hospitality technology. But at one private event in 2022, a select group of researchers were actually invited to hack a Vegas hotel room, competing in a suite crowded with their laptops and cans of Red Bull to find digital vulnerabilities in every one of the room's gadgets, from its TV to its bedside VoIP phone.
One team of hackers spent those days focused on the lock on the room's door, perhaps its most sensitive piece of technology of all. Now, more than a year and a half later, they're finally bringing to light the results of that work: a technique they discovered that would allow an intruder to open any of millions of hotel rooms worldwide in seconds, with just two taps.
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S4S5When Experts Fail - The Atlantic (No paywall)  Experts hate to be wrong. When I first started writing about the public’s hostility toward expertise and established knowledge more than a decade ago, I predicted that any number of crises—including a pandemic—might be the moment that snaps the public back to its senses. I was wrong. I didn’t foresee how some citizens and their leaders would respond to the cycle of advances and setbacks in the scientific process and to the inevitable limitations of human experts.
The coronavirus pandemic, in particular, would prove the perfect crucible for accelerating the decline of faith in experts. Paranoia and appeals to ignorance have long been part of the American political environment, but they were especially destructive at a time when the U.S. was riven by partisan hostility. The pandemic struck at multiple political and cultural weaknesses within the edifice of American life: A mysterious disease—from China, no less, a nation that typically serves as a source of American anxiety—forced citizens to rely on the media, including outlets that many of them already distrusted, for scattered pieces of information from white-jacketed experts and relatively unknown government officials.
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S6A new generation of music-making algorithms is here - The Economist (No paywall)  IN THE dystopia of George Orwell’s novel “1984”, Big Brother numbs the masses with the help of a “versificator”, a machine designed to automatically generate the lyrics to popular tunes, thereby ridding society of human creativity. Today, numerous artificial-intelligence (AI) models churn out, some free of charge, the music itself. Unsurprisingly, many fear a world flooded with generic and emotionally barren tunes, with human musicians edged out in the process. Yet there are brighter signs, too, that AI may well drive a boom in musical creativity.
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S7Can a Nap Make Up for a Bad Night of Sleep?  Maybe you stayed up too late scrolling TikTok, or tossed and turned because of anxious thoughts. And now you’re wondering if a quick lunchtime nap will give you the energy boost you need to power through the rest of the day, and potentially regain the health benefits of a full night’s sleep you may have lost.
It’s important to understand that while a midday nap will probably replenish your energy enough to get you through your day, said Rebecca Spencer, a sleep science researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, it won’t necessarily negate the health risks that may come with insufficient sleep at night.
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S8Ask Ethan: Has a new study disproven dark matter and dark energy?  Perhaps the pinnacle of scientific achievement is the fact that, at a fundamental level, from subatomic scales up to the largest cosmic ones, humanity has come to understand the Universe more completely and comprehensively than ever before. The standard model of particle physics accounts for the interactions, presence and properties of normal matter and radiation in the Universe, including atoms, ions, light, and neutrinos, while general relativity accounts for gravitation. Cosmically, the Big Bang plus the ingredients of inflation, dark matter, and dark energy explain the Universe’s evolution and structure, allowing us to piece together the most powerful explanatory picture of our cosmos ever concocted.
But you wouldn’t know it by reading the news about science these days. You’d think that dark matter, dark energy, and inflation were all ad hoc fixes that were destined to be wrong, that astronomy discoveries about distant galaxies, cosmic expansion, and black holes have demonstrated that our view of the Universe is fundamentally broken, and that new scientific discoveries continuously disprove our concordance picture. Referring to just one among a myriad of recent similar claims, I received a letter from Gonzalo Martin, who wants to know:
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S9How "somatic markers" can transform your decision-making  According to Buzzfeed, I’m an emotional kind of guy. Using their peer-reviewed, data-led research, I answered a series of questions about Disney characters and favorite holiday locations, only to find out that I’m all emotion. Ever since, my days have been a passion-soaked mania. I laugh at inappropriate things, I swear at the TV, I eat pizza for every meal, and I can’t be bothered to look after my toddler at 5 a.m. There’s no room for calculated thought anymore, and nothing is thought through. I’ve lost all my filters or social niceties; impulse is my middle name.
Many in the Western intellectual tradition have inherited an idea, owed mostly to the Greeks, that emotion and reason are mirror opposites. You have feelings and thoughts, or Dionysius vs. Apollo. Yet the neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, offers a counterpoint: “Somatic markers” are physiological responses that guide our decision-making. In other words, they are emotions that determine our reason.
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S10Homo sapiens: The "great synthesizers" of music  Humans are not the only species with music, but we are the only ones who had to make music completely from scratch.
According to Michael Spitzer, Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool, humans are not inherently musical. In fact, we come from a lineage less musically inclined than birds or even insects. This means that when it comes to our musical abilities, we had to rely on both cultural and biological evolution to make music a fundamental aspect of human life.
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S11Frans de Waal: Acclaimed primatologist and impactful Big Thinker  Primatologist Frans de Waal, who studied the emotional and psychological similarities between humans and apes, died on March 14, 2024. He passed from stomach cancer at his home in Stone Mountain, Ga., and is survived by his wife of 40 years, Catherine Marin, and his brothers. He was 75 years old.
“It’s difficult to sum up the enormity of [his] impact,” Lynne Nygaard, chair of the department of psychology at Emory University, said in the school’s tribute to his life and career. “He was an extraordinarily deep thinker who could also think broadly, making insights that cut across disciplines.”
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S12The atomic bomb, exile and a test of brotherly bonds: Robert and Frank Oppenheimer  Every now and then, science serves up poison pills. Knowledge gained in the course of exploring how nature works opens doors we might wish had stayed shut: For much of the past year, our newsfeeds were flooded with stories about how computational superpowers can create amoral nonhuman “minds” that may learn to think better than we do (and then what?). On the big screen, the movie Oppenheimer explored a threat people have lived with for nearly 80 years: How the energy of the atom can be unleashed to power unimaginably destructive bombs.
When potentially catastrophic inventions threaten all humanity, who decides how (or whether) they’re used? When even scientists toss around terms like “human extinction,” whose voice matters?
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S135 Ways to Handle Firing Someone with Compassion and Respect  Firing someone is never easy, but it's an inevitable part of being a leader. Whether due to a business shifting its structure or an employee simply not meeting expectations, the day will come when you have to sit down and have the tough conversation.
Gather all the necessary documentation and clearly outline the reasons for the termination. Choose a private location and an appropriate time for the meeting, considering the when as much as the where. Practice what you'll say beforehand, anticipating potential questions or reactions.
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S14Airline Clients Taking 737 MAX Disruption Gripes to Boeing's Board  Being the boss is never easy, as executives at Boeing know all too well, as the aircraft maker struggles with a succession of problems following a January 5 incident when a 737 MAX jet lost a side panel midflight. After harsh criticism from regulators, industry observers, and even passengers aboard that Alaska Airlines flight for the company's shoddy safety performance, Boeing officials are getting dressed down by the very air carriers the company relies on to survive.
As any business leader knows, there are fewer things more difficult than facing furious customers--a group bosses aren't inclined to contradict, especially when their gripes are justified. This week's development, though, is a bit worse. Because officials from those airlines--whose businesses are being handicapped by reduced 737 MAX production levels imposed by regulators after the January 5 panel blowout--aren't even bothering to tongue-lash their Boeing peers directly. Instead, they are going over their heads by meeting with the plane maker's board of directors, which has already been called upon by some sector analysts to make sweeping management changes.Â
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S15DoorDash Debuts its U.S. Drone-Delivery Effort  Since it was spun out of Google's "moonshot" project system in 2018, the tech giant's Wing drone unit has trialed delivery services in Finland and Australia, shipping all sorts of small items to consumers' doors. It also tested out deliveries in 2019 in Christiansburg, Virginia, where a new Wing drone delivery partnership will be launched in U.S. airspace--this time with food delivery service DoorDash.
After what Wing says was a "successful year-long trial" in Logan, Australia, delivering "a range of convenience and grocery items, pantry staples, snacks, and household essentials" to select customers, the company is expanding its experiment. It's all part of Wing's vision, a company blog post explains, an attempt to create what it believes can "become the preferred mode of delivery for the millions of small packages that are delivered every day around the world." It's also the first drone delivery via DoorDash in the U.S., Wing says.Â
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S16What Every Freelancer Needs to Know About Upcoming Tax Changes  Workers across different industries are increasingly receiving some or all of their income via apps. They include tutors, graphic designers, hair stylists, and all kinds of independent and self-employed workers, along with merchants who sell products online through Etsy, eBay, Amazon and other sites. But tax law is still catching up when it comes to how best to report this income.
If you're a freelancer or gig worker who receives payments via apps like Venmo, Zelle, Cash App or PayPal, your tax reporting requirements will change for the 2024 tax year. The law will not affect the amount of taxes owed, but it will change how you report income with 1099-K forms.
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S17Apple's Response to the DOJ's Lawsuit is a Lesson in How to Defend Your Company  Apple, facing a Department of Justice lawsuit that paints the iPhone maker as market-quashing monopolist, is not messing about when it defends itself. Its statement on the lawsuit argues very simply that the suit threatens "who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets." That's a strong existential position, essentially stating Apple is good at being Apple and simply wants to stay being Apple.Â
The statement also leads with a mention of its continuous efforts to innovate, to make "technology people love" that works seamlessly together, all while protecting "people's privacy and security." The company is, perhaps, hinting that what the DOJ is really taking aim at is its long-held stance on protecting users' privacy and data, in comparison to its high tech peers. Some of those high tech peers, including its recent lawsuit foes Epic Games and Spotify have, unsurprisingly, responded with plaudits for the DOJ's case.
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S18U.S. CEO Bill Anderson Replaces Managers with Employee Teams to Rejuvenate 160-Year Old Bayer  Many business owners and senior managers make periodic adjustments to company operations to improve efficiency, or just to test the effects of a novel tweak or two. Bill Anderson is taking another approach to organizational tinkering. The CEO of drug and chemical giant Bayer is eliminating scores of upper-level managers and traditional business divisions, with the goal of releasing increased employee initiatives, product ideas, and time-to-market speed from continually renewing, self-managed teams.Â
The 57-year old American took the helm of the German conglomerate last year, and just this month ruled out what many big investors, analysts, and pundits had urged: break the troubled giant into three separate companies. Instead, Anderson has decided to address the multiple ills plaguing Bayer through a radical reworking of its structure and operations--a strategy Friday's Wall Street Journal described as "purge the bosses" drive combined with "a management plan that shifts more decisions to workers."
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S19U.S. Regulators Urge Congress to Look Into Grocery Profits  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recommended Thursday that policymakers look further into profits at grocery store operators that remain elevated since the pandemic and promotions that consumer products makers offer retailers.Â
The FTC launched the study in 2021 when it ordered Walmart, Kroger, Procter & Gamble, grocery wholesalers and others to turn over detailed information relating to the supply chain crisis during the pandemic, which contributed to double-digit price increases on household necessities.Â
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S20Lawmakers Push Bill to Block the SBA From Expanding Further into Direct Loans  As President Joe Biden entertains the idea of expanding the Small Business Administration's direct lending capabilities, a pair of Republican lawmakers are looking to block that effort before it even begins.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) unveiled a two-page bill on Wednesday that would prevent the SBA from making direct loans via its flagship 7(a) loan program. Under the program's current iteration, lenders hand out loans directly to small businesses--but the agency guarantees part of the loans to help alleviate the perceived risk of lending to entrepreneurs.
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S21Reddit's IPO Surges on Back of AI Hype, But It May Not Last Forever  Reddit shares soared upon the social media company's Initial Public Offering on Thursday, jumping 48 percent from its initial asking price of $34, in a rare glimpse of optimism for an IPO market that's seen lackluster returns in recent months.Â
Shares closed at $50.44 on its first day of trading, and at one point surged to a high of $57.80, marking a 70 percent increase at peak trading. At market close, the San Francisco-based company had a valuation of $6.4 billion and raised $748 million.
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S22Breaking Barriers: How Storytelling Is Changing the Landscape for Black Business Owners  A few weeks ago, when I moderated a panel about social media at SXSW at Inc. Founders House, Lisa J. of BK Beauty shared a story with the audience. She said that a few years back, when she stopped posting for a while, she started to receive messages from followers asking if everything was OK, saying that they missed her. As a non-influencer, I was taken aback. And yes, I was also weirded out. How could these people feel that they knew Lisa well enough to miss her?
Then, it dawned on me: these followers must have felt a powerful and genuine connection to Lisa. Then I thought about what that meant for her brand, BK Beauty, and I realized that the magic of this connection came from years of sharing and storytelling about how Lisa built her brand.
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S23Fighting Loneliness on Remote Teams  Remote work offers many benefits, but the lack of community – compared to in-person environments – can cause some workers to feel isolated and lonely. These feelings can impact job performance, sometimes significantly. This article will share four evidence-based strategies that leaders and managers can use to build community in their remote teams. These strategies include reflecting on what’s working for your team, recognizing your team in a meaningful way, providing support for career development, and communicating with your team as a whole person. Building a community in a remote environment requires innovation and intention, but getting started only takes one act.
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S245 Kinds of Ownership Roles in a Family Business  One of the common unspoken tensions in a family business is the reality that different owners — and future owners — don’t all want to be involved in the same way. But too often those desires and expectations are not discussed or normalized. The author outlines five different types of family business owners, whose involvement ranges from passive to operational. He also shares a process to help families discuss their desired roles and evolve the business governance accordingly.
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S254 Experiments to Encourage Employees' Career Progress  The authors worked with 15 organizations and over 7,000 employees to experiment with ways to increase internal career development opportunities and prove promotion isn’t the only way people can advance. They found that when organizations enable ways to progress that go beyond promotion, it unlocks the flow of talent, skills, and strengths. Employees gain opportunities to grow, develop in different directions, and increase their career resilience. In summary, everyone wins. In this article, they share four experiments that unlock career progression.
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S26Don't Wait for a Crisis to Reduce Costs  Leaders who take a hard, holistic look across their cost base will find opportunities to reposition their companies for future growth. But they must act boldly and decisively to achieve a competitive cost position. In this article, the authors discuss five critical actions that CEOs and other executives can take to tackle cost challenges. Collectively, these measures help organizations sustain efficiency and redirect resources to invest in innovation, promote growth, and capture value.
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S27Photography Is No Longer Evidence of Anything ![]() For weeks now, the world has been awash in conspiracy theories spurred by weird artifacts in a photographic image of the missing Princess of Wales that she eventually admitted had been edited. Some of them got pretty crazy, ranging from a cover-up of Kate's alleged death, to a theory that the Royal Family were reptilian aliens. But none was as bizarre as the idea that in 2024 anyone might believe that a digital image is evidence of anything.
Not only are digital images infinitely malleable, but the tools to manipulate them are as common as dirt. For anyone paying attention, this has been clear for decades. The issue was definitively laid out almost 40 years ago, in a piece cowritten by Kevin Kelly, a founding WIRED editor; Stewart Brand; and Jay Kinney in the July 1985 edition of The Whole Earth Review, a publication run out of Brand's organization in Sausalito, California. Kelly had gotten the idea for the story a year or so earlier when he came across an internal newsletter for publisher Time Life, where his father worked. It described a million-dollar machine called Scitex, which created high-resolution digital images from photographic film, which could then be altered using a computer. High-end magazines were among the first customers: Kelly learned that National Geographic had used the tool to literally move one of the Pyramids of Giza so it could fit into a cover shot. "I thought, 'Man, this is gonna change everything,'" says Kelly.
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S28Hasselblad 907X 100C Review: Digital Smarts With a Film Soul ![]() 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 WIRED
Hasselblad's new 100-megapixel medium-format camera system is capable of truly stunning images and totally incapable of shooting video. This is a photographer's camera, for those lucky enough to still be photographers, without the demanding video workload tacked on to every job. If that's youâand you have plenty of cash to spareâthis is the camera you want.
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S29Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra 12K Review: Resin Printing Made Easy (and Big) ![]() 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 WIRED
I'm a huge fan of resin 3D printers. While the liquid resin can be a little harder to work with than typical filament printers, the results are often much more detailed and look better. However, there are some limitations to the Elegoo Mars 3 that I used in the past. Things like its small print bed, or making sure it's properly ventilated because resin printing can be toxic, mean I don't turn to it as often as I'd like. The new Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra, on the other hand, fixes all of these problems and more.
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S30Trump's Truth Social Is Going Public ![]() Former president Donald Trump's Truth Social, a shameless Twitter clone, is set to become a publicly traded company as soon as next week.
Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. voted on Friday to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. The vote is a culmination of a years-long saga attempting to merge Trump Media with a publicly traded company in what's known as a SPAC deal. The company will trade under the ticker DJT once it goes public.
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S31Stardew Valley's 1.6 Update Is Out--Here's Some of the Biggest Changes (2024) ![]() The popular farming sim and ultimate cozy game, Stardew Valley, dropped a major update on Tuesday after months of anticipation. StardewâÂÂs 1.6 update has an insane amount of new content that touches every area of the game, from new menus and DIYs, to a new farm layout, new crops, and the ability to have multiple pets and play with seven friends at once. ItâÂÂs enough updates to make the game feel fresh, but isnâÂÂt so new that you canâÂÂt ease back into a beloved farm and toil away.
It's important to note here that the free update is currently only available for PC players. The update will come to mobile and consoles like the Nintendo Switch later on. If you're not a PC player, the 1.6 news has not changed gameplay, and you'll be able to play normally while you wait for it to show up. If you don't have the game yet on PC, you can purchase it on Steam for $15, and it works on PC, Linus, and Mac computers.
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S327 Ways the Apple Antitrust Case Could Change Your iPhone ![]() The US Department of Justice has targeted Apple's alleged smartphone monopoly with its newly filed antitrust lawsuit. It accuses Apple of thwarting innovation, excluding competition, and locking customers into its walled garden. Get ready for a lengthy courtroom battle, and with pockets as deep as Apple's, who knows what the outcome might be? But concessions seem likely.
Many of the points raised in the lawsuit have double-edged implications, admonishing Apple for not granting third parties more access to crucial iPhone functions, but also for preventing its apps and services from working beyond iPhones. This aggressive legal challenge could significantly impact the iPhone in your pocket. Here are a few changes we might see if the suit proves successful.
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S33Our Favorite Laptop Tote Bags and Purses (2024): Sustainable, Weather-Proof, Durable ![]() 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 WIRED
Everyone needs a good bag, and if you're commuting to work or toting textbooks around campus, you need a good laptop bag. Backpacks are greatâand we have lots of favoritesâbut laptop tote bags and purses are just as capable and offer more stylish options if you prefer traditional handbags (like me).
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S34S35Best Cheap Electric Bikes Under $2,000 (2024): Commuter, Folding, Cargo ![]() 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 WIRED
Electric bikes reduce car congestion, get you moving, and reduce your carbon footprint. Also, they're just really fun. I've never met anyone who has tried an electric bike and not wanted one; in the Netherlands, ebikes currently outsell regular bikes. However, that four-figure price tag induces sticker shock. Many states are considering incentive programs, but how does that help you if you want or need an ebike now?
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S36S37What It Takes to Create an Engaging Work Environment  You’ve just been promoted into your first leadership role and are feeling a mix of nerves and excitement. You want to inspire people to deliver great work by creating an engaging environment and be the kind of leader who people actually want to work for. Simultaneously, this is your first time steering the ship, and you’re not sure where to start.
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S38The Cognitive Neuroscientist Who Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Language  Ursula Bellugi was fixated on how we learn language. Her groundbreaking research on sign language demonstrated the connection between language skills and biology
While working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., the late cognitive neuroscientist Ursula Bellugi discovered that, much like spoken language, sign language was made up of specific building blocks whose assembly followed strict rules. Her subsequent discoveries about the complexities of sign language led to both linguistic breakthroughs and changes in the way deaf people felt about signing. Bellugi demonstrated that sign language is as rich and complex as any spoken language. Her work deepened our understanding of what it means to communicate as humans.
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S39How Artificial Intelligence Helped Write this Award-Winning Song  Allison Parshall: Hey, I’m Allison Parshall, you’re listening to Science, Quickly. This week, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes – and honestly this one is one of my favorite things I’ve ever worked on.
It’s the first in a three-part series on artificial intelligence making music. Together we’re going to hear a very unique song, and trace the technical revolution that made its creation possible.
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