   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S50Announcing Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis should have been simple. But the palace let it get out of hand   The British royal family is famous for its carefully curated media image. That’s why it was a surprise to see them lose control of the narrative in the wake of what we now know is a serious health crisis befalling Catherine, Princess of Wales (or Kate Middleton as she’s popularly known).It is clear the nearly 1,000-year-old institution of the monarchy and its tradition of “never complain, never explain” is being tested by social media and its power to spread rumours and misinformation. The palace’s public relations team has underestimated how difficult it is to manage relationships with social media audiences. Their reactive attempts to rein in speculation has turned Catherine’s health challenge into a PR disaster.
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S25 A Five-Step Guide To Improving Your Employer Brand  The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.A consistent priority issue for boards of directors and CEOs is the acquisition and retention of talent. In a 2023 Manpower study of more than 30,000 employers in 41 countries, 75% of employers indicated that they were struggling to acquire the talent they needed. Many companies view the hiring process as the need to search for and find the right person — it is about “acquiring talent,” after all. But talent acquisition involves more than matching the right person to the right role. It also involves positioning your company as the best choice among the employers you are competing against — which highlights the importance of developing an employer brand that candidates believe will fulfill their needs and aspirations better than any other option in the marketplace.
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S28Will The Science For Psychedelic Drugs Ever Line Up With The Law?  The push to legalize hallucinogens is likely to heighten tensions between state and federal law. But will they listen to the science?When Oregon’s first psilocybin service center opened in June 2023, allowing those over 21 to take mind-altering mushrooms in a state-licensed facility, the psychedelic revival that had been unfolding over the past two decades entered an important new phase.
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S27How 2024's Best Strategy Game Could Redefine an Entire Genre  Released earlier this month, Unicorn Overlord marks a triumphant return for one type of old-school strategy RPG that prizes preparation and clever tactics over quick decision-making in the midst of combat. It’s also a major departure for developer Vanillaware, whose last game, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, was primarily a visual novel with limited strategic battles. Over the years, Vanillaware has made a name for itself with its distinctive graphics style and ability to tackle new genres with skill. That’s evident in Unicorn Overlord, which succeeds in a genre that’s not only new to Vanillaware but has also rarely been made by any developer in recent years. In my review for Inverse, I wrote, “The sheer joy of leading your army to victory through nothing but clever planning is hard to overstate, and I’m convinced it will make Unicorn Overlord a new classic of the strategy genre in years to come.”
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S19Inside the hunt for new physics at the world's largest particle collider - MIT Technology Review (No paywall)  In 1977, Ray and Charles Eames released a remarkable film that, over the course of just nine minutes, spanned the limits of human knowledge. Powers of Ten begins with an overhead shot of a man on a picnic blanket inside a one-square-meter frame. The camera pans out: 10, then 100 meters, then a kilometer, and eventually all the way to the then-known edges of the observable universe—1024 meters. There, at the farthest vantage, it reverses. The camera zooms back in, flying through galaxies to arrive at the picnic scene, where it plunges into the man’s skin, digging down through successively smaller scales: tissues, cells, DNA, molecules, atoms, and eventually atomic nuclei—10-14 meters. The narrator’s smooth voice-over ends the journey: “As a single proton fills our scene, we reach the edge of present understanding.” During the intervening half-century, particle physicists have been exploring the subatomic landscape where Powers of Ten left off. Today, much of this global effort centers on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an underground ring 17 miles (27 kilometers) around that straddles the border between Switzerland and France. There, powerful magnets guide hundreds of trillions of protons as they do laps at nearly the speed of light underneath the countryside. When a proton headed clockwise plows into a proton headed counterclockwise, the churn of matter into energy transmutes the protons into debris: electrons, photons, and more exotic subatomic bric-a-brac. The newly created particles explode radially outward, where they are picked up by detectors.
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S21TikTok is not the only Chinese app thriving in America - The Economist (No paywall)  WITH THE prospect of a ban hanging over TikTok, its 170m American users may start looking for an alternative time-sink. They could plump for Bigo Live, popular for TikTokish live-streaming. Or Likee, which offers similar video-editing and sharing options and has more than 100m users around the world. There is also Hago, which blends social media and video games, and which has clocked up some 500m downloads.
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S24S2619 Years Later, the Next Star Wars Show May Finally Unmask the Most Mysterious Sith Lord  The Acolyte might finally make Star Wars feel new again. Not only is it a Sith-focused story set a century before The Phantom Menace, but it’s also a mystery following a Jedi investigating the murder of their comrades. We still don’t know who the victims are, who the assassin is, and just how vengeful former Padawan Mae is involved, but there may be an explanation for one big question: why are Jedi being targeted? The entire answer may be laid out in a non-canon book.In an interview with StarWars.com, Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland revealed that the non-canon Extended Universe (now called Legends) features heavily in the series. “There are a couple of really big EU ideas that are utilized both early on in the series and later in the series,” she said.
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S41Cameron Murray's 'terrifically unfair' answer to our housing woes resembles a lottery, not the serious reform we need  With 120,000 people homeless each night and one in five low-income private renters spending more than half their income on rent, it is clear Australia urgently needs a housing policy change. A new book by economist Cameron Murray, The Great Housing Hijack, claims to provide a guide for just that. Murray is spot on about one thing: the housing policy debate has been hijacked. As he notes, the breathless reporting of every fluctuation in the market is unenlightening. People with a stake in property markets flood the debate with spurious claims.
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S29Voice-Controlled AI Gadgets Could Fix the Worst Part of Using a Computer  What if instead of spending time doing stuff on a laptop, you could simply tell an AI to operate it for you?We’ve covered several of the ways large language models, and more generally, a new wave of artificial intelligence software and hardware, could change the way we play games, work with our own data, and find information online. No one is quite sure what generative AI is good for — and accepting pretty subpar performance while developers try and figure it out — but it’s at least clear that leaning into natural interactions with digital assistants could change a lot of the ways we use our computers every day. Mainly, by removing the need for complicated interfaces.
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S3060 Weird Things Under $30 on Amazon That Are Clever as Hell  There are plenty of bizarre things for sale on the internet that beg the question: Who would buy this? Then there are these weird things on Amazon that are so damn clever, you’ll wonder who wouldn’t add them to their cart immediately. Why? Because they’re weird in the most helpful ways. From ingenious tools that streamline cooking and cleaning, to products that help you save money in the long run, you’ll find plenty of finds that will upgrade your routine. You’ll also discover some items that are just, well, fun. Because we all deserve to have a little more fun (don’t we?). Getting a little extra plug-in space doesn’t mean you have to deal with a bulky surge protector or power strip. In fact, this highly rated outlet extender has a minimalist 1.1-inch profile, so it not only looks sleek, but fits into tight spaces, like behind furniture. It offers up three AC sockets for appliances, along with two USB ports for charging devices.
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S3630 Years Ago, Bethesda Launched an Unstoppable Franchise That Changed Gaming Forever  To some, The Elder Scrolls series defines the action role playing game genre. Though the last installment in the main series, Skyrim, came out all the way back in 2011, and the next one, VI, has no set release date, Elder Scrolls looms over the industry. Every entry is treated as a bonafide event and Skyrim’s continuous success allowed it to be ported over a dozen times since its original release. Which is a little funny, considering that when Elder Scrolls was born, it was nothing like the RPG standard bearer that we’ve come to recognize.To go back to the first Elder Scrolls game, Arena, one must travel 30 years into the past, before the birth of Bethesda Game Studios and the massive popularity it would acquire. Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Bethesda Softworks was a tiny video game publisher behind fairly forgettable titles like Wayne Gretzky Hockey and video game tie-ins to The Terminator. As such, The Elder Scrolls: Arena was one of their first games to have a distinct personality — it just wasn’t the personality that it would eventually develop.
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S38A Swedish expat in the Philippines wonders: what's up with people sleeping at work? | Aeon Videos  Upon moving to the Philippines, the Swedish director Samir Arabzadeh noticed something that seemed quite peculiar about everyday life in the country. Rather than feeling the need to always look busy, employees often quite openly and unabashedly slept while on the clock. In his short documentary Powernapper’s Paradise, Arabzadeh sets out to understand this practice as someone from a culture that places a premium on productivity. Collecting a series of portraits of said on-the-job sleepers, Arabzadeh collates a broad range of perspectives that swirl around a single, shared understanding – a bit of shuteye on the job is really no big deal. And, tugging harder at the roots of the phenomenon, he finds a society that seems content to move at a leisurely pace, and uninterested in being rushed into a rushing world.‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’ One artist’s imaginative activism
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S39ISIS-K's attack in Moscow risks escalating the Russia-Ukraine war  A music concert in suburban Moscow became the scene of a bloody terrorist attack on March 22 as gunmen with automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails killed more than 130 people and injured dozens more. Although Ukraine was quick to deny any involvement, Russian President Vladimir Putin used a short televised statement to his nation to suggest, without evidence, that Ukraine was prepared to help the terrorists escape.
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S43We created a VR tool to test brain function. It could one day help diagnose dementia  If you or a loved one have noticed changes in your memory or thinking as you’ve grown older, this could reflect typical changes that occur with ageing. In some cases though, it might suggest something more, such as the onset of dementia.The best thing to do if you have concerns is to make an appointment with your GP, who will probably run some tests. Assessment is important because if there is something more going on, early diagnosis can enable prompt access to the right interventions, supports and care.
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S18What's next for offshore wind - MIT Technology Review (No paywall)  Large groups of turbines installed along coastlines can harness the powerful, consistent winds that blow offshore. Given that 40% of the global population lives within 60 miles of the ocean, offshore wind farms can be a major boon to efforts to clean up the electricity supply around the world. The coming year and beyond will likely be littered with more delayed and canceled projects, but the industry is also seeing new starts and continuing technological development. The question is whether current troubles are more like a speed bump or a sign that 2024 will see the industry run off the road. Here’s what’s next for offshore wind power.
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S22The secret to career success may well be off to the side - The Economist (No paywall)  The conventional language of career success moves in only one direction: up. You scale the career ladder or climb the greasy pole. If you do well, you have a rapid ascent. And if you really succeed, you reach the top. No one ever rings home to share the news that they have reached a plateau. But there is another type of career trajectory. Sideways moves, to jobs that don’t involve a promotion or even necessarily a pay rise, can be a boon to employees and organisations alike.
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S23S42S15Why AI is so thirsty: Data centers use massive amounts of water  Tech companies also like Iowa's wind power, which gives it the country's highest rate of renewable energy. Some 60 percent of Iowa's electricity comes from renewable sources, so tech companies can power their data centers there while also working toward ambitious climate goals for low-carbon power.As data center operators power up the servers that keep the internet humming and make artificial intelligence possible, they also need large volumes of water to cool those servers down, to keep them from overheating. The growing water consumption by data centers is becoming a challenge for some host communities.
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S20S11Banning TikTok Would Do Basically Nothing to Protect Your Data - Scientific American (No paywall)  Last week the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to approve a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S.—unless the wildly popular short video app is sold to a non-Chinese parent company. President Joe Biden and some U.S. lawmakers have called the app a potential national security threat and warned that the Chinese Communist Party could use it to glean sensitive data on its 150 million users in the U.S. But there is only very limited evidence—involving pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong—that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has ever directly shared any user data with the Chinese government. And there is no public proof that ByteDance has handed U.S. user data to Beijing.Despite legitimate concerns over big data, privacy and social media platforms’ influence on users’ opinions and beliefs for profit, multiple technology and privacy experts say singling out TikTok is not a fix. Foreign and domestic intelligence agencies alike have plenty of other access to sensitive information on people in the U.S. via the ever expanding global trade in digital data. Sanctions on any one app can’t solve these problems.
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S31Netflix's Latest Sci-Fi Epic Used a Surprising Alternative to the Volume for Its Trippiest Scenes  How do you create a VR world that is both convincing and also unreal? 3 Body’s Derek Tsang has the answer.In the world of 3 Body Problem, the title refers to two things: the complex physics problem that involves a planet that shares an orbit with three stars, and a VR game that characters play called “3 Body.” In Cixin Liu’s first book in the Three-Body series, Wang Miao finds himself playing the secret VR game, which is eventually revealed to be a recruitment tool for humans working with distant aliens. In the new Netflix show, the VR world of “3 Body” comes to life in a very specific way. When Jin (Jess Hong) and Jack (John Bradley) enter this VR world, it’s simultaneously extremely convincing and intentionally uncanny.
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S6Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon - WIRED (No paywall)  When AI researcher Melanie Mitchell published Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans in 2019, she set out to clarify AI’s impact. A few years later, ChatGPT set off a new AI boom—with a side effect that caught her off guard. An AI-generated imitation of her book appeared on Amazon, in an apparent scheme to profit off her work. It looks like another example of the ecommerce giant’s ongoing problem with a glut of low-quality AI-generated ebooks.Amazon took down the imitation of Mitchell’s book after WIRED contacted the company. “While we allow AI-generated content, we don't allow AI-generated content that violates our Kindle Direct Publishing content guidelines, including content that creates a disappointing customer experience,” Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek says.
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S8Can a 'prescription' for free fruits and vegetables improve health? Studies say yes.  These so-called produce prescription programs aim to combat heart problems and obesity-related diseases by either preparing free bundles of fruits and veggies for participants to pick up on a regular schedule, delivering fresh batches of produce to people’s homes or giving them money to buy produce. Recent studies support the benefits of these programs. New research presented Wednesday at the American Heart Association’s scientific sessions in Chicago analyzed the impact of a program called Recipe4Health, which delivers 16 weekly batches of free produce to people’s doorsteps in Alameda County, California. Participants also attend group medical visits that teach them about nutrition and physical activity.
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S9How To Set Boundaries At Work Without Jeopardizing Your Career - Forbes (No paywall)  Do you continue to take on any extra work your manager throws at you even when you’re at your breaking point? When your workload exceeds your capacity, it can lead to anxiety, stress and even burnout. In fact, burnout from workplace stress is at an all-time high, with 42% of the workforce reporting it, according to the latest Future Forum Pulse report. One group especially susceptible to burnout is women.Women burn out faster than men because they are more likely to be responsible for the household and caregiving duties (in addition to holding down full-time jobs). In a revealing study by the Pew Research Center, even women who are the breadwinners engage in more unpaid labor like housework and childcare. When you combine carrying a heavier burden at home with a lack of boundaries at work, it’s easy to understand why many women struggle to keep their heads above water.
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S10The total solar eclipse is returning to the United States -- better than before  By many measures, April’s event will (please excuse the pun) eclipse the last total solar eclipse that passed over the United States in 2017. There are few reasons. The shadow of totality will be twice as wide as that of the 2017 eclipse (more on why below), so it will be easier to find a place to view it in any given state. The time of totality — how long the moon is completely covering the sun — will also be almost twice as long, at over four minutes in many locations. “And I think even more importantly, 2024 passes over a much bigger population,” says Ernie Wright, who works in NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. He did the eclipse calculations underlying many of the maps and illustrations you’ll see in this article. “More than twice as many people actually live in the path and don’t have to go anywhere to see it.”
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S35Netflix Just Quietly Released the Most Deranged Sci-Fi Show of 2024  Netflix just debuted its latest big-budget, high-profile sci-fi series, 3 Body Problem, but don’t let it distract you from a humble show with more ambition and heart that premiered on the service just days earlier. While 3 Body Problem is about saving the entire Earth, this series is focused on a much humbler mission: keeping a chicken nugget safe. It may not have the same production values, but by the end of the first episode, you’ll be more invested in one little nugget than you are in the entire planet.Chicken Nugget, based on the Korean webtoon of the same name, follows Go Baek-joong, an intern at a machine manufacturing company who loves singing, dancing, and wearing yellow pants (a plot point worth keeping in mind). He has a crush on Min-ah, the daughter of his boss, Choi Seon-man, and he offers to share his sweet-and-sour chicken lunch with her. But before she can take her first bite, she steps into a strange purple machine that was delivered to the office and morphs into a chicken nugget.
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S45S46Labor drops to a 51-49 lead in Newspoll; Labor chooses to concede Tasmanian election  Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Newspoll, conducted March 18–22 from a sample of 1,223, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous Newspoll, four weeks ago. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (up one), 32% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (up one), 7% One Nation (up one) and 11% for all Others (down two).
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S3Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (~100 Models Explained)  Mental models help us understand the world. For example, velocity is a mental model that helps you understand that both speed and direction matter. Reciprocity is a mental model that helps you understand how going positive and going first gets the world to do most of the work for you. Margin of Safety is a mental model that helps you understand that things don’t always go as planned. Relativity is a mental model that shows us we have blind spots and how a different perspective can reveal new information. The list goes on.Think of each model as a lens through which you can see the world. Each lens offers a different perspective, revealing new information. Looking through one lens lets you see one thing, and looking through another reveals something different. Looking through them both reveals more than each one individually.
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S4Charted: Car Brand Loyalty in 2024  Infiniti dealerships are aware of this alarming trend, and have attributed it to the brand’s aging lineup. In a recent interview, Steve Lapin, Chairman of the Infiniti National Dealer Advisory Board, said: “Product is king. Infiniti doesn’t have the right products right now to compete in the marketplace.”
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S7What CEOs are saying about how they are controlling costs in 2024 - Fortune (No paywall)  Insulet’s flagship product is the Omnipod, a wearable insulin pump that automatically delivers multiple daily injections for people with diabetes. But while revenue is rising sharply, so too are expenses— including for research and development as Insulet works to improve the company’s products, expand beyond the 25 countries it serves today, and create new medical devices.To wrangle all the innovation avenues that Insulet could pursue, but may not actually result in a product that is brought to market, Hollingshead said Insulet has spent most of the last two years pairing back the company’s R&D portfolio to focus more on what could be brought to market in 2024 versus what’s to come in three years. “It’s allowed us to get much sharper,” said Hollingshead.
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S16Are You Noise Sensitive? Here's How to Tell - WIRED (No paywall)  As a mom of three boys, I can barely hear my thoughts against the cacophony of my brood plotting their next Minecraft moves, bartering Pokémon cards, or singing a Weird Al parody. They’re not fighting or wreaking havoc, but life with three energetic school-aged kids is, well, noisy … and I’m noise sensitive.It turns out, I’m in good company. According to a 2023 PLOS One study conducted in the UK, nearly one in five adults have some level of noise sensitivity. And Richard J. Salvi, cofounder and director of the University at Buffalo's Center for Hearing and Deafness, tells me that at least 29 medical conditions are linked to noise sensitivity.
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S34The Science of Eclipses Is Full Of Miscalculations, Bonfires, And Bad Weather  For centuries, astronomers have sought to learn more from eclipses — but it hasn’t always worked out. For centuries, astronomers have realized that total solar eclipses offer a valuable scientific opportunity. During what’s called totality, the opaque moon completely hides the bright photosphere of the sun – its thin surface layer that emits most of the sun’s light. An eclipse allows astronomers to study the sun’s colorful outer atmosphere and its delicate extended corona, ordinarily invisible in the dazzling light of the photosphere.
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S40S47Alternative proteins are here - the next 30 years could be crucial for NZ's meat and dairy sectors  The history of farming is seeded with technological “big bang” moments that have changed the trajectory of whole industries and countries. Some – such as mechanisation, and the arrival of synthetic fertiliser and pesticides, have transformed agricultural economic and technical systems. Others have involved substitute commodities – artificial flavourings, chemical dyes or synthetic fibres to replace wool – which have threatened the existence of whole farming sectors, including in New Zealand.
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S48Why sport is fundamental to the fabric of life  A couple of weeks ago we published an article that seemed to strike a chord with The Conversation’s readers. “Dreading footy season? You’re not alone – 20% of Australians are self-described sport haters” used survey data to examine why so many people have a negative reaction to sport. It was read more than 17,000 times and was well received.In the normal course of events, this would be pleasing, but on this occasion, it was faintly alarming. For some months we had been working behind the scenes on a plan to hire a new editor to increase our coverage of sport. What if our readers don’t share our enthusiasm?
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S49S12Move Over, Moon! Meet Earth's Flock of Quasi-Moons - Scientific American (No paywall)  Orbital mechanics is a weird subject. If you have a single object—say, a planet—orbiting another single object—a star—then things are relatively simple. The orbit might be a circle or more elliptical (elongated) or a variety of other mathematical shapes. The time taken to orbit the star once is called the planet’s orbital period, and it tends to stay pretty much constant. (For a circular orbit, the speed of the planet stays constant. But if the orbit is an ellipse, the planet speeds up a bit when it’s closer to the star and slows down when it’s farther out.)Now, let’s say there’s a second object, such as an asteroid, in orbit around the star. It, too, may travel along a circular path or a more elliptical one. And from the high and mighty view of someone looking at the system from the outside, both objects follow their paths at different speeds and with different periods.
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