How Business Owners Scrambled to Pull Their Funds from Silicon Valley Bank
Silicon Valley Bank was a top lender for startups. Now it's the largest bank failure since the Great Recession. Continued here |
Last Year's Sci-Fi Was More Genre-Bending Than Ever
Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUH Slide: 1 / of 1.Caption: Chris Rogers/Getty Images Continued here |
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The History-Making Multiverse of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'
The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. There have been few things more satisfying than the Everything Everywhere All at Once awards season performance. Star Michelle Yeoh canoodling with Cate Blanchett on red carpets, the directors—the duo known as Daniels—doing skits for The Late Show. Jamie Lee Curtis being the most Jamie Lee Curtis she can be. Yeoh threatening to beat up a pianist who tried to play her off stage during her Golden Globes acceptance speech. James Hong giving a history lesson on the Screen Actors Guild at the SAG Awards. The list is too long to name everything all at once. But more than that, it’s been amazing to watch the movie make so much history. Continued here |
Do You Know Where Your Data Is? Here's How Companies Are Approaching Cloud Storage
Data lakes, data warehouses, and data marts serve different purposes for different businesses. Continued here |
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Major Bank for Venture-Backed Founders Seized After Customers Pull Cash
Tech entrepreneurs were reportedly were being advised to pull out at least two months' worth of 'burn' cash from Silicon Valley Bank to cover their expenses. Continued here |
California is named for a griffin-riding Black warrior queen California has long been associated with fantasy, but few people know that centuries before Hollywood, it drew its very name from an imaginary kingdom—one ruled by a Black queen. Around 1530, when Hernán Cortés’s conquistadors, amid shipwrecks, mutinies, and the destruction of the Aztec Empire, arrived at the peninsula on Mexico’s western side, they christened it “California,” after a fictional island in a Spanish book published decades earlier. The name, later extended from the peninsula (now Baja California) to the mainland coast to the north, endured, surviving the region’s incorporation into the United States in 1850. Meanwhile, the novel of chivalry that spawned it, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Las Sergas de Esplandián, has been all but forgotten (despite being memorably cited by Cervantes as one of the books that turned poor Don Quixote’s brains to mush). Yet its portrait of California’s queen, the dark-skinned warrior Calafia, is worth revisiting—not just for its marvelous details, but for the light it sheds on medieval European attitudes about race. At least initially, Queen Calafia seems like she could have sprung from the pages of a modern fantasy novel, ruling a kingdom that wouldn’t have been out of place in Westeros or Middle Earth. Her island, located “on the right side of the Indies, very close to … the Terrestrial Paradise,” is filled with gold and inhabited only by Black women, who tame wild griffins to ride into battle (fed with the flesh of any unfortunate men who show up). Calafia herself is described as beautiful, strong, and courageous. The book portrays her in an unfailingly positive light, though it ultimately places her under the control of medieval European patriarchy. Continued here |
What You Can’t Say on YouTube
Recently, on a YouTube channel, I said something terrible, but I don’t know what it was. The main subject of discussion—my reporting on the power of online gurus—was not intrinsically offensive. It might have been something about the comedian turned provocateur Russell Brand’s previous heroin addiction, or child-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. I know it wasn’t the word Nazi, because we carefully avoided that. Whatever it was, it was enough to get the interview demonetized, meaning no ads could be placed against it, and my host received no revenue from it. “It does start to drive you mad,” says Andrew Gold, whose channel, On the Edge, was the place where I committed my unknowable offense. Like many full-time YouTubers, he relies on the Google-owned site’s AdSense program, which gives him a cut of revenues from the advertisements inserted before and during his interviews. When launching a new episode, Gold explained to me, “you get a green dollar sign when it’s monetizable, and it goes yellow if it’s not.” Creators can contest these rulings, but that takes time—and most videos receive the majority of their views in the first hours after launch. So it’s better to avoid the yellow dollar sign in the first place. If you want to make money off of YouTube, you need to watch what you say. Continued here |
Twitter's $42,000-per-Month API Prices Out Nearly Everyone
Since Twitter launched in 2006, the company has acted as a kind of heartbeat for social media conversation. That's partly because it's where media people go to talk about the media, but also because it's been willing to open up its backend to researchers. Academics have used free access to Twitter's API, or application programming interface, in order to access data on the kinds of conversations occurring on the platform, which helps them understand what the online world is talking about. Twitter's API is used by vast numbers of researchers. Since 2020, there have been more than 17,500 academic papers based on the platform's data, giving strength to the argument that Twitter owner Elon Musk has long claimed, that the platform is the "de facto town square." Continued here |
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Want to Dramatically Improve Your Memory? Cognitive Research Reveals the Best (and Worst) Ways to Get Smarter, Faster
Hint: Re-reading and highlighting are a relative waste of time. Continued here |
David Lynch shows us why movies don't need to make sense
The more formulaic and predictable Hollywood blockbusters become, the more attention we should pay to directors who value originality over popularity, and who stay true to themselves even if it lowers their odds of achieving critical and/or commercial success. Of all the directors working today who match this description, few are as stubbornly attached to their authorial visions as David Lynch. Whether revered or reviled, the filmmaking of Lynch — writer and director of such cult classics as Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive — is held together by a style so idiosyncratic that critics can only describe it as “Lynchian.” Continued here |
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What Stone-Wielding Macaques Can Tell Us about Early Human Tool Use
Macaques using stones to open oil palm nuts can accidentally create stone flakes that look like early human tools Consider the possibility that all human technology started with a mistake—or at least a lack of hand-eye coordination. In pursuit of this idea, Lydia Luncz and Tomos Proffitt, both at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, traveled to an abandoned oil palm plantation near Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay and collected nut-cracking stones used by a resident troop of long-tailed macaques. Macaques bash open oil palm nuts by placing them on a flat stone and striking their shell with another stone. These monkeys often miss the nut and unintentionally break the stones, producing sharp flakes. In a new study, Luncz and Proffitt argue that such mistakenly created flakes may have been our ancient ancestors’ or other now extinct early human relatives’ first step toward creating the sharp-edged tools that they used to butcher animals and cut edible plants. In other words, these are the type of tools that set our species on its evolutionary course to become ever more productive hunter-gatherers and technological tinkerers. Continued here |
Exclusive Livestream: Deepak Chopra in Conversation with Inc. on Longevity, Psychedelics, and Global Well-Being Sunday March 12 at 12:50 p.m. CT
The popular author and founder of The Chopra Foundation shares his insights on reaching your highest potential from his new book, 'Living in the Light.' Continued here |
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Ask Ethan: What does ER=EPR really mean?
Back in the 1930s, two seemingly unrelated revolutions were taking the world of physics by storm. Put forth in 1915, Einstein’s General Relativity reinterpreted gravity as the curvature of the fabric of spacetime, where the overall spatial curvature determines how matter and energy move through the Universe. Similarly, a new set of quantum rules were discovered to apply to a variety of physical systems, leading to a revolutionary, probabilistic picture of reality, rather than a deterministic one. One advance in the 1930s came from Einstein working with his student Nathan Rosen, where they found a way to connect two well-separated regions of space via an Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridge: the earliest theoretical example of a wormhole. Another, seemingly unrelated advance came from Einstein, Rosen, and Boris Podolsky’s thoughts on quantum entanglement, leading to what’s known as the EPR paradox and an argument that quantum mechanics was incomplete. More recently, physicists have been exploring the ideas that these two thoughts are linked, commonly expressed as ER = EPR. But what does that truly mean? That’s what Ken Lapre wants to know, inquiring the following after watching this video: Continued here |
Highly Politicized Congressional Hearings Air COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis
House Republicans have kicked off an investigation into how the pandemic began with witnesses who largely favor a lab origin The US House of Representatives held the first in a series of public hearings on 8 March aimed at exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic began. Members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic acknowledged that the question of where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus originated has become highly politicized. But they said that both hypotheses describing its emergence — one, that it spread naturally from animals to people; the other, that it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — must be explored. “This question is fundamental to helping us predict and prevent future pandemics, protecting our health and national security and preparing the United States for the future,” said committee chair Brad Wenstrup, Republican representative for Ohio, in his opening statement. Continued here |
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Little rewards get people to see truth in politically unfavorable info
Piecing together why so many people are willing to share misinformation online is a major focus among behavioral scientists. It's easy to think partisanship is driving it all—people will simply share things that make their side look good or their opponents look bad. But the reality is a bit more complicated. Studies have indicated that many people don't seem to carefully evaluate links for accuracy, and that partisanship may be secondary to the rush of getting a lot of likes on social media. Given that, it's not clear what induces users to stop sharing things that a small bit of checking would show to be untrue. Continued here |
The Best Mario Day Deals on Nintendo Games and Consoles
March 10 is Mario Day, and of all the made-up shopping holidays, this one is actually worth celebrating. From special console bundles to discounts on games featuring beloved characters from the Mario universe, these limited-time deals will be sure to have you yelling “Wahoo!” (Just don't jump into any mysterious pipes.) Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here |
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5 Ways This $2.5 Billion Tech Company Takes the Lead
Tell them where you're aiming the company. Continued here |
Working with People Who Aren't Self-Aware
Even though self-awareness—knowing who we are and how we’re seen—is important for job performance, career success, and leadership effectiveness, it’s in remarkably short supply in today’s workplace. Researchers have found that although 95% of people think they’re self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are. Un-self-aware colleagues aren’t just frustrating; they can cut a team’s chances of success in half and lead to increased stress, decreased motivation, and higher turnover. So how do we deal with these situations? Is it possible to help the unaware see themselves more clearly? And if we can’t, what can we do to minimize their damage on our success and happiness? Continued here |
4 Principles for Improving Customers' Digital Experience
Companies, despite exploding technological power, are failing to keep up with rising customer standards. Customer service technology should build a customer dialogue and foster deeper relationships, just as the best human customer service representatives do. And then it should go beyond, using emerging technology to accentuate and improve what a human agent can physically accomplish. This is what we call “digital empathy.” teThe keys are to offer customers more control, keep the technology so intuitive it feels mindless, provide visibility at points of customer agitation, and blur the divides of the digital and physical domains. Continued here |
Designing a Climate Advocacy Strategy
Although the business community has made progress toward climate goals since the 2015 Paris Agreement, fewer than one-fifth of net-zero targets set by national and subnational governments and only a third of the largest public corporations with net-zero targets actually meet science-aligned criteria. Further, anti-climate lobbying has had a disastrous effect on the planet and cost years in meaningful action. Inaction is not an option. Businesses committed to being on the right side of history must advocate for policies, regulations, and laws to achieve economy-wide systemic change at the pace and scale required to achieve climate targets. Based on their cross-organizational work at three B Corps, the authors identified five critical elements for advocacy strategies that will help businesses use their power and influence to push for the system change required to meet climate targets. Continued here |
Building Your Own Brand Platform
Some branded product companies are sidestepping digital aggregators like Amazon and Google Shopping and instead building their own brand flagship platforms. These platforms are more than just a direct sales channel. They provide a mix of specialized products, services, and content by involving participants—consumers and third-party businesses—in the value creation process, as both receivers and providers of value. Continued here |
Rich Countries Should Not Control the World's Sunlight, Experts Warn
Interest is building in using solar geoengineering to combat climate warming, but experts warn it could have broad—and inequitable—impacts CLIMATEWIRE | Radical climate interventions — like blocking the sun's rays — could alter the world's weather patterns, potentially benefiting some regions of the world and harming others. Continued here |
5 Ways to Promote Your Business Without Directly Promoting Your Business
Instead of shamelessly self-promoting, try doing this. Continued here |
The 42 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now
Netflix has something for everyone, but there are also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on the platform is updated weekly to help you figure out what to watch. We include some less-than-obvious gems, so we're confident you'll find a must-watch series you don't already know about. You can also try our guide to the best movies on Netflix for more options. And if you've already completed Netflix and are in need of a new challenge, check out our picks for the best shows on Hulu and the best Disney+ shows. Continued here |
How To Stop a (Potentially Killer) Asteroid
We slammed a $330-million spaceship the size of a dairy cow into an asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Here’s what we’re learning about how our first step in planetary defense could save us in the future. Tulika Bose: What would happen if a gigantic asteroid started hurtling towards earth? Would we all be headed for impending doom, like the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago? Continued here |
"Unemployment for all": The ideology of the anti-work movement
The most common surname in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. is Smith. A smith is, historically, a job title — a gunsmith, blacksmith, or goldsmith. In Germany, the most common name is Mueller (miller). In Slovakia, it’s Varga (cobbler). All over the U.S., you will find Hunter, Skinner, Weaver, Barber, Cook, Mason, Brewer, and Gardener. Our surnames tell a fascinating etymological tale about our forebears. And what this particular tale tells us, is that occupations mattered a lot. They mattered so much that they defined who you are. Many cultures have a version of a “good works” philosophy. This is the idea that the jobs we do, and the sweat and toil we put into a thing, define who we are. If the devil makes work for idle hands, then good, old-fashioned hard work will make us saints. We give life meaning in what we do and are most contented after a job well done. Continued here |
Live Closer to Your Friends
Sometime during the pandemic lockdowns, I began to nurture a fantasy: What if I were neighbors with all of my friends? Every day, as I took long walks through North Vancouver that were still nowhere near long enough to land me at a single pal’s doorstep, I would reflect on the potential joys of a physically closer network. Wouldn’t it be great to have someone who could join me on a stroll at a moment’s notice? Or to be able to drop by to cook dinner for a friend and her baby? How good would it be to have more spontaneous hangs instead of ones that had to be planned, scheduled, and most likely rescheduled weeks in advance? This doesn’t have to be just a dream. Friends who already live in the same city could decide to move within walking distance of one another—the same neighborhood, block, or even apartment building—and campaign for others to do the same. Doing so would likely involve a lot of effort on the front end, but the resulting community could pay emotional dividends for years. Meeting up would be a breeze if you didn’t have to travel as far to see one another. More than that, the proximity would make it easier to support one another materially and emotionally. Even just knowing that someone you cherish is near could be reassuring. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve become convinced: We should all live close to our friends. Continued here |
Australia's Massive Wildfires Shredded the Ozone Layer - Now Scientists Know Why
Smoke from the catastrophic 2019–2020 fires in Australia unleashed ozone-eating chlorine molecules into the stratosphere Massive wildfires that raged across southeast Australia in 2019–20 unleashed chemicals that chewed through the ozone layer, expanding and prolonging the ozone hole. A study, published today in Nature, describes how smoke combined with chlorine-containing molecules in the stratosphere — remnants of chemicals that are now banned — to cause the destruction. Continued here |
Silicon Valley Bank shut down by US banking regulators
Silicon Valley Bank was shuttered by US regulators on Friday after a rush of deposit outflows and a failed effort to raise new capital called into question the future of the tech-focused lender. Continued here |
Video Quick Take: Advisor360
That’s a great question, Todd. I don’t think anybody can argue against the importance of digital transformation to a business these days. So we all know that that’s important. Advisor360° recently completed a survey of the wealth management industry. And the research came back clear. Subpar technology costs advisors business. Continued here |
Why Great CEOs Are Actually Their Company's 'Chief Emotions Officer'
Entrepreneur coach Chip Conley shared why emotional intelligence is a key ingredient for corporate leadership in a moving session at Inc. Founders House at SXSW in Austin. Continued here |
Charlie Munger Says This Emotion Destroys Happiness. Jeff Bezos Could Have Used His Advice
It's why we're never satisfied, says Warren Buffett's longtime vice chairman. Continued here |
New Test Predicts a Life-Threatening Pregnancy Disorder
Preeclampsia is a common pregnancy disorder, but doctors lacked a decisive way to predict its severity until now Even after thousands of studies, questions still linger about one of the most common diseases unique to pregnancy: preeclampsia. This disorder leads to dangerously high blood pressure in about 5 percent of U.S. pregnancies, with significantly higher rates in Black women. And it is becoming more common. Continued here |
cURL, the omnipresent data tool, is getting a 25th birthday party this month
When you first start messing with the command line, it can feel like there's an impermeable wall between the local space you're messing around in and the greater Internet. On your side, you've got your commands and files, and beyond the wall, there are servers, images, APIs, webpages, and more bits of useful, ever-changing data. One of the most popular ways through that wall has been cURL, or "client URL," which turns 25 this month. Continued here |
How to Watch the 2023 Oscar Best Picture Nominees
While movies released to streaming services received gobs of attention at last year’s Oscars, most of the films up for Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards had a more traditional release in theaters. Movie executives are eager to get your butt back into that crushed velvet recliner with a $15 popcorn in hand. Even though a few smaller films, like Women Talking, are nominated for Best Picture, blockbuster events like Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are also up for the biggest award on Hollywood’s starriest night. Did you miss some of the nominated films during their initial release? Lucky for you, all but one of the movies are now available to half-watch from your couch while messing with your smartphone. The bad news is that no single streaming service has a bunch of the movies, so be prepared to rent them through a video-on-demand service or add another subscription to your monthly bill if you want to see all the Oscar-nominated flicks. Continued here |
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4 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time
Ever come out of a 12-hour workday feeling exhausted, yet not productive enough? We spend our days trying to tick things off our to-do list, and still, it feels like we haven’t done enough, or worse, haven’t been efficient. How we can be more productive in ways that feel manageable and good? Continued here |
How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow
When things are uncertain, it can feel comforting to avoid difficult feedback. But creating stability for your team — and success for your organization — depends on your ability to learn what needs to change. Burying your head in the sand is never the safe thing to do. A culture of ruinous empathy or false harmony is not the path to success. Instead, invite criticism from your team. This is awkward at best and can be a difficult emotional journey, so the authors present six tips for how to successfully solicit Radical Candor from your employees. Continued here |
3 Ways to Say "No" to Your Boss
Early in your career, you may feel pressure to say “yes” to everything. It makes sense. You’re new. You’re trying to build a good reputation. But remember: Reserving your energy for the most important work — the work that will benefit you and your ambitions — will make you more successful than taking on tasks you don’t have the bandwidth to handle. Here’s how to say “no” to your boss. Continued here |
How Fear Stopped Me from Betting on Myself
But one piece of advice changed the course of my life. Continued here |
5 quotes from the "Tao Te Ching" to help bring balance to your life
Sometimes it seems as though we are living through an era that’s perpetually off balance. Each day, the news brings us stories of conflict and political polarization. People search for, but can never find, that elusive work-life balance. And the challenges of modern living fill our lives with stress, burnout, and a never-ending time famine. While it is true that the world can be volatile and life confusing, this perspective also misses a vital point: Whether as individuals or as a society, we have always struggled to find balance in our lives. Our time isn’t special in this regard; it’s been a constant human endeavor. That’s why thinkers across the ages and from disciplines such as religion, philosophy, and science have attempted to offer their own answers to help. Continued here |
Am I Old Enough to Be Taken Seriously?
I started my career in New York City, working as an editorial assistant for one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world. Fresh out of grad school with several years of internship experience in tow, I walked into the 52-story building with my head held high. I was to report directly to the senior vice president, an industry legend. She was poised and intelligent and I idolized her. Continued here |
Kris Alexander: How video games can level up the way you learn
Video games naturally tap into the way we learn: they focus our attention and track our progress as we head toward a clear goal. Kris Alexander, a professor of video game design and passionate gamer himself, thinks the same elements should be used in traditional education to cater to different learning styles and engage students across the world, both in-person and online. Continued here |
Controversy Surrounds Blockbuster Superconductivity Claim
Will a possible breakthrough for room-temperature superconducting materials hold up to scrutiny? This week researchers claimed to have discovered a superconducting material that can shuttle electricity with no loss of energy under near-real-world conditions. But drama and controversy behind the scenes have many worried that the breakthrough may not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Continued here |
Photos of the Week:Â Sea Dragon, Mermaid Convention, Inflatable Tank
Speed skating in the Netherlands, a teddy-bear clinic in Belgium, a newfound sphinx statue in Egypt, an International Women’s Day march in Chile, carpet weaving in Afghanistan, Holi celebrations in India, skijoring in Colorado, a cow-look-alike competition for cats in Thailand, and much more Protesters brandishing a European Union flag brace as they are sprayed by a water cannon during clashes with riot police near the Georgian Parliament, in Tbilisi, on March 7, 2023. Georgian police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters Tuesday as thousands demonstrated in the capital to oppose a controversial "foreign agents" bill. Georgia's ruling party later said it was withdrawing the bill. # Continued here |
You Won’t Regret Starting a K-Drama
Don’t write off popular Korean-language TV series as sappy melodrama. These shows will expand your conception of what storytelling can be. Read on for recommendations for your weekend. To describe the plot of Crash Landing on You to the uninitiated is to invite mockery. After a paragliding test from Seoul gone wrong, a South Korean heiress and entrepreneur crash lands, literally, onto a stunningly handsome North Korean army officer, who, despite being lawful and rigid, decides to hide her and help her return home. What follows are 16 episodes, totaling more than 20 hours, of a story so propulsive I could watch nothing else for weeks after. Continued here |
See the First Complete Map of an Insect's Brain
Over 12 years, scientists charted more than 3,000 neurons and the nearly 550,000 connections between them in a larval fruit fly A fruit fly larva is only a fraction of an inch long, and its brain is the size of a grain of salt. But that didn’t stop scientists from trying to get a complete picture of what’s inside the tiny organ. Continued here |
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How dyslexia changes in other languages
Alex loved books and languages. His parents were native English speakers, and the family lived in Japan, so Alex spoke English at home, and Japanese at school. At the age of 13, however, Alex was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning difficulty that affects reading and writing. According to test results, his English reading level was that of a six-year-old. The results were a shock. "This test came along and they were like, actually, your writing is horrible," Alex recalls. "I thought I was doing ok. Yes, there was a bit of a struggle, but I assumed everyone else was struggling. In fact, the numbers that came out were quite devastating from my perspective." Continued here |
What I Learned While Being the World's Worst Manager
Managers are the solution to a problem that no longer exists. Continued here |
Preventing deadly elephant attacks with a new app
Bahundangi, a village in the Jhapa district of Nepal, regularly makes headlines for its human-animal conflicts. Tuskers enter the 1,800-household village from the Mechi River crossing, a transborder river flowing through Nepal and India. In the last 10 years, at least 53 people have died in elephant attacks, while 13 elephants have been killed. Now, a mobile app, Hatti Ayo (translation: “Elephant is coming”), is being used to avoid wild elephant attacks in the region. The app is installed on the phones of a group of volunteers led by Shankar Luitel Chettri — an elephant conservationist and resident of Bahundangi — who track elephant movement in the area. Continued here |
All of Shakespeare’s Plays Are About Race
A new book argues that the playwright’s work was central to defining whiteness as a racial category—one that has persisted ever since. Pop quiz: Which of the following Shakespeare works is about race? (A) Hamlet, (B) Othello, (C) Romeo and Juliet, (D) the sonnets. If you answered B, you’re not alone. Many of us have been taught that Othello is Shakespeare’s primary race play, because, of course, it focuses on a Black character. You might also recall that Shakespeare wrote a few other plays with nonwhite characters: the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, a suitor to the heiress Portia, who begs her, “Mislike me not for my complexion.” Or Cleopatra, the African queen whom Roman soldiers blame for seducing their general, Antony, with her “tawny front.” Or Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, a schemer alternately villainous and compassionate, who asks, “Is black so base a hue?” Or even Caliban, the island native in The Tempest whom Prospero, his enslaver, calls “this thing of darkness.” Continued here |
Phnam Bagley: Gourmet food for the final frontier
What does an in-flight meal look like when you're traveling to Mars? Designer Phnam Bagley envisions a future where astronauts have nourishing, flavorful food reminiscent of home -- a giant leap from their current staple of "goop-in-a-bag." Learn more about her team's gourmet creations for galactic travel and how these innovations can improve life here on Earth. Continued here |
Traute Lafrenz, Last Surviving Member of Anti-Nazi Resistance Group the White Rose, Dies at 103
During World War II, the rest of the movement’s core members were executed for distributing leaflets critical of the Nazi regime When German university student Traute Lafrenz met a young man named Alexander Schmorell during an afternoon bike ride in Switzerland in the summer of 1939, she had little reason to anticipate the role he would soon play in her life. Continued here |
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The time has come: GitHub expands 2FA requirement rollout March 13
Software development tool GitHub will require more accounts to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) starting on March 13. That mandate will extend to all developers who contribute code on GitHub.com by the end of 2023. Continued here |
The Oscars’ Incredible Knack for Being Wrong
Despite a history of embarrassment, the Academy has somehow managed to hold on to its prestige. As a film critic, I have complicated feelings about Oscar season, a baggy calendrical concept that now includes every month of the year, from the indie-film discoveries of the Sundance Film Festival in January to the awards voting by critics’ groups in December. The complaints about the Academy Awards are as well rehearsed as the acceptance speech of a surefire victor: The most deserving nominees seldom win, and the most inventive movies of the year typically get no nominations at all. The voting process is so opaque and so subject to external influence—barraged by ever more expensively managed PR campaigns and buffeted by political and social forces far outside the Academy’s garden walls—that to say the prize has little to do with the recognition of artistic merit is to join a weary chorus. And yet the whole cinematic world dances to the rhythm of the Oscars’ baton, and I refer not merely to the film industry itself but to a sprawling satellite economy of run-up awards, Oscar-branded media coverage, fashion marketing, and social-media conversation. Continued here |
The case for viewing depression as a consciousness disorder
The symptoms of depression are well characterized, but the subjective experiences of a depressed person are much harder to pin down. According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the core symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include depressed mood and a markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities. These can be accompanied by changes in appetite and weight, sleep disturbances, fatigue, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, a reduced ability to think or concentrate, and sometimes suicidal ideation. Continued here |
Trump Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine
The master of normalizing the once-unthinkable faces indictment, and no one seems surprised. “This is not normal,” Donald Trump’s opponents warned as he took office and began enacting his agenda. He gave them so many chances to use the phrase that it became first a cliché and then a sorry joke. Continued here |
Sales of vinyl albums overtake CDs for the first time since the late '80s
Sales of vinyl records have been on the rise for years, but according to the RIAA's 2022 year-end revenue report for the music industry (PDF), record sales hit a new high last year. For the first time since 1987, unit sales of vinyl albums outpaced those of CDs, vindicating all the people who have spent decades of their lives talking about how vinyl "just sounds better." Continued here |
California's 'Zombie Forests' Are Cheating Death—but Maybe Not for Long
A fifth of conifer forests in the state's Sierra Nevada mountains are stranded in unsuitably warm conditions In California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, ponderosa pines, sugar pines and Douglas firs stand tall. But despite their imposing nature, many of these cone-producing trees, some of the tallest living things on Earth, have a secret: They're living on borrowed time. Continued here |
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Silicon Valley Bank’s Failure Is Now Everyone’s Problem
Whispers about insolvency. A bank run. A desperate attempt to raise funds. A bank failure. Market gyrations. Concerns about financial contagion. History is repeating itself. Today, California regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank, a lender aimed at start-ups, technology firms, and wealthy individuals. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation stepped in as the bank’s receiver. Account holders with less than $250,000 in savings will have full access to their funds as of Monday, the FDIC said. Account holders with more than that—the overwhelming majority of entities banking with SVB, according to the bank itself—will have to wait and see. Continued here |
Being frugal sounds boring — until it makes you wealthy
Frugality isn’t easy to practice in today’s consumer-driven economy. But there is a growing frugality trend sparked by a mix of factors, namely the pandemic, inflation, and fears of a recession. Being frugal isn’t the same thing as being cheap — and watching your spending doesn’t mean you’re financially struggling. Instead, it’s about living within (or below) your means. It’s possible to do this without negatively impacting your quality of life. And it can also be good for the environment. Continued here |
Stadia's pivot to a cloud service has also been shut down
Poor Google Stadia; the service seemed like a slow-motion trainwreck from the moment it started. The service's launch, life, and death played out exactly how the "nobody trusts Google" naysayers (your author included) would have predicted, but we were all forced to go through the motions anyway. When Google killed the service, the narrative from the company was that Stadia's technology would live on in Google Cloud, but, according to Stephen Totilo of Axios, even Stadia's white-label game-streaming service is now dead. Continued here |
The Value in Decoding Fairy Tales
The simple logic of a fable can reveal something bigger about our culture: Your weekly guide to the best in books The wolf’s yellow eyes, sharp claws, and snapping teeth haunt our fairy tales and idioms, Erica Berry writes in her recent book, Wolfish. She asks why the animal has persisted as such a potent symbol of fear, arguing that this may color the way we see the world we share with animals and one another. By deconstructing stories such as “The Three Little Pigs” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” Lily Meyer wrote this week, Berry asks what dangers these canine villains are standing in for. Continued here |
A/B Testing: How to Get It Right
In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled experiment—an A/B test—to try it out. The test showed that the change increased revenue by an astonishing 12%. It ended up being the best revenue-generating idea Bing ever had, worth $100 million. Continued here
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