To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort

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To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort     An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is: “maximum effort = maximum results.” But research shows that it doesn’t actually work that way in reality. Here’s what actually works: The 85% rule, which counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort. Operating at 100% effort all of the time will result in burnout and ultimately less-optimal results. While the precise number 85% may just be a rule of thumb, it’s a helpful one for managers who want to create high-performance teams without burning people out. Continued here

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To Make a Greener Building, Start With an Old One     Next time you find yourself in a new-ish US office building, scan the walls visible from the entryway. Within seconds, you are almost guaranteed to find a glittering circular plaque embossed with a leaf. It’ll be topped with the words LEED Platinum—or sometimes Gold, Silver, or just Certified.In the late ’90s and early 2000s, LEED designation, awarded by the US Green Building Council to recognize leadership in energy and environmental design, was generally revered only in the niche world of architects devoted to reducing the carbon impact of the built environment. But the era of corporate greenwashing has transformed LEED into a badge of status. Recent constructions Apple Park, Google Bay View, and Salesforce Tower all boast LEED Platinum medallions. Amazon’s recently downsized HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, will likely earn a Platinum plaque when it opens. Continued here

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The End of Influencers on Instagram     Caitlin Covington never wanted to be an Instagram influencer—that is, just an Instagram influencer. She always identified as a blogger, and she held on to that even as blog readership slowly declined and Instagram began to crowd out any other type of content creation.Caitlin has been blogging about her personal style and life since 2012 and is one of the pioneers of the industry, a fashion and lifestyle blogger who rose to fame based on her aspirational aesthetic and girl-next-door wholesomeness. It’s hard to convey her magnetism without sounding like a creepy magazine writer describing a young ingenue primarily by her looks, but Caitlin’s Disney princess beauty, her long bouncy dark hair, and her big eyes are the first things you notice when you look at her feed. When you think of an influencer, you probably think of someone like Caitlin. Continued here

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The Kakhovka Dam Collapse Is an Ecological Disaster     A push notification news alert on his phone, then images of the deluge—that’s how Heorhiy Veremiychyk learned of the disaster. With water pouring through the stricken Kakhovka Dam in the Kherson region of Ukraine, he immediately understood the enormity of what had happened. “The water raised very sharply,” he says, referring to the terrible effects on wildlife downstream. “There was no possibility to escape.”Veremiychyk, of the National Ecological Center of Ukraine (NECU), says the impact of the dam’s destruction is severe. It will range from the obliteration of habitats to the contamination of drinking water. He can only watch from afar. Like millions of Ukrainians, he fled the Russian invaders, and he has been watching the Kakhovka Dam crisis unfold from the Czech Republic. Continued here

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The Strangely Believable Tale of a Mythical Rogue Drone     Did you hear about the Air Force AI drone that went rogue and attacked its operators inside a simulation? The cautionary tale was told by Colonel Tucker Hamilton, chief of AI test and operations at the US Air Force, during a speech at an aerospace and defense event in London late last month. It apparently involved taking the kind of learning algorithm that has been used to train computers to play video games and board games like Chess and Go and using it to train a drone to hunt and destroy surface-to-air missiles.  Continued here

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Self-Funding and Setting Limits     Luminary's Cate Luzio describes how she self-financed her business without losing everything. Continued here

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How heavy hydrogen reveals the dark Universe     The Universe as we know it, at present, mostly adds up, but not in any sort of intuitive way. The 20th century brought with it the realization that the majority of what we know and experience in this physical Universe — atoms, light, and the known subatomic particles along with everything they combine to form — makes up only 5% of the total amount of stuff in the Universe. The remaining 95% is a mixture of things that are completely “dark” to us: dark matter, which gravitates, and dark energy, which drives the expanding Universe ever farther apart. Uncovering the nature of the dark Universe remains one of the most ambitious goals for 21st century science.Our best evidence for the dark Universe comes from the combination of three different independent lines of observation: Continued here

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A Leaked Tesla Report Shows the Cybertruck Had Basic Design Flaws     In November 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stepped onto a stage in California to launch a new kind of EV: the Cybertruck, an angular cyberpunk-styled pickup with bodywork made of brushed stainless steel and “unbreakable” glass. What happened next has entered into public relations folklore. Under the glare of the cameras, the demo truck’s windows smashed not once, but twice during a demonstration of their strength. Musk first swore, then joked: “There’s room for improvement.” That off-the-cuff remark could have been a fitting mantra for the entire project.Not that this faltering start has deterred Tesla’s devoted fans, of course. Since then, an estimated 1.8 million customers have put down their $100 deposits to reserve a Cybertruck. The vehicle was supposed to start rolling off production lines in 2021. But two years on, the trucks still haven’t been delivered, and for most customers, they won’t be until 2024 at the earliest. Continued here

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Tesla to add General Motors to its charger standard next year     Tesla's Supercharger network is about to get more crowded. On Thursday afternoon, General Motors CEO Mary Barra joined Tesla CEO (and Twitter's owner) Elon Musk to announce that GM is signing on to what Tesla calls the North American Charging Standard (NACS) and will integrate those ports into its electric vehicles from 2025. The move follows a similar agreement between Tesla and Ford, announced two weeks ago. Continued here

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All the Ways ChatGPT Can Help You Land a Job     Artificial intelligence chatbots such as Bing AI and Google Bard offer help with everything from generating code to translating text to simplifying complex topics. They can also be useful when it's time to find a job. Wherever you are in your job search, you can turn to these tools for some help landing the role you want.The usual disclaimers apply here: These chatbots are still prone to inaccuracies and falsehoods, so never take what they say as 100 percent correct (at least not until you've checked it out from another source.) For more details, read about how LLMs actually work. Continued here

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Lung Cancer Pill Halves Risk of Death in Some People     For lung cancer patients who have a specific genetic mutation, taking a pill called osimertinib after surgery greatly reduced the risk of lung cancer recurrenceA daily pill may halve the risk of death for lung cancer patients with a particular type of genetic mutation who have undergone surgery, according to much awaited clinical trial results. Continued here

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Berkeley professor explains gender theory     What if gender wasn’t a predetermined reality, but a fluid construct formed by culture, history, and individual identity? This is a question that drives the work of Judith Butler, a gender theorist and distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley. While acknowledging the biological realities of sex, Butler promotes the concept of gender as performative — something that is enacted and shaped through our actions and interactions. This view, although challenging to traditional perspectives, is instrumental in the discourse on queer, trans, and women’s rights. Butler encourages a shift in societal conversation to include diverse gender identities.  Continued here

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How to Be Brave (and Other Career Advice) in Uncertain Times     Leena Nair is the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Unilever, a role she has held since March 2016. Leena was also the first woman appointed on the Unilever South Asia Leadership team. Her personal purpose is, “To ignite the human spark to build a better business and a better world.” As the CHRO, she champions having the right people, in the right roles, with the right capabilities and mindset and sees the young talent pipeline at Unilever as one of the most important strategic assets. With two sons aged 22 and 18, the topic of a tough job market and first careers has been dominating household conversations. Here is Leena’s advice to all graduating students and early career professionals on how to navigate the current job market. Continued here

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Juli     In a captivating, poetic ode to the beauty and strength of mixed languages, writer Julián Delgado Lopera paints a picture of immigrant and queer communities united not by their refinement of language but by the creative inventions that spring from their mouths. They invite everyone to reconsider what "proper" English sounds like – and imagine a blended future where those on the margins are able to speak freely. Continued here

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Where Imagination Lives in Your Brain     The ability to conjure up possible futures or alternative realities is the flip side of memory. Both faculties cohabit in the brain region called the hippocampusHenry Molaison, known for years as “H.M.,” was famously unable to form new memories. If someone he had met left the room only to return several minutes later, he would greet that person again as if for the first time. Because of surgery to treat intractable epilepsy, H M. lacked a sea-horse-shaped brain structure called the hippocampus and had amnesia. His case helped establish the hippocampus as an engine of memory. Continued here

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How Crowdfunding Offered Surprising Marketing Benefits     Luminary's Cate Luzio talks about how much crowdfunding boosted her with brand awareness Continued here

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A Guide to Becoming a Better Ally     Here’s the answer: While leadership teams have a big role to play, inclusion is not just a trickle-down effect. Experts say that the small, seemingly mundane interactions we engage in every day at work can also make an impact. Water cooler chats, email threads, and weekly meetings are all spaces where inclusive behaviors can be modeled and practiced. That means, each of us has the agency to create an environment that is safe, where everyone feels respected and valued, and where people can be themselves without fear or reprimand. Continued here

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Harnessing E-commerce Analytics Mindsets for Offline Retail Success     Learn how offline retailers can leverage analytics strategies to improve customer satisfaction and optimize store operations like e-commerce businesses. Continued here

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How to Redefine Your Work for Fulfillment and Success     Create space to redefine work for yourself while helping your employees do the same. Continued here

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Marc Andreessen Is (Mostly) Wrong This Time     Marc Andreessen occasionally sets the world on its ear with a sweeping hypothesis about the dawn of a new technological era. In his legendary 2011 blog post “Why Software Is Eating the World,” the cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz made the then-novel, now-undeniable case that even the most old-school industrial companies would soon have to put software at their core. In 2020, as Covid-19 caught the world desperately short of masks and nasal swabs, he published “It’s Time To Build,” a call to arms for reviving investment in technologies that could solve urgent problems like pandemics, climate change, crumbling infrastructure, and housing shortages.Now he’s back with a 7,000-word screed, another stab at framing the narrative; this time, the story is that “AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.” Much of it is devoted to debunking AI doom scenarios, and the rest to touting AI as little short of a civilizational savior. Continued here

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E. Jean Carroll's Case Reveals the 'Double Victimization' of Sexual Assault Survivors     Courts and the public are skeptical of sexual assault survivors who didn’t react violently to assault, placing a double burden on them. “Why didn’t you fight back?” is an impossible standard to demand, research showsE. Jean Carroll was asked this question by Joe Tacopina, the lawyer representing Donald Trump, in her sexual assault trial against the former president. Continued here

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Google un-bans Downloader app, but developer still mad about "broken" DMCA     Google has reversed the suspension of an Android TV app that was hit with a copyright complaint simply because it is able to load a pirate website that can also be loaded in any standard web browser. The Downloader app, which combines a web browser with a file manager, is back in the Google Play Store after nearly a three-week absence. Continued here

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How Global Information Sharing Can Help Stop Cybercrime     The Cybercrime Atlas is an initiative hosted by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Partnership Against Cybercrime. While it’s still in prototype stages, it’s being designed to provide a platform for academic analysts, cybersecurity companies, national and international law enforcement agencies, and global businesses to share knowledge about the cybercriminal ecosystem. At its core, the Atlas project is a database about cybercrime. Information could come from government alerts, cryptocurrency analysis companies, platform providers, court records, and publicly available materials — anything the analysts can identify that might be relevant to understanding the entirety of the criminal ecosystem. Analysts could then use this database to generate multiple different views or maps of various parts of the cybercriminal ecosystem. For example, one analyst might be interested in ransom payments and could use Atlas to help understand how illicit funds are moving. Another might be interested in identifying the platforms that appear to host a large number of criminal actors. Another “map” or view might focus on the relationships between different criminal groups. By creating an international information repository based on public data and voluntarily shared information, cybersecurity practitioners can create a tool that will enable them to fight cybercrime more effectively. Continued here

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What Will Working with AI Really Require?     To foster a symbiotic relationship between humans and AI, organizations must find the appropriate balance between investing in human skills and technological capabilities, and think strategically about how they attract and retain talent. To do this effectively, they need to think about where and how this technology will be used to assist people in their work — where people and machines will collaborate — and where either people or AI have skills that give them a clear advantage. Continued here

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A new Earth-sized, volcanic planet is a good candidate for harboring life     New planets are discovered every day, but this one deserves special note: An international team of astronomers led by Merrin Peterson and Björn Benneke of the University of Montreal reports finding an extraordinary world, called LP 791-18d, in a planetary system 87 light-years from Earth. The planet orbits a relatively cool M-class star not much bigger than Jupiter in the constellation Crater.Based on results from the TESS survey satellite and ground-based observations, astronomers already knew that this red dwarf star designated LP 791-18 is orbited by a super-Earth planet and another planet more like Neptune, only smaller. What’s exciting about the newly discovered Earth-sized planet is that it’s located in the habitable zone between the others, and is close enough to the Neptune-like planet that you’d expect it to have lots of volcanic activity. Continued here

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Report: Cooling Wage Growth Offers Small Businesses Some Much-Needed Breathing Room     A new report from Indeed shows that posted wage growth is broadly declining, though the full story differs by sector. Here's what entrepreneurs need to know. Continued here

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SEC Chair Tells Crypto Startups: You're Subject to Securities Law     Days after taking action against Binance and Coinbase, Gary Gensler firms up his stance, likening noncompliant crypto companies to "hucksters" and "scam artists" of the Roaring '20s. Continued here

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Are You Aware of Your Biases?     Often, it’s easy to “call out” people when we notice their microaggressions or biased behaviors. But it can be equally challenging to recognize and acknowledge our own unconscious biases. That said, becoming aware of your shortcomings can help you hone your leadership style, especially when you’re a new manager. Continued here

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The 25 Best Shows on Hulu Right Now     Netflix may have led the way for other streaming networks to create compelling original programming, but the best shows on Hulu are history-making. In 2017, it became the first streamer to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for The Handmaid’s Tale. In fact, that was just one of eight Emmys the series took home for its inaugural season, and it has continued to rack up nominations and wins over the years. While more competition for streaming eyeballs has popped up since Hulu started gaining serious critical credibility, the network has continued to stand out for its carefully curated selection of original series and network partnerships that make it the home of FX series and more. Below are some of our favorite shows streaming on Hulu right now. Continued here

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Our Favorite Standing Desks and Laptop Stands are on Sale Now     Sitting for eight hours a day isn't doing your back (and body) any favors. A standing desk isn't going to solve your problems, but it might give you the incentive to move around a little more during the day. Good news: Some of our favorite standing desks and laptop stands are on sale.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