Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language

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Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language     The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups. Continued here

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The Best Black Friday Sonos Deals     Sonos makes some of our favorite speakers and soundbars— we've tested all of them and have yet to find one we dislike. These devices are expensive, but the good news is that Black Friday Sonos deals are here (even if it's not Black Friday yet). Through November 27, you can snag sales on the company's Bluetooth speakers, soundbars, subwoofers, and more. We've included the best deals below. And make sure to read our Best Early Black Friday Deals roundup for more discounts.WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out. We'll update this guide through November. Continued here

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'It Gets Easier': The Biggest Myth of Parenting and Entrepreneurship     The idea that things will magically improve at some arbitrary point in time is a fantasy. Here's what I focus on instead. Continued here

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What the U.S.-China Agreement Means for Greenhouse Gas Emissions     The two nations announced limited steps to address climate change. But even a modest agreement could have far-reaching effectsAn aerial view of the ships carrying coal transport to unload outside the coal fired power plant on November 11, 2021 in Hanchuan, Hubei province, China. Continued here

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How Venture Capital Works     The popular mythology surrounding the U.S. venture-capital industry derives from a previous era. Venture capitalists who nurtured the computer industry in its infancy were legendary both for their risk-taking and for their hands-on operating experience. But today things are different, and separating the myths from the realities is crucial to understanding this important piece of the U.S. economy. Continued here

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The Best Early Black Friday Deals     You might be thinking, “How can there already be Black Friday deals?! November just started!” Well, dear reader, capitalism can't be slowed by mere dates on the calendar. Plus, if you can get ahead of the Black Friday madness and make a dent in your holiday shopping, why not? I'm certainly doing my best to get my Christmas shopping over as soon as possible, whether it's Cyber Monday or not. To help you do the same, we've tracked down great sales on our favorite products right now, from iPads and earbuds to stand mixers and bed sheets. Let the season of shopping gifting commence.Updated November 16, 2023: We've checked prices and added new deals, including the Amazon Kindle Scribe, Moto Razr+, Lovesac customizable couch, and Target Christmas trees and decorations. Continued here

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The Value of Keeping the Right Customers     Depending on which study you believe, and what industry you’re in, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. It makes sense: you don’t have to spend time and resources going out and finding a new client — you just have to keep the one you have happy. If you’re not convinced that retaining customers is so valuable, consider research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company (the inventor of the net promoter score) that shows increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Continued here

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Running Signal Will Soon Cost $50 Million a Year     The encrypted messaging and calling app Signal has become a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the tech world: It has grown from the preferred encrypted messenger for the paranoid privacy elite into a legitimately mainstream service with hundreds of millions of installs worldwide. And it has done this entirely as a nonprofit effort, with no venture capital or monetization model, all while holding its own against the best-funded Silicon Valley competitors in the world, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Gmail, and iMessage.Today, Signal is revealing something about what it takes to pull that off—and it’s not cheap. For the first time, the Signal Foundation that runs the app has published a full breakdown of Signal’s operating costs: around $40 million this year, projected to hit $50 million by 2025. Continued here

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Not Selling Turkey? You Can Still Tie Your Marketing to Thanksgiving     These three companies show that there are unique ways to drive Thanksgiving business for non-traditional products. Continued here

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Climate Change is Disrupting Animals' Brains. Here's How     The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Human-driven climate change is increasingly shaping the Earth’s living environments. Rising temperatures, rapid shifts in rainfall and seasonality, and ocean acidification are presenting altered environments to many animal species. How do animals adjust to these new, often extreme, conditions? Continued here

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Simple Formula Makes Prime Numbers Easy, but a Million-Dollar Mystery Remains     A generator equation can spit out many prime numbers, but it leaves important mathematical questions unansweredWould you like to be a millionaire? There are several ways to fulfill this dream. For two decades the U.S. edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? promised a million dollars if you could answer 15 challenging questions correctly. Today you could win that prize by answering just one question: How are prime numbers distributed on the number line? In doing so, you would solve the so-called Riemann hypothesis, one of seven “Millennium Problems,” the solutions of which are rewarded with $1 million each. Continued here

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How Blazy Susan and the Grateful Dead Came Together For a Paper Jam     Will Breakell took a long, strange trip to secure his company's first-ever licensing deal. Continued here

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Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake     Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel. Continued here

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Robotics 'Revives' a Long-Extinct Starfish Ancestor     Engineers and paleontologists teamed up to reconstruct an ancestor of starfish from the Paleozoic era and figure out how it movedDespite incredible advances in modern genomic research, science is nowhere near being able to clone long-extinct animals like the fictional ones in Jurassic Park. Even relatively recent extinctions remain enormously difficult to overcome. An innovative branch of research that joins robotics with paleontology, however, does let scientists bring back long-gone creatures in a different way: not with cells and DNA but with engineering skill and batteries. Continued here

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Mapping the 'Unknome' May Reveal Critical Genes Scientists Have Ignored     Among the vast contents of the human genome, geneticists are most interested in the tiny fraction—about 1.5 percent—that contains instructions for building proteins. Protein building is DNA's main function, and these complex molecules are essential for development, growth and reproduction across the entire body.But we don't know what most of these protein-coding genes actually do. Only about 20 percent of human coding genes are well studied, leaving the function of the other 80 percent (about 16,000 genes, along with the proteins they make) largely a mystery. This is because of a long-standing bias in genetics research: scientists more often study genes and proteins already known to have important functions. These high-profile projects, such as studying genes with known implications for cancer, are the ones that seem “sexy” to funders, says University of Oxford cell biologist Matthew Freeman. Continued here

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Time travel: What if you met your future self?     There's a classic short story by Ted Chiang in which a young merchant travels years ahead and meets his future self. Over the course of the story, the man receives warnings, promises and tips from the older, wiser version of himself. These premonitions then change the course of the merchant's life until he eventually becomes an older man, who meets his younger self and imparts the same wisdom.Scenarios like this are wildly popular and have been explored in many other novels as well as in movies like Back to the Future, and TV shows as diverse as Family Guy, Quantum Leap, and the BBC's own Doctor Who (see "The Doctor meets The Doctor" below).  Continued here

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New Study Shows Magicians Have Great Emotional Well-Being. Here's Why and What You Can Learn From Them     They're creative, but they're good at sweating the details, too. Continued here

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Unions Bring a Surprising Side Effect--Higher Vaccination Rates     Unions are good medicine, spurring vaccinations in their wider communities while overcoming pandemic politicsAt the height of the pandemic, unions across the U.S. demanded better COVID safety and health protection. From hospitals to fast food stands, warehouses to libraries, workers fought for personal protective equipment, cleaner workplaces, hazard pay and, where possible, telecommuting. To win protections, they signed petitions, organized sickouts, filed grievances, collectively bargained and, in some cases, engaged in work stoppages. Continued here

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'Assassin's Creed Nexus VR' Makes the Case for Immersive Gaming--Finally     I crouch unseen behind the bureau, the guard blocking the only exit from the room. Silently, I reach for a goblet, throwing it to the opposite side of the chamber. As the guard steps toward the disturbance, I emerge, sneaking behind him. With a flick of my wrist, my hidden blade emerges. He'll never take another step again. Also, his halberd starts fritzing on the floor before fading out of existence, a reminder that this is all virtual reality—or rather, VR within VR, the metatextual framing of Ubisoft's latest Assassin's Creed game.Ubisoft has had its fingers in VR for years now, from early efforts experimenting with the format—think Eagle Flight, an aerial racing game with a literal bird's-eye view that evolved from a tech demo—to more fully featured games, such as the social deduction title Werewolves Within or co-op space adventure Star Trek: Bridge Crew, both from its Red Storm studio. Continued here

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The I-10 Freeway Fire May Have Been Fueled by Exploding Hand Sanitizer     Shortly after a massive fire under the Interstate 10 freeway in downtown Los Angeles last weekend closed a 1-mile stretch normally traversed by 300,000 vehicles daily, California’s fire marshal announced that it was being investigated as possible arson.Some locals have been eager to blame the homeless encampments that are common under California's freeway overpasses, despite LA mayor Karen Bass saying this week that “there is no reason to assume that the reason this fire happened was because there were unhoused individuals nearby.” Continued here

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What Is the Manufacturing Outlook for 2024? A Review of Deloitte's Outlook     Deloitte's 2024 manufacturing industry outlook provides a glimpse into what the new year has in store for the sector.John Coykendall, Deloitte’s national sector leader for industrial products and construction, joins the show to talk about the company’s 2024 manufacturing outlook. Continued here

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US Congress Report Calls for Privacy Reforms After FBI Surveillance 'Abuses'     A report compiled by the Republican majority members of the US House Intelligence Committee says that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation should be required under the law to obtain a “probable cause warrant” before scouring the database of a controversial foreign intelligence surveillance program for information related to domestic crimes.The Section 702 program, authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), has a history of being abused by the FBI, the Intelligence Committee says, necessitating a “complete review” of the program and “the enactment of meaningful reforms.” Continued here

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Developing a Successful Business Strategy in China     China is more important than ever in the global economy, which means that many companies have to develop a strategy for doing business there. But that’s hard to do, because in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic the number of foreign journalists, businesspeople, academics, and executives on the ground has diminished dramatically. In 2019, there were roughly 3 million foreigners based in China, but today that number is said to have dropped to as low as 50,000. As a result, the world’s “ground-feel” for the country has never been worse. So how best to proceed if you’re a global business that has decided China needs to be a part of your future, or if you’re on a China-based team that is supporting global HQ in that decision? The author, a China expert, describes some key steps that companies can take to develop the right China strategy during this moment of opacity and flux. Continued here

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Are you really as good at something as you think?     Does confidence equal competence? Not quite. In a talk that will make you better aware of yourself, experimental psychologist Robin Kramer delves into the Dunning-Kruger effect — which argues that those who are least capable often overestimate their skills the most — and explores just how good you are at judging your own abilities. Continued here

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Business Groups Urge Congress to Speed Up Work Permits for Asylum Seekers     Business owners say that asylum seekers shouldn't have to wait six months before receiving work permits. Continued here

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MMA Fighting Is Known for Its Blood and Violence. This Founder Is Proving It Can Transform Lives     Inspired by tragedy to make major changes in his life, Alta co-founder Nick Langton is building a global community for MMA with digital technology and old-fashioned gym training. Continued here

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How "Chesterton's Fence" can help you avoid terrible decisions     Robert is a public-spirited, meddling, busy body. He means well, but when “Good Ol’ Bob” gets involved, he invariably louses it up. Let’s say Robert goes out on a walk in the countryside. It’s a popular walk with postcard views and picnic spots. There is barely a bug or beast to bother you. Halfway through this walk, and blocking the path, is a fence. The fence is tiny and made of damp, rotting wood. It’s easy to step over, but a bit of a nuisance. So Robert has a noble idea: Let’s get rid of the fence. It’s too small to be useful. It’s too rotten to be important. Let’s hack and bash at it so ramblers can enjoy an unimpeded walk.Within two months, all the cows in the local area are dead — 50 cows killed by Good Ol’ Bob. Two things did it for them. The first was that the tiny, rotten fence was keeping the sheep in their sheep field from the cows in their cow field. Sheep will eat grass right to the ground. They cut it short and low. Cows, though, need long grass to eat with their prehensile tongues. So, malnourished and hungry, the cows were ill prepared for their second plague: badgers. Badgers can carry tuberculosis, and when they come close to cows, they often infect their bovine neighbors. The cows didn’t stand a chance. Robert, with his well-intentioned act of fence vandalism, brought famine and pestilence to the farm. Continued here

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Apple's Pledge to Support RCS Messaging Could Finally Kill SMS     Good news is coming to your group chat. Today, Apple said it will add support for the RCS messaging standard to the iPhone. The website 9to5Mac broke the news that Apple will release a software update some time next year that will bring support to iOS for the messaging standard, which is already widely used by Android phones.RCS, or Rich Communications Standard, is a messaging service that's a step up from the SMS and MMS messaging standards that smartphones have used since they first arrived. RCS can do more than SMS and MMS: It allows users to share higher-resolution photos and videos between their devices; it supports read receipts; and there's more fun stuff, like the ability to easily drop emoji and GIFs into a conversation. It also adds extra layers of security that the older messaging standards lack. Continued here

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Ask Yourself the Question Warren Buffett Used to     "I had never had that thought in my entire life. The 'mindblown' emoji that was literally me." Continued here

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College ROI: Higher Education Leads to Significant Earnings Boost, According to a New Study     The study estimates the return on investment of graduating from University of North Carolina programs. Continued here

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Which processed foods are better than natural?     The language used to describe the foods we eat can have a huge effect on how we perceive them: "organic", "artisan", "homemade" and "handpicked" foods sound slightly more tempting than the prosaic "tinned", "rehydrated" or "freeze-dried".Another adjective that can whet our appetites is "natural", while we tend to associate "processed" food with long lists of ingredients we can't pronounce. But when it comes to our health – is natural always better than processed? Continued here

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U.K. Becomes First Country to Approve a CRISPR Disease Treatment     A newly approved CRISPR therapy could transform the treatment of sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia—but the technology is expensiveSickle-cell anaemia is marked by red blood cells that are misshapen and sticky, affecting blood flow. Continued here

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The Strategic Secret of Private Equity     The huge sums that private equity firms make on their investments evoke admiration and envy. Typically, these returns are attributed to the firms’ aggressive use of debt, concentration on cash flow and margins, freedom from public company regulations, and hefty incentives for operating managers. But the fundamental reason for private equity’s success is the strategy of buying to sell—one rarely employed by public companies, which, in pursuit of synergies, usually buy to keep. Continued here

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Put Meaning at the Center of Your Business Model     Most business models cover the bases nicely: how the company will serve customers better than rivals. But they don’t really explain why the company matters. Why should anyone care that your company exists? Why should they walk past your rivals in order to reach you? What’s your real differentiation in the eyes of target customers? Without good answers, you aren’t likely to stand out in the marketplace for long. Once the shine wears off, or rivals match your pricing, you’ll lose both customers and employees. That’s bad both for your long-term competitive position and for society. Adding a larger meaning beyond the dollars makes sense for every constituent — investors, employees and the community. A successful business model connects with customers, employees, and investors, and builds a compelling vision for the long term. And the only way to do that is with empathy and imagination to gain a deep understanding of the needs of your target customer. In this article, author Ron Shaich, founder and former chairman & CEO of Panera Bread, shares how his team transformed a low-margin French bakery into a profitable French bakery café by listening to customers and pinpointing the meaning behind the business model. Continued here

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What was it like when cosmic inflation occurred?     Our Universe today is full of matter and radiation and can be observed by us through a variety of means. Atoms have clumped and clustered together due to billions of years of gravitation. This has formed a great cosmic web on the largest scales, with clusters of galaxies, individual galaxies, clouds of gas, stars, planets, and more on smaller scales. Through it all, the Universe has been expanding and cooling, something it’s been doing since the earliest moments of the hot Big Bang.But the Big Bang wasn’t the very beginning of the Universe. Before that, there was a period known as cosmic inflation, which came earlier and set up the hot Big Bang. While living in an expanding, cooling Universe is difficult to intuit, inflation paints an entirely different picture. Here’s what it would be like to live in an inflating Universe. Continued here

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The 36 Best Black Friday Deals on Outdoor Gear     Black Friday is traditionally the season when you shop for televisions or Christmas presents, and not so much for outdoor gear. But that has changed in the past few years with REI's Get Up Get Out Sale and other outdoor retailers. It turns out now, a week early, is a great time to score a deal on tents, backpacks, sleeping pads, Garmin devices, and more. The “Black Friday deals" on outdoor gear are here now, even if the turkey isn't. Be sure to check out our other early Black Friday deals coverage, including mattress deals and Best Buy deals.Updated November 16, 2023: We've checked prices and added new deals, including an Exped sleeping pad, Therm-a-Rest Mondo King, Z-Rest, Nemo Stargaze chair, and a Hydroflask mug. Continued here

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The Best Home Depot Black Friday Deals     Winter means, for more of us than not, spending a lot more time at home than we'd otherwise choose to spend. Vacations are a fine remedy, sure, but who has money to travel all season long? Make home a pleasant place to be, inside and outside, with these deals on equipment for your garage, backyard, and home, and you won't want to leave.WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out. We'll update this guide through November. Be sure to check out our best early Black Friday Deals. Continued here

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This Biophysicist 'Sun Queen' Harnessed Solar Power     Hungarian-American biophysicist and inventor Mária Telkes illuminated the field of solar energy. She invented a solar oven, a solar desalination kit and, in the late 1940s, designed one of the first solar-heated housesToday we tell the story of Mária Telkes, one of the developers of solar-thermal storage systems. Telkes was so dedicated to the world of solar energy that while she was working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she earned the nickname the “Sun Queen.” Over her lifetime, she registered more than 20 patents, nearly all related to harnessing the power of the sun. Continued here

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When Silicon Valley investors try their luck abroad     Silicon Valley has many claims to being the center of the global tech industry, but the stickiest advantage is funding. There’s just no better place to raise money for a startup, from seed rounds to growth rounds to exit. If you can go anywhere, that’s where you go. It’s odd because we know how to send sums of money over long distances. (The blockchain solves this!) But when California investors reach into other markets and other countries, they tend to get clumsy.If you’ve spent any time in a regional startup scene, you can probably recognize the signs of a U.S. venture firm taking interest. The biggest difference is the sheer volume of money: far more than any local fund could muster, and enough to inflate valuations to the point that no local firm can compete. One or two startups will hit it big, then the next business will end up with high expectations and few funders that can live up to them. Even startups that were lucky enough to get U.S. money may have trouble making an exit now that they’ve set the bar so high. Continued here

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Behind the Scenes at a U.S. Factory Building New Nuclear Bombs     A mockup of a plutonium pit is shown at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s, where Manhattan Project scientists were developing the first nuclear weapons.This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal. Continued here