Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day: After declining Twitter engagement, a writer games the For You algorithm, which he suspected was using invisible subreddits via Topics to organize tweets — Read to the end for some really good horse content — I Gave Into The New Twitter Algorithm And I Went Way Too Viral
Some marketers worry that Meta’s AI-based Advantage+ ad tool, added after Apple’s ATT to automatically generate multiple ads, forces them to relinquish control (Financial Times)
Financial Times: Some marketers worry that Meta’s AI-based Advantage+ ad tool, added after Apple’s ATT to automatically generate multiple ads, forces them to relinquish control — Social network claims successes with tool to counteract Apple’s privacy changes that resulted in billions in lost revenue
Access Now: in 2022, 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, led by India with 84 disruptions, Russia causing 22 in Ukraine, and more (Niha Masih/Washington Post)
Niha Masih / Washington Post: Access Now: in 2022, 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, led by India with 84 disruptions, Russia causing 22 in Ukraine, and more — More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers …
New purification method could make protein drugs cheaper
One of the most expensive steps in manufacturing protein drugs such as antibodies or insulin is the purification step: isolating the protein from the bioreactor used to produce it. This step can account for up to half of the total cost of manufacturing a protein. In an effort to help reduce those costs, MIT engineers […]
Phiala Shanahan is seeking fundamental answers about our physical world
In 2010, Phiala Shanahan was an undergraduate at the University of Adelaide, wrapping up a degree in computational physics, when she heard of an unexpected discovery in particle physics. The news had nothing to do with any of the rare, exotic particles that physicists were searching for at the time. Rather, the revelation revolved around […]
Why Every Tech Company Needs ESG at the Core of Its Strategy – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM OPPO
Sponsor content from OPPO.
How to Pick the Right Backpack Size for You (2023)
What do liters mean? What capacity will you need for work or the wilderness? We unpack all your questions.
Nikon Z 30 Review: A Perfect Starter Camera for Vloggers
This all-in-one for online content creators simplifies the process of making videos for the internet.
Sci-Fi Publishers Are Bracing for an AI Battle
Fantasy and sci-fi publication Clarkesworld has been hit with hundreds of submissions from writers using chatbots. Others are prepping for an onslaught.
DCG reports 2022 revenue of $719M and a loss of $1.1B as the firm struggled with plunging crypto prices and the restructuring of its lending platform, Genesis (Ian Allison/CoinDesk)
Ian Allison / CoinDesk: DCG reports 2022 revenue of $719M and a loss of $1.1B as the firm struggled with plunging crypto prices and the restructuring of its lending platform, Genesis — DCG held cash and cash equivalents of just $262 million at the end of 2022, while investment assets amounted to $670 million.
White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have TikTok installed on government devices and adjust IT contracts with vendors accordingly (David Shepardson/Reuters)
David Shepardson / Reuters: White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have TikTok installed on government devices and adjust IT contracts with vendors accordingly — The White House on Monday gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have Chinese-owned app TikTok on federal devices and systems.
Zoom reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.12B, vs. $1.1B est., Enterprise revenue up 18% YoY to $636.1M, Enterprise customers up 12% YoY to ~213K; ZM jumps 6%+ (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Zoom reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.12B, vs. $1.1B est., Enterprise revenue up 18% YoY to $636.1M, Enterprise customers up 12% YoY to ~213K; ZM jumps 6%+ — Zoom Video Communications Inc. gained in late trading after giving an upbeat profit forecast for the current period …
MIT-Takeda Program heads into fourth year with crop of 10 new projects
In 2020, the School of Engineering and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company launched the MIT-Takeda Program, which aims to leverage the experience of both entities to solve problems at the intersection of health care, medicine, and artificial intelligence. Since the program began, teams have devised mechanisms to reduce manufacturing time for certain pharmaceutical products, submitted a patent […]
Why Retailers Fail to Adopt Advanced Data Analytics
Six factors holding the industry back — and how it can move ahead.
How to Onboard Your New Boss
Reducing their learning curve about your organization, team, and culture will help set all of you up for success.
Leading with Compassion Has Research-Backed Benefits
Why it helps you and your workplace — and how to get better at it.
The Amazonification of Buying a New Car
Tesla pioneered selling vehicles online. Electric cars, the pandemic, and changing consumer behavior are now causing other automakers to embrace the shift.
Are Customizable Game Controllers Worth It?
Thinking of shelling out for tailor-made joysticks and buttons? Here’s what to consider first.
No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work
Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work.
After a string of high-profile setbacks, the White House and FTC are finding breaking up Big Tech is hard, as Google lawyers up ahead of its court battle (Washington Post)
Washington Post: After a string of high-profile setbacks, the White House and FTC are finding breaking up Big Tech is hard, as Google lawyers up ahead of its court battle — Google is hiring teams of former DOJ lawyers to fight antitrust lawsuits as the battle over tech firms’ power shifts to the courts
A look at Dude Perfect on YouTube, as its five founders look to build a theme park; a source says Dude Perfect’s 2022 revenue was ~$25M, up from ~$20M in 2021 (Miles Kruppa/Wall Street Journal)
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal: A look at Dude Perfect on YouTube, as its five founders look to build a theme park; a source says Dude Perfect’s 2022 revenue was ~$25M, up from ~$20M in 2021 — The five friends found fame making basketball trick shots and now hope fans can try similar antics […]
Google announces new features for Android, ChromeOS, and Wear OS, including Fast Pair support for Chromebooks, Keep shortcuts, and Wear OS accessibility modes (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Google announces new features for Android, ChromeOS, and Wear OS, including Fast Pair support for Chromebooks, Keep shortcuts, and Wear OS accessibility modes — Google has announced a slew of new features for Android, Chromebook and Wear OS that are designed to improve connectivity, productivity and accessibility.
Why we need to slow down the AI chatbot revolution
Rushing the release of AI chatbots for search is a risky experiment fuelled by greed.
Augmented reality headset enables users to see hidden objects
MIT researchers have built an augmented reality headset that gives the wearer X-ray vision. The headset combines computer vision and wireless perception to automatically locate a specific item that is hidden from view, perhaps inside a box or under a pile, and then guide the user to retrieve it. The system utilizes radio frequency (RF) […]
Q&A: Tod Machover on “Overstory Overture,” his new operatic work
Composers find inspiration from many sources. For renowned MIT Media Lab composer Tod Machover, reading the Richard Powers novel “The Overstory” instantly made him want to adapt it as an operatic composition. This might not seem an obvious choice to some: “The Overstory” is about a group of people, including a wrongly maligned scientist, who […]
6 Best Organic Mattresses and Toppers (2023): Nontoxic, Natural
These nontoxic beds are easier on the environment and your health—and they’re also incredibly comfortable.
I Got a Destiny 2 Rocket Launcher and It’s My Whole Life Now
Bungie sent me a real-life (Nerf) Gjallarhorn. I was not prepared.
Picade Review: A DIY Mini Arcade Cabinet
Construct this cute arcade machine to play all your favorite games from old consoles.
Reports: 50+ Twitter staff were laid off over the weekend, including Twitter’s product lead Esther Crawford, and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper (Emma Roth/The Verge)
Emma Roth / The Verge: Reports: 50+ Twitter staff were laid off over the weekend, including Twitter’s product lead Esther Crawford, and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper — Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter’s forthcoming payments platform.
Source: Esther Crawford, who has become one of the most influential leaders at Twitter after Musk’s takeover, is out as chief executive of Twitter Payments (Zoë Schiffer/@zoeschiffer)
Zoë Schiffer / @zoeschiffer: Source: Esther Crawford, who has become one of the most influential leaders at Twitter after Musk’s takeover, is out as chief executive of Twitter Payments — Just got confirmation that Esther Crawford, chief executive of Twitter Payments, is out.
Inside Apple Exploratory Design Group, which works on a glucose monitor, other advanced tech, and was behind some of the chip and battery tech in iPhones, Macs (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Inside Apple Exploratory Design Group, which works on a glucose monitor, other advanced tech, and was behind some of the chip and battery tech in iPhones, Macs — Apple has a secret team working to bring noninvasive glucose monitoring to its smartwatch, but that’s not all it’s pursuing.
Editors at some literary magazines say they are getting overwhelmed by AI-generated submissions, potentially crowding out genuine submissions from newer writers (Mia Sato/The Verge)
Mia Sato / The Verge: Editors at some literary magazines say they are getting overwhelmed by AI-generated submissions, potentially crowding out genuine submissions from newer writers — A short story titled “The Last Hope” first hit Sheila Williams’ desk in early January.
How the potential of voice as a platform was wasted: closed ecosystems, overly ambitious claims, distorted monopolistic incentives, and too much capital (Ranjan Roy/Margins)
Ranjan Roy / Margins: How the potential of voice as a platform was wasted: closed ecosystems, overly ambitious claims, distorted monopolistic incentives, and too much capital — Sometimes innovation just ain’t enough … I have four Echo devices in my household. For years, we used them to control the lights in our apartment …
The recovery of ~120,000 stolen ether by Jump and Oasis demonstrates the centralization of DeFi enabled by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts (Molly White)
Molly White: The recovery of ~120,000 stolen ether by Jump and Oasis demonstrates the centralization of DeFi enabled by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts — Wormhole, Jump Crypto, and Oasis demonstrate the centralization threat introduced by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts.
Illuminating the successes and struggles of MIT Black history
When Victor Ransom ’42 arrived at MIT from New York City in 1941, he discovered a campus electrified by the war effort. People scurried between what he described as MIT’s “massive, unsympathetic buildings” as the campus underwent a transformation that took on new urgency after the attacks on Pearl Harbor that December. During his sophomore […]
9 Best Speakers for Kids: Smart, Bluetooth, and Offline Speakers
Play music, audiobooks, and more for your children with one of these WIRED-tested gadgets.
Spotify’s AI DJ Has No Soul
Plus: YouTube Music is finally adding podcasts, and Google Photos lets more users remove annoying friends from their pictures.
Security News This Week: Sensitive US Military Emails Exposed
Plus: Iran’s secret torture black sites, hacking a bank account with AI-generated voice, and Lance Bass’ unhinged encounter in Russia.
Report: 69,190 semiconductor patents were filed globally in 2022, up 9% YoY; Chinese companies accounted for 55%, US companies 26%, and UK companies 0.26% (Anton Shilov/Tom’s Hardware)
Anton Shilov / Tom’s Hardware: Report: 69,190 semiconductor patents were filed globally in 2022, up 9% YoY; Chinese companies accounted for 55%, US companies 26%, and UK companies 0.26% — The U.K. only accounted for 0.26% of the global total. — China is neither the world’s largest developer of chips nor the world’s largest maker […]
Sources: Sequoia resigned from Citizen’s board after the startup offered a “pay to play” deal obliging existing investors to participate in a new funding round (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times: Sources: Sequoia resigned from Citizen’s board after the startup offered a “pay to play” deal obliging existing investors to participate in a new funding round — Investor abandons start-up over fundraising that has massively diluted its shareholding, as Silicon Valley VCs re-evaluate deals
Experts: the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving militaries in Ukraine and beyond to hand over more control to AI, creating a slippery slope (Morgan Meaker/Wired)
Morgan Meaker / Wired: Experts: the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving militaries in Ukraine and beyond to hand over more control to AI, creating a slippery slope — Drones that can find their own targets already exist, making machine-versus-machine conflict just a software update away.
We Tried Vertu’s ‘Web3’ Phone. It Scared Us
The luxury phone maker refuses to die. We tested its new Metavertu handset and were led down a rabbit hole of legal disputes and security concerns.
Best Cheap Gear Under $200 (2023): Speakers, Bags, Kitchen Gear, and More
Thrifty buying isn’t just for low-cost bargains; you can also find smart picks for just a little more. Here are WIRED’s top sub-$200 picks.
10 Best Deals: Camping, Hiking, and Fitness Gear
The weather will start to warm up soon, and retailers are continuing their annual winter clearance events ahead of spring.
Crypto analytics firm Inca Digital: Huobi and KuCoin still allow traders to transact with debit cards issued by sanctioned Russian banks on their P2P platforms (Politico)
Politico: Crypto analytics firm Inca Digital: Huobi and KuCoin still allow traders to transact with debit cards issued by sanctioned Russian banks on their P2P platforms — Two of the world’s largest crypto exchanges failed to take steps to prevent sanctioned Russian banks from using their platforms …
A look at the Nvidia A100, a ~$10K GPU that has become a critical tool for generative AI; Nvidia has an estimated 95% market share of machine learning GPUs (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
Kif Leswing / CNBC: A look at the Nvidia A100, a ~$10K GPU that has become a critical tool for generative AI; Nvidia has an estimated 95% market share of machine learning GPUs — – Companies like Microsoft and Google are fighting to integrate cutting-edge AI into their search engines, as billion-dollar competitors …
A major outage has taken down Dish Network’s websites, apps, and customer support systems; remote employees have been cut off from accessing their work systems (Mitchell Clark/The Verge)
Mitchell Clark / The Verge: A major outage has taken down Dish Network’s websites, apps, and customer support systems; remote employees have been cut off from accessing their work systems — Since Thursday morning, Dish Network has been experiencing a major outage that’s taken down the company’s main websites, apps …
‘Cocaine Bear’ Is a Buzz Kill
The movie seems destined for internet infamy but doesn’t live up to the promise of its viral trailer.
The 35 Best Movies on Netflix This Week
From Call Me Chihiro to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, here are our picks for the best streaming titles to feast your eyes on.
The 40 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now
From Physical: 100 to Wednesday, these are our picks for the best streaming titles to binge this week.