Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
258 lines (205 loc) · 676 KB

2017-04-02-visualize-news-feed.md

File metadata and controls

258 lines (205 loc) · 676 KB
layout title author description image tags comments date read_time
post
analyze news feed, the first try
Titipata
feature
Data
Data Science
Python
true
2017-04-02 16:45:00 -0700
25

สำหรับโพสต์ที่แล้ว เราได้ลองใช้ฟังก์ชันง่ายๆใน Python เพื่อช่วยในการวิเคราะห์ไลน์แชทกันไป ในโพสต์นี้เราจะมาลองเขียน Python snippet เพื่อใช้วิเคราะห์ news articles กันบ้าง ต้องบอกไว้ก่อนว่าเราไม่ได้ลองโหลดบทความมามากมาย แต่หวังว่าผู้อ่านจะได้เรียนรู้ library หลายๆอย่างบน Python และสามารถ เอามาใช้งานได้ในอนาคต เพื่อว่าหลังจากอ่านโพสต์นี้ ผู้อ่านจะเอาไปต่อยอดได้ง่ายขึ้น

ก่อนเราจะลุยไปถึงโค้ดกันนั้น เรามาดูกันก่อนว่า tools หรือ library ที่เราจะใช้กันวันนี้มีอะไรบ้างตามลำดับ

  • newspaper ใช้ในการดาวน์โหลดข่าวและลิงค์ของข่าวในหน้าหลัก
  • BeautifulSoup ใช้ในการ scrape website หรือดึงข้อมูลมากจากเว็บไซต์นั่นเอง
  • scikit-learn สำหรับ machine learning algorithm สำหรับโพสต์นี้เราจะใช้ Principal component analysis เพื่อลดจำนวนมิติของเวกเตอร์ของคำศัพท์ที่อยู่ในบทความ (dimensionality reduction) ซึ่งทำให้เราพล็อตกราฟออกมาสวยงาม ไม่ยุ่งเหยิง
  • bokeh เป็น plotting library คล้ายกับ matplotlib แต่สำหรับโพสต์นี้ เราต้องการเขียน interactive plot สำหรับการพล็อต เราเลยเลือกใช้ bokeh library

สำหรับขั้นตอนของการเขียนโปรเจกต์ เราจะแบ่งเป็นสามขั้นตอนหลักๆดังต่อไปนี้

  • เก็บข้อมูล (collect the data)
  • ประมวลผล (เพื่อแปลง text จากข่าวให้เป็นเมกทริกซ์ที่เราสามารถพล็อตได้)
  • พล็อต (visualization)

สิ่งที่เราจะเขียนในโพสต์นี้เป็นเพียง 1 กิ่งก้านของ "How to learn Machine Learning Roadmap in 6 months" ที่แนะนำโดย scikit-learn เท่านั้น ไว้โพสต์หน้าๆ เราจะมาหาอะไรทำสนุกๆต่อ แต่ตอนนี้เรามาเริ่มกันเลยแล้วกัน

"How to learn Machine Learning Roadmap in 6 month" (credit: scikit-learn.org)

1. เก็บข้อมูล

ในกระบวนการทั้งหมดที่กล่าวมาข้างต้น การเก็บข้อมูลน่าจะเป็นกระบวนการที่ยากที่สุดแล้วก็เป็นได้ ในที่นี้เราใช้ไลบรารี่ชื่อ newspaper ไลบรารี่นี้มีคำสั่งที่ชื่อว่า build เพื่อให้เราเก็บลิงค์ทั้งหมดบนเพจนั้นๆได้ หลังจากเราโหลดลิงค์จากหน้าแรกมาแล้ว จะสามารถใช้คำสั่ง download เพื่อโหลดเนื้อหาข่าวของแต่ละบทความได้

เราเริ่มด้วยเว็บไซต์โปรดของเราเลย Wired.com

import newspaper
from newspaper import Article

wired_paper = newspaper.build('http://www.wired.com')
wired_urls = [u for u in wired_paper.article_urls() if 'https://www.wired.com/' in u]
wired_articles = []
for i, wired_url in enumerate(wired_urls):
    wired_article = Article(wired_url)
    wired_articles.append(wired_article)
for w in wired_articles:
    w.download() # load all articles

สำหรับอีกเพจที่เราชอบมากก็คือ Engadget แต่เนื่องจากว่าเราไม่สามารถใช้ฟังค์ชัน download เพื่อโหลดเนื้อหาข่าวหลังจากเก็บแต่ละ Article มาได้ ก็เลยต้องใช้ BeautifulSoup เพื่อโหลดเนื้อหาข่าวจาก Engadget แทน หน้าตาของโค้ดเป็นตามด้านล่าง

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

engadget_paper = newspaper.build('http://www.engadget.com/')
engadget_urls = [u for u in engadget_paper.article_urls() if 'video' not in u and 'tumblr' not in u]
engadget_contents = []
for url in engadget_urls:
    r  = requests.get(url)
    engadget_contents.append([url, r.text])

r.text ในที่นี้คือ HTML ทั้งหมดจากแต่ละลิงค์เพจที่เราเก็บมาได้ เราต้องเขียนโค้ด BeautifulSoup เพิ่มเติมเล็กน้อยเพื่อเก็บแท็กจากข่าว หัวข้อข่าว และเนื้อหาข่าว

def get_engadget_news_from_content(content):
    soup = BeautifulSoup(content, "lxml")
    title = []
    tags = []
    for s in soup.find_all('meta'):
        if s.get('property') == 'og:title':
            title = s.get('content', '')
        elif s.get('name') == 'tags':
            tags.append(s.get('content'))
    body_text = ' '.join([p.text for p in soup.find_all('p') if p.get('class') is None])
    return {'title': title,
            'tag': ';'.join(tags),
            'text': body_text}

หลังจากเราได้ข่าวจากทั้งสองแหล่งแล้ว แปลงเป็น dataframe และต่อ dataframe เข้าไปด้วยกัน

import pandas as pd
engadget_df.loc[:, 'source'] = 'engadget'
wired_df.loc[:, 'source'] = 'wired'
tech_news_df = pd.concat((wired_df, engadget_df)) # ต่อ dataframe เข้าด้วยกัน

จากตรงนี้ ใครขี้เกียจโหลดข่าวด้วยตัวเอง เราได้แปะ CSV (comma separated) file มาให้ด้วยที่

tech_news.csv

2. ประมวลผลข่าวที่ดาวน์โหลดมา

หลังจากเราได้ข่าวมาแล้วจากทั้งสองแหล่ง สิ่งที่เราจะทำถัดไปคือเราจะเก็บเฉพาะหัวข้อข่าวและ 3 ย่อหน้าแรก

def sample_paragraph(text):
    paragraph = ' '.join([a for a in text.split('\n') if a.strip() != ''][0:4])
    return paragraph
text_preproc = (tech_news_df.title + ' ' + tech_news_df.text.map(sample_paragraph)).map(lambda x: x.lower())

หลังจากนั้นใช้ TfidfVectorizer และ PCA จาก scikit-learn ไลบรารี่เพื่อแปลงข่าวทั้งหมดที่เรามีให้เหลือ 2 dimensions (เดี๋ยวว่างๆแล้วเราจะมาเขียนอธิบายเพิ่มให้อีกทีว่ามันคืออะไร)

from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.decomposition import PCA

tfidf_model = TfidfVectorizer(ngram_range=(1,2), max_df=0.8, min_df=1)
X = tfidf_model.fit_transform(text_preproc)
pca_model = PCA(n_components=2, whiten=True)
X_pca = pca_model.fit_transform(X.toarray())

X_pca ของเรามีขนาดเท่ากับ [n_article x 2] หรือเท่ากับ [150 x 2] นั่นเอง แต่ละแถวของ X_pca คือข่าวที่ได้ถูกแปลงเป็นแค่ตัวเลขสองตัวเท่านั้น

3. พล็อต

ท้ายสุดแล้ว เราเหลือแค่พล็อตข้อมูลที่เราประมวลผลมา ในที่นี้เราจะเลือกใช้ไลบรารี่ชื่อ bokeh เพื่อพล็อตข้อมูลที่เรามี หน้าตาของพล็อตแบบนี้บางทีเรียกว่า Scatter plot นะเออ

from bokeh.plotting import figure, show, ColumnDataSource
from bokeh.models import HoverTool

source = ColumnDataSource(tech_news_df)
# ใช้สีส้มถ้าเป็น Engadget และสีฟ้าถ้าเป็น the Wired
colors = tech_news_df['source'].map(lambda x: '#42b3f4' if x == 'wired' else '#f4a041')
hover = HoverTool(
        tooltips=[
            ("title", "@title"),
            ("url", "@url"),
            ("source", "@source")
        ]
    )
p = figure(plot_width=500, plot_height=800,
           tools=[hover],
           x_axis_label='1st Principal component',
           y_axis_label='2nd Principal component')
p.circle('x', 'y', size=8, source=source,
         fill_color=colors, fill_alpha=0.6,
         line_color=None)
show(p)

และนี่คือพล็อตแบบ interactive (เฉพาะบนคอมนะ)

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.pydata.org/bokeh/release/bokeh-0.12.4.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    Bokeh.set_log_level("info");
</script>
<style>
    .hidepc {
        display: none !important;
    }

    .bk-plot-wrapper {
    padding-left:50px;
    }

    .bk-toolbar-wrapper {
        left: 525px !important;
    }

    @media only screen and (max-width: 500px) {
        .bk-plot-wrapper {
            padding-left:10px;
        }
        .bk-canvas {
            height:75% !important;
            width:75% !important;
        }
        .bk-plot-layout, .bk-layout-fixed {
            height: 610px !important;
        }

        .bk-root {
        display: none !important;
        }

        .hidepc {
        display: block !important;
        }
    }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript"> (function() { var fn = function() { Bokeh.safely(function() { var docs_json = {"51170ab0-c4e1-43cb-869a-0beabc1426b5":{"roots":{"references":[{"attributes":{"dimension":1,"plot":{"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},"ticker":{"id":"71cb4150-83e7-414b-8221-9ac3ca7f614d","type":"BasicTicker"}},"id":"e1d2133f-08a0-4c42-97ae-58dc21a374f2","type":"Grid"},{"attributes":{"axis_label":"1st Principal component","formatter":{"id":"4fadb93b-9b85-490c-8359-ba01581b8ab1","type":"BasicTickFormatter"},"plot":{"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},"ticker":{"id":"5cc4d37e-51c2-47db-9616-dbc27c8c0388","type":"BasicTicker"}},"id":"50512048-2b6f-44c8-8cd8-6327a7ae9044","type":"LinearAxis"},{"attributes":{"data_source":{"id":"d591eec5-84d5-432c-964a-f7e8eab017ff","type":"ColumnDataSource"},"glyph":{"id":"fa0058ea-6554-456b-8677-2ea3765eaad6","type":"Circle"},"hover_glyph":null,"nonselection_glyph":{"id":"bd5ba32f-4671-4ea1-a1aa-0b3b41d5d7c6","type":"Circle"},"selection_glyph":null},"id":"58b0795e-73fc-4571-b3be-f7eb90a4466b","type":"GlyphRenderer"},{"attributes":{"below":[{"id":"50512048-2b6f-44c8-8cd8-6327a7ae9044","type":"LinearAxis"}],"left":[{"id":"76d65fa8-4eb2-42db-988a-975a00fcc05f","type":"LinearAxis"}],"plot_height":800,"plot_width":500,"renderers":[{"id":"50512048-2b6f-44c8-8cd8-6327a7ae9044","type":"LinearAxis"},{"id":"da31d3a7-28d3-4776-bad3-21ac2d5c23d8","type":"Grid"},{"id":"76d65fa8-4eb2-42db-988a-975a00fcc05f","type":"LinearAxis"},{"id":"e1d2133f-08a0-4c42-97ae-58dc21a374f2","type":"Grid"},{"id":"58b0795e-73fc-4571-b3be-f7eb90a4466b","type":"GlyphRenderer"}],"title":{"id":"ea0d03e2-178d-4163-b716-5883593e1685","type":"Title"},"tool_events":{"id":"009f0435-b05b-4d64-b7fa-f15897de26ab","type":"ToolEvents"},"toolbar":{"id":"e15a3dbf-782e-4a05-884f-a9b102175509","type":"Toolbar"},"x_range":{"id":"be87a874-2d28-4fef-be47-7ac8827c9adf","type":"DataRange1d"},"y_range":{"id":"a508c29f-c2e5-4385-8763-5d44cfadfd8c","type":"DataRange1d"}},"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},{"attributes":{},"id":"71cb4150-83e7-414b-8221-9ac3ca7f614d","type":"BasicTicker"},{"attributes":{"axis_label":"2nd Principal component","formatter":{"id":"8cd75210-6dd3-4d06-a3f5-a3c816eda7ea","type":"BasicTickFormatter"},"plot":{"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},"ticker":{"id":"71cb4150-83e7-414b-8221-9ac3ca7f614d","type":"BasicTicker"}},"id":"76d65fa8-4eb2-42db-988a-975a00fcc05f","type":"LinearAxis"},{"attributes":{"plot":{"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},"ticker":{"id":"5cc4d37e-51c2-47db-9616-dbc27c8c0388","type":"BasicTicker"}},"id":"da31d3a7-28d3-4776-bad3-21ac2d5c23d8","type":"Grid"},{"attributes":{"plot":null,"text":""},"id":"ea0d03e2-178d-4163-b716-5883593e1685","type":"Title"},{"attributes":{"callback":null,"plot":{"id":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d","subtype":"Figure","type":"Plot"},"tooltips":[["title","@title"],["url","@url"],["source","@source"]]},"id":"7e0d15c3-50ba-4e21-8354-5171ea349227","type":"HoverTool"},{"attributes":{"active_drag":"auto","active_scroll":"auto","active_tap":"auto","tools":[{"id":"7e0d15c3-50ba-4e21-8354-5171ea349227","type":"HoverTool"}]},"id":"e15a3dbf-782e-4a05-884f-a9b102175509","type":"Toolbar"},{"attributes":{},"id":"009f0435-b05b-4d64-b7fa-f15897de26ab","type":"ToolEvents"},{"attributes":{},"id":"4fadb93b-9b85-490c-8359-ba01581b8ab1","type":"BasicTickFormatter"},{"attributes":{"callback":null},"id":"be87a874-2d28-4fef-be47-7ac8827c9adf","type":"DataRange1d"},{"attributes":{"callback":null,"column_names":["tag","text","title","url","source","x","y","temp","index","fill_color"],"data":{"fill_color":["#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#42b3f4","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041","#f4a041"],"index":[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75],"source":["wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","wired","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget","engadget"],"tag":["Geek's Guide to the Galaxy;Syfy","podcasts;Planet Earth II","Geek's Guide to the Galaxy;Syfy","podcasts;cameras;Planet Earth II","Vault 7 coverage;MWC;Spotify;Pandora;Future of Mobility;baselworld;Samsung;Nintendo;vault 7;Gadget Lab Podcasts;Wikileaks;Mobile World Congress;podcasts","Geek's Guide to the Galaxy","Vault 7 coverage;MWC;Spotify;baselworld;Future of Mobility;Pandora;Samsung;Nintendo;vault 7;Gadget Lab Podcasts;Wikileaks;Mobile World Congress;podcasts","podcasts;Planet Earth II","robotics;engineering;Industry","NASA;Aviation","WIRED Instagram","Satellites;weather;NOAA;meteorology","robots;Boston Dynamics;biomimicry;Evolution","photography;documentary photography;WIRED Instagram","NASA;trucks;engineering;Air Force","news-in-crisis;magazine-25.03","","records;vinyl","photography;documentary photography","photography;documentary photography","photography;documentary photography","photography;documentary photography","Future of Mobility","Video;spiders;California Academy of Sciences;Future of Mobility;absurd creature;here;Insects;Biology;absurd creatures","NASA;aerodynamics;modeling;drones","photography;documentary photography","Tech Law;privacy;FCC;tech policy","magazine-25.04;National Affairs;Comedy","WIRED Classic;health;medicine;zika;epidemiology","Geek's Guide to the Galaxy","education;neuoscience;memory;psychology;Biology;book excerpt","isps;data;congress;privacy;tracking","encryption;security;Tor;privacy;Snowden;email","sundar pichai;Mark Zuckerberg;hacks","","Elon Musk;Neuroscience;brain-computer interface;Artificial Intelligence","isps;VPN;data tracking;Web Browsers;privacy","Science Fiction;Books;Sci-fi","security;bitcoin;Syria","phones;gadgets;wireless speakers;consumer tech","insurance;space;FAA;SpaceX;rocket launch","Bungie;console gaming;first-person shooter","Future of Mobility","Climate science;solar flares;supercomputers;computing","ios;puzzles;mobile games","Boeing;Aviation","chime;conference calls;future of work","Uber;diversity;Silicon Valley","security this week;vulnerabilities;Apps;IoT","Architecture;Film","NASA;space;space photos of the week","Infrastructure;Cities;traffic","Vault 7 coverage;MWC;Spotify;Pandora;baselworld;Future of Mobility;Samsung;Nintendo;vault 7;Gadget Lab Podcasts;Wikileaks;Mobile World Congress;podcasts","Movies;DC Comics","Game of Thrones;TV","Silicon Valley;Artificial Intelligence","congress;politics;basic income;automation","Headphones;Wireless headphones;earbuds","TV;cheddar;streaming tv","Geneva Motor Show;Audi;Tesla;Auto Racing;autonomous capabilities;Classic Cars;Mercedes;Police;Super Bowl;Lamborghini;Auto;Sports cars;SUVs;Mercedes-Benz;supercars;supercar;Luxury cars;Chrysler;Elon Musk;Future of Mobility;Ford;Aston Martin;Ferrari;Autonomous Vehicles;Dodge;CEO Elon Musk","NASA;Aviation","Movies;Valerian","Future of Mobility","WIRED Instagram","Apps;ustwo;meditation","robots;space;Mars;NASA;Mars rovers;Industrial Design","tinder;user interfaces","russia;politics;National Affairs;hacks","security;politics;surveillance;National Affairs","https;porn;encryption","longreads","Future of Mobility","Serial;podcasts","Facebook;deep learning;Silicon Valley;Artificial Intelligence","ces;ces2017;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;home","Alienware;ces2017;dell;gadgetry;gadgets;gaming;gear;Inspiron7000;personal computing;personalcomputing","ai;anime;gear;gearbox;gearboxai;idol;internet;jpop;personalassistant;robots;services;video;VirtualAssistant","Android;blackberry;BlackBerrySecure;business;enterprise;gear;IoT;JohnChen;licensing;SecurebyBlackBerry;video;wearables","Daedelus;gear;Gravity;IronMan;JetPack;RedBull;RichardBrowning;transportation;video","community;crowdsourcing;gear;google;internet;services;streaming;translate;translation;youtube","elonmusk;falcon9;science;ses-10;space;spacex","av;compulsiongames;dj2;dj2entertainment;entertainment;games;gaming;goldcircleentertainment;movie;movies;personal computing;personalcomputing;videogames;wehappyfew","android;archer;archerdreamland;augmentedreality;entertainment;fx;fxnetworks;fxx;games;gaming;ios;iphone;mobile;printer;television;tv","culture;entertainment;gadgetry;gadgets;gaming;gear;science;themorningafter","amazon;entertainment;internet","Archer;av;Channing Tatum;entertainment;Netflix;TheExpendables","allornothing;amazon;av;entertainment","av;culture;entertainment;FinalFantasy;FinalFantasyXIVDaddyofLight;gaming;jdramas;Netflix","av;entertainment;gaming;nintendo;Switch;Zelda;ZeldaBreathoftheWild","av;entertainment;Hermes;HumanTranslation;Netflix;Subtitles;Test;Translation","av;Cable;Comcast;entertainment;FiOS;LiveTV;LiveTvStreaming;TVChannels;verizon","entertainment;internet;podcast;s-town;serial;truecrime","AprilFools;culture;gallery;internet;pranks","activitytracking;applemusic;beats1;blink-182;cordcutting;culture;disney;emoji;espn;internet;magicband;podcast;privacy;recommendedreading;recreading;s-town;stown","av;broadcast;dvb-t;exploit;gear;hbbtv;oneconsult;overtheair;samsung;security;smarttv;television;tv;video;vulnerability","advancedtactics;courier;delivery;drone;gear;mail;panther;robot;robots;shipping","eye;eyes;health;maculardegeneration;medicine;science;stemcell;transplant","coal;eia;energy;energyinformationadministration;environment;fossilfuels;green;power;science","elonmusk;falconheavy;rocket;science;space;spacex","amazon;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;hands-on;home;huawei;mobile;personal computing;personalcomputing;robots","av;editorial;games;gaming;nintendo;Nintendo Switch;nintendoswitch;skylanders;skylandersimaginators;switch;toystolife;videogames","badpassword;column;culture;https;infosec;internet;LetsEncrypt;personal computing;personalcomputing;phishing;ransomware;security","business;culture;elonmusk;neuralink;robots;science","carbon;CarbonDioxide;cleancoal;ClimateChange;coal;culture;DonaldTrump;emissions;energy;GlobalWarming;green;GreenhouseGases;politics;science","jupiter;nasa;probe;science;space","cameras;CellDivision;Egg;Frog;medicine;science;Tadpole;TimeLapse;video","android;galaxys8;galaxys8event;galaxys8plus;gear;hands-on;mobile;samsung;smartphone;video","av;chromecast;gear;internet;ios;services;soundcloud","drone;drones;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;heathrow;near-misses;planes","av;blizzard;esports;esportsarena;gaming;taiwan;venue","advertising;att;comcast;congress;culture;FCC;internet;policy;politics;privacy;verizon","androidwear;androidwear2.0;gear;google;wear;wearables","ddr5;ddr5ram;gear;personal computing;personalcomputing","astronaut;iss;nasa;peggywhitson;science;space;spacewalk","award;blueorigin;colliertrophy;newshepard;rocket;science;space","av;entertainment;hiphop;music;musicstreaming;rap;services;spotify;streaming;TL17KARA;trafficjams","50Cent;applemusic;av;BroadCity;CarpoolKaraoke;ChrisLighty;entertainment;GimletMedia;internet;JamesCorden;LlCoolJ;LoudspeakerNetwork;NaomiZeichner;pandora;panoply;podcast;podcasts;scrubs;slate;spotify;StrangerThings;TheFader;TheLateLateShow;tidal;TL17KARA","apple;applemusic;av;CarpoolKaraoke;entertainment;internet;jamescorden;TL17KARA","apple;applemusic;av;carpool karaoke;CarpoolKaraoke;entertainment;music;musicstreaming;streaming;TL17KARA","apple;AppleMusic;CarpoolKaraoke;CBS;entertainment;JamesCorden;services;streaming;TL17KARA;video","av;entertainment;lyrics;music;musixmatch;spotify;streaming;TL17KARA","androidwear;androidwear2;gear;google;lg;lgwatchsport;mobile;review;smartwatch;video;watchsport;wearable","convertibles;dell;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;laptops;personal computing;personalcomputing;review;ultraportables;video;XPS13-2in1","engadgetirl;ergonomickeyboards;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;microsoft;naturalkeyboards;personal computing;personalcomputing;review;surfaceergonomickeyboard;uk-reviews;video","cats;culture;entertainment;facebook;gaming;gear;internet;microsoft;samsung;science;themorningafter","advertorial;business;culture;fashion;FederalTradeCommission;ftc;internet;nativeadvertising;refinery29;sponsoredcontent;vogue","culture;download;germany;IllegalDownloads;internet;law;rihanna","culture;https;internet;pornhub","Advertising;AppFlash;culture;FCC;gear;internet;InternetPrivacy;mobile;Privacy;verizon","av;ClosedBeta;gaming;Quake;QuakeChampions","Bilzzard;Blizzcon;BlizzCon2017;esports;gaming;internet;Overwatch;OverwatchWorldCup;video","av;bungie;destiny;destiny2;gaming;pc;personal computing;personalcomputing;ps4;XboxOne","entertainment;gadgetry;gadgets;GalaxyS8event;gaming;gear;GearVR;GearVRcontroller;mobile;samsung;VR;wearables","apple;dongle;donglelife;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;lg;lgultrafine;macbookbro;usb-c","androidwear;androidwear2.0;bug;delay;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;google;mobile;smartwatches","falcon9;reflight;rocket;science;space;spacex","GeoDeepDive;geology;green;Macrostat;science;uw-madison","falcon9;rocket;science;space;spacex;watchthis","3dplatformer;art;banjokazooie;gaming;indie;indiegames;interview;platformer;playtonic;playtonicgames;rare;yookalaylee","AI;BinduReddy;culture;DeepLearning;internet;PostIntelligence;Twitter","AdultingWeek2017;culture;design;internet;opinion;uk-feature","50s;camera;cameras;engadgetirl;fuji;fujifilm;fujifilmgfx50s;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;gfx;gfx50s;mediumformat;mirrorless;mirrorlesscamera;review;video","gear;microsoft;personal computing;personalcomputing;review;Windows10;Windows10CreatorsUpdate","av;bioware;caseyhudson;eaorigin;electronicarts;frostbite;gaming;genophage;geth;krogan;masseffect;masseffect2;masseffect3;masseffectandromeda;pcgaming;playstation;playstation3;playstation4;review;roleplayinggame;rpg;xbox;xbox360;xboxone","android;gear;htc;htcsense;htcu;htcuultra;mobile;review;secondscreen;sensecompanion;smartphone;uultra","android;gadgetry;gadgets;gear;googlepixelc;mobile;pixelc;review;samsung;SamsungGalaxyTab;SamsungGalaxyTabS2;samsunggalaxytabs3;tablet;tablets","av;breathofthewild;gaming;nintendo;nintendoswitch;review;thelegendofzelda","BreathoftheWild;consoles;gadgetry;gadgets;gaming;gear;JoyCon;mobile;nintendo;review;Switch;TL17NINSWI;Zelda;ZeldaBreathoftheWild","alienware13;dell;gaming;gear;kabylake;personal computing;personalcomputing;review;uk-reviews","art;av;gaming;GuerrillaGames;Horizon;horizonzerodawn;Playstation4;ps4;review;sony"],"temp":[false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false,false],"text":["Syfy\u2019s epic space show The Expanse is a smash hit among science fiction fans, drawing praise from websites like io9 and Ars Technica and from celebrities like Adam Savage. Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley also loves the show.\n\n\u201cThis is my favorite show on TV,\u201d Kirtley says in Episode 248 of the Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. \u201cThis is the most serious science fiction TV show\u2014in terms of what hardcore science fiction fans would want in a TV show\u2014that I\u2019ve seen in a long time, possibly ever.\u201d\n\nBut while the show is widely praised in many corners, it has yet to attract a wider audience. John J. Joex, who tracks the ratings of various shows over at Cancelled Sci Fi, says that The Expanse looks like a show headed for cancellation.\n\n\u201cThe ratings started out decent and then really dropped off,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I know this is an expensive series to produce, so I was really getting kind of nervous about it.\u201d\n\nSyfy recently renewed The Expanse for a third season, but a fourth season seems unlikely if the ratings don\u2019t improve. Science fiction editor John Joseph Adams watches every episode of The Expanse, and he\u2019s annoyed that he isn\u2019t being counted by the Nielsen ratings.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s pretty frustrating to hear that all of the viewing that I\u2019ve done, none of that counts for anything as far as the networks are concerned,\u201d he says.\n\nJoex says that one way to make sure that your support for a show does get counted is to pay money for it. He says that\u2019s more likely to save a show than letter-writing campaigns or billboards. \u201cI think the best thing to do is to start buying episodes on iTunes, Amazon, that sort of thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIf they see a lot of people spending money on it, that might convince them.\u201d\n\nListen to our complete interview with John Joseph Adams and John J. Joex in Episode 248 of Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy above. And check out some highlights from the discussion below.\n\nJohn J. Joex on franchise potential:\n\n\u201cStar Trek never had a huge audience, but look at the franchise that it became. It\u2019s gone on for all these decades and spun off several television series and movies, with a new series on the way. Science fiction tends not to have a huge audience when it first airs, but it makes much more of a lasting impression. People will continue to watch it and buy merchandise for years and years to come, and so if they stick with a show, even if the ratings aren\u2019t great right away, chances are that down the road it\u2019s going to pay off. Firefly only had 14 episodes, and yet today it\u2019s still a greatly celebrated show, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019re making plenty of money off of selling the DVDs and all the other merchandise from it. And yet they killed it just because the ratings weren\u2019t great.\u201d\n\nJohn Joseph Adams on promoting The Expanse:\n\n\u201cI watched that special they did with Adam Savage, where he was going behind the scenes of The Expanse, and at the end of that they had a little snippet of Season 2\u2014this was before Season 2 started airing\u2014and it was that scene with Bobbi and the Martians doing their training, and it\u2019s this really intense action sequence with people in power armor. If you could take that sequence, or one of the big space battles, and advertise it in a movie theater\u2014I mean, with all the movies that are out there right now that are all science fiction and fantasy oriented, even the superhero stuff, if you aired that kind of thing in front of one of those movies, it seems like that would drive a lot of people to go watch the show that haven\u2019t tried it.\u201d\n\nDavid Barr Kirtley on paying for content:\n\n\u201cI understand if your finances are tight and you can\u2019t pay for shows, but people will spend $5 on a coffee or something like that, and just considering how important I think shows like this are, I wish people were willing to spend more money on them compared to other things that they spend money on. \u2026 And I think it would really be helpful if the networks themselves would say very clearly, \u2018If you buy this from iTunes or whatever, it\u2019s going to help you get another season of this show,\u2019 and have some sort of feedback mechanism to make that clear to people, so it\u2019s not just this black box where you\u2019re throwing your dollars into it and you don\u2019t know if anything\u2019s going to come out of that. Just something where you could see somehow that spending money to support the show was actually helping that show get another season.\u201d\n\nJohn Joseph Adams on cliffhangers:\n\n\u201cI kind of feel like networks at least owe fans some kind of wrap-up, even if it\u2019s not on the air. If you have a show and you produce it, and you get all these people hooked on something, the least you could do is do something to wrap it up in some way\u2014maybe publish some scripts online or something. You\u2019d have to pay somebody to write the scripts, but then you don\u2019t actually have to spend the money to produce them. At least then maybe some diligent fans will get some closure, whereas leaving you high and dry when you end the season on a cliffhanger, that\u2019s the worst feeling as a fan.\u201d","The first scene in \u201cCities,\u201d the final episode of Planet Earth II, looks like a chase scene out of a James Bond movie. But instead of Daniel Craig, you\u2019ve got a bunch of fighting langurs battling high above the city of Jodhpur, India. The music thumps, the camera soars, and if you watch on a big enough screen, it feels like you\u2019re leaping from rooftops alongside them.\n\nPodcast\n\n\u201cCities\u201d represents a new sort of endeavor for the Planet Earth team. Their latest study of animals looks at how cities change and shape animals, how animals survive (or don\u2019t) in urban environments, and how humans can improve the relationship. It\u2019s thrilling and touching, and features a surprising amount of turtle gore. We continue our ongoing coverage of this wonderful series, we talk to Fredi Devas, who directed and produced the finale, about the experience of exploring these newest of habitats.\n\nYou can watch Planet Earth II on BBC America each Saturday at 9 pm. You can even watch the premiere free on BBC America\u2019s website. We love it, so check out our Planet Earth II coverage, and be sure to come back for discussions of other episodes. We still have lots of questions. If you do too, send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","A future world ruled by evil corporations isn\u2019t exactly a new concept, but the Syfy show Incorporated brings something fresh to the idea. Science fiction editor John Joseph Adams says the show\u2019s world-building will impress even hardcore science fiction readers.\n\n\u201cMost shows don\u2019t come anywhere near the world-building sophistication of a science fiction novel, but this one really does,\u201d Adams says in Episode 247 of the Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. \u201cIt\u2019s almost surprising to me that it\u2019s not based on a novel.\u201d\n\nFantasy author Erin Lindsey, who spent over a decade as a humanitarian aid worker, says that some of that sophistication may be the work of Matt Damon, who\u2019s a producer on Incorporated. She says the show\u2019s depiction of a resource-depleted war zone definitely rings true to her.\n\n\u201cMatt Damon does a lot of not-for-profit work, particularly focused on Water.org, and so he\u2019s spent a lot of time with the UN and with NGOs out in the field,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd so he\u2019s seen some of these places that not a lot of people get to see.\u201d\n\nAnthony Ha, who covers technology and pop culture for TechCrunch, says that even very good science fiction shows, such as Black Mirror, tend to present future worlds built around a single premise, whereas Incorporated is more ambitious.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re willing to say, \u2018This would go in this direction, and this would go in this direction,\u2019 and it\u2019s not just all subservient to this one overarching idea that drives everything, because that\u2019s not how the future works,\u201d he says.\n\nUnfortunately, excellent world-building wasn\u2019t enough to make Incorporated a success\u2014Syfy recently announced that the show won\u2019t be returning for a second season. But Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley hopes that other shows will take a cue from Incorporated.\n\n\u201cI just really hope other shows will look at this and take that example to heart, and have world-building this good in other science fiction shows going forward,\u201d he says.\n\nListen to our complete interview with John Joseph Adams, Erin Lindsey, and Anthony Ha in Episode 247 of Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.\n\nJohn Joseph Adams on describing Incorporated:\n\n\u201cOne of the things I was thinking about in terms of how to describe the show to people who haven\u2019t seen it\u2014which may not be entirely helpful because I\u2019m going to reference some books that people maybe haven\u2019t read\u2014but it\u2019s kind of like Market Forces by Richard Morgan, plus The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, plus the movie Gattaca, plus the movie Total Recall, plus some cyberpunk thing\u2014I\u2019m not sure which one\u2014but if you mash up all those things together, that\u2019s kind of what this is. I\u2019m a little sad that it doesn\u2019t have the gladiatorial car duels that Market Forces has, but otherwise it\u2019s very similar to Market Forces in a lot of ways. I actually really wanted to know if Paolo Bacigalupi had seen this show, because it just reminded me so much of his work.\u201d\n\nErin Lindsey on ethical dilemmas:\n\n\u201c[There\u2019s] a scene where Laura is operating in her clinic in the red zone, and she finds what she thinks is this kid, and he\u2019s going to die because this implant he has has burst. And after she saves him, she\u2019s explaining to him very happily that she saved his life from this implant, and he says, \u2018Well, you\u2019ve got to put that implant back in, because actually I\u2019m 19 years old, and that implant keeps me a kid so that tricks will pay 10 times more, to have sex with a child.\u2019 And she\u2019s appalled, and she doesn\u2019t know what to do, and he basically says, \u2018If you don\u2019t put this back in me, not only do I not eat, but my parents don\u2019t eat, my siblings don\u2019t eat, my cousins don\u2019t eat,\u2019 and on and on. Those kinds of ethical dilemmas are very, very real, and they\u2019re really compelling, and I would have liked to see more of that.\u201d\n\nErin Lindsey on media democratization:\n\n\u201cThe \u2018democratization\u2019 of the entertainment industry and the fact that there is this glut of content, is really wonderful from the point of view of the consumer, but it essentially means that there\u2019s so much clutter in the space\u2014competing for the attention of the viewer\u2014that the marginal probability of any specific property succeeding is really, really low. \u2026 I think the takeaway here for people who really enjoyed this show, or really enjoyed BrainDead or any of these other things that are getting cancelled, is to dig deeper in making your entertainment choices than whatever pops up at the top of your algorithm. \u2026 [Most people] are very lazy about their entertainment choices being curated for them, and as a result it\u2019s just a drift to the middle.\u201d","When the trailer dropped for the BBC\u2019s new Planet Earth II series, the most memeable moment was a small fox diving confidently and head-first into a pile of snow. It\u2019s a perfect snippet for a good ol\u2019 \u201cIt me,\u201d or a \u201cWhen it\u2019s Monday,\u201d or really just about anything else. But did you ever wonder about the person filming that moment? Standing there in 40-below weather, periodically punching themselves in the eye to keep it from freezing every time she blinks? That\u2019s what Chadden Hunter and his team had to do, during the shoot for this weekend\u2019s Grasslands episode.\n\nPodcast\n\nOver the last few weeks, we\u2019ve been talking with the creators of Planet Earth II about how exactly they make a show like this. The gear they use, the way they approach the shoots, and how they turn years of wildlife footage into hour-long documentaries. Hunter, for his part, has been working on Planet Earth since the show began, and has seen it evolve as the technology has. In fact, he says if the tech hadn\u2019t changed, there might be no Planet Earth II at all. We asked Hunter, who made a name for himself on the first series as \u201cthe guy covered in bat crap,\u201d how he liked shooting with all this new-fangled gadgetry, and what kinds of stories it allowed the BBC crew to tell.\n\nYou can watch Planet Earth II on BBC America, Saturdays at 9pm. If you haven\u2019t seen anything yet, you can watch the premiere free on BBC America\u2019s website. See all of our recent Planet Earth II coverage. We\u2019ll do this for the next few episodes, too, through the rest of the season. We still have lots of questions. If you do too, send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","Pandora Premium launched this week, but is it too late for the legacy music service to succeed in the current streaming landscape? Spotify already has the volume, the name brand, and the cultural cache. Pandora has\u2026 tens of millions of users who\u2019ve been getting something for free for over a decade. Can the company convince them to start coughing up $10 a month? The hosts also discuss the state of the other streaming services (YouTube, Soundcloud, Mixcloud) and David recounts last week\u2019s SXSW experience.\n\nPodcast\n\nSome links: Pandora Premium launched. Check out Mixcloud for DJ mixes. Sonos has new hardware, the Playbase. Recommendations this week: The \u201cWa Da Da\u201d reggae playlist and Foursquare City Guide.\n\nSend the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","Five years ago TV critic Mark Dawidziak watched every episode of The Twilight Zone with his teenage daughter, and in every episode he noticed something important, some lesson that is as valuable today as it was 50 years ago. For example, the episode \u201cEscape Clause,\u201d about a deal with the devil, prompted him to warn his daughter about always reading something carefully before signing it.\n\n\u201cI started thinking about the housing crisis and all these people who had signed contracts not knowing what the ramifications of those contracts would be, and all the trouble it got us into,\u201d Dawidziak says in Episode 246 of the Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.\n\nThat thinking eventually led to his new book Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone, which contains 50 life lessons drawn from classic episodes of the anthology series. Dawidziak says it\u2019s no accident that The Twilight Zone contains so many important pointers\u2014the show\u2019s creator, Rod Serling, consciously infused everything he wrote with an uncompromising moral vision.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a concern with racism and prejudice and bigotry that runs through all his work,\u201d Dawidziak says. \u201cAnd an awareness of what we need to be\u2014the tolerance we need\u2014to survive as a people, as a society, as a nation, and as a planet.\u201d\n\nDawidziak isn\u2019t alone in using The Twilight Zone to teach ethics. He often hears from teachers who show the episodes to their students. \u201cThey use it to teach and to instill discussion among the students, and it gets them going in ways that other things don\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the enduring power of storytelling to teach a lesson or a moral.\u201d\n\nBut The Twilight Zone\u2019s most enduring legacy might be its impact on TV writers like David Chase (The Sopranos), Matt Weiner (Mad Men), and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), who all cite Serling as an influence.\n\n\u201c[Television] has become what the American theater was in the 1950s, when writers like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams were writing the plays that illuminated who we are and what we are as a society,\u201d Dawidziak says. \u201cCable dramas have taken over that.\u201d\n\nListen to our complete interview with Mark Dawidziak in Episode 246 of Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.\n\nMark Dawidziak on pop culture amnesia:\n\n\u201cOne of the things that breaks my heart is that I have seen, since I started teaching these classes\u2014every semester, two classes each semester, since 2009\u2014I have seen things recede and disappear from the pop culture consciousness. There are still a few things\u2014thank goodness\u2014that we still share, and we still all know. The Wizard of Oz. You can use a Wizard of Oz reference. Star Wars. Star Wars is a perfect example. You can say, \u2018May the Force be with you,\u2019 and have a pretty good shot at hitting most people in the room. But among black-and-white TV shows, there are only two shows that continue to jump [generations]. \u2026 I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone are the only two shows that the majority of my students still know.\u201d\n\nMark Dawidziak on Rod Serling:\n\n\u201cHe was the first guy to realize that if you put something in the trappings of fantasy, or science fiction, or horror, or whatever you want to call the genre\u2014and The Twilight Zone is kind of its own genre\u2014but if you dress it up in those, the sponsors won\u2019t care. All they\u2019re going to see are the aliens and the monsters and the spaceships and things like that. They\u2019re not going to see the message. Gene Roddenberry took this lesson from Rod. He said Rod taught him how to do this. You put it on a spaceship, send it out to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and you can talk about whatever you want. You can talk about racism, you can talk about war, you can talk about prejudice, you can do whatever you want and nobody\u2019s going to raise an eyebrow over it.\u201d\n\nMark Dawidziak on Richard Matheson:\n\n\u201cOne of the things I really wanted to know was if he\u2019d ever seen the wonderful episode of 3rd Rock From the Sun where William Shatner was the guest star as The Big Giant Head, and they have to go meet him. His plane has been routed in the wrong direction\u2014they\u2019re aliens and he is their superior. And of course John Lithgow starred in the remake of \u2018Nightmare at 20,000 Feet\u2019 in the Twilight Zone movie. So in the episode Shatner comes off the plane and Lithgow goes up to greet him and says, \u2018How was the flight?\u2019 And Shatner says, \u2018It was fine, but you know, halfway through I thought I saw something out on the wing,\u2019 and Lithgow goes, \u2018The same thing happened to me!\u2019 \u2026 I asked [Matheson] if he\u2019d seen it and he hadn\u2019t, and he was so delighted with the knowledge of that moment in 3rd Rock. And it does speak also to the resonance of that episode, that it shows up in a sitcom so many years later, and the assumption is that everybody will get the joke.\u201d\n\nMark Dawidziak on \u201cTime Enough at Last\u201d:\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re all sitting around and we fell into talking about The Twilight Zone. And everybody sort of went, \u2018Yeah yeah yeah, \u201cTime Enough at Last,\u201d the broken glasses, the broken glasses!\u2019 And I kept quiet, I just was silent, but after a while the silence got a little loud, and somebody said, \u2018Don\u2019t you like it?\u2019 And I said, \u2018No, I like it enormously, but I do have a problem with it.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Look, in the years since The Twilight Zone, language skills have gone down. Books are in danger, libraries are in danger. That episode makes it a crime that that guy wants to read, and I think that\u2019s a pretty terrible message, actually, if you stop and think about it.\u2019 And they all kind of stopped short, they all kind of went, \u2018But\u2026,\u2019 and they didn\u2019t really have an answer.\u201d","It was a big week for the security community. On Tuesday, WikiLeaks published some 9,000 pages of documents detailing various hacking tools the CIA had developed to spy on intelligence targets. They hit the public like a punch to the gut. Your cellphone can be hacked. Your Windows PC or Mac is pudding in the hands of government snoops. Even a smart TV can be converted into a bug that records private conversations. Jiminy! That\u2019s pretty nuts. WIRED\u2019s security editor Brian Barrett joins Michael Calore to talk about the Vault 7 revelations, and what they mean for consumers.\n\nPodcast\n\nSome links: Andy Greenberg details the tools exposed in the Vault 7 leak. Mike tells you how to find out if your Samsung television is spying on you (it very likely is not, you can trust it). See all of WIRED\u2019s Vault 7 coverage. Recommendations this week are Last Chance U and the New York mag conversation with David Letterman.\n\nSend the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Brian Barrett is @brbarrett. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","It\u2019s 160 degrees outside, a massive sandstorm could appear at any moment, and you\u2019re trying to capture footage of a pack of lions chasing a giraffe. They\u2019re bigger, faster, and scarier than you are. Oh, and you\u2019ve been out in the desert for weeks, waiting for this exact moment. Don\u2019t screw it up.\n\nPodcast\n\nThat, evidently, is what it\u2019s like to be a member of the crew for Planet Earth II. And as we watched the show, we found ourselves wondering how it all comes together. So we asked! This is the second episode in a miniseries in which we\u2019re sitting down with some of the people who make Planet Earth II to talk about the cameras, infrared lights, helicopters, home-made lens protectors, and all the other things that go into making this crazy show.\n\nMany of the show\u2019s creators have been working in these places for years or decades, finding themselves suddenly able to capture new things in new ways as technology gets better. Wasn\u2019t that long ago you could barely get a camera on your shoulder, much less have one flying quietly through the air. For this week\u2019s episode, \u201cDeserts,\u201d David Pierce chatted with director and producer Ed Charles. They talked about how to film in a sandstorm and not ruin your camera (spoiler: it\u2019s impossible), and how to find and capture a tiny animal that almost never comes above ground.\n\nYou can watch Planet Earth II on BBC America, Saturdays at 9pm. If you haven\u2019t seen anything yet, you can watch the premiere free on BBC America\u2019s website. See all of our recent Planet Earth II coverage. We\u2019ll do this for the next few episodes, too, through the rest of the season. We still have lots of questions. If you do too,\n\nsend the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","You can\u2019t have a conversation with your microwave or refrigerator\u2014unless, of course, you\u2019re on acid. And that\u2019s all right, because these machines serve their purpose just fine as-is. They can afford to be shy.\n\nBut the robots that will one day move into your home can\u2019t. To be truly useful, they\u2019ll need to speak human language and understand human gestures. Which makes a repurposed Baxter industrial robot renamed Iorek1 all the more remarkable: It not only recognizes an object a human being is pointing at and talking about, but asks questions to clarify what they mean. Iorek is limited to trafficking in specific objects, sure, but the robot is a big deal for the budding field of human-robot interaction.\n\nThe robot\u2014from researchers at Brown University\u2014works like so. A human wearing a headset stands in front of the machine, which sits on a table with six objects in front of it. The human points at, say, a bowl, and asks, \u201cCan I have that bowl?\u201d A Microsoft Kinect atop the robot\u2019s head tracks the movement of the hand to determine which object the subject means and combines that data with the vocal command.\n\nSometimes, though, two bowls are sitting right next to each other, and Iorek can\u2019t differentiate which one the human is after. So it hovers an arm over the bowl it thinks the human wants and asks: \u201cThis one?\u201d If the subject says no, the robot determines that its master seeks the other.\n\nThat may seem like a simple interaction, something a child could do. But this is huge for a robot because the system solves a nasty problem: uncertainty. \u201cThe real innovation in what we\u2019re doing is what we call social feedback,\u201d says Brown University\u2019s Stefanie Tellex, co-creator of Iorek. \u201cSo what we\u2019re trying to do is not just listen and watch and then act, but assess the robot\u2019s own certainty about what the person wants it to do.\u201d\n\nAfter all, communication is all about certainty. And you want robots in your home to be very, very certain. Consider a robot that one day helps the elderly\u2014cleaning up clutter, lifting them into and out of bed, etc. And say your grandmother asks it to put her down on the sofa, but the robot hears \u201cdrop me down the stairs.\u201d Perhaps a rare situation, but you get the point.\n\nThe big question now is: How do humans want to communicate with the machines? One idea is to use EEGs to actually have them read our minds. (Also demonstrated with a Baxter robot, by the way. Baxter is quite popular in robotics labs.) That\u2019s far off, of course. But Iorek shows how good machines are getting at recognizing vocal commands and gestures. That\u2019s how the vast majority of people communicate, so sights and sounds will be key to human-robot interaction. More challenging, though, is adapting robots to get along with the deaf and blind.\n\nWhatever that solution ends up being, chances are roboticists will have Iorek to thank for getting them there. So take a bow, Iorek.\n\nNo no no. A bow, not a bowl.\n\n1Update, 3/20/17 3:15 pm ET: The spelling of the robot has been corrected from Lorek to Iorek, pronounced \u201ceeyorek.\u201d","At 48 years old, Boeing 747 is getting long in tooth. (For an aircraft, that is.) But over the years it\u2019s proved itself to be one of the most versatile aircraft. Its upstairs deck has been home to swinging champagne bars. Its wide belly has made it a favorite of cargo transporters. Modified 747s serve as mobile command centers\u2014heard of Air Force One? But NASA\u2019s really taken it to extremes: It\u2019s transported space shuttles strapped to one, and cut a gigantic hole in the side of another, for stargazing.\n\nSince 2010, that hole has allowed scientists to point an on-board 8.2 feet telescope towards the cosmos, while pilots take the plane well above any water vapor in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, rivals the Hubble Space Telescope in size, and researchers have used it to study the atmosphere of other planets, the fields of gas where stars are born, and the composition of comets.\n\nTelescopes need to be aimed precisely, so building one into a plane, and making it turbulence proof, took some major engineering. NASA started with a 747SP, or Special Performance, which is lighter than a regular jumbo, and can fly higher and farther. (The plane previously saw service with United and Pan Am as a regular passenger jet.) The space agency worked with Raytheon to cut open a 16-foot by 23-foot section of fuselage, behind the wing, and cover it with a sliding door. They performed extensive tests to make sure the gaping hole didn\u2019t make the plane unflyable.\n\nThe telescope itself is mounted on fast reacting gyroscopes to keep it locked on a target, even if the flight gets bumpy. As you\u2019ll see in our clamber-around (above) the interior of the plane is mostly given over to racks of equipment and seats for researchers to watch their data come in. But most impressive of all is the sheer scale of the telescope, and the venerable plane that carries it. As members of the flying public we\u2019re more likely to be squished into uncomfortable seats than staring into black holes, so we don\u2019t often get to see just how big\u2014and multitalented\u2014a jumbo jet really is.","Bernard Lang loves dense scenes. He revels in the beauty a beach lined with umbrellas, the symmetry of cars filling a parking lot, and the kaleidoscopic color of ports teeming with shipping containers. But even he found Manila\u2019s slums sobering.\n\nManila has 36,000 people per square mile, making it one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The density is even higher in the 500 slums that line the city\u2019s rivers, railroad tracks, and garbage dumps, where you can find more than 200,000 people per square mile. During his first night in town, Lang looked out his hotel window to see the city aglow. An unattended stove sparked a fire that raced through Tondo, the city\u2019s largest slum. By morning, 1,000 shacks and shanties lay in ruin, leaving 15,000 people homeless. \u201cIt\u2019s this close, edge-to-edge life,\u201d he says.\n\nThe next day, Lang chartered a helicopter to fly over the ruins. Safely belted into his seat, the photographer leaned out the side with his medium format digital camera. A thousand feet below, people sifted through the rubble and lined up for food and water at a nearby church. The chopper took Lang to other neighborhoods and to the port, where hundreds of makeshift houses teeter on stilts. \u201cThey\u2019re literally built on the sea,\u201d Lang says.\n\nTwo more fires broke out during the week Lang spent in Manila. His striking photos are a reminder of how perilous life is at the edge.","NOAA\u2019s new GOES-16 satellite\u2014the most advanced tool in the agency\u2019s weather-prediction arsenal\u2014doesn\u2019t just take pretty pictures. It also might keep an unexpected bolt of lightning from crispifying you while you\u2019re barbecuing this summer. Or give you ample warning before a tornado scoops you up inside your house, Dorothy style.\n\nSee, before GOES-16 was launched last year, scientists didn\u2019t always have good way to check a storm\u2019s intensity or lightning risk. Especially if that storm was hanging out in the middle of the ocean, or even in a mountainous region like the western US, where the topography fouls up radar signals.\n\nGOES-16 changes all that. Its lightning mapper is sensitive enough to see lightning brewing inside storm clouds over the Americas and their surrounding oceans. And that data should help climate scientists and weather forecasters warn people about weather hazards\u2014from severe thunderstorms to tornadoes to wildfires\u2014a lot faster and more accurately.\n\nIt\u2019s a common sense scientific advancement, and one that meteorologists depend on\u2014as they depend on other NOAA satellite data. Which is why it\u2019s surprising that the program is the latest thing on President Trump\u2019s budget chopping block.\n\nAccording to an Office of Management and Budget memo The Washington Post got ahold of, the Trump administration wants to cut NOAA\u2019s entire budget by 17 percent. The satellite program stands to lose 22 percent of its budget ($153 million) if the proposal goes through\u2014the harshest cuts NOAA is facing. It\u2019s hard not to see that move as political: Scientists use NOAA\u2019s satellites, including GOES-16, to monitor how Earth\u2019s climate continues to change, despite (debunked) claims from various government leaders that the rate of change has slowed. But if this is political payback, it\u2019s pretty irresponsible. NOAA\u2019s satellite data does a lot in the way of keeping citizens safe, and GOES-16 is the best of them.\n\nWhy is the lightning mapper so much better than your average storm chaser? It boils down to location and bandwidth. The lightning mapper (and the rest of GOES-16\u2019s instruments) are in geostationary orbit over the the Americas, while previous lightning-detection instruments have been in low Earth orbit. \u201cNow we\u2019re just staring at the same place, so we can monitor the trends and life cycle of the lightning,\u201d says Steve Goodman, GOES-16 senior scientist. \u201cBefore we just got snapshots.\u201d And since lightning\u2019s trends influence things like wildfires, figuring out its hotspots will be especially helpful in high risk (and bone dry) areas like California.\n\nNOAA\n\nScientists are also working with about a 1,000 times more information than they had before. GOES-16 has a bandwidth of about 7.7 megabits per second\u2014a big step up from its stodgy 8 kilobit per second predecessors. \u201cWhen we flew over big storms, the old instruments would saturate,\u201d Goodman says. The sensors would poop out just when meterologists needed them most.\n\nNow, monitoring intense storms is kind of the lightning mapper\u2019s specialty, and measuring flash rates fills in a longstanding meteorological blindspot. Radar can detect precipitation, but it can\u2019t tell you how intense a storm is. That\u2019s determined by updraft, which pulls raindrops way up high and bangs particles together until things start getting electric. No sensor can measure updraft strength, but NOAA has found a correlation between updraft and lightning activity.\n\n\u201cAll of these things are connected,\u201d says Goodman. \u201cIf the storm is developing and becoming very intense, the in-cloud lightning activity, which we can now detect, starts having high flash rates.\u201d The rapid-fire flashes are hard evidence of a storm revving up its engines. Which is especially helpful if you\u2019re an aircraft more than about 300 miles off the coast, where land-based radar can\u2019t see you.\n\nLike the rest of GOES-16, the lightning mapper instrument also produces some pretty striking imagery. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to see lightning dancing on cloud tops on television,\u201d Goodman says. \u201cBut not just because it\u2019s impressive. It\u2019s going make warnings come sooner, and help people personalize the risk better.\u201d With fewer false alarms and more time to get inside, GOES-16 will help make sure you\u2019re not the one getting cooked at the next family barbecue.\n\nNOAA","If you\u2019re ever feeling down, do yourself a favor and watch some footage from the 2015 Darpa Robotics Challenge. This competition of bipedal beasts put robots up against a number of challenges, from turning valves to driving a car. But they struggled to open doors, much less stand for a decent amount of time. The verdict? Our face-planting future robotic overlords could stand some improvements.\n\nOh, how the world laughed. And oh, how the world gasped when Boston Dynamics dropped a video of its newest bot, Handle, this week. It\u2019s also a biped\u2014but with wheels instead of feet, screaming around a building and leaping four feet high and doing pirouettes because why the hell not.\n\nHandle isn\u2019t just a startling reminder that highly sophisticated robots are here and stealing jobs, but that humans can create robotic forms superior to anything you\u2019ll find in nature. And I\u2019m not just talking about strength. What Boston Dynamics has done with Handle is take what natural selection has crafted\u2014the human form\u2014and turned it into a more efficient chimera. It\u2019s created an evolutionary marvel.\n\nDon\u2019t get me wrong\u2014the human body is a masterpiece of evolution. Walking on two legs frees up our hands, for one, allowing us to manipulate our environment. But it also has its drawbacks. Two legs are far less stable than four. That\u2019s not so much a problem for humans with years of practice, but a serious problem if you\u2019re trying to build a bipedal robot that doesn\u2019t fall on its face.\n\nShould you crack that problem, though, you have a machine that can navigate a world built for humans like a human. It can climb stairs and open doors. Hell, it could even drive a car if need be. Creating robots in our image is part egomania, sure, but it\u2019s more about inventing machines that could one day explore places made for bipeds. For instance, taking care of your grandma in her two-story house.\n\nWould Handle be good at that sort of thing? Probably not\u2014just you try climbing stairs on rollerblades. (Boston Dynamics did not reply to a request for comment. About the robot, not the rollerblades.) But if Boston Dynamics\u2019 video is any indication, its form would do nicely in a warehouse as a heavy lifter or patrolling with soldiers as a kind of pack animal. (The US military wanted the firm\u2019s \u201cBigDog\u201d quadruped for such a purpose, but rejected it in 2015 because it was too noisy.) And really, no one robot will be a universal solution. Wheeled bots are great on wide open plains, tracked robots rock when traversing rubble, and bipeds rule buildings built for people.\n\nBut what about a robot that can transform itself for each environment? \u201cWe can wear various contraptions to allow us to skate on ice, go underwater for days at a time, and even fly to the moon,\u201d says roboticist Jerry Pratt of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. But we take those skates and space suits off when we return indoors. \u201cIt would be great to see a version of the Boston Dynamics Handle robot that can roll around fast on city streets but then take off its wheels and walk inside a building.\u201d\n\nIndeed, it was a hybrid robot that won the Darpa Robotics Challenge in 2015. South Korea\u2019s DRC-HUBO looked like a humanoid, but could actually kneel and scoot around on wheels. And it crushed the competition of almost entirely bipedal humanoids. \u201cThey won so much time by going over flat terrain with wheels that they had this huge advantage,\u201d says roboticist Hanumant Singh of Northeastern University. \u201cI think [Handle] is somewhat of a reaction to that.\u201d\n\nWhat\u2019s remarkable about Handle is that it has essentially one-upped evolution. Natural selection never saw fit to give a mammal wheels, for obvious reasons\u2014you\u2019d need a motor and bearings and a perfectly flat world and let\u2019s face it I don\u2019t need to tell you why natural selection never invented the wheel. But wheels are extremely energy-efficient. So much so that Boston Dynamics claims Handle can travel 15 miles on a charge. Just imagine a bipedal robot trying to stumble that far. (Boston Dynamics\u2019 Atlas bipedal robot manages about an hour on a charge.)\n\nHandle is an academic robot for now, so don\u2019t expect one for Christmas this year. But it represents something exhilarating: Humans are getting very, very good at taking the bipedalism that evolution gave us and not only replicating it in robots, but supercharging it to a quite honestly terrifying degree. Take that, Darwin.","Take two strips of fluorescent yellow felt, wrap them around a rubber sphere, and\u2014voila!\u2014you have a tennis ball. Easy, right?\n\nWrong. Every one of the 90 million balls Wilson produces each year requires 24 steps and six days to complete. \u201cWhen you get down to the micro details, it\u2019s incredibly complex and precise,\u201d says Amanda Mustard, who followed the process from start to finish.\n\nMustard played tennis competitively in high school and still whacks a ball around a court near her apartment in Bangkok. So when The New York Times asked her to visit Wilson\u2019s factory in Thailand in August, she welcomed the chance. She took a morning bus to the 118,000-square-foot factory in Nakhon Pathom. \u201cIt was pretty nondescript,\u201d she says. \u201cThe only thing that gave it away were a few large bags of discarded felt scraps sitting outside.\u201d\n\nThe smell of hot rubber wafts through the air as some 400 workers churn out 275,000 balls each day. Some of the rubber comes from Thailand, and the rest from Malaysia and Vietnam. Huge machines mix the material with additives to stabilize it, then knead it and cut it into individual \u201cslugs.\u201d Workers pressure-heat the slugs in giant molds to create hemispheres that look a lot like chocolate. They add glue to each half, press them together for eight minutes, and boom. Balls. They all go for a tumble in a noisy barrel lined with a sandpaper-like substance. \u201cIt sounds like rubber popcorn,\u201d Mustard says. Once roughed up, the balls get a dip in glue.\n\nAs all of this is happening, other big machines punch small strips called \u201cdogbones\u201d out of 8-foot-wide rolls of bright yellow felt. They\u2019re stacked 75 a time and dunked into white paint so the seams have that cool white line. From there, workers feed the dogbones into the machine that wraps them around the ball, then shove them into an oven where they cure for 11 minutes. A six-minute blast of steam and a little hot air fluffs the felt. Add a logo, and they\u2019re ready for the court.\n\nIt\u2019s a surprisingly big operation for such a seemingly simple product. Remember that the next time you\u2019re hitting balls at the court, or tossing one for your dog.","A cold wind is whipping past, but the engineers scurrying around the giant room don\u2019t seem to mind. They\u2019re busy moving a fishing rod-like smoke wand this way and that, watching vaporized mineral oil stream off its tip and flow like a contrail over the sleekest semi you\u2019ve ever seen.\n\nThe engineers call this space \u201cthe 80-by-120;\u201d it\u2019s the largest wind tunnel on the planet, 80 feet tall and 120 feet wide, big enough to hold a Boeing 737, the star of the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex in Mountain View, California. The truck is Navistar\u2019s \u201cCatalist,\u201d a concept built to cut drag and boost fuel efficiency. The 80-by-120 is one of the few places that can really put the new design to the test.\n\nSitting on the western edge of NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center, the 80-by-120 blows through superlatives. It is its own biggest fan. It\u2019s always in heavy rotation. This isn\u2019t just spin! Its six turbines\u201440 feet wide, each powered by a 22,500-horsepower motor\u2014can hit 180 rotations per minute, generating 110 mph winds in the tunnel and moving 60 tons of air every second. At that speed, they guzzle 106 megawatts of electricity\u2014enough to power a town of 100,000 people.\n\n6\n\nThe turbines sit at the back of the tunnel; 1,400 feet away, in the front, is a screen door the size of a football field, which sucks in air from the outside, but not things like geese and NASA employees. After charging the length of the tunnel and passing the turbines, the air vents to the sky. That\u2019s good for the folks on the ground uninterested in recreating Mary Poppins, but a potential problem for the commercial jets landing at and taking off from the nearby San Jose International Airport. So before spinning the turbines to full speed, the Air Force warns pilots about the risk of turbulence.\n\nA smaller wind tunnel opened here in 1944, and tested Cold War jets and models of the Space Shuttle. The big one opened in 1987, large enough for helicopters with 65-foot rotors and the parachute that landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. \u201cYou\u2019re able to do a lot of things at full scale that you\u2019re not able to do in tunnels that are much smaller,\u201d says Scott Waltermire, who runs the aerodynamic complex.\n\nThat\u2019s why Navistar showed up with its truck, which a crane dropped into place (the walls of the tunnel open up for easy access). The Chicago-based manufacturer has spent five years working on the concept big rig, with a $20 million grant through the Department of Energy\u2019s Supertruck II program. The Catalist truck (the \u201cist\u201d is for International Super Truck) packs a mild hybrid powertrain, running auxiliary systems like the A/C off a battery, charged by rooftop solar panels and regenerative braking.\n\nAnd it looks pretty badass. Sleek cameras instead of bulky sideview mirrors. \u201cSuper single\u201d wide tires instead of two skinnier ones side by side. Sophisticated trailer skirts and a boat tail to smooth the air flowing over the truck.\n\n\u201cIf you think of the analogy of a boat going through the water a large wake behind it, we\u2019re aiming to reduce that wake that the truck creates,\u201d says Navistar aerodynamic engineer Craig Czlapinski. The result is a truck that Navistar says delivers a whopping 13 miles to the gallon, even when 80 percent full. (A typical 18-wheeler gets about 6 mpg.)\n\nThey\u2019ve come to the wind tunnel to make it even better. The opening test keeps the wind speed low, about 15 mph. Czlapinski wields the smoke wand, guiding the smoke over the cab and along the trailer. He pokes it between the two, then into the wheel wells, watching for points where the smoke (and thus the air) pulls away from the body. Then the team triggers the turn table on which most of the truck sits, some 55 feet in diameter, turning it a few degrees to the left, then to the right. Wind, after all, doesn\u2019t just hit vehicles head on. They notice smoke leaks through the part of the boat tail, a by-product of drag pulling on the rear doors of the trailer\u2014so they\u2019ll likely add a seal to plug up the leak. Up front, smoke is getting sucked up between the cab and trailer, a sign they should lower the adjustable bit of the roof of the tractor.\n\nAfter 40 or so minutes in the wind, the engineers shut down the turbines and walk out. For the next test, they\u2019ll sit in the control room\u2014no one\u2019s allowed in the tunnel when it cranks the wind up to highway speeds. The Navistar folks will spend five weeks here, testing the Catalist and some other production models, swapping out cabs and trailers. Then it\u2019s back to Chicago to study the results, stamp out the weaknesses, and perfect the aero.\n\nAnd while they\u2019re making trucking better for everybody, the wind tunnel\u2019s operators will get ready to put their next giant client on blast.","This story is part of our special coverage, The News in Crisis.\n\nThe news media is in trouble. The advertising-driven business model is on the brink of collapse. Trust in the press is at an all-time low. And now those two long-brewing concerns have been joined by an even larger existential crisis. In a post-fact era of fake news and filter bubbles, in which audiences cherry-pick the information and sources that match their own biases and dismiss the rest, the news media seems to have lost its power to shape public opinion.\n\nIt\u2019s worth remembering, though, that as recently as 30 years ago, people worried that the press had entirely too much power. In 1988, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky published a book called Manufacturing Consent, which argued that the US media puts a straitjacket on national discussion. The news, they argued, was determined by the small handful of media corporations capable of reaching a mass audience\u2014a huge barrier to entry that kept smaller, independent voices out of the conversation. The corporations\u2019 business model relied on national-brand advertisers, which tended to not support publications or stories they found controversial or distasteful. And journalists relied on the cooperation of high-ranking sources, a symbiotic relationship that prevented the press from publishing anything too oppositional. As a result, Chomsky and Herman wrote, \u201cthe raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print.\u201d The result was a false national consensus, one that ignored outlying facts, voices, and ideas.\n\nIn the three decades since Herman and Chomsky leveled their critique, almost every aspect of the news industry has changed. National-brand advertising has given way to automated exchanges that place ads across thousands of sites, regardless of their content. Politicians no longer need to rely on journalists to reach their audiences but instead can speak to voters directly on Twitter. In fact, the ability to reach a national audience now belongs to everyone. There is nothing to prevent fringe ideas and arguments from entering the informational bloodstream\u2014and nothing to stop them from spreading.\n\nThese developments have upended the business logic that once pushed journalists toward middle-of-the-road consensus. When there were only three national news broadcasts, each competed to attract the broadest audience and alienate as few potential viewers as possible. But with infinite news sources, audiences follow the outlets that speak most uniquely to their interests, beliefs, and emotions. Instead of appealing to the broad center of American political opinion, more news outlets are chasing passionate niches. As media theorist Clay Shirky says, they can\u2019t rely on captive viewers but always have to hunt down new ones, \u201crecruiting audiences rather than inheriting them.\u201d\n\nThese trends have been in place since the dawn of the internet, but they were supercharged over the past couple of years as social media\u2014and especially Facebook\u2014emerged as a major news source. Media professionals\u2019 already-eroding power to steer the national conversation has largely vanished. Before social media, a newspaper editor had the final say as to which stories were published and where they appeared. Today, readers have usurped that role. An editor can publish a story, but if nobody shares it, it might as well never have been written.\n\nThe Decline in News Jobs The number of Americans whose job it is to \u201cinform the public about news and events \u2026 for newspapers, magazines, websites, television, and radio\u201d has decreased by nearly 10 percent over the past decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The next 10 years aren\u2019t looking any better.\n\nIf readers are the new publishers, the best way to get them to share a story is by appealing to their feelings\u2014usually not the good ones. A recent paper in Human Communication Research found that anger was the \u201ckey mediating mechanism\u201d determining whether someone shared information on Facebook; the more partisan and enraged someone was, the more likely they were to share political news online. And the stories they shared tended to make the people who read them even more furious. \u201cYou need to be radical in order to gain market share,\u201d says Sam Lessin, a former vice president of product management at Facebook. \u201cReasonableness gets you no points.\u201d\n\nIn other words, we have gone from a business model that manufactures consent to one that manufactures dissent\u2014a system that pumps up conflict and outrage rather than watering it down.\n\nThis sounds dire. Heck, it is dire. But the answer is not to pine for the days when a handful of publications defined the limits of public discourse. That\u2019s never coming back, and we shouldn\u2019t want it to. Instead, smart news operations, like the ones profiled in these pages, are finding new ways to listen and respond to their audiences\u2014rather than just telling people what to think. They\u2019re using technology to create a fuller portrait of the world and figuring out how to get people to pay for good work. And the best of them are indeed creating really, really good work. As the past 30 years of press history shows, everything changes. Great journalism helps us understand how and why things change, and we need that now more than ever.\n\nJason Tanz (@jasontanz) is editor at large at WIRED.\n\nThis article appears in the March issue. Subscribe now.","\u201cThere\u2019s this fashion for media companies to call themselves technology companies,\u201d says Jake Silverstein, editor of The New York Times Magazine. \u201cOur job isn\u2019t to make technology. Our job is to figure out how to use technologies.\u201d Or, as Sam Dolnick puts it: \u201cWe\u2019re not going to create augmented reality. We\u2019re going to figure out how to use that in a journalistic way.\u201d\n\nWhich is to say, a \u201cTimesian\u201d way, a shorthand you frequently hear for what the Times can and cannot do in the interest of protecting its exalted status (and nowhere is it more exalted than within the Times itself). What Timesian means or doesn\u2019t mean often depends on who\u2019s defining it, but it\u2019s typically in the same general neighborhood as authoritative, or maybe stuffy. Editors are infamous for their lengthy divinations on whether new headline styles are sufficiently Timesian, and, per the Innovation Report, nothing slowed down a new initiative more than when management deliberated on just how Timesian it was or wasn\u2019t.\n\nIt\u2019s been Dolnick\u2019s mission to drum up enthusiasm in the newsroom for testing out new applications, from VR to livestreaming, without worrying too much about the Timesian thing. After stints at the Staten Island Advance and the Associated Press, Dolnick started at the Times in 2009 as a metro reporter\u2014the same year as his cousin A.G.\u2014and wrote a prizewinning series on halfway houses before becoming a senior editor for mobile and then an associate editor. Inside the Times these days, he is known for the regular companywide email newsletter \u201cDigital Highlights.\u201d\n\nOne such highlight: At the Olympics last summer, deputy sports editor Sam Manchester sent short, frequently humorous text messages to the 20,000 readers who had signed up for the service. One, which sparked a viral meme, was a photo of a lifeguard watching swimmers practice, with a caption: \u201cYou know who has the most useless job in Rio? She does. That\u2019s right, they have lifeguards in case Olympic swimmers need saving.\u201d\n\n\u201cA generation ago, or even five years ago,\u201d says Dolnick, \u201cthere\u2019d be a lot of this Timesian stuff, \u2018Oh, The New York Times doesn\u2019t do that. We don\u2019t make jokes in text messages.\u2019 \u201d The audience responded, though, and Manchester buckled under the thousands of questions that readers texted him. That explains why, for its next engagement experiment with readers, the Times turned to artificial intelligence. Running up to the election, they created a Facebook Messenger chatbot that offered daily updates on the race in the voice of political reporter Nick Confessore. Running the backend was a tool created by Chatfuel that combined natural language parsing (so it could understand the questions posed to Confessore) with a conversation tree (so that the bot could respond to readers\u2019 queries using prewritten answers).\n\nOne of the biggest initiatives Dolnick has been involved in is virtual reality. He says it started with an email he sent to Silverstein last year: \u201cHey man, want to see something cool?\u201d Dolnick had just visited a VR production company called Vrse.Works (since renamed Here Be Dragons1) and brought one of their films, Clouds Over Sidra, into his office. The Times has since jumped into VR, partnering with Google to send its Cardboard VR viewers to all of its 1.1 million Sunday print-\u00adedition subscribers, creating an NYT VR app that\u2019s been downloaded more than 1 million times, and producing 16 (and counting) original films about topics as varied as displaced refugees (The Displaced), floating movie stars (Take Flight), and battling ISIS in Iraq (The Fight for Falluja). It remains a working experiment. The floating movie stars, for example: \u201cPeople liked it, it got pretty good views,\u201d Silverstein says. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t feel like we were advancing the ball. It had a little whiff of \u2018Look at us. We have VR.\u2019\u201d\n\nEven as Sulzberger boasts, \u201cWe employ more journalists who can write code than any other news organization,\u201d there are some at the Times\u2014usually those who can\u2019t write code\u2014who chafe at these endless waves of experimentation. \u201cWhen we\u2019re told this is the new best practice, everyone marches in lockstep,\u201d says one editor who asked to remain anonymous. \u201cFacebook Live? Yep! Video? On it! The New York Times isn\u2019t a place where people say no, and we\u2019re flat-out exhausted.\u201d\n\nThe Pew Research Center recently asked Americans whether they prefer to watch, read, or listen to the news. Here\u2019s what they said.\n\nIn March of 2016, Alex MacCallum, the Times\u2019 senior vice president for video (and at the beginning of her career, one of the first three hires at the Huffington Post), went to Baquet with a proposition from Facebook: If the Times would commit to producing dozens of livestreams a month for Facebook Live, its new video platform, the social media giant would pay the Times $3 million a year. Like most major media companies, the Times has a complicated relationship with Facebook\u2014a 2015 deal to publish Times journalism directly on Facebook Instant led some in the newsroom to worry about cannibalizing subscriptions and losing control of their content\u2014but following the Innovation Report, the pull of a new social platform was hard to resist. Baquet gave the green light. \u201cWe spun up a team and started producing within two weeks, which is like a land speed record in this organization,\u201d MacCallum says.\n\nOver the next few months, the Live team recruited more than 300 Times journalists to livestream anything and everything: press conferences, protests, political conventions. It was too much for some, and the public editor of the Times, Liz Spayd, said as much in a column headlined \u201cFacebook Live: Too Much, Too Soon.\u201d Spayd complained that some of the videos were \u201cplagued by technical malfunctions, feel contrived, drone on too long \u2026 or are simply boring.\u201d She urged editors to slow down, regroup, and wait until the Times could stay true to its past model of \u201cinnovating at a thoughtful, measured pace, but with quality worthy of its name.\u201d (Timesian!)\n\nMacCallum concedes that some of the early efforts may have fallen short, but today she puts them in the perspective more common in tech circles than media organizations. \u201cI disagree that it\u2019s possible to have every single thing be up to the standard. Otherwise you can\u2019t take any risks.\u201d What\u2019s more, Baquet says, the project helped train hundreds in his newsroom in how to frame a shot, speak on camera, and all the other skills necessary to produce journalism in the years to come. \u201cIf you buy that our future is the phone, and you buy that that means our future is going to be more visual than it\u2019s been in the past, then New York Times journalists have to be comfortable with video.\u201d\n\nThe alternative is stark. For most of the last year, the Times offered buyouts to employees, in part to make room for new, digitally focused journalists. As one editor (fearful of being quoted by name) put it: \u201cThe dinosaurs are being culled.\u201d","In the mid-20th century, when the LP was the medium of choice, massive hydraulic-powered vinyl pressing machines\u2014manufactured by long-forgotten companies like SMT, Lened, and Toolex\u2014pumped out the endless stream of grooved discs that became the lifeblood of the booming post-war music industry.\n\nWhen CDs emerged in the mid-1980s, most of those aging LP presses ended up in landfills and warehouses. The rest of the plot unspools like a stale Wes Anderson ensemble. Fueled by millennials feeling nostalgic for something they never experienced, vinyl enjoyed a stunning revival and, defying all pundit predictions, became more than a passing format fad. Smelling money, the Big Three labels rereleased their legacy acts on hot wax, Technics started making SL-1200 turntables again, and vinyl got its own global holiday.\n\nThe first new record-pressing machines built in over 30 years are finally online.\n\nAll of that is about to change: The first new record-pressing machines built in over 30 years are finally online. The brainchild of some Canadian R&D guys with a background designing fancy MRI machines, the Warm Tone record press is everything that its vintage counterpart is not: safe, fast, fully automated, reliable, run by cloud-based software, and iOS-controlled. These $195,000 whiz-bang machines, the homegrown product of a Toronto company called Viryl Technologies, are the next-gen record presses our 21st century vinyl revolution has been waiting for.\n\nThere\u2019s an App for That\n\nUnlike the old stamping behemoths, a single worker can operate several Warm Tone units at once. Its unrivaled speed and efficiency leaves the standard cycle time benchmarks in the dust, too: 20 seconds versus 35 seconds, which translates to three records per minute instead of only two. That\u2019s pretty good, but the actual product yield is even better than that. That\u2019s because the old school presses run at a 30 to 40 percent product loss due to everything from operator error to mechanical failure. In order to press a high quality record, a vinyl \u201cpuck\u201d must be steam-heated up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and water-cooled down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit in only 22 seconds. Muck those numbers up, and nasty warps are sure to follow. The Warm Tone is so well designed and performs this heating-cooling process so precisely that the vinyl it spits out is uniformly flat. Product loss is a miserly one percent. (Vinyl geeks: A new German pressing machine called Newbuilt hit the market last year, but it\u2019s based on less reliable Finebilt tech.)\n\n\n\nThe Warm Tone is also modular (making repairs literally a snap), mobile-friendly (manufacturing data is instantly relayed to smart devices through a custom interface), and has passed the most rigorous stress tests (24/7 operation is encouraged).\n\nWhile the press churns away, Viryl Technology\u2019s proprietary quality-control software collects data from every vital point in the Warm Tone manufacturing process. The tool also allows the operator to make important tweaks in real time\u2014from changing nozzle and steam pressure to adjusting flywheel trimming speed and vinyl blend\u2014that can mean the difference between a successful run and a budget-breaking failure.\n\nAfter much planning and infrastructure build-out (aspiring vinyl moguls: don\u2019t scrimp on the boiler and closed-loop \u201cchiller\u201d systems), Hand Drawn Records, a 12-man indie label outside Dallas, has just flipped the switch on the first Warm Tones to enter the vinyl supply-side chain. Housed in the Hand Drawn Pressing plant in Addison, Texas, the two machines, currently running 18-hour shifts, are on pace to churn out 1.8 million units in 2017.\n\n\u201cWaffle makers are better today than they used to be because the machines continued to improve,\u201d says Hand Drawn Records CCO Dustin Blocker. \u201cRecord presses have actually gotten worse because the technology hasn\u2019t changed in half a century. The machines are falling apart.\u201d\n\nHe pauses to let this unconscionable lapse in scientific progress sink in. \u201cIt took a while, but we finally have a better record maker.\u201d","Daniella Zalcman has been a photographer for 10 years, and she\u2019s long since lost count of how many times she\u2019s heard a photo editor explain how he\u2019d hire women if he knew where to find them. So she\u2019s showing them. In no uncertain terms.\n\nZalcman just launched Women Photograph, a website featuring more than 400 (and counting) female photojournalists from 67 countries. \u201cWe need to make a better effort to find female photographers and photographers of color,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause they exist. They\u2019re there.\u201d\n\nThe site is Zalcman\u2019s attempt the combat the sexism within a profession where she routinely heard lines like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s such a big lens for a little girl.\u201d Zalcman, who lives in London, started her career at The New York Daily News and invariably found herself vastly outnumbered. \u201cIt was the two of us and a bunch of middle-aged men,\u201d she says.\n\nAlthough the situation has improved since then, there is more progress to be made. WIRED talked to Zalcman about her website, her experiences, and why bringing more perspectives to journalism is essential. Her thoughts are below, and those of several women photographers appear in the captions.\n\nWhy is it important to hire female photographers?\n\nIt\u2019s just good journalism. We need to tell stories about diverse people from diverse perspectives\u2014from a female perspective, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. You make really big mistakes when you don\u2019t have those voices in your newsroom.\n\nHow did you choose the women featured on your site?\n\nLast July I made a Google spreadsheet and emailed it to 20 of my female photographer friends. Over the next six months, I kept passing it around. I\u2019d ask people to reach out to mutual acquaintances. They were all like, \u2018Oh my god, we need something like this.\u2019 It reached about 200 photographers at the beginning of December. That\u2019s when I started building the website. We\u2019re still adding to it.\n\nWhat does sexism look like in photojournalism today?\n\nThere\u2019s just this very paternalistic thread that exists within the news photography community of men believing they need to impart wisdom on the women photographers. It\u2019s like, \u2018No, we\u2019re good at our jobs. We know what we\u2019re doing. Thank you very much.\u2019\n\nThere are also explicit acts of sexual harassment that occur on a regular basis. Early on, you don\u2019t have the wherewithal to fight back. You just want to be liked, to be compliant, in an industry that is entirely based on subjectivity, on likability, where you\u2019re based on how much an editor wants to work with you. So I get why so many young female photographers get into the field, have one or two really nasty experiences, and then say, \u2018Screw it. I\u2019m going to law school.\u2019\n\nWhat unique perspectives do women bring to photography?\n\nSomething I hear from editors recently is that generally speaking, women tend to be a little more sensitive, a little more dedicated to long-form personal narrative and really getting into a story. A lot of slower social documentary work is done by women. They form close bonds with subjects and they\u2019re let in. But it doesn\u2019t just fall along the lines of men and women. There are incredible male social documentary photographers and incredible female war photographers. So I hesitate to make generalizations about what women are stronger at.\n\nBut we also just have different access. If we\u2019re talking about stories in the Middle East, a woman is going to get very different access than a man would be able to. There are certain communities where you cannot work if you are male.\n\nWhy is this subject so important right now?\n\nThere\u2019s a growing empathy gap. Looking at America specifically, I think we\u2019re having a harder and harder time understanding people who are different from us and who have had different experiences. We have these two deeply divided populations who don\u2019t listen to each other and don\u2019t seem to want to listen to each other. We have to figure out how to fix that. We have a liberal media and conservative media and the overlap between those is very slight. People pick the one that reinforces their worldview, and that\u2019s really scary and dangerous.\n\nHow do you change that?\n\nWe do need to make a concerted effort to diversify the people who are telling stories in this industry. That is deeply important to informing the public. Because if our readership is diverse, and the people we are reporting on are diverse, then we as journalists need to be diverse. And right now that is not the case.","The bomb hunters of Kosovo roam the country on foot, searching for explosives that dot the landscape 17 years after the Kosovo War. The slightest disturbance can cause an explosion, making the work so risky that the men and women who do it insisted that Emanuele Amighetti wear body armor and helmet just to photograph them.\n\nNATO dropped many of those bombs during a 78-day campaign to end the ethnic war that roiled Kosovo for 15 months. An estimated 20 percent of those munitions didn\u2019t detonate, joining the untold numbers of mines and other explosives left behind by soldiers on both sides. The United Nations swept the nation after the war and declared it free of ordnance in 2001, but data from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor show more than 100 people have been injured by explosives since then.\n\nAmighetti\u2019s work often examines the aftermath of war, so he asked Halo Trust International about joining a team as it went hunting for bombs. It estimates that some 60 minefields remain\u2014each littered with as many as a few hundred of bombs\u2014and hopes to clear them all by 2020.\n\nThat tedious full-time job falls to workers drawn from local communities. They receive one month of rigorous training before being deployed with bulletproof aprons and face shields. They work through early winter, when the weather makes the work too difficult. Each team is led by a seasoned veteran and includes a paramedic, although no one\u2019s been hurt since 2001, when a cluster bomb near Grebnik killed one person and injured another.\n\nThe job requires pin-sharp concentration and tireless attention. The teams start by scanning an area with metal detectors, some of them fitted with ground-penetrating radar. Workers carefully clear brush and vegetation, and listen for the tell-tale beep that indicates a potential bomb. Anything suspicious is fenced off wth red stakes.\n\nAt that point, a worker starts digging a few feet away, slowly scraping away earth laterally to reveal the object from the side. The idea is to avoid easing any pressure bearing down on the possible bomb and detonating it. Any ordnance is immediately reported, and destroyed where it sits or removed for detonation elsewhere. At that point, the team makes another check of the area to ensure nothing is left behind.\n\nAmighetti accompanied a team as it worked near the villages of Balinc\u00eb and Kryshec in December. The workers didn\u2019t find anything, but his photos convey the constant threat of danger that still threatens the country long after the war ended.","You can do lots of things in 10 seconds. Update your Twitter status. Tie your shoes. Demolish an entire neighborhood.\n\nNineteen residential towers came crashing down in Wuhan, China, on Saturday in less time than it took you to read this far. The falling towers, some as tall as 12 stories, kicked up a cloud of dust and debris that filled the nighttime sky in an operation that that demolition director Jia Yongshen called \u201cquite ideal.\u201d\n\nRazing the buildings required weeks of planning. Crews needed 20 days just to drill 120,000 holes in all that concrete and place 5,000 pounds of explosives. They all went off exactly as planned at 11:50 pm this Saturday. Once all that debris is hauled away, work begins on business center revolving around a 2,320-foot-tall skyscraper. Epic, sure, but not nearly so epic as the blast that made it possible.","When Meryl Meisler heard about the growing number of women planning a huge march in Washington, DC, she immediately knew she would be there. The presidential election left her feeling something like mourning, and she saw the march as a chance to assuage her anger over the result, and fears about the future. When the time came, she and her wife boarded a bus and made the four-hour ride from New York to the nation\u2019s capital to make her stand as a woman.\n\nAnd a photographer.\n\nMeisler was among the dozens of professional photographers for whom the Women\u2019s March events in cities around the world were profoundly personal, and professional. They came to make their voices heard, and to document what many considered a defining moment in the ongoing struggle for equality in all its forms. \u201cMy photographs document the events I witnessed and provided me with a way to share this moment with others,\u201d Meisler says.\n\nThe marches drew 3.3 million people to protests on all seven continents. For the women shooting the event, it was not only a chance to make history, but record it. \u201cWitnessing the masses of people on the streets was inspiring and an honor to document: as a photographer, as a woman, and as a citizen,\u201d says photographer Maggie Shannon.\n\nWIRED talked to 14 photographers about their experiences on that historic day. This is what they said.","Few tropes in modern America are as enduring as the LSD Trip Gone Far Too Long. It should all be over after a few hours, right? OK maybe not. Eight? Ten? Probably should have cleared more of my calendar.\n\nEven though science has long had an intimate relationship with LSD\u2014chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesized it way back in the \u201830s\u2014why the drug insists on producing such lengthy hallucinations hasn\u2019t been so clear. Until now. A new paper out today in Cell finally reveals the secret of the LSD Trip Gone Far Too Long: The drug binds to receptors in your brain in a fascinating way, essentially locking into position to guarantee a good, long burn. And that could have big implications for harnessing LSD as a therapeutic drug.\n\nNow, your body will clear LSD from your bloodstream in a matter of hours. But not your brain. Specifically, not the serotonin receptors that LSD binds to in the claustrum region of the brain. \u201cOnce LSD gets in the receptor, you can think of it as a hole in the ground. LSD jumps into it and then pulls a lid down over the top,\u201d says study co-author Bryan Roth, a pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. \u201cBasically, from the structure we could tell that once LSD gets in there it can\u2019t get out. That\u2019s why it lasts so long.\u201d We\u2019re talking 12, 18, maybe 24 hours, by the way. Still, that lid will move around, so some LSD molecules will escape as the high wears off.\n\n\n\nThe receptors, though, are very flexible and wily: Some bend this way, others that way. So to image them, the team had to freeze the receptors in time with crystallization. \u201cA crystal by definition is the same exact molecule, the same exact configuration over and over and over again as a three dimensional arrangement,\u201d says Wacker. It\u2019s the same principle as salt crystals forming as a bowl of soup evaporates\u2014only on a much, much smaller scale.\n\nNow, with the X-rays you get at the dentist, only 10 percent of the rays will actually hit an atom to produce an image. The same would go for trying to image crystallized receptors. So the researchers used the Argonne National Laboratory\u2019s Advanced Photon Source to fire a concentrated beam of x-rays at the crystals. \u201cNow if you shoot a lot more at them, you will get a lot more data out of it,\u201d says Wacker, \u201cbecause it\u2019ll always be 10 percent.\u201d\n\nWhat Roth and his colleagues are finding is that the longer the receptor and LSD are in proximity, the better the LSD gets at activating the receptor. Meaning, a very small dose could still have an effect. That could have implications for so-called microdosing, in which users ingest a tiny amount of LSD, supposedly to treat things like depression and increase productivity. \u201cOur results actually suggest that microdosing probably is having some effect,\u201d says Roth. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t say that the effect is beneficial or not, but it does give a biological and a chemical and a structural explanation for how these vanishingly small doses of LSD can actually have effects.\u201d\n\nNow\u2019s as good a time as any to remind readers that while LSD shows medical promise, it\u2019s still very much illegal in the United States. And even if people could use it legally, those interested in it as a therapeutic might not want those pesky trips. \u201cWe can begin to determine whether the psychedelic experience is part and parcel of all the potential therapeutic effects,\u201d Roth says. \u201cIt may or may not be, but the structure basically gives us the potential to design drugs that may have the beneficial actions without the deleterious effects.\u201d\n\nBut hold up, says Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. If the FDA were to approve LSD, it\u2019d need evidence of safety and efficacy, not mechanism of action. \u201cWhile this new paper is fascinating from a neurobiological perspective,\u201d he says, \u201cit doesn\u2019t contribute any useful information to how to enhance the efficacy or the safety of LSD-assisted psychotherapy.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t to say that mechanism of action research isn\u2019t important and valuable,\u201d he adds, \u201cit\u2019s just to say that I don\u2019t see any way that the new information about LSD\u2019s mechanism of action will translate to enhancing therapeutic methods or increasing safety.\u201d\n\nBut hey, science is progress. This study certainly didn\u2019t take the understanding of LSD backwards. Teasing apart its structure is a step toward controlling the drug. \u201cWe can actually present alternative routes\u2014how to make derivatives of LSD, slight modifications to it\u2014so we can create tool compounds that then are actually allowed by the FDA to study things,\u201d says Wacker.\n\nSo who knows, maybe one day your doctor will prescribe a derivative of LSD\u2014without the LSD Trip Gone Far Too Long, of course.","If you were almost perfectly spherical, life wouldn\u2019t be too bad\u2014you could just roll around town. But for an almost perfectly spherical fish like the adorable little lumpsucker, life is rather more complex. For him, being laughably unmaneuverable is a serious hazard. Its solution? Suction itself to the seafloor, that\u2019s what. Check out this week\u2019s episode of Absurd Creatures to learn more!\n\nBig up to the California Academy of Sciences for letting us film their lumpsuckers.\n\nFind every episode of Absurd Creatures here. And I\u2019m happy to hear from you with suggestions on what to cover next. If it\u2019s weird and we can find footage of it, it\u2019s fair game. You can get me at [email protected] or on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.","If you\u2019re the type of person who throws rocks at drones, or if you\u2019ve ever shot one out of the sky with a shotgun because it invaded your airspace, I have some bad news for you\u2014other than your pending civil lawsuit. Drones will be everywhere soon. Just imagine all that infuriating bvrrr and wrrr and weeeeer.\n\nBut theoretically, drones don\u2019t have to be so loud. As designers improve their understanding of drone aerodynamics, they have the potential to quiet the machines down and make them more efficient by reducing turbulence. And to that end, NASA scientists have generated an incredible visualization of the air currents and pressures of a quadcopter in flight.\n\nCheck out the GIF below. The blue bits are areas of low pressure, red is high, and the white stringy stuff is disturbed air. Aerospace engineer Seokkwan Yoon and scientific visualization specialist Tim Sandstrom\u2014both from NASA\u2014visualized those dynamics not by imaging a drone midflight, but by using a digital model. They began with a 3-D scan of a drone, running a simulation on 1,024 cores of NASA\u2019s Pleiades supercomputer (your computer is probably a dual-core or quad-core) to model the motion of air around the craft. Even with all that power, it took the supercomputer five days to complete.\n\nSo, what are we seeing here? For one, notice that the tops of the blades are a low-pressure blue. But what you can\u2019t see are the undersides of the blades, which would be high-pressure red. It\u2019s this pressure differential that produces the thrust that propels the drone.\n\nBut here\u2019s the problem with quadcopters. As a rotor slices over the four-armed body of the drone, it sends ripples of pressure across the surface\u2014those trippy-looking flashes of blue and red. \u201cWhen the rotors pass over the arms, the fuselage creates a large download (downward force), which in turn reduces the total thrust,\u201d Yoon says in an email. In addition, the interactions between the rotors and fuselage can lead to wobble, making the drone unstable if it doesn\u2019t have automatic flight control (a system that takes a chunk out of battery life, what with the computation power and all that course correcting).\n\nThe visualization also exposes how drones create all that cacophony. See those blue circles of low pressure created by the blades\u2019 tips? Well, the rotors end up slicing back through those circles, creating the disturbance that makes a drone so noisy. With the help of visualizations like these, designers might find ways to redesign their drones to hush up a bit.\n\nThose pressure maps could also help designers optimize stability\u2014a crucial requirement for retailers like Amazon, if they start using drones to deliver packages. Small drones, after all, don\u2019t get along well with gusts of wind. And they especially don\u2019t get along well with the sides of buildings the wind blows them into. \u201cIf we really want to realize services such as Amazon and other companies are dreaming about, we may need to look into other design configurations to address these safety issues,\u201d Yoon says.\n\nSo put down that shotgun. The future is quieter\u2014I promise.","It is really hard to photograph a meteor. Even though some 25 million of them hurtle toward Earth each day, most of them are too small to track. Those you can see are tough to spot during the day, and most people are sleeping when they streak across the sky at night. But Prasenjeet Yadav managed to get one anyway, entirely by accident.\n\nYadav was asleep when this bright green meteor exploded over Mettupalayam, a small town in the mountainous Western Ghats region of southern India. But the time-lapse rig he\u2019d set up on a nearby hilltop captured this beautiful image.\n\nHe didn\u2019t set out to be a photographer. He was born in Nagpur, roughly 35 miles from the setting for Rudyard Kipling\u2019s The Jungle Book, and tigers and leopards routinely wandered through his yard. He studied big cats as a molecular biologist, but had the sense that most people didn\u2019t read, let alone understand, academic papers. If people are to understand science, he thought, they have to see it. And so he became a photographer.\n\nYadav won a National Geographic Young Explorers grant to document \u201csky islands,\u201d the isolated mountain peaks that rise above the clouds along a 400-mile swath of the Western Ghats. He wanted a nighttime shot of Mettupalayam to show the area\u2019s urbanization. In the wee hours of October 9, 2015, Yadav drove into the mountains, set up his Nikon D600, and programmed it to take 15 second exposures every 10 seconds until 4:30 am. Then he made camp and dozed until dawn.\n\nThe next day, he reviewed the thousand or so images on his camera and spotted a brilliant flash of emerald light. At first he thought it was a fluke, but several astronomers confirmed that it was a meteor. It\u2019s a perfect shot. \u201cI was there, and that\u2019s what photography is all about\u2014being there in the right place at the right time,\u201d Yadav says. That, and a bit of luck.","Protecting internet privacy should be a bipartisan issue, right? After all, Americans seem united in their dislike of the phone and cable behemoths that dominate internet service in the US.\n\nMore importantly, the principle of protecting your personal online data from snooping wouldn\u2019t seem to break down along tidy partisan lines. Democrats want to protect the little guy from exploitation by corporate interests. Republicans believe in individual liberty. And yet, the decision to revoke Federal Communications Commission rules that would have stopped internet providers from selling your data without your permission followed party lines almost perfectly. Almost.\n\nNo Democrat in either the House or Senate voted for the resolution that repeals Federal Communications Commission rules prohibiting ISPs from selling your browsing history without your opt-in permission. No Senate Republican voted against it. But 15 House Republicans bucked their party to join a unified Democratic caucus to vote against the resolution. Call it online profiles in courage.\n\n\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s your data,\u201d says representative Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who voted against the repeal. \u201cI don\u2019t see how it could be anyone else\u2019s.\u201d\n\nDavidson says ISPs tracking your web surfing habits to target ads is like the postal service or FedEx snooping through your letters to figure out what junk mail to send you. \u201cIf a guy could carry a letter on a horse for weeks and not open it, why can\u2019t [internet providers] carry it for three seconds?\u201d he asks. \u201cWhat\u2019s changed? It\u2019s just that it\u2019s easier now.\u201d\n\nFor most Republicans, it seems, someone else\u2019s private property rights took precedence: the cable and phone companies themselves. Davidson says he believes most of his colleagues subscribed to the free-market reasoning that because the ISPs built the networks, they could do with them what they pleased. But many people don\u2019t have access to more than one home broadband provider\u2013particularly in many of the rural districts that Republicans represent. That limitation was not lost on Republicans who broke rank.\n\n\u201cConsumers have little\u2014if any\u2014choice of internet service providers, because government severely restricts competition,\u201d representative Tom McClintock (R-California) said in a statement. \u201cAs long as free choice cannot protect the consumer, rules like this are necessary.\u201d\n\nThe Great Polarization\n\nMoney would seem to be another obvious driver of partisanship, but in the case of rescinding internet privacy protections, its influence wasn\u2019t necessarily decisive.\n\nThe telecommunications industry has more than doubled its lobbying spending since 2000, and some of the resolution\u2019s biggest backers, such as representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), have reportedly raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industry.\n\n\u2018At the end of the day, it\u2019s your data. I don\u2019t see how it could be anyone else\u2019s.\u2019 Warren Davidson (R-Ohio)\n\nBut telcos also heavily lobby the other side of the aisle. Congressional Democrats received about $6 million in donations from the industry in 2016, according to the site Open Secrets, while Republicans received $6.8 million. Many Democrats who voted against the measure received more from the industry than some of the Republicans who voted for it. Democrats may or may not have been more motivated by party politics than principled opposition to the resolution. But if the vote came down to lobbying dollars alone, it surely would have passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.\n\nIf money can\u2019t really explain the polarization on internet privacy, then what?\n\nRepublicans traditionally recoil from government regulation\u2014but the FCC\u2019s regulations carried a special taint: the agency passed them under the Obama administration. President Obama, faced with an uncooperative Congress, relied heavily on executive orders and federal agencies to advance his agenda. Now that the GOP controls the White House and both houses of Congress, it\u2019s working quickly to dismantle as many Obama-era rules as possible.\n\nEven distrust of red tape and the former president wasn\u2019t enough to convince Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) to vote for the resolution. \u201cThink how you would respond if you hired a plumber to fix your sink and you later found him or her digging through your file cabinet, perusing your checkbook or reviewing credit card statements,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cYou would be appalled\u2014and should be. To a large degree, that is what is happening with our use of the internet.\u201d\n\nOf course shipping companies and plumbers have a strong market incentive not to snoop through people\u2019s stuff. No one would hire them if they had a reputation for violating their customers\u2019 privacy. But as long as consumers have so few option when it comes to paying for internet access, they\u2019ll have little choice but to invite that nosey plumber in.","From trolling SNL to skipping out on the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner, POTUS has developed a reputation as a guy who can\u2019t take a joke. But that doesn\u2019t mean he can\u2019t dish it out. He\u2019s eager to subtweet Schwarzenegger, snark at uncooperative world leaders, and openly goad his political opponents. Over the course of the presidential election, Trump workshopped a bragging, mocking (borderline inappropriate) brand of humor all his own. The flipside of LOL? The stealthily deployed, smirking one-liner.","\u201cDo you want to see Zika?\u201d Robert Tesh asked the question not ten minutes after I stepped into his office. He whisked me next door to his lab and pulled a box of glass ampoules out of the fridge, each half-full of what looked like dirty snow. Here was Zika, frozen and dried: the virus causing panic in the Americas because of its increasingly likely link to brain defects in babies.\n\nFor Tesh, Zika has long been one of his \u201corphan viruses,\u201d of only fleeting interest even to the people who make the study of mosquito-borne illnesses their specialty. As director of the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Tesh and his predecessors have amassed 7,000 virus strains, freeze-dried for long-term storage. About ten of those are versions of Zika, and they have spent years in the reference center, to little attention.\n\nThen came the epidemic in Brazil, the photos of babies born with heads too small to seem real, the World Health Organization\u2019s declaration of a public health emergency. On a recent Friday alone, 11 labs contacted the Galveston center to request Zika strains and reagents for detecting the virus. Sharing this stuff is exactly what the reference center exists to do, though the timing is a bit inconvenient: The center\u2019s dedicated shipping person had recently left.\n\nInside the university\u2019s medical branch, Zika research is accelerating. With a critical mass of mosquito-born disease experts, as well as facilities like the reference center and a high-containment lab for breeding mosquitoes like the ones spreading Zika, the Galveston medical center was one of the the first places outside of the CDC to jump on Zika. A team spent Christmas setting up experiments in Brazil. Back in Texas, they\u2019re already running studies to figure out how to better diagnose Zika, confirm the link to microcephaly, replicate the disease in mice and primates, and potentially create a vaccine. \u201cWe\u2019re hitting this virus from all possible angles,\u201d says Scott Weaver, a medical entomologist leading the charge at the medical center, where a couple dozen researchers are hammering away.\n\nIf anyone saw a sliver of Zika\u2019s coming shadow, it was Weaver. In 2009, he and William Reisen of UC Davis published a paper on emerging threats in their field. \u201cWe put Zika in the paper, which is kind of amazing because you usually get these kinds of things wrong,\u201d Weaver says. He still seems a bit dazed by his premonition. Weaver feels the thrill of being right, of suddenly having the whole world cast its attention toward his obscure corner of science. But he also has the sinking feeling that he was right about something going very, very wrong.\n\nObscure Viruses Behaving Badly\n\nSome mosquito-borne virus experts come to the field by way of mosquitoes; some by way of viruses. Weaver\u2019s in the first group. His office, on the top floor of the Galveston National Lab\u2014the shiniest building on campus\u2014has a shelf of mosquito memorabilia: a hand puppet, a sculpture mounted on a spring, and (his favorite) a bug-shaped spark plug. It\u2019s the most anatomically correct, he says, pointing out the head, thorax, and abdomen in the same even tone he uses whether telling jokes or discussing molecular biology.\n\nAs college student in Maryland, Weaver got a summer job hunting down mosquitoes for the public health department. The job took him all over the county, through remote marshlands and DC suburbs. He loved the field work. When he began graduate school at Cornell, he focused on mosquito transmission of an obscure virus that causes Venezuelan equine encephalitis. From there, Weaver went on to study other tropical diseases\u2014yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, which have all become notorious as they\u2019ve spread out of the tropical zones. \u201cI have a long history of working on obscure viruses,\u201d he says, \u201cbut all of a sudden some of them are behaving very badly, so they\u2019re no longer obscure.\u201d\n\nWhen Weaver first started working on it, Zika had just registered the tiniest of blips on the public health radar. The virus commonly circulated in low levels in Africa and America. But in 2007, it jumped to a Pacific Island called Yap, where it infected nearly three-quarters of the population. A few years later, Weaver got a grant to study how yellow fever and chikungunya circulated among mosquitoes in Senegal. Those same mosquitoes spread Zika, so he threw it in the mix. \u201cFrankly it would have been impossible for me or anyone else to get grant to work on Zika,\u201d he says. The National Institutes of Health had never funded a grant dedicated to it before this month.\n\nIn 2015, Weaver started hearing from his collaborator Albert Ko at Yale, an epidemiologist who has spent years studying yet another obscure disease called leptospirosis in Brazil. The patients Ko was tracking in the northeastern city of Salvador suddenly started getting Zika. Then the microcephaly cases started appearing. At a December meeting in Brazil\u2014planned before the Zika outbreak, coincidentally\u2014Weaver and Ko decided it was time to send a team.\n\n\u201cIt was \u2018We\u2019re completely inundated, can you come today?\u2019,\u201d says Nikos Vasilakis, one of two researchers from Texas who went down to Brazil. They called in favors, the consul general of Houston got involved, and Shannan Rossi, a fellow researcher at the medical branch who is married to Vasilakis, got her visa for Brazil in 24 hours\u2014a bureaucratic miracle.\n\nChristmas in Brazil\n\nVasilakis and Rossi still have the slightly unruly air of graduate students, with his skull ring and her printouts of XKCD comics lining the lab bench. The two met 15 years ago working at the pharmaceutical company Wyeth, went through graduate school at UT Medical Branch together and, aside from a year in Pittsburgh, have worked there ever since.\n\nThe low-key Christmas vacation they imagined at home in Texas blew up into a last minute trip to Brazil. The reason that Zika had flown under the radar for so long is that it\u2019s hard to diagnose: The symptoms are often indistinguishable from those of better known viruses such as yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya, and typical field tests can\u2019t distinguish between these viruses either. On top of that, 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms at all. The Texas team wanted to make sure their Brazilian collaborators could reliably detect Zika in fetal tissue\u2014which could help suss out the link to microcephaly.\n\nAt a lab in Salvador, Vasilakis and Rossi worked side by side with scientists from FioCruz\u2014the Brazilian equivalent of the NIH\u2014to work out a test that can pick up the genetic signature of the Zika virus in amniotic fluid and cord blood as well as tissues from stillborn babies collected by obstetricians. The team worked through Christmas Eve and then Christmas, running and rerunning the test to make sure it was picking up Zika and only Zika.\n\nThis is easy enough at the lab bench, but hard to ramp up at the beginning of an outbreak, especially without a ready supply of the reagents or a protocol that reliably prevents false positives and negatives. For example, to guard against false negatives, you need to make sure the test is detecting genetic material from Zika, which means you need a sample that you know contains Zika. But the world\u2019s supply of Zika is limited, even with the reference center in Texas cranking away at growing new virus. The Brazilian lab will eventually need to grow its own Zika, or at least snippets of its genetic material. That\u2019s just one example of the layers of complexity necessary for rigorous lab tests.\n\nAfter ten whirlwind days in Brazil, Vasilakis and Rossi returned to Texas. Now, they wait for the data to roll in from their Brazilian collaborators. But they have plenty of other work to do. They\u2019ve been working ten, twelve, fourteen hour days. \u201cWe\u2019re running on caffeine and adrenaline,\u201d says Rossi, who\u2019s also developing an animal disease model for Zika.\n\nNow that they\u2019re back, their experiments have taken on new significance. Lab work is usually so abstract, so removed from the real world. But in Brazil, Vasilakis and Rossi stepped into the hospital, where mothers cradling babies with microcephaly waited to meet with doctors and social workers. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking. I don\u2019t think it was something either one of us was prepared for. You see the pictures and you hear about the news stories, but then you see the mothers and their children,\u201d says Rossi. \u201cIt flavors everything you do from here on out.\u201d\n\nWhat she really sensed was frustration\u2014the frustration that doctors had no answers. Back home, the university is constantly getting emails asking for advice, usually from pregnant women, and, well, what can you say but spell out the uncertainty?\n\nScience is supposed to revel in the unknown, but so much is unknown about Zika that even the \u201cexperts\u201d don\u2019t consider themselves that. \u201cIf anybody tells me I\u2019m expert, I\u2019d say, \u2018You\u2019re nuts,\u2019\u201d says Vasilakis. But from the outside, he and his colleagues are the most reliable source of information. As Zika awareness exploded outside of virology circles, the attention turned surreal. After appearing on TV, Vasilakis got a call from the owner of a Greek diner on Long Island, where he\u2019d worked decades ago, congratulating him on making something of himself.\n\nWhat Lurks Behind Zika\n\nThe World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses started in New York in 1952, at Rockefeller Foundation Laboratories. Then it moved to Yale, and then to the UT Medical Branch. In fact, it\u2019s hard to find a virus the Rockefeller Foundation hasn\u2019t gotten its gloves on\u2014the organization poured money into virus hunting and surveillance in the mid-twentieth century. The researchers who first discovered Zika in the Uganda forest in 1947 were working at a Rockefeller-funded lab. As one historian put it, \u201cIn the field of virus research, the Rockefeller Foundation was a fairy godmother waving her wand over scientists around the world.\u201d\n\nVirus hunting in the 21st century has no such fairy godmother. \u201cIn the last 30 years of biology and research on viruses, the emphasis has been on molecular biology,\u201d says Weaver. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to even find people who want to do surveillance.\u201d Funding agencies like studies that test a specific hypothesis or tease out the specific inner workings of, say, a virus. That\u2019s reasonable, but it also means that surveillance\u2014casting a wide net and hoping for something interesting to pop up\u2014is not a priority.\n\nTo prepare for the next Zika, you need research infrastructure\u2014for surveillance, for collections of rare viruses, for work that may not seem important until suddenly one day it is.\n\nAt the same time, the danger of emerging viruses is growing. Modern international travel makes it easy for viruses to hop borders, and climate change is expanding the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes. New diseases can hide behind more common infections with similar symptoms: A typical clinic in South American might classify anything that looks like dengue as dengue, but perhaps only a third of these diagnoses are accurate. The rest are lesser-known viruses like Venezuelan equine encephalitis or Oropouche or Mayaro or another hard-to-pronounce name you probably haven\u2019t heard of it. Some of it is probably Zika, too, though most clinics didn\u2019t have the diagnostic capabilities to know for sure. \u201cThey hide under the dengue umbrella,\u201d says Weaver. Without resources for surveillance, a new virus can easily fly under the radar.\n\nChikungunya was the first virus whose spread from Africa and Asia through the Americas over the past decade set off alarm bells. Zika is unlikely to be the last. With Zika hogging all the attention, the White House is now asking for $1.8 billion for research on the virus. But to prepare for the next Zika, you need research infrastructure\u2014for surveillance, for collections of rare viruses, for work that may not seem important until suddenly one day it is. The CDC, where several alums of the UT Medical Branch now work, does a lot of this research, but the academic community around surveillance is small.\n\nTesh recently celebrated his 80th birthday, and he is still collecting viruses for the reference center. While he and I were talking, he got a call from his long-time collaborators in Brazil, who had just stepped off the plane in Texas. He\u2019s been coaxing them to send over a Brazilian strain of Zika, which foreign researchers can\u2019t access because of Brazil\u2019s tight export laws.\n\nMeanwhile though, the UT Medical Branch has freezers full of viruses. Presumably something else in there could do what Zika has done\u2014break into a larger population, show a surprising or terrifying symptom, expand its range. It\u2019s 7,000 potential disasters, or 7,000 potential research bonanzas if the scientists can untangle their secrets. They just have to figure out which one to pay attention to.","In 2001, director Richard Kelly\u2019s Donnie Darko opened in a small number of theaters and quickly vanished. The film, a cryptic comedy about a troubled teen and the supernatural rabbit who urges him to act out, would have been a hard sell at any time, but was particularly unwelcome in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In the intervening years, however, Kelly has seen the film slowly blossom into a cultural phenomenon.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s come a long way from being a failure to being a cult film to now, I believe, being something that everyone has heard about, and that\u2019s a wonderful thing,\u201d Kelly says in Episode 249 of the Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.\n\nKelly recently completed a 4K restoration of the film which will be screened in select theaters this month for the film\u2019s 15th anniversary. He says he was never really happy with the color and detail levels of previous scans, and he\u2019s excited for fans to be able to see this new version in theaters. \u201cThis was a film that was barely released on screens in 2001, in a very limited way, and a lot of people have never seen it on the big screen,\u201d he says.\n\nDonnie Darko is a densely layered story which touches on many themes, including sacrifice, destiny, and the power of art. But one aspect of the story that\u2019s gained increasing relevance in recent years is its political angle. The film is withering in its contempt for sanctimonious hypocrites who peddle feel-good nonsense.\n\n\u201cThis is a story about a character who is trying to confront a system of conformity,\u201d Kelly says. \u201c[He] is confronting his community and trying to make sense of the world.\u201d\n\nKelly\u2019s interest in politics is even more apparent in his follow-up films\u2014The Box, about a shadowy government conspiracy that tests people\u2019s greed, and Southland Tales, a gonzo dystopian satire about the confluence of celebrity culture and the military-industrial complex. He hopes the continued success of Donnie Darko will allow him to explore his political ideas even further in future films.\n\nListen to our complete interview with Richard Kelly in Episode 249 of Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.\n\nRichard Kelly on The Box:\n\n\u201cAs to whether Americans would push the button more than people in other countries, that\u2019s a much bigger question about ethics and morality, and it also has to do with our connection to technology. We obviously have things like drone strikes now. We have devices that can be implemented that separate the person from the act of violence, or the instrument of violence, and we have people who have to physically push a button in a military trailer outside of Las Vegas that will launch a missile that can potentially end hundreds of lives in a second, so we\u2019re getting into a situation where the idea of pushing a button that will result in the death of another person is a pretty substantial thing that we\u2019re going to have to deal with.\u201d\n\nRichard Kelly on Southland Tales:\n\n\u201cI think that someone like Donald Trump probably would have been too cartoonish for the movie, which is strange to say, but it was not even in our imagination at the time that something like this could have come to fruition. \u2026 It\u2019s hard to top what\u2019s happening in the real world in terms of just the ridiculousness and the vulgarity and the shamelessness of this political nightmare that we wake up with every day. \u2026 I know that the South Park guys have decided that they\u2019re going to stop rendering Trump stories, because they don\u2019t feel like they want to do it anymore. I think it\u2019s going to be interesting. But I think that a lot of people are politically activated, and we\u2019re going to hopefully see a lot more films that are very, very aggressive in speaking to these political times.\u201d\n\nRichard Kelly on storytelling:\n\n\u201cThe kind of experience I want to deliver for people is a really complicated story with a lot of layers and a lot of hidden clues spread throughout. I want it to kind of wash over the viewer and leave them a little dizzy. That\u2019s my motive as an artist, to put you in a roller coaster and have you walk out of the theater a little disoriented. \u2026 And that\u2019s a risk you take, because not everyone is appreciative of that kind of film. A lot of people go to the theater and they want everything spelled out. They want to know exactly what happened, and then they want to go to dinner, or they want to go have a drink, and move on with their lives. And my movies aren\u2019t those kinds of movies. They\u2019re always going to leave you with a lot of questions.\u201d\n\nRichard Kelly on S. Darko:\n\n\u201cI was against it being made at all, but it was basically presented to me as like, \u2018Well, if you\u2019re not going to be involved, it\u2019s going to happen regardless, there\u2019s nothing you can do to stop it from getting made.\u2019 There was really nothing I could do. I\u2019ve never seen it and I don\u2019t really see it as being anything that I authorize or endorse in any way. So yeah, that was not fun. The thing that\u2019s bothered me a lot over the years is that people just assume that I allowed it to happen, or that I profited from it, or that I sold off the rights to someone else or something, and that wasn\u2019t the case at all. When you direct your first movie at that young of an age, you never get to control the underlying rights to anything.\u201d","Bennett Schwartz is one of the nation\u2019s leading memory experts, and when I visited him in his office at Florida International University, he was standing at his desk. A soft sunlight crowded the room. Large windows framed the palm tree-lined quad outside.\n\nDressed in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, Schwartz appeared to be quietly talking to himself, with hushed, mumbled words, and for a long moment, it seemed as if he was some sort of monk, living in another, more esoteric world.\n\n\u201cHi?\u201d I said tentatively.\n\nSchwartz turned around, putting the book away with an easy gesture.\n\nIt turned out that when I walked into the room, Schwartz was honing his Scrabble skills. He had a Scrabble tournament the next day, and he was practicing words from a book devoted to the game. \u201cThe director is allowing me to play against the good Scrabble players,\u201d Schwartz told me, laughing. \u201cI have to make sure I know my words.\u201d\n\nSo how exactly does one of the nation\u2019s premier memory experts develop his Scrabble skills?\n\nWell, Schwartz uses a type of self-quizzing: In order to hone his expertise, he\u2019s constantly interrogating himself to see if he can recall various Scrabble words. So when Schwartz stops at a red light\u2014or if he\u2019s just waiting in his office\u2014he\u2019ll ask himself questions about what he\u2019s learned as well as what he aims to learn.\n\nThe learning strategy has shown clear results, helping Schwartz become a nationally ranked player, boosting his Scrabble rating by more than 25 percent over the past few years.\n\nKnown as retrieval practice, the approach to learning fills the recent literature on memory, sometimes showing effects some 50 percent more than other forms of learning. In one study, one group of subjects read a passage four times. A second group read the passage just one time, but then the same group practiced recalling the passage three times.\n\nabout the author About Ulrich Boser (@ulrichboser) a senior fellow at the Center for American Progressn.\n\nBut when the researchers followed up with both groups a few days later, the group that had practiced recalling the passage learned significantly more. In other words, subjects who tried to recall the information instead of rereading it showed far more expertise.\n\nWithin the learning sciences, retrieval practice is sometimes referred as the testing effect since the practice is a matter of people asking themselves specific questions about what they learned. But in many ways, the idea goes much deeper than self-quizzing, and what\u2019s important about retrieval practice is that people take steps to recall what they know. They ask themselves questions about their knowledge, making sure that it can be produced.\n\nMore concretely, retrieval practice isn\u2019t like a multiple-choice test, which has people choose from a few answers, or even a Scrabble game, where you hunt in your memory for a high-point word. Retrieval practice is more like writing a five-sentence essay in your head: You\u2019re recalling the idea and summarizing it in a way that makes sense.\n\nIn this regard, we can think of retrieval practice as a type of mental doing: It\u2019s a way to create the webs of meaning that support what we know. As psychologist Bob Bjork told me, \u201cThe act of retrieving information from our memories is a powerful learning event.\u201d\n\nA lot of the benefit of retrieval practice is explained by the nature of long-term memory, and Schwartz describes long-term memory as being like the sprawling, chaotic bedroom of a teenager. It might seem messy from the outside, but the disorder makes a lot of sense to the people who live there. \u201cEach of us has his or her own subjective organization strategies, which may not be obvious to others, but give us each or own unique associations and memory,\u201d Schwartz told me.\n\nThe key to recalling memories is to have cues that closely link up with a memory, Schwartz says. When we have strong associations, we can more easily recall a word or idea. Because if \u201ccues change, finding that missing word or event is like looking for a particular t-shirt among the chaos of the mess,\u201d he says. We simply can\u2019t find it.\n\nIn this regard, retrieval practice helps us recall memories because it more closely links cues and their associated memories. It pushes us to foster associations\u2014and make more durable forms of knowledge. As Schwartz argues, \u201cit\u2019s the growing mess and the lack of the organizational cues that makes memory fade.\u201d\n\nThe benefits of retrieval practice go far beyond facts or games, and there are ways to use self-quizzing to develop conceptual understanding. One student recommends that people first create a pile of cards that lists facts. Then people should build a second pile that asks things like \u201cgive a real life example\u201d or \u201cdraw this concept.\u201d In this approach, people learn by picking one card from the first pile and a card from the second pile, and then executing the task.\n\nRetrieval practice doesn\u2019t have to be written down, either. When I was in college, I worked as a teaching assistant for a class that relied on a form of retrieval practice, and once a week, I would gather a group of students in a classroom and verbally ask them rapid-fire questions. The class was relatively short\u2014just 45 minutes a week. But it was easy to see the effects of the free-recall type of practice, and the more the students retrieved their knowledge, the more they learned.\n\nAs for Schwartz, he did well at the Scrabble tournament on the day after our interview. The director placed him in one of the highest divisions, and he went against some of the best players in the state of Florida. Using his technique of retrieval practice, Schwartz managed to notch wins in about a third of his games. As Schwartz modestly joked in a follow-up email, \u201cI didn\u2019t finish last, so I did OK.\u201d\n\nThe Hard Matter of Learning\n\nThere\u2019s a problem with retrieval practice and Schwartz is pretty familiar with it. In recent years, Schwartz has been encouraging students in his classes at Florida International University to use retrieval practice and he repeatedly asks them to explain about what they know.\n\nBut Schwartz\u2019s students have not been all the supportive of the new approach to learning. \u201cMy students have to take a quiz every week,\u201d he told me, \u201cand they would much prefer not to take a quiz every week. They don\u2019t like it. They complain. Every week, I get excuses about dead grandmothers.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s pretty easy to see why the students don\u2019t like the quizzes. Retrieval practice is uncomfortable. It requires additional work. The frequent quizzing pushes students to constantly recall things from memory, and while the students end up posting higher grades on the final exams, they have to put forth a lot more mental energy.\n\nSchwartz argues that this is simply the nature of learning. Developing a skill takes cognitive toil, and we can see the benefits of this sort of struggle in our brain. Indeed, it appears that at a very basic neurological level, grappling with material in a dedicated way promotes a type of shifting of our neural circuits\u2014and a richer form of expertise. \u201cIf we process things too easily, they do not form into memories,\u201d Schwartz says.\n\nA version of this idea has long intrigued Yuzheng Hu. A researcher on brain plasticity at the National Institutes of Health, Hu has studied something called white matter. A type of neural transmission cable, white matter helps distribute messages throughout the brain. It makes information flow more effectively, allowing electronic pulses to jump more easily from one neuron to the next. If the brain has a form of wiring, white matter serves as the copper, the substance that conducts the messages.\n\nIn one of his first studies, Hu and some colleagues decided to see if certain types of learning might boost white matter within the brain, and so they compared a group of young subjects who received a rigorous type of math training and those who didn\u2019t.\n\nThe data suggested that the more rigorous math approach built up the brain\u2019s transmission material, and under the bright scan of the MRI machine, certain white matter zones of the brain like the corpus callosum pulsed stronger in people who had studied the harder approach to learning math.\n\nHu\u2019s study was built on a decade\u2019s worth of research that shows that there\u2019s very little fixed about the brain. Our brain systems are not like a piece of metal, something rigid in its fundamentals, hard and inflexible. The brain, instead, is something that can change, something that can adapt to its environment, more neural cloud than neural cement.\n\nIf you master karate, for instance, there are clear, structural changes that happen to white matter structures within your brain. Similar changes happen when we learn to juggle\u2014or learn to meditate.\n\nThis idea has a number of important implications for how we develop a skill. For one, there are far fewer neural set points than we generally believe. Our brains are not fixed at birth. Our mental abilities are not preprogrammed. For a long time, for instance, people believed in the notion of \u201ccritical periods,\u201d or the idea that we need to acquire certain skills at particular times in our life. But except for a few narrow abilities, we can acquire most skills at any time.\n\nBut what\u2019s new\u2014and really most important\u2014about this line of research is how exactly the brain builds new structures, and it seems that the brain creates white matter in an effort to deal with mental struggle. When there\u2019s a large gap between what we know and what we can do, the brain shifts its structures to address the issue. Some years ago, a group of German researchers described a new way of understanding why this happens, and they argue that when \u201cdemand\u201d overwhelms the brain\u2019s \u201csupply,\u201d we build new neural structures.\n\nFor his part, Hu argues that the brain responds to an opportunity to learn. When faced with a tough situation, it rises to the occasion. \u201cThis is your brain optimizing the way you perform that task,\u201d Hu told me. \u201cIf you practice something a lot, your brain will think, \u2018This is important,\u2019 and you will develop a strategy to better perform it.\u201d\n\nSchwartz goes a little further. He argues that white matter and learning might not actually be all that different, at least at some philosophical level. \u201cI am a materialist. I don\u2019t like the idea that our brain is somehow different from what we consider to be ourselves,\u201d Schwartz says. Thus, for him, \u201cwhite matter connectivity is the neural correlate of cognitive engagement and growth. They are one in the same\u2014rather than one resulting from the other.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s possible to go too far here. Learning is about a lot more than developing a specific axon in the brain. But more broadly what\u2019s clear is that the brain itself seems to understand the value of repeatedly quizzing, of learning as a form of cognitive work.\n\nThe Psychology of Errors\n\nMemory researchers haven\u2019t always believed in the power of mistakes. Before the advent of researchers like Bennett Schwartz, struggle wasn\u2019t considered part of the learning process, and in more passive, more behaviorist models of learning, mistakes are exactly that: mistakes. They show that people are not learning properly. Blunders are a sign that someone is doing something wrong.\n\nBut it turns out that understanding doesn\u2019t transfer immutably from one person\u2019s head to another. Our brain is not a simple storage device, a lockbox, or a warehouse that serves as some type of memory depot. Instead, we have to make sense of ideas, to grapple with expertise, and that means that errors are simply unavoidable.\n\nThis notion is pretty clear in something like retrieval practice. If you\u2019re constantly asking yourself questions, you\u2019re bound to have some misses. Someone like Schwartz, for instance, often gets something wrong as he practices for his Scrabble tournaments, unable to recall a high-value Scrabble word like \u201cqat.\u201d\n\nJust as important, errors create meaning. They build understanding. When I interviewed Schwartz in his office, for instance, he asked me the question: What\u2019s the capital of Australia?\n\nUnless you\u2019re from Australia, your first guess is probably the same as my first question: Sydney. But that\u2019s not correct.\n\nSecond guess? Maybe Melbourne? Again, wrong.\n\nOr perhaps Brisbane? Perth? Adelaide? All those answers are also off the mark.\n\nThe correct response, it turns out, is Canberra.\n\nI know. Weird. If you\u2019re not from Australia, the answer of Canberra probably comes with a buzzing shock of surprise. That\u2019s certainly what happened to me when Schwartz finally told me the answer. It was an odd little eye-opener.\n\nBut that feeling\u2014that zinging moment\u2014is learning. It\u2019s the signal of a shift in understanding. When we make a gaff, we search for meaning, and so we learn more effectively. This idea goes back to memory being like a messy, teenager\u2019s room. If there\u2019s an error\u2014and it\u2019s a salient one\u2014we put a red, Sharpie-made x on the memory, noting exactly where it\u2019s located in the room. Within our brains, we\u2019re telling ourselves: Remember this idea. It\u2019s important.\n\nOf course, no one likes mistakes. Errors are sharp and painful, humiliating and demoralizing. Even the smallest of gaffs\u2014a misspoken word, a blundered errand\u2014can haunt people for years. In this sense, mistakes make us rethink who we are; they\u2019re a threat to our being.\n\nBut still, errors help us gain skills. They create mastery. When I last checked in with Schwartz, he had won a tournament in St. Myers, landing second place and taking home $80 in award money. He was still processing what he had done wrong, figuring out how to gain from his mistakes: \u201cI could not play that damn \u2018v,'\u201d he told me.\n\nBut Schwartz was also focused on what he needed to get better, to win at the next Scrabble tournament. \u201cI need some time to study if I want to break to the next level,\u201d he told me. In other words, he needed some more time to quiz himself.\n\nExcerpted from Learn Better by Ulrich Boser. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Ulrich Boser. With permission of the publisher, Rodale Books. All rights reserved.","I just Googled \u201calarm dust,\u201d \u201calibi sweatshirt,\u201d and \u201csleuth intelligence.\u201d Then I shopped for industrial dehydrators, scanned a Pinterest page for concrete decks, and read something about nuclear war.\n\nThe thing is, I\u2019m not in the market for a new dehydrator. Concrete decks aren\u2019t really my style, and I still have no idea what \u201calarm dust\u201d is. I didn\u2019t visit any of these web sites of my own volition\u2014a website called Internet Noise did, all to obscure my real browsing habits in a fog of fake search history.\n\nYesterday, the House of Representatives voted to let internet service providers sell your browsing data on the open market. This decision angered a lot of people, including programmer Dan Schultz. After reading about the vote on Twitter at 1 AM, he turned off Zelda and coded this ghost currently opening tabs on my machine.\n\nInternet Noise acts like a browser extension but is really just a website that auto-opens tabs based on random Google searches. Schultz isn\u2019t a hacker but a concerned do-gooder trying to get Americans to understand how much their online privacy is at risk. \u201cI cannot function in civil society in 2017 without an internet connection, and I have to go through an ISP to do that,\u201d he says.\n\nTo counter that threat, Schultz wants to make it impossible for ISPs or anyone they\u2019ve sold your data to accurately profile you. The vote yesterday implicitly legalized such tracking by explicitly rescinding rules against it. By muddying your online identity, advertisers can\u2019t accurately target you, and authorities can\u2019t accurately surveil you. To create noise that blocks your signal, Schultz googled \u201cTop 4,000 nouns\u201d and folded the list into his code. When you hit the \u201cMake some noise\u201d button on his site, it harnesses Google\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Feeling Lucky\u201d button to search those phrases, then opens five tabs based on the results. Every ten seconds it does another search and opens up five more. Within minutes, my entire browser history was a jumble. Internet Noise will keep going until you hit the \u201cSTOP THE NOISE!\u201d button. Schultz envisions you running this while you sleep.\n\nThis signal-jamming offers just one modest example of the larger theory of obfuscation, the idea that if you can\u2019t disappear online at least you can hide yourself in a miasma of noise. Adnauseam.io is a plug-in currently banned by Google that works in a similar way, except instead of just opening pages and jamming your history, it actually clicks on random ads. In the process, it\u2019s directly targeting the ad model that underpins so much of the internet, and it can be pretty effective. I am not building a deck or in the market for a manual regenerative hydrator, but now that Internet Noise search for those things ads for both will likely appear in my Facebook feed, and I\u2019m cool with that. Internet Noise tries to throw them off my trail by creating a fake path to follow. That\u2019s the key to successful signal-jamming: You can\u2019t just generate random sounds. You have to generate a second song.\n\nRisks and Limitations\n\nWhat if it\u2019s not an advertiser looking at your web data, though, but a spy agency or some other authority drawing conclusions about your browsing? From my test run, someone might conclude something causal between my googling of industrial equipment, chemical companies, nuclear proliferation, sleuth intelligence, and cancer. Sketchy! Schultz himself hasn\u2019t evaluated all 4,000 search words (and the 16,000,000 results their two-word combinations can generate)1 to determine whether they might raise red flags for anyone spying on my habits.\n\nBut I can take some comfort in the fact that right now, Schultz\u2019s site isn\u2019t that effective at truly jamming my signal. It\u2019s actually too random. It doesn\u2019t linger on sites very long, nor does it revisit them. In other words, it doesn\u2019t really look human, and smart-enough tracking algorithms likely know that.\n\n\u201cThe main problem with these sorts of projects is that they rely on your being able to generate plausible activity more reliably than your adversaries,\u201d says privacy expert Parker Higgins, formerly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. \u201cThat\u2019s a really hard problem.\u201d\n\nSchultz says the main point of Internet Noise for now is to raise awareness, though the open source project has the potential to evolve into a real privacy tool. People have already reached out to fix minor problems and suggest ways to make it more effective. In the meantime, anyone truly concerned about their privacy needs to stay savvy about the technical limitations of the tools they choose, including Internet Noise. \u201cI fear that any of these cool hacks will give people a false sense of security,\u201d says EFF privacy researcher Gennie Gebhart, who is working with her team to create a broad toolkit of how to protect yourself from ISP tracking. \u201cThere is no one click that will protect you from all the kinds of tracking.\u201d\n\nNot that privacy-minded programmers will stop trying. Internet Noise may be the first grassroots hack created in direct response to yesterday\u2019s vote. But a sizable collection of similar tools offers a sobering reminder that companies were already tracking and selling your data. Geeks may not have the political clout to stop such infringements of online freedom, but they do have the advantages of speed and passion. As long as they have keyboards, internet fighters will try to drown out Washington with the roar of their code.\n\n1Updated to include how many different search results the noun combinations could generate.","If you\u2019re like me, one of the first things you do in the morning is check your email. And, if you\u2019re like me, you also wonder who else has read your email. That\u2019s not a paranoid concern. If you use a web-based email service such as Gmail or Outlook 365, the answer is kind of obvious and frightening.\n\nEven if you delete an email the moment you read it on your computer or mobile phone, that doesn\u2019t necessarily erase the content. There\u2019s still a copy of it somewhere. Web mail is cloud-based, so in order to be able to access it from any device anywhere, at any time, there have to be redundant copies. If you use Gmail, for example, a copy of every email sent and received through your Gmail account is retained on various servers worldwide at Google. This is also true if you use email systems provided by Yahoo, Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Microsoft, or even your workplace. Any emails you send can also be inspected, at any time, by the hosting company. Allegedly this is to filter out malware, but the reality is that third parties can and do access our emails for other, more sinister and self-serving, reasons.\n\nWhile most of us may tolerate having our emails scanned for malware, and perhaps some of us tolerate scanning for advertising purposes, the idea of third parties reading our correspondence and acting on specific contents found within specific emails is downright disturbing.\n\nThe least you can do is make it much harder for them to do so.\n\nStart With Encryption\n\nMost web-based email services use encryption when the email is in transit. However, when some services transmit mail between Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs), they may not be using encryption, thus your message is in the open. To become invisible you will need to encrypt your messages.\n\nMost email encryption uses what\u2019s called asymmetrical encryption. That means I generate two keys: a private key that stays on my device, which I never share, and a public key that I post freely on the internet. The two keys are different yet mathematically related.\n\nFor example: Bob wants to send Alice a secure email. He finds Alice\u2019s public key on the internet or obtains it directly from Alice, and when sending a message to her encrypts the message with her key. This message will stay encrypted until Alice\u2014and only Alice\u2014uses a passphrase to unlock her private key and unlock the encrypted message.\n\nSo how would encrypting the contents of your email work?\n\nThe most popular method of email encryption is PGP, which stands for \u201cPretty Good Privacy.\u201d It is not free. It is a product of the Symantec Corporation. But its creator, Phil Zimmermann, also authored an open-source version, OpenPGP, which is free. And a third option, GPG (GNU Privacy Guard), created by Werner Koch, is also free. The good news is that all three are interoperational. That means that no matter which version of PGP you use, the basic functions are the same.\n\nWhen Edward Snowden first decided to disclose the sensitive data he\u2019d copied from the NSA, he needed the assistance of like-minded people scattered around the world. Privacy advocate and filmmaker Laura Poitras had recently finished a documentary about the lives of whistle-blowers. Snowden wanted to establish an encrypted exchange with Poitras, except only a few people knew her public key.\n\nSnowden reached out to Micah Lee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Lee\u2019s public key was available online and, according to the account published on the Intercept, he had Poitras\u2019s public key. Lee checked to see if Poitras would permit him to share it. She would.\n\nabout the author About Kevin Mitnick (@kevinmitnick) is a security consultant, public speaker, and former hacker. The company he founded, Mitnick Security Consulting LLC, has clients that include dozens of the Fortune 500 and world governments. He is the author of Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion, and The Art of Deception.\n\nHow would they know each other\u2019s new email addresses? In other words, if both parties were totally anonymous, how would they know who was who and whom they could trust? How could Snowden, for example, rule out the possibility that the NSA or someone else wasn\u2019t posing as Poitras\u2019s new email account? Public keys are long, so you can\u2019t just pick up a secure phone and read out the characters to the other person. You need a secure email exchange.\n\nBy enlisting Lee once again, both Snowden and Poitras could anchor their trust in someone when setting up their new and anonymous email accounts. Poitras first shared her new public key with Lee. Lee did not use the actual key but instead a 40-character abbreviation (or a fingerprint) of Poitras\u2019s public key. This he posted to a public site\u2014Twitter.\n\nSometimes in order to become invisible you have to use the visible.\n\nNow Snowden could anonymously view Lee\u2019s tweet and compare the shortened key to the message he received. If the two didn\u2019t match, Snowden would know not to trust the email. The message might have been compromised. Or he might be talking instead to the NSA. In this case, the two matched.\n\nSnowden finally sent Poitras an encrypted e\u2011mail identifying himself only as \u201cCitizenfour.\u201d This signature became the title of her Academy Award\u2013winning documentary about his privacy rights campaign.\n\nThat might seem like the end\u2014now they could communicate securely via encrypted e\u2011mail\u2014but it wasn\u2019t. It was just the beginning.\n\nPicking an Encryption Service\n\nBoth the strength of the mathematical operation and the length of the encryption key determine how easy it is for someone without a key to crack your code.\n\nEncryption algorithms in use today are public. You want that. Public algorithms have been vetted for weakness\u2014meaning people have been purposely trying to break them. Whenever one of the public algorithms becomes weak or is cracked, it is retired, and newer, stronger algorithms are used instead.\n\nThe keys are (more or less) under your control, and so, as you might guess, their management is very important. If you generate an encryption key, you\u2014and no one else\u2014will have the key stored on your device. If you let a company perform the encryption, say, in the cloud, then that company might also keep the key after he or she shares it with you and may also be compelled by court order to share the key with law enforcement or a government agency, with or without a warrant.\n\nWhen you encrypt a message\u2014an e\u2011mail, text, or phone call\u2014use end\u2011to\u2011end encryption. That means your message stays unreadable until it reaches its intended recipient. With end\u2011to\u2011end encryption, only you and your recipient have the keys to decode the message. Not the telecommunications carrier, website owner, or app developer\u2014the parties that law enforcement or government will ask to turn over information about you. Do a Google search for \u201cend\u2011to\u2011end encryption voice call.\u201d If the app or service doesn\u2019t use end-to-end encryption, then choose another.\n\nIf all this sounds complicated, that\u2019s because it is. But there are PGP plug-ins for the Chrome and Firefox Internet browsers that make encryption easier. One is Mailvelope, which neatly handles the public and private encryption keys of PGP. Simply type in a passphrase, which will be used to generate the public and private keys. Then whenever you write a web-based email, select a recipient, and if the recipient has a public key available, you will then have the option to send that person an encrypted message.\n\nBeyond Encryption: Metadata\n\nEven if you encrypt your e\u2011mail messages with PGP, a small but information-rich part of your message is still readable by just about anyone. In defending itself from the Snowden revelations, the US government stated repeatedly that it doesn\u2019t capture the actual contents of our emails, which in this case would be unreadable with PGP encryption. Instead, the government said it collects only the email\u2019s metadata.\n\nYou\u2019d be surprised by how much can be learned from the email path and the frequency of emails alone.\n\nWhat is email metadata? It is the information in the To and From fields as well as the IP addresses of the various servers that handle the email from origin to recipient. It also includes the subject line, which can sometimes be very revealing as to the encrypted contents of the message. Metadata, a legacy from the early days of the internet, is still included on every email sent and received, but modern email readers hide this information from display.\n\nThat might sound okay, since the third parties are not actually reading the content, and you probably don\u2019t care about the mechanics of how those emails traveled\u2014the various server addresses and the time stamps\u2014but you\u2019d be surprised by how much can be learned from the email path and the frequency of emails alone.\n\nAccording to Snowden, our email, text, and phone metadata is being collected by the NSA and other agencies. But the government can\u2019t collect metadata from everyone\u2014or can it? Technically, no. However, there\u2019s been a sharp rise in \u201clegal\u201d collection since 2001.\n\nTo become truly invisible in the digital world you will need to do more than encrypt your messages. You will need to:\n\nRemove your true IP address: This is your point of connection to the Internet, your fingerprint. It can show where you are (down to your physical address) and what provider you use.\n\nObscure your hardware and software: When you connect to a website online, a snapshot of the hardware and software you\u2019re using may be collected by the site.\n\nDefend your anonymity: Attribution online is hard. Proving that you were at the keyboard when an event occurred is difficult. However, if you walk in front of a camera before going online at Starbucks, or if you just bought a latte at Starbucks with your credit card, these actions can be linked to your online presence a few moments later.\n\nTo start, your IP address reveals where you are in the world, what provider you use, and the identity of the person paying for the internet service (which may or may not be you). All these pieces of information are included within the email metadata and can later be used to identify you uniquely. Any communication, whether it\u2019s email or not, can be used to identify you based on the Internal Protocol (IP) address that\u2019s assigned to the router you are using while you are at home, work, or a friend\u2019s place.\n\nIP addresses in emails can of course be forged. Someone might use a proxy address\u2014not his or her real IP address but someone else\u2019s\u2014that an email appears to originate from another location. A proxy is like a foreign-language translator\u2014you speak to the translator, and the translator speaks to the foreign-language speaker\u2014only the message remains exactly the same. The point here is that someone might use a proxy from China or even Germany to evade detection on an email that really comes from North Korea.\n\nInstead of hosting your own proxy, you can use a service known as an anonymous remailer, which will mask your email\u2019s IP address for you. An anonymous remailer simply changes the email address of the sender before sending the message to its intended recipient. The recipient can respond via the remailer. That\u2019s the simplest version.\n\nOne way to mask your IP address is to use the onion router (Tor), which is what Snowden and Poitras did. Tor is designed to be used by people living in harsh regimes as a way to avoid censorship of popular media and services and to prevent anyone from tracking what search terms they use. Tor remains free and can be used by anyone, anywhere\u2014even you.\n\nHow does Tor work? It upends the usual model for accessing a website. When you use Tor, the direct line between you and your target website is obscured by additional nodes, and every ten seconds the chain of nodes connecting you to whatever site you are looking at changes without disruption to you. The various nodes that connect you to a site are like layers within an onion. In other words, if someone were to backtrack from the destination website and try to find you, they\u2019d be unable to because the path would be constantly changing. Unless your entry point and your exit point become associated somehow, your connection is considered anonymous.\n\nTo use Tor you will need the modified Firefox browser from the Tor site (torproject.org). Always look for legitimate Tor browsers for your operating system from the Tor project website. Do not use a third-party site. For Android operating systems, Orbot is a legitimate free Tor app from Google Play that both encrypts your traffic and obscures your IP address. On iOS devices (iPad, iPhone), install the Onion Browser, a legitimate app from the iTunes app store.\n\nIn addition to allowing you to surf the searchable Internet, Tor gives you access to a world of sites that are not ordinarily searchable\u2014what\u2019s called the Dark Web. These are sites that don\u2019t resolve to common names such as Google.com and instead end with the .onion extension. Some of these hidden sites offer, sell, or provide items and services that may be illegal. Some of them are legitimate sites maintained by people in oppressed parts of the world.\n\nIt should be noted, however, that there are several weaknesses with Tor: You have no control over the exit nodes, which may be under the control of government or law enforcement; you can still be profiled and possibly identified; and Tor is very slow.\n\nThat being said, if you still decide to use Tor you should not run it in the same physical device that you use for browsing. In other words, have a laptop for browsing the web and a separate device for Tor (for instance, a Raspberry Pi minicomputer running Tor software). The idea here is that if somebody is able to compromise your laptop they still won\u2019t be able to peel off your Tor transport layer as it is running on a separate physical box.\n\nCreate a new (invisible) account\n\nLegacy email accounts might be connected in various ways to other parts of your life\u2014friends, hobbies, work. To communicate in secrecy, you will need to create new email accounts using Tor so that the IP address setting up the account is not associated with your real identity in any way.\n\nCreating anonymous email addresses is challenging but possible.\n\nSince you will leave a trail if you pay for private email services, you\u2019re actually better off using a free web service. A minor hassle: Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others require you to supply a phone number to verify your identify. Obviously you can\u2019t use your real cellphone number, since it may be connected to your real name and real address. You might be able to set up a Skype phone number if it supports voice authentication instead of SMS authentication; however, you will still need an existing email account and a prepaid gift card to set it up.\n\nSome people think of burner phones as devices used only by terrorists, pimps, and drug dealers, but there are plenty of perfectly legitimate uses for them. Burner phones mostly provide voice, text, and e\u2011mail service, and that\u2019s about all some people need.\n\nHowever, purchasing a burner phone anonymously will be tricky. Sure, I could walk into Walmart and pay cash for a burner phone and one hundred minutes of airtime. Who would know? Well, lots of people would.\n\nFirst, how did I get to Walmart? Did I take an Uber car? Did I take a taxi? These records can all be subpoenaed. I could drive my own car, but law enforcement uses automatic license plate recognition technology (ALPR) in large public parking lots to look for missing and stolen vehicles as well as people on whom there are outstanding warrants. The ALPR records can be subpoenaed.\n\nCreating anonymous email addresses is challenging but possible.\n\nEven if I walked to Walmart, once I entered the store my face would be visible on several security cameras within the store itself, and that video can be subpoenaed.\n\nOkay, so let\u2019s say I send a stranger to the store\u2014maybe a homeless person I hired on the spot. That person walks in and buys the phone and several data refill cards with cash. Maybe you arrange to meet this person later away from the store. This would help physically distance yourself from the actual transaction.\n\nActivation of the prepaid phone requires either calling the mobile operator\u2019s customer service department or activating it on the provider\u2019s website. To avoid being recorded for \u201cquality assurance,\u201d it\u2019s safer to activate over the web. Using Tor over an open wireless network after you\u2019ve changed your MAC address should be the minimum safeguards. You should make up all the subscriber information you enter on the website. For your address, just Google the address of a major hotel and use that. Make up a birth date and PIN that you\u2019ll remember in case you need to contact customer service in the future.\n\nAfter using Tor to randomize your IP address, and after creating a Gmail account that has nothing to do with your real phone number, Google sends your phone a verification code or a voice call. Now you have a Gmail account that is virtually untraceable. We can produce reasonably secure emails whose IP address\u2014thanks to Tor\u2014is anonymous (although you don\u2019t have control over the exit nodes) and whose contents, thanks to PGP, can\u2019t be read except by the intended recipient.\n\nTo keep this account anonymous you can only access the account from within Tor so that your IP address will never be associated with it. Further, you should never perform any internet searches while logged in to that anonymous Gmail account; you might inadvertently search for something that is related to your true identity. Even searching for weather information could reveal your location.\n\nAs you can see, becoming invisible and keeping yourself invisible require tremendous discipline and perpetual diligence. But it is worth it. The most important takeaways are: First, be aware of all the ways that someone can identify you even if you undertake some but not all of the precautions I\u2019ve described. And if you do undertake all these precautions, know that you need to perform due diligence every time you use your anonymous accounts. No exceptions.\n\nExcerpted from The Art of Invisibility: The World\u2019s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data, Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Kevin D. Mitnick with Robert Vamosi. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York. All rights reserved.","Black hats hack for espionage, crime, and disruption. White hats hack to defend, digging up security vulnerabilities so that they can be fixed. And then there are the confusing ones: hackers whose black hats are covered in the thinnest coat of white paint, or so patchwork that even they don\u2019t seem to remember which color they\u2019re wearing.\n\nOver the last couple of weeks a group calling itself OurMine has established itself as prominent members of that third category. Late Sunday night, the OurMine team claimed credit for compromising the Twitter and Quora accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, posting messages reading \u201chacked\u201d and \u201cwe are just testing your security\u201d to his half-million followers. Pichai is just the latest target of the group, which on Monday also hacked VC Mark Suster, and has already hit the Twitter accounts of Mark Zuckerberg, his sister Randi Zuckerberg, Spotify founder Daniel Ek, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, and actor Channing Tatum.\n\nWe are not blackhat hackers. We are just trying to tell people that nobody is safe. Anonymous member of OurMine team\n\nIn a conversation with WIRED, one anonymous member of the group insisted that OurMine\u2019s string of tech exec embarrassments is only its way of teaching us all a helpful lesson. \u201cWe don\u2019t need money, but we are selling security services because there is a lot [of] people [who] want to check their security,\u201d he wrote in less-than-perfect English, declining to offer his name or the location of what he described as OurMine\u2019s three-person team. \u201cWe are not blackhat hackers, we are just a security group\u2026we are just trying to tell people that nobody is safe.\u201d\n\nThe OurMine representative added that the group hadn\u2019t changed any of the passwords of the accounts it compromised\u2014a polite touch it claims shows its benign intentions. But if their goal is to offer security warnings, why not privately inform the targets of their hacks of their vulnerabilities? \u201cThey will ignore us, so we should prove it,\u201d the OurTeam spokesperson protests. \u201cWe didn\u2019t do anything wrong.\u201d (He did note, however, that the group changes its IP addresses \u201cevery minute\u201d to keep ahead of law enforcement.)\n\nThe anonymous member of OurMine says that the group was able to gain control of Pichai\u2019s Twitter feed through the CEO\u2019s Quora account; the two were linked to allow easy tweeting of Quora posts. He then claimed that OurMine hacked Pichai\u2019s Quora account using a web vulnerability that it\u2019s since reported to Quora. But a Quora spokesperson says it has no record of any vulnerability report from OurMine, and that it\u2019s \u201cconfident that Sundar Pichai\u2019s account was not accessed via a vulnerability in Quora\u2019s systems.\u201d\n\nInstead, the company believes Pichai\u2019s account was hacked due to his reusing a password that was exposed in one of the many recent dumps of credentials on the dark web\u2014the same problem that led to Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Twitter account hack earlier this month. As for OurMine\u2019s other hacks, the group\u2019s representative said that it had hacked Amazon\u2019s Werner Vogels and Randi Zuckerberg by exploiting a vulnerability in their Bit.ly accounts, which were also linked to Twitter. But Bit.ly also denied in a statement to WIRED that the hacks had exploited vulnerabilities in its site, blaming compromised passwords.\n\nIn fact, it\u2019s worth taking all of OurMine\u2019s claims with a heaping dose of skepticism. The OurMine member claimed, for instance, that the hackers have already collected $18,400 in fees for security services they\u2019ve performed for willing clients. But when WIRED requested evidence of those transactions, he sent a screenshot from the group\u2019s PayPal account that appeared to be doctored: It showed $5,000 payments from the companies Conversely and TruthFinder, but Conversely tells WIRED it never paid for any such \u201csecurity\u201d service. \u201cThe screenshot is fraudulent\u2014we have never heard of OurMine until now, and would definitely never purchase such a service,\u201d Conversely spokesperson writes. TruthFinder didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.\n\nAll of that suggests, if it weren\u2019t already clear, that those seeking a security audit should probably not engage a group of anonymous, lawbreaking Twitter-defacement artists. But OurMine does offer some real security lessons, free of charge: Don\u2019t reuse passwords between sites, set up two-factor authentication, and be aware that linking accounts can lead to unexpected security risks. Your Twitter account, as OurMine has successfully taught Sunder Pichai free of charge, is only as secure as the least-secure account that can post to it.","Craig\u2019s first major break in the case came in September 2009. With the help of some industry experts, he identified a New York\u2013based server that seemed to play some sort of role in the Zeus network. He obtained a search warrant, and an FBI forensics team copied the server\u2019s data onto a hard drive, then overnighted it to Nebraska. When an engineer in Omaha examined the results, he sat in awe for a moment. The hard drive contained tens of thousands of lines of instant message chat logs in Russian and Ukrainian. Looking over at Craig, the engineer said: \u201cYou have their Jabber server.\u201d\n\nThis was the gang\u2019s whole digital operation\u2014a road map to the entire case. The cybersecurity firm Mandiant dispatched an engineer to Omaha for months just to help untangle the Jabber Zeus code, while the FBI began cycling in agents from other regions on 30- or 90-day assignments. Linguists across the country pitched in to decipher the logs. \u201cThe slang was a challenge,\u201d Craig says.\n\nOne woman explained that she\u2019d become a money mule after a job at a grocery store fell through, telling an agent: \u201cI could strip, or I could do this.\u201d\n\nThe messages contained references to hundreds of victims, their stolen credentials scattered in English throughout the files. Craig and other agents started cold-calling institutions, telling them they had been hit by cyberfraud. He found that several businesses had terminated employees they suspected of the thefts\u2014not realizing that the individuals\u2019 computers had been infected by malware and their logins stolen.\n\nThe case also expanded beyond the virtual world. In New York one day in 2009, three young women from Kazakhstan walked into the FBI field office there with a strange story. The women had come to the States to look for work and found themselves participating in a curious scheme: A man would drive them to a local bank and tell them to go inside and open a new account. They were to explain to the teller that they were students visiting for the summer. A few days later, the man had them return to the bank and withdraw all of the money in the account; they kept a small cut and passed the rest on to him. Agents pieced together that the women were \u201cmoney mules\u201d: Their job was to cash out the funds that Slavik and his comrades had siphoned from legitimate accounts.\n\nBy the summer of 2010, New York investigators had put banks across the region on alert for suspicious cash-outs and told them to summon FBI agents as they occurred. The alert turned up dozens of mules withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars. Most were students or newly arrived immigrants in Brighton Beach. One woman explained that she\u2019d become a mule after a job at a grocery store fell through, telling an agent: \u201cI could strip, or I could do this.\u201d Another man explained that he\u2019d be picked up at 9 am, do cash-out runs until 3 pm, and then spend the rest of the day at the beach. Most cash-outs ran around $9,000, just enough to stay under federal reporting limits. The mule would receive 5 to 10 percent of the total, with another cut going to the recruiter. The rest of the money would be sent overseas.\n\n\u201cThe amount of organization these kids\u2014they\u2019re in their twenties\u2014were able to pull together would\u2019ve impressed any Fortune 100 company,\u201d the FBI\u2019s James Craig says.\n\nThe United States, moreover, was just one market in what investigators soon realized was a multinational reign of fraud. Officials traced similar mule routes in Romania, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Russia. All told, investigators could attribute around $70 million to $80 million in thefts to the group\u2014but they suspected the total was far more than that.\n\nBanks howled at the FBI to shut the fraud down and stanch the losses. Over the summer, New York agents began to close in on high-ranking recruiters and the scheme\u2019s masterminds in the US. Two Moldovans were arrested at a Milwaukee hotel at 11 pm following a tip; one suspect in Boston tried to flee a raid on his girlfriend\u2019s apartment and had to be rescued from the fire escape.\n\nMeanwhile, Craig\u2019s case in Omaha advanced against the broader Jabber Zeus gang. The FBI and the Justice Department had zeroed in on an area in eastern Ukraine around the city of Donetsk, where several of the Jabber Zeus leaders seemed to live. Alexey Bron, known online as \u201cthehead,\u201d specialized in moving the gang\u2019s money around the world. Ivan Viktorvich Klepikov, who went by the moniker \u201cpetr0vich,\u201d ran the group\u2019s IT management, web hosting, and domain names. And Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov, a well-known local DJ who went by the nickname \u201ctank,\u201d managed the whole scheme, putting him second in command to Slavik. \u201cThe amount of organization these kids\u2014they\u2019re in their twenties\u2014were able to pull together would\u2019ve impressed any Fortune 100 company,\u201d Craig says. The gang poured their huge profits into expensive cars (Penchukov had a penchant for high-end BMWs and Porsches, while Klepikov preferred Subaru WRX sports sedans), and the chat logs were filled with discussions of fancy vacations across Turkey, Crimea, and the United Arab Emirates.\n\nBy the fall of 2010, the FBI was ready to take down the network. As officials in Washington called a high-profile press conference, Craig found himself on a rickety 12-hour train ride across Ukraine to Donetsk, where he met up with agents from the country\u2019s security service to raid tank\u2019s and petr0\u00advich\u2019s homes. Standing in petr0vich\u2019s living room, a Ukrainian agent told Craig to flash his FBI badge. \u201cShow him it\u2019s not just us,\u201d he urged. Craig was stunned by the scene: The hacker, wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket, seemed unperturbed as agents searched his messy apartment in a Soviet-\u00adstyle concrete building; his wife held their baby in the kitchen, laughing with investigators. \u201cThis is the gang I\u2019ve been chasing?\u201d Craig thought. The raids lasted well into the night, and Craig didn\u2019t return to his hotel until 3 am. He took nearly 20 terabytes of seized data back to Omaha.\n\nWith 39 arrests around the world\u2014stretching across four nations\u2014investigators managed to disrupt the network. But crucial players slipped away. One top mule recruiter in the US fled west, staying a step ahead of investigators in Las Vegas and Los Angeles before finally escaping the country inside a shipping container. More important, Slavik, the mastermind himself, remained almost a complete cipher. Investigators assumed he was based in Russia. And once, in an online chat, they saw him reference that he was married. Other than that, they had nothing. The formal indictment referred to the creator of the Zeus malware using his online pseu\u00addo\u00adnym. Craig didn\u2019t even know what his prime suspect looked like. \u201cWe have thousands of photos from tank, petr0\u00advich\u2014not once did we see Slavik\u2019s mug,\u201d Craig says. Soon even the criminal\u2019s online traces vanished. Slavik, whoever he was, went dark. And after seven years of chasing Jabber Zeus, James Craig moved on to other cases.","Elon Musk wants to merge the computer with the human brain, build a \u201cneural lace,\u201d create a \u201cdirect cortical interface,\u201d whatever that might look like. In recent months, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI has repeatedly hinted at these ambitions, and then, earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk has now launched a company called Neuralink that aims to implant tiny electrodes in the brain \u201cthat may one day upload and download thoughts.\u201d\n\nAnd he\u2019s not the only one. Bryan Johnson, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who previously sold a startup to PayPal for $800 million, is now building a company called Kernel, pledging to fund the operation with $100 million of his own money. He says the company aims to build a new breed of \u201cneural tools\u201d in hardware and software\u2014ultimately, in a techno-utopian way, allowing the brain to do things it has never done before. \u201cWhat I really care about is being able to read and write the underlying functions of the brain,\u201d says Johnson.\n\nIn other words, Musk and Johnson are applying the Silicon Valley playbook to neuroscience. They\u2019re talking about a technology they want to build well before they can actually build it. They\u2019re setting the agenda for this intriguing yet frightening idea before anyone else sets it for them. And they\u2019re pumping money into the idea in ways no one else ever has. Throw in all those science fiction tropes involving brain interfaces\u2014that\u2019s where the term \u201cneural lace\u201d comes from\u2014and you\u2019ve got a brand new and potentially very important industry that\u2019s ridiculously difficult to make sense of.\n\nLet\u2019s start here: According to David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist and an advisor to Kernel, the notion of implanting a computer interface in a healthy human brain is a non-starter\u2014not only now, but even if we look many, many years down the road. \u201cWith any neurosurgery, there\u2019s a certain risk\u2014of infection, of death on the operating table, and so on. Neurosurgeons are completely reluctant to do any surgery that is not a required surgery because the person has a disease state,\u201d he says. \u201cThe implanting of electrodes idea is doomed from the start.\u201d\n\nThat said, surgeons have already implanted devices that can help treat epilepsy, Parkinson\u2019s, and other maladies with what\u2019s called deep brain stimulation. In these situations, the risk is worthwhile. Researchers at IBM are exploring a similar project, analyzing brain readings during epileptic seizures in an effort to build implants that could stop seizures before they happen.\n\nThe immediate aim of Kernel and, apparently, Neurolink is to work with devices along the same lines. Such devices would not only send signals to the brain as a means of treatment, but also gather data about the nature of these maladies. As Johnson explains, those devices could also help gather far more data about how the brain works in general\u2014and ultimately, could feed all sorts of other neuroscience research. \u201cIf you have much higher quality neural data from more regions of the brain, it will inform all sorts of other possibilities,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cWe just haven\u2019t had the right tools to acquire these datasets.\u201d\n\nAs Eagleman explains, this could not just fix unhealthy brains, but get more out of healthy ones too. \u201cIn these situations where you have reasons to open the head anyway,\u201d he says, \u201cthen you can look for ways of improving the brain.\u201d\n\nWhat Johnson and presumably Musk hope to do is gather data that could, years and years down the road, help us build a kind of interface that lets humans connect their brains to machines. Musk believes this kind of thing will help us keep pace with artificial intelligence. \u201cUnder any rate of advancement in AI, we will be left behind by a lot,\u201d he said at a conference last summer. \u201cThe benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we\u2019d be like a pet, or a house cat. I don\u2019t love the idea of being a house cat.\u201d\n\nBut Eagleman is adamant that this kind of interface will not involve implanting devices in healthy brains. And you hear much the same from others working in the field. Chad Bouton, a vice president of advanced engineering and technology at the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research, which is working to develop bioelectronic technology for treating disease, also warns that brain surgery is an incredibly invasive procedure.\n\nIt is far more likely, Eagleman says, that scientists will develop better ways of reading and simulating the brain from the outside. Today, doctors use techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to read what\u2019s happening in the brain, and they use methods like trans-cranial magnetic stimulation to change its behavior. But these are rather crude techniques. If scientists can better understand the brain, Eagleman says, they could potentially improve these methods and build on them, creating something far more useful.\n\nResearchers could also develop genetic techniques to modify neurons so that machines can \u201cread and write\u201d to them from outside our bodies. Or they could develop nano-robots that we ingest into our bodies for the same purpose. All this, Eagleman says, is more plausible than an implanted neural lace.\n\nIf you strip away all the grandiose language around these efforts from Johnson and Musk, however, Eagleman admires what they are doing, mainly because they are pumping money into research. \u201cBecause they are wealthy, they can set their sights on a big problem we\u2019re trying to solve, and they can work their way toward their problem,\u201d he says.\n\nThat doesn\u2019t sound quite as revolutionary as a neural lace. But it\u2019s also not quite as frightening. And, well, it\u2019s a lot more real.\n\nCorrection: This story has been corrected to properly identify functional magnetic resonance imaging.","On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to reverse regulations that would have stopped internet service providers from selling your web-browsing data without your explicit consent. It\u2019s a disappointing setback for anyone who doesn\u2019t want big telecoms profiting off of their personal data. So what to do? Try a Virtual Private Network. It won\u2019t fix all your privacy problems, but a VPN\u2019s a decent start.\n\nIn case you\u2019re not familiar, a VPN is a private, controlled network that connects you to the internet at large. Your connection with your VPN\u2019s server is encrypted, and if you browse the wider internet through this smaller, secure network, it\u2019s difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on what you\u2019re doing from the outside. VPNs also take your ISP out of the loop on your browsing habits, because they just see endless logs of you connecting to the VPN server.\n\nThere are more aggressive ways of hiding your browsing and more effective ways of achieving anonymity. The most obvious option is to use the Tor anonymous browser. But attempting to use Tor for all browsing and communication is difficult and complicated. It\u2019s not impossible, but it\u2019s probably not the easy, broad solution you\u2019re looking for day to day to protect against an ISP\u2019s prying eyes.\n\nTrust Factors\n\nVPNs can shield you from your big bad cable company, but they are also in a position to potentially do all the same things you were worried about in the first place\u2014they can access and track all of your activities and movements online. So for a VPN to be any more private than an ISP, the company that offers the VPN needs to be trustworthy. That\u2019s a very tricky thing to confirm.\n\nOne solid indicator? Check whether the VPN keeps logs of user activity. Many privacy-focused VPNs are intentionally very up front about their no-log policies, because they want to make it clear to law enforcement groups around the world that even if they are served with a warrant or subpoena, they won\u2019t have the ability to produce customer records. It\u2019s worthwhile to specifically check a company\u2019s Terms of Service to see what it says there about logging and scenarios where it would (or wouldn\u2019t) disclose user information.\n\nIt\u2019s frustrating to acknowledge, but it\u2019s crucial to understand that even these gut checks aren\u2019t foolproof. A company could misrepresent its logging practices or could accidentally store data without realizing it for longer than it means to. Additionally, research shows that scams are common among VPNs, especially mobile VPNs, and that some services simply don\u2019t offer any of the features they say they do.\n\nA simple way to improve your chances of landing on a safe and well-meaning VPN is to pay for one. Free VPNs aren\u2019t inherently bad, but all services have to make money somehow. A free trial is one thing, but a totally free service may not have the resources to actually offer the security features it claims. And even if you\u2019ve done all the research you can and checked the reputation against independent assessments, there can still be flaws in how companies set up and configure their VPN services, which could cause data leaks that are simply beyond your control.\n\nChoices, Choices\n\nThese caveats don\u2019t make VPNs useless. It\u2019s just important to understand that these services aren\u2019t a magical solution to all your privacy woes.\n\n\u201cISPs are companies that we pay for a certain service, and sharing personal information of their clients with third parties is wrong on all levels,\u201d says Sergiu Candja, the CEO of CactusVPN, a mid-sized VPN based in Canada which says it does not keep user logs. Candja adds that consumers should feel empowered to vet VPNs by checking their stance on logging, choosing smaller companies that are less likely to be targeted for having access to tons of valuable data, and using a VPN that is based in a different country.\n\nWhat the VPN world really needs are standardized independent audits. Until those become commonplace\u2014which doesn\u2019t seem likely any time soon\u2014your best bet is to stick with reputable names, rather than rushing to the first Google result.\n\nF-Secure Freedome, for instance, received plaudits from independent security researchers for its mobile product recently. A VPN called Private Internet Access is bare-bones, but well-reviewed, and a recent FBI case appeared to confirm its claims that it does not store any user logs.\n\nIn truth, there may be no such thing as a \u201cbest\u201d VPN. You\u2019re simply looking for something with the best chance of working as advertised.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve made your pick, the set-up process is fairly straightforward: You pay for access from the VPN of your choice, create an account, and then download the VPN\u2019s portal program onto your computer and mobile devices. After you log in, most VPNs offer different servers you can connect through that are based in different countries. Many also offer features like \u201ckill switches,\u201d so that if your internet or VPN connection becomes unstable, the VPN will automatically quit pre-selected programs if they\u2019re running. This reduces the chance of data leakage from sensitive programs during periods of funky connection. Once you install your VPN, you can use the IPLeak.net tool to check whether the service is functioning.\n\nThere are some more practical downsides to VPN use, aside from general trust issues. Connections can be slower, for one. And after a broad crackdown to prevent users from accessing different countries\u2019 content catalogs, Netflix no longer works on most VPNs.\n\nThe reason to consider VPNs in light of the House vote about ISPs, though, is that they\u2019re fairly easy to keep on for large periods of time. If you\u2019re concerned about your ISP\u2019s bulk data collection and want to really throw a wrench in their snooping, a VPN you trust will do the trick.","Kameron Hurley\u2019s science fiction novel The Stars Are Legion almost never saw the inside of a book store. She came up with the idea in 2012, but she and her agent didn\u2019t think anyone would buy it. A \u201cbig gory political space opera\u201d wasn\u2019t something flying off the shelves at the time. But two years later, Ann Leckie\u2019s Ancillary Justice swept the major science fiction awards, Guardians of the Galaxy became a surprise box office smash, and Syfy announced plans to make The Expanse into a TV show. Hurley\u2019s book soon found a home at Saga Press.\n\nShe was hardly alone. \u201cPublishers started snapping up space operas, leading to a huge demand that needed to be filled,\u201d she says. Today, a bumper crop of space adventures fill Kindles. They run the gamut from intimate character dramas to galaxy-spanning epics, each of them as big and bold as their genre implies, but far more experimental and varied than ever before.\n\nNot long ago, a group of mostly British men dominated the field. Authors like Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, and Iain M. Banks wrote wild, sweeping tales, often about cyborgs and other post-human characters. You still see a lot of that in space operas, but the genre\u2019s renewed popularity has introduced readers to a diverse array of writers, each of them bringing a new approach to tales of thrilling adventures in the cosmos.\n\nNnedi Okorafor\u2019s beautifully crafted and moving Binti series, for example, tells a personal story of a girl\u2019s voyage to space and her return home. Critics praise the intimate feel, and addictively fun writing, of Becky Chambers\u2019 novels. (Her second book, A Closed and Common Orbit, arrived earlier this year and examines with the relationship between a woman and an artificial intelligence that has acquired an illicit robot body.)\n\nJohn Scalzi grapples with problems of sustainability against the backdrop of space in his snarky, thrilling new book The Collapsing Empire. And The Stars Are Legion, which Scalzi calls \u201cbadass,\u201d is a sweeping epic about a squad of starships\u2014one that just happens to feature a cast of all female characters.\n\nWhy Space Opera, Why Now?\n\nPublishers love space operas for an obvious reason. (It rhymes with schmook schmales.) It\u2019s not so obvious why so many authors find themselves drawn to writing them. Many, like Chambers, grew up on Star Trek, Carl Sagan, and Ursula Le Guin. And for writers like Scalzi, the form provides entire star systems to play with, plus the ability to create whole new cultures totally unconnected to today\u2019s Earth. (Full disclosure: Scalzi and I share the same editor at Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden.) With a book set 1,500 years from now, Scalzi says, \u201cI can make up anything I want.\u201d\n\nYoon Ha Lee, whose The Raven Stratagem comes out in June, chose space opera because \u201cI wanted to blow up spaceships.\u201d Lee\u2019s inventive books feature a super-science dominated by complex mathematical formulas, something inspired by \u201cMarcia Ascher\u2019s work on ethnomathematics,\u201d he says, and the idea that \u201cthe laws of reality could be mutable from point to point, like a sort of modifiable vector field.\u201d\n\nOkorafor says she didn\u2019t think of Binti as a space opera while she was writing it; she just wanted to tell the girl\u2019s story. The setting was almost secondary. Likewise, Chambers wanted to write a character-focused book without the epic stakes often found in the genre\u2019s earlier novels. The idea, she says, was to combat the notion that \u201cspace is only for the elite.\u201d Highly educated and exhaustively trained astronauts get to explore the galaxy, and soon the world\u2019s wealthiest people will visit space. But everyone else stays on Earth. \u201cIn both the history of human spaceflight and in the stories we tell, space doesn\u2019t feel like a place for everybody,\u201d she says. Her book celebrates the idea that the universe \u201cbelongs to all of us.\u201d\n\nThe Ann Leckie Effect\n\nPinpointing just what launched this new phase remains tricky, but Ancillary Justice definitely encouraged new writers bring a fresh approach to the genre. Leckie\u2019s book, Lee says, emphasizes the \u201csociocultural\u201d rather than the \u201ctechnological wonder and exotic science\u201d of authors like Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton.\n\nOf course, it helps that more people appreciate the wonders of space. \u201cNASA has been killing it at doing public outreach through social media and internet technology,\u201d says Chambers. And meanwhile, entrepreneurs like Elon Musk capture the imagination with their ambitious space ventures. But the biggest reason might be the simplest of all: The real world can be frightening right now. Space operas celebrate the idea that, come what may, humanity will one day conquer the stars and brave new worlds. It offers an escape, and, Hurley notes, a glimpse of more hopeful futures.","On a desert-cold, moonlit night just over two years ago, Amir Taaki stepped off the Iraqi sand into a rubber dinghy floating in the Tigris River. The boat was just wide enough to fit his compact body next to the much larger American ex-Army machine gunner sitting beside him. Taaki and the dozens of soldiers waiting on the shore were part of a motley crew of Kurds and foreigners from as far away as Britain, Portugal, Canada and the US, and they\u2019d spent the last two weeks waiting anxiously in a mountain camp of Kurdish guerrillas. As one of the Kurds silently rowed the boat away from the looming snow-covered peaks behind them and toward the high reeds on the Syrian side of the river, Taaki was headed into one of the world\u2019s most dangerous war zones. And he was elated.\n\n\u201cSomething was finally happening,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cI was going to find Rojava.\u201d\n\nTaaki was already a notorious figure in the world of politically-loaded cryptography software and bitcoin. But that night, virtually no one in that world knew where he was. After years of preaching a crypto-anarchist revolution on the internet, Taaki had set out in secret to fight for a very real revolution\u2014in Syria. The Iranian-British coder was headed to a state near the country\u2019s northern border with Turkey: Rojava, where an unlikely anarchist movement was fighting for its life against the Islamic State. And so a subversive idealist who\u2019d until then confined his radicalism to building encryption software and bitcoin tools would end up firing an AK-47 at jihadis.\n\n\u201cThis felt like something I was dragged into,\u201d Taaki told WIRED shortly after returning to England last spring, after 15 months in the Middle East. \u201cWhen I found out there was an actual anarchist revolution happening in Syria, I felt, \u2018I have to do that.\u2019 I was compelled to go help them.\u201d\n\nNo sooner had Taaki safely made it out of Syria, however, then he landed in a different sort of jeopardy. For the last year, the 29-year-old has been under investigation by British police. Now that he\u2019s back home, Taaki has found that his own government still isn\u2019t sure if he\u2019s a programmer, a revolutionary, or a terrorist.\n\nFrom Bitcoin to Bullets\n\nA self-taught software engineer, Taaki has long been a prominent and controversial figure in the bitcoin community, one who dreamed of using the cryptocurrency to flout government control, break economic embargoes, and supercharge black markets worldwide. In 2011 he developed his own complete rewrite of bitcoin\u2019s core code called Libbitcoin and built a prototype for a decentralized Silk Road\u2013style darknet market designed to be impervious to law enforcement. When WIRED profiled Taaki in 2014, he was a wandering activist, squatting in abandoned buildings in Barcelona, London, and Milan and leading the development of a widely anticipated piece of software called Dark Wallet, designed to allow untraceable bitcoin transactions.\n\nThen, less than a year after the launch of its beta version, Dark Wallet development halted without explanation. \u201cIs Amir Taaki still alive?\u201d asked a thread on Reddit\u2019s bitcoin forum a year ago.\n\nBy that time, Taaki was in Syria. In late 2014 he\u2019d read about the YPG, a group affiliated with the leftwing Kurdish militant group known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. On a Massachusetts-sized slice of land on Turkey\u2019s southern border, the Rojavan Kurds were writing one of the few stories of hope in Syria\u2019s horrific civil war: Taaki read about how they\u2019d created a functioning, progressive society of more than 4 million people, based on principles of local direct democracy, collectivist anarchy, and equality for women.\n\n\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a revolution like the one in Rojava since the 1930s,\u201d Taaki says, comparing it to Catalonia and the Spanish Civil War. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the biggest things to happen in anarchist history.\u201d\n\nThe people in Rojava were putting into practice the anarchist ideals that Taaki hoped the internet and bitcoin might someday make possible. So when ISIS invaded the central region of Rojava\u2019s territory known as Koban\u00ee and massacred more than a hundred civilians, including women and children, Taaki decided to go there, hoping to lend his technical expertise to the budding revolution. \u201cMy fellow anarchists were fighting the most disgusting type of Islamic fascism, and it was my duty to help them,\u201d he says.\n\nBut as with so many young Westerners drawn to fight on either side of the war with ISIS, Taaki\u2019s life in Syria would turn out differently from what he\u2019d imagined. In February 2015, he flew from Madrid to the city of Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq, where Kurdish Iraqi police detained him for a day and searched his few belongings. When they determined that he wasn\u2019t a member of ISIS and was instead seeking to join the Rojava movement, they put him in a cab to a nearby safe house to meet a YPG recruiter. That recruiter took him to a YPG camp in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, where he waited with a group of other foreigners who\u2019d come to the Middle East from around the world, many with only a blind desire to kill members of ISIS. YPG operatives then smuggled the group to Syria in a full-moon trek down from the mountains, across the Tigris and into trucks that took them to a training camp of Kurdish soldiers.\n\nWhen Taaki reached the camp on the Syrian side of the border, he says, he tried to explain to the elderly officer in charge that he\u2019d come to Rojava to offer his tech skills in one of Rojava\u2019s cities, not to fight. But as Taaki tells it, the man waved away his protests and conscripted him into a unit with the other foreigners. The YPG issued the short, slight programmer a Kalashnikov and a uniform and, without even a day of training, sent him to war.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s how I ended up at the front,\u201d says Taaki, whose only education in military basics came from his fellow soldiers during brief breaks as the convoy of trucks drove south. \u201cIf you\u2019re called on to fight, you have to fight.\u201d\n\n\n\nWatch the clip above from the upcoming documentary the New Radical, which includes interviews with Taaki before and after his trip to Syria.\n\nA Coder, Not a Fighter\n\nAs Taaki tells it, he would spend three and a half months in the YPG\u2019s military forces. WIRED can\u2019t independently confirm much of Taaki\u2019s account of that early period in Iraq and Syria. But his story is short on self-aggrandizing detail and long on boredom punctuated by violent tragedy. He describes the daily pattern of his life: US air forces would drop ground-shaking artillery on ISIS positions, the jihadis would retreat, and his unit would load up into Toyota Hilux pickup trucks to advance forward and hold the new territory. His view of ISIS was usually as menacing black dots on distant hills.\n\nTaaki says he was deeply impressed with the political education of the Kurdish rebels he met, who casually cited writers like Proudhon, Bakunin, and Rojava\u2019s favorite American philosopher, Murray Bookchin. But the fighting itself was less inspiring: His first battle began when he was taken by surprise while outside his base testfiring a rifle to calibrate it; At the moment ISIS opened fire, he\u2019d only returned behind the base\u2019s walls because his friend had forgotten his jacket. One soldier in his unit died in a similar ISIS machine-gun ambush, his torso perforated with bullet wounds. Another committed suicide, inexplicably hanging himself in the kitchen of a base where they were sleeping. Taaki says he befriended one young Iranian recruit who later scrambled the wrong direction during a skirmish, was shot, and slowly bled to death while his unit helplessly watched.\n\nAt one point, a capable young Turkish Italian woman named Seran Altunkili\u00e7, who commanded Taaki\u2019s unit\u2014most women in Rojava serve in its military alongside the men\u2014learned of Taaki\u2019s technical skills. She promised to get him discharged to serve a more useful role as a civilian. But before she could help him, he was instead transferred to a different group of soldiers. Later he learned that nearly a third of the 30-person group he\u2019d been with earlier had been killed in an ISIS assault\u2014Altunkili\u00e7 among them.\n\nIn those months at the front, Taaki says, he took part in only three actual firefights and never got closer than about a thousand feet from ISIS fighters. But seeing so many friends die\u2014dozens in total, he says\u2014took a psychological toll. He remembers waking up one night after a shell exploded next to the building he was sleeping in, close enough to shatter its windows. He bolted upright in his bed, hallucinating in that first moment that the room was full of bloody corpses and dismembered limbs.\n\nLife in Rojava\n\nFinally, one day that spring, an officer who\u2019d earlier been responsible for managing foreign recruits spotted Taaki and recalled his technology background. \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d the man asked. \u201cWhat am I doing here?\u201d Taaki remembers responding. Taaki was discharged from his unit and, after days more of waiting, driven away from the front.\n\nTaaki settled into Rojavan life in the northeastern city of Al-Malikiyah, and then in Qamishli, the capital. He joined the region\u2019s Economics Committee and enrolled in Rojava\u2019s language academy to learn Kurdish. And he began frenetically working to make himself useful in a society rebuilding itself in the Syrian war\u2019s power vacuum. He trained local people on how to use open source software and the internet, created an ideological curriculum for all the foreigners who came to Rojava, helped build a fertilizer production factory, worked on a solar-panel research project, wrote a guide for foreigners trying to learn Kurdish, and helped start a young women\u2019s revolutionary magazine.\n\n\u201cHis work was difficult, because here very few people understand the importance of the internet, and of course nobody had heard about bitcoin or free software or anything like that,\u201d says Pablo Prieto, a Spanish biologist based in Rojava who worked with Taaki on the fertilizer production facility. He also says the Rojavan community came to see Taaki as an important member. \u201cHe was very valued here \u2026 He left a deep footprint.\u201d\n\nUltimately, Rojava\u2019s leaders gave Taaki the task of helping to design the technology curriculum for the nascent education system. He later became the only foreigner invited to attend the meeting of the country\u2019s economics conference, where the local government made the key decision to turn the land left behind by refugees into cooperative farms. \u201cBeing in that atmosphere, where all around you there are people working on building a new society\u2014it\u2019s indescribable,\u201d Taaki says.\n\nBut just as he settled into life in Rojava, Taaki felt the West start to pull at him again. He began to fixate on the latest internecine conflicts of the bitcoin community. Taaki was particularly annoyed when, in May of last year, Australian programmer Craig Wright publicly claimed to be bitcoin\u2019s creator, a claim Taaki believes to be fraudulent. And Taaki began to believe that returning to the UK and completing Dark Wallet\u2019s development would allow him to help Rojava better use bitcoin as a fundraising tool, one that would circumvent the US and EU sanctions that prevent any funds from being transferred into Syria.\n\nNo Hero\u2019s Welcome\n\nSo in May of 2016, Taaki made the long journey back to London, telling himself the trip was only temporary and that he\u2019d return to Rojava soon.\n\nInstead, British police boarded his plane within minutes of its landing at Heathrow. They took him to an airport detention facility. After a few hours there, he was arrested, his three phones and laptop seized. The authorities handcuffed Taaki and took him to a special terrorism investigation center where, he says, officials interrogated him about not just ISIS and the PKK but also about bitcoin and his close association with Cody Wilson, the libertarian creator of the first 3-D-printed gun. Taaki says he answered the questions and told the full story of his time in Rojava.\n\nA day later, Taaki found himself under house arrest at his mother\u2019s home in Broadstairs, required to check in with local police three times a week. For 10 months he remained in legal limbo as British investigators repeatedly extended their investigation. Even today, he hasn\u2019t got his passport back. And Taaki says he\u2019s been hesitant to organize new work on Dark Wallet or any other software project for fear that he might soon be in prison.\n\nIn a statement to WIRED, the UK\u2019s South East Regional Counter Terrorism Unit declined to comment on any ongoing investigation. But spokesperson Parmvir Singh noted that \u201csupporting, joining, or being a member of any proscribed terrorist organization is an offense under the Terrorism Act 2000, and the police will investigate allegations relating to any person suspected of committing such offenses.\u201d\n\nTaaki\u2019s lawyer, Tayab Ali, says Taaki will fight any charges that may be brought against him. \u201cAmir\u2019s position is that any action he took while abroad was done to defend and protect civilians and was completely lawful in the context of domestic and international law,\u201d says Ali, a human rights attorney who specializes in British terrorism cases. \u201cIf Amir is prosecuted, he would welcome a trial to both clear his name and to show that the actions of people in his position should not be the subject of criminal prosecution.\u201d\n\nOne complication in Taaki\u2019s case? The PKK is considered a terrorist group in Turkey, accused of decades of violent actions in that country. But Ali points to several other Britons who have fought for the PKK-linked YPG without being charged. He argues that Taaki has been unfairly singled out for a drawn-out investigation, though Ali says he has no sense of the reasons for that targeting. Taaki\u2019s defenders at the legal advocacy group the Courage Foundation speculate that it may be related to Taaki\u2019s subversive software projects or his Iranian heritage. \u201cAmir\u2019s treatment has been alarming,\u201d says Naomi Colvin, Taaki\u2019s case director at the foundation. \u201cAnd it appears to be discriminatory.\u201d\n\nSpeaking before his charges were filed, Taaki said that regardless of his legal fate, he doesn\u2019t regret his trip to Rojava. At times, he says, he\u2019s still surprised that he survived it. \u201cI was certain I was going to die,\u201d Taaki remembers. \u201cBut it would have been worse to continue living as a hypocrite\u2014to call myself an anarchist revolutionary and then not to take part in a real revolution.\u201d","No one at Sonos ever tires of saying Sonos is, first and foremost, a music company. It makes speakers, and it makes them damn well. But the Playbase, the newest speaker, is perhaps the company\u2019s most radical move yet. At just over two inches tall, and capable of supporting up to 75 pounds, the Playbase fits under nearly any television set. Sonos designed it to look like a single slab, something Moses might have carried down from the mountaintop. More than just a speaker, though, the Playbase is bold gambit to win coveted space in people\u2019s living rooms and set itself up as the interface of interfaces, the tool through which all other gadgets and protocols communicate. In the future, this could be the speaker for your entire smart home. Read the full story.","Launching rockets is a risky business. So, in addition to those precious payloads, every mission carries an insurance policy juuust in case something goes awry. Private insurers handle most of it, but the federal government offers a backstop for those truly unusual catastrophes\u2014think rocket nosediving into an elementary school\u2014that would max out the private coverage.\n\nAnd it turns out a Cape Canaveral cataclysm\u2014or, if you prefer, a Wallops Island walloping, or a Vandenberg devastation\u2014could cost that program far more than it expects. A report from the Government Accountability Office says the federal program undervalues its launch insurance and ought to update its estimates. Given that the entire space launch insurance industry bases its rates on those same estimates, any update could make even commercial updates more expensive.\n\nFirst, a little history. In 1988, Congress recognized that private insurers lacked the resources to insure against a truly epic disaster and passed amendments to the Commercial Space Launch Act. The updated law required the Federal Aviation Administration to create a safety cushion of up to $1.5 billion\u2014about $3.1 billion today, adjusted for inflation. \u201cThe federal insurance was put in place because there was a fear that the private companies wouldn\u2019t be able to take risk of launching and being insured and so it was a way of allowing the commercial market to develop,\u201d says Alicia Cackley, director of the GAO\u2019s financial markets and community investment team.\n\nSpace insurance isn\u2019t just a good idea, it\u2019s required. Every company launching a rocket must buy a policy\u2014available through private insurers\u2014based on calculations made by the FAA. These calculations depend on the type of rocket, the location of the launch site, and other variables. Do the math and you get something the insurance industry calls the maximum probable loss. The FAA caps it at $500 million.\n\nProblem is, the program\u2014and its estimates of maximum probable loss\u2014need to get with the times. It still bases the cost of human casualties on 1988 values: $3 million per life. \u201cWe don\u2019t think that 1988 estimate is realistic anymore, just based on cost of living increase, if nothing else,\u201d says Cackley. The FAA also uses the casualty rate to set the value of property damage, so that, too, is undervalued. A truly horrific accident could leave the government paying out far more than expected.\n\nOr not. The 1988 law does not guarantee that Congress will pay out the FAA\u2019s liability coverage\u2014lawmakers would have to vote on it. \u201cThe companies all believe the federal government will stand by its commitment, and they operate as if that will happen,\u201d says Cackley. But if the cost vastly exceed FAA estimates, Congress could balk, leaving the launch company holding the bag.\n\nUpdating those figures, as the GAO recommends, poses other risks to the industry. \u201cIf the cost of the casualty number were to increase dramatically, that could reasonably increase the rate that private insurers have to charge,\u201d says Cackley. And that puts the FAA in a pickle, because it doesn\u2019t want to price private insurers out of the game. Nor does it want to put commercial launch companies out of business.\n\nBut representatives from insurance companies consider change in rates negligible, and in fact encourage the FAA to get with the re-estimating. \u201cMore accurate and less uncertain maximum probable loss calculations may allow more launch operators, more launch pads, and a more open launch environment, hence, increasing the number of space liability policies and the size of this market,\u201d says Denis Bensoussan, head of aviation for Beazley, an insurance company that covers space.\n\nAnd the impact might not even be that bad. \u201cI\u2019d be surprised if insurance is 1 percent of the overall launch cost per flight,\u201d says Chris Kunstadter, senior vice president at XL Catlin, a large insurance company that covers spaceflight. And the overall risk to the government is actually quite low\u2014it has never had to actually pay out for a catastrophic launch disaster.\n\nThe bigger threat to the industry, says Kunstadter, is the proliferation of small satellites. These need less insurance coverage, because they are cheaper to manufacture. They\u2019re also so light that many companies launching small satellite constellations put a dozen or so extras into orbit under the assumption that some will fail. \u201cSo maybe you don\u2019t need as much insurance, and that can have an effect on our market,\u201d he says. Space is risky, but not always in the ways you expect.","Destiny 2 is coming, and it\u2019s bringing a smartass. \u201cHis name is Gary!\u201d declares robot gunslinger Cayde-6 in the game\u2019s announcement trailer, which went online yesterday to much fanfare. \u201cOr Gil. Glen? Is it \u2026 I dunno. It\u2019s something with a G!\u201d This is his rousing speech to the defeated heroes of Bungie\u2019s multiplayer alien shooter, his pitch to them to go out and face the big bad who just took over their home base. \u201cAlso,\u201d he continues, \u201cthere will be a ton of loot!\u201d This is what gets the cheers from Cayde\u2019s fellow Guardians\u2014and probably from a lot of players as well.\n\nWith that line, the trailer calls back to what instantly became the most addictive part of Destiny when the game came out in 2014: the platonic ideal of the grind. Kill baddies, get treasure, upgrade, repeat; the game\u2019s flawless shooting mechanics turned that cycle into a pleasure. But while the sequel trailer\u2019s focus on that aspect may be red meat for fans, it feels like a missed opportunity\u2014the same one that limited its predecessor to being a good game rather than a truly great one.\n\nWhen the original Destiny was first announced, its aesthetic was presented as a strange, gripping mixture of high fantasy and the lived-in sci-fi of Bungie\u2019s iconic Halo franchise. Heroic space wizards wield powers given by a mysterious supergod trapped in a brilliant white orb, wearing shining armor that\u2019s as much medieval majesty as space-faring survivalism\u2014and all of it set against a backdrop of space-race nostalgia. But then the game itself came out, and the weirder parts of the world had been sanded down to almost nothing. The narrative, which hinted at eccentricities and mysteries far beyond the scope of play, was almost nonexistent, raising questions it didn\u2019t seem to understand, let alone want to answer. All its best eccentricities were pushed to an online-only set of logs and short stories called The Grimoire, a lexicon of well-written and original genre ideas that would have been fascinating to see in the game itself.\n\nFor instance: Destiny players, did you know that the final raid\u2014the most complicated gameplay challenge in the whole game\u2014takes place in a pocket dimension designed to protect the Big Bad\u2019s soul, designed according to his will using godlike powers he earned through worshiping the very concept of death? That\u2019s wild, right? But the game doesn\u2019t tell you anything about it. To find out, you have to dig through the Grimoire, putting together clues from a literal epic poem\u2014sections of which you can only unlock online after gathering certain obscure in-game collectibles. The most interesting thing about the game was an afterthought, trapped in a morass of \u201ctransmedia\u201d confusion.\n\nThe Grimoire is full of stuff like this. Like the idea that the Vex, a race of time-travelling alien machines you fight in-game, are religious not because of faith, but as a strategy. At some point in their history, apparently, they decided that religious devotion was the most efficient way to operate as a collective. Imagine a game that integrated these big, wacky sci-fi ideas into its texture, instead of forcing them onto the sidelines where no one except obsessives and games journalists are ever going to see them. This might be Destiny\u2019s biggest problem. It offers you a world primed to capture your imagination, and then reduces it to its most basic mechanical conceits. Which is exactly why the reveal trailer is so frustrating: It\u2019s Nathan Fillion (who voices Cayde-6), yelling about shooting dudes and getting treasure.\n\nDon\u2019t get me wrong, there\u2019s nothing bad about Nathan Fillion yelling, and the trailer gives us some good stuff, too. The art style is as impressive as always, and the promise of a destabilized Destiny, pulling players away from the comfort and stability of its sterile hub, is a really exciting one. But this trailer signals an image of Destiny 2 as just a bigger, better version of the more conventional creature its predecessor became\u2014more monsters, more loot, a few good jokes, while ignoring the so many ways that it could be more than that. For starters, it could include the writing that got pushed in the Grimoire into the main plot. It could make exploration of the solar system and its mysteries more key to the gameplay, giving the player a way to learn about things like the Vex\u2019s time-skipping techno religion in a way that\u2019s directly tied to the explicit goals of the game. It could find a place that balances the fun playfulness of the trailer\u2019s tone with a renewed interest in the bizarre and grand ideas hanging out under the surface.\n\nWhen Destiny 2 comes out in September, it\u2019ll have a chance to fulfill the strange, creative promises the original made but never followed through on. I have high hopes; Bungie has made some of my favorite games of all time over the years. But the reveal trailer, as fun as it is, doesn\u2019t do that potential justice. I mean, how am I supposed to care about fighting the bad guy when Cayde doesn\u2019t even know his name?","You don\u2019t expect to find queen-sized mattresses, minibars, or an indoor swimming pool in prison\u2014must less a prison for suspected terrorists. Yet the 1,000 or so men accused of such crimes enjoy a rather comfortable life that includes conjugal visits at Al Ha\u2019ir, a Saudi Arabian rehabilitation center taking an unusual approach to waging the war on terror.\n\n\u201cTheir goal isn\u2019t to incentivize through discomfort, but to incentivize through comfort and knowledge, asking the hard philosophical questions about religion,\u201d says photographer David Degner, who got a rare look inside Al Ha\u2019ir.\n\nThe deradicalization effort is a small part of the sprawling prison, which covers more than 19 million square feet and sits 25 miles south of Riyadh. It is one of five counter-terrorism facilities that hold some 5,000 prisoners in all. Many of them waged jihad abroad, committed attacks against the government, or simply fell in with the wrong circle. Although incarceration is clearly meant to punish, the prisons also hope to rehabilitate inmates by addressing the underlying problems\u2014illiteracy, poverty, and the like\u2014that authorities believe sent them down the wrong path to begin with.\n\nThe government embraced the approach about 14 years ago after a series of terrorist attacks. \u201cThe Saudis decided to engage in an experiment,\u201d says John Horgan, a psychologist at Georgia State University who wrote Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements. \u201cThey wanted to develop a small program to rehabilitate terrorists through what they call re-education and rehabilitation.\u201d\n\nMany similar projects arose in the wake of 9/11. The British program Channel matches at-risk youth with reformed radicals who counsel them to shun hatred. Google\u2019s Jigsaw launched Redirect Method, which places de-radicalizing ads alongside search results associated with ISIS recruitment. And there are more than 40 terrorist deradicalization prisons and centers worldwide. The Saudis \u201cnever intended for people to know about it but then the Saudis were so convinced of their success that they decided to invite westerners to see it,\u201d Horgan says.\n\nIslamic scholars work with inmates at Al Ha\u2019ir to help them understand Islam and the Koran, and to abandon extremist ideology. \u201cIt\u2019s about trying to convince the detainees that they have been mislead, that their particular interpretation of jihad comes from an authority that doesn\u2019t have the proper credentials,\u201d Horgan says. Inmates also receive medical treatment at the on-site hospital and monthly conjugal visits with their wives in a hotel. The state provides the families with stipends and covers schooling costs as well.\n\n\u201cFrom the outside this might look like it\u2019s a soft touch, treating jihadists, some of whom have blood on their hands, with kit gloves, but I can assure you it\u2019s not,\u201d Horgan says. \u201cThere\u2019s always the threat of coercion or the possibility that the family members may be mistreated or even imprisoned if the former detainee goes back to his old ways. There\u2019s always the threat of sanction hanging over the air.\u201d\n\nAfter serving their sentences, prisoners go off to rehabilitation centers like the Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef Center for Advice and Care. They spend another eight to 12 weeks in what amounts to a high-security halfway house, meeting with psychologists, undergoing art therapy, receiving job training and more. The government even helps prisoners find wives, buy cars, and land a job. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like they\u2019re engineering model citizens,\u201d Horgan says. \u201cThe individual has no time to go back to terrorism, they can\u2019t spend time hanging around with their friends anymore.\u201d\n\nCritics argue the government doesn\u2019t actually teach that religious violence is wrong, while others question the state\u2019s definition of terrorism. The inmates include dissidents, activists and people who didn\u2019t commit a crime, and Human Rights Watch says beatings and torture are common in Saudi prisons. The government remains opaque, so no one can say definitively how effective the deradicalization effort is, and some former inmates have gone on to commit terrorist attacks.\n\nDegner spent two days at Al-Hair and the Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef center in May. Authorities would not allow him to photograph prisoners, required him to use an approved Nikon camera, and insisted upon reviewing all of his photos. He saw just one inmate, handcuffed with a bag over his head. Despite the restrictions, Denger\u2019s images provide a glimpse into an usual campaign where pink gilded hotel rooms, sun-dappled courtyards, and art therapy are among the weapons in the war on terror.","Travel just few miles west of bustling Cheyenne, Wyoming, a you\u2019ll find yourself in big-sky country. Tall-grass plains line the highway, snow-packed peaks pierce the sky, and round-edged granite formations jut out of the ground. But in this bucolic scene sits an alien building: a blocky, almost pre-fab structure with a white rotunda, speckled with dozens of windows that look out onto the grounds. Inside, it\u2019s home to two supercomputers that focus on the vast landscape above.\n\nThis building belongs to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which spends money from the National Science Foundation to learn about things like atmospheric chemistry, climate, weather, and wildfires. That kind of research didn\u2019t always require supercomputers. But today, the kinds of three-dimensional, detail-oriented models that scientists need\u2014as they churn through everything from wind calculations to simulations of the sun\u2014require so much processor power that no desktop will do. So in January, the center commissioned a brand-new supercomputer here called Cheyenne, the 20th fastest machine on the planet.\n\nCheyenne isn\u2019t alone out here in the wild. Turns out, Wyoming\u2019s climate, tax code, and utility infrastructure make it appealing to people who want to put a whole lot of processing units in really big rooms. Right down the road, Microsoft runs a massive data center. And more are likely on the way, as the state\u2019s shiny new facilities and financial incentives catch the eyes of other businesses.\n\nSafe from Space Weather\n\nCheyenne\u2019s first working orders are to compute 11 different projects, a mix of ideas from the atmospheric research center and outside academics\u2014only the ones who can handle this many CPUs at once. \u201cIt\u2019s a fighter plane,\u201d says Gary New, head of operations. \u201cYou have to know how to fly it.\u201d\n\nMost of the projects are climate-related\u2014improving seasonal forecasts, understanding weather extremes, seeing how smoke affects clouds, and digitally trying out geoengineering. Two of them, though, deal with the potentially disastrous effects of weather from way beyond Earth\u2019s atmosphere: space weather.\n\nSometimes, the sun becomes violent and sends forth solar flares and coronal mass ejections, in which fast-moving particles, radiation, and magnetic fields spew into space. Extreme solar activity, unfortunately aimed, can take down earthly communications and navigation satellites. It can also cause massive blackouts. Think about everything that draws electricity\u2014lights, phones, refrigerators, city water utilities, medical equipment, banking systems, tabletop drum kits\u2014and what it would mean if none of that worked. This is why people become preppers.\n\nBut never fear (OK, fear a little): Scientist Matthias Rempel is using Cheyenne to see the nitty-gritty of the sun\u2019s magnetic field and how its sometimes leads to big eruptions. And physicist Michael Shay will take Cheyenne\u2019s helm to look at plasma turbulence and the explosions of magnetic energy that may lead to coronal mass ejections. By getting at the physics that makes the sun tick (tick BOOM), Rempel\u2019s and Shay\u2019s work improves predictions\u2014and so preparedness.\n\nThat work wouldn\u2019t have been possible on the center\u2019s first supercomputer, the Cray-1A from 1977. So quaint, it could now be bested by your smartphone. NCAR brought another supercomputer, Yellowstone, online in Wyoming in 2012. But even that one has just one-third the power of Cheyenne, with its 5.34 petaflops, and in early 2018, NCAR will decommission five-year-old Yellowstone.\n\nThat\u2019s normal. They run the systems pretty much 24/7. Imagine if you did that to your car starting in 2012 and didn\u2019t stop till 2017. A) You\u2019d be somewhere weird. B) You\u2019d need a new car. So six months after NCAR moves in with any given supercomputer, it starts to think about the next one.\n\nWhy Wyoming?\n\nIt\u2019s not an accident that the atmospheric research center chose to build a home in Wyoming. It has the fifth-coldest average temperature in the country, so they could save on keeping the supercomputer chill. And the low humidity, while it aggravates aging skin, makes that natural chilling more efficient. Electricity also comes cheaper than it does in 46 other states, lowering those bills even more.\n\nAnd Wyoming offers computer-users synthetic benefits. Regional and nation-crossing fiber converges near Cheyenne, so the internet\u2019s spine is strong. And Wyoming has the most business-friendly tax climate in the nation, along with initiatives like the Managed Data Center Cost Reduction Grant, the Data Center Recruitment Fund, and special tax exemptions.\n\nSo after NCAR set up its homebase, it was rather natural that Microsoft came to the same business center, expanded thrice\u2014including a $200 million expansion in 2015\u2014and whipped up the first zero-carbon data center, which keeps its lights on with fuel cells fed by biogas. EchoStar Communications, a digital broadcaster, announced it would build a 77,000-square-foot data center here in 2010. And Wyoming-bred Green House Data finished a $35 million expansion in 2014.\n\nWyoming hopes more data-driven organizations are on the way\u2014and in Yellowstone and Cheyenne\u2019s room, there\u2019s space to grow. The center can also add more modules without uprooting all the electrical and temperature-control infrastructure. So in a few months, when NCAR starts thinking about its next-next-supercomputer, they can focus on what Western name to give it and not what state to put it in.\n\nWhile the center dreams of the shiny supercomputers of 2022, Cheyenne will keep whirring. Its first round of research ends this month. The two solar-science projects will have accounted for about 16 percent of its core hours. Shay and Rempel, data in hand, will figure out what those bytes mean for the sun\u2014perhaps helping keep the lights on at your house and the supercomputer spinning.","Like most good puzzle games, Typeshift is simpler than it appears. What at first glance looks like a meaningless jumble of letters is in fact a collection of vertically shiftable columns; when you arrange them correctly, horizontal words emerge from the mayhem. Use all the letters to form at least one word, and you\u2019ve solved the puzzle.\n\nRestricting the game to a single mechanic makes for a satisfying hook, and is a huge part of the pleasure of a mobile gem like Typeshift. (The game, which came out earlier this month, is available for free on iOS). You can take a few idle minutes during your commute and make order out of chaos. Maybe you\u2019ll learn a few words while you\u2019re at it; if you stumble into making a word that you\u2019re unfamiliar with, you can learn its definition courtesy of a partnership with Merriam-Webster. It offers that satisfying jolt of cleverness that is the reward of any bitesize puzzler worth your time, and it does so in a slick, responsive way, columns moving shifting up and down in response to a fingertip flick. But then Typeshift expands\u2014which is no surprise, seeing as how it\u2019s the brainchild of the reigning king of smart games for smartphones.\n\nZach Gage is an experimental systems designer and mobile developer with a penchant for taking familiar ideas to unexpected places. To access his personal website, you have to navigate a captcha\u2014but one with a personal twist. For example, I had to write out that the president is destroying our country. Others are more intimate, musings on what it takes to be a good person or how to handle being introduced to someone you\u2019ve met before but whose name you don\u2019t remember. To prove you\u2019re not a robot, in other words, you need to demonstrate a grasp of human anxieties. That\u2019s just his website, but the many games he\u2019s designed share that mischievous spirit: Before Typeshift, his most recent iOS game was Really Bad Chess, which upended the classic board game by using randomized pieces.\n\nGame design is in some ways a problem-solving exercise; you can understand a lot about a game by thinking about what it\u2019s trying to fix, and how it does so. Really Bad Chess is a response to the predictability of real chess; the stronger the players, the more mired the game can become in orthodoxy and playing through already-explored move sequences. To solve it, Gage injects uncertainty that breaks expectation while still hewing to the ruleset of the original game. And for Typeshift, his target is the crossword puzzle. After your initial letter matching puzzles, the game introduces \u201cclue\u201d puzzles, which function similarly to crosswords, offering you a list of clues along with your jumble of letters. When you\u2019ve solved a clue, you tap it\u2014and if you\u2019re correct, the clue disappears along with any letters that won\u2019t be used again.\n\nWhat\u2019s the problem with a crossword puzzle, though? Well, in its purest form, it challenges your recall rather than creativity. You have a finite vocabulary, and a finite amount of trivia knowledge. At some point, if you don\u2019t know the answers, you just don\u2019t know the answers; sorry, no more crossword for you. But by giving you a pool of letters to select from, Typeshift allows you to intuit answers from what you\u2019re given\u2014or even, with enough patience and time, brute-force a puzzle entirely. While crosswords are an exercise in knowing, Typeshift is an exercise in learning. It promises that if you want to keep playing, you can, no matter how knowledgeable or baffled you might be.\n\nIn practice, this is engrossing: My first session with the game lasted roughly half an hour longer than I meant it to. While there are puzzle packs available for in-app purchase, Typeshift is free, with a large bevy of puzzles to play immediately and a free daily puzzle. You can also shell out for hints if you get really stumped. By the time you get through the initial offering, two bucks for another set of puzzles will probably be a no-brainer if you\u2019re still enjoying yourself.\n\nAnd you probably will be. Typeshift is more than a smart, fun word puzzler. It\u2019s just good game design.","If Boeing learns anything from today\u2019s maiden flight of the 787-10 Dreamliner today, it means something has gone wrong.\n\nThat\u2019s because the planemaker has left the Wright brothers\u2019 system\u2014build something, throw it off a sand dune, observe\u2014far in the past. Instead, the company\u2019s engineers have spent the past five years testing, tormenting, and torturing every last scrap of metal on its latest widebody commercial jet destined for customers all over the world\u2014before letting it leave the ground. Today\u2019s maiden flight is a milestone more than anything, signaling the new jet is ready to take off\u2014and endure yet more testing.\n\n\u201cToday is about getting the plane up in the air,\u201d says Frank Rasor, who runs flight testing for all Boeing aircraft. \u201cWe won\u2019t learn anything in a first flight.\u201d In this case, ignorance is bliss.\n\nMeasuring 244 feet from nose to tail and listed for a cool $306 million, the 787-10 is the latest, longest variant of the 787 Dreamliner. The twin engine jet\u2019s 7,400-mile range won\u2019t take it quite as far as its shorter siblings (it follows the 787-8 and 787-9), but it seats 330 passengers, 90 more than can sardine into the 787-8. Boeing built the plane to battle Airbus\u2019 A350-900 in the growing Middle Eastern market.\n\nThe 787 itself, launched in 2011, is still among the most advanced jets on the planet, built from lightweight carbon fiber and stuffed with the latest in aviation tech. Each pilot gets a head-up display, the plane spots and counters turbulence, and offers extra large windows. Boeing plans to deliver the \u201cDash 10\u201d starting next year, but first, it\u2019s got to prove its mettle.\n\nThat testing process is baked into the development process, starting at the most basic level. Before attaching a bolt to a nut, Boeing engineers will hammer at each bit until it breaks, gauging material strength. As the myriad components take shape, they undergo their own rigorous tests.\n\nAs each piece secures approval, it moves up into a larger system, which then faces its own test: Landing gear takes the full impact of a landing without leaving the ground. That process takes the plane all the way to the runway for a taxi test, where the pilot accelerates to 100 mph\u2014just shy of takeoff speed\u2014before slamming the brakes so hard, they glow orange with heat.\n\nToday\u2019s flight out of Boeing\u2019s Charleston, South Carolina plant (takeoff time is TBD, weather depending) signals the final stage of testing. At last, Boeing will test the plane as a whole, in the air where it will spend its life. \u201cIt\u2019s about the ultimate system integration testing,\u201d Rasor says.\n\nFor this maiden voyage, the two test pilots\u2014no passengers for the inaugural flight\u2014will take it easy on the plane. They\u2019ll fly at a casual 300 mph (max speed is twice that), moving up and down between 10,000 and 15,000 feet. They\u2019ll spend four hours aloft, testing systems like the flaps and landing gear, before touching down back at the plant. All the while, a team on the ground will crunch reams of data far beyond what any pilot needs, making sure everything, down to the speed and movement of the wingtip, checks out.\n\nFrom there, life gets hard on the 787-10. The test pilots will take it all the way to \u201cdive speed\u201d and up to its 40,000 foot ceiling, introducing new challenges with each flight. No one will repeat test pilot Tex Johnston\u2019s famed barrel roll in the Boeing 707\u2014the days of unauthorized aerial tricks are long dead\u2014but the crews will push the new jet to climb nearly vertical, banking hard enough to empty even the most iron of stomachs. They\u2019ll fill up water ballast tanks to make the plane heavier, and fly as slowly as they can, to see how the plane handles stalls, when it\u2019s no longer generating enough lift to stay airborne.\n\nFor a brand new kind of plane, the regimen demands 4,000 to 5,000 hours in the air, in a series of roughly four-hour flights. Because the 787-10 is just a variant of the 787, it gets cleared for service after about a quarter of that. Instead of retesting every component it shares with the other members of the 787 family, which are well proven at this point, Boeing will focus on what\u2019s different. Here, that means the handling and speed tests, because the plane\u2019s longer body changes how it acts in midair.\n\nBecause Seattle isn\u2019t the world\u2019s roughest place to fly, Boeing takes the plane abroad: to the baking heat of the Arizona desert, the high altitude of Bolivia, the humidity of Cura\u00e7ao, the frigid temperatures of northern Russia, and the brutal crosswinds of Iceland.\n\nSo the first time you climb aboard the new bird, treat it real nice. After all, it\u2019s been through a lot.","Stepping into one of the \u201cproject rooms\u201d at speaker-maker Sonos\u2019s office in downtown Boston is like opening a teleportation portal. The large, messy space, cluttered with half-built soundbars and heaping piles of screws, almost exactly replicates a room 3,000 miles away in Santa Barbara. Two screens hang on the wall of each one, displaying live feeds from both offices. Microphones around the room make it impossible to even whisper without being heard across the country; a surgical camera hanging overhead can zoom in on tiny screws anywhere on the table. Even the whiteboard syncs between the two offices. From either project room, you\u2019re really inside both.\n\nSonos rigged the system together, largely with technology from conferencing startup Zoom, so its engineers and designers can work remotely and yet together. It\u2019s a particularly complex solution to an increasingly common problem: Employees just don\u2019t work in the same room anymore. A Gallup poll earlier this year found that 43 percent of American employees spend at least some time working remotely, and 20 percent work remotely all the time. Meanwhile, analysis firm IDC suggests that by 2020, nearly three quarters of the American workforce\u2014more than 105 million people\u2014will do work on mobile devices. The days of the 9 to 5 desk job are nearly dead and gone.\n\nAll this gives reason to solve a very old problem: meetings suck. That\u2019s always been true, even when meetings only involve people in the same room. But now that so many people work outside of the office, dialing in from the airport or Starbucks or their dining room table, it\u2019s increasingly difficult to get everyone on the same page. Remote workers need to hear and be heard, to share their screen and collaborate on documents, even if all they have is a crappy Android phone.\n\nEnterprising startups have tried to fix conference calls for years. But thanks to improved bandwidth, mature tools for sending video and audio over the web, and some very good and very cheap hardware, real change is finally possible. And companies throughout Silicon Valley are taking advantage\u2013not just to reinvent the conference call, but the way you collaborate with co-workers in real time from thousands of miles away.\n\nMany Problems, One Solution\n\nWhen Eric Yuan joined WebEx in 1997, the web-conferencing startup had 10 employees and one goal: to let you share your computer screen over the internet. By about 2010, after WebEx sold to Cisco and Yuan became the VP of engineering, he started to see people doing new things, too: audio conferencing, video conferencing, document collaboration, and more. There were patchwork solutions\u2014Skype here, GoToMeeting there, Polycom in the conference room\u2014but those came with a mess of plugins, logins, and user interfaces. \u201cQuite often, I\u2019m using four, five, six solutions for collaboration,\u201d Yuan says. \u201cThat\u2019s crazy.\u201d\n\nYuan envisioned a system that fixed everything at once. That wasn\u2019t possible at Cisco\u2014it would\u2019ve required re-writing most of the company\u2019s software\u2014so he left, and spent the next two years quietly building what he hoped would be the alpha and omega of conferencing solutions. The result, Zoom, goes beyond conferencing. He calls it \u201ca next generation cloud unified collaboration solution company.\u201d OK, sure.\n\nZoom now sells a system in which 500 people can join a video meeting with a single tap. There are apps for mobile devices, integrations with calendars and Slack, and lots of ways to share your screen. You can launch the latest presentation across screens with one click, or use Zoom to teach yoga over the internet, which Yuan says he\u2019s witnessed firsthand. The service promises rock-solid connectivity with high-quality video and audio, for a monthly fee of about $20 per person.\n\nThese features represent the new standard for meeting improvers, from BlueJeans to Highfive to Chime to Google Hangouts. They can\u2019t make your synergistic circle-back meetings more useful, but they can make them easier. \u201cTeams are defined by their experiences together,\u201d says Scott Johnston, Google\u2019s director of product management for Hangouts Meet. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason you shouldn\u2019t be able to just instantly jump into a face-to-face chat.\u201d\n\nCan You Hear Me Now?\n\nThe ideas seem obvious, but only recently has technology made them possible. Your phone\u2019s selfie camera is now high-res enough, and your screen big enough, to double as a functional webcam and workstation. Excellent bandwidth is now widely available. Cameras, processors, and wireless radios have become so cheap that kitting out a conference room costs a fraction of an old Polycom rig. Those Polycom rigs can now intelligently identify who\u2019s speaking, and thanks to devices like Google\u2019s Jamboard and Microsoft\u2019s Surface Hub, it\u2019s even possible to write on a whiteboard alongside someone miles away. And it\u2019s all accessible with a few clicks. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have to remember these long, complicated pins,\u201d says Gene Farrell, Amazon\u2019s VP of web services and the head of its new Chime conferencing tool. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have to hire professionals to be able to start a video conference, and I shouldn\u2019t need these clunky tools to either go through my computer.\u201d\n\nBack-end technologies have come a long way, too. Take WebRTC, a widely-used standard that enables your web browser to access your camera and microphone, then transmit audio and video in real-time. That standard made it possible to join a call just by opening a link. And because systems like AWS and Google Cloud exist, rather than forcing every customer to buy and maintain a rack of servers, everything can be hosted on a cloud service somewhere. It\u2019s cheaper, more stable, and a whole lot easier to spin up.\n\nThese days, a do-everything service makes sense\u2014no one wants to have to decide which kind of meeting to schedule, or remember where they\u2019re supposed to log in. But conferencing companies are also learning to be productive members of an ecosystem, rather than replacing it themselves. Sure, Zoom and Chime have chat apps, but they won\u2019t kill Slack. So instead, they\u2019re all integrating with Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook. If you want to use Hangouts but keep all your stuff in Dropbox, Google\u2019s OK with that. \u201cWe\u2019ll solve the meetings piece,\u201d says Highfive CEO Shan Sinha. \u201cYou use whatever you use for your documents piece, you use whatever you use for your chat piece, and we\u2019ll work right alongside those tools.\u201d Sinha, like everyone else, knows that people generally don\u2019t like new tools. His goal is to integrate Highfive into your current toolset.\n\nThe end game, then, is about more than conference calls. It\u2019s about becoming the office of the future\u2014ultimately, working without the office at all. As employees scatter across the globe and the gig economy replaces traditional office jobs, virtual workspaces become as important as physical ones. That only works when employees can talk as easily as walking over to each other\u2019s desks. Luckily, it\u2019s already happening. Which means we might all finally get some work done.","Uber just released its first diversity report. For years, the ride-hailing giant shunned the practice adopted by most other major Silicon Valley companies. But Uber\u2019s scandals have snowballed. Multiple claims of misogyny and sexual harassment suggest a company that doesn\u2019t just have isolated problems but a pervasive culture of sexism. Uber\u2019s responses have included a much-hyped conference call led by board member Arianna Huffington and this week the diversity report.\n\nThe numbers, to no one\u2019s shock, were dismal. While a little more than one-third of Uber\u2019s employees are women worldwide\u2014close to the industry average\u2014they only hold about one-fifth of the leadership roles, several percentage points lower than industry norms. When it comes to leadership jobs specifically related to Uber\u2019s tech, the fraction of women drops to just over one-tenth, and only 15 percent of Uber\u2019s engineers are female. Only six percent of the company\u2019s engineers are black, Hispanic, or multiracial, a figure similar to other big tech companies.\n\n\u201cThis report is a first step in showing that diversity and inclusion is a priority at Uber,\u201d Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement. \u201cI know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers\u2014and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency.\u201d\n\nBut is it? After a few years of similarly lousy reports and similarly uninspired rhetoric from across the industry, diversity reports seem to have done little to spur actual improvements in tech industry diversity. Seems like the best way to demonstrate commitment to change is to change.\n\n\u2018Diversity as Performance Art\u2019\n\nA few years ago, the industry seemed ready to do just that. In 2014, after actively stonewalling questions about the composition of their workforces\u2014Silicon Valley companies began publishing annual diversity statistics. Yes, some started publishing earlier than others, and tech companies have also shown varying degrees of openness with their data. But one thing has stayed true: the numbers started out bleak. And they\u2019ve barely budged. The results have become so monotonous that a handful of the companies have even started delaying their updates or reframing reports to focus on hiring goals rather than race and gender breakdowns.\n\n\u201cTransparency is good, but \u2018diversity as performance art\u2019 is not\u2014and diversity reports are part of it,\u201d says engineer Cate Huston, who has written extensively about diversity in tech. \u201cThe parade of PR around diversity reports does not constitute meaningful change.\u201d\n\n\u2018Transparency is good, but diversity as performance art is not\u2014and diversity reports are part of it.\u2019 Cate Huston\n\nThe releases now follow a formula. Companies pre-brief media companies with the news. They prepare measured statements from CEOs. They supply \u201cdiversity experts.\u201d The companies themselves also conduct, commission, and publicize their own diversity surveys. They have every incentive to make themselves look as good as possible. They often don\u2019t break down results by department or rank. Most of them leave out promotions, pay scales, and retention rates.\n\n\u201cThose rates get closer to the heart of the matter,\u201d says Rachel Thomas, a deep learning researcher who worked at Uber in 2013 and 2014. Thomas has criticized tech companies\u2019 \u201cdiversity branding,\u201d arguing that data on who is moving up at the company and who is leaving would offer a more meaningful measure of companies\u2019 efforts.\n\nIn the eyes of some, diversity reports still serve a useful purpose. \u201cThey create accountability,\u201d says Alexandra Kalev, a sociologist and professor at Tel Aviv University who has studied corporate diversity programs. \u201cEveryone knows the numbers and they can evaluate where they are after some time. And they create awareness\u2014workers themselves become aware of their own lack of diversity.\u201d But so far that accountability has not made a real difference. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of what you do with the diversity report,\u201d Kalev says.\n\nA Real Cultural Change\n\nResearch shows retention of women in tech is a systemic issue dating back nearly a decade. A 2008 survey showed that women left the industry at twice the rate of men. Meanwhile, the proportion of bachelor\u2019s degrees in computer science earned by women has plunged from 37 percent in 1984 to 18 percent in 2014. (Industry-wide retention data doesn\u2019t exist so far for people of color in tech, but an upcoming study from the Kapor Center for Social Impact is slated to explore this issue.)\n\nClearly, tech companies need to take the numbers coming out of diversity reports and apply them to real, actionable policies. Uber\u2019s chief human resources officer is reportedly on a \u201clistening tour\u201d to hear employees\u2019 grievances. This is the wrong way to tackle the problem, Kalev says. \u201cA program that points fingers at managers and decision-makers, and views them as a source of the problem that needs to be fixed\u2014regardless of if they do contribute to the problem\u2014creates alienation and resistance,\u201d she says. There\u2019s actually a decline in diversity at companies where such programs are enacted, according to Kalev\u2019s research. \u201cManagers don\u2019t become committed to the goal of diversity; they feel threatened by the goal of diversity.\u201d\n\nThe point where progress on diversity does become possible is when management and employees commit to changing the culture on their own. \u201cCompanies have to be willing to look those problems in the face and say, \u2018You know what? We\u2019re going to be transparent about this,'\u201d says Erica Joy Baker, a founding member of Project Include, which advocates for more diversity in Silicon Valley. Baker applauds Intel specifically as the only company in the Valley that publicizes its retention rates. \u201cEven though they have their own diversity problems, they came to that decision on their own.\u201d\n\nCompanies that made diversity training mandatory actually saw by declines in management diversity, Kalev\u2019s research has found. The best results, meanwhile, came at companies where managers voluntarily participated in mentorship programs and showed up to diversity training programs\u2014generally, leading by example. Besides, not making diversity a requirement still draws in a pretty significant crowd: Kalev\u2019s research showed voluntary programs still drew 80 percent of employees.\n\nYes, the problem of diversity in tech is deeply entrenched and now well-documented. Companies themselves are the first to jump up and say the process takes time. That\u2019s true. It\u2019s also absolutely true that companies will use the same line during next year\u2019s diversity report season. Rather than mouth platitudes, companies need to foster a real cultural change\u2014not next year, but starting now.","If you need a break from the 24-hour news cycle, delve into the story of a crypto-anarchist who put his digital life on hold to fight with rebels in Syria in an all too real-world revolution.\n\nBut if you don\u2019t need a break from the 24-hour news cycle\u2026\n\nJust about every week these days are \u201cStartling Intelligence Revelations\u201d themed, and for this edition House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chair Devin Nunes spent the last few days defending against accusations that the investigation he\u2019s leading into Russian election meddling is deeply flawed. Take a look at this timeline if you\u2019ve been having trouble keeping up with all the commotion (who hasn\u2019t?). Meanwhile, on Thursday the Senate Intelligence Committee had a public hearing about its own Russian election interference investigation, and Senator Marco Rubio alleged in testimony that in addition to Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign, his staffers were also the target of Russian hacking during his 2016 bid for president.\n\nIn other news, the hunt for a nonlethal gun is heating up, Pornhub and sister site YouPorn are both taking the important step of implementing HTTPS encryption, while hackers are still threatening to breach millions of iCloud accounts and even remotely wipe iPhones connected to those accounts. It\u2019s probably bunk, but change your password and enable Apple\u2019s two-factor authentication just in case. Some organizations still struggle to minimally secure their online databases, endangering millions of people\u2019s personal data. And if you\u2019re worried that your internet service provider will sell your online browsing history (you should be, it is) it might be time to consider setting up a VPN.\n\nAnd there\u2019s more. Each Saturday we round up the news stories that we didn\u2019t break or cover in depth but that still deserve your attention. As always, click on the headlines to read the full story in each link posted. And stay safe out there.\n\nLast weekend a German security researcher discovered a vulnerability in the internet-connected Miele Professional PG 8528 dishwasher, an industrial \u201cwasher-disinfector,\u201d used in facilities like restaurants and hospitals. The bug allows an attacker to access the device, plant malware on it, and potentially use it as a jumping off point to compromise other devices on the dishwasher\u2019s network. Perfectly exemplifying the larger problem with internet of things insecurity, a successful hack of the dishwasher could end up causing problems in a restaurant or have severe consequences in a medical settings. \u201cAn unauthenticated attacker may be able to exploit this issue to access sensitive information to aide in subsequent attacks,\u201d researcher Jens Regel wrote. There is currently no patch for the bug.\n\nAn app that sends users push notifications for every new drone strike mentioned in the news has been rejected by Apple\u2019s App Store 13 times. It was approved once before in 2014 after five attempts, and remained live for about a year before Apple pulled it again. Creator Josh Begley (who is also the research editor at The Intercept) reported on Tuesday that the app had finally won approval again\u2014only to be taken down again several hours later.\n\nGoogle researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered a major vulnerability in the password manager LastPass this week that would allow an attacker to access user passwords and even spread malware. Ormandy hasn\u2019t publicly disclosed how the exploit works, but says he found a way to execute code within the LastPass browser extension in all major browsers and on Windows and Linux (it may work on macOS as well). \u201cWe are now actively addressing the vulnerability. This attack is unique and highly sophisticated,\u201d LastPass said in a blog post. While LastPass resolves the issue, the company suggests mitigation strategies like launching websites through the LastPass Vault, and enabling two-factor authentication on as many accounts as possible. Ormandy discovered another vulnerability in LastPass two weeks ago, and the service has also been breached in the past. Password managers are naturally subject to extensive scrutiny by researchers and attackers alike, but so many flaws in LastPass, even when addressed quickly, could become a problem for the company.\n\nOn Tuesday, Apple released patches for a bug in iOS and macOS that allowed remote code execution in the web server authentication function of the two operating systems. The vulnerability, disclosed by researchers at Cisco\u2019s Talos Intelligence Group, could have allowed an attacker to use malicious certificates to dupe the validation system that checks whether web servers a user is trying to connect to are identifiable and trusted. This could have endangered web browsing, email server connections, and could have allowed an attacker to plant a malicious certificate in a user\u2019s macOS keychain.","Autonomous drones, lasers, and computer rendering play increasingly vital roles in filmmaking, but what makes Liam Young\u2019s moody, futuristic films so unusual is these technologies are not tools, but stars.\n\nThe Australian architect-turned-filmmaker considers his films In the Robot Skies, Where the City Can\u2019t See, and Renderlands Trojan horses bringing these technologies into mainstream consciousness in a positive, even creative, way. If people give, say, LIDAR, any thought, it\u2019s probably within the context of autonomous vehicles or that lawsuit against Uber. But Young sees a compelling story. \u201cWe tell stories about what these technologies might mean,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re prototyping their possibilities.\u201d\n\nThe films, appearing in the exhibit \u201cNew Romance\u201d at Columbia University\u2019s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, paint a promising, or at least benign, picture of where such technology may lead humanity. But they also offer a warning about how technology can constrain, even control, society. Such themes are not of course limited to drones, the focus of In the Robot Skies.\n\nIn that film, autonomous drones follow characters through bleak 70\u2019s-era public housing over a soundtrack of demonic, industrial music. The film, shown through the drone\u2019s point of view, tells the story of a young woman and her boyfriend who send surreptitious and illegal messages with the drones. In addition to shooting and starring in the films, the drones directed it, too. Their flight algorithms, navigation system, and facial recognition software allowed them to decide where to go and what to film. Young edited the footage into the final story, following the whims and foibles of the drones. \u201cThe technology has its own tendencies and personality,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to see the world through their eyes.\u201d\n\nLIDAR, the laser-scanning technology that allows autonomous vehicles to \u201csee,\u201d is the star of Where the City Can\u2019t See. Young uses LIDAR to simulate the gliding view of an autonomous car as it navigates Detroit. The ghostly scenes, set to haunting, atonal digital music, show abandoned fields and urban ruins as heavily pixellated, colorful point clouds. The actors, who play teenagers trying to escape constant surveillance, wear clothing that absorbs, or reflects, the lasers\u2019 light, creating rippling, distorted shapes and patterns as they move through the city.\n\nIn Renderlands, Young creates a dark collage of live-action shots of computer renderers\u2014their faces glowing in the light of their monitors\u2014working in India and the CGI visions of Hollywood they\u2019re creating. It\u2019s a misty, neon-lit place replete with long piers, hilltop vistas, and other Southern California clich\u00e9s that the workers have never seen and only imagine. The process of rendering imagined worlds becomes an important part of the film\u2019s look, structure, and plot.\n\nYoung, who once worked for renowned architect Zaha Hadid, sees his work as one possible roadmap for architects, whom he believes have seen their roles as builders of the physical world usurped by developers and engineers. He sees a future for architects guiding society into the digital world, helping people understand their physical surroundings and the technology that will dictate them. \u201cThese things are going to rule a large part of our lives,\u201d he says. \u201cHelping people develop relationships with them is critical.\u201d To that end, he helped found the Masters of Fiction and Entertainment program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture to advance tech-inspired filmmaking. It already has 15 students, each of them, like Young, pondering how technology might tell, and star in, stories.","Men have walked on the moon, the Curiosity Rover roams Mars, and a probe crossed three billion miles of hard vacuum to glimpse Pluto. Yet most of what lies beyond Earth remains a mystery, and a marvel. This week, the cosmos offered some of both.\n\nThe Hubble Space Telescope captured an amazing photo of a Type Ia exploding star, a supernova so bright that scientists can measure the expansion of the universe and learn more about dark energy. But how do these supernovae form? Colliding dwarf stars or a greedy dwarf star gobbling up gas from a neighbor until it explodes are two possibilities.\n\nNASA\u2019s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array mission spotted another mystery this week when it zeroed in on large disk galaxy Was 49a and a \u201cdwarf\u201d galaxy Was 49b. Data show that a supermassive black hole lies within the smaller galaxy, something scientists did not realize is possible. No one knows just how the supermassive black hole formed, but they expect that black hole to one day merge with a black hole at the center of the larger galaxy, creating a \u2026 super-supermassive black hole. Don\u2019t worry, though. NASA says it won\u2019t happen for a few hundred million years.\n\nThe week offered up an array of beauty too, from the intricacies of Saturn\u2019s A Ring captured in high resolution by NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft to a stunning shot of dunes on Mars via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And if you\u2019ve clicked through the slideshow, but just can\u2019t get enough of space? Check out the entire collection.","Residents of Atlanta are facing months of traffic hell\u2014even more so than usual\u2014after a section of elevated I-85 freeway collapsed in a fire on Thursday night. Clouds of black smoke started billowing out from under the crucial freeway around 6:30 pm, half an hour later the road gave way. An entire slab of concrete that formed the northbound lanes plummeted, leaving a gap 100 feet long. Nobody was hurt, but it took until Friday morning for firefighters to extinguish the blaze. What\u2019s left is a charred mess of concrete and steel, and miles of snarled traffic hunting for ways around the vital bit of road.\n\n\u201cWe are not able to give you a firm estimate at this moment, but this will take at least several months to get this rebuilt,\u201d said Russell McMurry, Georgia\u2019s transportation commissioner, at a news conference Friday. In total, engineers will have to replace 350 feet of both north and southbound lanes.\n\nAtlanta now has to figure out how to rebuild as quickly and cost effectively as possible. \u201cThey have to fabricate the beams, they have to cure the concrete, it could take two to three months or more,\u201d says retired bridge engineer, Andy Herrmann.\n\nBut, there are some tried and tested methods it can use to hasten the process, like incentives for beating deadlines, that have worked after earthquakes, fires, and bridge collapses in other states. California, in particular, can serve as an example of how to speedily address an infrastructure calamity.\n\nAfter all, that\u2019s where C. C. Meyers earned his reputation as the fastest freeway builder in the west. In 1994, Meyers led efforts to rebuild sections of the Santa Monica (405) freeway in Los Angeles, after the Northridge earthquake. His contract had a penalty for finishing late, balanced by a payout for completing early. He won a $15 million bonus for finishing the work twice as fast as expected.\n\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t actually make all that as profit,\u201d he says. \u201cWe probably spent $10 million getting ahead, running 24 hours a day.\u201d When he needed materials from the Midwest in a hurry, he rented an entire train to bring them in. Then he paid an extra $125,000 to make it run non-stop.\n\nMeyers was also instrumental in rebuilding the MacArthur Maze intersection at the Bay Bridge in San Francisco in 2007, after a tanker crash and fire caused a chunk of freeway to collapse. He did that in just 26 days. Officials had allowed for 50. Bonus: $5 million. The same pay structure worked to speed the rebuilding of the Minnesota Bridge carrying the I-35 which collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people. The rebuilding took just 11 months, meaning the builders won a $27 million bonus.\n\n\u201cThe cost benefit depends on how much pressure there is to get traffic moving again,\u201d says Herrmann. That, and whether local allow would allow Atlanta to open its wallet to get things going. Some jurisdictions insist on separate evaluation, design, and build, parts to a major project.\n\nInvestigators are still working out the cause of the Atlanta blaze. \u201cThe area in which the fire originated is part of the state\u2019s right of way that was utilized as a storage location for construction materials, equipment and supplies,\u201d according to a statement from Georgia\u2019s Department of Transportation. Meanwhile it has released a map showing the affected areas to avoid. Pretty much anywhere nearby.\n\nDetour: Piedmont Road from Cheshire Bridge Road to Sydney Marcus Blvd. #Planahead #MetroATL pic.twitter.com/wru5ZbnlqN \u2014 Georgia DOT (@GADeptofTrans) March 31, 2017\n\nGiven the importance of the highway artery, Georgia\u2019s DOT could consider putting in a temporary bridge while the replacement is being built. There are companies that supply components for temporary structures, ready to be bolted together like an Erector set.\n\nAtlanta officials do have precedent for how to manage the impending traffic chaos\u2014the city hosted the Olympics in 1996, which may give some hints for minimizing disruption\u2014but that plan likely needs a 21st-century upgrade. The city is already encouraging people to use public transport, and cars in the express lane now have to have at least three occupants. But even with speedy repairs, it\u2019s going to feel like a long road ahead for Atlanta commuters.","Samsung\u2019s latest Galaxy devices, the S8 and the S8+, were unveiled this week. They represent a turning point for Samsung, as the Korean giant hopes to put the whole exploding Note 7 debacle well behind it. The path forward is through these new phones, which come with bespoke software and a voice assistant called Bixby. The hosts discuss the new developments. Also, there\u2019s a new-not-new iPad to talk about, and David starts the show by recounting his experiences as a smartwatch enthusiast at Baselworld, the watch industry gathering in Switzerland. In the middle of the show, Paul Sarconi brings us another installment of Brief Histories of Important Gadgets. This week: the Tablet PC.\n\nPodcast\n\nSome links: The Samsung Galaxy phones. More about Bixby. Logitech\u2019s Rugged Combo iPad keyboard case. Baselworld awkwardly surfs the smartwatch wave. A new iPhone is red. Recommendations this week: The Dinner Party Download and Switched on Pop.\n\nSend the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.","For years, fans have been wondering what Joss Whedon would do next. After leaving the Avengers Mansion, he kept up with his producing duties and worked on some comics, but remained non-committal about his intentions in Hollywood. Now we know: He\u2019s queueing up to write and direct a new standalone Batgirl movie. The pairing makes sense: a filmmaker who understands superheroes and female protagonists, matched with a girl in a cape. But I still have mixed feelings about Whedon doing it.\n\nThere\u2019s no question that Whedon can ace this. Even if you don\u2019t love Avengers: Age of Ultron and Dollhouse as much as I do, Whedon has an amazing track record of writing heroic narratives, and especially female heroes, going all the way back to the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His record also indicates he\u2019d be more likely to include the LGBTQ characters that have shown up in recent Batgirl comics, like Alysia Yeoh, Barbara\u2019s transgender roommate, and Frankie, a disabled queer woman of color that she met in physical therapy. He is, amongst Hollywood\u2019s biggest directors, uniquely qualified to take Barbara Gordon out of Batman\u2019s shadow and turn her into a major big-screen hero.\n\nBut still, selfishly, I\u2019d rather Whedon created something new. He is one of entertainment\u2019s great originals, able to take familiar genres like horror (Buffy) or Westerns (Firefly) and use them to tell ornate new stories full of people with rich inner lives. I miss Whedon\u2019s talent for world-building, something that an off-the-shelf character won\u2019t afford him the chance to do. Why play in someone else\u2019s sandbox?\n\nThere\u2019s also the question of how Whedon would handle Batgirl\u2019s disability. In the 30 years since the Joker shot and paralyzed Barbara (in the notorious comic The Killing Joke), that\u2019s been a major part of her story. Whedon\u2019s movie could ignore this, of course, but that would invite justifiable blowback. At the same time, tackling the issue could also be a potential nightmare\u2014especially for Whedon, whose obsession with depicting the violation of women\u2019s bodies has occasionally been his downfall. Of course, Whedon has been known to surprise people, and he may have a clever way to finesse the issue of Barbara\u2019s wheelchair, but it\u2019s still a major challenge that will need to be addressed somehow.\n\nMuch of Whedon\u2019s success or failure with a Batgirl movie will also depend on whether he\u2019s able to break free from the heavily stylized, slo-mo Zack Snyder aesthetic that seems to be shaping all the DC Comics films. (Even the Wonder Woman trailer, in parts, looks like 300.) Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara has described the studio\u2019s comic-book movies as \u201cedgier\u201d than Marvel\u2019s, although the upcoming Justice League does seem to be trying for a lighter tone. Whedon has been open about his \u201cunpleasant\u201d creative clashes with Marvel on the Avengers films, and you have to wonder how his famous sense of whimsy will fare in an \u201cedgy\u201d universe.\n\nFinally, there\u2019s the point that much of Twitter was making yesterday when the news broke: A female director should have been given a crack at Batgirl. Warner Bros. did the right thing in hiring Patty Jenkins to direct Wonder Woman, because a female icon deserves a woman\u2019s creative vision behind the scenes. Now that superhero movies are eating Hollywood, they need the female gaze more than any other genre. And there are tons of incredibly talented women out there who are as experienced as James Gunn, Peyton Reed, Gavin Hood, and Tim Miller were when they were handed superhero franchises. Really, a woman should be directing Justice League\u2014but Batgirl would be a good start.\n\nEven with all the above misgivings, though, there\u2019s still plenty of reason to be excited about what Whedon will do with DC\u2019s brainiest superhero. Between Barbara\u2019s stints as a librarian, the super-hacker Oracle, and even a US Congresswoman, there\u2019s a lot of great material for the man who gave the world Zoe Washburne. Surely fans will love the new Batgirl\u2014but it\u2019s hard not to wonder if we wouldn\u2019t have liked a new Buffy more.","Yesterday, HBO released a new teaser video for Season 7 of Game of Thrones, and while it showed us not a single frame of the actual season, one thing is clear: Winter is here. There\u2019s a chill in Westeros, as Cersei Lannister\u2019s visible breath shows, and things are only going to get colder.\n\nBut climate change isn\u2019t the only thing the new teaser reveals. As with all things GoT, the drama is in the details. On its surface, the the clip simply braids together footage of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) walking down separate hallways and sitting in their various throne rooms\u2014but if you look closely, their clothes signal what\u2019s coming in Season 7.\n\nThe first one we see is Jon, in Winterfell, so let\u2019s start there.\n\nJon Snow\n\nFor the most part, Jon Snow\u2019s outfit consists of his standard-issue cloaks and shawls. Now that he\u2019s reclaimed his place in Winterfell, though, his draped garments seem to be held on by a fancy new gold clasp now. (Also, that fur around his neck looks like it could\u2019ve come from one of the Stark family direwolves\u2014Grey Wind, maybe?\u2014but that seems too dark even for Game of Thrones.) It\u2019s hard to tell for sure, but it seems highly likely that at least part of his outfit is new. Last season, after Jon complimented Sansa\u2019s \u2019fit, the new lady of Winterfell made her bastard brother one to match, adding \u201cI made it like the one father used to wear.\u201d Sansa\u2019s cloak, you\u2019ll remember, had quite a bit of symbolism: the Stark\u2019s direwolf family sigil emblazoned on the chest. She\u2019s nowhere to be found in this trailer, but if she was it would be a stark (sorry) reminder that now it\u2019s truly the girls who run Westeros. Speaking of which\u2026\n\nDaenerys Targaryen\n\nNext up is Dany, dressed in the kind of dark tones we hardly ever see her wearing. For years, we saw the Mother of Dragons in blue, because it was a Dothraki color. But then last season, as she began her liberation of Slaver\u2019s Bay (now the Bay of Dragons), she started wearing more whites and neutral tones. The white, as costume designer Michele Clapton told BuzzFeed last year, \u201csignifies her mental removal from some of the scenes that she has to be in\u2014like in the fight pit. \u2026 She was visually removing herself from the things that she disagreed with.\u201d Now that she\u2019s taking her throne in (what we assume is) Dragonstone, she\u2019s dressed in a charcoal-colored outfit with a burgundy cloak. The fact that she\u2019s incorporating a red-adjacent color might be the most telling thing of all\u2014she hasn\u2019t dressed in that color since she was with her brother Viserys (aka Literal Goldilocks). Could it be signaling her status as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne\u2014or at least her return to her ancestral home? (Also, speaking of dragons, that brooch is \ud83d\udd25.)\n\nCersei Lannister\n\nAfter Tommen\u2019s suicide, Cersei now holds the Iron Throne, and her look is suitably regal. At the end of Season 6 she started wearing the kind of leather gear her father, Tywin (RIP), had preferred; the Rhythm Nation 1814 aesthetic continues in Season 7, and now she\u2019s added a neckpiece with the Lannisters\u2019 lion sigil and some serious medieval-football-player shoulder pads. Cersei is another character who used to wear a lot of red (the Lannister\u2019s signature color), but as her multigenerational mourning continues, she\u2019s been sticking to black. She\u2019s also going to be, as indicated in this Season 7 teaser, incorporating a lot more silver flair into her look\u2014as costume designer Clapton notes, it\u2019s her \u201cnew color.\u201d Winter is here, y\u2019all; time to get monochromatic.","America\u2019s biggest tech companies are remaking the internet through artificial intelligence. And more than ever, these companies are looking north to Canada for the ideas that will advance AI itself.\n\nThis morning, Google announced it\u2019s starting an AI lab in Toronto. At the same time, it\u2019s helping to fund a public-private partnership with the University of Toronto to develop and commercialize AI talent and ideas. In November, the company made a similar move in Montreal\u2014a city that has also attracted Microsoft\u2019s attention.\n\nThe Canadian connection is hardly coincidental: Universities in Toronto and Montreal have played a big role in the rise of deep learning, a collection of AI techniques that allows machines to learn tasks by analyzing large amounts of data. As deep learning remakes the likes of Google and Microsoft, Canada has become a hotbed for new talent.\n\nGeoff Hinton, one of the founding fathers of the deep learning movement and a professor at the University of Toronto, has worked for Google since 2012 and will run its new Toronto lab. Hinton says that this is partly a way for him to spend more of his time in the city. The lab will stay small and focus on basic research, he says. At the same time, it will enable Google to maintain a grip on the AI talent coming out of Toronto\u2014a strategic move with deep learning experts among the most prized talent in tech world. \u201cThere will be new researchers,\u201d Hinton says.\n\nMeanwhile, Google is investing $5 million in the Vector Institute, a brand new AI research lab backed by the Ontario government, the Canadian federal government, and as many as thirty other companies. Hinton will serve as a primary advisor. Also based in Toronto, the lab is an effort to bridge the gap between university research and companies like Google. \u201cWe want to support more research,\u201d says Jordan Jacobs, co-founder of an AI company called Layer 6 and a former media and technology lawyer who helped create the new lab. \u201cBut also help commercialize\u2014help companies that need to hire.\u201d\n\nAll told, government and corporate players have invested some $180 million in the lab altogether. It\u2019s clearly a sign that Canada is serious about cultivating its status as an AI hotbed, even as some in the Trump administration downplay its importance. \u201cWe\u2019ve re-established Toronto\u2019s preeminence as the center of deep learning,\u201d he says (though universities in Britain, France, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe have also played a big part in advancing this movement). Either way Canada is indeed a feast of AI research, and the big American companies want to make sure they have a seat at the table.","The Trump administration may not believe that automation threatens today\u2019s American workforce, but try telling that to a travel agent or a truck driver or a factory worker or an accountant. One recent study found that for every one robot introduced to the workforce, six related human jobs disappear. But those six humans still need to get by.\n\nThat\u2019s why many Silicon Valley leaders, even as they innovate entire industries and livelihoods out of existence, have started gravitating toward a not-so-new concept: basic income. Under the idea, the government would provide every citizen with a stipend, no strings attached. Especially in times of economic upheaval, when technological change is both rampant and unpredictable, the thinking goes, a basic income would ensure a baseline of stability.\n\nNow the Valley\u2019s newest congressional representative is bringing the idea to Washington, to the tune of $1 trillion. Democrat Ro Khanna of California\u2019s 17th district\u2014home to companies like Apple and Intel\u2014would seem to have little chance of persuading the most conservative Congress in memory to blithely give away so much money. But there\u2019s a wrinkle: The biggest beneficiaries wouldn\u2019t be Khanna\u2019s well-heeled constituents in Cupertino or Santa Clara. It\u2019s President Trump\u2019s core supporters in rural America who would have the most to gain.\n\nKhanna is preparing to introduce a bill that he calls \u201cthe biggest move in orders of magnitude\u201d toward providing a basic income in the US. Specifically, it proposes a $1 trillion expansion of the earned income tax credit, which would roughly double the amount of money going into low-income families\u2019 pockets. The main difference between Khanna\u2019s plan and the Silicon Valley utopianists\u2019 version of basic income is that for now recipients would still have to have a job to qualify. Think of it more as a basic income warm-up.\n\nKhanna, a former Stanford economist who briefly worked for the Commerce Department under President Obama and supported Bernie Sanders for president, knows Congress will probably (ok, definitely) never go for it. For now, that\u2019s fine by him. You could think of his plan as a kind of political moonshot. As with Google Glass, it\u2019s a bold idea that may not catch on in the mainstream. But simply injecting the idea into public conversation propels it forward until people finally find it palatable (hello, Snap Spectacles).\n\n\u201cThe criticism of the Democrats in the past is that they were too timid. They ran on consultant-driven platitudes and didn\u2019t offer a compelling enough vision,\u201d Khanna told me as he sipped cappuccino from a paper cup inside New York\u2019s Chelsea Market building one crisp morning in March. \u201cAs we saw with this election, people are attracted to bold clear ideas.\u201d\n\nBut the boldest part of Khanna\u2019s plan isn\u2019t merely what it will cost a budget-conscious Congress. According to the Tax Policy Center, which assisted Khanna in crafting this bill, this plan would compensate the bottom 20 percent of earners for wage stagnation dating back to 1979. Currently a family with one child earning below a certain income threshold receives a $3,400 earned income tax credit. Under Khanna\u2019s plan, they would get roughly twice that. The more kids you have, the more money you get. And you don\u2019t need to dig too far into a map of average incomes across the US to see where that 20 percent lives. Hint: It ain\u2019t Silicon Valley. Instead, the plan, if it worked as promised, would especially benefit states like Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia\u2014in other words, Trump Country.\n\nCoders in Coal Country\n\nKhanna became Silicon Valley\u2019s newest voice in Washington in November after ousting incumbent Mike Honda, a member of Congress since 2001, in an acrimonious primary. It was Khanna\u2019s second time running, and his insurgent campaign earned support from techies like Facebook\u2019s Sheryl Sandberg, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai, and yes, even billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who admired Khanna\u2019s attempt to unseat a career politician. \u201cPeter Thiel and I disagree on 99 percent of things,\u201d Khanna said stiffly, aware of the seeming contradiction that a devout libertarian like Thiel would contribute to his campaign. \u201cBut he wants robust, spirited debate.\u201d\n\nSupport for basic income also doesn\u2019t break down along the usual party lines. The idea of a guaranteed income originated with libertarian economist and Reagan administration advisor Milton Friedman, who called it a \u201cnegative income tax\u201d and argued it would \u201cdispense with the vast bureaucracy\u201d that dictates welfare programs. At the same time, some progressives argue that basic income would undermine need-based welfare programs and the more important priority of creating jobs.\n\n\u2018This idea you\u2019re going to take a 50-year-old coal miner and turn them into a software engineer is ridiculous. That\u2019s sometimes how the Democratic message came out.\u2019 Ro Khanna\n\nDuring his short stint in office so far, Khanna also has not followed the most conventional path. For a congressman whose district is home to billionaires and boasts a median annual income of more than $111,000, he has shown an unusual fixation on crafting policy for the country\u2019s rural poor. For too long, he says, the tech industry has not heeded President Kennedy\u2019s call to \u201cask not what your country can do for you.\u201d Over the years, the industry has done a lot of asking: for regulatory changes, for high-skilled worker visas, for privacy protections, for net neutrality, for patent reform. To be sure, all of those things help the tech industry thrive. But Khanna says the November election reminded tech leaders that America is a big country, and the tech sector needs to use its power to help Americans who live outside of the industry\u2019s narrow, coastal enclaves.\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t want a populist backlash,\u201d Khanna said of his constituents. \u201cThey don\u2019t want a country divided by place.\u201d\n\nKhanna believes there\u2019s little the tech industry can do about such divisions if its leaders continue to cling to the coasts. Shortly after taking office, Khanna traveled to Paintsville, Kentucky, to check out a program that teaches people in Appalachia, many of them the children of coal miners, to code. It also connects them with jobs once they finish. Scaling such programs will be critical to equipping the next generation with the skills they need in a tech-centric economy. At the same time, Khanna acknowledges that Democrats especially can\u2019t rest on the notion that code can fix everyone\u2019s economic woes. Certainly older workers who bought into President Trump\u2019s message about reviving manufacturing didn\u2019t buy it.\n\n\u201cThis idea you\u2019re going to take a 50-year-old coal miner and turn them into a software engineer is ridiculous,\u201d Khanna says. \u201cThat\u2019s sometimes how the Democratic message came out.\u201d\n\nA Not So Modest Proposal\n\nKhanna believes expanding the safety net through the earned income tax credit, a kind of basic income precursor, could help provide more comprehensive support for people caught up in the economic turmoil spurred by automation. And in that, he\u2019s not exactly alone. Last year, President Obama and House Speaker Paul Ryan both proposed expansions of the credit that would benefit childless workers. But the more radical idea of a basic income\u2014which is to say, giving away free money\u2014has failed to take hold in the United States especially, as lawmakers fear it would dampen people\u2019s incentive to work.\n\nEven Khanna agrees these kinds of subsidies should be tied to work. It\u2019s a less radical approach to a basic income, which is why there are optimists like liberal economist Robert Reich who believe Khanna\u2019s plan might just have a shot, particularly at a time when Trump\u2019s base comprises the people would seem likely to benefit most. \u201cUnless the party has become brainlessly ideological, one would think that this concept would appeal to many of them,\u201d says Reich, who has also been working with Khanna on the plan.\n\nThe congressman holds no such illusions. Not only would it cost $1 trillion\u2014a hard sell as the Trump administration is gutting the federal budget\u2014but Khanna proposes paying for it with a financial transaction tax, even as the administration rolls back Wall Street regulations. But getting a bill passed isn\u2019t really the point. Khanna says Ryan gave Democrats a blueprint for how to operate as the opposition party, and now that the Democrats are out of power, he\u2019s following it. \u201cHe was proposing budgets into the wilderness,\u201d Khanna said of Ryan\u2019s approach, \u201cbut then they became a real part of the conversation.\u201d\n\nFor Khanna, the Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to lay out a clear vision. Whether or not the party ultimately gets behind basic income as part of that vision, Khanna believes Democrats must say what they\u2019re for, not just who they\u2019re against. Until they win back power, most Democratic proposals will remain hypothetical. They might as well be daring, too.","Apple\u2019s AirPods aren\u2019t the only wireless earbud game in town. If the idea of earplugs as audio gear entices you, another option on the market arrives from Swedish startup Earin and its M-1 earbuds.\n\nEarin M-1 Wireless Earbuds 3/10 Wired Look ma, no wires, and no golf clubs dangling from my ears! Better audio quality than expected. Tired Massive connectivity issues. No microphone/phone features at all (not even incoming audio). Very weak battery life. Charging system is underbaked and needs a complete overhaul. (Good news: The Earin M-2s come out sometime soon.) How We Rate 1/10 A complete failure in every way\n\nA complete failure in every way 2/10 Sad, really\n\nSad, really 3/10 Serious flaws; proceed with caution\n\nSerious flaws; proceed with caution 4/10 Downsides outweigh upsides\n\nDownsides outweigh upsides 5/10 Recommended with reservations\n\nRecommended with reservations 6/10 Solid with some issues\n\nSolid with some issues 7/10 Very good, but not quite great\n\nVery good, but not quite great 8/10 Excellent, with room to kvetch\n\nExcellent, with room to kvetch 9/10 Nearly flawless\n\nNearly flawless 10/10 Metaphysical perfection\n\nAs with any wireless earbud, these are fully detached, miniature Bluetooth speakers that you wedge into each ear. The Earin design is probably the most utilitarian on the market today, as the little black cylinders jut visibly out of your ear like some kind of post-modern tribal jewelry. They aren\u2019t exactly unobtrusive or attractive, but if the industrial, Frankenstein look* is in your wheelhouse, you\u2019ll find them stylish.\n\nAs audio quality goes, I was reasonably impressed with the earbuds, which offer both crystal clear bass and clearer highs than I expected, with only a few issues of hiss and problems with balance, though these problems seemed to be specific to certain audio tracks. Wedging the foam tips into your ear canal can take a few tries, but once you have a good seal they create a reasonably immersive listening experience that does a great job at blocking out the teeming masses. And they didn\u2019t fall out once in my testing.\n\nOn the whole, everything sounds pretty good\u2026 until suddenly it doesn\u2019t sound like anything at all. Connection problems were ubiquitous in my testing\u2014either one earbud wouldn\u2019t get sound, or neither would. Dropouts and hiccups were common, even with my phone only two or three feet away. Then there\u2019s the battery life. Like most wireless buds on the market, a charging case (which is itself battery powered and rechargeable) is used for both storage and recharging the earbuds. Earin says the earbuds should run for three hours per charge, and you can recharge them three times inside a fully charged case, for a total of 12 hours before you have to find a USB connection.\n\nNone of that really panned out in my testing. Sometimes I\u2019d get a full three hours on a charge, sometimes I\u2019d get one. Never did I experience 12 hours of airtime after charging the case. My best mark was seven hours\u2014again, much of that marred by Bluetooth connectivity problems.\n\nThe Earin earbuds also come with an iOS/Android app, which is almost completely useless, good only for adjusting left-right balance and, honest to god, turning on \u201cbass boost.\u201d It allegedly lets you check your battery level too, but I never once got the app to work, either. The good news is you don\u2019t need the app at all to use the earbuds. Just pair them via Bluetooth like any other speaker and you\u2019re on your way. I mean, until you\u2019re not.\n\n* Don\u2019t start with me on the \u201cFrankenstein\u201d vs. \u201cFrankenstein\u2019s monster\u201d business. The monster might have worn the look, but Dr. Frankenstein designed it, so shut up.","As a dozen members of the production team at Cheddar, a startup internet TV company, settle into their cramped control room at a co-working space in downtown Manhattan, Donald J. Trump looms large. Literally: One of the room\u2019s largest screens, named RS2-DON, is tuned to a feed from the White House pool camera, currently showing the wrought-iron front door of Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate. On this frigid afternoon a few days after Christmas, the president-elect is expected to make an announcement about, well, something. No one knows what. Or exactly when. All the Cheddar crew can do is watch and wait.\n\nTrump or no Trump, Cheddar\u2019s Closing Bell show is about to start, live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The two-hour show airs every weekday not on linear TV, but all over the web. You can watch it, and Cheddar\u2019s two other shows, on Facebook and Twitter, on its Roku channel or Apple TV app, or on your smartphone. The company\u2019s big plan is to be everywhere video is\u2014everywhere but your cable box.\n\nSince launching nearly a year ago, Cheddar has evolved and experimented, trying to figure out how to make live TV work in the on-demand era. It\u2019s CNN minus (most of) the old white guys, CNBC minus the bank and oil stocks. It aims to learn from, and ultimately replace, those channels as the future of live television. Which means it has to be on time. So when the clock hits 3, executive producer Kavitha Shastry, with an eye on RS2-DON, starts the show.\n\nThe Best Shows You Don\u2019t Watch\n\nJon Steinberg started plotting Cheddar in 2015, after leaving his post as the Daily Mail\u2018s North American CEO. Before that, he served as president and COO at BuzzFeed. He had cred in the media world, and plenty of job opportunities. But Steinberg was ready to start something on his own.\n\nSteinberg saw a gap in the so-called \u201cgolden age of television.\u201d Netflix and HBO made the prestige content, Facebook and YouTube dominated viral clips, but there wasn\u2019t much for when all you wanted to watch was\u2026 something. People watch CNBC, Steinberg reasons, partly because they want to hear the news but mostly to have something on in the background. But only old people watch CNBC, and nobody\u2019s making that stuff for a digital audience. You could argue that\u2019s because the digital audience doesn\u2019t want that stuff, which even Steinberg acknowledges is a possibility. But he\u2019s betting that even as tech changes, viewing behavior won\u2019t. An audience that doesn\u2019t care about The Today Show, he thinks, will still want something to watch while they get the kids ready for school; offices full of millennials will still want a stock ticker on in the background. He calls it \u201cwindow on the world content\u201d or \u201cambient TV.\u201d\n\nSteinberg wasn\u2019t sure exactly what this new channel should look like. He just knew it had to be live, so that something would be on every time you tuned in. And as a lifelong CNBC fan (and more recent talking head), he sensed that the business-news formula was ripe for reinvention. Steinberg came up with the \u201cCheddar 50,\u201d the cool tech and media companies the network would focus on. \u201cMy view on it was,\u201d Steinberg says, \u201cAmazon, Netflix, Google, Airbnb, Tesla, Facebook, Snap: that was a whole live news network. That should be the whole thing. One hour wasn\u2019t enough, two hours wasn\u2019t enough\u2014that was an enormous part of culture.\u201d\n\nTV you don\u2019t really pay attention to doesn\u2019t make for the sexiest pitch, which might explain why everyone told him it was a bad idea. \u201cEveryone,\u201d Steinberg tells me dramatically, \u201cexcept Jeremy Liew.\u201d\n\nLiew, a partner at venture-capital firm Lightspeed Ventures, also has plenty of cred in the media world. He was the first person to invest in Snapchat, and when Snap went public, Lightspeed\u2019s $485,000 reportedly turned into as much as $2 billion. After talking to Steinberg in early 2016, he also became the first investor in Cheddar, putting $3 million into the fledgling startup. He bought in based on a simple idea: that every TV channel will have its digital analog (and potential usurper), and the opportunity to seize that airspace is right now. He rattles them off: Cheddar is CNBC, Mic is CNN, LittleThings is daytime talk shows. Lightspeed has invested in all three, and Liew\u2019s looking for more. \u201cI\u2019d love to find a home shopping analog and a televangelism analog,\u201d he says, sounding like he\u2019s kidding but not really kidding at all.\n\nCheddar\u2019s original plan was to sell native advertising integrated into its shows, and put itself on every so-called skinny bundle it could manage. Then, in April of 2016, Facebook Live happened. Live wasn\u2019t exactly designed as a cable competitor\u2014Mark Zuckerberg envisioned it more as a messaging platform, \u201ca big shift in how we communicate\u201d\u2014but it put a billion-plus potential viewers one click away. For Cheddar, it was too good to resist.\n\nCheddar\u2019s first show aired on Facebook Live the following Monday, April 11. This was before Facebook had an API allowing other devices to tap into the tech, so the crew filmed everything as it would a normal TV broadcast\u2014and then wrapped an iPhone in cardboard to keep external light out, pointed it at a monitor, and blasted a bootleg feed to the world. Despite the primitive setup, the show went well. Sort of. The crew lost connection for a while, the pre-produced packages had no sound, and the show ran out of steam after about 40 minutes. But the guests showed up, the cameras rolled, and they made a show for an audience larger than zero. \u201cWe\u2019ll be back tomorrow,\u201d Steinberg told the camera at the end, half promise and half threat.\n\nPretty soon the team figured out how to fill an hour. Then two hours. Then four, and six. The shows air live almost everywhere, all at once. \u201cI need to have a lot more stamina today than I did a year ago,\u201d says Kristen Scholer, Cheddar\u2019s senior anchor. At the beginning, she says, \u201cwe were going live at the same time every morning, and there was almost a floating out point.\u201d Now things are more carefully planned, and the show more often hits its mark. Steinberg says he no longer goes to bed worrying about whether or not they\u2019ll have anything to put on air tomorrow. But he still feels like Cheddar\u2019s only at the very beginning of figuring out what exactly it\u2019s going to be.\n\nFrom Primitive to Professional\n\nAfter almost a full year of broadcasting, Steinberg says Cheddar is up to a million live views per day across platforms, and is reaching the audience it wants: On Facebook, 60 percent of viewers are under 35. You can also find Cheddar\u2019s shows on Twitter, Periscope, Vimeo, Amazon, iOS, Sling, Apple TV, and Roku, or even on platforms you\u2019ve definitely never heard of, like Pluto and Xumo. For $2.99 a month1, you can get access to exclusive interviews and the full Cheddar archive. The company\u2019s growing up.\n\nIn the process, Cheddar\u2019s programming has become far more polished\u2014more like CNBC, but less formal. It has a pink logo with a slice of cheese, after all. Its shows feature hosts sitting behind a desk talking to expert guests\u2014but the hosts are younger, more diverse, more prone to goof off mid-segment. On the day I visited, a segment about Trump and the economy derailed when the producers noticed the guest, Politico\u2019s Peter Sterne, was wearing Apple\u2019s new AirPods, which became the focus of the segment.\n\nThis informality is, in many ways, a necessity. Cheddar doesn\u2019t have studios around the country or budgets to fly guests in, so the team relies on sometimes-wonky Skype feeds. Since Facebook Live encourages fast and constant viewer feedback\u2014as does Twitter, whose live video offering Cheddar also jumped on immediately\u2014it makes sense to break the fourth wall and involve viewers\u2019 questions and comments. And it makes Cheddar\u2019s inevitable problems a little less jarring. \u201cWe brought the audience along for the ride,\u201d Scholer says, \u201cso they were hearing about any technology issues we were having, and they were part of it too.\u201d\n\nCheddar\u2019s back-end tech allows broadcasting from a phone, a tablet, or really anything with a camera. That\u2019s mostly a cost-cutting measure (Steinberg says Cheddar got up and running for a tenth the cost of a normal broadcast network) but the technical flexibility also gives Cheddar room to experiment with new ways of reporting. When Snap first dropped its Spectacles vending machine, Steinberg, in the middle of the show, called Daniel Schneider and told him to go get in line. Schneider, Cheddar\u2019s biz-dev guy, livestreamed a FaceTime call of his entire experience, giving Cheddar the first-ever footage of what it was like to buy and use Spectacles. It was low-res, poorly framed, and as Liam Roecklein, Cheddar\u2019s VP of content, points out, something CNN couldn\u2019t do.\n\nWe're the first to use @snapchat's new Snapbot machines to purchase a new pair of Spectacles! Check out how they work, and add us: cheddartv pic.twitter.com/nFpLkURa0C \u2014 Cheddar (@cheddar) November 10, 2016\n\nOf course, Cheddar isn\u2019t the only company trying to reinvent television on the internet. While it\u2019s younger and hipper than other business media, it\u2019s still competing with Vice and Mic and BuzzFeed and your favorite YouTuber for attention. It\u2019s also working out how to make its footage fit to air across platforms. The best Facebook videos are silent and text-heavy, but that won\u2019t work on Sling; the conversational informality that works live doesn\u2019t make for viral YouTube clips. \u201cIt was always our intention as a company to be a live news and entertainment network,\u201d says Peter Gorenstein, Cheddar\u2019s chief content officer. \u201cWe have to just focus on that one main goal right now. Then if it\u2019s a smashing success and people can\u2019t get enough, maybe we do more.\u201d\n\nOne benefit of all the platform diversity: Cheddar can respond to the news immediately. Its shows don\u2019t have to end on time, start in their allotted spaces, or exist in only one format. As the Closing Bell\u2018s two hours wind down, and Trump continues his Mar-a-Lago tease, Cheddar\u2019s producers decide to stay on until the president-elect speaks\u2014whenever that is. One steps out to call MLBAM, which handles the back-end streaming tech for the Twitter shows, to let them know they\u2019re going to stay up. Another tells Sling the same.\n\n\u201cWe hope millennials come to us for the Trump stuff,\u201d Roecklein says, and this is a chance to make sure Cheddar\u2019s ready. Luckily, it doesn\u2019t take long: At 5:06, only a minute or so after the producers decide which bouncy music to play over the boring stream, Trump comes out, gives a short speech taking credit for Sprint bringing 5,000 jobs back to the US, and leaves. After he\u2019s finished, the crew files out of the control room, muttering about the anticlimax of the whole thing.\n\nEveryone files into a conference room across the hall, where Roecklein leads a production meeting to begin planning the next day. He has notes on today\u2019s show, too\u2014a couple of segments ran too long, and there were some weird technical difficulties with a guest\u2014but everyone seems happy. The show stayed live, and more importantly, people watched. And tomorrow they\u2019ll be back on again, trying to do it all a little bit better.\n\n1 UPDATE: an earlier version this piece misstated Cheddar\u2019s monthly subscription price.","Tesla is pushing a software update that makes its latest cars as good as its older cars.\n\nAutoPilot 8.1 expands the autonomous capabilities of every Tesla sold in the past six months, making them more adept at cruising along on their own. Once downloaded and installed, the cars can steer themselves at up to 80 mph (up from 55 mph), squeeze into tight parking spaces, and change lanes when the driver clicks on the turn signal.\n\nPerhaps those skills sound familiar: Model S sedans and Model X crossovers that rolled out of the Tesla factory before October could do all of those things. Cars built in the past six months took a step backward when Tesla started installing more sophisticated hardware\u2014gear CEO Elon Musk says could give the cars full autonomy one day\u2014but not the software needed to use it. The new tech includes a suite of eight cameras, forward-facing radar, and a supercomputer that Musk claims is 40 times more powerful than its predecessor.\n\nTesla designed the system itself, but it didn\u2019t count for much without the software needed to make it work. That limited the cars\u2019 capabilities while its engineers finished that job and pushed Software 8.1. From here on out, the autonomous capabilities of cars with the latest hardware package will advance as the company issues future software updates.\n\nBefore long, Musk says, the cars will pass slower vehicles without any input from the driver, navigate freeway interchanges on their own if you\u2019ve programmed the route in GPS, and park themselves like robotic valets.\n\nJust when Tesla deploys these tricks, and how well they work, will speak to the success of Tesla Vision, the in-house autonomous technology the company launched after breaking with camera supplier Mobileye. In his typically hyper-ambitious style, Musk has pledged to send one of his cars across the country without a driver by the end of this year. Today\u2019s update is a step in that direction, but Tesla has a ways to go. Pressure\u2019s on.","Being a test pilot means taking the ultimate risk every time you take to the skies, putting your faith in the soaring ambitions of engineers, and your life in their hands. It\u2019s a life lived aboard new types of aircraft, mastering newfangled control systems, and testing radical technologies to make flying faster, safer and more efficient\u2014for everyone else.\n\nMost pilots to become household names\u2014the likes of Chuck Yeager and John Glenn\u2014earned their reputations at NASA and the Air Force. They flew at the forefront of modern aviation, testing jet technology, busting through the sound barrier, exploring the stratosphere, and more, before anyone else dared.\n\nToday, much of that work happens in the computer, but NASA still needs men and women willing to take unproven tech into the sky. At the agency\u2019s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Southern California, pilots fly F-18s and 747s that double as airborne telescopes. They test wild concepts like shape shifting wings and ride Cold War spy planes to edge the atmosphere.\n\nBut before takeoff, NASA test pilots brave a battery of training and testing on the ground. In simulators, they sweat out emergency ejections. They practice parachuting to safety when everything falls apart. They play out the worst case scenario, in the hope it never happens for real. Watch above as we take a shot at the training regimen designed to keep pilots safe\u2014or as safe as possible\u2014as they push the boundaries, for science.","The most important words in the new trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets are not \u201cfrom the legendary director of The Professional, The Fifth Element, Lucy.\u201d They\u2019re certainly not the names of the two leads or the exposition of their mission, even though all that does the work of establishing why people might want to see this movie (hint: Luc Besson!)\u2014and at least an inkling that this candy-colored kaleidoscope will also have a plot.\n\nNo, the most important words are \u201cwelcome to.\u201d Because forget Besson\u2019s pedigree, or all that science fictobabble\u2014what matters is that you get some idea of what the hell is going on in Besson\u2019s new universe. The next decade of moviemaking might be riding on it.\n\nValerian has a little bit of a problem. Two, actually. The first is that despite the trailer\u2019s insistence that the movie is \u201cbased on the groundbreaking graphic novel that inspired a generation,\u201d odds are you\u2019ve never heard of the Valerian and Laureline series of French bandes dessin\u00e9es. In other words, an epic, mega-budget sci-fi movie that\u2019s based on a not-widely-recognizable intellectual property. John Carter much?\n\nOriginal-IP sci-fi is suffering, with rare Interstellar-shaped exceptions. Besson gets to make them because of his reputation, and occasionally some slick international film financing. And that\u2019s great! If you liked the eight-figures-worth of visual insanity that was Lucy, well, it turns out that nine figures delivers you exponentially more: bioluminescent aliens, flying saucers, giant monsters, battle scenes, ray guns, and a magical color-change Rihanna. Sure. Yes. I\u2019m in.\n\nBut don\u2019t forget the second problem. Those Valerian and Laureline comics? The ones that Besson grew up reading, and now wants to spin into a franchise of dimension-hopping space-faring chrome-clad cloak and daggering? Well, you might not have heard of them, but they influenced a lot of stuff that you have heard of. Like, a lot a lot. So now, audiences see this trailer, this thing that is actually the progenitor of some iconic strains of cinema sci-fi, and they think eh, looks kinda derivative. It\u2019s like seeing Reservoir Dogs after you\u2019ve seen Things to Do in Denver When You\u2019re Dead. Well, not quite, but you get it. Point is, if people think they\u2019ve seen it before, maybe that makes them less likely to see it again.\n\nBetween now and its July release, Valerian has its work cut out for it.\n\nSo between now and its July release, Valerian has its work cut out for it. It needs to do more than just reel in an old Besson\u00edste like me\u2014and in fact has to pull in a way bigger audience than Besson\u2019s other work. That starts and ends with laying a foundation. Alien montages and Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne swashbuckling around the galaxy won\u2019t do it. I mean, a little bit, but not all of it. Because while Besson might feel like he\u2019s coming home and meeting old friends, most audiences won\u2019t. They\u2019re going to have to want something new from a brilliant, idiosyncratic creator. You might see hints of Avatar and of Star Wars in the trailer, but this new world is all Besson\u2019s. Welcome to it.","You can\u2019t visit Cuba and not hear reggaet\u00f3n. The eclectic mix of salsa, hip-hop and electronica blasts from shops, cars and bike taxis. And despite government censorship and limited internet access, the genre exploded in popularity thanks to \u201cel paquete,\u201d a grassroots distribution system that relies on nothing more than hard drives, thumb drives, and old-fashioned hand delivery.\n\n\u201cMy neighbor has some kid who rides by on his bike and drops off this hard drive,\u201d says Cuban-American photographer Lisette Poole, who lives in Havana. \u201cShe copies whatever she wants, then he comes and picks it up two hours later.\u201d\n\nPoole celebrates this vibrant movement in Reggaet\u00f3n. Her colorful, energetic photos show superstar reggaet\u00f3neros like Jacob Forever and Chacal y Yakarta in the studio, meeting fans, and singing for thousands of people at county fairs and elite nightclubs. \u201cCubans love to express themselves and have fun and really dance,\u201d Poole says. \u201cThe reggaet\u00f3n scene is part of that self-expression.\u201d\n\nReggaet\u00f3n started in Panama in the 1970s, and spread to Cuba in the early 2000s with the release of albums like Cubanito 20.02\u2019s Soy Cubanito. The government found the entire genre, with its overtly sexual lyrics, vulgar and demeaning and banned it in 2012. It eased up a bit in the years since, but still prohibits reggaet\u00f3n artists from appearing on most state-run TV and radio or recording in state-run studios. El Paquete (\u201cthe packet\u201d) became the only way for reggaet\u00f3neros to reach adoring fans. \u201cThat\u2019s how this music has been able to gain such popularity without having access to TV or radio,\u201d Poole says.\n\nOr much access to the internet. Less than 30 percent of Cubans are online, and those who are usually surf the web at public hotspots in parks. They pay about $1.50 an hour\u2014a hefty sum in a nation where most people earn around $25 a month, and the government monitors online activity. El paquete started in Havana in 2008. Each Saturday, one terabyte of music, TV shows, and even commercials hits the street. A network of 300 vendors pays $20 apiece to copy the data onto hard drives. Couriers deliver the drives to hundreds of customers, who pay anywhere from $5 to $15 to download the content, which they sell to some three million people throughout the country.\n\nPoole moved to Cuba in 2014 and noticed reggaet\u00f3n\u2019s influence everywhere. Young people sport similar haircuts (long on top, shaved on the sides), tight pants, and oversized t-shirts just like their favorite reggaet\u00f3neros. The music even infects the language. Lyrics like \u201chasta se seque el malecon\u201d (\u201cuntil the seafront dries up\u201d), from a hit song by Jacob Forever, became a common expression on the street. \u201cIt kinda means, \u2018This party goes all night,\u2019 or, \u2018This will go on forever,\u2019\u201d Poole says. She began collecting songs from the packet and shooting concerts in the spring of 2015. By fall, she was following reggaet\u00f3n bands on tour and visiting them in their homes and studios.\n\nHer magnetic images capture the infectious energy and electricity of reggaet\u00f3n. Producers hole up in studios laying down the latest track. A music video shoot fills a busy city street. Artists perform on stage, half-illuminated by strobe lights and obscured in smoke while screaming fans claw at their feet. Everyone is lost in the beat. Even Poole is addicted. \u201cRight now I like this new guy Harrison\u2019s song \u2018Onaonao,'\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019d hear it and go, \u2018What the heck?\u2019 But it grows on you when you\u2019ve been here for a while.\u201d\n\nPoole\u2019s short documentary film, Reggaet\u00f3n Revolution: Cuba in the Digital Era, is playing at the Norwegian Embassy in Havana March 31st.\n\nUPDATE: 13:43 03/30/17: A caption originally stated it cost 10 Cuban pesos for a concert. It is actually 10 Cuban convertible pesos. A quote was also updated for clarification.","Most people hit the beach to relax and soak up the sun. Hainan offers an added attraction: the cleanest air in all of China. Folks like it so much that one startup claims to have sold 500,000 bottles of the stuff in smog-shrouded cities like Beijing and Shanghai.\n\nThe enormous tropical island is China\u2019s most popular vacation destination among Chinese looking to get away. It drew some 16 million visitors last year, many of them middle- and upper-class city dwellers seeking relief from the country\u2019s notoriously foul air.\n\n\u201cIn Beijing I couldn\u2019t see the sun behind the gray smog, but on Hainan the sky was blue,\u201d says Norwegian photographer Cicilie Andersen, who documented the island for Escape the Smog.\n\nAndersen learned about the island while planning a two-month trip to China early last year. She hoped to make time for a visit, but after a few days in Beijing and Harbin, made it a priority. \u201cI felt like I couldn\u2019t breathe. I even slept with the masks at night,\u201d she says. Andersen made the six-hour flight south.\n\nShe spent three weeks on the island, mostly in its biggest city, Haikou. She also visited Sanya, a resort city on the southern end of the island popular with the wealthy. Of all the things she saw, Andersen most enjoyed the whistle-stop bus tour she took with 25 middle-aged tourists to the island\u2019s must-see spots.\n\nEvery few hours the driver turned everyone loose on an attraction, where they all dutifully snapped selfies and bought duty-free souvenirs. The most unusual stops included a taxidermy fish museum peddling Omega-3 supplements, a mattress factory hawking pillows, and Luhuitou Park, a hotspot for wedding photos. Hundreds of primping brides dotted the coastline, flanked by bridesmaids, grooms, makeup artists, and photographers. \u201cCouples were running around everywhere, having the most intimate moments of love, surrounded by hundreds of people doing the exact same thing, and trying to have their photographers frame them alone,\u201d she says.\n\nAndersen captures the absurdity of it all with her camera. The bright, quirky photos look like vacation snapshots from a place where the sun is bright, the water is blue, and, above all, the air is clear.","Of all the places to meditate, the backseat of a yellow cab isn\u2019t ideal. And yet, the other day I found myself stuck in traffic feeling tranquil, or at least less agitated than I\u2019d usually be given the circumstances. As the firetruck next to me blared its sirens, I cradled my phone in my hands and swayed back and forth to the sounds of whooshing water and chirping birds.\n\n\u201cDirect your attention to the movement,\u201d the app Sway told me as I unconsciously sped up the rhythm of my languid to-and-fro. \u201cYou were going too slow,\u201d it prompted me a few minutes later when I accidentally dozed off. After five minutes of this repetitive motion, a gentle chime sounded, and a notification popped up telling me I had met my meditation goal for the day.\n\nSway is a new app from interaction designer Peng Cheng and Ustwo\u2019s Malmo studio that uses the phone\u2019s sensors to guide people through meditation practice. Nearly two years ago, Cheng and Ustwo built Pause, another mindfulness app, in which you use your finger to follow the path of a floating blob of pigment as it moves around your phone\u2019s screen. Sway, which is now available in the App Store for $2.99, is their second release, and its end goal is similar to Pause\u2019s. \u201cThe problem we\u2019re trying to solve is an important one,\u201d says Marcus Woxneryd, head of Ustwo Malmo. \u201cHow can we help people destress, refocus and recharge anywhere, anytime as part of their normal lives?\u201d\n\nTurns out, Ustwo and Cheng aren\u2019t the only ones trying to solve this problem. Search for \u201cmindfulness\u201d on the App Store, and you\u2019ll get more than 700 results. Many of these apps, like Headspace, Calm, and Buddify, use guided meditation, a practice that relies on an omnipresent teacher doling out specific step-by-step instructions. \u201cIt\u2019s effective,\u201d Cheng says. \u201cBut we want to create an experience where the user doesn\u2019t need a Zen master to guide them anymore.\u201d\n\nWith Sway, the phone becomes the teacher. The app uses the phone\u2019s gyroscope and accelerometer to measure a person\u2019s voluntary attention. It requires slow, consistent, and deliberate motion, whether that\u2019s swaying back and forth with the phone in your pocket or walking with intention down the street. Move at the right pace and a soothing audio mix will play over the speakers; interrupt your movement, or tilt the phone too far in one direction, and you\u2019ll get a notification urging you to refocus. \u201cIn a very simple way, we\u2019re using technology to sense whether a person is present or not,\u201d Cheng says.\n\nCheng and Woxneryd designed Sway to elicit the relaxation response, a term Harvard physician Herbert Benson coined in the 1970s to describe a physiological state in which muscles relax and blood flows more readily to the brain. \u201cOne of best ways to get to the relaxation response is slow, continuous movement,\u201d Cheng says. It\u2019s why Chinese meditation balls, Tibetan prayer wheels, even praying with a rosary can have a calming effect. It\u2019s also why Sway, which requires repetitive motion, is able to divert attention away from buzzing brains.\n\nThe trick is, once people are locked into the relaxation mode, the app is able to tell when they snap out of it. \u201cIf the user accelerates or rotates too much, the app interprets it as a lack of mindfulness\u201d Cheng says. Master the introductory three-minute sequence, and you can progress through longer periods of meditation\u2014up to 20 minutes. By training people to pay attention to their movements, Cheng hopes to give people more control over the way they think and feel. \u201cThe attention regulation loop is something new in mindfulness apps,\u201d says Annika Rose, a positive psychology specialist with the Wellbeing Collective who\u2019s studied the efficacy of wellness apps. \u201cProviding feedback to the user that then guides them through the experience and continues that loop again and again helps the meditation practice to flow without disturbing the user.\u201d\n\nWith Sway and Pause, Ustwo and Cheng are building out a roster of interactive meditation tools that contradict the notion that mindfulness and technology are pitted against each other. \u201cThey actually go hand-in-hand perfectly,\u201d Rose says. But there is currently scant empirical evidence to support that claim. A review of several hundred iPhone apps, published in 2015, concluded that while guided meditation apps may have the potential to improve users\u2019 sense of wellbeing, there remains little proof of their effectiveness in developing mindfulness.\n\nIn their own small study, Cheng and Ustwo monitored the brain activity of 10 people using Sway at a desk and at a bus stop. They concluded that the app reduced subjects\u2019 mental workload and increased relaxation during in both settings, but only at participants\u2019 desks was the difference statistically significant. Cheng admits the small number of test subjects may explain the experiment\u2019s ambiguous results; a bigger, independent study would go a long way toward validating the app\u2019s effectiveness. But speaking from my own experience, with full recognition that I\u2019m a sample size of one: Anything that makes riding in cab ride feel remotely peaceful has to have some merit to it.","NASA may have equipped its Mars Curiosity rover with an impressive array of scientific instruments, but the robot attach\u00e9\u2019s size and $2.5-billion price tag give its operators ample reason to steer clear of terrain that could jeopardize its mission. Which is a shame, because much of Mars\u2019 craggy, cave-ridden, boulder-strewn landscape is so treacherous (planetary geologists literally call it chaos terrain), that big, expensive robots like Curiosity can\u2019t risk accessing it. That\u2019s why NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory built Puffer.\n\nShort for Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot, Puffer is the agency\u2019s latest origami-inspired device. JPL has experimented previously with collapsible solar panels based on the Japanese art of folding paper. Now it\u2019s applying that craft to robots the size of a smartphone. Puffer can\u2019t match the scientific capabilities of rovers like Curiosity, or its successor, the Mars 2020 rover. But it can shapeshift, allowing it to scuttle up inclines too steep and through nooks too small for bigger robots. That\u2019s critical to exploration of the Red Planet, where some of the most science-rich places might be the hardest ones to reach.\n\n\u201cMars has caves, lava tubes, steep inclines, and overhung rocks,\u201d says JPL roboticist Jaakko Karras. \u201cIt\u2019s very adverse terrain, stuff you wouldn\u2019t want to send your only multi-billion dollar rover into.\u201d Two years ago, that fact prompted Karras to start work on Puffer. The small robot stands just seven centimeters tall, weighs 5.3 ounces (a little less than a cue ball), and would cost millions\u2014not billions\u2014to build. Its two wheels bookend a circuit board chassis, the origami-inspired construction of which allows the wheels to collapse inward, bringing the entire Puffer into a flat configuration reminiscent of a horseshoe crab.\n\nPuffer is still in development. Future versions will wear a small camera and flashlight. JPL is also currently working with Distant Focus Corporation, an Illinois optics company, on a microscope. The size of a sugar cube, it can attach to Puffer\u2019s underside and capture images of soil as it travels.\n\nThe instruments on a Puffer can\u2019t rival the abilities of the rover\u2019s. But that\u2019s okay\u2014Puffer is, technically, an instrument itself. Karras envisions sending a rover and a small fleet of 10 or so Puffers on parent-child missions, where Puffers crawl into crevices and bring scoops of dirt back to the mothership. Puffer can live recklessly: Its folding joints not only allow it to nestle into small spaces, they also let it fall and land unharmed, like a cat. \u201cThat\u2019s something we hope to exploit, getting them off cliffs without having to drive around them,\u201d Karras says.\n\nIn that light, Puffer is kind of like the GoPro of space exploration. The robot\u2019s design mirrors the shift towards miniaturization in the rest of the tech industry. The smaller gadgets get, the more places you can take them. \u201cAs we start to push to more and more distant bodies, we\u2019re going to be going in with less prior knowledge of the terrain,\u201d Karras says. \u201cHaving something like Puffer gives you greater flexibility to adapt to what you encounter.\u201d\n\nNASA has already tested Puffer on adverse terrain here on Earth, including a volcano in Antarctica. Karras says future trials will also focus on the planet\u2019s polar regions, where earth scientists can deploy a handful Puffers to see how well they fare. The expectation is that these robots could stay for months, and survive for far less money than a team of human explorers. But the real goal is the Mars 2020 mission. Karras says his team plans to have a fleet of little robots tested and ready to journey into space with the parent rover by then. \u201cThat\u2019s a good opportunity for Puffer to catch a ride to Mars.\u201d","Tinder has always lived on your phone. The dating app, which seduced tens of millions of users with its delightfully simple right-swipe, didn\u2019t just have a mobile experience, it was a mobile experience. That changes today, with the release of a browser-based applet the company calls Tinder Online.\n\nWhen it arrives in the US later this year (the company is now testing it in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia, where users with weak cellular connections will finally be able to use Tinder from a desktop), Tinder Online will look a lot like the mobile version. But the company\u2019s designers made some changes to the interface, starting with the swipe. The gesture you\u2019re used to is gone; now, users either click and drag or tap their keyboards\u2019 arrow keys to flip through potential matches. There\u2019s also more emphasis on conversations. A message panel now fills a third of the desktop screen at all times. It\u2019s a small change with big implications: By prompting people to talk more and swipe less, Tinder Online encourages users to temper their snap judgements with some genuine connections.\n\nDoing so means messing with Tinder\u2019s winning formula. \u201cThe ease of swiping, that\u2019s central to its success,\u201d says Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. But what comes after the swipe matters, too. To hook a person, Eyal says you need four things: trigger, action, reward, and investment. In the case of mobile Tinder, the trigger is loneliness, boredom, or your libido, and the action is the swipe. \u201cIt loads the next trigger, because when you swipe right hopefully you\u2019ll bring a notification for a match,\u201d Eyal says. That match is the reward (humans really like rewards), and the investment is the message you send.\n\nTinder Online attempts to rewrite this cycle by bringing conversations front and center. On Tinder\u2019s mobile interface, matches and messages live on different screens, which has a direct effect on how people use the app. \u201cWe see patterns of people going on swipe sprees, where they\u2019re really engrossed in evaluating people. Then once you\u2019ve queued up matches you take a break and have conversations,\u201d says Samantha Stevens, the product manager for Tinder Online. Divorcing matches from messages also affects the quality of user interactions. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to have more generic conversations when you\u2019re not looking at someone\u2019s information and what they stand for,\u201d Stevens says. This makes a non-committal \u201cwyd\u201d easier to fire off than a question you might ask of a person you\u2019d like to know.\n\nWhich brings us back to the trigger-action-reward-investment cycle. With Tinder Online, the trigger is still loneliness or libido. But now, instead of going on a swiping spree, maybe you send a message. Suddenly, rather than another match, the reward is a meaningful reply; and the investment is now continuing the conversation, not just starting one. With a tweak of its user interface, Tinder could remap your trigger from a desire for more matches to a desire for more dialogue. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Tinder\u2019s strategy here was to get people interested in longer term partnerships,\u201d Eyal says.\n\nThat\u2019s good for Tinder\u2019s business. For all the people who turn to Tinder for superficial hookups, there are countless stories about people who found love on the app. That kind of publicity acts as testimonial for people in search of serious relationships, who might prefer sites like OkCupid or eHarmony. So far, Tinder hasn\u2019t done much to encourage that kind of seriousness\u2014stories of married couples who met on Tinder are almost always cast as unlikely ones. But Desktop Tinder might. By weaning people off the swipe, it could nudge them into taking Tinder\u2014and by proxy, Tinder users\u2014a little more seriously.","Hillary Clinton may not have been the only Trump opponent who came into the sights of Russian hackers during the 2016 election. According to testimony in a Senate hearing today, so did one of President Trump\u2019s Republican primary adversaries: Senator Marco Rubio.\n\nIn a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio revealed for the first time that his campaign staffers were also targeted by hackers seemingly based in Russia. Those repeated attempts at intrusion, according to Rubio, came after he dropped out of the primary, and were unsuccessful. He added that in just the last 48 hours, those apparent Russian attacks had targeted his staffers again.\n\n\u201cIn July 2016, shortly after I announced I\u2019d seek re-election to the US senate, former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to the internal information of my presidential campaign were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia. That effort was unsuccessful,\u201d Rubio told the hearing. \u201cI do think it\u2019s appropriate to divulge this to the committee, since a lot of this has taken a partisan tone.\u201d\n\nRubio went on to add that at 10:45am yesterday, a second attempt was made to target his staffers, also seemingly originating in Russia, also without apparent success.\n\nThe intention of the attacks Rubio describes is far from clear. Both attempted intrusions would have come months after Rubio dropped out of the presidential campaign in March of 2016. But testimony at another hearing earlier in the day also suggested that Rubio was also a target of Russian disinformation before he quit the race for president.\n\n\u201cRussia\u2019s overt media outlets sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum,\u201d said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. \u201cSenator Rubio, in my opinion, you suffered through these efforts.\u201d Watts didn\u2019t elaborate on that claim, and Rubio declined to comment on Watts\u2019 testimony in the second hearing.\n\nA US senators\u2019 staff makes a natural target for Russian hackers, especially given the breadth of previous Russian intrusions that have hit all parts of the federal government, ranging from the Department of Defense to the State Department to the White House. Later in Thursday\u2019s hearing, both Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich and Republican Senator John Cornyn said they\u2019d also been targeted with phishing emails and attempted password resets on their accounts.\n\n\u201cI would expect that nearly all of you are targeted on a near-daily basis,\u201d Kevin Mandia, the CEO of security firm FireEye, told the Senate committee.\n\nRubio\u2019s reminder of the bipartisan nature of Russian hacking comes as a parallel House of Representatives investigation into Russian meddling in the US election has reached a new frenzy of partisan bickering. In its own hearing last week, House Republicans asked almost no questions about the intentions or methodology of Russian hackers or their possible connections to the Trump campaign. Instead, they focused on how hints of those connections had leaked to the press. House Intelligence Committee Republican Chair Devin Nunes later held a press conference focused on the surveillance of the Trump campaign\u2014which Trump has referred to as illegal wiretapping\u2014and briefed Trump himself on the matter without consulting the rest of the committee. He then cancelled a previously scheduled open hearings related to Russian collusion. (The New York Times reported Thursday that Nunes\u2019 information on how Trump\u2019s staffers were swept up in routine foreign surveillance was actually given to him by White House officials.)\n\nI would expect that nearly all of you are targeted on a near-daily basis. FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia\n\nThe Senate, for its part, has vowed to run a more focused and objective inquiry. \u201cThis investigation\u2019s scope will go wherever the intelligence leads,\u201d Senate intelligence committee Republican chair Richard Burr said in a press conference Wednesday.\n\nThe FBI also continues to conduct its own investigation, which includes an active probe into whether members of Trump\u2019s campaign staff colluded with Russia operatives to sabotage the Clinton campaign. FBI Director James Comey has remained tightlipped about details though, declining to answer dozens of questions from Congress about the investigation as he testified at last week\u2019s hearing.\n\nRubio\u2019s remarks on his targeting by apparently Russian hackers isn\u2019t his first call for a unified response to those intrusions. In October of last year, he warned his fellow Republicans of the dangers of trying to capitalize on the hacks targeting the Clinton campaign. \u201cToday it is the Democrats,\u201d Rubio said. \u201cTomorrow it could be us.\u201d\n\nFormer NSA director Keith Alexander, speaking to the Senate hearing Thursday, echoed that call for unity. \u201cWhen you look at the problem and what we\u2019re facing, it\u2019s not a Republican problem, it\u2019s not a Democrat problem,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cThis is an American problem, and we all have to come together to solve it.\u201d","If you\u2019d heard of representative Devin Nunes before this week, you\u2019re either from his California district or you pay closer than average attention to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which he leads. In that capacity, Nunes also heads up the House investigation into Russian\u2019s interference in last year\u2019s presidential election, as well as any ties between Russia and Trump or his colleagues.\n\nBut last week, Nunes grabbed far more headlines than usual. Wednesday, he held an extraordinary, impromptu news conference. President Trump and his associates, Nunes declared, had been caught up in surveillance by US intelligence agencies. Nunes then rushed to the White House to share the information in person. It was a remarkable breach of protocol\u2014one that, like some sort of inverse Magic Eye poster, becomes more confusing the longer you look at it. Further complicating matters is the fact that Nunes was an adviser to Trump\u2019s transition team.\n\nThe initial Nunes surveillance claims are plenty problematic on their own, and we\u2019ve discussed them before. (The short version: The kind of \u201cincidental collection\u201d Nunes described has nothing to do with direct surveillance of Trump, his associates, or Trump Tower). It\u2019s becoming increasingly clear, though, that the way Nunes came into this information, and the way he disseminated it, holds more intrigue than his original allegations.\n\nBelow, we\u2019ve cobbled together a brief timeline of the Nunes claims from last week, based on publicly available information, various reports, and statements from both Nunes and his colleagues. And while it may not say anything conclusive about Nunes\u2019 relationship with the White House\u2014and whether that tarnishes his leadership role in the Russia investigation\u2014it certainly raises plenty of questions about his objectivity and his ability to lead an independent investigation.\n\nTuesday evening: Devin Nunes takes a phone call while sharing a ride with a staffer, according to The Washington Post. After the call, he switches cars without telling his team where he\u2019s going. As a Nunes spokesperson confirmed following a later CNN report, the unscheduled trip is to the White House, where an unnamed source provides Nunes with information about incidental collection of Trump and his associates.\n\nWednesday afternoon: Nunes holds a press conference in the Capitol building outlining \u201cincidental collection\u201d of Trump and associates, as well as their \u201cunmasking,\u201d which means they were identified by name in intelligence reports. Nunes says the reports came from FISA surveillance, which means that foreign nationals who the intelligence community has eyes on either talked to or about the president-elect and his transition team at some point. There\u2019s nothing either incriminating or surprising about this.\n\nNext, Nunes visits the White House to brief Trump on the intelligence reports. Directly after, he holds another press conference, this time on the White House lawn.\n\nMeanwhile, Trump says he feels \u201csomewhat vindicated\u201d after the Nunes briefing, despite no evidence that Trump Tower was wiretapped (which is what he had claimed).\n\nShortly thereafter, representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, releases a statement clarifying that Nunes did not share his information with his colleagues prior to holding public press conferences. Schiff added that Nunes had informed him that, contrary to previous statements, \u201cmost of the names in the intercepted communications were in fact masked.\u201d\n\nWednesday evening: Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), in an MSNBC interview, calls for a select committee to investigate Russia, saying that \u201cno longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone.\u201d\n\nThursday morning: Nunes apologizes to his Intelligence Committee colleagues \u201cin a generic way,\u201d according to representative Jackie Speier (D-California), a fellow committee member. Nunes also tells the committee that they\u2019ll see the documents on Friday. (This does not happen.)\n\nThursday afternoon: A Nunes spokesperson clarifies that Nunes does not know \u201cfor sure\u201d whether Trump or his associates were on the phone calls that were being surveilled or whether they were just mentioned in conversations between two or more foreign nationals.\n\nThursday night: Appearing on Hannity on Fox News, Nunes explains his rationale for briefing Trump on sensitive information: \u201cI felt like I had a duty and obligation to tell him, because, as you know, he\u2019s taking a lot of heat in the news media,\u201d Nunes said. \u201cI think to some degree there are some things he should look at to see whether, in fact, he thinks the collection was proper or not.\u201d\n\nFriday morning: Nunes cancels a planned open Intelligence Committee hearing that was to feature former ODNI head James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan, and former deputy attorney general Sally Yates. Schiff calls it an \u201cattempt to choke off public info.\u201d\n\nSeparately, representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, confirms that Nunes has not showed them the intelligence reports as promised, adding that \u201cit looks like [Nunes is] running his own intelligence service at this point.\u201d\n\nMonday morning: A Nunes spokesperson says Nunes met his source at the White House last week \u201cin order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source.\u201d That\u2019s apparently referring to a SCIF, a protected room used to share classified materials. But the need for a SCIF doesn\u2019t explain the use of the White House; the Capitol building houses several of them and sits just 15 minutes away by car.\n\nThe spokesperson further clarifies that, \u201cbecause of classification rules, the source could not simply put the documents in a backpack and walk them over to the House Intelligence Committee space.\u201d That also seems unlikely, given that someone with access to that level of confidential documents would in most cases also be cleared to take them from one location to another.\n\nMonday night: Schiff officially calls on Nunes to recuse himself.\n\nTuesday morning: Appearing on the Today show, senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) colorfully derides Nunes as running an \u201cInspector Clouseau investigation,\u201d referring to the bumbling detective in the Pink Panther series.\n\nLater Tuesday morning, Nunes declines to recuse himself from the investigation. When pressed on Democrat concerns that he\u2019s too close to Trump, Nunes responds that it \u201csounds like their problem.\u201d House Speaker Paul Ryan also said he saw no reason for Nunes to step aside.\n\nWednesday morning: Nunes shifts blame to the Democrats, saying: \u201cWe\u2019re beginning to figure out who\u2019s actually serious about the investigation because it appears like the Democrats aren\u2019t really serious about this investigation.\u201d Democrats on the panel respond by noting that it was Nunes who canceled a previously scheduled open panel scheduled with no explanation and no apparent intent to reschedule.\n\nThursday afternoon: The New York Times reports that National Security Council senior director for intelligence Ezra Cohen-Watnick and White House national security lawyer Michael Ellis provided Nunes the intelligence documents, indicating a direct thread between the administration and the original news conference. At his daily press briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer declines to comment, saying he chooses to focus more on the \u201csubstance\u201d than the \u201cprocess.\u201d\n\nThis post will continue to be updated as the Nunes situation evolves.","As the internet continues to limp toward better security, sites have increasingly embraced HTTPS encryption. You\u2019ve seen it around, including here on WIRED; it\u2019s that little green padlock in the upper lefthand corner, and it keeps outside eyes from snooping on the details of your time online. Today, the biggest porn site on the planet announced that it\u2019s joining those secured ranks. Pornhub\u2019s locking it down, and that\u2019s a bigger deal than you\u2019d think.\n\nOn April 4, both Pornhub and its sister site, YouPorn, will turn on HTTPS by default across the entirety of both sites. By doing so, they\u2019ll make not just adult online entertainment more secure, but a sizable chunk of the internet itself.\n\nThe Pornhub announcement comes at an auspicious time. Congress this week affirmed the power of cable providers to sell user data, while as of a few weeks ago more than half the web had officially embraced HTTPS. Encryption doesn\u2019t solve your ISP woes altogether\u2014they\u2019ll still know that you were on Pornhub\u2014but it does make it much harder to know what exactly you\u2019re looking at while you\u2019re there.\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019re visiting sites that allow HTTPS, you don\u2019t have to worry so much about what they\u2019re doing to observe your traffic,\u201d says Joseph Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights group that has offered HTTPS assistance to the adult industry, but was not part of Pornhub or YouPorn\u2019s switch. That\u2019s especially important for porn sites, and not just for prudes. In countries and cultures where homosexuality is considered a crime, for instance, encryption can be critical.\n\nTo get a sense of just how big this Pornhub news is, though, it helps to get a sense of Pornhub\u2019s size.\n\nTraffic Hub\n\nIt can be hard to keep porn sites straight, since so many of them sound like parodies to begin with, and mostly seem to follow the same basic rubric. Pornhub stands out, though, as not just the biggest adult site in the world, but one of the biggest sites over all.\n\nJust how much traffic flows through Pornhub on any given day? Try 75 million daily visitors. According to Alexa site rankings, that makes it the 38th largest website overall, sliding in one slot below Ebay. It\u2019s bigger than WordPress. It\u2019s bigger than Tumblr. It\u2019s only a few spots down from Netflix. It\u2019s a behemoth.\n\nYouPorn\u2019s no slouch either; it cracks the Alexa top 300, and serves a billion (with a b) video views every month.\n\nIn fact, that both Pornhub and YouPorn are predominantly video-based makes their HTTPS transition all the more consequential\u2014and difficult. There are plenty of challenges to HTTPS implementation, but among the biggest is that it requires any content coming in from the outside\u2014like third-party ads\u2014to be HTTPS compliant. For a video-heavy site, there\u2019s the added challenge of finding a content delivery network\u2014the companies that own the servers that shuttle web pages and videos across the great wide internet\u2014\u2014that\u2019s willing to take on that volume of encrypted video.\n\n\u201cFinding CDN providers to handle the massive amount of traffic, but also stream through HTTPS is never easy,\u201d says Pornhub vice-president Corey Price. \u201cThere are few providers worldwide that can handle our levels of traffic, especially in HTTPS.\u201d Price declined to give specific names, but says that Pornhub has managed to enlist three \u201clarge CDN partners\u201d to handle the switchover.\n\nHTTPS comes with other inherent challenges as well, especially on a site of this size. Fortunately, Pornhub wasn\u2019t starting from scratch. Its parent company, MindGeek, also owns a popular adult site called RedTube, which made the transition earlier this month. And Pornhub itself had already dabbled as well, offering HTTPS for its paid Pornhub Premium service late last year.\n\n\u201cThe biggest learning was finding ways to mitigate the site speed impacts of switching to HTTPS, as many of the techniques we used don\u2019t have the same effect with HTTPS,\u201d says Price.\n\nEncrypt It All\n\nOn its own, Pornhub\u2019s HTTPS embrace will secure a significant portion of the web literally overnight. It also has broader importance, though.\n\nFirst, it\u2019s part of MindGeek\u2019s commitment to rolling out HTTPS across all of its properties. That\u2019s over 100 million unique visitors every single day that will eventually enjoy a secure connection. Facebook nets 200 million in a month. The only question is when, not if, that\u2019s going to happen.\n\n\u201cAll properties are managed independently with different engineering teams,\u201d says Price. \u201cEach team always faces different challenges as each site is an entirely different codebase. Some features and changes can take a couple of hours to do on Pornhub, but take weeks on YouPorn, and vice-versa.\u201d\n\nMore significantly, it signals that encryption has become the norm on the web. Broad HTTPS adoption is great, but nothing beats concentrated implementation among the very biggest sites.\n\n\u201cThe reason that a lot of us are focused on the top 100 websites is because so much of web traffic is represented by those sites,\u201d says Hall. \u201cRight now we\u2019re at 50 percent of all web browser connections on HTTPS. If we were to get the top 100, that would easily get to 80 or 90 percent.\u201d\n\nThat\u2019s still a ways off. But on April 4, two sites will keep the internet that much safer from all kinds of prying eyes.","This was one hell of a year, with no end of important stories. WIRED traveled the world covering hundreds of stories, from celebrating the triumph of AI over an ancient game to exploring how ISIS mastered social media to meeting a woman with no autobiographical memory. We even convinced President Obama to guest-edit an entire issue.\n\nBut we know you\u2019re busy. You\u2019ve got jobs and kids and lives, so we understand if you missed some of these features. Not to worry. Our editors choose a handful of stories that we believe reflect our very best work.\n\nSo now that you\u2019ve cleaned up the last of the wrapping paper and you\u2019ve got a little time to relax, pour yourself a glass of something nice and settle in with our favorite WIRED longreads of 2016.","From time to time you\u2019ll find on WIRED a link to buy a product from Amazon.com. If you choose to click the URL will contain a small code that\u2019s unique to links from our website. This is an affiliate code, and it sends our company a small percentage of the money you spend. This does not mean we are indebted to Amazon, nor does it mean we\u2019re favoring some products or companies over others. Let us be very clear: WIRED is committed to covering Amazon and other companies objectively.\n\nWIRED\u2019s editorial team has nothing to do with the affiliate program, which functions entirely separate from the editorial process. Our business team brokered the arrangement with Amazon, and our publishing system adds the appropriate code when it detects an Amazon purchase link. WIRED\u2019s editorial news team has nothing to do with the affiliate program. Our ad sales team brokered the arrangement, which functions independently of our editorial and newsgathering process. Reporters and editors are not asked to write about products available on Amazon, and do not benefit from doing so.\n\nThat said, affiliate links are quickly becoming the industry standard in online publishing, and they offer another means of paying for the high-quality journalism you expect from WIRED. However, if you object to this process, we\u2019ll help you opt out. Here\u2019s how to remove an Amazon affiliate code from a WIRED URL:\n\nRight-click the link in question and select \u201cCopy Link\u201d\n\nPaste the link in your browser\u2019s URL field. Then highlight and delete the ?tag=w050b-20 portion.\n\nSo this:\n\nBecomes this:\n\nYou\u2019re done!","At the center of S-Town, the new podcast from the team behind Serial, lies a maze. Well, two mazes. The first is an elaborate hedge maze on a plot of land in rural Woodstock, Alabama, meticulously maintained by a reclusive antique horologist named John B. McLemore. The second maze is S-Town itself\u2014specifically, the labyrinth of lies and mystery that McLemore drew host Brian Reed into when he called the This American Life producer back in 2013.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a story about [McLemore], and a potential murder he wanted me to look into,\u201d says Reed. \u201cBut the story shifted dramatically while I was reporting it, and becomes something I couldn\u2019t have imagined at the beginning.\u201d By the end of the first episode, Reed gives up on the murder investigation; by the end of the second episode, one of the main characters has\u2026well, you\u2019ll get there. At that point, the podcast really takes a left turn, and turns into a different mystery altogether: a treasure hunt for a rumored fortune in buried gold, featuring foreboding sundial inscriptions, conniving Floridian cousins, and a small-town lawyer named Boozer Downs. It\u2019s a journey that may leave listeners stumbling and disoriented\u2013and that\u2019s exactly what Serial Productions intended.\n\nIn 2014, Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Ira Glass proved that podcasts could be appointment-listening. Millions tuned into Serial\u2018s true-crime investigation as soon as new episodes dropped Thursday mornings. With S-Town\u2014which, as we learned today with the podcast\u2019s official release, is actually called Shittown\u2014the trio is imagining a new form for the podcast: seven bingeable episodes that function as chapters. \u201cWith Serial, we were experimenting with using television as a model,\u201d says Snyder, co-creator of Serial and executive producer of Shittown. \u201cWith this one, we looked to novels.\u201d\n\nWelcome to Twin Peaks, Alabama\n\nWhile Shittown boasts the seamless audio production of Serial, it\u2019s tonally a very different beast\u2014equal parts Twin Peaks-style quirky-small-town portraiture and the unsettling Southern Gothic of Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s Wise Blood. In fact, When Reed first arrives in Woodstock, McLemore (who gives his home the name \u201cShittown\u201d) gives him bedtime reading to better understand the place: not a history book or the local newspaper, but short stories by Faulkner and Shirley Jackson.\n\nFor a podcast company looking to experiment with form, this story provided a perfect opportunity to go literary. \u201cIn a novel, you\u2019re entering into a hermetic world,\u201d says Snyder. \u201cThat\u2019s what we were trying to do, that we hadn\u2019t yet done with a podcast: where you can enter their specific world, and you don\u2019t know really know what it\u2019s about or where it\u2019s going, but hopefully you\u2019re compelled to stay in it the whole time.\u201d\n\nMuch of Serial\u2018s gotta-hear-it appeal hinged on plot-driven cliffhangers; with Shittown, though, you keep listening not for hopes of resolution, but to figure out what exactly is happening. \u201cWe can take our time, and wander for a while,\u201d says Reed. \u201cWhen a novel starts talking about a character, you just trust that you\u2019re reading a novel, and that\u2019s what they do\u2014we thought, maybe we can make a podcast that way.\u201d\n\nThat confidence that an audience will continue to listen is a privilege unique to the Serial pedigree. Other well-known brands have also released full-season podcast drops\u2014ESPN\u2019s Dunkumentaries and New York Magazine\u2019s recent music issue among them\u2014but there\u2019s never been a high-profile full-season release of a narrative show. In a novel, readers might accept perspective-switching or a chapters that focus on a single character, but those sorts of formal devices haven\u2019t wormed their way into a popular podcast. Then again, there haven\u2019t been many podcasts that have stayed on the top iTunes charts for weeks purely on the strength of a three-minute preview, the way Shittown has.\n\nMuch of that, of course, is due to Serial Productions\u2019 pedigree; it\u2019s easier to try something risky when you\u2019ve already established a loyal fan base. Snyder recognizes the creative freedom of their success, and plans to take advantage of it in the next two podcasts in the pipeline from Serial, which boasts an editorial staff including Ira Glass, Sarah Koenig, and Mystery Show\u2019s Starlee Kine. \u201cWhen we released Serial weekly, we didn\u2019t do it with any intention that the best way to listen to this story is week-by-week,\u201d says Snyder. \u201cWe only did it that way because both Sarah [Koenig] and I had worked at This American Life [which releases a weekly show] for 15 years.\u201d But she learned a lesson from the show\u2019s sustainable and fervent listenership: If you tell a story well, you can tailor the form to the content. \u201cYou could do a nonfiction radio essay, that is also anecdotal and compelling\u2014I\u2019m hoping we could try something like that next,\u201d she says.\n\nIn his first phone calls with Reed, McLemore gave the producer a specific mission: to \u201ccome down to this pathetic little Baptist shit town and blow it off the map.\u201d Shittown doesn\u2019t expose Woodstock as the excrement-laden land of \u201cproleptic decay and decrepitude\u201d described by its hedge-maze proprietor, but its novelistic approach does offer listeners one winding way into the maze of McLemore\u2019s preoccupations\u2014and one more path for what a podcast can be.","Chia-Chiunn Ho was eating lunch inside Facebook headquarters, at the Full Circle Cafe, when he saw the notice on his phone: Larry Zitnick, one of the leading figures at the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab, was teaching another class on deep learning.\n\nHo is a 34-year-old Facebook digital graphics engineer known to everyone as \u201cSolti,\u201d after his favorite conductor. He couldn\u2019t see a way of signing up for the class right there in the app. So he stood up from his half-eaten lunch and sprinted across MPK 20, the Facebook building that\u2019s longer than a football field but feels like a single room. \u201cMy desk is all the way at the other end,\u201d he says. Sliding into his desk chair, he opened his laptop and surfed back to the page. But the class was already full.\n\nInternet giants have vacuumed up most of the available AI talent\u2014and they need more.\n\nHe\u2019d been shut out the first time Zitnick taught the class, too. This time, when the lectures started in the middle of January, he showed up anyway. He also wormed his way into the workshops, joining the rest of the class as they competed to build the best AI models from company data. Over the next few weeks, he climbed to the top of the leaderboard. \u201cI didn\u2019t get in, so I wanted to do well,\u201d he says. The Facebook powers-that-be are more than happy he did. As anxious as Solti was to take the class\u2014a private set of lectures and workshops open only to company employees\u2014Facebook stands to benefit the most.\n\nDeep learning is the technology that identifies faces in the photos you post to Facebook. It also recognizes commands spoken into Google phones, translates foreign languages on Microsoft\u2019s Skype app, and wrangles porn on Twitter, not to mention the way it\u2019s changing everything from internet search and advertising to cybersecurity. Over the last five years, this technology has radically shifted the course of all the internet\u2019s biggest operations.\n\nWith help from Geoff Hinton, one of the founding fathers of the deep learning movement, Google built a central AI lab that feeds the rest of the company. Then it paid more than $650 million for DeepMind, a second lab based in London. Another founding father, Yann LeCun, built a similar operation at Facebook. And so many other deep learning startups and academics have flooded into so many other companies, drawn by enormous paydays.\n\nThe problem: These companies have now vacuumed up most of the available talent\u2014and they need more. Until recently, deep learning was a fringe pursuit even in the academic world. Relatively few people are formally trained in these techniques, which require a very different kind of thinking than traditional software engineering. So, Facebook is now organizing formal classes and longterm research internships in an effort to build new deep learning talent and spread it across the company. \u201cWe have incredibly smart people here,\u201d Zitnick says. \u201cThey just need the tools.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile, just down the road from Facebook\u2019s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, Google is doing much the same, apparently on an even larger scale, as so many other companies struggle to deal with the AI talent vacuum. David Elkington, CEO of Insidesales, a company that applies AI techniques to online sales services, says he\u2019s now opening an outpost in Ireland because he can\u2019t find the AI and data science talent he needs here in the States. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an art than a science,\u201d he says. And the best practitioners of that art are very expensive.\n\nIn the years to come, universities will catch up with the deep learning revolution, producing far more talent than they do today. Online courses from the likes of Udacity and Coursera are also spreading the gospel. But the biggest internet companies need a more immediate fix.\n\nSeeing the Future\n\nLarry Zitnick, 42, is a walking, talking, teaching symbol of how quickly these AI techniques have ascended\u2014and how valuable deep learning talent has become. At Microsoft, he spent a decade working to build systems that could see like humans. Then, in 2012, deep learning techniques eclipsed his ten years of research in a matter of months.\n\nIn essence, researchers like Zitnick were building machine vision one tiny piece at time, applying very particular techniques to very particular parts of the problem. But then academics like Geoff Hinton showed that a single piece\u2014a deep neural network\u2014could achieve far more. Rather than code a system by hand, Hinton and company built neural networks that could learn tasks largely on their own by analyzing vast amounts of data. \u201cWe saw this huge step change with deep learning,\u201d Zitnick says. \u201cThings started to work.\u201d\n\nFor Zitnick, the personal turning point came one afternoon in the fall of 2013. He was sitting in a lecture hall at the University of California, Berkeley, listening to a PhD student named Ross Girshick describe a deep learning system that could learn to identify objects in photos. Feed it millions of cat photos, for instance, and it could learn to identify a cat\u2014actually pinpoint it in the photo. As Girshick described the math behind his method, Zitnick could see where the grad student was headed. All he wanted to hear was how well the system performed. He kept whispering: \u201cJust tell us the numbers.\u201d Finally, Girshick gave the numbers. \u201cIt was super-clear that this was going to be the way of the future,\u201d Zitnick says.\n\nWithin weeks, he hired Girshick at Microsoft Research, as he and the rest of the company\u2019s computer vision team reorganized their work around deep learning. This required a sizable shift in thinking. As a top researcher once told me, creating these deep learning systems is more like being a coach than a player. Rather than building a piece of software on your own, one line of code at a time, you\u2019re coaxing a result from a sea of information.\n\nBut Girshick wasn\u2019t long for Microsoft. And neither was Zitnick. Soon, Facebook poached them both\u2014and almost everyone else on the team.\n\nThis demand for talent is the reason Zitnick is now teaching a deep learning class at Facebook. And like so many other engineers and data scientists across Silicon Valley, the Facebook rank and file are well aware of the trend. When Zitnick announced the first class in the fall, the 60 spots filled up in ten minutes. He announced a bigger class this winter, and it filled up nearly as quickly. There\u2019s demand for these ideas on both sides of the equation.\n\nThere\u2019s also demand among tech reporters. I took the latest class myself, though Facebook wouldn\u2019t let me participate in the workshops on my own. That would require access to the Facebook network. The company believes in education, but only up to a point. Ultimately, all this is about business.\n\nGoing Deep\n\nThe class begins with the fundamental idea: the neural network, a notion that researchers like Frank Rosenblatt explored with as far back as the late 1950s. The conceit is that a neural net mimics the web of neuron in the brain. And in a way, it does. It operates by sending information between processing units, or nodes, that stand in for neurons. But these nodes are really just linear algebra and calculus that can identify patterns in data.\n\nEven in the `50s, it worked. Rosenblatt, a professor of psychology at Cornell, demonstrated his system for the New Yorker and the New York Times, showing that it could learn to identify changes in punchcards fed into an IBM 704 mainframe. But the idea was fundamentally limited\u2014it could only solve very small problems\u2014and in the late \u201960s, when MIT\u2019s Marvin Minsky published a book that proved these limitations, the AI community all but dropped the idea. It returned to the fore only after academics like Hinton and LeCun expanded these system so they could operate across multiple layers of nodes. That\u2019s the \u201cdeep\u201d in deep learning.\n\nAs Zitnick explains, each layer makes a calculation and passes it to the next. Then, using a technique called \u201cback propagation,\u201d the layers send information back down the chain as a means of error correction. As the years went by and technology advanced, neural networks could train on much larger amounts of data using much larger amounts of computing power. And they proved enormously useful. \u201cFor the first time ever, we could take raw input data like audio and images and make sense of them,\u201d Zitnick told his class, standing at a lectern inside MPK 20, the south end of San Francisco Bay framed in the window beside him.\n\n\u2018We have incredibly smart people here. They just need the tools.\u2019 Larry Zitnick\n\nAs the class progresses and the pace picks up, Zitnick also explains how these techniques evolved into more complex systems. He explores convolutional neural networks, a method inspired by the brain\u2019s visual cortex that groups neurons into \u201creceptive fields\u201d arranged almost like overlapping tiles. His boss, Yann LeCun, used these to recognize handwriting way back in the early \u201990s. Then the class progresses to LSTMs\u2014neural networks that include their own short-term memory, a way of retaining one piece of information while examining what comes next. This is what helps identify the commands you speak into Android phones.\n\nIn the end, all these methods are still just math. But to understand how they work, students must visualize how they operate across time (as data passes through the neural network) and space (as those tile-like receptive fields examine each section of a photo). Applying these methods to real problems, as Zitnick\u2019s students do during the workshops, is a process of trial, error, and intuition\u2014kind of like manning the mixing console in a recording studio. You\u2019re not at a physical console. You\u2019re at a laptop, sending commands to machines in Facebook data centers across the internet, where the neural networks do their training. But you spend your time adjusting all sorts of virtual knobs\u2014the size of the dataset, the speed of the training, the relative influence of each node\u2014until you get the right mix. \u201cA lot of it is built by experience,\u201d says Angela Fan, 22, who took Zitnick\u2019s class in the fall.\n\nA New Army\n\nFan studied statistics and computer science as an undergraduate at Harvard, finishing just last spring. She took some AI courses, but many of the latest techniques are still new even to her, particularly when it comes to actually putting them into practice. \u201cI can learn just from interacting with the codebase,\u201d she says, referring to the software tools Facebook has built for this kind of work.\n\nFor her, the class was part of a much larger education. At the behest of her college professor, she applied for Facebook\u2019s \u201cAI immersion program.\u201d She won a spot working alongside Zitnick and other researchers as a kind of intern for the next year or two. Earlier this month, her team published new research describing a system that takes the convolutional neural networks that typically analyze photos and uses them to build better AI models for understanding natural language\u2014that is, how humans talk to each other.\n\nThis kind of language research is the next frontier for deep learning. After reinventing image recognition, speech recognition, and machine translation, researchers are pushing toward machines that can truly understand what humans say and respond in kind. In the near-term, the techniques described in Fan\u2019s paper could help improve that service on your smartphone that guesses what you\u2019ll type next. She envisions a tiny neural network sitting on your phone, learning how you\u2014and just you in particular\u2014talk to other people.\n\nFor Facebook, the goal is to create an army of Angela Fans, researchers steeped not just in neural networks but a range of related technologies, including reinforcement learning\u2014the method that drove DeepMind\u2019s AlphaGo system when it cracked the ancient game of Go\u2014and other techniques that Zitnick explores as the course comes to a close. To this end, when Zitnick reprised the course this winter, Fan and other AI lab interns served as class TAs, running the workshops and answering any questions that came up over the six weeks of lectures.\n\nFacebook isn\u2019t just trying to beef its central AI lab. It\u2019s hoping to spread these skills across the company. Deep learning isn\u2019t a niche pursuit. It\u2019s a general technology that can potentially change any part of Facebook, from Messenger to the company\u2019s central advertising engine. Solti could even apply it to the creation of videos, considering that neural networks also have a talent for art. Any Facebook engineer or data scientist could benefit from understanding this AI. That\u2019s why Larry Zitnick is teaching the class. And it\u2019s why Solti abandoned his lunch.","Connected home gadgets were everywhere at CES 2017 -- we saw WiFi cameras, smart walking canes and Echo clones aplenty. But while several of them were truly innovative, there were some that made no sense at all. Just because something has Bluetooth or internet connectivity that doesn't make it useful. Even more ridiculous are devices that have voice controls when they don't actually need them. As Nick Offerman said on our Engadget stage a few days ago, sometimes the best tech is low-tech. As far as tech for tech's sake goes, here are some of the worst offenders from this year's show. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.","The XPS 13 two-in-one might be Dell's biggest laptop news at CES this year, but the company also has some major updates in store for gamers. Take the new Inspiron 7000 for one, a $799 laptop that pushes the boundaries of what you'd call a budget machine. The company's Alienware laptops are also getting another performance boost, thanks to the addition of Intel's latest seventh-generation CPUs. At first glance, the Inspiron 7000 looks like the inevitable union of Dell's consumer laptops with the Alienware lineup. Its plastic case doesn't have the many visual flourishes of its premium gaming counterpart, but the red accents around the front and rear fans make it seem like much more than a typical Inspiron. And yes, it's strange seeing elaborate heat sinks on this product line. Hardware-wise, you can choose between Intel's seventh-gen i5-7300HQ or i7-7700HQ processors and NVIDIA's GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti GPU for the Inspiron 7000. You can also opt for 1080p or 4K screens in 14-inch and 15-inch variants, as well as up to 32GB of RAM. Of course, going crazy with specs will definitely rocket you past the $799 base price, but even with its most basic hardware it'll still be a decent gaming machine. As for the refreshed Alienware hardware upgrades, you've got the option of using Intel's i7-7700HQ CPU or the i7-7820HK. And for the first time, the massive Alienware 17 can fit in NVIDIA's GTX 1080 mobile GPU. You can grab the Inspiron 7000, or any of the new Alienware models, starting on Jan. 5th.","Gatebox AI is an unusual virtual assistant that involves a projected CGI character kind-of trapped in a jar -- with voice controls! The sales pitch is that this virtual assistant will give the sensation of living with a fictional character, or according to how creator Vinclu Inc. words it, \"your heroes\". Which is fine, if your hero is a non-spectacular CGI anime character with blue hair and excessively submissive temperament. Behind the virtual idol/slave gloss, Gatebox AI's assistant functions approach a bare-bones Amazon Echo. According to the preorder site, Gatebox's debut character Hikari has the \"ultimate healing voice\" (uh huh) and the J-Pop AI will adjust to your daily rhythms, welcoming you home or sensing when you get up. According to the demo video, the CGI \"dimension traveller\" will be able to switch on your lights and other home appliances based on your movement or orders. The device includes infrared tech, meaning it should be able to talk to not-so-smart home appliances that aren't WiFi-connected. (Of course, there's WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity for anything smart you do own.) The character is made up of a two-dimensional rear projected image, and you'll be able to play other videos if you hook-up a PC to its HDMI port. When it comes to interacting with users, the Gatebox has a camera and other (unspecified) sensors to detect movement and even the owner's face. Unlike the Echo (or even Siri), you'll have to physically press the mic button on the Gatebox to talk to your rear-projected idol; the device won't just pick up your oral commands. The company admits there's only limited conversation interactions anyhow, although there's a text message-based Chatbot for Hikari if you're also not much of a talker. You'll be able to text the her, even though she isn't real. She'll get lonely if you come home late, apparently, but again, she is not real. There's a limited run of 300 Gearboxes, on preorder til mid January 2017, with delivery currently penned for December 2017. You'll have to really like the idea of a tiny trapped anime character of your own: preorders cost 298,000 yen -- which is roughly $2500. Hit up the creepy source links for more details. (She likes donuts.)","A few years ago we had all the jokes about BlackBerry and licensing, but yesterday the company reported a higher profit than analysts were expecting and says that its licensing program will expand soon. Right now, BlackBerry licenses its name and Android-based software for devices made by other companies. In December TCL announced it would be the exclusive manufacturer and distributor of BlackBerry phones in most countries, but now BlackBerry says it's pursuing \"additional endpoints.\" That could include \"tablets, wearables, medical devices, appliances, point-of-sale terminals and other smartphones.\" On the company's earnings call, CEO John Chen said (via Seeking Alpha) that \"We are now expanding to the next phase of our licensing program. This will focus on a broader set of endpoints. What this might mean, and I make no promise, is that you may soon see a BlackBerry tablet, and it will also extend to cobranded handset with IoT and Enterprise of Things to EoT devices. These endpoints will run our software and security features and be cobranded Secure by BlackBerry.\" The exec was careful not to promise anything, but it's clear where the company is going. With connected devices spreading throughout homes and offices, it feels the BlackBerry name and technology still provides a level of comfort and security. Wherever those smart devices go, a BlackBerry-branded and powered device could follow. The example Chen used was with medical devices, saying that \"companies providing medical monitoring devices must protect health data on the device, guarantee it connects securely to the healthcare system, and most importantly ensure that it cannot be hacked, BlackBerry Secure helps solve this triple threat.\" Add in the well-received KEYone that's due to launch later this month, and Chen's plan to remake the company looks like it might be moving in the right direction.","Remember the, insane record-shattering flight of a jet-powered hoverboard? UK inventor Richard Browning thought that riding on top of a jet pack wasn't crazy enough, so he strapped six kerosene-powered microjets to his arms. That transformed him into a bargain store Iron Man, helping him get off the ground in what looks like the most dangerous way ever. Each motor produces about 22kg (46 pounds) of force, so six are more than enough to heft Browning aloft. The device cost him \u00a340,000 ($50,000) to build, but some of that cost was offset thanks to investors and partners like Red Bull. \"I can just strap this on and go flying at a moment's notice,\" Browning told Techcrunch, adding that a mountain bike was more dangerous. Judging by the footage of his early trials, however, his rig \"Daedelus\" looks insane on multiple levels. Powered by kerosene jet fuel, it looks like the fiery explosion would kill you if the crash or fall didn't, judging by the videos detailing his training (below). However, Browning downplayed the danger, saying it's designed to go low and slow (walking speed and no more than 6-10 feet above ground), and uses a dead-man's switch that stops everything when not pressed. As for the kerosene, he says it's really not explosive or flammable in the relatively small quantities he uses. \"If I fell in some unimaginably bad way and somehow burst my robust fuel system, I would just leak it very slowly on the floor,\" he says. There are also at least two people on hand with fire extinguishers during each test flight, and he wears a fire-proof suit. After trying the suit with the rockets on both his legs and arms, he switched to an arms-only approach. That works well for him as an ex-Royal Marine and fitness enthusiast, but it would probably tire the average person's arms rather quickly. In comparison with Franky Zapata's Guiness World Record-setting mile-and-a-half flight, the video flights (below) are pretty disappointing. Browning does eventually fly near the ground in a warehouse, as shown in the Red Bull video below. He controls the flight just by pointing his arms, in a process he equates to riding a bike. \"If you let go, your brain does the rest.\" Browning recently added a Sony-built heads-up display that can show fuel levels. Prior to that, he had to ask family members to feel the back-mounted tank \"and judge by their facial expression\" how much was left, he told Wired. The aim is to eventually build a device that could be used by rescue or military personnel, but for now Browning is just doing exhibitions, perfecting the device and hopefully staying in one piece while doing so. Browning's even building a miniature, drone-powered model for his kids, too. As such, he really should rethink the name of his jet-powered craft -- Daedelus is the mythic Greek father of the original flying man and famous crash-and-burn victim, Icarus.","YouTube has had community-sourced subtitle translations since 2015, but they're only useful if people can find the videos in the first place... what about labeling the videos? You now have a chance to help. The internet video service has expanded its Community Contributions to let you translate video titles and descriptions, not just captions. If you think a video in your preferred language would be helpful elsewhere in the world, you don't have to ask the clip creator to do you a favor. The user-powered tools could be important to spreading YouTube's international reach. There are 76 languages in use on the site, but those groups exist in relative isolation from each other. You probably won't search for videos in Korean if you only know Hindi, for instance. If all goes well, the community translations will expose you to a raft of videos that you'd otherwise have never seen, regardless of your native tongue.","Today's SpaceX launch will be logged in the history books as the first time a flight-proven orbital class rocket has successfully been relaunched and returned to Earth. \"We just had an incredible day today,\" CEO Elon Musk said after the first stage Falcon 9 rocket made a clean landing \"right in the bullseye\" on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You. \"This is gonna be ultimately a huge revolution in spaceflight,\" Musk said. \"It's been 15 years to get to this point. I'm sort of at a loss for words. It's been a great day for SpaceX and space exploration as a whole.\" Stage 1 of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched today was first used to boost a Dragon vehicle on a supply run to the International Space Station. The same rocket was also the first to successfully land on SpaceX's drone barge. The first stage represents about 80 percent of the cost of a rocket launch, so when Musk describes the next era in space exploration, he is referring to the new opportunities that will come with the significant cost savings. Falcon 9 first stage has landed on Of Course I Still Love You \u2014 world's first reflight of an orbital class rocket. Meanwhile, the SES-10 vehicle that topped today's rocket launch will go on to a geostationary orbit where it will deliver direct-to-home broadcasting, broadband and mobile services in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.","Video game movies tend to struggle in part because of their stories. What sounds good for an adventure or first-person shooter can fall flat when you're asked to construct a cinematic narrative around it. However, you might get something better this time around. Variety has learned that We Happy Few, Compulsion Games' paranoia-fueled tale of an English town gone terribly wrong, is becoming a movie. The company behind the Pitch Perfect movies, Gold Circle Entertainment, is working with dj2 Entertainment (also working on the Sleeping Dogs movie) to make it a reality. There's still a lot up in the air. The team doesn't even have writers, let alone a cast. Compulsion believes the producers have good ideas for maintaining the \"menace, dark humor and central themes\" of the survival horror title, however, and dj2 says it'll stay \"true to the source material\" while including a few surprises. There's good reason to be skeptical, since game-based movies only rarely get top-flight screenwriting and acting talent. However, We Happy Few at least has a concept that's well-suited to the big screen. Its alternate history plot, where people are forced to take a mind-altering drug to hide a sinister truth, shares something common with popular movies that revolve around the \"town with a dark secret\" premise -- think The Wicker Man or even Hot Fuzz. That's a good platform to build on, then. The big challenge is evoking the spirit of those classics without either being overly derivative or diluting what makes the game special.","By their very nature, most augmented reality games are at least a little bit futuristic. The creators of Archer, however, are embracing the past... in more ways than one. FXX's Archer, P.I. mobile game will have you pointing your Android or iOS device at your TV, Facebook and even billboards to scan for clues to a hidden story inside Archer: Dreamland, the film noir-inspired eighth season for the animated series. If you want to claim your rewards and unlock every mystery, though, you'll also have to print and assemble physical objects based on what you see in the show. That's right -- if you've welcomed the paperless future with open arms, you won't get everything the story has to offer. It'll seem more than a little odd at first blush, and it's hard to say how well this will work when Archer resumes on April 5th. But to the creators, it's just a logical extension of what they've been doing so far. Executive producer Matt Thompson tells Uproxx that his team wanted to up the ante on the previous two seasons, which offered digital rewards (a website and a 3D printer file) for fans willing to look closely at every scene. Now, you're not constructing prizes so much as you are an entirely distinct narrative. While the printer element may be a throwback for some people, it only makes sense if you're an avid viewer hoping for a souvenir at the end of the season.","Apple may have scrapped its rumored March press event, but fortunately, we were able to count on Samsung for some good old-fashioned spectacle. Actually, by the company's standards, Wednesday's Galaxy S8 launch in New York was fairly tame: There was no orchestra onstage, and attendees looking for VR headsets underneath their seats were left empty-handed. Instead, we got the heavily leaked Galaxy S8 (and S8+), along with a healthy dose of humility -- yes, Samsung is still very sorry about those exploding Note 7s. All told, the phones themselves look promising, with nearly bezel-less displays that make the devices easier to hold than their 5.8- and 6.2-inch screen sizes would have you believe. Samsung's face-recognizing personal assistant Bixby looks interesting too, though we're gonna call BS on the company's pitch that these devices represent a fresh form factor for phones -- they're still just boxes, guys. Oh, and can Samsung succeed where other companies have failed, and make phone-powered desktops a thing? Only time will tell, but suffice to say, we have some questions. There was so much happening at Samsung's one-hour press event that you may have missed, well, lots of other things going on this week. Just a few hours before the Samsung event, the first reviews of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update hit the internet. We're especially excited about built-in game streaming and some new Edge browser features, but you might end up downloading it just for Paint 3D. Meanwhile, in more sobering news, Democrats pushed the issue of cybersecurity, and the Trump administration claimed coal can be a form of clean energy. Don't want to think about politics, hackers and smoke clouds as you kick off the weekend? Here, check out this video from our Rock Band VR review, and make sure you keep watching to the very end. -- Dana Wollman, Executive Editor SlowlyAndroid Wear 2.0 is rolling out to a few more devices After a brief delay, the new version of Android for wearables is hitting more smartwatches. The Polar M600, Nixon Mission, Fossil Q Wander, Fossil Q Marshal and Michael Kors Access join the Fossil Q Founder, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 and TAG Heuer Connected on the update list that so many other older devices will never join. Hopefully, your wristwear is on the list, though, because it looks like version 2.0 is worth the wait. That's one way to fix the problemTwitter is changing its default profile pic Twitter had the idea that new users would \"hatch\" into birds -- like its logo -- before sending tweets, so it made the default profile image an egg. Unfortunately, over the years, anonymous trolls have associated the egg with every kind of hate and filth you can imagine, and probably some you can't. Now Twitter is adjusting the head and shoulders of its default pic to be more inclusive and assigning a neutral gray color scheme to give them less prominence. A special kind of crazyMeet bargain-store 'Iron Man' UK inventor Richard Browning strapped six kerosene-powered microjets to his arms and took flight -- sort of. His suit flies low and slow, and while that may not quite meet the bar of a Marvel movie special effect, Browning claims it's safe. Moore's Law will continueIntel: Our next chips will be a 'generation ahead' of Samsung Intel's 10nm \"Cannon Lake\" chips have hit some delays, but it's still confident that when they arrive, it will outpace the competition from Samsung and TSMC. With \"hyper scaling\" that will allow for more transistors, it expects to produce CPUs with 25 percent faster performance than current Kaby Lake chips, and 45 percent lower power use. It worksSpaceX stuck the landing with a reusable rocket ICYMI, this week SpaceX proved its model works -- by launching and landing a previously-used orbital rocket booster. Relive the breakthrough right here. The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe.","You'll probably have to get used to the idea of Twitch streaming a bunch of Amazon Prime Video shows. Starting at 4PM Eastern on April 5th, three of Prime Video's spring pilots will air on repeat for 24 hours on the Twitch Presents page, which just finished showing 23 seasons of Power Rangers. The first episodes of sci-fi drama Oasis, dramedy The Legend of Master Legend and comedy Budding Prospects will air back to back the whole day. It sounds like a great way to catch any of them if you can't be bothered to head over to Prime Video's website. The media and retail company first aired pilots on Twitch late last year. We're guessing this won't be the last time it'll promote new shows on the streaming service it purchased in 2014, especially since Twitch has been expanding its repertoire. In fact, it's gearing up to show its own studios' first original mini-documentary on April 7th, 5PM Eastern. Entitled Ironsights, it tells the story of Big Buck Hunter champ Sara Erlandson, as she makes her way to the arcade hunting game's World Championship in Austin, Texas. The mini-docu will air right after Twitch Weekly concludes and might only be the first in a series of originals produced by Twitch Studios.","Netflix is making its animated feature film debut with the grandly titled America: The Motion Picture. According to Deadline, the original movie is an R-rated, comedic take on the founding of our country. The production team is stellar and will be led by Archer's Matt Thompson (who will direct) and Adam Reed. The Expendables' Dave Callaham will write the script, and the team behind The LEGO Movie, (including Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Will Allegra) will also contribute. Channing Tatum gets a producer credit as well, and is on tap to voice George Washington in the film. Deadline calls the project an \"R-rated revisionist history tale about the founding of the country,\" which makes a ton of sense considering the Thompson and Reed previous work, which includes the hilarious shows SeaLab 2021 and Frisky Dingo. This will also be the first feature-length animated project for Netflix, which has previously only made a foray into kid-friendly episodic shows like The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show as well as the much more melancholy and adult animated series, Bojack Horseman.","Amazon debuted its All or Nothing NFL series back in 2016 with a look at the Arizona Cardinals' 2015 season. Now the online retailer is bringing back the original for a second act. The company announced that it greenlit the second season of the show, and this year it will chronicle the Los Angeles Rams. From the team's relocation back to LA to hiring a new coach and gearing up to hit the field this fall, the show will offer an in-depth look at the Rams' busy 2016 season. The first season of All or Nothing earned a Sports Emmy nomination for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary. As you might expect, the show is available to stream with a Prime membership via Amazon's video apps that are available on a range of devices. If you're streaming with a Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet or a compatible Android device, you'll get to see behind-the-scenes clips thanks to Amazon's X-Ray feature that overlays info and more on top of the video you're watching. There's no premiere date just yet, but when the time comes, season 2 of All or Nothing will be available to Prime members in Austria, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the UK in addition to viewers in the US.","Japan's unique Final Fantasy XIV-based drama is making its way to the rest of the world thanks to Netflix. Daddy of Light isn't really an adaptation of the hit MMO -- it's a live-action show that focuses on a father and son who play the game together. The series will start airing on Netflix in Japan starting on April 20th, Polygon reports, and it'll head to other countries in the fall. It's not the first Japanese drama Netflix has picked up -- the service also carries popular shows like Hibana: Spark -- but it's still a good get, given the power of the Final Fantasy brand. And yes, it does seem like it'll keep the Daddy of Light moniker when it heads to the West. ","The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a near-perfect game, but its performance on the Nintendo Switch is far less so. While it plays smoothly in handheld mode, it's not unusual to see lower frame rates when you dock the console. Mostly, that's because the Switch is pumping out a higher resolution when it's connected to your TV, which puts a strain on the console's mobile hardware. But with its latest patch for Breath of the Wild, Nintendo has apparently solved that slowdown dilemma, Polygon reports. According to Nintendo's official support page for Breath of the Wild, \"adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience\" in the 1.1.1 patch. That's pretty vague, but the video below shows that performance has definitely been improved in some environments.","Netflix supports over 20 languages, many of which aren't dubbed, so subtitles are often the only way for foreign viewers to follow the plot. While the streaming company holds itself to a high standard, the internet abounds with tales of wonky translations. That's why it has developed Hermes, the first-ever proficiency test for caption translators by a major content provider. The aim is to identify subtitlers that understand the subtleties of a language and won't translate \"Smashing Pumpkins\" to \"Pumpkin Puree\" (above). Netflix outsources translation to third-party services, all with different recruiting practices, \"so it's nearly impossible for Netflix to maintain a standard across all of them,\" it wrote in its Hermes launch post. To improve quality control, Netflix said it took a \"Hollywood meets Silicon Valley\" approach to solving it. Hermes grills candidates on their ability to understand English, the root language of most of its films. It also tests their ability to \"translate idiomatic phrases into their target language\" without linguistic or technical errors. For instance, \"they are very shrewd and made a killing\" is ripe for mistranslation if the subtitler isn't familiar with double-meaning of \"made a killing.\" There are over 4,000 such expressions in English, Netflix says, so it's important to find a translation that's \"culturally accurate\" while keeping the color of the original. After taking the tests, each captioner will be assigned an \"H-Number\" that tells Netflix their skill level. That way, it can use its best people for, say, Out of Africa, while those with lower skills could handle Mama Mia! The H-Number, which Netflix will require of every subtitler by this summer, will also help it to match the quality of a translation to the person who did it. \"Perhaps they consider themselves a horror aficionado, but they excel at subtitling romantic comedies -- theoretically, we can make this match so they're able to do their best quality work,\" Netflix says. It adds that soon English \"won't be the primary viewing experience on Netflix,\" making the work increasingly important for a company that's keen on expansion.","It looks like Comcast isn't the only cable operator considering a Sling TV-like live streaming service. Verizon has also been acquiring the digital rights to TV stations like CBS and ESPN, according to Bloomberg. However, unlike Comcast, which is rumored to be offering such a service only to its internet customers, Verizon plans to launch it nationwide this summer. It makes more sense for Verizon (AOL and Engadget's dear parent) to offer a cable cord-cutting service immediately. It has just 4.6 million cable TV subscribers compared to 22.4 million for Comcast, and with seven million broadband users, could immediately boost those figures. It would also be a way for Verizon to offer a bundled TV streaming service with its wireless plans if it wanted, much as AT&T does with DirecTV Now. Unlike Comcast, which has been testing its Stream online TV service since 2015 in limited markets, Verizon has never done live TV streaming -- apart from the much-derided go90, which mostly features lower-tier and internet content. The company has already signed a pact with CBS with rights for \"future digital platforms, with specifics to be released at a later date,\" Bloomberg notes. If the rumors are accurate, and assuming Verizon can sign enough stations to make a streaming TV bundle attractive, it'll supposedly launch the service this summer for about the same price as DirecTV Now, which runs $35 a month for 60 channels. That would give consumers three main live TV options -- Sling TV, DirecTV Now and Verizon -- and several more limited offerings, including Playstation Vue and Hulu. Verizon's service may also push Comcast into rethinking the scope of its own launch, which would add another nationwide service to the fray. That would make a lot of services for only two million subscribers to internet-based live TV so far. Considering all the cord-cutting happening right now, however, operators seem willing to try anything new. *Verizon owns AOL, Engadget's parent company. However, Engadget maintains full editorial control, and Verizon will have to pry it from our cold, dead hands.","When the Serial team announced their new spinoff podcast called S-Town, they promised a murder investigation in rural Alabama. While that's what host Brian Reed went there to cover, somewhere along the way it turned into a treasure hunt for buried gold. Reed also ended up unraveling the mysteries of the person who called the team to his neck of the woods to investigate a wealthy man who was reportedly bragging about getting away with murder. The good news is that you won't have to wait weeks to find out how the story ends. Reed and the team have given S-Town (or Shittown as the podcast revealed) the Netflix treatment -- all seven episodes are now online and ready for binging. We say \"Netflix treatment,\" but S-Town executive producer Julie Snyder told Wired that the spinoff actually used novels as a model in the same way Serial used TV. \"In a novel, you're entering into a hermetic world,\" she said. \"That's what we were trying to do, that we hadn't yet done with a podcast: where you can enter their specific world, and you don't know really know what it's about or where it's going, but hopefully you're compelled to stay in it the whole time.\" Just don't expect to be listening to the podcast equivalent of a crime novel, because what you'll get is a Southern Gothic tale wrapped in layers of small-town mystery.","It's (ugh) that time of year again. That magically obnoxious season wherein every tech startup, thought influencer and blog worth its weight in snark attempts to pull a fast one on the rest of us with a clever April Fool's Day prank. Only problem is, they're rarely clever, usually terrible and almost assuredly obvious to anyone with a functioning brainstem. Don't believe me? Here are 17 of the weirdest prank pitches to come through the Engadget tip box this year.","Blink-182 and Apple\nMusic Team up to\nShow Off Increasing\nReach And Power of\nBeats 1\nSteve Baltin,\nForbes Beats 1 has been a key selling point since Apple Music's launch. The internet radio station boasts a number of big names and includes a slate of shows hosted by the artists themselves. Even if you don't have your own show like Dr. Dre, Drake or Run the Jewels, debuting new music with Zane Lowe can do wonders for your hype train. Forbes details the power of Beats 1 through the lens of rockers Blink-182. The Verge also has a look at how the platform helped catapult Drake's latest album to the top of the streaming charts. What Is Gender and Why Does It Matter to Emoji?\t\t\tPaul D. Hunt, Emojipedia Blog Here's a look at what goes into designing the tiny graphics we love so much from a member of the Unicode Consortium's Emoji Subcommittee. How I Let Disney Track My Every Move \t\t\tAdam Clark Estes, Gizmodo Gizmodo dissected (literally) Disney's MagicBand to find out just how much of your privacy you're sacrificing for convenience at its parks. ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It\t\t\tIra Boudway & Max Chafkin, Bloomberg Businessweek ESPN still hasn't accepted its fate at a time when cord cutting is all the rage. The only question is how long it can afford to ignore the writing on the wall. Liked 'Serial'? Here's Why the True-Crime Podcast 'S-Town' Is Better\t\t\tAmanda Hess, The New York Times The new podcast from the makers of Serial debuted this week in its entirety. The New York Times explains why you should binge listen to it as soon as possible.","Worries that someone could hijack your TV with a broadcast have been present for decades (ever see The Outer Limits?), and it's clear that they're not going away any time soon. Oneconsult security researcher Rafael Scheel has outlined an attack that can control smart TVs by embedding code into digital (specifically, DVB-T) over-the-air broadcasts. The intrusion takes advantage of flaws in a set's web browser to get root-level access and issue virtually any command. You only need to have a transmission powerful enough to reach compatible TVs, and at least one attack will work without revealing that something is wrong. The technique is known to work on at least two recent Samsung models, and it's possible to alter the code to compromise other web-enabled TVs. If there's a saving grace, it's the specificity of the attack. Only some countries use DVB-T, and fewer still support the hybrid broadcast broadband TV format (HbbTV) needed to make this work. The victim also needs to both be tuned into a DVB-T channel and have the TV connected to the internet. North Americans watching ATSC broadcasts have nothing to worry about right now, in other words, and you're also safe if you use a game console or media hub for your living room entertainment. The discovery nonetheless underscores the importance of locking down smart TVs, which don't usually receive security updates as frequently as phones or PCs. It's one thing when hackers compromise individual TVs through conventional internet-only attacks, but it's that much more sinister when they can compromise multiple TVs within a certain range. Manufacturers will need to treat security as a higher priority if they're going to prevent attacks like this from happening in the real world. ","Delivery drones have more than a few challenges, not the least of which is dropping off the package in a convenient place. Do you really want to head out to your yard to collect a box? You might not have to. Advanced Tactics has successfully tested delivery with a drone, the Panther sUAS Air/Ground Robot, that can both fly and drive up to your door. When it's too dangerous or costly to travel by air, the machine just has to touch down and wheel its way to its destination. It promises more considerate (not to mention less theft-prone) shipping to homes and offices, and it could also lead to faster deliveries in areas where no one transportation method is particularly speedy. The Panther drone isn't a heavy-duty hauler when it can only carry 15lbs, and its range is limited to 10 miles when on the ground (flying range isn't mentioned, but it only flies for 5-10 minutes). However, it can handle attachment that extend its usefulness well beyond getting products from A to B. You can add a camera and video screen for telepresence, or sensors if you're using it to study nature or construction projects. You can even add robot arms to grab samples or unload supplies. The Panther is already on sale in the US (it's discounted to $2,495 until April 5th), and Advanced Tactics is quick to stress that you don't need to go through regulatory hoops to own one. It's light enough to be considered a small drone, so you don't need an FAA waiver to fly it. You probably won't see companies using it right away, though. While it's relatively easy to buy a drone for personal use, it's another matter to clear the legal and logistical hurdles needed to use it for business. Where would delivery drones launch from, for example? Still, the test is proof that there are already drones that can solve some of the real-world problems with drone use.","The concept of using stem cells for transplants just became a truly practical reality: a Japanese man with age-related macular degeneration has received the first transplant of stem cells from another human donor. Doctors repurposed the donor's skin cells by turning them into induced pluripotent stem cells (that is, forced into a state where they can become many kinds of cells) that then became retinal cells. If all goes according to plan with the multi-step procedure, these fresh cells will halt the degeneration and preserve the patient's remaining eyesight. This isn't the first time that human stem cells have been used. There was another macular degeneration treatment in 2014. However, the prior example revolved around taking samples from the patient's own skin. That's risky when they may be dealing with genetic flaws that could hinder the treatment. So long as the newest procedure proves a long-term success, it opens the door to plucking cells from healthier candidates. And importantly, there are plans for this to become relatively commonplace. Researcher Shinya Yamanaka is developing a stem cell bank that would give recipients immediate treatment, instead of having to wait months to cultivate cells from a matching candidate. This would only potentially address about 30 to 50 percent of the Japanese population, but that could be enough to improve the quality of life for many people.","Whether you like it or not, coal power is on the decline... and that's having a marked impact on American energy output. The US Energy Information Administration has published data revealing that the country's 2016 energy production dropped over year-over-year -- the first such drop since 2009. Most of it can be pinned on coal, whose output fell a steep 18 percent compared to 2015. Other energy sources dipped as well, but not by nearly as much. Natural gas and crude oil were down 'just' 2 and 7 percent respectively. The one bright spot was renewable energy. Technologies like solar and wind power put out 7 percent more energy in 2016 than they did a year earlier. The increase isn't all that shocking, of course. The cost of renewable energy is dropping quickly enough that it's becoming increasingly practical, particularly for large-scale projects that can power whole urban centers. This doesn't mean that the US is losing its clout in energy exports. Those actually increased by 6 percent, a large chunk of which came from a 7 percent spike in crude oil shipments (coal dropped a steep 19 percent). However, the figures suggest that it may be too late to prop up the coal industry. It could be more effective to convert power plants, retrain workers and otherwise prepare for a renewable-focused future.","Hot on the heels of Falcon 9's historic flight, SpaceX chief Elon Musk has revealed on Twitter that Falcon Heavy's first flight is scheduled for late summer this year. He also announced that the company is considering trying to reland and retrieve the rocket's upper stage during the demo, though that's probably much easier said than done. The bigger vehicle is no Falcon 9. It's an entirely different beast that has three cores instead of one -- SpaceX equipped the rocket it's launching this year with two pre-flown boosters -- and will be able to carry twice the cargo it can. The company says it was \"shockingly difficult to go from a single core to a triple-core vehicle.\" And while it already ironed out most of the issues brought about by using three cores, the demo flight will still be very risky. It's even loading something silly on board for the test, maybe something sillier than the big wheel of cheese it launched to space aboard the Dragon capsule's maiden flight in 2010. SpaceX has to be able to retrieve parts of Falcon Heavy someday if it wants to fulfill its dream of sending humans to colonize Mars on a reusable spaceship called \"Interplanetary Transport System.\" But for now, it has more attainable goals lined up for the near future, including using more pre-flown boosters, retrieving a Falcon 9's second stage and relaunching a used rocket 24 hours after its first flight. Falcon Heavy test flight currently scheduled for late summer ","It's time to call it: Amazon has conquered the smart home industry. From connected appliance makers and game creators to television networks and even financial institutions, everyone is jumping aboard the Alexa train. But Amazon is eyeing a new domain: your smartphone. And its bid for a presence in phones faces stiff competition from existing assistants. Still, when Huawei announced at CES that it would bring Alexa to its Mate 9 flagship, we were intrigued. But we didn't know quite what to expect, since details at the time were scant. Now that the update has begun rolling out in the US, though, we have a clearer picture of what Alexa can do here. Turns out, the benefits of having Amazon's helper on a phone are limited and require too much effort to be practical. Let's start with the biggest flaw: Each time you want to talk to Alexa on the Mate 9, you first have to open the Huawei Alexa app by tapping it. For a service that Huawei itself calls \"a primarily voice-driven experience,\" the lack of hotword support is puzzling. I'm used to hollering at Siri from across the room, asking her to take notes or give me weather updates when my hands are occupied. When I wanted to get the Mate 9's Alexa to turn on a switch in my apartment, I had to walk over to the phone, unlock it, find the app, tap it and then say \"Alexa, turn on closet WeMo.\" I could have walked over to the switch and turned it on thrice in the time it took me to ask Alexa to do so. An always-listening assistant would have saved me four steps. Plus, having a continued conversation with Alexa becomes frustrating if there are long pauses between your commands because the phone goes to sleep after its preset time (between 15 seconds and 10 minutes) and you'll have to unlock if you want to talk to the assistant again. You could work around this by setting your Mate 9 to only go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity (the maximum period allowed), but that's a compromise security-minded folks won't likely tolerate. Still, it's a flaw I'm willing to overlook since having Alexa on a smartphone is not just about hands-free convenience. Amazon's helper currently has a more robust set of functions than its rivals, with more than 7,000 skills that enable voice control for a plethora of services. Many of these are available on the Mate 9, but a few big ones are missing. In particular, not being able to play music or set alarms and reminders feel like major oversights, considering these are the tools I use most frequently on the Echo. Thankfully, at least, you can still use Google Assistant or Siri for those tasks. Despite these shortcomings, the Alexa integration still offers a few conveniences. If the phone is already in your hands or within reach, and you want to do more than simply turn on a light, it's easy to just open the app and say, \"Alexa, change the lights to movie mode.\" For Mate 9 owners who want to link their smart home devices to Amazon's helper but don't want to shell out for the Echo or Echo Dot, this is a nice bonus. Alexa on the Mate 9 also responded quickly to my commands and understood me most of the time even with noisy coworkers in the background. But it's not a feature that will convince shoppers to buy a Mate 9. Android users can lean on the Google Assistant to carry out similar tasks. Many smart home devices already work with Google Home, and more are expected to join in, making the Assistant potentially as capable as Alexa. On iOS, you can choose between Siri or Alexa via the Amazon app. Just as it is on the Mate 9, hotword support is missing for Alexa on iPhones, although that's less of a surprise considering Apple's notoriously closed-off OS. You can ask Alexa to stream music from stations in Amazon's iOS app, though, so the Mate 9's inability to do so is strange indeed. To be fair, music playback may roll out to the Mate 9 in the future, along with some other features. During a phone briefing last month, vice president of Huawei Device USA Vincent Wen told reporters that setting alarms with Alexa is \"coming very soon,\" and to \"stay tuned to future versions\" for music support. No specific time frame was given for these updates. Huawei and Amazon's partnership on this project feels rushed, and I wish they had waited until the integration was more complete before pushing it out. Ultimately, Alexa on the Mate 9 is a telling and underwhelming preview of what Amazon might have in the works for its assistant on smartphones. On both iOS and the Mate 9, voice activation is missing. There isn't an official Android version of Alexa yet, but always-listening is also rare on third-party offerings. Amazon needs to find a way to enable that capability and support the most commonly used skills for Alexa on smartphones to truly be helpful. Meanwhile, there are plenty of standalone devices other than the Echo speakers that offer Alexa support. Huawei's flagship is a capable phablet with its own artificial intelligence baked in and doesn't benefit from the Alexa implementation in its current form.","The paradigm for toys-to-life games is well-established: one part kid-friendly video game, one part expensive, collectible figurines -- and a tethered NFC \"portal\" that ties them together. When Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure introduced this model in 2011, it sparked a new genre in gaming -- bringing about the rise and fall of Disney Infinity, the nostalgic brand licensing of LEGO Dimensions and even inspired Nintendo to launch its own line of NFC gaming collectibles. In fact, with the exception of Nintendo, all of these brands followed Skylanders' tethered-portal model. On the Nintendo Switch, however, the game that started it all is taking the Amiibo approach. If you buy Skylanders Imaginators on the Nintendo Switch, it won't come with the series' iconic \"Portal of Power\" peripheral. Instead, the game piggybacks off the NFC technology Nintendo built into the console's controllers. Rather than placing characters on a wired base to transmit figurine data into the game, players merely need to tap their Skylander toys against the thumbstick on the right-hand Joy-Con. That's it. No more setting up a USB peripheral every time you want to play the game or making sure it's in reach of the couch. Instead, you just tap and play. Easy. Although this is a simple, straightforward change that seems like a long overdue evolution of the toys-to-life experience, it wasn't really something that could be done until now. Not because the technology didn't exist, but because it wasn't available on most platforms. Neither the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 have built-in NFC readers, and only one of the Wii U's controllers (the included GamePad) supported the feature. The Switch is the first console to standardize NFC communication in every controller configuration. Finding another way to scan in the Skylanders toys was also necessary to serve players who use the Switch in portable mode. While it's certainly easier to play Skylanders without the cumbersome portal accessory, its absence fundamentally changes the game into a more traditional experience. Changing characters in Skylanders typically meant placing a figure on the portal and leaving it there -- but after you scan a character into the Nintendo Switch version of the game, you don't even need the figure anymore. Scanning a toy more than once turns it into an \"Instant Skylander\" that can be summoned from the game's menu at any time. This is perfect for players who want to take the game on the go without toting a bunch of toys, but it calls the entire concept of the series into question. If you can scan your figures once and play the game without them, does Skylanders even need a toy component? Technically, the game could get away without the physical toys, although that's not the point. For Skylanders (and other toys-to-life) fans, collecting is part of the fun, and the developer isn't offering any toy-free options at this time. The portal-free approach doesn't work for all toys-to-life games, either -- LEGO Dimensions features several puzzles that require players to move toys to different portions of its connected figure base, a gameplay element that wouldn't work with the Nintendo Switch's single NFC touchpoint. Still, for Skylanders Imaginators, the change feels like a massive improvement, and a lot like the Amiibo system it's piggybacking off. By making the figures a little less necessary, Skylanders on Switch now comes close to mirroring Nintendo's toy-optional approach to the genre. It's a less tedious experience. It's still probably not the future of the Skylanders franchise, though.There are far too many figures and portals left over from previous games to expect Activision to nix the conceit of the series on other platforms. But if you're looking for a more minimalist toys-to-life experience, it can be had on the Nintendo Switch.","Just when we'd learned the importance of HTTPS in address bars, spammers and malicious hackers have figured out how to game the system. Let's Encrypt is an automated service that lets people turn their old unencrypted URLs into safely encrypted HTTPS addresses with a type of file called a certificate. It's terrific, especially because certificates are expensive (overpriced, actually) and many people can't afford them. So it's easy to argue that the Let's Encrypt service has done more than we may ever realize to strengthen the security of the internet and users everywhere. But like so, so painfully many great ideas from the tech sector, Let's Encrypt apparently wasn't built with abuse in mind. And so -- of course -- that's exactly what's happening. Because it's now free and easy to add HTTPS to your site, criminals who exploit trusting internet users think Let's Encrypt is pretty groovy. When a site has HTTPS, not only do users know they can trust they're on an encrypted connection, but browsers like Google's Chrome display an eye-catching little green padlock and the word \"Secure\" in the address bar. What's more, privacy and security advocates, from the EFF and Mozilla (who founded it) to little people like yours truly, have done everything possible to push people to seek these out as a signifier that a website is safe... The fact that Let's Encrypt is now being used to make phishing sites look legit is a total burn for us, and a potential house fire for users who rely on simple cues like the green padlock for assurance. According to certificate reseller The SSL Store, \"between January 1st, 2016 and March 6th, 2017, Let's Encrypt has issued a total of 15,270 SSL certificates containing the word 'PayPal.'\" Keep in mind that the SSL Store is a provider of those incredibly overpriced certificates, so Let's Encrypt's mission isn't necessarily in their interests. Even still, their post points out that the \"vast majority of this issuance has occurred since November -- since then Let's Encrypt has issued nearly 100 'PayPal' certificates per day.\" Based on a random sample, SSL Store said, 96.7 percent of these certificates were intended for use on phishing sites. The reseller added that, while their analysis has focused on fake PayPal sites, the firm's findings have spotted other SSL phishing fakers, including Bank of America, Apple IDs, and Google. This problem isn't new (it's just getting worse). Back in January, security firm Trend Micro raised a semaphore convention's worth of red flags about a malvertising campaign that targets sites that use those free Let's Encrypt certificates. Researchers at Trend Micro had uncovered a malicious ad campaign in December 2016 that sent surfers to websites hosting the Angler Exploit Kit. If you're unfamiliar, Angler invisibly and seamlessly infects you with malware when you visit a web page, meaning that you won't know, and you don't even need to have clicked on anything. Researchers found that over 50 percent of Angler infections turn into ransomware, where all your files are locked until you pay, well ... a ransom. Trend Micro found that the malvertisers using Let's Encrypt for HTTPS had created subdomains that looked real enough to fool the average web surfer. The criminals used Let's Encrypt certificates that had been specifically obtained for the subdomains, making the poisoned sites look valid and secure. \"Any technology that is meant for good can be used by cyber criminals, and Let's Encrypt is no exception,\" Trend Micro fraud researcher Joseph Chen wrote on the TrendLabs Security Intelligence blog. So why can't Let's Encrypt just revoke what are obviously fake PayPal certificates? Because they believe it's just not their problem. Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group, told InfoWorld back in January that giving a toss about what happens to certificates after Let's Encrypt issues them \"would be impractical and ineffective.\" (ISRG is the group managing the Let's Encrypt project.) Aas echoed his 2015 Let's Encrypt blog post disavowing responsibility for the massive HTTPS trust issue the org has facilitated, telling press the certificate-issuing system is not the appropriate mechanism for policing phishing and malware on the Web. The post, which explained \"The CA's Role in Fighting Phishing and Malware,\" might as well have been titled \"\u00af\\_(\u30c4)_/\u00af\" for all the interest it had in addressing the monster it was most certainly enabling. In it, Let's Encrypt officially pushed the problem off onto the browser security teams at Google, Firefox, Safari and others. Aas said that browsers' anti-phishing and anti-malware protections were \"more effective and more appropriate\" than anything issuers like Let's Encrypt can do. But even if Google flags malicious HTTPS phishing domains, Let's Encrypt won't revoke their certificates. Thus begins the unraveling of the work we've done getting people to trust HTTPS and that little \"Secure\" green padlock. Now we say, you should always use HTTPS, but you shouldn't always trust it as a marker for your safety. Because now people really, really need to know that HTTPS doesn't equal legitimate safety, as they've been led to believe. It's important to remember that checking the link they click for validity, spelling, and malfeasance needs to take priority over the need to check against making sure Chrome says \"Secure.\" Because it's not. You'd think that when it becomes well documented that criminals are obtaining and using that green padlock, it would undermine the whole purpose of getting people to trust them. But this is the world of cybersecurity, and so you would be wrong. Images: adrian825/Getty (HTTPS); Getty Images/iStockphoto (Ransomware)","Somewhere between rolling out new Teslas, launching re-usable rockets and digging a tunnel under Los Angeles, Elon Musk managed to start yet another new company. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Musk's latest project is called Neuralink and its goal is to explore technology that can make direct connections between a human brain and a computer. As the Journal reports, Musk has an \"active role\" in the California-based neuroscience startup, which aims to create cranial computers for treating diseases and, eventually, for building human-computer hybrids. During a conference last summer, Musk floated the idea that humans will need a boost of computer-assisted artificial intelligence if we hope to remain competitive as our machines get smarter. Neuralink is registered in California as a medical research company and has reportedly already hired several high profile academics in the field of neuroscience: flexible electrodes and nano technology expert Dr. Venessa Tolosa; UCSF professor Philip Sabes, who also participated in the Musk-sponsored Beneficial AI conference; and Boston University professor Timothy Gardner, who studies neural pathways in the brains of songbirds. Like Tesla or SpaceX, the company plans to present a working prototype to prove the technology is safe and viable before moving on to the more ambitious goal of increasing the performance of the human race. In this case, the prototype will likely be brain implants that can treat diseases like epilepsy, Parkinson's or depression. Musk himself told Vanity Fair that he believes the technology for \"a meaningful partial-brain interface\" is only \"roughly four or five years away.\" But even if that proves successful, there's still a long way to go before we're plugging an AI directly into our brains. Long Neuralink piece coming out on @waitbutwhy in about a week. Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to.","\"Clean coal\" is an oxymoron. Even if you took a hunk of coal, doused it in bleach and scrubbed it for six hours with a soapy horsehair brush, it would still cause lung cancer and fill the air with carbon emissions when you burned it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. However, the phrase \"clean coal\" is ridiculously tenacious in public discourse. Just this week, President Donald Trump used it: As he signed an executive order rolling back a bevvy of environmental protections laid out under the Clean Power Plan, he turned to the coal miners staged around his desk and promised to \"end the war on coal and have clean coal, really clean coal.\" The president of the United States is lying. Unfortunately, he isn't alone. \"Clean coal\" has been used as a euphemistic tool by advertisers, lobbyists and politicians for nearly a decade. The phrase was created in 2008 by the advertising agency R&R Partners -- the same folks who invented the Las Vegas slogan, \"What happens here, stays here\" -- and it's been weaponized in debates and ad campaigns ever since. The initial \"clean coal\" ads were bankrolled to the tune of $35 million by the world's largest mining company, the largest US coal mining company and a handful of other energy-industry giants. The coal industry was facing a crisis in 2008, as the public and states began discussing humanity's impact on global warming, and the federal government began floating plans for new carbon-emissions regulations. So, \"clean coal\" was born. The term isn't completely baseless (though it is still nonsensical). Plenty of companies in the industry were -- and still are -- working on ways to reduce the amount of carbon emitted by the coal-burning process. One method favored by US companies is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which would separate out the carbon dioxide in the air and store it in a secure location such as an oil, gas or deep saline reservoir. The Department of Energy has historically been interested in two methods of CCS: pre- and post-combustion capture. Pre-combustion is the more efficient method, allowing operators to remove carbon dioxide from the coal as it is being transformed into a gas. Unfortunately, this requires the construction of new coal-burning power plants, which is a costly endeavor. On the other hand, post-combustion systems can be retrofitted onto existing power plants and extract carbon dioxide directly from the boiler. CCS sounds like a practical solution, and it might be -- if the technology actually existed. President George W. Bush attempted to break into the CCS game in 2003 with FutureGen, a project that initially hoped to build a pre-combustion coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Illinois. Over four years, the plant would sequester and pump 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into a deep saline reservoir 8,000 feet underground, demonstrating the viability of CCS. FutureGen was expected to cost $1.65 billion, with $1 billion coming directly from the federal government. Runaway costs and lawsuits kept the project at bay, and it was officially canceled in 2015. Today, here's how the Office of Fossil Energy explains the state of CCS technology: \"Today's capture technologies are not cost-effective when considered in the context of storing CO2 from existing power plants. DOE/NETL analyses suggest that today's commercially available post-combustion capture technologies may increase the cost of electricity for a new pulverized coal plant by up to 80 percent and result in a 20 to 30 percent decrease in efficiency due to parasitic energy requirements. Additionally, many of today's commercially available post-combustion capture technologies have not been demonstrated at scales large enough for power-plant applications.\" There are a handful of experimental CCS projects scattered around the world, but in the US, a working coal-burning power plant that sequesters and secures carbon dioxide simply does not exist. That's right: \"Clean coal\" does not exist. Coal is a powerful tool in every sense of the word. Coal power sparked the US' Industrial Revolution and it heats homes, runs businesses and energizes gadgets across the nation. In 2015, coal accounted for 21 percent of the US' energy production, behind only natural gas and petroleum. It also has the power to kill: The toxins emitted by coal-burning power plants contribute to thousands of premature deaths and diseases every year, and man-made carbon emissions are the leading cause of global warming (despite any doubts the head of the EPA might have on that topic) It's not surprising that coal production has been falling steadily since 2008. The US industry's output in 2015 was roughly the same as it was in 1981 as industries and individuals switched to more-efficient energy systems. Meanwhile, the renewable-energy market is growing: The solar industry employed 260,000 people in the US as of May 2015, while the coal industry employed 70,000. And in 2016, the number of people working in the solar-energy industry rose by 25 percent. Wind-energy employment spiked 32 percent. This is the real meaning of \"clean coal.\" Peel away the layers of dishonest advertising and behavioral science cues, and \"clean coal\" looks a lot like a desperate slogan for a dying industry. It looks a lot like a lie. Update: The Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada, uses CCS technology and has been open since October 2014, and the article has been edited to reflect this information. However, Boundary Dam is not a shining example of CCS feasibility. The plant has suffered technical and design issues since coming online, it's been shut down for long stretches of time, and in its first year (at least) it operated at 40 percent capacity. The plant also doubles the price of power in the region. Images: Carlos Barria / Reuters (Trump); Shutterstock / Danicek (Smokestacks)","In August 2011 NASA sent a probe the size of a basketball court into space on a mission to observe Jupiter. Now, five years later, the $1 billion dollar probe has something to show for it's 415 million mile journey. Named Juno, the probe has managed to photograph Jupiter's poles for the first time, capturing the planet's mysterious auroras and unique cloud formations after a few technical errors. Getting these photos hasn't exactly been easy for Juno. With Jupiter's radiation belts proving hazardous to its electronics, the drone has had to carefully swing in wide arcs in order to avoid spending too much time exposed to the damaging particles. With these maneuvers only taking place once every two months, Juno recently completed its fifth maneuver, returning with stunning photographs of Jupiter that it streamed back to Earth. While the original images were sent back in black and white, amateur astronomers have taken the time to retouch the shots in full color. You can see a selection of the edited photos in their full vibrant glory below: Here's a close-up of Jupiter's swirling cloud tops.","You might have paid more attention to cell division in biology class had you seen this timelapse video from filmmaker Francis Chee (below). It shows the cell division of an egg from Rana temporaria (the common frog) in such astonishing detail that it looks like a digital effect. Starting with just four cells, it divides into seemingly millions more in around 33 hours, a time that's compressed to 23 seconds in Chee's video. The team didn't just grab off-the-shelf equipment. \"It was done with a custom-designed microscope based on the 'infinity optical design' \" that's not available from any manufacturer, he said in the YouTube description. Chee also built the LEDs and optics used to film it, and sat the whole thing on an anti-vibration table. The final shot depended on numerous other variables like \"the ambient temperature during shooting, the time at which the eggs were collected, the type of water used,\" and other factors, he said. Whatever, the final result is so bizarre it almost looks fake -- the first few divisions rip the cells into smaller pieces through what looks like actual voodoo. In a future video, Chee hopes to capture the next stage, in which the egg becomes an actual, wiggling tadpole. In the meantime, you can check out his channel to see other time lapse videos, including one called \"Don't watch this video if you're scared of spiders.\" Update: A lot of folks in our comments (and elsewhere) are asserting that the video is indeed CGI and not a real video, despite the fact that the creator, Francis Chee, has been making nature and time lapse videos since 2009. However, he has just released another video using the same technique that basically picks up where the other left off. It shows the now highly divided egg transforming into a tadpole in another quasi-miraculous production. You're still allowed to have your doubts, but you'd have to be a hell of an animator to create this latest time-lapse.","Samsung officially revealed the new Galaxy S8 and S8+ here in New York, and it seems safe to say that we got what we expected. The lack of a home button; the new AI assistant; the near bezel-less, curved screens; the rear-mounted fingerprint sensors -- all the leaks were true. What ultimately matters more than the lack of surprises are ambition and keen execution, and Samsung clearly embraced both when building the S8s. It's a good thing too: After the Galaxy Note 7's rise and fiery fall, Samsung needed to prove that it could craft some flawless smartphones. Well, I'm not sure about flawless, but the S8 and S8+ are both gorgeous and full-featured -- for now, the good certainly seems to outweigh the bad. I can't overstate how gorgeous the S8 and S8+ are. The former packs one of Samsung's beautiful 5.8-inch \"infinity displays\" -- that's a Super AMOLED screen that wraps around the phone's curved front to the point where it almost touches the metal band running around the device. As the name implies, the S8+ has a larger display; we're talking 6.2 inches from one diagonal corner to another. Both run at what Samsung calls Quad HD+ resolution, otherwise known as 2,960 x 1,440, since these screens are longer than normal. All the leaked renders and photos don't do these phones justice: The look might feel understated, but the fit and finish are incredible. Remember how the front and back edges of the Note 7 melted into the metal frame running around the phone without a rough seam to be seen? Well, the effect here is similar but much more striking because of how round the phones feel now. I developed a bit of a crush on the Honor Magic for its sleek, curved lines, and the S8s have a similar vibe going. As you might have already known, the US Galaxy S8 and S8+ will feature one of Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 835 chipsets, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Versions available elsewhere will have one of Samsung's octa-core Exynos chips in lieu of Qualcomm's stuff, which will be a bummer for some people and old news for others. (The Exynos-equipped Galaxy S7 seemed to have a few advantages over the US, Snapdragon 820 model, but we'll see if that shakes out the same way this year.) Both devices also have 12-megapixel, dualpixel rear cameras with an f/1.7 aperture, which, yes, are very similar to last year's S7 cameras. That said, Samsung has apparently changed the way photos are processed, which should make for slightly better colors and clarity throughout. More importantly for our uber-vain generation, the S8s have an improved front-facing camera: an 8-megapixel sensor with autofocus and the ability to shoot wide-angle selfies. In a nod to apps like Snapchat, Snow and countless others, Samsung has included goofy filters and stickers to festoon your photos. The stickers are fine, but some of these filters straddle the line between hilarious and horrifying. It's also nice to see that Samsung hasn't given up on old fan-favorite features. Both the S8 and the S8+ still have headphone jacks, along with microSD card slots that take up to 256GB of extra storage for now. (There are bigger microSD cards, but Samsung has only certified cards as large as 256GB.) And all of you should be glad that the phone is still water- and dust-resistant, features that not all 2017 flagships have embraced. Depending on your taste, not every change here is a step forward from the Galaxy S7. The S8's fingerprint sensors are on the back, to the right of the camera, and reaching them with your index finger can still be a little awkward. For everyone's sake, we hope not. Earlier this year, Samsung announced a slew of new testing methods and safety standards meant to ensure the Note 7's failures weren't repeated. Concerns over potential battery issues could partially explain why the S8s don't have bigger batteries than last year's flagships. In fact, while the S7 and the S8 both have 3,000mAh batteries, the S8+ actually has a slightly smaller 3,500mAh battery compared to the S7 Edge's sealed 3,600mAh cell. The phones we played with weren't final, but they were still impeccably crafted. There's barely any bezel between the S8's beautiful, mobile HDR-certified screen and the rest of the phone's body. That's a feat this device shares with LG's new G6, but the approaches couldn't feel more different. If the G6 is a flat slab of stone, the Galaxy S8 is a polished river rock, and it's all the more comfortable as a result. The larger S8+ is as impressive to hold and feel, and it fits neatly into small pockets without trouble. Sure, this screen might not be quite as pixel-dense as the smaller S8s, but there's no way most people would be able to tell. More importantly, this might be the most comfortable big phone I've ever held. The iPhone 7 Plus I usually carry felt like a whale by comparison. The combination of Qualcomm's new chip and a seemingly lighter new version of TouchWiz mean the S8 and S8+ feel incredibly fast. The updated interface, by the way, is pretty gorgeous; it's not quite as loud as previous iterations, and the subtle new icons, fonts and widget choices make TouchWiz feel more mature. It takes a little more time to get used to the new home button. The physical key (and the capacitive keys that used to flank it) are gone. Instead, you have a small, pressure-sensitive strip of screen at the bottom that you can press while on any screen to jump to the homescreen. You just have to know the home button is there, even when you can't see it. Since both the S8 and S8+ have curved-edge screens, there's no real need for an Edge model anymore. It makes sense that all of those Edge shortcuts, like app, contact and news panels, have been built into both versions of the S8. I'm still not sold on their usefulness, but it's nice to know they're around, waiting. I haven't had the chance to benchmark these things, but even unfinished, I couldn't get them to hiccup or stutter. For now, in terms of design and performance, the S8 and S8+ consistently impress. To tell the story of the Galaxy S8s is to tell the story of Bixby, the virtual assistant Samsung has been working on for years. You can invoke ... him? her? it? ... by hitting a button on the S8's left side or saying its name aloud. Samsung's plans are ambitious: You'll eventually be able to control the phone with your voice as capably as you could by tapping the screen, a feat most existing assistants can't pull off. To be clear, there are some big differences between the version of Bixby I played with and the version you'll see when the phones go on sale next month. When Bixby launches you'll be able to ask it for photos from your last trip to Hong Kong or to open apps. Bixby will also live on your homescreen, tracking your steps and offering suggestions to you when it starts to understand your behavior. Do you call certain people at the same time every day? Expect Bixby to notice and remind you. The S8s I played with weren't quite that far along, but Bixby Vision actually worked pretty well. Long story short, Bixby will recognize things like products, restaurants and landmarks and offer more information about them. Let's say you're looking at a book someone is reading. You could use Bixby to learn more about the author or find a link to buy it. Even in these early stages, the visual recognition worked well: Bixby identified a bottle of Poland Spring water, a book and a friend's Apple Watch. (That last time, it offered Amazon links to watch bands.) In a way, Samsung is trying to make the new S8s the center of the connected home. A new application called Samsung Connect lets you control or monitor all of your Samsung connected devices (of which there are now quite a few). Same goes for any third-party, SmartThings-compatible device that's tied into a network of smart home gadgets. Additionally, Samsung cooked up a system called DeX. Tell me if this sounds familiar: You plop the phone in a dock; connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse; and get stuff done on a phone-powered desktop. I've seen so many other companies try this and frankly screw it all up, but I spent half an hour playing with the demo station Samsung had set up for me. Here's a deeper dive on DeX for you, but Samsung's hybrid approach to Android on the desktop seems surprisingly usable. Consider me cautiously optimistic. As of this writing, we don't know how much the new Galaxy S8 or S8+ will cost. It won't be long before we find out though: You'll be able to preorder the phones in the US starting tomorrow, March 30th, with an official launch coming on April 21st. Oh, and you'll get a free Gear VR and controller if you lock down a phone early. (We'll update this story once we get firm pricing details.) That even these non-final phones were oozing with polish and poise is a testament to how important Samsung believes they are. After all, these are Samsung's attempts at redemption: It couldn't afford to build anything less than excellent. We'll have a full review for you soon, but this much seems clear: While memories of burning Notes still linger, Samsung seems to be right back on track. Click here to catch all the latest news from Samsung's Galaxy S8 launch event!","With a new subscription tier and a fresh bank loan, SoundCloud is moving right ahead with business as usual. Today's update brings a sorely missed compatibility so you can now play your SoundCloud mixes through a Google Chromecast from an iOS device. SoundCloud was already compatible with Sonos devices, and Android folks had Chromecast integration for awhile now too, but Friday's update means iPhone users with a SoundCloud Go+ subscription can finally stream their entire catalog to a Chromecast connected to a TV or speakers. Multiple users can also control what's on with a shared playback feature. SoundCloud also says they've upgraded their mobile apps across the board and streamlined the whole experience for more consistent playback.","Heathrow is apparently a magnet for drone pilots fond of flying their devices near planes. According to the latest report from the UK Airprox Board, three planes narrowly missed drones roaming the skies near the airport last year. They're separate incidents from the British Airways plane that struck what authorities believe was an unmanned flying vehicle in April. These particular near-misses happened within a three-week period from October to November 2016. Two of the three were classified as \"category A\" or the most serious of near-misses. In one incident, the pilots of an A320 passenger plane saw a UAV flying below their vehicle's right wing 10,000 feet in the air as they prepare to land at the airport. That's about 9,600 feet higher than the legal altitude for drones in the UK. According to investigators, the UAV with multiple rotors seem to be custom-made and not something off the shelf. They also said that \"providence had played a major part in the aircraft not colliding\" with the device. In the second category A incident, a pilot taking off from Heathrow spotted a drone around 150 feet away from his plane's wing at 3,000 feet in the air. Authorities believe they \"narrowly avoided\" a collision, as well. The third drone sighting at the airport within that three-week timespan was less dangerous than the other two, but it still came within 200 feet of an aircraft. Overall, the report says there were 70 near-misses between planes and drones in 2016 compared to the 29 incidents in 2015. As more people start flying drones as a hobby or for business, we'll likely see that number grow unless authorities find a way to spot UAVs before they get too close to airports.","Blizzard had a formative role shaping the strategy and MOBA titles that dominate eSports today. But the studio didn't really dive into competitive events until it started devoting floorspace to its own tournaments at BlizzCon 2009. Now the gaming titan is moving up from its annual weekend convention to open its first permanent competitive gaming space, a plush eSports arena fronted by a snack bar and memorabilia shop. And it'll be in Taipei. The Blizzard eStadium, as it's named, seats up to 250 fans. Our Engadget colleagues got a tour of the event center, which the company will use to host both local matches and international tournaments for the Asia-Pacific region. While we only managed to snag photos of the company swag up for sale at the venue's shop, it's a good bet that their snack bar will be stocked with jokey goods matching Blizzard's particular sense of humor. Blizzard will break in the eStadium on April 8th with the first games in the Overwatch Pacific Championship, the studio-run competitive league based in Taipei. Eight teams from Taiwan, Japan, Australia and Thailand will compete for 11 weeks, with the top three advancing to the playoffs and, eventually, this year's Overwatch World Cup. The venue will expand to host matches from other games in Blizzard's competitive retinue, like Hearthstone and Starcraft 2. Maybe one day, we'll even see the remastered Starcraft: Brood War grace its fresh gamer halls -- a perfect mix of old nerdity and new.","Now that Congress has passed a rule rolling back FCC regulations that would explicitly prevent internet service providers from selling data like your browsing history, three of the biggest ones are trying to reassure customers. AT&T, Verizon (which owns AOL, the parent company of Engadget) and Comcast all published posts today about the event, with varying levels of explanation about what their privacy policies are. Comcast: We do not sell our broadband customers' individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC's rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so. Verizon: Those statements are true, however, if you read past the \"commitment to privacy\" headlines, you'll notice that both companies have other plans in place for selling customer data. Comcast uses \"non-personally identifiable information\" from internet and cable TV packages, while Verizon makes similar claims about its advertising policies. What those posts leave out, is how that information, once shared, can become a part of what those companies' partners know about you. as a 60 Minutes report detailed in 2014, data brokers can specialize in taking that \"non-PII\" data and tying it back to a person based on what they know about their location and demographics. Now that you, the consumer, are frequently ingesting media on multiple platforms at a time, that information is becoming even more valuable. It's the kind of thing Vizio was trying to accomplish with its Inscape advertising program -- until the FTC punished it for automatically opting customers in without informing them well enough about what it was doing. As AT&T's post describes, the ISP argument is that since \"other internet companies, including operating system providers, web browsers, search engines, and social media platforms\" collect (for example) location data and aren't regulated by the FCC, restricting an ISP from doing it is just confusing customers anyway. The ISPs and their lobbyists have argued that the FTC should be in charge of all of this, however, AdAge explains, it's unlikely that agency will impose such strict policies. While these companies can tell you what they're not doing with your browsing history right now, it's impossible to know if that will change based on regulations that may or may not come in the future. While we wait to see what ultimately happens to protect your data, I can point you to information about advertising opt-outs for AT&T, Comcast (TV & internet), and AOL/Verizon. *Verizon owns AOL, Engadget's parent company. However, Engadget maintains full editorial control, and Verizon will have to pry it from our cold, dead hands.","Yesterday, Google said that an unspecified bug was delaying the Android Wear 2.0 rollout yet again. It looks like the delay hasn't been too severe, though. The company says that Wear 2.0 is now available for five more watches: the Polar M600, Nixon Mission, Fossil Q Wander, Fossil Q Marshal and Michael Kors Access. That's in addition to the Fossil Q Founder, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 and TAG Heuer Connected, which Google said were already receiving the update. All told, that's almost half of the 19 older watches that'll get the Wear 2.0 update. It's a shame the Android Wear 2.0 rollout has been so challenging -- many, many other devices won't ever receive the update. Those that are getting it have had to wait a long time, too, but it seems like it won't be too long until the whole group gets the new software. It makes the platform a lot better, though smartwatches remain a niche. If you really want Wear 2.0, though, your best bet is probably checking out one of LG's newest smartwatches."," PC gamers and video professionals alike (among many others) live and die on fast performance. For the speed demons out there, we have some good news. JEDEC, the organization that sets standards for the microelectronics industry, says it's currently working on design specifications for the next-generation of DDR RAM. DDR5 memory should have double the bandwidth and density of its predecessor, as well as improved channel efficiency, making it faster and more power-efficient. It will likely find its way into high-end gaming PCs and laptops first, allowing gamers to squeeze every last frame rate out of the most graphically-intensive titles. But a mobile version could also boost battery life and performance in portable devices as well. JEDEC says it plans to publish the new standards sometime in 2018, which means DDR5 RAM won't be available to consumers any time soon. Computer manufacturers will need time to build support for the new chips as well, and that could take years. In the meantime, Intel is working on its own memory option called Optane, which combines extremely low latency with the speed of a solid state drive to boost your desktop PC's performance. ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are already planning to release Optane-equipped systems sometime this year. If it takes off, DDR5 could be obsolete before it steps off the assembly line.","Dr. Peggy Whitson, the first woman to command the ISS, might soon also hold the record for the most spacewalks by a female astronaut. She's scheduled to step out of the ISS today (March 30th), and once she does, she'll have eclipsed the number of times current record holder Sunita Williams floated around in space outside the orbiting lab. Williams still holds the distinction of being the astronaut who fixed the ISS with a toothbrush, though. Whitson and Commander Shane Kimbrough will attach the docking module Canadarm2 recently moved to its new power and data cables. It'll serve as the second docking port for the space taxis Boeing and SpaceX are developing to ferry astronauts to orbit. The duo won't be stepping out of the ISS until 8AM EST, but you can tune in to NASA TV's broadcast of the six-and-a-half-hour event as early as 6:30AM. ","Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket has been winning awards left, right and center, but this one is \"personally meaningful\" for company chief Jeff Bezos. The reusable rocket has been chosen to receive the Collier Trophy for 2016, presented to those who've made the \"greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America\" for the past year. New Shepard is the latest in the list of impressive awardees, which include Boeing for the 747 and its successors, the Navy for its autonomous X-47B aircraft and NASA JPL for landing Curiosity on Mars. According to the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), Blue Origin won the award \"for successfully demonstrating rocket booster reusability with the New Shepard human spaceflight vehicle through five successful test flights of a single booster and engine, all of which performed powered vertical landings on Earth.\" The Jeff Bezos-owned private space corporation conducted five test flights using New Shepard 2 in 2015 and 2016, successfully relanding the rocket each time. NAA Chairman Jim Albaugh praises the company for \"developing the first new large liquid hydrogen rocket engine in almost 20 years and demonstrating repeatable vertical takeoffs and landings makes the long sought after goal of low cost reusable rockets and access to space a reality.\" Blue Origin hasn't been resting on its laurels despite New Shepard's success. It recently finished building the new BE-4 engines for Shepard's successor, the New Glenn rocket. That doesn't mean it's abandoning its award-winning creation, though -- it even recently released the first photos of the New Shepard capsule. Impossible to express how personally meaningful this is. A dream. Huge kudos to @BlueOrigin team that worked so hard https://t.co/q2P0Lsi81U https://t.co/D56XNkIiBP","Apple already locked down a season's worth of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke, but Spotify isn't letting that stop it from developing a similar show of its own. The streaming service announced this week and it teamed up with Russell Simmons on Traffic Jams, a show that pairs a hip-hop artist and a producer who haven't worked together to create something new before they arrive at their destination. Oh yeah, they have to do so while sitting in rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles. The final stop in each episode is the Spotify-All Def Stage where each pair has to perform their newly written song for hundreds of fans. All Def Digital, which Simmons co-founded, is handling production for the 8-episode series with comedian DoBoy handing the hosting/driving duties. The first installment matches up T-Pain with Atlanta-based producer Southside while other episodes star D.R.A.M, Joey Bada$$, E-40 and more. Traffic Jams debuts on Spotify April 4th with new episodes every Tuesday through May 23rd. For a look at what you can expect from the show, watch the trailer below.","Spotify dipped its toes into podcasting in 2015 by adding pre-existing programs to its lineup. Now it's getting into content creation and rolling out its own shows. The company is launching three original podcasts, and it says that's just the start. The first of the new programs, Showstopper, is available now and features The Fader editor in chief Naomi Zeichner talking with music supervisors from TV shows like Stranger Things and Scrubs. The bi-weekly podcast offers commentary and insight on noteworthy music moments in television history. A second show, Unpacked, will debut on March 14. Broad City music supervisor Matt FX and Spotify Studios' Michele Santucci will host and travel to festivals across the US for interviews with \"all manner of creative folks.\" The third show, which follows a more narrative format, premieres in April and has the working title The Chris Lighty Story. The subject is an executive who worked with rappers like 50 Cent and LL Cool J before passing away due to an apparent suicide. Spotify is trying to differentiate itself in a crowded streaming market. In recent months, Pandora started offering a Spotify-like premium service, while Tidal introduced audio editing tools and Apple Music is working on original video series like The Late Late Show with James Corden spinoff Carpool Karaoke. The company has recruited established entities in the podcasting world to help their new venture go smoothly. Showstopper is produced in partnership with Slate and Panoply Studios, the latter of which is home to shows like Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History and many others. Meanwhile, The Chris Lighty Story got a helping hand from Gimlet Media, a self-described \"narrative podcasting company,\" and Loudspeaker Network, which features shows about hip-hop, geek culture, sex and other topics. Spotify says that more programs will be announced later this year. Although this is its first concentrated push into original podcasts, Spotify is no stranger to the format. The streaming service previously partnered with Mic and Headcount.org last year for Clarify, an audio and video series that explored the relationship between music and political issues.","It's been six months since Apple acquired the keys to the viral juggernaut that is Carpool Karaoke. In that time, we've learned that the iPhone maker plans 16 half-hour episodes that will include celebrities like Alicia Keys, Ariana Grande, John Cena and Will Smith, but there's been little talk about how it will stand alone from the original Late Late Show segment. Thanks to a new trailer, we now have some idea of the route Apple is taking: much of it is staying the same, but an Apple budget will also take the series in a couple of new directions. First, is additional confirmation that British host James Corden won't front every installment. He does appear in some, but the trailer also shows shots of Billy Eichner riding shotgun with Metallica and John Legend driving Alicia Keys (although Corden is shown in the back seat in a later shot). Second, the teaser highlights that some parts of the show won't take place in a car at all. Shaq and John Cena are shown hanging out in a bakery, John Legend welcoming a choir in a laundromat and Will Smith whizzing by the Hollywood sign in a helicopter. Although Apple is ready to market its new series, during the Grammys no less, there's still no word on when the episodes will be released. The company says it's \"coming soon\" to Apple Music, which likely means you'll need a subscription to view them. ","We still don't know exactly when Apple Music's version of a popular Late Late Show segment will debut, but we do know some of the singers who will appear on it. During the first batch of 16 half-hour episodes of \"Carpool Karaoke,\" Alicia Keys, Ariana Grande, Blake Shelton, John Legend, Metallica and Will Smith will all take a ride with rotating hosts. That's right, different people will be behind the wheel during the course of the first \"season.\" There still aren't a ton of details right now, but Variety reports that Alicia Keys and John Legend are paired together. Comedian Billy Eichner hosts the Metallica episode, Seth McFarlane rides along with Ariana Grande and Chelsea Handler hits the road with Blake Shelton. Late Late Show host James Corden will only drive in the episode with Will Smith. There's an interview component to the Apple Music version, so each installment will have a slightly different format than the sketch you've likely heard about. While Apple Music has exclusive rights to the series, \"Carpool Karaoke\" will still be a regular segment on Corden's TV show. This will also be the first series on the streaming service that's ramped up its video lineup over the last few months. As we get closer to the premiere date, we'll likely hear more about the guess list for those first 16 episodes.","On The Late Late Show with James Corden the \"Carpool Karaoke\" segment has seen visits from a number of celebrities, and now Apple wants in. It's signed an exclusive deal with CBS to produce a 16 episode series where celebrity guests ride along with the host (still TBA), visit \"meaningful\" places, sing songs and surprise fans. This is apparently the kind of thing Eddy Cue meant when he said Apple was only interested in developing content that could be complementary to Apple Music. \n","If you tried to access Spotify's lyrics feature recently, you were likely greeted with a \"Humming is fun\" message instead. That's because the streaming service ended its partnership with Musixmatch, a company that power the tool with its catalog of song lyrics. Billboard reports that \"updates\" are on the way, though specifics aren't mentioned, so there's no concrete indication when or if the feature will return. Spotify does still offer insight into the meaning of a song's words, thanks to a separate partnership with Genius. In a Medium post this week, Musixmatch explained that as of the end of May, its lyrics would no longer be available in the Spotify app. Musixmatch's library is still available through its own apps for Android, iOS, a Chrome app for YouTube and the web. \"We don't want to run the risk of Musixmatch no longer existing, CEO and Founder Max Ciociola explained. \"We would eventually like to offer this experience to third parties, however only if the economic value is recognized.\" Spotify did confirm that the partnership was ending, but didn't elaborate on any future plans. \"It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions,\" a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget.","Today has been a long time coming. Android Wear 2.0 was originally announced last May, groomed for launch last fall and then delayed until, well, now. Since that first announcement was made at Google I/O last year, we've seen plenty of new Android Wear watches hit store shelves, but it was hard to get worked up over version 1.whatever when something better, faster and more functional was oh so close. Now the wait is over. As rumored, Google and LG have teamed up on a pair of smartwatches to usher in a new Android Wear 2.0 era. You can find our review of the more basic LG Watch Style here, but with its bigger battery, larger screen and extra niceties, the $349 LG Watch Sport now seems like the Android Wear smartwatch to beat. When I think of sporty smartwatches, I think of bright colors, chunky bodies and outdoorsy looks. The LG Watch Sport, the company's first crack at a fitness-friendly wearable, avoids most of those design tropes. There's nothing particularly rugged about its clean lines and stainless steel, though the watch is nonetheless IP68 water- and-dust resistant. (I've been wearing it in the shower for nearly a week; no disasters so far.) In fact, I'd go as far as to say the Sport would look as good nestled under a suit sleeve as it would on the trails. The two available finishes -- gray and dark blue -- are similarly subdued. When taken in tandem, these design elements make for a smartwatch that's handsome -- in an inoffensive, dull sort of way. There's no getting around it, though: The Watch Sport is one chunky wrist computer. The problem doesn't lie in the screen, a perfectly adequate 1.38-inch round P-OLED panel running at 480 x 480. No, the issue lies mostly with the body. At 14.2mm thick, the Watch Sport is one of the thicker Android Wear pieces out there -- only slightly thinner than overtly rugged devices like Casio's smartwatches and the Nixon Mission. It doesn't help that the polyurethane bands are wide and nonremovable. Google says some of the watch's sensors extend into the band, which explains why those straps aren't going anywhere. They're comfortable enough (even though the plastic bit that holds the tail end of the strap in place moves around a lot), but they angle away from the watch's body in a way that could be uncomfortable for big-wristed people. You might expect the standard-bearer of a dramatically upgraded operating system to pack some impressive, fresh-off-the-line components. Well, not quite. On one hand, there's a fairly common 1.1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset inside the Sport, paired with 4GB of storage. On the other hand, you get a whopping 768MB of memory. That chip has definitely been around, but we're looking at the most RAM ever in an Android Wear watch -- definitely handy for keeping everything running smoothly. Then comes the laundry list of radios and sensors seen in other high-end smartwatches. In addition to Bluetooth and WiFi, there's GPS, a heart-rate sensor, an LTE radio and nano-SIM slot, NFC for Android Pay transactions, an accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, and ambient light sensor. Phew. No wonder this thing feels so chunky. New to the Android Wear formula is a rotating crown button, similar to what you'll find on Apple Watches. The comparison to Apple is impossible to avoid, but I actually prefer LG's approach; there's just the right amount of friction as you turn the crown, and it juts further out of the watch's body so that it's easier to spin with two fingers. I'm still convinced the spinning bezel from Samsung's Gear S3 Frontier is the most elegant interface you'll find on a smartwatch, but the combination of a big, touchable screen here and a rotating crown for more-precise control gets pretty close. Having two interface mechanisms that essentially do the same thing can get tricky, though, as I'll explain in a moment. Anyway, the crown is flanked by two quick-launch buttons that fire up Google Fit and Android Pay by default. I'm still not sold on the look, but unless you're really into thin watches, the Watch Sport packs more bang for your buck. Love the design or hate it, the LG Sport is ultimately a vessel for a new version of Android Wear. If I were writing this six months ago, that would've meant a wearable with a smattering of new features that, while pretty nifty, didn't do much to move the platform forward. Not anymore. During the week I've been testing the Watch Sport, there's one thought I've kept coming back to: Android Wear is all grown up. More importantly, performance is mostly smooth now. Obviously, the robust hardware helps keep things running nicely, but Android Wear has never felt this fast or flexible, even on watches with basically the same components. Take the apps situation, for instance. Developers have achieved some impressive feats on our wrist-screens, and now it's easier to download and manage apps on the watch independently from a phone. The update packs the ability to download certain apps directly to Wear 2.0 watches over a WiFi or LTE connection. It's quick and works well, and now there are plenty of apps that work well right on the wrist. These past few days, Foursquare has made for a surprisingly able wrist app on day trips to New York City. The app Bring added a handy shopping list I could tap when I remembered to grab the eggs. More crucial to me is that we can now add complications from third-party apps to watch faces. It's been a lifesaver. Consider the weather: Right out of the box, there isn't a way to add a \"current temperature\" complication to the Sport's six preloaded watch faces. Sure, there's a standalone weather app, but who has the time to open the app launcher and scroll down to the Ws? With the 2.0 update in place, downloading the Weather Channel's complications onto the watch (but not the phone) is dead simple. The Watch Sport is also one of the first wearables to come with Google's Assistant baked in, and most of the time it was an impressive performer. I spent most of the past week asking it to text my friends and answer mundane, random questions I couldn't be bothered to grab a phone for. Think \"how many cups in a quart?\" or \"how old is Vladimir Putin?\" Alas, though, my home isn't terribly smart, so I couldn't test how the Watch Sport does at managing lights and firing up connected coffee makers. In any case, my only real disappointment is how long it sometimes takes for the assistant to respond to my questions. The longest delay I've ever seen was 10 to 15 seconds when connected to a phone via Bluetooth; it was typically faster at returning results over WiFi or LTE. Then there are the little things. The watch displays the time even while it's booting up, so there's never a moment -- short of the watch being dead -- when you can't tell what time it is. Quick settings like screen brightness, volume, Do Not Disturb and Airplane Mode are all located in one menu when you swipe down from the home screen, unlike the multiple pages of options in older Android Wear versions. Notifications are color-coded based on the app, and the Google Inbox-style smart replies to messages have been mostly spot-on. As a whole, the Android Wear 2.0 package is impressively well-rounded. My list of gripes is much shorter by comparison. While I think the new design is a big improvement, longtime Android Wear fans will need some time to get reacquainted. It's mostly minor stuff, such as swiping to change watch faces instead of long-pressing. I also wish Google had applied some of these new interaction rules more consistently. Most of the time you have to swipe from left to right on the screen to go back one level, but that doesn't work from the app list. Instead, you're supposed to hit the crown button. Speaking of, the crown could use more consistency too. In some situations, you can either swipe on the screen or spin the crown to scroll up and down. In others, you're forced to use one or the other. The only way to know is to keep an eye on what kind of indicators appear on-screen; if you get a scroll bar that hugs the screen's round edge, you can swipe or spin. For scrolling through things like watch-face complications, though, your only choice is to swipe. Why? I have no idea. To its credit, Google has taken note of the issue and has said it will address this in a future update, but it's unclear when. I might not love the Watch Sport's exterior design, but LG has otherwise nailed the basics. The display is crisp and decently bright even under harsh sunlight, though the always-on display mode is easily overpowered by bright days. Day-to-day performance, as I've noted, is generally excellent. Even the new fitness functionality, which can track indoor workouts such as using the elliptical and doing squats, is more precise than I expected. It's a bummer that the automatic activity recognition doesn't work the way Google originally said it would. Early on, the plan was for Android Wear to interpret certain movements as exercise so you'd get the caloric credit for a workout without having to touch the watch. That didn't pan out, as a Google spokesperson explained to Engadget: \"After internally testing the auto-start feature as originally envisioned, we concluded that it wasn't the best user experience for many situations (e.g., when you're running to catch the bus).\" Fair enough, since the feature still exists for strength training exercises, but here's hoping Google figures it out later. In general, though, the new Android Wear is mostly excellent and runs like a charm on LG's hardware. Still, let's not forget all the extras that the Sport brings to the wrist. I don't know that talking into your wrist has become completely socially acceptable, but at least the Watch Sport doubles as a decent phone. It's worth noting LG isn't new to this; the second-edition Watch Urbane with LTE was the first Android Wear timepiece with a built-in mobile radio for data and calls. And now the Sport's improved software makes it much easier to use. Sure, you can launch the Phone app and scroll through all of your contacts, but asking Google's Assistant to connect me to someone usually seemed more accurate than relying on the voice commands of old. Audio quality is nothing to write home about, though. Max volume isn't all that loud, but I could still hear most conversations pretty clearly on bustling New York streets. Using the GPS can take a while if you're using the watch as a standalone device, but performance improves quickly when the Sport is connected to your phone. Once that's finished, you can load an app such as Google Maps -- which isn't installed on the watch by default, strangely -- to get to your next destination. Getting Android Pay set up before the watch's official launch was sort of a pain, but once that initial setup was complete, I had no problem using the Sport to make some purchases at my local drug store. All of these extras require a powerful battery, though, and the 430mAh cell in the Sport doesn't seem like enough. Yes, that's a bigger battery than we usually see in Android Wear watches, but this updated software seems to be pushing the hardware much more than before. With an active Bluetooth connection to a phone, auto brightness and the always-on display enabled, the Watch Sport usually stuck around for about 13 hours before dying. While that's technically enough juice to get me through a full day of work, I always had to make a beeline for a power outlet once I got home. If you really want to see the battery meter plummet, use an LTE connection to download some apps or load up the watch face that updates its background image based on your location. I think a bigger battery would do more for the watch's user experience than a persistent network connection, but it's ultimately a matter of preference. Not everyone needs every bell and whistle the LG Watch Sport offers, which is why the more basic LG Watch Style exists. It will launch alongside the Sport as one of the first Android Wear 2.0 watches on the market, which means the Style packs all of Google's helpful tweaks and a similar rotating crown button for precise control over apps and notifications. The Style also uses the same Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset as the Sport (albeit with less RAM), and the performance there feels similarly smooth. It costs $100 less than the Sport too, though you'll lose the LTE, NFC, GPS and heart rate sensor along the way. My colleague Cherlynn isn't a fan, but it's worth a look at least. Then you have options like Samsung's Gear S3 Frontier, which features many of the same Watch Sport tricks in a slimmer body. I dig the Frontier's rugged look, but I appreciate its spinning bezel even more. In addition to being fun to use, the bezel also has distinct notches that click into place, making the act of scrolling through notifications and menus feel more satisfying. It costs $349 like the Watch Sport, but choosing the Frontier means you're working with Tizen and its limited selection of useful apps. If you're looking for a smartwatch for your iPhone, meanwhile, the Watch Sport technically does the job. Still, we've experienced a handful of issues with getting standalone apps and notifications to work properly, to the point where we almost don't recommend trying. It's possible this is a symptom of non-final software (we've asked Google for comment), but don't expect the Watch Sport to be much more than a second-class citizen as far as your iPhone is concerned. You're better off with an Apple Watch, in that case. One final note: If you're in the market for a smartwatch, do yourself a favor and ignore every Android Wear 1.0 wearable out there. Their time has come and gone. Even if the LG Watch Sport falls short of perfection, it's just one of many options that will soon be available, and the software improvements are notable enough that there's no reason to look back. It's rare that I find myself enjoying a device's software more than its hardware, but here I am. Don't get me wrong, not much about the Watch Sport as a package of parts is definitively bad. If you don't mind the lackluster battery and thick body, it's a perfectly fast, perfectly adequate smartwatch. It's just that Android Wear 2.0 -- even with its flaws -- is such a marked improvement over earlier versions that it can't help but steal the show. While I don't agree with every one of LG's design choices, the Watch Sport's greatest strength is how easily its technological trappings fade into the background, giving Google's software the power and space to fully shine. In that way, the Watch Sport feels almost Nexus-like in its ambitions and execution. Ultimately, LG has put together a decidedly decent smartwatch, but I can't wait to see where Android Wear 2.0 pops up next.","It was only a matter of time until Dell gave us a convertible spin on the XPS 13, our favorite Windows laptop for nearly two years running. While the original model is still ideal if you need a traditional laptop design, it falls short if you ever want more than just a clamshell. Enter the XPS 13 2-in-1, which has the same style and premium quality as its sibling, but with the added ability to transform into a tablet (and a few other things in between). It doesn't revolutionize the world of convertible laptops, but it makes Dell's high-end laptop lineup that much stronger. It's easy to mistake this new machine for the original XPS 13. They share the same overarching design: sleek metal cases, nearly bezel-less screens and an attractive carbon-fiber weave covering the keyboard deck and trackpad. While it would have been nice to see some dramatic changes, it's nonetheless a handsome, premium-looking laptop. The XPS 13 2-in-1 also feels just as sturdy as its sibling; there's no flex to the case around the keyboard or the screen. The one major difference is the convertible's two prominent hinges, which prevent the display from sitting flush with the keyboard. Those hinges make the convertible XPS 13 look a bit less refined than the original, but at least they're put to good use: They allow the display to swing around 360 degrees. The XPS 13 2-in-1 can flip around in a \"tent\" formation, which is ideal for bingeing on Netflix in bed, and a \"stand\" mode, which puts the display facing toward you with the keyboard resting facedown. And, of course, moving the display all the way around turns the machine into a tablet (albeit a fairly hefty one). Thanks to the hinge design, I was able to smoothly transition the 2-in-1 among all of its different modes, and I was pleased to see that the display held steady at just about every angle. Sure, Dell is aping the convertible design that Lenovo pioneered with its Yoga line, but it's hard to blame the company for copying when so many others are doing the same. At 2.7 pounds, the 2-in-1 clocks in at around the same weight as the XPS 13. It feels substantial in your hand, but it's also light enough to forget about in your bag. As a tablet, though, don't expect to be holding it one-handed for too long. At least Dell made the convertible thinner: Its tapered chassis measures between 8mm and 13.7mm thick, whereas the XPS 13 measured between 9mm and 15mm. That's not a huge difference, but it's still noticeable. As you can imagine, that small frame makes it a wonderfully portable computer. Thanks to its skinny bezels, it can fit into bags meant for 11-inch laptops. But, as usual, there's a cost to being so thin. The XPS 13 2-in-1 doesn't have room for full-size USB connections. Instead, it packs in two USB-C ports on each side, which can handle charging and external displays. One socket is also Thunderbolt 3.0 compatible, which makes it around eight times as fast as USB 3.0 for data transfer. Thankfully, Dell includes a dongle in the box to get your older devices connected to USB-C. Aside from a connection for a laptop lock, there's also a microSD card slot, a headphone jack and a useful battery life indicator. (It's something I'd like to see in more laptops.) Once again, Dell chose to put a 720p webcam right below the screen -- but at least it's centered this time, instead of being shoved to one side. Your Skype calls won't exactly be flattering in laptop mode when you have a camera pointing at you from that angle, but you can always opt to take video calls in the tent mode, which positions it above the display. The webcam also has infrared capabilities, but you won't be able to use it to log in with your face via Windows Hello until later this year. For now, you can rely on the fingerprint sensor beside the touchpad, which performed reliably in my tests. The XPS 13 2-in-1's backlit keyboard is as comfortable as ever, offering a satisfying amount of travel with every key press. My typing speed was about on par with what I can achieve on my 13-inch MacBook Air and Lenovo's recent ThinkPads: typically about 76 words per minute. I somewhat expected Dell to make the keyboard shallower to compensate for the slimmer case, but fortunately that wasn't the case. Dell's Precision Touchpad, a specification co-developed by Microsoft, was also among the best I've used on a Windows laptop. It had no trouble interpreting multi-finger gestures for scrolling around web pages and documents, and it handled typical mousing tasks well too. And yes, there's stylus support too with Dell's optional Active Pen. Another feature worth mentioning (or, really, the lack of one): The XPS 13 2-in-1 has no fans. Instead, it relies on passive cooling and a very efficient processor to manage heat. Given that I struggle with my MacBook Air's fans daily, it was honestly refreshing not to hear constant whirring whenever I started stressing the system. The computer definitely gets warm, especially on the bottom of its case, but it was never uncomfortably hot to hold in my lap. It seems like a small change at first, but I'd imagine plenty of consumers would be into owning a fanless laptop. Dell delivers a gorgeous 13.3-inch screen with the 2-in-1. It keeps the \"InfinityEdge\" bezel from the XPS 13, which measures just 5.2mm thick. I tested out the 1080p version of the display, which was bold, colorful and relatively sharp. (I would have really liked to see the Quad HD+ version of the screen in action, though.) It was plenty bright indoors, and highly usable in direct sunlight. Though it wasn't as high-res as some other laptop screens I've seen lately, like Lenovo's Quad HD OLED ThinkPad, the XPS 13 2-in-1's panel was particularly impressive when streaming video and displaying digital comics. It was great for diving into Fiona Staples' intricate artwork in the latest issues of Saga. And yes, you can bet that I made heavy use of the 2-in-1's tent and tablet orientations for all of my testing. Given that many consumers would be interested in this computer for lounging around in bed and on the couch, it's a good thing the screen can keep up with my endless media diet. In day-to-day use, the XPS 13 2-in-1 felt as zippy as most other ultraportables I've tested recently. I didn't notice any speed issues, even as I had multiple browsers open with dozens of tabs, Slack, Spotify, Evernote and Paint.net all running at the same time. As the benchmarks below reveal, though, it's actually a bit slower in both general performance and 3D graphics than the 2015-era XPS 13. That's still a major accomplishment, since we typically expect much lower performance in fanless laptops (looking at you, MacBook). But we're also seeing the slight limitations of Intel's seventh-generation Y-series chips. E2,927 / P1,651 / X438 E2,697/ P1,556/ X422 Our review model is powered by a Core i7-7Y75 CPU running at 1.3GHz to 1.6GHz along with 8GB of RAM. The fact that it compares well with the XPS 13, which was powered by a faster i5-6200U chip the last time we benchmarked it, is impressive. Dell also implemented a dynamic power mode that pushes the 2-in-1's hardware in short bursts. But really, if performance is your main concern, you're better off looking at the refreshed XPS 13, or HP's revamped Spectre x360, both of which support Intel's faster U-series chips. Honestly, though, if I had never seen the benchmarks, I probably wouldn't have noticed the convertible's slightly limited performance. It worked perfectly fine as a traditional laptop. In the tent and stand orientations, it had no trouble dealing with my constant swiping. Admittedly, the XPS 13 2-in-1 doesn't exactly make for an ideal tablet, given that it's almost three times heavier than most premium slates today. But I found the mode useful when I really wanted to dive into a long article or comic. I'd never suggest anyone buy a convertible laptop if they're mainly interested in using it as a tablet. It's more ideal if your needs tend to shift throughout the day. Battery life The 2-in-1 typically lasted a full eight-hour workday, with around an hour of juice left to spare. In our battery test, which involves playing an HD video on loop until the computer dies, it lasted around eight and a half hours. That's about an hour more than we saw with the original XPS 13, but it's thoroughly bested by Lenovo's Yoga 910, which lasted an impressive 16 hours and 13 minutes in our test, and the HP Spectre x360, which notched 13.5 hours. The XPS 13 2-in-1 starts at $1,000 with a Y-series Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. But if you're really considering it, I'd recommend stepping up to the $1,200 model with 8GB of RAM and a roomier 256GB SSD. You can also upgrade to a Quad HD+ display for another $250. Our review unit is valued at $1,300, but if money is no object, you can get a machine with 16GB of RAM for $1,400. And, at the very high end, you can get a Core i7 Y-series CPU and Quad HD+ display with either 8GB or 16GB of RAM for $1,700 or $1,800, respectively. While Lenovo kicked off the trend of bendable laptops, plenty of PC manufacturers are now offering their own spin on the concept. Most recently, we looked at HP's new Spectre x360, which came with a few improvements and a whole new set of compromises. Lenovo's Yoga 910 is also a decent alternative, though it doesn't have Thunderbolt-compatible USB-C ports. I was also wowed by Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga, though its starting price of $1,682 puts it in an entirely different league (same with the recently refreshed Surface Book). It's worth considering if you need a convertible at all. If you just want a nice and light traditional laptop, there's a plethora of options out there, including the standard XPS 13. And as I mentioned above, those machines will typically offer more speed for your dollar, not to mention better battery life. Yes, we've seen convertible laptops like this, but none with Dell's XPS styling. And, based on my conversations with potential PC buyers, that alone could be enough to tempt them away from rival machines. While Dell made some concessions with the XPS 13 2-in-1, I'm ultimately impressed that it managed to deliver a premium convertible laptop that mostly lives up to its beloved predecessor. Photos by Shivani Khattar","If you spend most of your days typing at a desk, it's worth looking into an ergonomic keyboard. The traditional flat QWERTY keyboard design wasn't designed with comfort in mind, and really, why should you be forced to live with an input interface originally designed for typewriters in the 1870s? Microsoft has been at the forefront of the ergonomic arena for the past few decades with its \"Natural\" keyboards, which split the QWERTY layout into two halves to make typing easier on your hands and wrists. And with its new wireless Surface Ergonomic Keyboard, Microsoft has delivered its best model yet. Strangely enough, this new entry actually looks like a step backward from Microsoft's last model, the Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard. Whereas that version had a futuristic look, with a large gap between its two sets of keys, the Surface Ergonomic Keyboard is fairly plain. Its light gray styling makes it fit in right alongside the Surface laptops and the Surface Studio desktop (hence the name). But while it looks a tad more traditional, it's also the most refined Microsoft keyboard I've used when it actually comes to typing. All of its keys are easy to reach, and there's a nice amount of depth and resistive feedback with every button press. It's also worth pointing out that the keys feel inviting as you lay your fingers on them, almost as if they're asking you to start mashing on them. The Surface Ergonomic is also a surprisingly quiet keyboard, even for heavy typists like me, so it won't annoy your office mates. And even though it's made entirely out of plastic, it feels sturdier than its predecessor. (I attribute that to the fact that it doesn't have a big, gaping hole right down the middle.) Whenever I showed off the keyboard to my fellow Engadget editors, they couldn't help but start fondling its palm rest. It's made out of a soft material that feels smooth and comforting. There's also plenty of cushioning on the palm rest, which should soothe your tired wrists. The keyboard gets its ergonomic badge from its split key design, which cuts the traditional QWERTY layout down the middle. By having your hands rest at a more natural angle (hence the name of Microsoft's early keyboards), the idea is that they'll be less fatigued than if you have to contort them to fit a rectangular set of keys. The Surface Ergonomic also has a slight slope to it, which raises the keys slightly. I've used the keyboard to write several reviews and news posts, and I found that my wrists felt less stressed after lengthy typing sessions. For work, I mostly rely on my MacBook Air's keyboard, which is among the better ones on a laptop, but I still noticed an appreciable difference. I've been using these sorts of keyboards for years, so I had no problem getting started with the Surface Ergonomic. But if you've only ever used standard keyboards, it might take some getting used to. Your hands will have to retrain themselves, especially if you're a dedicated touch typist. If you're testing out an ergonomic keyboard for the first time, just give it some time instead of throwing up your hands in frustration. It's worth the work, trust me. My biggest issue with the Surface Ergonomic Keyboard is its high $130 price. I'm used to spending a bit of a premium for a high-end keyboard, but that's still tough to swallow. You could snag Microsoft's Sculpt Ergonomic, which also comes with a mouse, for around $80 today. And for most people, that will feel almost as good as this new model (plus its black design might blend more easily into your hardware). If you're a typing nerd like me who hasn't yet fallen for the siren call of mechanical keyboards, and you don't mind the high price, the Surface Ergonomic is worth a look. And if you do get one, just be sure to keep it safe from jealous desk neighbors.","It's Friday, so live a little. Maybe order a pizza by robot? How about the latest phone available directly from Microsoft, the, er, Galaxy S8? Meanwhile, Destiny 2 is coming to PCs, and Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey parted ways with Facebook. No April Fools here -- it landing on a weekend means that's someone else's problem.\n There and back again, again.SpaceX proves its rockets are reusable Last night SpaceX launched a cargo mission into orbit, then landed the Falcon 9 rocket booster safely on its drone ship. While that has become almost routine, what's new is that for the first time, the company reused a rocket that had already made the trip. Being able to reuse booster rockets will be a big part of dropping the price tag on space travel, and Elon Musk says that this time SpaceX even recovered the nose cone -- a $6 million part on its own. You can pre-order now at Microsoft retail stores. Microsoft has its own version of the Samsung Galaxy S8 (updated) Samsung has bundled Microsoft apps like Skype, OneDrive, OneNote and more on its phones and tablets for a while now. But when it comes to the Galaxy S8, the two companies are taking their partnership a step further. Microsoft is selling a special Samsung Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition that comes loaded with apps and services like Office, OneDrive, Outlook and Cortana. It's interesting that Microsoft's virtual assistant would be included given that these two new handsets are the big debut of Samsung's Bixby. It's not exactly what we asked for Twitter changed replies Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you -- Twitter changed its reply style. The company has been working on this tweak for a while, and the good news is that it stops things like @names, quote tweets, images or polls from counting towards your 140 character limit. Of course, users have already found ways to annoy each other with the feature by creating massive @reply canoes. 'We're thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR.' Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey leaves Facebook Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Rift headset, is no longer with the company. After the news that he'd donated $10,000 to a group spreading pro-Trump memes, the 24-year old had increasingly shied away from the public eye. That even went as far as skipping last October's Oculus Connect event so as not to be a \"distraction\" to the news coming out of the conference. Five years later...NASA probe Juno captures Jupiter's poles in glorious detail Finally, Juno's taken some nice snaps. It's an interactive relaxation app from the makers of 'Monument Valley'.Sway is a slick meditation app that makes sure you relax Sway is a smartphone-based meditation (kind of) game, that comes from Ustwo, the company behind acclaimed mobile hit Monument Valley. No, this isn't a dreamily designed puzzler, but the same gentle aesthetics and attention to detail are definitely found in this app's DNA. Mat Smith managed to test Sway out a few times earlier this week and says it's a cleverly distracting way to get into mindfulness. 51.4 megapixels in a DSLR-like body Fujifilm GFX 50S review We spent a week with a $6,500 camera and (probably) didn't drop it. Sure, the GFX 50S might be better if it had 4K video, but most buyers will be here for the pictures, and they did not disappoint.","The Federal Trade Commission is going back to an old well, and possibly will actually exercise some of its authority. We're talking about the FTC's stance on sponsored editorial posts that aren't clearly labeled as such. \"The FTC will soon begin holding media companies accountable for deceptive practices,\" fashion business publication WWD reports. \"Although the FTC works with publishers, it has never penalized a media company with a fine.\" That could soon change given the rise of native advertising online (especially with celebrity social media accounts) and in print. As a quick refresher, native advertising is different in that it looks like an editorial piece, but is paid for by advertisers. In print, that usually is achieved with a label on the header or footer of the page saying it's advertisement. And, in addition to that, there's usually a writing staff focusing solely on native advertising that the editorial side would never touch. Because ethics. To sidestep this, some online publications have rushed to label themselves as \"entertainment\" rather than news and have moved such articles under that label. But when you ask the people running such websites, the delineation between ads and genuine editorial becomes murky. Both WWD and The Fashion Law use examples from places like Refinery29 and Vogue, but you can find this type of stuff all over the web. The problem arises when readers or social followers can't tell the difference between independent opinions and paid advertising, and that's what the FTC hopes to end.","When it comes to piracy, institutions typically go after individual offenders and platforms, especially illicit ones. But Germany's highest court just ruled that children aren't just on the hook for illegally downloading music or movies -- their parents are, too. And if they don't rat out their kids, they'll get stuck with the court-decided fine. The precedent-setting decision by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) charged the parents of three children with a \u20ac3,500 fine after someone in the home illegally downloaded Rihanna's 2010 album \"Loud.\" The father stated that Germany's Basic Law protects family members from testifying against each other and refused to out which child did the deed. The court didn't force him to reveal the perpetrator, but held him liable in their stead. If parents refuse to name the guilty party, the decision establishes, whoever gets the bill for internet service is ultimately responsible to pay the fine. But nobody will be forced to \"deliver their children at knifepoint,\" state prosecutor Christian Rohnke reportedly said.","Now that your ISP will soon be able to sell your browsing history to advertisers, it's good to know which companies have your back, privacy-wise. Around the web, the recent switch to HTTPS encryption has been a step in the right direction, but adult websites -- the ones with the most potentially embarrassing content -- have been slow to adopt. This week Pornhub, the most popular porn site on the internet, announced it now supports HTTPS to keep users' browsing habits within its network of sites as private as possible. HTTPS uses encryption to secure the connection between your browser and the server and while it won't make you invisible on the internet, it will conceal any traffic beyond the top domain level. HTTPS can also speed up page loads, keep out malware and prevent sketchy ads from hijacking the page, which can be fairly common in some of the seedier corners of the internet. In the case of HTTPS-enabled adult sites like Pornhub, your ISP (or anyone monitoring your connection, really) will be able to see that you've visited the site, but not what data is being transferred. While the protocol is not perfect, your dirty searches and video views will be kept in the dark. \"With this Internet communication protocol we can ensure not only the security of our platform, but also that of our users,\" Pornhub VP Corey Price said in a statement. \"At the end of the day, we want every single one of them to feel safe and secure on our platform while enjoying our library of over 5 million videos.\"","Who'd have thought that just days after the house rolled back privacy protections for internet users, ISPs would take advantage? The EFF did, pointing out that Verizon has already announced that it will install spyware, in the form of the launcher AppFlash, across its users' Android devices in the coming weeks. AppFlash, as TechCrunch reports, will embed itself to the left of your home screen, offering details on local restaurants, movies or apps that you can download. But the EFF spent a little time staring at AppFlash's privacy policy, where it's revealed that the software will vacuum up any and all of your private data. For instance, it'll snag your cell number, device type, operating system and the apps or services that you use. More crucially, the app will also harvest the details of everything installed on your device, your location and the contact details of everyone in your phonebook. Verizon admits that the information will be shared within \"the Verizon family of companies,\" including that of (Engadget parent) Aol. From there, the data will be used to \"provide more relevant advertising within the AppFlash experiences and in other places.\" The other places being a euphemism for banner and display advertising all across the web. So, if you're trying for a baby and you've got a fertility app on your phone, it's reasonable to expect plenty of banner ads for diapers and formula feeding. If you're doing something more private, like making your first steps out of the closet or dealing with a substance abuse issue -- and you've got a relevant app -- then Verizon's gonna know about it. To be fair, Verizon justifies its stance by saying that it'll need some of this data in order to make on-demand services work. How, after all, can it seamlessly tell you local movie times and call you an Uber to the cinema if it doesn't know where you are? Not to mention that Google already snatches most of this information for its own purposes. But, as the EFF points out, most of the Android devices on Verizon's network will now have a common app that hackers will be probing for holes. Should a nefarious type find such a vulnerability, then you can be sure that same personal data will be sold off to the highest bidder. Update: Verizon has since sent the following statement to Engadget: \"As we said earlier this week, we are testing AppFlash to make app discovery better for consumers. The test is on a single phone \u2013- LG K20 V \u2013- and you have to opt-in to use the app. Or, you can easily disable the app. Nobody is required to use it. Verizon is committed to your privacy. Visit www.verizon.com/about/privacy to view our Privacy Policy.\" Update 2: Following Verizon's statement, the EFF has actually taken the step of withdrawing its prior accusation of the cellular network's motives. The privacy body has pledged to investigate the matter further, but it looks as if it may have been a lot of fuss over what amounts to very little. Update 3: Verizon has also posted a brief explanation on privacy in light of Congress deciding to roll back the FCC's privacy laws this week. \"We have two programs that use web browsing data -- and neither of these programs involves selling customers' personal web browsing history,\" chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia said. \"The Verizon Selects advertising program makes marketing to customers more personalized and useful -- using de-identified information to determine which customers fit into groups that advertisers are trying to reach.\" *Verizon owns AOL, Engadget's parent company. However, Engadget maintains full editorial control, and Verizon will have to pry it from our cold, dead hands.","If you're waiting with baited breath for the Quake Champions beta, then you'll soon be able to begin exhaling. The news is out that the game's closed beta will begin on Thursday, April 6th, with additional players being added to it over time. If you haven't yet signed up, you can do so right now at the Quake website, along with pretty much every other gamer in the world. There's a lot riding on Quake Champions, which its creators are hoping will make it as big a blockbuster as other competitive shooters like Overwatch. For one thing, id Software is promising that the game will play at 120Hz as a pean to pro gamers. After all, faster frame rates equal faster reaction times, the sort of thing that professionals obsess about. Quake Champions' creators also have designs on cornering the lucrative, and massive, amateur esports market with the game. By making it free to play-ish, combined with the strength of the Quake brand, it should swamp those gaming cafes in eastern Europe and South Korea. Just so long as it can unseat titles like League of Legends and do for Quake what Doom did for the FPS late last year.","The Overwatch World Cup is back for its second go-round, this time inviting players from more countries, featuring more games and promising even more live events. The world of eSports has continued to expand since the inaugural event last fall, and that's why things are kicking off now to get ready for a showdown at BlizzCon 2017. Right now, skilled players (the top 100 in each country) need to make sure they represent well enough on average that their country is in the top 32 by the time phase two starts in 25 days. After that, things get a bit political, with each country's top eligible players creating a three-person committee that will recommend roster picks for all stages of the competition. Once that's done, the live qualifiers begin, with four live events scheduled to take place this summer in Europe, North America and Asia. They will be streamed online, or you can buy tickets and watch in person. There teams from the top 32 countries will battle it out, with the top two automatically qualifying to compete live at BlizzCon 2017 in November. It's all very simple, right?","Destiny 2 will hit PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 8th, much to the delight of wannabe space hunters worldwide. The original Destiny was console-only, leaving PC players in the lurch, but pre-orders for the sequel went live today and confirmed the new game is coming to desktop. Destiny 2 is a completely new title, meaning any progress that players made in the original game will not carry over to the sequel. This is good news for newcomers, PC players or otherwise, as it places every person on equal footing from the get-go. However, it's a bit of a blow to anyone who's spent the past three years grinding with their Guardian (not like that, you pervs). Note that PS4 folks will have a bit of an advantage over players on other platforms: The console is getting \"exclusive content\" that won't show up on Xbox One or PC until fall 2018 at the earliest. Destiny 2 comes in a variety of flavors, including the Collector's Edition (which features a convertible backpack capable of carrying a 15 inch laptop), the Limited Edition (access to the first two expansion packs and a fancy display box), and the Digital Deluxe Edition (the expansion pass and extra in-game content). Nathan Fillion once again stars as the Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6 in the latest trailer for Destiny 2, but this time around he's sharing the screen with the more composed character, Commander Zavala.","While the VR war between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive is getting most of the hype, the competition in mobile VR is a far bigger deal for most consumers. After all, you only need a phone and a cheap headset for mobile VR, not a powerful gaming rig and lots of spending money. Samsung's Gear VR cemented itself as a pioneer in the market over the past few years, but Google's Daydream View headset came out swinging last year with the inclusion of a small motion-sensing remote. Samsung is ready to fight back with a refined headset and mobile motion controller of its own. As part of its Galaxy S8 event today, Samsung announced that the new Gear VR will be available on April 21st for $129. Current Gear VR owners can also nab the controller separately for $39. While the Gear VR is still far less than the $600 you'd have to shell out for the Oculus Rift or Vive, it's more than the $80 price for either the previous model or the Daydream View. But Samsung might be able to justify that premium with a slightly better mobile VR experience. I had a chance to try out the new controller with an older Gear VR, and I was surprised by how comfortable it was. The motion tracking felt fairly accurate, but mostly I was struck by how it felt in my hand. It has a slightly angled orientation, and your fingers naturally fall on the large trackpad on top and the trigger button on the back. That trigger, by the way, differentiates it from the Daydream View remote, which only has a trackpad and a few buttons. It makes the controller more in line with the Oculus Touch and Vive gamepads, and it's a big help for most VR shooting titles. Beyond the new hardware, Oculus also updated its Oculus Home experience for the Gear VR. It boots up much faster than before, so you're not left staring at a black screen when you put on the headset. You'll also notice that Oculus Home looks much clearer than it did in the past. It's now easier to read text, thanks to a doubled pixel resolution. To show that feature off, Oculus also added a VR web browser, which was able to render Engadget and other major websites with no issue. Most importantly, the website text looked good enough to read within the Gear VR. A new controller doesn't mean much without software that supports it though. Oculus says there will be 20 compatible titles next month, with 50 games to follow over the coming months. The company is also bringing over Oculus Avatars to the Gear VR along with the new Home update. You'll be able to design and dress up your avatar, and the customizations will also carry over to the Oculus Rift if you ever upgrade. Similarly, if you're a Rift owner who's already designed an avatar, you should see that within the new Oculus Home experience. Click here to catch all the latest news from Samsung's Galaxy S8 launch event!","When Apple rolled out its controversial new MacBook Pro last fall, potential buyers were a bit miffed at the need to buy a host of expensive dongles to make the computer work with their old devices. Apple quickly responded by cutting prices on a host of USB-C cables and accessories, as well as the new LG 4K and 5K displays that are compatible with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Originally, those discount prices were set to expire at the end of 2016, but Apple extended the deal until the end of March. Well, that day of reckoning is here -- the discount on cables, accessories and monitors is set to expire today, March 31st. So if you've been considering buying one of those LG monitors, today is definitely the day to do it. The 21.5-inch 4K display currently sells for $524, down from $700. The 27-inch 5K screen is priced at $924, a pretty notable discount from the $1,300 it will cost tomorrow. You're not going to save nearly as much cash on cables and adapters, but Apple is still offering pretty steep discounts. The super-helpful USB-C to USB dongle is $9 right now, down from $19, while you can save $5 on USB-C to Lightning cables for your iPhone or iPad. More expensive multiport adapters for outputting video to external displays are $49 instead of $69. All third-party USB-C accessories are 25 percent off, as well. If you've been thinking about buying a new MacBook Pro (or already have one) and have been dragging your feet on getting the cables you need, now's a good day to go get them.","Google's been talking about Android Wear 2.0 for a long time -- it was first announced almost a year ago, at the I/O 2016 developer event. But it was delayed from a planned fall launch until early 2017. And while a few watches have been released that include the new software (most notably the LG Watch Style and Sport), the release for older Android Wear devices has continued to be delayed. And you'll have to keep on waiting -- Google confirmed today that an unspecified bug was found during final testing that will push back the release again. \"We have started rolling out the Android Wear 2.0 update to Fossil Q Founder, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 and Tag Heuer Connected,\" a Google spokesperson said in a statement. \"For other devices, the update is currently being delayed due to a bug found in final testing. We will push the update to the remaining devices as soon as the issue is resolved.\" That said, it's worth noting that -- in typical Google fashion -- Android Wear 2.0 didn't have a solid release date. When LG's pair of watches hit the market in February, the company confirmed that the new software would start rolling out to older devices \"in the coming weeks.\" That's the beauty of non-specific release schedules. Google isn't technically late, it's just taking a bit longer than planned. Google hasn't said exactly how long it'll take for this bug to get worked out, but hopefully it won't take very long. 9to5Google has a complete list of the 19 watches that'll get Android Wear 2.0 when it's finally ready to go.","SpaceX just made history by launching the world's first reflight of an orbital rocket and landing its first stage on a barge again. The booster wasn't the only part of the rocket the company recovered from the SES-10 mission, though: it also managed to land Falcon 9's $6 million nose cone for the first time ever. A rocket's nose cone, found at its very tip, protects its payload and makes sure it offers minimum aerodynamic resistance. Musk has announced its recovery during the post-launch press conference, calling it \"the cherry on the cake.\" The SpaceX chief has revealed that the company used thrusters and steerable parachutes to guide two halves of the 16-foot-diameter cone back home. Musk and his team are hoping reusable rockets can make spaceflight a lot more affordable, so the more parts that can be reused, the better. Now that they've proven Falcon 9's first stage is reusable, they've set their sights on another goal: to relaunch a rocket within 24 hours of its last flight. Incredibly proud of the SpaceX team for achieving this milestone in space! Next goal is reflight within 24 hours. Wondering what happened to SES-10 since everybody keeps talking about SpaceX's rocket landing? It has successfully made its way to its new home in geostationary orbit. Successful deployment of SES-10 to geostationary transfer orbit confirmed. pic.twitter.com/FkVoUYSsmq SpaceX stuck the landing! pic.twitter.com/zAvYmgt89N","Sometimes facts from the ancient world aren't hidden in fossils or subterranean rock -- they're found across a massive range of ordinary data. Scientists started a project to discover when a unique type of rock formation, stromatolites, stopped forming in the ancient world. But to finish, they developed tools that let them parse through three million scientific publications, lowering the bar for research projects in the future. Stromatolites are layers of sediment made by microbes which started disappearing, paleontologists had believed, about 560 million years ago once those tiny organisms started getting eaten up en masse by newly-evolving multi-celled creatures. But after deploying their new tool, researchers found a greater correlation with seawater chemistry -- specifically, whether there was an abundance of the sediment dolomite. They started looking not just for where stromatolites showed up in rocks across history, but where they could have appeared and didn't. The researchers built two systems to collect and parse through the colossal range of data. First was GeoDeepDive, a digital library that could rapidly read millions of papers and pluck out particular nuggets. The massive computing it requires is generated by UW-Madison's Center for High Throughput Computing and HTCondor systems. The second, Macrostat, is a database that tracks the geological properties of North America's upper crust at different depths and across time. The undertaking started when one of the study's authors fresh out of undergrad at Princeton, Julia Wilcots, took it on as a project in summer 2015. By the end, it pioneered a new way to parse through a massive volume of academic publications and pick out particular references. \"Doing this study without GeoDeepDive would be all but impossible,\" The study's first author Shanen Peters told UW-Madison's newsroom. \"Reading thousands of papers to pick out references to stromatolites, and then linking them to a certain rock unit and geologic period, would take an entire career, even with Google Scholar. Here we got started with a talented undergrad working on a summer project. GeoDeepDive has greatly lowered the barrier to compiling literature data in order to answer many questions.\"","SpaceX is getting ready for one historic flight. The private space corporation has announced on Twitter that all systems are ready for today's launch -- the weather seems to be cooperating, as well. In 60 minutes or so (around 6:30PM Eastern), we might see the company send the first rocket it landed on an ocean platform back to space. It's the first orbital mission ever to use a recovered rocket and will prove that Falcon 9 truly is reusable. The flight will ferry the SES-10 communications satellite to orbit, so it can provide broadband and mobile services in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America. You can watch the event unfold through the company's live broadcast after the break. Update: The flight was a resounding success. SpaceX has landed the booster on a barge (yet again), marking the world's first reflight of an orbital class rocket. ~60 minutes until launch window for SES-10 opens. All systems and weather are go. Watch here https://t.co/gtC39uBC7z pic.twitter.com/KNUujBCDa7","A few years ago, the 3D platformer was in a bad place. Mario was still around, but the genre had little support elsewhere. Colorful games like Crash Bandicoot, Pyschonauts and Jak and Daxter had vanished in favor of grittier, more realistic adventures. There was the occasional surprise, like the papercraft-inspired Tearaway, but nothing close to the breadth of games found on the N64, PlayStation and PlayStation 2. The market had moved on, publishers thought, and it no longer made sense to fund ambitious, big-budget projects like Beyond Good and Evil. That all changed in May 2015. Playtonic Games, a small British team made up of former Rare employees, pitched a new platformer called Yooka-Laylee on Kickstarter. At their previous employer, they had worked on Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Country and Viva Pinata, all creative and well-received titles. Yooka-Laylee, they promised, would be a 3D platformer \"rare-vival,\" bringing back the colorful words, collectibles and twin-protagonist gameplay that made the Banjo series so special. The crowdfunding campaign was a huge success, raising over \u00a32 million (roughly $2.6 million) and hitting all of its stretch goals, which included boss battles, local co-op and four-person multiplayer, as well as an orchestral score. Clearly, backers remembered Banjo with fondness and were willing to pay for a spiritual successor. Since then, Insomniac has rebooted Ratchet & Clank, its weapon-centric space platformer, and Sony has announced a Crash Bandicoot 'N-Sane' remaster collection. Nintendo has chipped in too, unveiling Super Mario Odyssey, a successor to the likes of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, which is due to come out on the Switch this holiday. Yooka-Laylee, it seems, is at the center of a 3D platformer revival. \"3D platforming has its own subgenres, and they all satisfy a different itch.\" \"From our point of view it's coincidental,\" Gavin Price, creative lead at Playtonic says. \"I would love to say we all got together and had a secret meeting, and said, 'Let's do this!' One big collaboration.\" He continues, \"But what's brilliant is that 3D platforming has its own subgenres, and they all satisfy a different itch. You have the action-platforming of Ratchet, the gymnastical approach of Mario and the open-world collecting of us. I feel confident that you could buy all of these games and not feel like you're playing the same game twice. They have this natural inventiveness and creativity that is purely unique to those titles and characters.\" Playing Yooka-Laylee is an odd experience. It's at once familiar and alienating, like you've traveled to your childhood town only to find the houses and streets rebuilt. You're quickly introduced to Yooka, a green chameleon, and Laylee, a purple bat, two troublesome heroes who have stumbled upon a magical book. It's soon ripped from their grasp, however, with the pages scattered across distant lands. Laylee sits on Yooka's head and you control them as one, rolling along the ground in a ball or lapping up enemies with Yooka's tongue. For fans of Banjo-Kazooie, the premise is nothing new. The worlds you're exploring, however, are more beautiful and interesting than anything Rare produced on the N64. As soon as the first cutscene ends, I found myself rushing toward a pirate ship and using Laylee's wings to glide where I shouldn't. Open-world collectathons have always inspired exploration, and the same holds true in Yooka-Laylee. I had forgotten about my objective completely -- to investigate a nearby factory that's hoovering up books -- and started testing whether I could open treasure chests yet. The mechanics are familiar, and I quickly found my rhythm bouncing up walls and double jumping over large gaps. I soon met Trowzer, a snake who has stretched his long body to fit inside a pair of cargo shorts. To an adult, the joke is obvious, and I couldn't help but giggle as he explained the various upgrade systems. The pun-tastic humor is a trademark of Rare games, and I'm happy to see it preserved in Playtonic's work. Notably, there's no real voice acting in Yooka-Laylee. Instead, the game provides an endless supply of made-up gibberish, performed in slightly different accents to reflect the characters and their eccentric personalities. All the dialogue is explained through subtitles, however, so it's easy to keep up with the far-fetched story. Banjo-Kazooie was the same way, and Price insists the choice was an artistic one for Yooka-Laylee rather than a way to keep development costs down. \"I'm a big fan of content that doesn't hand-hold the player and leaves creative gaps for you to inject some of your own thinking into what's going on and engage with the game on a deeper level,\" he says. \"You want to decide for yourself exactly what Yooka is like. We provide some bits and bobs of information through the way he talks, and what he says, to inform you that this is the kind of character he is. But if we were to give him a voice, we would also be closing that door for the player.\" The platformer is also quick to poke fun at modern game design. Upon entering the factory, Laylee comments that Yooka \"gave himself a short tutorial on the way in.\" Trowzer responds that while he'd like to help the pair, he has \"an important call coming up with the World 1 boss.\" These references are littered throughout the game and emphasize the simple joy of 3D platformers. Sometimes you want a deep, BAFTA-nominated storyline, like the ones found in Firewatch, Inside and Oxenfree, but other times you just want something goofy that puts a smile on your face. That purity could be why the 3D platformer has found an audience again. \"It's nice to embrace the fact you're a video game and play to the strengths of acknowledging you're a video game,\" Price explains. The team's intent is to create comedy that works on different levels, similar to The Simpsons, Wallace and Gromit and the Disney-Pixar films. As a child, it's all innocent slapstick fun, but as an adult you can appreciate the subtle nods and winks. In the opening world, for instance, you can find tins of multicolored paint around your home. \"It's something we're a big believer in.\" Price says. \"I'm sure kids won't even think about it, and say, 'Well, multicolored paint is a thing in this world, that's fine,' and not see it as a joke.\" New 3D platformers offer more than upgraded visuals. While it's true that Yooka's environments are luscious, the underlying gameplay is far from a simple retread. Each world is now expandable, for example. Once you've collected enough 'Pagies,' you can unlock a new world or choose to improve an existing one. Either option will grant you new challenges, which can then be completed to repeat the process. It's a binary choice but one that gives you greater control over how the adventure unfolds. Yooka-Laylee also features a perk system. These unlocks affect your attributes in the game, simplifying challenges and catering to different play styles. In an early world called Tribalstack Tropics, I was struggling with a race that required me to roll around like a ball. Curling up consumes energy, and my stamina bar would always deplete before the finish line. I solved the problem by talking to Vendi, an enormous vending machine, who can lower the amount of energy required to perform the move. Playtonic says this perk system, and many other new features, were inspired by other video games outside the 3D platformer genre. \"There was a lot to maintain and keep in terms of what worked in the past,\" Price says,\" but we wanted to update it with new ways of engaging modern gamers' tastes as well. I think that gives the game a unique, refreshed appeal that can satisfy the old people like myself who played this stuff years ago while hopefully attracting new audiences.\" Playing Yooka-Laylee, it's hard to believe the game is an indie project. Playtonic launched its Kickstarter with a six-man team, and during its development averaged 15 full-time employees. Now, two years later, the studio sits at 23. That's not a small team, especially by indie standards, but it's a fraction of the manpower that would normally be required to build a platformer of this size. As I tick off more challenges, I'm looking for the cracks, the places where the studio has decided to cut corners. Aside from the camera, which occasionally frustrates, it's hard to find any faults. \"The middleware tools have been a big help,\" Price says. \"But being a smaller team, creatively led, you don't have to worry about disrupting other cogs in the machine. You can be a lot more reactive, nimble and productive. During the day there are no meetings, and we're in an area that's similar to the size of this room [he looks around and gestures -- we're in a small bar] so if you need to shout and ask someone for something, you can just stand on your chair and say, 'Hey, come and do this!'\" Price comes across mellow and carefree, but deep down he's nervous. Yooka-Laylee is an important game for multiple reasons. For one, it's a Kickstarter game. The crowdfunding platform is divisive: For every success like Shovel Knight, there's a dramatic failure such as Yogventures or Mighty No. 9. Yooka-Laylee will inevitably fall into one of those camps, twisting people's perception of the platform accordingly. For another, it's the first game that Playtonic has released. If it's successful, the company will have the creative freedom to tackle new types of games. \"Back in the day, we were never defined by our games in one genre only. We tried our hand at all sorts.\" \"Back in the day, we were never defined by our games in one genre only,\" Price explains. \"We tried our hand at all sorts. As a business proposition, that's actually really difficult to do. For a large company to say, 'Well, we're not going to be the racing game studio,' or 'We're not going to be this genre only.' That's the challenge we've now given ourselves, because the Kickstarter funding went so well. It's become a bigger opportunity than even we realized.\" Playtonic has made a conscious effort to design supporting characters who could appear in their own games. Like the Mushroom Kingdom, which allows Yoshi, Wario and Princess Peach to star in their own spinoff titles, Yooka-Laylee is the starting canvas for weird and wonderful heroes (or, potentially, antiheroes) to emerge. Playtonic's goal is to become a two-game studio, developing projects in tandem. That's important, Price says, because he and his friends are older than the average indie game developer. \"None of us are getting any younger,\" he says. \"We're becoming indie developers at the age of, well, double the age most indie developers are. I remember looking at a list of game ideas we had for various characters and saying, 'Hang on, if we did all of these, I'm going to be 70!'\" Playtonic is working with Team17, best known for the Worms series, to publish Yooka-Laylee. Success will prove to creators and publishers alike that the 3D platformer can thrive again through new, alternative methods of funding. It could help avoid the problems of the early 2000s, when many middle-tier developers struggled and were ultimately forced to shut down. \"None of us are getting any younger.\" \"I don't want to see other creators make fantastic games which ultimately kill them and mean they can't carry on,\" Price says. \"It's been really frustrating for me, to see games that I've really enjoyed and thought, 'Oh, they didn't get the love they deserved.' That can happen to big people as well, like Ubisoft and Beyond Good and Evil. I thought it was one of the best Zelda games I've ever played. To see it not perform as I thought it deserved was gutting. But there's certainly a lot of support out there now, and ways of making content like this viable.\" The 3D platformer's future isn't certain. It's possible that the renewed interest will quickly fade, leaving Nintendo as the sole flag bearer once more. Yooka-Laylee's Kickstarter, however, suggests that a small but viable market exists for the genre. These games have the potential to attract two different types of audiences, after all: new, younger players who never grew up with Croc, Gex or Spyro the Dragon in their home, as well as older video game enthusiasts who remember them with (mostly) fondness. In some ways, it feels like the video game equivalent of the Western. Movie depictions of the Wild West were popular in the 1950s and '60s but then quickly fell out of favor. In recent years, however, they've made a comeback, with Slow West and The Revenant succeeding at the box office. To feel new again, 3D platformers needed a similar amount of time away from our screens. It's why recently there's been a surge of 2D revivals: The point-and-click adventure game has been reborn with Broken Age and countless Telltale episodic series, and 'Metroidvania' games, inspired by Metroid and Castlevania, have been revived through titles like Axiom Verge. For the 3D platformer, it was simply a matter of time. \"Because it hasn't been served so much for so long, maybe that passion has naturally pent up and pent up,\" Price muses. \"And now it's just burst out.\"","My name is Daniel Cooper, and I tweet ... a lot. Twitter is an extension of my subconscious, a pressure valve that lets half-baked thoughts escape my mind. In the last seven years, I've tweeted 73,811 times, and yet none of those 140-character messages has made me internet-famous. For all my efforts, I've accrued just 5,635 followers, most of whom are in tech and were probably made to follow me by their boss. It seems that no matter how much I try, I'm never going to become a celebrity tweeter. That gnawing neediness in my soul explains why I was intrigued by Post Intelligence, a startup with a deep learning algorithm that can supposedly make you better at social media. For now, Post Intelligence works with Twitter and Facebook, but there's potential for it to engage with several other platforms. The algorithm is the brainchild of Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, two former Google product managers. Reddy can count Blogger, Google Video and Google+ on her record, while Sundararajan helped develop Gmail and AdSense. Together, they previously founded media agency MyLikes and Candid, a Secret-esque anonymous network. Pi, as Post Intelligence is nicknamed, studies your record to learn how you tweet and then looks for patterns to help improve your strategy. It slurps down your most recent 3,000 or so posts, determines your most commonly used words, calculates the scope of your influence and analyzes the sentiment of said tweets. Alas, Pi managed to overestimate my legendary levels of miserableness by marking these jokey tweets as having a negative tone. Why does Doctor Strange insist on being called Doctor when every other surgeon in history gets arsey unless you use Mr / Mrs? The juxtaposition of these two makes me think that alt-J is just a Jamiroquai covers band for racists. pic.twitter.com/bybIXfFCEB Leader Desslok accusing Obama of wiretapping him is pure distraction.Guys, it's time for some Gamilon theory. The platform also examines what times of the day your messages are most likely to get good traction. Given that the bulk of my audience is in the UK and in the eastern US, it's little surprise that my posting windows are 11AM, 1PM and 4PM GMT. So, when I write an explosive tweet with the potential to make everyone in the world chuckle, I should schedule them for those times for the best potential results. But it's the main interface that's the most interesting because it encourages you to look for trending topics to glom onto. The day that I gained access to the platform, a British politician announced that he would take on his sixth concurrent job: editing a daily newspaper. I'd already made several unsuccessful attempts to write a joke on the subject, but this time I could use Pi's rating system as a guide. Before posting each tweet, I ask myself: Does it bring me joy? Will it bring joy to others? I never wait for the answer. You see, rather than issuing a prescriptive system that will tell you what to tweet, Pi's algorithms will give you a rough idea of your tweet's potential. A \"Prediction Bar\" sits below the compose field, giving you a score out of 10 for the messages that you write. It's almost a game unto itself, as you trial-and-error your way toward a hot tweet in the hopes that the system will bless it. My next attempt was to try and satirize Cosmopolitan's decision to go all-in on Jamie Dornan. The Fifty Shades of Grey furniture was plastered above the magazine's Twitter page, presumably in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, a tweet with a measure of subtlety can fly past the algorithm's senses and, no matter what combination I tried, I only ever got a score of two out of 10. Or, and this is the more outlandish theory, my weird sense of humor isn't actually funny and my whole life has been a lie. I think someone has a crush. pic.twitter.com/qoxhGL7xs0 There's another issue too: Pi can't be used as a full-blown Twitter client -- only as an adjunct to the main site. You can't see the firehose of tweets as the day unfolds, and you have to stop yourself from reacting as you normally would. Rather than firing off a response, you have to pause, switch tabs and then tweet inside the Pi window, checking for your tweet's virality. That's a blessing because you're forced to tweet more thoughtfully, and a curse because you lose the instant gratification that Twitter provides. But what's interesting, at least to me, is how having Post Intelligence in my life has redefined my relationship with the site. Whereas before I would use it almost exclusively upon instinct, typing whole tweet threads upon instinct, now, I just ... don't. Instead, I'll try and work out the neatest, highest-scoring phrase for my new master in the hope of getting a higher score out of 10. It's not yet made me internet-famous -- my follower count still remains hopelessly low -- but perhaps I'm not far from my big break.","Last December, I bought a pair of jeans from Uniqlo. That was the only time I purchased clothing from a brick-and-mortar store in all of 2016. For the past few years now, I've done most of my clothes shopping online. Not just because it's convenient, but because the internet provides me with fashion alternatives that I would never have discovered otherwise. The internet not only opened my eyes to different style options; it helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I wasn't really a girly girl growing up. As a kid, I ran around in shorts, and abhorred dresses. In high school, my interests trended toward science and fantasy novels rather than makeup and fashion. I didn't learn what \"foundation\" was until I was 20 years old, and much of my wardrobe consisted of T-shirts and jeans. Sure, I wore the occasional dress for special occasions, but it was more out of obligation than anything else. Looking like an adult was something grownups did, and I wasn't in a big hurry to grow up. In my early 20s, however, I started feeling some pressure to look more presentable, especially when interviewing for jobs. So I started paying attention to what other people wore. I studied fashion magazines and TV shows and wandered around mainstream stores like Gap and Banana Republic -- generic enough brands that I felt sure I couldn't go wrong. I soon found that the clothes I liked in fashion magazines and TV were often wrong for my body type. Not only am I short -- I stand a mere five-foot-three -- but I'm also pretty chubby. So \"petite\" size clothes were too small, while \"normal\" sizes were too long and needed to be hemmed or tailored. I grew to loathe off-the-rack shopping, with endless trips to the changing room, only to leave feeling disappointed. So when online shopping took off in the early aughts, I embraced it wholeheartedly. At last, I could easily find sizes I normally had trouble finding in retail stores. It was a godsend, especially to someone like myself, who abhorred spending hours in malls. Still, I took relatively few fashion risks, and I kept to the brands I trusted. I had it in my head that I could never really wear clothes that were \"sexy\" or \"feminine\" because they didn't make those kinds of clothes in my size. Plus it was a style of clothing that I never thought I could pull off, given my tomboy childhood. It wasn't that I was uncomfortable with it; it's just that I never thought I could wear something like that. It just didn't seem very \"me.\" Credit: Modcloth A few websites helped me see things differently. The first was Modcloth, which introduced me to the world of vintage-inspired fashion. It struck me as a more affordable alternative to Anthropologie, a brand known for its soft, feminine pieces. But what was particularly intriguing about Modcloth is that even the most flirty of dresses came in my size. On a whim, I thought, hey, why not take a risk? It looks like it might fit. So I ordered a green ruffled dress with a zip that ran up the cleavage. And, to my surprise, it looked pretty good. That kicked off a Modcloth love affair that lasted for several years. I started experimenting with all manner of looks, from sensible sheath dresses to flirty laced skirts, because these were clothes that actually fit me. It gave me a freedom to try different things; to figure out exactly what my style was. All of a sudden, I was not afraid to wear pretty much anything. I explored this even further with a personalized styling service called Stitch Fix that launched a few years ago, but which has grown quite a bit since then. Though the company declined to reveal user numbers, Stitch Fix says it's now shipped \"millions\" of fixes, and brought in $250 million in revenue in 2015 alone. The idea behind the service is that you plug in your measurements, answer a few questions about your style preferences and budget, and it sends you a selection of clothes for a $20 fee. If you don't like them, you can send them back in an enclosed envelope. If you do decide to keep any of the clothing items, the earlier $20 will be applied as a credit toward a purchase. But if you buy the entire package, you get 25 percent off everything. My first package contained five different items, three of which I didn't like -- one was an oversize cardigan that made me look like a blob, one was a humdrum shirt and another was a dress that didn't fit. But I also received a green chevron tank -- a style and pattern that I never thought would be my thing -- that fit perfectly. I loved it. I also kept a clutch. So I returned the items I didn't like, with a note explaining why. A month later, I went ahead and gave Stitch Fix another shot. This time, all the items were perfect, in a surprising way. Pink cropped pants? A laser-cut see-through blouse? These are not the kind of clothes I would ever pick out for myself. And yet I really liked them, and they looked flattering on me, too. These days, there are many other stylist options on the internet. Keaton Row and Tog & Porter are a little more high-end, but also promise a more personalized service. Trunk Club started as a service for men, but has since expanded to women. Similarly, Stitch Fix now has a men's section too. Bombfell is one that serves exclusively men. Seeing how beneficial Stitch Fix was for me, I would certainly recommend giving the online stylist a shot. Growing up, I never thought of myself as a clothes horse, because I just wasn't comfortable enough with who I was and, importantly, I didn't really figure out how I wanted to present myself to the world. What I've realized -- with the help of the internet -- is that if you take away sizing limitations and preconceived notions, that I have the freedom to dress and look however I want. That, I believe, is truly what it means to dress like an adult. Check out all of Engadget's \"Adult Week\" coverage right here.","Fujifilm surprised the camera world last year with the introduction of the GFX 50S, its first medium-format mirrorless. The shooter, which is now available for $6,500 body only, packs a large 51.4-megapixel CMOS sensor (43.8 x 32.9mm) in a DSLR-like frame that only weighs 1.6lbs (740g). If you've ever used a Fuji before, its ergonomics should be familiar, thanks in large part to the company's trademark physical dials and generally premium build. What powers the GFX 50S is the latest X-Processor Pro, the same imaging chip found on Fujifilm's flagship X-Pro2 and X-T2 cameras. But how do these specs translate into real-world use? To put the GFX 50S through its paces, I took it with me to SXSW 2017 and on a trip to the nation's capital, Washington, DC. Most of the photos I captured looked great straight out of the camera: sharp and rich in color, with almost no signs of noise in low-light shots. And you shouldn't expect anything less from a $6,500 camera, which I paired with a $1,500 GF63mm f/2.8 lens. I wish the GFX 50S supported 4K video though, especially since that's a feature we're now seeing even on lower-end cameras. Instead, recording here is limited to 720p and 1080p at 24, 25 and 30 frames per second. While the 51.4-megapixel sensor helps create a crisper image then, it still feels like Fujifilm could have done buyers a favor by future-proofing it. Still, video has never been the company's strongest suit, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that even this medium-format mirrorless beast falls short in that regard. Thankfully for Fuji, the GFX 50S makes up for its video shortcomings with some terrific stills. And given that the camera is geared toward professional photographers after all, I have a feeling the GFX 50S won't have any shortage of suitors. To view our sample images in full resolution, click here.","The Windows 10 Creators Update, which starts rolling out on April 11th, is more than a mere operating system upgrade. Microsoft wants to make it clear that Windows is not only a platform for productivity apps but also an OS where you can produce all sorts of creative things. That could mean building a 3D model with the new Paint 3D app or kicking off a livestream of your favorite PC game. It's not like you couldn't do these things in Windows before, but now it's easier than ever. And that's an ideal way for Microsoft to encourage kids and traditional creative types -- in other words, the people who typically use Macs. Aside from the setup process, which is now narrated helpfully by Cortana, there aren't many surprises here. Your desktop and apps still look the same, so don't go in expecting a major facelift from last year's Anniversary Update. Given that Windows 10 already looked fairly refined, I don't think that's an issue. Instead, you can look forward to many small improvements. The built-in Night Light mode makes it easier to work after dark by reducing the amount of blue light on your monitor (similar to the popular app Flux and the Night Shift feature on iOS and Mac OS). You can now use Windows Ink to mark up your photos and videos. Additionally, you can upload music to OneDrive and listen to it in the Groove app, which could serve as an easy way to jam out to your music library on the Xbox One. The real reason this update is interesting, though, is because of the bigger additions. Paint 3D, an evolution of the classic Paint app in three dimensions, is the highlight of the Creators Update. Just like the original version (which is still available in Windows 10), it's basically a blank canvas for doodling. But it's also much more full-featured, since creating 3D objects isn't as simple as 2D drawings. The app's interface is pure minimalism. Along the top, you can choose among brush tools, 3D objects, 2D stickers, text, canvas effects and Remix 3D. The latter option is particularly interesting, as it's being positioned as a community for uploading and sharing 3D creations. On the right side of the screen, you have different options for all of those tools. If you've used Paint before, you'll be familiar with some of them: The brushes include markers, pencils and crayons. This time around, though, you can also give them matte and metal sheens. Things get more interesting with the newer tools. The 3D models include a man, woman, dog and cat by default, but you can also add more from Remix 3D. There are also geometric 3D objects, and you can turn doodles into sharp and soft-edged 3D objects. While the initial assortment of objects seems a bit generic, I have a feeling kids will enjoy drawing their own as well as collecting new figures from Remix 3D. As for the stickers, those serve as both 2D objects for your canvas as well as textures for 3D objects. Perhaps the most useful new addition: There's now a history bar for reversing bad decisions, and it can also generate a video of your creation process. I didn't think much of Paint 3D at first, but my mind changed the instant I overlaid a leafy texture on top of a 3D cat. That's the sort of thing you previously needed pricey and complex 3D-modeling software to do -- now it's a free part of Windows 10 that's simple enough for kids to use. Even manipulating the 3D objects blew my mind a bit. You can rotate any model using the buttons displayed around them, and you can even change their position in relation to other objects on the 3D canvas without much fuss. Paint 3D offers plenty of helpful hints for using these features, but they're also laid out easily enough for anyone to figure out with a bit of experimenting. That's simply good software design. While Paint 3D is intriguing on its own, it's particularly inspired when taken together with the Remix 3D social network. If you've used a Windows machine before, there's a good chance you've sketched out something in Paint, only to have it sit in obscurity on your hard drive. By having a way to quickly share creations as well as bring in art from others, Microsoft is also hoping to spark a bit more creativity among Paint 3D users. It's easy enough to search for new items from Remix 3D within Paint 3D, but there's also a Pinterest-like website for you to browse community submissions (you can even manipulate items in 3D within Edge). One big takeaway from the Creators Update: Microsoft is mastering the art of synergy more than ever before. For example, you can take your creations from Minecraft and dump them into Paint 3D. And eventually, you'll be able to 3D print them from the app as well. That may not be useful in most homes, where 3D printing never quite took off, but it could be huge for schools that jumped on that bandwagon. Expect to hear a lot more about Windows 10's game bar in the Creators Update. Microsoft is pushing the feature heavily now (you can activate it by hitting the Windows key + G), in part because it's the way you activate Windows 10's built-in game-broadcasting feature. Clearly, Microsoft didn't waste any time integrating Beam's broadcasting tech after snapping it up last summer. The company is targeting less-experienced streamers, who might not have the patience to deal with Twitch streaming. The company tells us Beam's tech also sports sub-second latency, which allows for near real-time feedback between what you do and what your audience sees. Your Xbox Live friends are alerted whenever you start a Beam broadcast (there's that whole synergy thing again), and you can view them from either a PC or Xbox One. And yes, Xbox One owners will also be able to broadcast their games using Beam. The Creators Update also introduces a new Game Mode into Windows 10. Simply put, it prioritizes your system resources whenever you're playing a supported game. If, for example, you have Photoshop running in the background while you're playing Doom 3, your PC will focus more CPU and GPU horsepower on the game. Microsoft reps say that by doing so, Game Mode will ensure higher peak performance as well as more-consistent frame rates. I didn't have a chance to test out the final version of the feature on my gaming rig, but on the Surface Pro 4 I noticed a slight bump of around five frames per second while running Minecraft with Paint 3D and several browsers open. That's not much, but I'll take whatever I can get, especially on a machine running integrated graphics. Intriguingly enough, Microsoft also hinted that Game Mode could eventually apply to other apps. Artists would likely want to allocate as much horsepower to Adobe Photoshop and Premiere while they're working, for example. While the company's spokespeople wouldn't say anything for certain, it sounds like Microsoft has something along those lines in the works. Or perhaps it could simply rebadge Game Mode as Turbo Mode or something more generic. You know things have changed quite a bit when Microsoft's Edge is beating Google and Firefox to innovative browser features. With the Creators Update, you'll be able preview tabs by hovering your mouse over them, which could be useful if you're the sort of person who ends up piling dozens of tabs into a single window. (To be fair, Opera did this first.) Even more useful for tab-aholics, you can now set collections of tabs aside for later viewing by hitting a single button. (And no, there's no limit to the amount of tabs you can save.) You can also browse and restore those bundles of tabs easily. Sure, you'll have to wait a few seconds for them to reload, but it's a much more useful way to track your tabs than saving them to your bookmarks. Because, really, who uses bookmarks anymore? It's a feature that clearly reflects our changing browsing habits. If you were expecting a momentous shift in the way Windows 10 looks and works, the Creators Update will probably disappoint you. What's more important, though, is how Microsoft is fundamentally shifting its focus toward creativity. Paint 3D could end up showing someone that she has the ability to design things in entirely new ways. And the built-in game-streaming feature could end up creating some new online stars. I'll take that over a minor facelift any day.","A veteran Mass Effect player and a complete novice walk into a bar. This isn't the beginning of a terrible joke: Instead, it's the premise of a conversation between Engadget associate editor Timothy J. Seppala and senior reporter Jessica Conditt, both of whom have been playing the latest Mass Effect game, Andromeda, over the past few weeks. Tim has devoured and adored the Mass Effect series for almost a decade while Jessica has never touched the games before. How does Andromeda compare to previous Mass Effect games? Does it stand on its own as a worthy addition to the sci-fi genre? Are the animations always this messed up? In the following conversation, Tim and Jessica discuss Andromeda's highs and lows from two vastly different perspectives -- and somehow, they end up with similar conclusions. Spoilers for the entire Mass Effect series reside below; you've been warned. Timothy J. Seppala, Mass Effect fan Jess, it pains me to say this, but I don't want to play more of Mass Effect: Andromeda. I've spent hundreds of hours in that universe, playing through the previous trilogy a handful of times as the altruistic Timothy J. Shepard and as his evil counterpart Toni Shepard. Together, they helped form some of my fondest recent gaming memories. The games were nowhere near perfect, but their rough charm made them all the more endearing. It was easy to overlook how awful the UI and cover system were in the first game when I had a team of ridiculously well-developed alien compatriots along for the ride. More than in any series prior, Mass Effect's characters felt like friends. The bond I formed with those characters helped carry me through the sequels and their increased focus on being action RPGs versus the hard-core role-playing games developer BioWare was known for. I'll never forget my reflexive scream when Legion, a former enemy robot, and Tali, a mysterious helmeted scientist, sacrificed themselves in Mass Effect 3 within moments of each other. I thought I'd saved them both from certain doom before that cliffside conversation. Watching helplessly as Legion gave his life and Tali took her own was a 1-2 punch to the gut after all the time we'd spent together. It wasn't easy, but I managed to keep my expectations tempered going into Andromeda. And somehow, I'm still disappointed. You've never played a Mass Effect prior, so I'm curious how you're feeling about the game. After all, it's a new story line that's set in an entirely new galaxy, so it should be a good starting point for people, right? Jessica Conditt, Mass Effect noob I was worried I'd have to argue that one of your favorite series is actually generic and janky garbage, so I'm glad you came out and said it first. Timothy J. Seppala I can love something and still admit it has flaws! It's called being a rational adult. Jessica Conditt You're a saint -- and I might have been a little harsh. I'm only a few hours into Andromeda, and I realize this game is not representative of the entire Mass Effect franchise. However, as a new player, it's all I have to go on. And so far, I simply don't understand the hype. Mass Effect: Andromeda is broken. When I think about my time with the game, the first thing that springs to mind is how busted some of its mechanics, animations and narrative arcs are. The camera angles during dialogue scenes look as if they were directed by a film school sophomore attempting to \"recapture Kubrick's melodrama\" and the characters' facial animations are distractingly stilted, as the internet has already noticed. It's not all terrible though. I truly enjoy Andromeda's combat; these scenes remind me of Halo and Gears of War but with a fun super-powered twist. I also love how my character looks: I'm playing as Chenault Ryder, a female model with neck and face tattoos and cotton-candy pink hair. It's wonderful to see her flying around deep space, kicking ass. What I'm most curious about is the story. So far, Andromeda's narrative has felt uninspired, and I'd always had the sense that Mass Effect was a rich and unique sci-fi landscape. So, Tim, tell me: How does Andromeda's story compare with previous Mass Effect games? Timothy J. Seppala Well, so far, the narrative is on a much smaller scale -- the polar opposite of the previous games. The Shepard trilogy was a gigantic space opera about saving the galaxy from a race of ancient machines that emerge from their hiding spots and wipe the galaxy of all organic life every 50,000 years. You know, the usual. On top of that, Shepard him/herself had to represent humanity to the rest of the galaxy and prove that we aren't just a bunch of bullies. Or not. I mean, if your evil-speech skill was high enough, you could coerce the end boss to commit suicide. In contrast, Andromeda feels a little more personal and self-contained. As one of the twentysomething Ryder twins (above), you're out to find your dad and somehow settle an entirely new galaxy. And then a few laborious hours of generic third-person shooting and an overlong vehicle segment later, Andromeda reveals its hand and shows what the game is really about. Rather than appeasing the Space United Nations, you're dealing with interpersonal conflicts. There are larger implications from your actions though. Will your first outpost on an alien world be a research facility focusing on science? Or is setting up a military to help guard against the Kett, your cannon fodder for the game, more your style? Jessica Conditt Kill everyone, obviously. Timothy J. Seppala Jerk. See, I picked science because (at least in video games) I'm idealistic and want to show the galaxy that we don't always need to pull a gun to get a point across. That choice is already bearing fruit. Those narrative themes work for me; establishing an identity for the human race and settling worlds is kind of my jam. But Andromeda has other story ideas in mind too. Like the Kett leader who's a religious fanatic and effectively turns the game's new alien race into zombies. I could not care less for this. I'm guessing at some point I'll have to put my terraforming efforts and search for Dad aside and kill him. My hangup is that it's a generic sci-fi trope, and one that's been done many times over in other games. 'Sup, Halo? More damning than that, Andromeda is doing a poor job of getting new players up to speed with the galaxy's goings-on. The story takes place 600 years adjacent to the original trilogy, but (spoiler) there are some returning names. Words like \"genophage\" and \"geth\" are peppered casually throughout conversations with no real explanation for what they are. Or when they are detailed it feels shoehorned in, like half-assed fan service. To your larger point, what I've always loved about the series is its absurdly detailed world building. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Salarians and Krogan hate each other because the former used genetic engineering to reduce the latter's population. Krogan are a race that thrives on war and conflict, so in the interest of the greater good a vast majority of the race was sterilized with the genophage. In Mass Effect 3 I reversed that, and Mordin Solus, my crew's Salarian scientist, sacrificed his life doing so. The Krogan/Salarian relationship was one of many like it, and they were all incredibly well done. Jessica Conditt That is what I'm missing from Andromeda: The sense of a living, complex universe. Timothy J. Seppala See, I thought it was just me. One of my other gripes is that in the Shepard games, story and character development we not only delivered via exposition dumps or conversations but also peppered into combat. Picking my two squadmates before going planetside was dictated as much by who I wanted to learn more about as it was by their combat abilities. They'd chatter among themselves during quiet moments, and, in a firefight, I could use space magic to lift an enemy off the ground and have one squadmate slam him back into it while another sniped from a distance. As far as I can tell, that isn't the case here. I spent the majority of my time on Havarl, the fourth planet, with two lockjawed squadmates. And aside from ordering my Krogan, Drack, to move to one position and Jaal the Angaran to another, there isn't much by way of tactics. It feels like a huge step backward both for gameplay and narrative reasons. In Andromeda I can sub in basically any squadmate and the sortie will feel the same. The combat is fine (aside from the finicky cover system), but it definitely doesn't feel like Mass Effect. Jessica Conditt \"The combat is fine\" sums up my feelings as well. I actually enjoy the shooty-shooty-bang-bang portions of Andromeda so far, though I've played more-enthralling action games already this year. Of course, I'm not comparing Andromeda to the teamwork mechanics of previous games. As for the narrative -- I love the idea of colonizing a new galaxy for the human race. That's an incredible premise for a video game, though it definitely has been done before. With such a pure sci-fi premise, Andromeda has to nail its storytelling arcs and build believable, complex characters and relationships; otherwise, the entire game becomes bland. Unfortunately, the details are precisely where the story falls apart for me. I don't care much about my crewmates yet, partially because I can hardly see their faces while I'm talking with them, and the story beats don't always align with the personality choices I make. At one point, I land on an alien planet for the first time and instruct my crew to be vigilant yet respectful. \"We're the aliens here,\" I say around bubblegum-pink lip gloss (Chenault is very on trend). A handful of minutes later, I'm pumping a horde of strange creatures full of lead and lasers, and my squadmates are telling me to shoot any other aliens that I see on sight, in a \"give 'em hell, kid\" kind of way. The transition from cautious explorer to violent conqueror is whiplash-inducing. I love the epic scope of Andromeda. I think this kind of story -- one that deals with the cosmic future of the human race -- is relevant right now, as private companies are gearing up to colonize Mars and NASA is discovering potentially habitable planets in nearby galaxies. Essentially, it feels as if Andromeda represented a brilliant opportunity to tell a powerful story about humanity's future, and BioWare took the whole thing in an expected, generic direction. It's not bad. It's just kind of boring. Portions of Andromeda are gorgeous, though these are mainly cut scenes, and I adore my own character. The combat moments are engaging and fun, though so far they represent a minority of the gameplay. Much of Andromeda deals with dialogue choices and building personal relationships among the characters, but so far I haven't formed any memorable friendships, foes or love interests. There's nothing about Andromeda that makes me want to boot it up at the end of the day; I don't ponder its story or crave its mechanics when I'm not playing. Unfortunately for BioWare, 2017 is a great year for role-playing games, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn already on the market. In my mind, Andromeda just doesn't compare -- no matter how cool my character's hair is. Timothy J. Seppala \"Andromeda is about new beginnings.\" That wasn't a quote from a developer or a PR rep; it came from a Krogan I happened upon in the game. While he was speaking directly about the titular galaxy, to me he was describing Mass Effect as a whole. If you want to take it even deeper, you could argue that the game's story of being prematurely forced into your dad's old role is allegorical for BioWare itself. We watched as numerous key talent left during Andromeda's development cycle - - including longtime executive producer Casey Hudson and, prior to that, studio founders Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk - - and I can't help but feel some of that is reflected in the game's narrative. That's not to mention the wildly inconsistent nuts and bolts of its gameplay. If it weren't for the promise that everything I do in this game will carry forward, I wouldn't give a second thought to putting Andromeda down for good. Really all I want to do is drop the difficulty to \"easy\" so I can enjoy the best aspect of what I've played so far: lengthy bouts of talking with my crew. I'm well past the awful beginning hours that've plagued the series since 2007. Now? I want to get to the good stuff as frequently as possible. I have some time before the sequel though, so like you I'm going back to Zelda and Horizon. What makes Andromeda so troubling is that I'm not sure if Mass Effect is still for me and if BioWare remembers what made the previous games so special.","I was almost giddy when I reviewed the HTC 10 last year. After years of casting about for the right approach, the company built a phone that seemed like a clear step in the right direction. Fast forward to January 2017: HTC revealed the $750 U Ultra, a glossy flagship that represented a totally new direction for the company. The phone packs a huge screen, a second display for quick controls and an AI-powered virtual assistant that promises to subtly help you out during the day. It's an ambitious device, certainly, but what's life without a few risks? Unfortunately, looks aside, HTC's newest phone feels poorly thought-out. At the risk of sounding too grim too early, the HTC U Ultra is beautiful, expensive and misguided. Normally, I loathe putting phones in cases \u2013 engineers and designers didn't slave away on these things just so you could hide them behind cheap plastic. But with the U Ultra, I didn't feel like I had a choice. After years of crafting metal-bodied smartphones, HTC wrapped the Ultra in glass, including Gorilla Glass 5 on the 5.7-inch screen and a curved pane of colorful \"liquid surface\" on the back. (There's another version of the U Ultra with sapphire crystal coating the screen, but it'll set you back close to $1,000 \u2014 no, thanks.) I don't have enough adjectives for how nice our blue review unit's finish looks. Stunning? Striking? Rapturous? (That last one was a little much, but you get the idea.) Just as impressive is how those two glass sides gently curve toward each other, eventually meeting the thin metal rim that runs around the phone without any harsh or protruding seams. The only thing that breaks up the U Ultra's sleek lines is a square hump where the 12-megapixel rear camera lives. For all of the financial trouble HTC has had lately, it still knows how to build an impeccably pretty machine. It's too bad that the U Ultra isn't water- or dust-resistant -- a phone this pricey should be a little more durable. The downside, of course, is that glass breaks. It's a good thing, then, that a thin, clear plastic case is included in the box. HTC says the phone can handle drops from as high as a 3.2 feet without a problem, but anything higher than that could wreck that beautiful build. The other downside becomes apparent when you spin the phone around. Let's see, there's a volume rocker on the right side with the power button below that, the SIM tray up top, the USB Type-C port on the bottom and ... damn: no headphone jack. HTC's repudiation of that classic port actually started with last year's Bolt/10 Evo, but the loss doesn't sting any less now that we're looking at a 2017 flagship. Since HTC already threw in a case, you'd think a freebie 3.5mm-to-Type-C adapter would be in order, but no -- you'll have to use the included USonic earbuds or find another pair of Type-C cans. The annoyances don't end there. I wish the fingerprint sensor and the capacitive Back and Recent Apps keys were centered in the expanse of black under the phone's screen. That might sound like I'm nitpicking, but, as you'll see later, HTC's attention to detail wavers pretty frequently in this phone. While this design is new for HTC, the stuff inside should be very familiar. We're working with a quad-core Snapdragon 821 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM, an Adreno 530 GPU, 64GB of internal storage and a microSD slot that takes cards as large as 256GB. While your hopes for an insanely fast Snapdragon 835 chip might be dashed, this well-worn spec combo is still plenty powerful. More concerning is the 3,000mAh battery tucked away inside. That's much, much smaller than I expected for a phone this big. Even the new LG G6, which looks downright tiny next to the U Ultra, packs a more capacious cell. The U Ultra's face is dominated by that 5.7-inch, Super LCD5 panel, and it's easily one of the phone's strongest assets. Sure, there are brighter screens out there -- LG's G6 and last year's Galaxy S7s come to mind -- but the U Ultra's panel nonetheless offers excellent viewing angles and decent colors. Thankfully, you can address that latter bit with a quick trip into the device's settings, where you'll find an option to tweak the screen's color temperature as needed. Most people won't ever bother doing this, but I found it crucial because the U Ultra's screen is a few degrees too cool for my liking. And of course, there's that second screen sitting atop the main one. It's easy enough to read at a glance and, on paper, it packs many of the same tricks I enjoyed on the LG V20. The way those tricks have been implemented, however, feels kludgy at best and completely dumb at worst. For starters, that secondary screen can display the next event in your calendar, but there's no way to specify which calendar you want it to use. That's bad news if you rely on separate calendars for personal and work events, as I do. The screen displays a weather forecast for the rest of the day, but despite being a US-spec device, it insists on showing 24-hour time instead of AMs and PMs. You can control music playback in Spotify or Google Play Music, but that's it; if, for example, you're listening to a Pandora station or a podcast in Pocket Casts, you're stuck using the in-app controls. And for some reason, you can only access a tray of settings controls (think: WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) when the screen is off. I get that HTC thought it was easier to swipe down into the quick-settings panel, but why not make persistent controls an option? It's sad to see that HTC's attention to detail seemed to end with the U Ultra's hardware. Then again, HTC always had other plans for this additional space. It's the little corner where HTC's AI-powered assistant, Sense Companion, lives, offering suggestions based on what it knows about you and your behavior. At least the U Ultra does better at cranking out the tunes. The days of two front-mounted speakers on an HTC flagship are long behind us, but the compromise on display here works well anyway. There's one front speaker that doubles as the earpiece and another speaker mounted on the phone's bottom edge. Together, they're capable of pumping out loud audio, and with decent channel separation, to boot. There's a little software trickery at play here, too: When playing audio through the speakers, you can switch between \"music\" and \"theater\" modes. I suppose the latter is supposed to sound more spacious, and it works to some extent, but the music mode tends to flatten out whatever you're listening to so that it feels more present. Similar software makes the included USonic earbuds more than just a cheapie pack-in. When you pop the buds into your ears for the first time, you're ushered through a quick customization process that automatically tunes audio specifically for your head. I'm no acoustician, but to my ears, the difference was immediate. The earbuds are also meant to change the way that same audio sounds based on your environment, so you'll continue to get great sound while you're, say, waiting for the train to show up. The thing is, it's a manual process that requires you to tap a notification every time you want to retune based on ambient sound. HTC fanboys might pine for the company's audio halcyon days, but the U Ultra definitely still has some game. When HTC released the 10, it also updated its approach to the Sense interface. Long story short, the company streamlined the Sense interface, discontinued some apps where Google was clearly doing better work and added theming options so your phone doesn't have to look like mine. The U Ultra ships with Android 7.0 Nougat onboard, but HTC's approach to augmenting it hasn't changed much since last year. In general, that's fine by me: I'm a Sense fan (though it certainly isn't for everyone) and Nougat brings enough notable changes in its own right. The less HTC messes with it, the better. That -- along with a lack of carrier pressure -- explains why there are so few extraneous apps on the U Ultra. HTC's Boost+ is a resource management app that made it very easy to free up storage space. My inner paranoiac had me frequently thumbing the controls to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the phone, but I never actually noticed any speed gains. The app gets bonus points for letting me lock certain apps with a PIN or pattern to keep prying eyes out of my business. BlinkFeed is back too, for better or worse; a quick left-to-right swipe on the home screen reveals a grid of content to digest. BlinkFeed pulls content from social networks like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others, along with articles from NewsRepublic, if you're so inclined. I didn't have many issues with the sorts of stories the app automatically provided. Be warned, though: BlinkFeed likes to put sponsored posts right in your eye-line when you open it. Really? If you're going to have me look at ads by default, give me a discount on the phone or something. While the ads are easy to disable, making them opt-out rather than opt-in does nothing for the overall experience. The stuff I've mentioned so far is classic HTC. Sense Companion is not. There's a team somewhere within HTC that has spent months building an AI-powered virtual assistant that means to offer suggestions (like a reminder to bring a power bank on a day your calendar says is busy) on that underused second screen. As it turns out, \"means to\" are the operative words in that sentence; I've been testing the phone for nearly two weeks and Sense Companion hasn't done much of anything. I'm opted-in; I've allowed all permissions, and still nothing. Every once in awhile I'll get what looks like a Companion notification, but it's a false alarm; the phone is asking me to opt-in to suggestions that never come. Annoying as it is for review purposes, HTC made this choice deliberately. The idea isn't to overload users with AI-fueled notifications; subtlety is key here, with prompts to bring an umbrella timed for rainy days you'll be out in the thick of it. Anything more pervasive than that might make you turn Sense Companion off altogether and, well, HTC can't have that. Even now, it's unclear whether what I'm experiencing is wrong or not, and that doesn't bode terribly well for the feature's short-term prospects. Sense Companion's true value will only be made apparent in time, and it will almost certainly get better eventually. Still, if this is what everyone who buys the phone will have to deal with, I can't imagine people would bother with Sense Companion for very long. It's impossible to miss the U Ultra's main, 12-megapixel camera -- it's tucked away in that big, squarish lump around back. On paper, the camera seems promising enough: It has a f/1.8 aperture, large, 1.55-micron sensor pixels, optical image stabilization and hybrid phase-detection-and-laser autofocus, just like many other recent flagship smartphones. What the U Ultra lacks is consistency. In good lighting conditions, I found that this 12-megapixel sensor typically captures ample detail and accurate colors, but it occasionally struggles to accurately expose photos. Even then, they're never bad, per se -- just less impactful than what you'd get out of rivals like the Google Pixels. (Yes, I get that's not a completely fair comparison since the Pixels rely on more algorithms to make photos look good, but the difference is clear nevertheless.) Given its track record, HTC knows just how hard it is to nail a smartphone camera. The HTC 10 seemed like a great step forward last year, earning the company a surprisingly high spot on DxOMark's mobile scale. At its best, the U Ultra produces clearer, more brightly rendered photos than the 10. Every other time, the U Ultra walks down the middle of the road. Put another way, this camera would've been a remarkably solid contender last year, but last year's performance doesn't do HTC much good now. That's not to say that HTC doesn't understand anything about cameras. I often go back and forth, but HTC's camera interface is my current favorite: It lends itself well to instantaneous shooting and the Pro mode (which lets you capture RAW images) allows for fast, meticulous fiddling. The included Zoe mode -- yes, it's still kicking around -- shoots brief snippets of video along with a photo, just because. (For you iPhone people, think of it as a Live Photo broken down into its constituent parts.) And, vain as I am sometimes, I have frequently used and mostly enjoyed the U Ultra's 16-megapixel front-facing camera. Rather than wait for Qualcomm's new top-tier Snapdragon 835 chipset to become widely available, HTC went with last year's 821. It's the classic choice between new and tried-and-true, and it's worth noting that other manufacturers made the same decision this year. Fortunately, the 821 is still an excellent platform and I never felt as though I was missing out. The combination of these four processor cores with an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM should sound familiar, but more often than not, they made for fluid app use, gameplay and general navigation. Ah, but there are those pesky words: \"more often than not.\" For some reason, while the U Ultra didn't so much as hiccup while playing intense games, my week of testing has seen more random bouts of lag than I would've expected. They happened most frequently as I was jumping in and out of open apps or even just unlocking the phone. These slow spells occurred perhaps once or twice a day and passed quickly, but they were more frequent than I cared for considering devices like the Google Pixels use the same components and were almost perfectly speedy. Your mileage may vary, though, and it's worth reiterating that most of the time the U Ultra was snappy. The U Ultra's high-end components can be taxing on a battery, especially when we're working with a modest 3,000mAh cell. I typically got between a day and a day and a half of moderate use on a single charge -- and by \"moderate,\" I mean I pick up the phone and fiddle with it a few times an hour, rather than sitting around glued to it. Since I'm the kind who charges his devices every night, that kind of battery life is more or less adequate for me. With that said, there's no denying that some of its fiercest competitors do a better job. With a Google Pixel XL, a physically smaller device with a bigger battery, I could get about two full days of use without having to overthink it. The Moto Z Force, another smaller device, could last for about three days if I played my cards right. (LG's V20 had a bigger battery, and it was removable, but it actually fared a little worse than the U Ultra in daily use.) The point is, I'm struggling to understand why HTC couldn't give us something better. There's also no denying that the U Ultra didn't fare well in the standard Engadget rundown test, where we loop an HD video at fixed brightness with WiFi turned on. On average, the U Ultra lasted for about 11 hours and 40 minutes before dying. That's far short of the Pixel XL's 14 hours, but still a half-hour better than the V20. If you're in the market for a fancy new smartphone and you need it now, stop and look at a Pixel XL first. It has a bigger battery. It has the same Snapdragon chipset but feels faster in use. It packs a superior camera. And don't forget: HTC also built the thing for Google. Sure, it lacks the U Ultra's sheer style, but the promise of fast and frequent software updates should help ease the blow. Some people really like the idea of a second screen, and those folks need to see the LG V20. It has more pronounced audiophile tendencies and the controls on the auxiliary display just work better And then, of course, there's the current crop of 2017 flagship phones. Despite its odd aspect ratio, LG's G6 is a return to slightly more conventional hardware, and so far I've been impressed with the not-quite-final version I've been playing with these last few weeks. (Our full review will come when after we've tested a finished model.) It uses the exact same Qualcomm chip as the U Ultra, but squeezes those components into a tiny, sturdy metal body that also houses a great 13-megapixel dual camera setup. The G6 also packs Google's Assistant, rather than something like Sense Companion, which has so far been a notable positive. Meanwhile, the U Ultra's biggest competitor -- Samsung's heavily leaked Galaxy S8 -- is almost here. We know it will have a Snapdragon 831 chip, we know it has an AI assistant that could find a life beyond just phones, and we know it's pretty damn good-looking. We'll have to wait to confirm the rest of the juicy details at the launch event March 29th, but based on what we know so far, I'd be a little worried if I were HTC. I can't stress this enough: The HTC U Ultra is not a bad device. It's beautiful, well-built and plays home to a lot of good ideas. I think HTC was right to build a big phone, and the way it wants to subtly integrate an AI assistant into that second screen is genuinely smart. It's just unfortunate that the good ideas here have been obscured by bad design decisions and what seems to be a terminal a lack of focus. Now, it's very, very possible we'll see another flagship phone from HTC before the year is over. For the company's sake, I hope it takes a hard look at what the U Ultra does and doesn't get right before it bothers to release its next big thing.","Samsung is continuing its quest to outdo Apple at the tablet game with the new Galaxy Tab S3. The $600/\u00a3599 Android slate improves on the already pleasant multimedia experience that the Tab S2 offered by packing a brilliant HDR display and four speakers tuned by AKG. It also comes with an S Pen for on-the-go scribbling. Plus, its beefy processor and long-lasting battery help the Tab S3 better take on rival flagships. But although I enjoy watching movies, playing games and sketching on the Tab S3, I still find its $600 price hard to swallow. If you've seen the Tab S2, you've basically seen the Tab S3. The new tablet has the same slim silhouette as its predecessor, although it's gained a glass covering that lends it a more premium feel. That unspecified glass also makes the tablet heavier and very prone to smudges, though. Aside from that reflective facade and sharp profile, the Tab S3 looks as unassuming as earlier models. I like the minimalist look here, especially how much less unsightly the rear is now that the camera sits flush with the casing. That camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels, by the way, while the front-facer has seen a bump to 5 megapixels. Along the sides is an array of ports and connectors, including a microSD card slot on the right and a USB-C socket and headphone jack at the bottom. Like previous Tab S devices, the S3 also has a fingerprint sensor built into the physical home button below the display. I like that this reader is capable of identifying whether you placed your thumb on it horizontally or vertically, as long as you set it up correctly in the settings. Overall, Samsung didn't deviate much from the previous Tab's aesthetic, choosing instead to build the S3 from more premium materials. It's not the most inspired or exciting design, but it succeeds in making the tablet feel classier and more expensive. One of the Tab S3's highlights is its 9.7-inch Super AMOLED display. Its 2,048 x 1,536 resolution gives it a 4:3 aspect ratio, just like on the iPad Pro. Samsung's screen here offers HDR support for higher contrast and more vivid colors; indeed, it provides a rich canvas for videos and games. When you view HDR content on the Tab S3, objects in the shadows become clearer and easier to see. But HDR content is not widely available yet, so this feature's usefulness remains limited for now. To accompany the rich images you see, Samsung equipped the Tab S3 with four speakers tuned by AKG for louder, fuller sound. Although this setup provides volume that was loud enough to hear over my TV, the actual audio quality is merely decent. Songs like \"I Don't Want to Live Forever\" by Zayn come through with ample bass but sound hollow. More percussive songs, like \"It's Just Us Now\" by Sleigh Bells, get tinny at times too. The speakers also support a neat new feature that uses the accelerometer to understand how you're holding the tablet and then adjusts the audio output to make sure the left and right speakers are tuned to deliver balanced surround sound in either landscape or portrait orientation. Frankly, I didn't notice a huge difference in the way music was reaching my ears, although I did catch some small volume changes as I rotated the device in hand. It's a nice feature, but not one that will make you go out and buy the tablet. It's not easy to get a portable keyboard right, so kudos to Samsung for coming close with the Tab S3's optional $130/\u00a3119 accessory. Typing is mostly bearable on the Tab's relatively cramped keyboard, which attaches magnetically to the tablet as well as through a POGO connector for power and data. Each button press is satisfying, thanks to ample travel and the springy mechanism underneath each keycap. In general, too, the letter keys were comfortably sized, and I also appreciate the support for shortcuts like Alt-Tab, Ctrl-X and Ctrl-C, although that's standard for such keyboard accessories. But the keyboard still presents a few frustrating issues. For one, as a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts, I would have appreciated a second Control button to the right of the space bar, close to the arrow keys. Instead Samsung has placed a so-called Language key in that spot, and it doesn't do much more than show you what language your keyboard is set to. The Enter and Backspace keys are also undersized and placed just out of reach of my little finger, so I have to exercise extra care when aiming for them. Finally, even though I initially thought a touchpad wasn't necessary for a device with a touchscreen, its absence here was jarring -- my fingers frequently wandered over to where a trackpad would normally be, only to be left hanging. To its credit, Android does at least support cursor input (unlike iOS), and some similar keyboards, such as the one on the Lenovo Yoga Book, have such a space to make navigating the OS more intuitive when working in a laptop-style configuration. To be fair, the companion keyboards for the Pixel C and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro don't have trackpads either, and squeezing one in would have made the keys smaller, so I'm willing to overlook this trade-off. Plus, I rather enjoy using the S Pen as a mouse replacement to scroll through websites or navigate the OS without having to reach for the screen, so it's a good thing Samsung included it. Speaking of, the S Pen is another standout feature of the Tab S3. I appreciate that Samsung, unlike Apple, includes the stylus gratis, though I wish there were a way to stow it on the device itself. Still, the pen provides a comfortable, natural writing experience, thanks to its grip-friendly shape, larger size (than the version for the Note phablets) and fine 0.7mm nib. As the pen hovers over the Tab's screen, a little circle appears to track its position. Using the button on the S Pen's side, you can activate Air Command to access shortcuts such as Create Note, Smart Select and Translate. That last one lets you pick a word with the stylus to translate into your desired language. Drawing with the S Pen feels smooth, and because of the fine nib and bigger canvas, you can achieve fairly detailed drawings. Plus, the new S Pen is twice as pressure sensitive as previous iterations, and can detect up to 4,096 levels of force. This means you can get thinner lines than before, and the extremely wispy strands of hair I drew onto my hapless stick figure is a testament to that level of detail. In addition to the pre-installed Microsoft OneNote and Samsung Notes apps, I also tried the pen out with Autodesk SketchBook and Adobe Draw, both of which offer more advanced controls. Like the most recent S Pen, this stylus doesn't need to be recharged, which is convenient. Ultimately, Samsung's effective integration of the S Pen here will make it a popular new bonus of the Tab line, just as it has become a defining feature of the Note series. Thanks to its quad-core Snapdragon 820 chipset and 4GB of RAM, the Tab S3 was mostly fast and responsive. Jumping between graphics-intensive apps like room-escape games and scrolling through web pages is mostly smooth. There's a slight delay in launching apps like Camera and Chrome, but once they're up and running, the apps perform well. I'm tempted to blame the company's TouchWiz UI for that lag, which is overlaid here on Android 7.0 Nougat in a more restrained manner than usual. It's still noticeable through the software's icons and app offerings, though. * SunSpider: Lower scores are better. Despite the inclusion of Microsoft's Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote apps, as well as Android Nougat's new multi-window features, the Tab S3's capability as a productivity machine is limited. Android apps in general still aren't optimized to make better use of the larger screens of tablets, although Google and Microsoft's offerings have improved in that respect. But with Tab S3, my usual workflow is further hampered by the cramped keyboard and missing touchpad. Synthetic benchmark results paint a similar picture, placing the Tab S3 just behind the Google Pixel C, which packs a powerful Tegra X1 processor, on most tests. Samsung's tablet beat Lenovo's Yoga Book, which uses an Intel Atom chip, on most general performance benchmarks. The three devices also ranked similarly on graphics tests, with the Pixel leading the pack, the Tab taking second place and the Yoga Book falling behind. The Tab S3's endurance varies quite a bit depending on how you use it. When you're not overworking the device by multitasking with a video streaming in the background, you'll find its 6,000mAh battery is enough to last a day and a half. Start playing games, or run a graphics- and computing-intensive app, and you'll find the power level dropping at a much faster rate, going from about 60 percent charged to 25 percent in just a few hours. The Tab S3 clocked nearly 12 hours on Engadget's battery test, which involves looping an HD video at fixed display brightness. That's three hours longer than what the Pixel C was capable of, and two hours longer than the iPad Pro. The Yoga Book is a closer contender, having finished the same test within 40 minutes of the Tab S3. Few Android tablets on the market try to be productivity powerhouses, simply because the OS itself isn't designed well for that purpose. But that hasn't stopped Samsung, Lenovo and even Google itself from trying. The Tab S3's most obvious rival is Google's Pixel C, which costs the same (for more storage) and has a similarly premium build. Samsung's slate comes with the S Pen and has a more brilliant display, making it the better device for creatives. On the other hand, the Pixel has a more powerful Tegra processor, which, despite being paired with less RAM, performs better on benchmarks than the Galaxy Tab. The Pixel also offers a companion keyboard for $20 more than the Tab's, but neither accessory is a good substitute for a full-size keyboard. Lenovo, on the other hand, ditches the keyboard altogether with the Yoga Book, which costs $100 less than the Tab S3. Instead of physical keys, you get a smooth surface on which to write notes or doodle, and it has light-up outlines of keys you can tap when you need to type. Artists who prefer a more old-school pen-and-paper experience will prefer the Yoga Book's integration, which lets you use actual pen and paper to draw and has your sketch appear on the tablet in real time. The Lenovo slate's biggest downside is its terrible typing experience, and it also trails the Tab S3 in both performance benchmarks and battery life. Then there's the iPad Pro 9.7. The different OS aside, the iPad Pro is very similar to the Tab S3. It has a 9.7-inch 2,048 x 1,536 display, a svelte 6.1mm (0.24-inch) profile and quad-speaker setup, just like Samsung's slate. The Tab S3's advantages over Apple's device include HDR media support, bundled S Pen, and a battery that lasts two hours longer than the iPad on a charge. But the iPad will still hold more appeal for iOS fans. Ultimately, the Tab S3 is a solid utility tablet that does nearly everything it promises. It provides a bright, vibrant display and booming audio for enjoyable binge watching or gaming, and a fluid S Pen experience that digital artists will appreciate. Its long-lasting battery is also a bonus. I don't recommend getting the $130 keyboard or trying to use this tablet for any real work (in other words, writing a report or intensive multitasking), though. Don't think of the Tab S3 as a laptop replacement and you'll find it a perfectly capable machine that's largely inoffensive. Whether that's worth $600 depends on how much you want a really nice screen and loud speakers.","I replayed the first 30 minutes of Rise of the Tomb Raider the other day. In it, I scaled a mountain, leaping from platform to platform while the environment around me crumbled. I then headed into a tomb, worked through a few puzzles, and triggered a high-octane escape sequence. A year ago, I enjoyed those opening moments immensely. After playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, though, they felt lifeless and stale. From Tomb Raider to Uncharted, the modern adventure game is a tightly choreographed charade, a 20-hour quick time event (QTE) with a clearly defined path. When I jumped to evade an avalanche, Lara landed exactly where the game's developers wanted her to. When I needed to solve a puzzle, the game began pointing, beckoning me to do what the developers wanted me to do. In Breath of the Wild, I had heart-stopping, adrenaline-filled moments, I solved complex puzzles, but through it all, I walked my own path. The Zelda series has long followed a simple pattern: You awaken as Link, the silent protagonist, and find a sword and shield. Then you discover that a mysterious antagonist is messing up the fictional land of Hyrule. You must, of course, save the kingdom and its Princess Zelda, so you travel to a number of dungeons, each holding a key item that will aid you on your quest, and defeat the bosses within, before facing off against the big bad. Day saved. Roll credits. While there's still a lot of that DNA in this game, the development team has thrown out some old ideas completely. And those tropes that do remain have been disguised and evolved, leaving a game that feels fresher than I'd ever imagined a 31-year-old franchise could. Take our hero, Link. He begins as a silent soul, almost devoid of life, but through the course of the game he uncovers facts about his past that build him out as a character. The narrative is structured around him, and the journey it sends you on feels natural and logical. Sure, there's a lot of talk of destiny and heroics, but when on the main quest, I felt a sense of purpose, a notion that I wasn't striding down a well-trodden road, but finding my way on a Tolkienesque journey. The world of Breath of the Wild is enormous. Link begins his adventure on a plateau -- a kind of tutorial area, but without the tutorial. You very quickly meet an old man who recalls the first NPC Link ever met, in the original NES classic. He sends you on a mission to find Shrines -- essentially single-room puzzles littered throughout the world -- promising you a glider in return, and with it a safe way off the plateau. The first Shrines you come across are very simple, serving more as a conduit to grant you a set of powers that you'll use throughout your quest. These come in the form of Runes, and the important ones let you set bombs, manipulate metal objects, turn water into ice or temporarily freeze an object in time. They're useful in combat, and essential to beating the other Shrines (there are 120, and completing them gives you additional life and stamina) and the more complex challenges that lie ahead. Rather than hand you specific items at the right time and tell you what to do with them, as past Zelda titles did, Breath of the Wild dumps a lot of skills on your lap at the start of the game. It's up to you to work out which tool works in which situation. Because of this lack of linearity, finally cracking a puzzle brings a sense of accomplishment that's been missing from almost every Zelda game in recent memory. From the moment you receive your first quest, it's clear that something's different here: You're not given waypoints. To aid your search, Link has a tablet (called a \"Sheikah Slate\") that can act as a map. You start the game with that map entirely blanked out, save for the boundaries between regions, but if you can see a place in the distance, you can mark its location with the slate. Your task, then, is to head for high ground, try to spot the Shrines, and find a way to get to them. Eventually, you're given a simple warmer/colder tool to help you track down Shrines, but wayfinding still forms a huge part of Breath of the Wild. By being vague about locations, and the paths thereto, the game asks you to explore, and to adapt. Upon leaving the plateau, I headed, as instructed, to Kakariko Village to talk to the next quest giver. It was on that walk that I allowed myself time to slow down and really take the world in. While there are clearly more technically proficient games out there, the art direction in Breath of the Wild surpasses anything I've played before. The Switch's screenshot tool doesn't quite do the game justice, but the presentation here is pristine, with gorgeous character and location modeling, smooth animations and dazzling particle effects. That journey to Kakariko sticks in my mind almost as much as entering the village itself. Perhaps the biggest leap forward over past Zelda games is the lighting. The way the mood changes with the weather and time of day is stunning, and I don't think I'll ever forget the first time I got caught in a thunderstorm. But even now, some 45 hours later, I find myself stopping and pausing to take in a sunset, or even just the shadow of a cloud rolling across a field. While that initial trail followed a fairly straight road, it would be the last time I was handed such a simple objective. Missions sometimes place a waypoint on your map, but they give you little indication of how to get there. Instead, I found myself reading signposts to find my way. Even then, the world is full of environmental obstacles, from rivers and mountains, which simply need traversing, to lava and snow, which require special clothes or elixirs to deal with. Heading in a straight line toward an mission will rarely work out well, and as roads frequently diverge, it's tough to stay on the right path. To aid in your travels, there are various towers dotted around the landscape (one for each of the game's regions). Finding a way to the top of these structures is not always simple, but when you finally reach the summit you'll be rewarded with a map of the corresponding area. The changes continue into combat and inventory management, both of which have been thoroughly revamped. The basic combat controls will be familiar, but the biggest change is that weapons slowly degrade as you use them, before eventually breaking. This mechanic adds a new dimension to encounters: You could certainly attack every foe with your best weaponry, but what happens when it falls apart and a difficult enemy appears? Invariably, you die. As such, you'll want to approach each battle with careful thought. There are Rune skills that could dispatch a beast or two; you could use stealth to sneak up on a watchman, or take someone out from afar with a well-placed arrow to the head. And you'll want to check every weapon an enemy dropped to see if it's of use. Weapons also handle fairly uniquely. Obviously, swords are different from spears, and boomerangs are different from bows, but there's a sense of weight, and a real physics engine driving combat here. Heavy swords swing slower than light ones, making them tricky to wield successfully against a fast opponent; arrows travel in an arc, making aiming at a distance hard; and the boomerang, although difficult to master, is extremely satisfying when you get it right. There isn't a huge range of enemy types in the game, but what variety is there is augmented in some intelligent ways. There's a real sense of dynamism from the combat, and environment plays a key part in every battle. Enemies can be intelligent, and adapt quickly. The addition of a stamina meter also brings something new to combat. In a typical encounter, it doesn't come into play; unlike in Dark Souls, it's virtually impossible to tire yourself out just by swinging your sword around. But running, gliding and climbing will all have Link gasping for breath. In one moment, I was fighting a group of three Lizalfos (twitchy, bouncy, lizard-like enemies). I approached from the air, gliding over before shooting an arrow at one of their heads. I then descended quickly, smashing that enemy with an ax as I touched down. From there, I switched to a boomerang. I hit the second Lizalfos, but I mistimed the button press to catch the weapon on its return. As I raced over to retrieve it, I ran out of stamina. One of my foes quickly grabbed my boomerang and began attacking me with it. I did not survive the encounter. As with all good games, every time I died I knew it was my fault. At least at first, though, some battles felt unfairly weighted against me. Roaming the land are Guardians, dangerous mechanical sentries that you'll certainly bump into. They move faster than Link can on feet, their attacks have a longer range than yours and, honestly, they're kind of terrifying, even with the necessary equipment to fight them. I've been killed by them countless times, and I've died in this game maybe 30 times total. That's probably more deaths than my combined count across all Zelda games in the past 15 years. So staying alive is hard, and I get used to seeing \"Game Over\" fairly frequently. While it doesn't come close to testing you in the way that, say, a From Software game would, Breath of the Wild is not an easy game. Like in Dark Souls, simple enemies can quickly overwhelm you if you approach them incorrectly. Because of this, maintaining and managing your inventory is key. There's a bona fide in-game economy now, along with a fairly robust crafting system. There aren't many rupees lying around on the floor, so you'll need to do more to make your way through Hyrule. Upon death, enemies \"drop\" various \"items\" (i.e., you pick up a few of their body parts), which can either be used to craft elixirs or sold to stores and traveling salespeople. You can also harvest vegetables and fungi, and hunt fish and mammals for meat. Oh, and there are various critters around the world that make an excellent addition to an elixir. Crafting is done at campfires: You combine ingredients to create dishes that not only recover health but increase your attack power, stamina, defense, or environmental resistances. The crafting system is a welcome addition, but it's not without issues. Cooking up one of these meals takes no time at all, but preparing 30 dishes can be a slog. You have to manually head to your inventory, pick up a steak, back out of the menu, and drop the steak into the pan. Over and over again. Nonetheless, it became something of a ritual for me to cook up various meals before sending Link to sleep, ready for a long journey in the morning. It took me around 45 hours to beat Skyward Sword, the last home console game in the series. I've put almost exactly that much time into Breath of the Wild and, so far as I can tell, I'm barely past halfway. That's partly because this is the biggest game Nintendo has ever made, but it's also because Zelda just begs you to explore. The game's real genius lies in its map. It's vast -- more akin to The Witcher 3's than Skyrim's in size -- and it's full of life. Even its quieter sports are crafted in such a way that they feel connected to the overall world. Heading from one location to another, you invariably see points of interest in your peripheral vision. Typically, this is achieved by elevation. Say you're heading along the side of a canyon, when suddenly the mist parts to reveal an oasis below -- who wouldn't want to glide down and take a look? Other times you'll see a distant spec moving on the horizon (draw distances are stellar), or a Shrine nestled on a hilltop. Remember: Anything you can see, you can mark as a waypoint on your map, which made finding my way around the world feel like a much more personal effort. I've spent days of in-game time carving a path through the game's various areas, just on the whim that I might find something worth doing at the end of my journey. Almost without exception, the game rewarded my exploratory instincts with items, characters, new locations, or, occasionally, just a beautiful vista. The consistency of these reward loops encouraged me to explore more, to find high ground, to head to the farthest point I could see. It's at these moments, when I'm scaling a sheer rock face in the hope of discovering something at its peak, that the game is at its best. Throughout it all, music is sparse, which lends a real sense of isolation. Occasionally, you'll hear some incidental piano playing in the background, while combat also triggers some light music, but the rich orchestral scores of Ocarina of Time are nowhere to be found here. It's mostly just silence, or the sounds of nature. In addition to Shrines dotted all around the landscape, Breath of the Wild has some larger set-piece dungeons, more in the style of the classic Temples of Zelda past. But, like everything in this game, these dungeons are dramatically different from what you've seen before. The larger dungeons are typically introduced by memorable gameplay moments. In one case I found myself firing arrows in midair at a giant beast in bullet time; in another I had to stealthily guide a dumb companion past deadly sentries. Once those set pieces are over, though, you're essentially dropped in the middle of a giant puzzle and asked to work your way out. Once inside, you'll discover there are no keys, no new items and no labyrinthine layout. Instead, they're a single environment, which you manipulate in order to achieve your goal. Rather than handing you, say, a grappling hook and asking you to use it to navigate around a space, the game expects you to use all your Rune skills to proceed to the flashy boss fight that awaits. The second layer of complexity comes from points of articulation within the dungeon. Once you've downloaded its map onto your tablet, you're able to transform the layout slightly with the press of a key. In one example, this might be to change the flow of water to get wheels spinning in motion, while in others, you're able to rotate the entire dungeon on its side. The level of challenge offered isn't off the charts -- although I did get stuck for an hour by missing something blindingly obvious -- but the puzzles really encourage lateral thinking, and required me to use all the tools at my disposal to progress. There has never been this big a change in direction since The Legend of Zelda first graced the NES 31 years ago. Despite rightly being lauded as one of the best games ever, Ocarina of Time was not the sea change that Breath of the Wild represents. Yes, it realized the world of Zelda in three dimensions, and provided memories that will last many gamers a lifetime, but it did not drastically mess with the formula laid down by A Link to the Past in the early '90s. Breath of the Wild does. Nintendo has challenged the very notion of what a Zelda game can be. It's torn out parts I would've considered key to the franchise and swapped in the very best ideas from other titles. Breath of the Wild borrows liberally from games that, in fairness, all owe the Zelda series a little piece of their existence. It takes Far Cry's scouting out locations and hunting animals. It has Monster Hunter's meticulous journey preparation. It distills the sense of wonder you get in Skyrim when you spot a speck on the horizon and resolve to one day see it. There's even a little of Just Cause's physics-based mayhem wrapped in there somewhere. Yet, despite all of this change, I never once questioned that I was playing a Zelda game. It's not just the characters, or the shared world. There's a quality beyond the tangible that makes Breath of the Wild feel like an entirely natural evolution of a beloved franchise. This is a blueprint for a new kind of Zelda game -- one that can undoubtedly evolve and improve beyond our imaginations in the future. For Nintendo to have reworked so much without losing what makes this series so special is an achievement in itself. For it to have created something that, after 45 hours or so, is shaping up to be one of the best games ever made is something else entirely.","There's a certain magic in the air ahead of a console launch. Unlike with phones and other gadgets, we don't see new game systems very often, so each new release feels momentous. That's particularly true for Nintendo, a company that's been striving to differentiate itself from its rivals. While Sony and Microsoft are pushing their consoles to be more like gaming PCs, Nintendo has focused on creating unique experiences that you can get only by buying one of its systems. The Switch has a lot riding on it. Nintendo has to make up for the missteps it made with the Wii U, and it has to convince gamers that a portable system can also be a decent home console. And of course, the company is under pressure from Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro and Microsoft's upcoming Scorpio. But while those systems are focused on offering powerful specs for 4K gaming and VR, Nintendo is once again selling something completely different. No doubt about it, the Switch is unlike any system we've seen before. It's both a powerful portable device and a capable home console when connected to your TV. The ability to easily swap between different modes just by dropping the system into its dock is what makes it truly special. Nintendo doubled down on the Wii U's best feature: being able to play games entirely away from your TV. But unlike that console, which relied on a clunky Fisher Price\u2013esque gamepad, the Switch is a lot more refined. And, thankfully, you don't need to worry about staying within wireless range of it either. At its core, the Switch is basically just a very powerful tablet. It's driven by a custom version of NVIDIA's Tegra X1 chip, which also sits at the heart of that company's Shield set-top box. In fact, Nintendo's system is also reminiscent of NVIDIA's Shield tablet, an earlier stab at combining portable and home gaming. The Switch is much beefier than a typical slate, though, measuring around 15.2 millimeters thick. It also features a 6.2-inch 720p display -- a huge improvement over the Wii U's low-resolution screen. And even though it's made entirely out of plastic, it feels sturdy enough to survive a few drops. Aside from the usual power button, volume controls and headphone jack on the top of the tablet, the Switch also has a USB-C port on the bottom for charging. It's definitely nice to see Nintendo finally give up on proprietary charging cables. There's also a slot for game cards on top, a kickstand around back, and a microSD card slot nestled underneath the kickstand. The console ships with 32GB of internal storage, but it's helpful to be able to upgrade that easily. Yes, Nintendo decided to forgo optical media with the Switch. The game cards it relies on look similar to the cartridges used on the Nintendo 3DS and DS. While it seems like a throwback, using game cards makes a lot of sense today. They don't skip like optical media (which is important for a portable device), they load data faster than discs, and they can also store a lot more than they used to. It wouldn't be a new Nintendo console without unique gamepads, and the Switch's Joy-Con controllers certainly fit the bill. They resemble two miniaturized gamepads; both feature an analog stick, four face buttons, two top buttons and another two buttons on the sides. There are a few differences, though. The left Joy-Con has a minus button and one for taking screenshots. The right Joy-Con, meanwhile, has a plus button and another one for quickly returning to the home screen. Sliding on the included Joy-Con Strap accessories makes their buttons easier to hit, and gives you some helpful ways to secure the controllers when you're playing a game that uses motion controllers. And, as you've probably seen from Nintendo's Switch promotional videos, you can also hold the Joy-Con controllers horizontally to use them as tiny gamepads. While it's not exactly an ideal way to play modern games, it lets you bring in a friend for head-to-head battles in titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. In many ways, the Switch is defined by how you're using the Joy-Con gamepads with the tablet. Slide them onto the side of the Switch and you've got a game system you can take anywhere. You can also pop out the kickstand, place the Switch on a table, and hold the controllers in each hand. But once you dock the tablet and slide the controllers onto the included Joy-Con Grip accessory, you're dealing with something that's more like a traditional console. The system's dock is mostly just a slab of plastic for charging the Switch. It has power, HDMI and USB 3.0 connections on the back, and there's a useful flap for routing your cables neatly. There are also two additional USB ports on the side, which could be useful for charging controllers and low-bandwidth peripherals. While it's fairly plain-looking on its own, the dock looks attractive when the Switch is in place. And, thankfully, Nintendo made it easy to drop the console into the dock. I never had an issue with the Switch getting misaligned, and I'd imagine it wouldn't be a problem for kids either. While it might look hefty, the Switch is actually lightweight and easy to hold with two hands. It's definitely a bit awkward to hold one-handed with the Joy-Con controllers attached, but that's not something you'll be doing much. Most important, it feels light-years beyond the Wii U's clunky gamepad, which in retrospect was little more than a prototype for the Switch. Whenever I handed the console over to someone, they immediately remarked on how light and balanced it felt. The Switch's screen is bold and sharp -- for the most part. It worked best indoors and on cloudy days. But once there was a hint of sun in the sky, it was a lot harder to see anything on the screen. And yes, I made sure to turn off automatic screen adjustments and crank the brightness all the way up. Even when the screen was bright enough, its high reflectivity often got in the way. Compared with the displays we're seeing on modern phones and tablets today, the Switch is noticeably inferior. While it's easy to hold, the Switch isn't exactly pocket friendly. It'll stick out of most pants and jacket pockets, thanks to its extra-wide frame. This is definitely the sort of gadget that you'll need a bag to transport. I'd also recommend snapping up a case to protect the screen. I tested The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for most of this review, and at the last minute I received Super Bomberman R. Zelda performed well; it's certainly a lot smoother than other games I've seen running on NVIDIA's X1-powered hardware. In particular, Zelda's stylized graphics also do a fine job of showing off the Switch's screen indoors. Super Bomberman R, meanwhile, is ... Bomberman. It's not that different from other games in the series, and it doesn't do much to show off the Switch's capabilities. I had no trouble playing Zelda for hours on end in the Switch's portable mode. The Joy-Con controllers are well suited to mobile play, since they're not very large. All of the controller's buttons offer a decent amount of feedback, though you can only expect so much from small buttons. Sure, I miss having a traditional directional pad on the left side of the console, but I'll gladly forgo that for the ability to turn the Joy-Cons into two tiny gamepads. The latter feature isn't very helpful in Zelda, but it will be in future games like 1-2 Switch and Snipperclips. As you'd expect, battery life is the Switch's biggest portable problem. I was able to play Zelda for only around two and a half hours before I needed to recharge. Nintendo claims less demanding games might last for up to six hours, but I'll take that figure with a grain of salt, since the company previously said Zelda would get around three hours of battery life. Clearly, it's not the sort of device you'd want to take on a long trip without a power adapter or backup battery. Since it charges via a USB-C port, though, you should be able to juice up easily with typical battery packs in sleep mode. (Hooray for interoperable standards!) You might have trouble charging from some sources while playing Zelda, since the system would technically be using more power than it takes in. It was a unique experience playing Zelda in the Switch's tabletop mode (with the kickstand out), though it's clearly not an ideal way to play the game. It's far more immersive when you're actually holding the Switch in your hands. That kickstand, by the way, is easily the flimsiest component of the entire system. It's just a thin piece of plastic, and I often felt like I'd rip it out of the system whenever I used it. At least Nintendo recognizes it could be a problem: The company points out that you can simply pop it back in the Switch if it falls out. Still, that's a component that might not last too long in the hands of unruly kids. The Switch feels much more familiar when it's docked to a TV. As soon as you slip the Joy-Cons into the Grip accessory, there really isn't a huge difference between the Switch and Nintendo's previous consoles. As a former Gamecube owner, I also felt a bit of nostalgia holding the Joy-Con Grip. It's similar to Nintendo's excellent Wavebird controller in your hands, even if the two gamepads don't look much alike. Naturally, Breath of the Wild is a much more epic experience on a large television. The game simply looks great, with long draw distances, spectacular lighting effects and detailed characters. I lost count of the number of times I set the controller down just to take in Zelda's detailed environments. In particular, I loved the way sunlight and clouds slowly rolled over the game's expansive environments. Zelda had some performance issues when the screen was filled with enemies and lots of action, but it wasn't anything game-stopping. It's not really news that the Switch's graphical capabilities aren't competitive against the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One -- that's not the market Nintendo is aiming for. The Joy-Con Grip held up through hours of playtime, though the smaller buttons on the controllers were irritating during longer play sessions. And, strangely enough, you can't charge the Joy-Cons from the Grip; you have to reconnect them to the docked Switch to do so. If you want to refuel while playing a game, you'll have to shell out another $30 for the Charge Grip accessory, which includes a USB-C port on the top of the gamepad. While the Joy-Cons should technically last for round 20 hours of playtime (I never noticed them losing much charge), it's still baffling that Nintendo is making you pay extra for the privilege of a USB-C port. And despite its name, the Grip Charge doesn't have any sort of built-in battery to recharge the Joy-Cons either. Nintendo's Switch Pro controller is a solid alternative for gamers looking for a more traditional gamepad, but at $70 it's surprisingly pricey. It's the only Switch controller with a directional pad, which makes it a must-have if you're into fighting games. It wasn't long before I started favoring the Pro controller while playing Zelda, though I noticed some build-quality issues after a few hours. The controller's right analog stick stopped rotating smoothly and feels a bit rough in certain spots now. That's the sort of thing that a warranty would cover, but hopefully it's not a widespread problem. One surprising issue: There's currently no way to get wireless audio from the Switch when it's docked. That's practically a standard feature in consoles today -- even the Wii U! -- and its absence could pose a problem for anyone who wants to game at night without disturbing their housemates. There's a chance that you'll be able to get wireless audio from the upcoming Switch mobile app, but Nintendo hasn't commented on that yet. The Switch's day-one update adds a slew of new features that I couldn't test in my initial review. Most importantly, it gives you access to the Switch's eShop, where you can actually download new games. If you've used Nintendo's online stores on the 3DS, Wii U or Wii, you won't notice any significant changes. It shows off recently added games (only nine are available at the moment), and it lets you keep an eye on upcoming titles. And yes, if you have money sitting on a Wii U or 3DS online account, you'll be able to transfer it to the Switch eShop when you first sign in. Similarly, the Switch's friend list looks very familiar -- right down to the resurrection of the dreaded friend code. Luckily, that's not the only way to add multiplayer buddies: You can also choose from people near your Switch, or folks you've played online. There's not much you can do with the friend list right now, but it will be the central piece of Nintendo's upcoming mobile app, which lets you chat with your buddies. As much as I loved the Switch's ability to let me game just about anywhere, there's still a lot that's up in the air. Nintendo's multiplayer network is free for Switch owners until the fall, for example, but we don't know how much it'll cost after that. At this point, all we've learned is that it will rely on a smartphone app and could potentially cost between $20 and $30 a year. You'll also have to wait until who knows when to play Virtual Console titles on the Switch. Additionally, I didn't have a chance to review the Switch's newer gaming experiences ahead of its launch, like the unique 1-2 Switch minigame collection . I've enjoyed what I've played of that game from preview events, but it would have been nice to actually test it at home. Nintendo's slim launch lineup doesn't inspire much hope either. Aside from Zelda, there aren't any must-have titles, though I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Arms, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Splatoon 2 later this year. Clearly, Nintendo was in a bit of a rush to launch the Switch. That's a shame, because it's tough, as a reviewer, to completely weigh in on a system that's not quite finished. It's also particularly worrying after the failure of the Wii U, a console that launched with a series of baffling issues as well. If Nintendo wants to make shoppers more confident about its abilities to launch new hardware and networking capabilities, this isn't a good start. We'll update this review once we get a chance to test more games and features. While the Switch technically competes with all of the other consoles on the market, it's clear that Nintendo isn't trying to take them on head-on. Instead, like with the Wii, it's offering an alternative experience. Sure, you can get luscious 4K graphics on other consoles, but when did you last go head-to-head with a friend in Mario Kart? Still, the Switch is $300, so if you have a limited budget for gaming, you might be better off with the PlayStation 4 Slim or Xbox One S. Those consoles cost the same but have far more robust libraries and multiplayer networking features. And while Nintendo claims the Switch doesn't mean it's giving up on the 3DS, it's not hard to imagine that having a more powerful portable console on the market could eat into that system's sales. My big takeaway from the Switch: Nintendo has figured out how to innovate once again. It's clearly different from other consoles, and it does plenty of new things that gamers might appreciate. But the system's battery life, outdoor screen performance and unknown networking capabilities have me worried. Nintendo has wowed us again, but it still has a long way to go to prove that the Switch isn't another Wii U. Aaron Souppouris contributed to this review. Update 3/6: Added more details about the Switch's friends and eShop feature. ","Gaming laptops used to be an outlier in the world of portable computing. When the rest of the market was focused on extending battery life, gaming laptops doubled down on raw power and thick frames designed for better airflow. Trying to find a small gaming machine that didn't sacrifice power for portability was a fool's errand. Today, things are different. Gaming laptops can be thin, have enough battery life to survive a plane flight and double as a productivity and entertainment machines with few compromises. The best recent example of this to cross my desk is the Alienware 13, a small, powerful gaming laptop that does almost everything right.\n The New Alienware 13 is not only a strong example of a compact gaming notebook but also the brand's first outing with an Intel 7th-generation Kaby Lake Core CPU, which promises to push 4K content to the laptop's screen without decimating battery life. Combined with the strides NVIDIA made with its mobile GPU platform last year, that makes 2017 a good year for PC gamers to consider upgrading their mobile battle station. But there's more to love about the Alienware 13 than just its new internals. Somewhere between the garish, brightly colored accents of ASUS' ROG Strix laptop and the thin aluminum shell of the Razer Blade Pro, you'll find Alienware's latest notebook -- a machine with enough flair to identify itself as a serious gaming rig yet still subtle enough to keep it from being an eyesore. Its simple, matte black finish lets it blend in as a normal work laptop, but its anodized aluminum lid, subtly angled front lip and Dell's AlienFX lighting lend it just the right amount of attitude. At a glance, the machine looks like a minor tweak of Alienware's previous gaming laptops, albeit with less LED lighting, but there is one major change: the screen. Dell has moved the Alienware 13's display about an inch closer to the user. This is actually a practical design aesthetic: It leaves a 1.3-inch lip behind the screen for heat exhaust, making the laptop's bottom a little cooler when playing games. That lip is also home to most of the machine's connections, including an Ethernet jack, mini DisplayPort, HDMI socket and a USB Type-C Thunderbolt port. This is also where you'll plug in the laptop's AC adapter and the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, if you happen to own one. Users who just want to plug in a mouse can find a full-size USB 3.0 port on either side of the machine as well as two audio jacks on the left and an extra USB Type-C connection on the right. The smooth, soft plastic coating that drapes the laptop's chassis is a bit of an Alienware standard, and I'm still a fan. The rubberlike surface dulls the corners of the machine's body and feels almost silky to the touch. Best of all, it doesn't collect unsightly fingerprints like laptops built from harder materials. That same rubberized coating extends to the keyboard, which lends the Alienware 13's keys a soft, almost luxurious feel. The buttons themselves are a joy to type on, falling 2.2mm and landing on a firm but springy steel baseboard. Like any keyboard bearing the Alienware TactX branding, it promises millions of keystrokes in durability and full anti-ghosting capabilities, but to me, it's the style that makes it stand out. Unlike most modern laptops, the Alienware 13's keyboard features full-size keycaps that meet edge to edge, with no space between the keys. It's a design you might have seen on a machine made a decade ago, before island-style keyboards became the norm. For me, it's a nostalgic comfort -- a style I've always found easier to type and game on that has nonetheless fallen by the wayside. The Alienware 13's touchpad gets almost everything right as well. It's a spacious mousing surface that can navigate multitouch gestures without messing up, a feat that's unfortunately still impressive on many Windows machines. The buttons are great too; they fall with a firm but quiet click that feels just right. At worst, its AlienFX lighting feature activates at inconvenient times, causing the entire touchpad to glow if my palm ever brushes it while I'm typing. This contact never moved the cursor, but the repeated, unexpected lighting can be distracting. I turned it off and moved on. Most gaming machines I review manage a passing audio grade by doing the bare minimum: offering loud, clear sound without distortion or cracking. The Alienware 13 is one of the rare few that actually impressed me. During my gaming sessions, I kept hearing odd sounds coming from my front door. I'd check the porch, and there would be nothing there. Back at my desk, the sound would pipe up again. After a few fruitless trips to the front of the house, I figured out what was happening: The laptop was somehow throwing sound across the room like a ventriloquist. The Alienware 13 has built-in surround sound that actually kind of works. This was a surprise. Most attempts to simulate spatial sound in a laptop fall flat, but Alienware's Virtual Surround had me instinctively glancing left and right to see where a sound might have come from. It's a clear differentiation from simple left-and-right sound separation too, with the ability to project sound to areas close to the laptop's chassis or all the way across the room. Like most fake surround systems, it fails to simulate having speakers behind the viewer, but it's still a cut above the average laptop audio setup. My review unit came outfitted with a 13.3-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 OLED touch display, and it's simply gorgeous. It offers everything you'd expect from a great screen: vivid colors, wide viewing angles and excellent contrast. It's a strong example of the kind of difference that display technology can make; OLED panels simply produce deeper blacks than their IPS counterparts. Still, there are some drawbacks. The screen's blacks are so dark that it's almost hard to tell where the display ends and the its dark, wide bevel begins, which can make the screen look a little smaller than it really is. I also had to dial Battlefield 1's brightness calibration dial to 93 percent to make the test logo visible. Deep blacks indeed. E2,927 / P1,651 / X438 Since Alienware is one of the most recognizable brands in PC gaming, I expect its laptops to keep pace with everything in my game library with minimal fuss. I was not disappointed here. With a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics and 16GB of RAM, my review unit played almost every game I tried on high or ultra settings at the screen's native 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. Overwatch and Dishonored 2 easily broke 60 frames per second with maximum resolution and visual settings while games like Battlefield 1, Just Cause 3 and Shadow Warrior 2 could be coaxed past the 60-fps barrier by either scaling settings down to high or dialing resolution back to the standard 1080p. The usual suspects gave the machine a bit of pause, however. The Witcher 3 had to be restricted to medium settings to hit higher frame rates at the PC's native resolution, and Resident Evil 7 suffered from noticeable slowdown until I dialed it back to medium texture quality at 1080p. That's about right for a smaller-form gaming laptop, but it's also just skirting the edge of playing newer games at maximum fidelity. Keep your games tuned one step below their highest settings (or crank it to 11 but settle for 1080p) and you'll be fine. Virtual reality may not have hit the mainstream yet, but if you decide to pick up an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset, the Alienware 13 will serve you fine. With a score of 5,985 in VRMark's Orange Room benchmark (and 1,091 in its more intensive Blue Room test), Alienware's smallest notebook is definitely VR ready -- as long as you leave most games at their default settings. Like the Razer Blade Pro and ASUS ROG Strix, it ran everything in my VR library fine until I cranked up resolution multipliers in titles like Raw Data. Battery life I've never used a gaming laptop that wasn't powerful enough to handle my Engadget workload. The problem has always been battery life: What good is a machine that can handle half a dozen tabbed browser windows, work chat and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere if it dies after only a few hours? Most gaming machines struggle to break four hours in Engadget's standard battery test. The Alienware 13, on the other hand, lasted over seven and a half. True, our video-based rundown test is well suited to play nice with the processor's Kaby Lake's video features, but that longevity panned out in casual use too. During my normal workday, the Alienware 13 regularly lasted five to six hours on a charge. That's still leagues behind even an average productivity notebook, but for a gaming machine? It's not bad. The days of buying a new PC with bloatware are pretty much behind us, but that doesn't mean there still isn't room for improvement. While the Alienware 13 doesn't tack on any extra software besides its own AlienFX configuration tool, an audio manager for handling the laptop's Virtual Surround mode and a bandwidth management application, it does pester the user with annoying pop-ups -- and too often. Minutes after I had opened the laptop for the first time, the Alienware software suite asked me to rate my experience with the machine. Gee, I don't know what my experience is yet. I only just opened the box. It's not uncommon for software to beg users to register, rate or update it, but Alienware's suite played this card too often, and too soon. It's far from a deal breaker, and the pop-ups dropped off after a day or two. Even so, repeated, nagging interruptions took a lot of joy away from my first moments with the machine. Nobody likes a needy notebook. My $1,831 review unit is just shy of the most powerful configuration Dell offers for the Alienware 13, with its aforementioned 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU, 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe SSD. Tacking on an extra $150 will double the RAM to 32GB, and users can upgrade to one or two 1TB SSD drives for $400 and $1,150, respectively. Adding the slightly longer-range version of the laptop's wireless chip (Kill 1535) will add an additional $25 to the total, with the most expensive Alienware 13 configuration ringing in at $3,156. Storage space is expensive, isn't it? Dell's customization tool lets users create endless price points, but Alienware's default configurations offer plenty of variety for folks looking for a cheaper gaming rig. A machine with half as much storage and RAM as our review unit can be had for $1,650, for instance -- and downgrading its OLED display to a 1080p IPS screen will knock off an additional $250. Buyers willing to settle for a 180GB SSD and a less powerful Geforce GTX 1050Ti GPU (with just 2GB GDDR5) can score the machine for $1,150. Last, a bottom-dollar build is available for $1,000, but that means knocking the GPU down another notch to a regular GTX 1050 and settling for a dimmer 1,366 x 768 display. If you're thinking of going with another brand (and don't mind missing out on that OLED screen), it's a good time to be shopping around; Alienware isn't the only company to upgrade its gaming rigs with Kaby Lake processors. Gigabyte's Aero 14 can be had with the same specs as our Alienware 13 review unit for $1,750 with a larger 14-inch 2,560 x 1,440 IPS display and a slightly thinner profile. You can get the same internals in an even slimmer profile in the Razer Blade's $2,400 aluminum chassis -- with a higher resolution 4K screen, to boot. That said, if you want variety, you'll have to settle for a slightly larger chassis. Most gaming laptops are more in line with machines like the ASUS Strix: 15 inches wide at minimum and at least half an inch thick. When friends come to me asking for a laptop recommendation, I usually try to lead them through a process of figuring out what features they need, what size they want and what fits in their budget before offering them a short list of different options from different manufacturers. When they don't feel like doing the work, however, I usually shrug and tell them to look at Alienware. There's a reason for that. Dell's gaming brand has a history of making well-built gaming machines with great design and excellent performance that are a joy to use. The Alienware 13 is no exception. If you're overwhelmed by the dizzying array of choices available to you as a PC gamer but still want to be sure you're getting a high-quality machine, Alienware's latest won't let you down.","There's something about Aloy. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's an enchanting kind of magic in the way she shoots a bow, speaks her mind and sprints across vast valleys littered with monstrous metal beasts. Aloy is powerful and loyal, an underdog outcast who rises to glory on an epic scale, and it's impossible to not root for her. She's as clever as Hermione Granger, as tough as Lara Croft and better with a bow than Katniss Everdeen -- and she's the reason I fell in love with Horizon Zero Dawn. As is often the case, love hit me out of nowhere, when I least expected it. See, Horizon is not my typical kind of game. I'm generally drawn to experiences I can play in bursts, like League of Legends, TowerFall, Neko Atsume or Overwatch, and I've never been tempted to play all the way through massive, open-world role-playing games like Dragon Age, Skyrim or The Witcher. I see the appeal of these series -- I'm a nut for the fantasy and sci-fi genres in general -- but they never hold my attention for long. I figured it would be the same with Horizon. I'd be intrigued by the futuristic world, my heart would pound with joy while watching the gorgeous trailers, but then I'd drop the game after playing for just a few hours. I'd hear reverent whispers about its 30-hour campaign and wonder how the hell anyone could get through it all. It would seem like too much. But with Horizon, 30 hours sounds like barely enough time. I wish it were 60 hours long. I wish it were an infinite MMO that I could live inside for years to come. Finally, I understand open-world RPGs. Aloy drives my infatuation with Horizon, which lands on the PlayStation 4 on February 28th. Aloy is the kind of character I want to hang out with for hours on end -- compassionate, thoughtful, independent and the best warrior in the land. She radiates power, and it feels marvelous to wield her strengths and fight through her weaknesses. Aloy is a lifelong outcast of the Nora tribe, a matriarchal society stationed in the wilds of the future, living among the ruins of our long-dead, technologically advanced civilization. The Nora are strict and isolationist, and their tribe members believe fiercely in the All-Mother, the goddess of nature. Of course, as an outcast, Aloy is less inclined to believe blindly in the gospel of the All-Mother. Just beyond the Nora's impressive huts and bonfires, dinosaur-like robots prowl the wilderness, hostile protectors of the precious resources that compose their bodies. No one knows where the metal beasts came from. However, they have something to do with the death of a hauntingly familiar society whose buildings, gadgets and corpses lie in ruins all across Aloy's homeland. This is where Horizon separates itself from other open-world RPGs: It's apocalyptic like Fallout, but it's set in environments so lush they would make Bob Ross blush. It's fantastical like Dragon Age, at least until the robot dinosaurs show up. It's futuristic like Deus Ex but feels like a story set in a distant, magical past. Horizon occupies a delicious space between sci-fi and fantasy, blending the genres into something that feels distinctly modern and unique. This allows Horizon to tell a new, compelling story about our relationships with nature, technology and motherhood. It also allows Aloy to come to life. At one point, a few hours into the game, Aloy and a high matriarch are confronted with a computer interface embedded in the bowels of a mountain -- the matriarch falls to her knees in supplication, convinced the All-Mother is speaking to them. Aloy doesn't flinch. She's spent her life on the fringes of Nora society, exploring caves filled with ancient technologies and learning how to fend for herself. She knows this isn't a spiritual being, and she doesn't hesitate to tell the matriarch as much. It sounds like a small moment, but it speaks to Aloy's character as a whole. She's fiercely independent, maneuvering around conversations as readily as she does a spear. She believes what she can see, touch and kill, and she isn't afraid to use technology to her advantage. A handful of mysteries enrich this underlying tension between nature and technology, and make Aloy's world feel real: What happened to the ruined civilization? Where did the machines come from? What do they want? But these aren't the most compelling questions in Horizon. They serve as background tales, solidifying the game's narrative in a fresh, complex and fascinating world. Instead, the game is framed around a more specific, but no less complicated, question: Who is Aloy? And, just as important, who was her mother? Aloy approaches these questions fearlessly and armed to the teeth. Horizon features a robust crafting and upgrade system, allowing players to modify weapons, clothing and other items with unique abilities, and build a wide range of deadly traps and tools. Aloy herself also levels up as the game progresses, learning new skills that open up combat scenes in wonderful ways. The wide range of weapons available in Horizon could easily be overwhelming, but instead it feels natural to tailor Aloy's attacks to each situation. And it helps that the game is gorgeous, no matter which battle strategy Aloy employs. Allow me to set the scene: Aloy is on a grassy ridge in the dead of night, staring down a gaggle of Watchers. By this point in the game, my hunter skills are so honed that I simply mosey up to one of the machines lurking in the tall grass, override it and sit back as it destroys all of its former comrades. In real life, I even set down the PS4 controller and answer a text message. When I hear the last Watcher die and I look up again, it's to see the game's dynamic day-night cycle in full effect: The evening sky, previously dark blue and green, has transformed into a sunrise of gorgeous early-morning pastels. Pink and gold light shines down on a tree-lined field littered with a half dozen sparking robot-velociraptor corpses. I take a moment to soak it all in (and grab some screenshots). Horizon is, in a word, seamless. It's massive, yet there are no loading screens peppered throughout the map (aside from fast travel and death), leaving Aloy's path open as she travels from village to village. There are plentiful side quests and save points (giant campfires) dotted along the way, and miles of mysterious wilderness for her to explore. Aloy's personal journey is intrinsically tied to the broad mysteries hovering over Horizon's world, and each new revelation unfolds beautifully throughout the game. The team at Guerrilla Games have crafted a powerful narrative headlined by an equally compelling protagonist: a young warrior desperate to discover her true identity and perhaps save the world in the process. Maybe that's what I love about Horizon. It's familiar and new at the same time, but it's infinitely relatable. Though I've never run across a giant metal stegosaurus in my own life, I know how it feels to wonder who I am and what I'm doing on this planet. I'd bet everyone knows how that feels. Maybe even giant robot dinosaurs. Maybe."],"title":["Only You Can Stop The Expanse From Becoming the Next Canceled Sci-Fi Classic","It's Hard Out Here For a Pigeon","Incorporated Built an Incredible World. Then Syfy Nuked It","How to Film at 40 Below Without Killing Your Camera\u2014or Yourself","Gadget Lab Podcast: Pandora Premium Chases the Stream Dream","The Twilight Zone Can Make You a Better Person. Really","Gadget Lab Podcast: WikiLeaks Vault 7 Revelations","Planet Earth II: Filming a Nature Doc Among a Swarm of Locusts","Meet Iorek, the Robot That Communicates in a Remarkable Way","Take a Ride in a Boeing 747 That NASA Turned Into a Huge Telescope","Staggering Views of Manila\u2019s Insanely Crowded Slums","Check Out the Flashy Lightning Mapper on NOAA's Weather Satellite","Boston Dynamics' New Rolling, Leaping Robot Is an Evolutionary Marvel","Tour the Factory That Cranks Out 90 Million Tennis Balls a Year","Navistar's Prototype Catalist Truck Takes the Aerodynamic Challenge of the World's Largest Wind Tunnel","From Fake News to Disappearing Ad Revenue, Journalism Fights for Survival","How The New York Times Is Clawing Its Way Into the Future","Meet the Warm Tone, the Software-Controlled Record Press Fueling Vinyl's Comeback","Female Photographers Matter Now More Than Ever","The Hunt for the Hidden Bombs and Land Mines of Kosovo","Chinese Construction Crew Demolishes an Entire Neighborhood in Just 10 Seconds","Powerful Images From Female Photographers at the Women's March","Ever Had a Really Long Acid Trip? Now Science Knows Why","The Achingly Cute Fish With a Suction Cup on Its Belly","Watch Air Swirl Around a Quadcopter Drone's Rotors","A Brilliant Green Meteor Lights Up India\u2019s \u2018Sky Islands'","The Conservative Case Against Trashing Online Privacy Rules","10 Times That Trump Was Actually Kind of Funny","These Scientists Saw Zika Coming. Now They're Fighting Back","Donnie Darko Is No Cult Classic\u2014It\u2019s a Straight Up Classic","Want to Play Scrabble Like a Pro? Here\u2019s Your Memory Trick","Wanna Protect Your Online Privacy? Open a Tab and Make Some Noise","Famed Hacker Kevin Mitnick Shows You How to Go Invisible Online","Meet OurMine, the 'Security' Group Hacking CEOs and Celebs","Inside the Hunt for Russia\u2019s Most Notorious Hacker","Elon Musk Isn\u2019t the Only One Trying to Computerize Your Brain","How VPNs Work to Protect Privacy, and Which Ones to Use","Space Opera Fiction Isn't Just Back. It's Better Than Ever","How an Anarchist Bitcoin Coder Found Himself Fighting ISIS in Syria","March's Best Gear: Best Smartphones, Wireless Speakers, and Gaming Consoles","Yup, Rockets Need Insurance, Too. But Way More Than the Feds Think","Destiny 2 Needs to Get a Lot Weirder Than Its First Trailer","Step Inside a Saudi Rehab Prison for Jihadists","Why You Should Put Your Supercomputer in Wyoming","Typeshift Enlightens Word Nerds With Masterful Game Design","Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner Makes Maiden Flight, And Prepares for Some Brutal Testing","Silicon Valley's Plot to Reinvent the Dreaded Conference Call","Hey Tech Giants: How About Action on Diversity, Not Just Reports?","Security News This Week: Yes, Even Internet-Connected Dishwashers Can Get Hacked","You Can Make Movies With Drones and CGI, Sure. But Why Not Make Them the Stars?","Space Photos of the Week: Mystery Supernova Won\u2019t Say Where It\u2019s From","How Atlanta Will Fix the Collapsed I-85 Freeway","Gadget Lab Podcast: Samsung, Baselworld, and the Tablet PC","Joss Whedon Could Make a Great Batgirl Movie, But He Shouldn\u2019t","What\u2019s Coming in the Next Game of Thrones Season? Look at the Clothes","For Google, the AI Talent Race Leads Straight to Canada","A Silicon Valley Lawmaker's $1 Trillion Plan to Save Trump Country","Earin M-1 Wireless Earbuds Review","Inside Cheddar, the Would-Be CNBC of the Internet","Tesla Software 8.1 Upgrades Autopilot Capabilities","How NASA's Test Pilots Train for a Life in the Sky","Valerian's Biggest PR Problem: It Did Everything First","How Reggaet\u00f3n Exploded All Over Cuba Without the Internet","The Island Where Chinese Tourists Flee to Escape the Smog","An App That Tracks Your Movement to Help You Relax, Even in the Back of a Cab","NASA\u2019s Shapeshifting Origami Robot Squeezes Where Others Can\u2019t","Tinder's New Desktop App Pushes You to Actually Talk to People","Marco Rubio Says Hack Attempts From Russia Targeted Him, Too","Devin Nunes: A Timeline of His White House Visits and Trump Surveillance Claims","The World's Biggest Porn Site Goes All-In on Encryption","The Best WIRED Longreads of 2016","WIRED's Editorial Policy on Affiliate Links","'S-Town' is the Binge-Ready New Podcast From the Creators of 'Serial'","I Took the AI Class Facebookers Are Literally Sprinting to Get Into","Wading through the Internet of Crap","Dell intros the $799 Inspiron 7000, details Alienware CPU upgrades","This virtual assistant looks like an anime girl trapped in a coffee pot","Expect to see BlackBerry's name (and tech) on more devices","Homemade 'Iron Man' suit requires a special kind of crazy","YouTube wants you to translate video descriptions","SpaceX successfully relaunched a Falcon 9 rocket","Survival horror game 'We Happy Few' is becoming a movie","'Archer' mobile game asks you to break out your printer","The Morning After: Weekend Edition","Amazon is making Twitch a destination for original shows","Netflix nabs 'Archer' team for its first animated feature","Amazon's NFL series goes inside the huddle for a second season","'Final Fantasy XIV' live action drama heads to Netflix","'Zelda: Breath of the Wild' patch improves docked Switch performance","Netflix has a new translation test to avoid subtitle fails","Verizon reportedly wants in on this streaming TV thing","'Serial' team's seven-episode podcast is ready for binging","17 corporate pranks that aren't April Fooling anybody","Recommended Reading: Beats 1 is a powerful music marketing tool","Exploit attacks your smart TV through over-the-air signals","Flying courier drone can drive up to your door","Man receives someone else's reprogrammed stem cells","Coal's sharp decline leads to a drop in US energy production","SpaceX might reland Falcon Heavy's upper stage this summer","Alexa on the Huawei Mate 9 isn't worth the effort (yet)","'Skylanders' learns what Amiibo knew all along: Drop the portal","When the S in HTTPS also stands for 'shady'","Elon Musk's Neuralink will plug AI into your brain","Dear Donald Trump: 'Clean coal' doesn't exist","NASA probe Juno captures Jupiter's poles in glorious detail","This time-lapse cell division film is not CGI","The Galaxy S8 and S8+ pack big changes into gorgeous bodies","SoundCloud brings Chromecast streaming to iOS","UK reports 70 drone near-misses at Heathrow in 2016","Blizzard's first eSports stadium opens for 'Overwatch'","AT&T, Comcast and Verizon explain that they don't sell your browser history","Android Wear 2.0 is hitting more watches today","Next-gen RAM will be twice as fast ... whenever it arrives","Watch astronaut Peggy Whitson's historic spacewalk","Blue Origin's New Shepard wins prestigious aeronautics award","Spotify's latest show is basically 'Carpool Karaoke'","Spotify gets into podcasting with three music-themed shows","Apple's Carpool Karaoke series gets its first trailer","Apple Music's 'Carpool Karaoke' features Alicia Keys and Metallica","Apple Music signs up 'Carpool Karaoke' as a new show","Spotify's karaoke-style lyrics are gone, for now","LG Watch Sport review: Where software steals the show","Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 nearly lives up to the original","Microsoft's Surface Ergonomic Keyboard makes typing a pleasure","The Morning After: Friday, March 31st 2017","The government plans to crack down on sketchy advertorial","German law urges parents to rat out kids' illegal downloads","Pornhub adds HTTPS to keep your kinks hidden","EFF: Verizon will install spyware on all its Android phones (update)","The 'Quake' answer to 'Overwatch' enters beta next week","The Overwatch World Cup is back for 2017","'Destiny 2' brings the interstellar MMO grind to PC in September","Samsung's new Gear VR and controller arrive on April 21st for $129","Apple's 'we're sorry we took away your ports' dongle sale ends today","Bug delays Android Wear 2.0 yet again","SpaceX recovers Falcon 9's $6-million nose cone for the first time","Scientists search 3 million publications to unlock sea change secret","Watch SpaceX relaunch the first rocket it landed on a barge (update: it was a success)","'Yooka-Laylee' is at the heart of a 3D platformer revival","An AI taught me to be a better tweeter","What the internet taught me about dressing like an adult","A week with Fujifilm's GFX 50S medium-format mirrorless camera","Microsoft's Windows 10 Creators Update lives up to its name","What we love and hate about 'Mass Effect: Andromeda'","HTC U Ultra review: Bad decisions in a beautiful body","The Galaxy Tab S3 is good, but not $600 good","'Breath of the Wild' is the best 'Zelda' game in years","Nintendo Switch review: revolutionary, but it still needs work","The Alienware 13 gets better with VR and impressive battery life","'Horizon Zero Dawn' made me fall in love with open-world RPGs"],"url":["https://www.wired.com/2017/03/geeks-guide-the-expanse-2/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/its-hard-out-here-for-a-pigeon/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/geeks-guide-syfy-incorporated/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/planet-earth-2-chadden-hunter/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/gadget-lab-podcast-308-2/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/geeks-guide-twilight-zone/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/gadget-lab-podcast-308/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/life-among-billion-locusts/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/meet-lorek-robot-communicates-remarkable-way/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/flight-lab-take-ride-747-nasa-turned-huge-telescope/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/bernhard-lang-manila-aerials","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/check-weather-satellites-flashy-lightning-mapper/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/boston-dynamics-new-rolling-leaping-robot-evolutionary-marvel/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/amanda-mustard-wilson-tennis-ball-factory-bangkok/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/climb-inside-worlds-largest-wind-tunnel/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/journalism-fights-survival-post-truth-era/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journalism/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/warm-tone-record-press-hand-drawn-records/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/heres-female-photographers-matter-now-ever/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/emanuele-amighetti-the-hunt-for-the-hidden-bombs-and-land-mines-of-kosovo/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/19-buildings-demolished-10-seconds/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/powerful-images-female-photographers-womens-march/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/ever-really-long-acid-trip-now-science-knows/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/achingly-cute-fish-suction-cup-belly/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/stunning-animation-reveals-air-swirling-around-drone/","https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bright-green-meteor-lights-mountains-india/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/conservative-case-trashing-online-privacy-rules/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/10-times-trump-was-funny/","https://www.wired.com/2016/02/zika-research-utmb/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/geeks-guide-donnie-darko/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/want-play-scrabble-like-pro-heres-memory-trick/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/wanna-protect-online-privacy-open-tab-make-noise/","https://www.wired.com/2017/02/famed-hacker-kevin-mitnick-shows-go-invisible-online/","https://www.wired.com/2016/06/meet-ourmine-security-group-hacking-ceos-celebs/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/russian-hacker-spy-botnet/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/elon-musks-neural-lace-really-look-like/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/want-use-vpn-protect-privacy-start/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/rejuvenation-of-space-opera/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/anarchist-bitcoin-coder-found-fighting-isis-syria/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/marchs-coolest-gadgets/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/yup-rockets-need-insurance-way-feds-think/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/destiny-2-reveal-trailer/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/david-degner-jihad-rehab/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/put-supercomputer-wyoming/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/typeshift-good-game-design/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/boeings-test-protocol-new-planes-beat-oblivion/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/silicon-valleys-plot-reinvent-dreaded-conference-call/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/hey-tech-giants-action-diversity-not-just-reports/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/security-news-week-yes-even-internet-connected-dishwashers-can-get-hacked/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/can-make-movies-drones-cgi-sure-not-make-stars/","https://www.wired.com/2017/04/space-photos-of-the-week-mystery-supernova-wont-say-where-its-from/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/rebuild-atlantas-collapsed-freeway-like-now/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/gadget-lab-podcast-310/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/joss-whedon-batgirl-maybe-not/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/game-of-thrones-teaser-costume-analysis/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/google-ai-talent-race-leads-straight-canada/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/silicon-valley-lawmakers-1-trillion-plan-save-trump-country/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/review-earin-m-1-wireless-earbuds/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/inside-cheddar-cnbc-internet/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/tesla-finally-makes-new-autopilot-good-old-one/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/flight-lab-watch-flunk-nasas-brutal-test-pilot-training-course/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/valerians-biggest-pr-problem-everything-first/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/lisette-poole-reggaeton/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/cecilie-anderson-escape-the-smog/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/app-tracks-movement-help-relax-even-back-cab/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/nasas-shapeshifting-origami-robot-squeezes-others-cant/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/tinders-new-desktop-app-pushes-actually-talk-people/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/marco-rubio-says-hack-attempts-russia-targeted/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/devin-nunes-white-house-trump-surveillance/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/pornhub-https-encryption/","https://www.wired.com/2016/12/favorite-wired-longreads-2016/","https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/s-town-podcast/","https://www.wired.com/2017/03/took-ai-class-facebookers-literally-sprinting-get/","https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/11/internet-of-crap-ces2017/<br/><br/>","https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/03/dell-inspiron-7000/<br/><br/>","https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/16/anime-virtual-assistant-trapped-in-a-coffeemaker/<br/><br/>","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/expect-to-see-blackberrys-name-and-tech-on-more-devices/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/homemade-iron-man-suit-requires-a-special-kind-of-crazy/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/youtube-community-translations-for-/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/spacex-successfully-relaunched-a-falcon-9-rocket/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/we-happy-few-movie/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/archer-pi/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/the-morning-after-weekend-edition/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/amazon-spring-pilots-original-shows-twitch/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/netflix-first-animated-feature/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/amazon-nfl-documentary-all-or-nothing-season-2/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/final-fantasy-xiv-daddy-of-light-netflix/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-patch-improves-docked-switch-perform/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/netflix-has-a-new-translation-test-to-avoid-subtitle-fails/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/verizon-reportedly-wants-in-on-this-streaming-tv-thing/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/29/serial-team-s-town-podcast/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/16-corporate-pranks-that-arent-april-fooling-anybody/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/recommended-reading-beats-1-is-a-powerful-music-marketing-tool/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/smart-tv-broadcast-security-exploit/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/flying-courier-drone-drives-to-your-door/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/02/man-receives-stem-cell-donation/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/coal-decline-leads-to-drop-in-us-energy-production/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/spacex-reland-falcon-heavy-upper-stage/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/alexa-huawei-mate-9-hands-on/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/skylanders-learns-what-amiibo-knew-all-along/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/when-the-s-in-https-also-stands-for-shady/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/27/elon-musk-neuralink-ai-cranial-computing/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/clean-coal-myth-trump-carbon-capture-energy-no/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/nasa-probe-juno-captures-jupiters-poles-in-glorious-detail/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/27/this-time-lapse-cell-division-film-is-not-cgi/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/29/meet-galaxy-s8-and-s8-plus-hands-on/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/soundcloud-chromecast-streaming-ios/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/uk-drones-near-misses-planes-heathrow/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/blizzards-first-esports-stadium-opens-for-overwatch/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/atandt-comcast-and-verizon-explain-that-they-dont-sell-your-brow/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/android-wear-2-0-is-hitting-more-watches-today/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/ddr5-ram/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/watch-peggy-whitson-historic-spacewalk/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/blue-origin-new-shepard-collier/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/spotify-traffic-jams/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/23/spotify-gets-into-podcasting-with-three-music-themed-shows/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/13/apple-carpool-karaoke-series-trailer/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/01/10/apple-music-carpool-karaoke-alicia-keys-metallica/","http://www.engadget.com/2016/07/26/apple-music-cbs-carpool-karaoke/","http://www.engadget.com/2016/06/02/spotify-lyrics-musixmatch/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/08/lg-watch-sport-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/01/27/dell-xps-13-2-in-1-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/04/microsoft-surface-ergonomic-keyboard/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/the-morning-after-friday-march-31st-2017/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/the-government-plans-to-crack-down-on-sketchy-advertorial/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/german-law-urges-parents-to-rat-out-kids-illegal-downloads/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/pornhub-adds-https-security-keep-your-kinks-hidden/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/eff-verizon-will-install-spyware-on-all-its-android-phones/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/quake-champions-beta-begins-april-6th/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/the-overwatch-world-cup-is-back-for-2017/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/destiny-2-brings-the-interstellar-mmo-grind-to-pc-in-september/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/29/samsung-gear-vr-controller-release-date/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/apple-dongle-sale-ends-today/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/bug-delays-android-wear-2-0-yet-again/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/spacex-recovers-falcon-9-nose-cone/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/scientists-search-3-million-publications-to-unlock-sea-change-se/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/watch-spacex-relaunch-first-rocket-barge-landing/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/28/yooka-laylee-3d-platformer-revival-interview/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/27/post-intelligence-ai-social-media-coach/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/23/what-the-internet-taught-me-about-dressing-like-an-adult/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/fujifilm-gfx-50s-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/29/windows-10-creators-update-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/23/mass-effect-andromeda-jess-tim-discussion/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/24/htc-u-ultra-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/22/samsung-galaxy-tab-s3-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/02/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-switch-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/03/01/nintendo-switch-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/21/alienware-13-2017-kaby-lake-review/","http://www.engadget.com/2017/02/20/horizon-zero-dawn-made-me-fall-in-love-with-open-world-rpgs/"],"x":[-0.3342001277508214,-1.3456745372061962,-0.44832533704213756,-1.311667065904307,-1.3628809753414437,-0.6397752457917133,-1.0613013919764462,-0.9541960852016678,0.008754664874195482,-0.5568362977254053,-0.5393333565572586,-0.5610608751262629,-0.06865760307580758,-0.1833348562620537,-0.3910785156923976,-0.25524214160533754,-0.09048965620755343,-0.06506381126372798,-0.39300197644418305,-0.4687221138939522,-0.4450017942071155,-0.48489125929403193,-0.23410966916379433,-0.42297429611910947,-0.5207547845339104,-0.4892433256875847,-0.7953756264614382,-0.6639086218225092,-0.39781533629803995,-0.10108328805197007,-0.09793768566894608,-0.2574492264826525,-0.26629951508074207,-0.7687752387365417,-0.467316816561834,-0.4388484751444626,-0.471644679902429,-0.11032153344049402,-0.18039042985133216,0.2550002320777183,-0.6759973753470391,1.6110677192132015,-0.46411498935509493,-0.21499513683113022,1.6661413343109717,-0.5722371849203177,0.06903552180799583,-0.43171473111146824,-0.9363576944027369,-0.7137356438239061,-0.5195803022828364,-0.35119911607519416,-0.07987097646657973,-0.076911127677179,0.2693274806024411,-0.19056176551716286,-0.5298583668440863,0.2514672957053658,-0.37751791569885607,-0.09271679800129656,-0.3257041000123422,-0.14978585064783362,-0.5099521382674299,-0.5151762205581569,0.45452665792422636,-0.2700164325188263,0.3848300443778019,-0.8695268718545551,-0.6729011364935794,-0.6631330763605514,0.10078080260467491,-0.29619902744441545,-0.7453958411673492,-0.08515213210965385,-0.09406273395117631,1.4768176021297406,0.5074035723353765,-0.036373662299573783,0.12068376572899502,-0.37530444748258196,-1.4608356581924655,0.7072071795792988,0.6851704396531506,1.3004360637475607,-0.12239170475633537,-0.4931018218772654,-0.05860738896434624,0.1948396758443687,2.133649313395128,-0.32562838974252734,-0.6366919142650489,-0.8341451637841352,-0.3260448773095234,-0.9275504960309499,0.11491790954056597,-0.38549457194561054,-0.4307044476054124,-0.3381606489904898,-1.0779962495133657,0.738002024475031,2.6056432433294243,-0.3612607538437074,-0.66724036612962,-0.26692603333214565,-0.602402278394897,-0.04480938285673281,1.9849073475888381,0.0705056211501946,-0.826847330206405,0.31667641742430364,-0.7667390641502736,0.9980570712872144,1.0373932102408896,-0.4491540826056941,-0.8131331273675249,-1.1435234609489153,-0.9875873430221092,-1.2984482541181308,-1.5628038819549621,-1.5613034851022896,-0.19481840770800898,2.100293574312422,2.191713976470871,1.0232161093136574,0.6778534268695233,-0.3901929741819901,-0.5255371632521878,-0.5465336977611626,-0.2048943307561151,0.8305280264526109,0.1395001137519666,1.1467605549186348,1.2043425955003417,0.19654569597031493,1.098630092864914,-1.3792380937406603,-0.3729060963952028,-1.352225753910842,2.489566717197583,0.1562989293349696,0.5700630601901143,0.10983387383476258,2.2374881608518513,1.8153773410704956,2.1889805401870897,2.1995843865540667,3.188810905994059,3.8640942908505833,3.2660435557595244,1.458146923618518],"y":[-0.8960527475871616,-2.3781177671365303,-0.6884372498098362,-2.3955098012167957,-1.0747532101848725,-0.8156736750433309,-1.029293627009449,-1.7844891814119201,0.02425724890899457,0.4446509098441103,-0.41689413358956884,0.10690801309077078,-0.12439105524900074,-0.07569294746263396,-0.006306318798920351,0.008408305147942182,0.14563686434007375,-0.01760049139841954,-0.22690814867166162,-0.0693001216773423,-0.04041938813218564,-0.35459710690855256,0.015601161182707322,-0.6945444145864085,0.3207244845971074,-0.2914303219614937,0.3107782253261959,-0.11189151942925965,-0.15714275319378776,-0.706664936981498,-0.2871450782763593,0.18874610386995133,-0.061232836118982864,-0.046793443505492145,-0.18589816042621604,0.7148617979588872,0.4888812838427918,-0.003207906653071716,-0.10426569195040425,-0.15907154377973695,1.2641968595934399,-0.7469096279015895,-0.28584227735662454,-0.1379750448882227,-0.6996641813072892,0.8211127944412584,0.0814798163973329,0.0654828159029978,0.012693442754059793,-0.2882985010480946,0.1891999566130386,-0.16980293759251563,-0.46913629030316206,-0.3493834200238436,-0.6605417446129235,0.17753677262222226,-0.054888686288039466,-0.15234348173405915,0.14833729710633664,0.4581437502655569,0.32905291320689106,-0.7457738042968701,-0.4849099820458456,-0.07950999598214739,0.4468293932365231,0.08386020755740012,0.25060720242012985,-0.0639026144583763,-0.3056514495833778,0.046267460536256286,-0.36432348063569725,-0.23453848293254087,-1.17307714962002,0.2533214509535022,0.34659736465407515,0.16862393422839475,-0.05270679403588654,0.36875932117870514,0.3650558424499338,-0.10435954700539997,4.231985918371773,-0.561749600056909,-0.8646084320637109,1.8065030433736744,-0.4967129416403179,-0.9567400039942036,-0.3508412328660665,-0.5145697406695281,-0.9120053706065405,-0.12212846253063049,0.8327421618410766,-1.110932579369242,-0.10540395179920112,-1.0547902662994313,0.1516368429628316,0.44133143538326447,0.04867893196465911,0.042521227689861815,2.9506164602717138,0.10413638699214418,-1.0824028408621995,0.1533962302304322,1.1837845774682754,0.22792827170032923,0.058394495246842384,-0.019913120694832885,1.040496948761383,0.14103851618402177,0.3071764590963432,-0.21834517899890088,1.18505610602844,1.5244983038397226,-0.04815522103977857,0.5555213965254537,1.9534189499603065,-1.5722947044018774,-1.3850334400207995,-2.187304718463062,-2.5143628382694962,-2.145916828412347,-0.1799163897285685,1.4347473393988037,0.2008177038659624,0.15968425617307933,2.2676602280689977,0.059620856862584955,-0.03317712624914011,0.3418818689533683,1.4154006040441514,-0.6604535885531168,0.04962444046313301,-0.39321740527603954,0.7178910259277796,-0.1424856582156277,1.5870740512862258,4.162532623848425,0.02922935960679207,4.247634837514459,-0.6610591089191171,0.4987824712068366,0.06896778497586588,0.05183450101133023,0.1548459994359273,-0.7294030176956314,0.623855906159873,0.40848753420255246,-0.9716296807917195,-0.6262325209300541,-0.015431711906711469,-0.6035662979980704]}},"id":"d591eec5-84d5-432c-964a-f7e8eab017ff","type":"ColumnDataSource"},{"attributes":{"callback":null},"id":"a508c29f-c2e5-4385-8763-5d44cfadfd8c","type":"DataRange1d"},{"attributes":{},"id":"8cd75210-6dd3-4d06-a3f5-a3c816eda7ea","type":"BasicTickFormatter"},{"attributes":{"fill_alpha":{"value":0.6},"fill_color":{"field":"fill_color"},"line_color":{"value":null},"size":{"units":"screen","value":8},"x":{"field":"x"},"y":{"field":"y"}},"id":"fa0058ea-6554-456b-8677-2ea3765eaad6","type":"Circle"},{"attributes":{"fill_alpha":{"value":0.1},"fill_color":{"value":"#1f77b4"},"line_alpha":{"value":0.1},"line_color":{"value":"#1f77b4"},"size":{"units":"screen","value":8},"x":{"field":"x"},"y":{"field":"y"}},"id":"bd5ba32f-4671-4ea1-a1aa-0b3b41d5d7c6","type":"Circle"},{"attributes":{},"id":"5cc4d37e-51c2-47db-9616-dbc27c8c0388","type":"BasicTicker"}],"root_ids":["2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d"]},"title":"Bokeh Application","version":"0.12.4"}}; var render_items = [{"docid":"51170ab0-c4e1-43cb-869a-0beabc1426b5","elementid":"0ed0fbb6-2c1c-4130-97d7-0285580e0913","modelid":"2a90f081-616a-483a-b591-79823e343c6d"}]; Bokeh.embed.embed_items(docs_json, render_items); }); }; if (document.readyState != "loading") fn(); else document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", fn); })(); </script>

หลังจากนั้นเราก็จะได้พล็อตออกมา และเมื่อเราลากเมาส์ผ่านไปบนพล็อต จุดที่เราลากผ่านจะโชว์หัวข้อข่าว ลิงค์ไปยังข่าว และที่มาของข่าวให้เรา จุดข้างบนสามจุดนั้นคือเรื่องเกี่ยวกับ SpaceX ทั้งหมด กลุ่มข่าวด้านล่างนี่ เกี่ยวกับ Spotify และ Apple Music ส่วนข้างขวาเกี่ยวกับ Gadget เป็นหลัก

จะเห็นได้ว่าเพียงแค่ 150 ข่าว เราก็สามารถเริ่มจัดกลุ่มให้ข่าวพวกนี้ได้แล้ว ถ้ามีข่าวเพิ่มอีกมากๆ ก็ยังทำได้เช่นกัน :)

อารัมภบท

ออกจะยากไปหน่อยสำหรับโพสต์นี้ แต่ว่า สำหรับใครที่สนใจ data science เบื้องต้น ลองทำตามโพสต์นี้ ลอง download, clean data ซักหน่อย แล้วพล็อตข้อมูลที่เรามี เป็นแบบฝึกหัดที่ทำให้เราเล่นกับ data ได้อย่างสนุกขึ้นในอนาคตนะ