In a move that surely made the Succession theme play in the heads of all who got the push notification, Rupert Murdoch announced today that the “time is right” for him to step down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corp, ending his seven-decade reign as mastermind of the media landscape. His retirement won’t… Continue reading The Great Unbundling of Rupert Murdoch
Author: Wired Magazine
The Dumb Alien Mummy Story Takes an Entirely Predictable Turn
On September 12, ufologist and journalist Jaime Maussan presented what he claimed to be evidence of alien life to the Congress of Mexico. On September 19, Mexico’s scientific community gathered for a conference to ask a simple question in return: “Extraterrestrials or Llama Skeletons?” The answer was right there in the subtitle of the conference… Continue reading The Dumb Alien Mummy Story Takes an Entirely Predictable Turn
The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Actually Died
Fresh allegations of potential securities fraud have been leveled at Elon Musk over statements he recently made regarding the deaths of primates used for research at Neuralink, his biotech startup. Letters sent this afternoon to top officials at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by a medical ethics group call on the agency to… Continue reading The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Actually Died
What an AI-Generated Medieval Village Means for the Future of Art
Where does art begin and end? The question is at the center of a debate that roiled X (formerly known as Twitter) this month after an AI-generated image of a medieval village, titled Spiral Town, went viral. “I stole this from someone on Twitter who stole this from someone on Reddit,” a user named @deepfates… Continue reading What an AI-Generated Medieval Village Means for the Future of Art
The UK Is Burning Climate Pledges to Fuel a Culture War
The UK government has taken the unusual step of scaling back major climate commitments, despite widespread pushback from scientists, businesses, and lawmakers across the political divide. In a speech today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the UK would push back deadlines for the planned phaseout of gas-powered vehicles, ending fossil-fuel heating in homes not connected… Continue reading The UK Is Burning Climate Pledges to Fuel a Culture War
OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 Is an Art Generator Powered by ChatGPT
This image, rendered by Dall-E 3, shows how using ChatGPT to fill in a prompt produces a more coherent and sophisticated image. It might normally require a huge amount of prompt engineering, whereby a user tries increasingly complex prompts to create something sophisticated. But with Dall-E 3, ChatGPT takes on the work of crafting that… Continue reading OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 Is an Art Generator Powered by ChatGPT
Everything We Know About Neuralink’s Brain Implant Trial
Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink has announced it is one step closer to putting brain implants in people. Today, the company stated that it will begin recruiting patients with paralysis to test its experimental brain implant and that it has received approval from a hospital institutional review board. Such boards are independent committees assembled… Continue reading Everything We Know About Neuralink’s Brain Implant Trial
DeepMind’s New AI Can Predict Genetic Diseases
About 10 years ago, Žiga Avsec was a PhD physics student who found himself taking a crash course in genomics via a university module on machine learning. He was soon working in a lab that studied rare diseases, on a project aiming to pin down the exact genetic mutation that caused an unusual mitochondrial disease.… Continue reading DeepMind’s New AI Can Predict Genetic Diseases
The Dark Economics of Russell Brand
There was a brief, strange moment in 2015 when Russell Brand mattered in mainstream British politics. With an election looming, the opposition Labour Party was trailing in the polls against a coalition government that was the very definition of establishment—led by an Eton- and Oxford-educated prime minister in David Cameron and his Westminster- and Cambridge-educated… Continue reading The Dark Economics of Russell Brand
Explore the Ancient Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering
The Aztecs did not count time on an infinite scale, as we do, but in cyclical 52-year periods, and at the completion of each cycle, life and the world would begin anew. To initiate the start of a new cycle the New Fire ceremony was held, the most important Aztec ritual. Every 52 years the… Continue reading Explore the Ancient Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering