It’s officially the end of an era at Google. As the company faces a series of antitrust investigations and mounting employee unrest, its two cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced on Tuesday they were stepping down from their leadership roles at the company. Page had been CEO of Google parent organization Alphabet, while Brin… Continue reading Larry Page and Sergey Brin Hand Over Alphabet’s Reins
Author: Wired Magazine
Blockchain Developer Gets Busted After Talk in North Korea
The prominent hacker and Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government Friday after he spoke at an April conference on blockchain technologies in North Korea. The US government considers his presentation to be a transfer of technology—and therefore a violation of US sanctions. But Griffith’s defenders, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, describe… Continue reading Blockchain Developer Gets Busted After Talk in North Korea
A Physics Analysis of Tesla’s Shattered Cybertruck Windows
I don’t know what to think about Elon Musk anymore. I mean the SpaceX stuff is awesome, and the Tesla car has been pretty cool. But now we have the Tesla pickup truck, unveiled on Thursday. (Simone Giertz did it first!) The Tesla Cybertruck looks odd—one person likened it to a futuristic doorstop—but that’s fine… Continue reading A Physics Analysis of Tesla’s Shattered Cybertruck Windows
Researchers Want Guardrails to Help Prevent Bias in AI
Artificial intelligence has given us algorithms capable of recognizing faces, diagnosing disease, and, of course, crushing computer games. But even the smartest algorithms can sometimes behave in unexpected and unwanted ways, for example picking up gender bias from the text or images they are fed. A new framework for building AI programs suggests a way… Continue reading Researchers Want Guardrails to Help Prevent Bias in AI
Feds Pin Uber Crash on Human Operator, Call for Better Rules
The Uber self-driving car crash that killed a pedestrian in March 2018 was the fault of the vehicle’s operator, who wasn’t paying attention at the time and was likely looking at her cell phone, the National Transportation Safety Board has determined. But the safety watchdog didn’t end the blame game there. At a board meeting… Continue reading Feds Pin Uber Crash on Human Operator, Call for Better Rules
How Ford Created the Mach-E, Its Fully Electric Mustang SUV
The Ford Mustang Mach-E—a fully electric SUV “inspired by” the famed two-seat coupe—debuted in Los Angeles Sunday night, kicking off what’s sure to be years of enthusiast debate about whether the high-riding four-door merits the name “Mustang,” in form or function. The character and performance won’t come to light until the car arrives next year.… Continue reading How Ford Created the Mach-E, Its Fully Electric Mustang SUV
Drawing With Drones Over the Salt Flats of Bolivia
Reuben Wu has photographed some of the world’s most remote and extreme places: Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Bisti Badlands of New Mexico, the Arctic tundra of Norway, Peru’s Pastoruri glacier. But few locations compare to the site of his latest project, Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Stretching across more than 4,000 square miles of South America’s… Continue reading Drawing With Drones Over the Salt Flats of Bolivia
Hackers Discovered Only After Maxing Out Victim’s Cloud Storage
Move fast and break things was in full effect this week, as researchers revealed that Intel took a full year to release a fix for a chip flaw the company had been repeatedly warned about. Over in a different digital ecosystem, researchers from the security firm Kryptowire dropped 146 vulnerabilities found in handsets made by… Continue reading Hackers Discovered Only After Maxing Out Victim’s Cloud Storage
The Searing Colors of Santiago’s Revolution
Revolution is never quiet. The sound of it is not so much a sound as it is an action—a gathering tide, a firework just as it is about to mushroom with wild light, a tremor gaining force. It’s not what we hear but what we witness. In the theater of cruelty that is the modern… Continue reading The Searing Colors of Santiago’s Revolution
For Fantasy Author N. K. Jemisin, World-Building Is a Lesson in Oppression
The worlds of the fantasy writer N. K. Jemisin are as imaginative as they are intimate. In her Inheritance trilogy, the gods are real and walk the streets. Her Hugo Award-winning Broken Earth books feature a supercontinent called the Stillness that is anything but—the very land is a geologic time bomb, ravaged by earthquakes and… Continue reading For Fantasy Author N. K. Jemisin, World-Building Is a Lesson in Oppression