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 S22The AI-Augmented Leader - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Humans are good at inventing tools, but not as good at adapting to the change these tools can cause. While there has been much focus on the technical impacts and potential dark side of AI, the authors’ research has shown that AI can enhance and empower leadership, actually helping make leaders more human. To do this, we need to invest just as much in the development of our human potential as we do in harnessing the power of AI. This means focusing on the core leadership qualities of awareness, wisdom, and compassion, as well as taking on a both/and mindset. The “AI-augmented leader” can leverage both the power of AI and develop their most human qualities, bringing the best of both human and machine to their leadership practice.
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S5How an Ancient Human Species Formed Family Ties - Discover Magazine (No paywall) Sands swept over the tracks, which stayed buried for millennia, until 21st-century archaeologists uncovered nearly 600 of the footprints. Based on the size and shape of prints that likely had been laid within a few days, researchers reconstructed a unique snapshot of a Neanderthal community: A few adults accompanied about 10 teens and children, including a 2-year-old.But thanks to the Normandy footprints and to new clues from methods such as ancient DNA, the mysteries of Neanderthals’ relationships have recently started to resolve. The emerging evidence suggests Neanderthals formed tightknit communities, but may have been relative introverts, compared to our Homo sapiens ancestors. They lived “cozy, but without parties,” as archaeologist Penny Spikens, of the University of York in the U.K., puts it.
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S6Another summer of extreme heat is ahead--and you'll feel every degree of it - Environment (No paywall) In the annals of human history, a subtle but relentless pulse has marked our anthropogenic impact on Earth. Since the industrial revolution dawned in 1850, our planet has steadily warmed each year , with the rate tripling since 1982. By the year 2050, experts estimate we’ll see a 2.7 degree Celsius average temperature rise—and a cascade of ecological repercussions.According to the study published in the journal Nature, humans are even more sensitive to temperature shifts than previously thought: Indeed, we can perceive temperature differences as small as 0.9°C with surprising accuracy. “Whether or not you’re aware of it, you are actually sensitive to it biologically,” says Laura Battistel, a cognitive and brain sciences student at the University of Trento who led the study.
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S7S8Hamas Has Reinvented Underground Warfare - Foreign Affairs (No paywall) When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it dragged Israel into one of the worst underground wars ever. By now, it is abundantly clear that the scale of Hamas’s subterranean complex is unprecedented and that the use of tunnels has contributed to casualties among civilians and soldiers. More consequentially, by sustaining underground operations over months, Hamas has delayed an Israeli victory, causing unimaginable diplomatic and political costs along the way.In terms of tunnel warfare, the only war that compares is World War I, in which countless British and German soldiers died trying to expose, mine, and dig tunnels. No other use of tunnels in warfare comes close—neither the entrenchment of Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan that enabled him to evade U.S. forces and plan attacks undetected; nor that of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, where tunnels were used in launching attacks from nearly impregnable underground hideouts; nor that of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), which used tunnels to conduct attacks on U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and Syria. Hamas’s use of tunnels is so advanced that it more closely resembles how states use underground structures to protect command-and-control centers than what is typical for nonstate actors.
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S9How America Can Win the Coming Battery War - Foreign Affairs (No paywall) The United States has begun a green industrial transformation. The Inflation Reduction Act of August 2022—which, despite its name, includes many measures intended to address climate change—jump-started investment in U.S. clean energy manufacturing. In the first quarter of 2022, investment in U.S. clean energy manufacturing was $4 billion; in the first quarter of 2024 it was $17 billion, a 325 percent increase in just two years. The IRA has been a boon especially to the supply chain for electric vehicles. U.S. battery production is expected to jump from 257 gigawatt-hours in 2023 to over 1,000 gigawatt-hours by 2030: enough batteries for ten million vehicles per year, roughly the number produced in the United States annually.This battery boom is changing the geography and the politics of clean energy manufacturing. In a clever political play, the IRA, which was championed by progressives, has disproportionately benefited workers in politically conservative regions. The Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University found that 80 percent of announced U.S. battery production capacity will be in Republican-held congressional districts. Nationwide, the majority of the 400,000 jobs that the IRA is expected to create will end up in red areas represented by Republicans. Consider the state of Georgia, for example, which is on track to become the largest producer of battery cells in the United States. Although it is a purple state, where politicians from both major parties hold top offices, all of its battery plants are in Republican-held districts.
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S10A New Cold War Needs Its Own Rules - Foreign Policy (No paywall) Memories of the Cold War against the Soviet Union are fading. Many balk at the idea of having a new cold war with China and at any prospect of returning to a world where the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation hangs overhead. Some critics think efforts to cut strategic goods from trade with China go too far.Memories of the Cold War against the Soviet Union are fading. Many balk at the idea of having a new cold war with China and at any prospect of returning to a world where the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation hangs overhead. Some critics think efforts to cut strategic goods from trade with China go too far.
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S11America's Israel Policy Is Stuck in the 1990s - Foreign Policy (No paywall) In March, Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior American officials met with the leader of Israel’s National Unity political alliance and war cabinet member, Benny Gantz. He was in Washington to understand and perhaps take the edge off the differences between the United States and Israel over the war in Gaza. The Biden administration’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gantz’s reputation as the “adult in the room,” and the Bibi Derangement Syndrome—the other BDS—that afflicts much of Washington’s foreign-policy community created great expectations for Gantz’s visit.In March, Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior American officials met with the leader of Israel’s National Unity political alliance and war cabinet member, Benny Gantz. He was in Washington to understand and perhaps take the edge off the differences between the United States and Israel over the war in Gaza. The Biden administration’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gantz’s reputation as the “adult in the room,” and the Bibi Derangement Syndrome—the other BDS—that afflicts much of Washington’s foreign-policy community created great expectations for Gantz’s visit.
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S12'Concern is real' about long Covid's impact on Americans and disability claims, report says - STAT (No paywall) The Covid pandemic has been called a “mass-disabling event” since early on — the kind of once-in-a-generation public health crisis that could shape millions of people’s lives forever. But while more people self-identified as disabled since the pandemic began, applications for disability benefits have stayed level, according to data from the Social Security Administration. However, long Covid is difficult to map onto the agency’s existing eligibility requirements for disability insurance, says Stephanie Rennane, an economist at the RAND Corporation who’s studied disability benefits. “The severity and duration of the condition can vary a lot, and in ways that we can’t fully predict yet. Even after 4 years, the research landscape in this area is evolving quickly and summary reports like this are a helpful way to translate the state of knowledge into something actionable for policymakers,” she said in an email.
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S13S14S15S16S17How Liberals Talk About Children - The New Yorker (No paywall) The question, I admit, was an abstraction—a philosophical debate that I found interesting to consider but that I didn’t apply, in any serious way, to my own life. Later, and in much the same way, I followed debates about anti-natalism spurred by the work of the South African philosopher David Benatar, who argues, in a seeming perversion of Buddhist thought, that it is immoral to have children because so much of life is suffering. Then, when the timing felt right, my wife and I had our first child. Six years later, we decided to have a second. We liked the idea of giving our daughter a sibling.These weren’t decisions based on a lot of rational calculation. We did factor in whether we could afford to have children, but even those considerations felt a bit post hoc—if we hadn’t been able to provide for the kids and maintain our basic standard of living, we probably would’ve just convinced ourselves that we could, and we would have made do. Most couples, I suspect, make such decisions more or less this way, because there is never really a perfect time, and, unless you’re fabulously wealthy, there is never really enough money. Child rearing, for us, is mostly pleasant, and largely straightforward; the kids have needs and we try our best to meet them. This is called a blessing and a privilege. It is also, for me, I’ve come to realize, called being a man. My wife thought much more about the ethical implications of having children than I did.
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S18Canada's Extremist Attack on Free Speech - The Atlantic (No paywall) The Online Harms Act states that any person who advocates for or promotes genocide is “liable to imprisonment for life.” It defines lesser “hate crimes” as including online speech that is “likely to foment detestation or vilification” on the basis of race, religion, gender, or other protected categories. And if someone “fears” they may become a victim of a hate crime, they can go before a judge, who may summon the preemptively accused for a sort of precrime trial. If the judge finds “reasonable grounds” for the fear, the defendant must enter into “a recognizance.”The proposed law, the result of efforts that began in 2019 after a terrorist attack in New Zealand, does many other things too. One section concerns the obligations of online platforms to police content. Another bears on the worthy goal of protecting children from viewing pornography and stopping the distribution of child-sexual-abuse material, raising the odds that the bill will pass with too little attention to its worst provisions. (In February, it passed its first reading in the House of Commons. Becoming law would require a second and third reading in that body, where amendments can be proposed; passage in the national Senate; and approval by the governor general.)
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S19China Is Losing the Chip War - The Atlantic (No paywall) In an April phone conversation, Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued a stern admonition to President Joe Biden. Washington’s ban on the export of American advanced microchips and other sanctions designed “to suppress China’s trade and technology development” are “creating risks.” If Biden “is adamant on containing China’s high-tech development,” the official Chinese readout went on, Beijing “is not going to sit back and watch.”Imagine for a moment how humiliating that exchange must have been for Xi Jinping. Xi is not supposed to suffer such indignities. His propaganda machine portrays him as an all-knowing sage who will lead China to a new era of global greatness. His word is practically law, and such a warning as he gave Biden would have induced fear and obedience among his compatriots. Yet the American leader not only stood firm; he even went on to lecture the Chinese dictator.
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S20An AI Cartoon May Interview You for Your Next Job - WIRED (No paywall) The cartoon interviewer greets you onscreen. He looks a little young to be asking questions about a job—sort of a cartoon version of Harry Potter, with dark hair and glasses. You can choose other interviewers to speak with instead, representing various genders and races with names like Benjamin, Leslie, and Kristin. Alex, the name given to this AI interviewer, asks about your professional experience, theoretical questions about programming, and then gives out a coding exercise.The use of AI tools in job hunting is becoming widespread. Career sites like Indeed and LinkedIn have incorporated generative AI tools for job seekers and recruiters into their platforms. There are interviewer chatbots companies can enable, as well as AI tools to help people practice for job interviews. But the use of AI in evaluating candidates has mixed reviews: Some HR tools have been caught making negative judgements on applicants who have Black-sounding names, giving preference to men, or skipping over candidates with employment gaps on résumés.
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S21The Case for MDMA's Approval Is Riddled With Problems - WIRED (No paywall) Only two drugs are formally approved for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and they don't help everyone. A lack of effective treatment options has led some patients to seek out the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, to help relieve their symptoms when traditional medications and therapy don't work.In the US, momentum has been growing to legalize MDMA and other psychedelics. Lykos Therapeutics, which has been testing MDMA alongside psychotherapy in clinical trials for years, had a chance this week to prove that the combination is effective at treating PTSD. But at a June 4 meeting, a panel of advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly voted that there wasn't enough evidence to recommend its approval. Just two of the 11 committee members were convinced that the treatment was effective, and only one said its benefits outweighed the risks.
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S239 Questions to Help You Figure Out Why You're Burned Out - Harvard Business Review (No paywall) The World Health Organization characterizes burnout as comprising three key dimensions: sustained feelings of exhaustion, feelings of personal inefficacy, and increased mental distance from one’s job. In this article, the author outlines nine questions to ask yourself under each of these three categories to help you diagnose what’s causing your burnout. It’s likely a combination of factors, requiring a number of changes over time to fully address it, and not something a one-off vacation can reverse right away. Nonetheless, the answers to these questions serve as a starting point and can inform steps you can take to address your burnout and possibly prevent it from happening again in the future.
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S24Workers Are Concerned About AI Taking Their Jobs. Should Managers Be Too? - Inc.com (No paywall) But should they be the only ones feeling the heat? A new announcement by the workplace management software company Asana suggests that managers, too, may eventually see some of their responsibilities automated. The San Francisco-based firm is launching what it calls "AI teammates," which are essentially chatbots that can "advise on priorities, power workflows, and even take action on work." Leveraging Asana's proprietary "work graph" data model--which links "work and workflows to higher level company objectives"--the bots are supposedly capable of assigning projects, triaging tasks, and identifying issues that stand in the way of team success.Asana says one early adopter, an outdoor ad firm, is already using AI teammates to automate aspects of its request process, including delegating tasks to specific employees and helping with client research. Another Asana customer, a cybersecurity firm, has reportedly used the software to enforce internal naming conventions and translate content to ensure brand consistency.
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S25S26S27Both a 'skills tsunami' and a 'silver tsunami' are set to hit the workforce at the same time, McKinsey says. - Fortune (No paywall) Back in 2010, the U.S. had around 12 million more unemployed people than it had job vacancies, senior McKinsey partner Anu Madgavkar said during the consultancy’s media day last week. “Despite the ups and downs of Covid, things are more normal now, but we still have a deficit—2.5 million more vacancies than job seekers.”That imbalance, coupled with the ever-present advancements in AI, has led to what Madgavkar calls a “skills tsunami.” She defined the term as the massive shift in capabilities workers are soon going to need. There’s also, she added, a “silver tsunami,” which describes the institutional loss of talent and perspective as millions of older workers head into retirement.
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S28Europe 'afraid' of Chinese EVs, says BYD boss Wang Chuanfu, ahead of likely EU tariff hike - Fortune Europe (No paywall) The European Union is expected to unveil tariffs in the coming weeks targeting Chinese electric cars following a probe into Beijing’s EV subsidies, a move that will likely hurt the small-but-growing number of imports into Europe. China has hinted it will retaliate with its own 25% tariffs, as trade tensions continue to escalate.BYD has risen to become a dominant player in the EV industry, having halted production of cars solely with combustion engines in early 2022. By last year, the Shenzhen-based auto giant made and sold 3 million electric and hybrid vehicles, cracking the top 10 list of global automakers by sales.
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S29Philippine Tycoon Edgar Saavedra Gears Up To Build $3 Billion Solar Dream After Completing His Toughest IPO - Forbes (No paywall) Saavedra’s Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. (CREC) completed this month a 5.6-billion-peso initial public offering. Combined with the 5 billion pesos raised in April from the sale of about 28% stake in its REIT unit to the billionaire Sy family’s SM Investments, Saavedra said Citicore Renewable now has the funding to deliver the initial 1,000 megawatts, a fifth of his target. CREC shares started trading today on the Philippine Stock Exchange. The shares gained as much as 3% to 2.78 pesos apiece, before closing at its IPO price of 2.70 pesos.The IPO also opened the doors to a stream of financing that will bankroll CREC’s annual 36-billion-peso capital expenditure needed to deliver 1,000 megawatts of new capacity every year. It had 118 megawatts of solar energy capacity in 2023. It is also developing wind and hyrdopower projects.
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S30Taiwan's 50 Richest 2024: Supercharged By AI Demand, Chip Fortunes Hit Record Highs - Forbes (No paywall) After a modest 1.3% expansion in 2023, Taiwan's economy, propelled by an exports surge, revved up in the first quarter of 2024, logging a 6.5% rise, the fastest pace in almost three years. The benchmark Taiex stock index was up by nearly a third since we last measured fortunes 14 months ago, boosting the combined wealth of Taiwan's 50 richest to $174 billion from $155 billion last year.A total of 29 tycoons got richer, resulting in a notable change in the pecking order at the top. Barry Lam, chairman of Quanta Computer, a manufacturer of laptops and AI servers for companies such as Apple and Google, topped the list for the first time. Lam's net worth more than doubled to $11.7 billion, making him the biggest gainer in both dollar and percentage terms, as Quanta's net profit jumped by more than a third to $1.2 billion last year. Its stellar performance also earned a debut spot for its vice chairman and president C.C. Leung, who appears at No. 42 with $1.45 billion.
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S31Chinese fast-food insurgents are beating McDonald's and KFC - The Economist (No paywall) WESTERN CHAINS used to dominate casual dining and drinking in China. The arrival of a Kentucky Fried Chicken in a Chinese city was once regarded as a developmental milestone. Today China is home to 10,000 KFCs (whose owner, Yum China, was spun off from its American parent in 2016), more than twice the number in America. Starbucks has 7,000 coffee shops and McDonald’s boasts 6,000 burger joints. The foreigners’ cash and cachet made it hard for locals to compete.Now the tables are turning. Starbucks’s Chinese sales fell by 8% in the first quarter, year on year, and Yum China reported a drop of 3%. Yet even as they lose their appetite for foreign chains, Chinese consumers cannot get enough of domestic ones. Tastien, which fills hamburgers with local delicacies such as Peking duck or mapo tofu rather than beef, has opened 1,600 new shops in the past six months, bringing its total to 7,000. Wallace, another burger-flipper, now has more than 20,000. Cotti, a two-year-old coffee-shop chain, plans to have that many by the end of 2025, up from 6,000 last October. An older caffeine-pedlar, Luckin, opened 8,000 in 2023, doubling its network. Mixue hawks its bubble tea through 36,000 outlets.
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S32Three reasons why it's good news that robots are getting smarter - The Economist (No paywall) THE ROBOTS are coming! In science fiction that is usually an ominous warning. In the real world, it is a prediction—and a welcome one. The field of robotics has made impressive progress in the past year, as researchers in universities and industry have applied advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to machines. The same technology that enables chatbots like ChatGPT to hold conversations, or systems like DALL-E to create realistic-looking images from text descriptions, can give robots of all kinds a dramatic brain upgrade.As a result, robots are becoming more capable, easier to program and able to explain what they are doing. Investors are piling into robotics startups. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, which gave up on robots a few years ago, has changed its mind and started hiring a new robotics team. When brought to bear upon the physical world, previously disembodied AI now appears to have enormous potential.
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S33The return of Cambodia's food lost during the Khmer Rouge regime A Cambodian chef is one of a few women looking to revive her culture's nearly forgotten Khmer recipes; her recent cookbook, Saoy, was named 'the best cookbook in the world'.Cambodian (also known as Khmer) cuisine consists of subtle curries and fresh flavours, yet despite its palate-pleasing complexity, it has barely made it onto the international map. In recent years, however, this has begun to change, with contemporary female chefs making it their mission to preserve and share Khmer recipes and ingredients that were nearly lost during the brutal Khmer Rouge period of the 1970s, when many restrictions were placed on local foods, from eating to farming.
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S34Ask Sanyin: What's the Right Way to Carry Out Layoffs? | Sanyin Siang The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.It's tempting to deal with a difficult situation by getting it over with and moving on. But leaders making decisions that have a significant impact on employees' lives should aim to be thoughtful and compassionate. Layoffs can shatter trust and leave remaining employees feeling insecure. Tending to emotions and caring about the ramifications for those who are let go as well as those who remain is critical.
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S35S36This Experimental Male Birth Control Works Even Better Than Expected The treatment, known as NES/T, just completed its phase two clinical trial with flying colors. In 2018, a handful of couples ditched their birth control to embark on a one-year trial of a hormonal topical gel as their only contraceptive. This gel, however, was for men to use in order to suppress their sperm levels enough that they wouldn’t impregnate their partner. Over the next 6 years, 200 monogamous couples at 15 sites worldwide completed this experiment as part of a phase 2 clinical trial for the gel, which may become the first available hormonal male birth control.
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S37This Clever Persona-Inspired Horror RPG Just Got Its First Public Demo At Steam Next Fest If you think you have a busy schedule, imagine needing to squeeze in some time to fight demons — or just give Demonschool a shot and see what it's like for yourself. Developer Necrosoft’s Demonschool blends Persona-style schedule management with a novel turn-based battle system and low-key horror vibes for a game that feels totally unique despite its familiar influences. And during this month’s Steam Next Fest, it’s getting its first-ever demo so you can check it out for yourself.Demonschool follows Faye, the world’s last demon hunter, who’s just enrolled at a new university that happens to be overrun with, you guessed it, demons. It’s a demon school, in other words. There, she meets up with Namako, Destin, and Knute, whose latent demon-fighting abilities awaken in her presence. From there, the group battles an infestation of supernatural ghouls that somehow involves their school’s administration, the Yakuza, and a mysterious wave of amnesia affecting people all over town.
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S38This Extremely Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Linked to Blood Clots, Study Shows Low-calorie sweeteners are having a rough go as of late. Last July, the World Health Organization warned of aspartame’s possible cancer-causing properties in humans. (Our analysis of that here.) Now, researchers have found a link between consuming large amounts of the low-calorie sweetener xylitol and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol that sweetens many reduced-sugar foods, baked goods, chewing gums, and toothpastes. The team, led by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, published their findings today in the European Heart Journal.“We gave healthy volunteers a typical drink with xylitol to see how high the levels would get and they went up 1,000-fold,” senior study author Stanley Hazen, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic, told CNN.
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S39The Most Iconic Sci-Fi Dystopian Franchise of the Century is About to Get Even Bigger The Hunger Games saga was one of the last pop culture phenomenons of the 2010s. It came at the tail end of the decade-defining young adult novel craze, and while the books weren’t the most sophisticated, their film adaptations brought the industry closer to prestige than ever. The Hunger Games and its sequels felt like “real” movies: aesthetically and narratively complex, and featuring a caliber of actors few expected to see in YA dystopia. When the franchise made a surprising comeback last year with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it reaffirmed just how much potential it still had. The fans who’d grown up with the series all seemed to want more, and with a new book on the horizon, the Hollywood powers that be clearly feel the same.
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S40Xbox Game Pass Just Quietly Released One of the Most Overlooked RPGs of 2023 Up until now, one of Square Enix’s best modern series has been strangely hard to play. In 2018, Octopath Traveler launched on Nintendo Switch, before coming to PC the next year and Xbox One two years after that. Octopath Traveler 2 hit Switch, PlayStation, and PC in 2023, avoiding Xbox entirely. That meant that unless you were playing on Switch or PC, you couldn’t play both parts of the excellent series on the same platform — but that changes now. Starting June 6, the original Octopath Traveler is finally on PlayStation and its followup is on Xbox. Not only that, but both Octopath Traveler games are coming to Xbox Game Pass for the occasion, so you can experience two of the best RPGs in recent years with your subscription.You don’t actually need to play the original Octopath Traveler before playing the sequel. Both games tell separate stories, each following a cast of eight distinct characters on their own quests. One critique that both games faced is that its eight cast members’ missions, while interesting in their own right, don’t intersect in a particularly satisfying way. Despite that, their individual stories are fascinating on their own and well worth following.
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S4110 Years Later, Netflix's Most Underrated Found-Footage Thriller is Back -- With a Twist Ever since The Blair Witch Project popularized the found-footage horror, the format has been a go-to for movies on a budget. However, fans can only watch so many spooky tales of “real” abandoned cameras and missing persons before the shtick gets old. In 2014, however, a duology used the technique to make a smart, intimate horror movie that’s equally terrifying and goofy. Now, a decade later, the series is returning in a new form that’s perfect for its story.
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S42'FFXIV' Director Reveals Two Vital Pieces of Lore You Need to Know Before Dawntrail The Dawntrail expansion is an opportunity for Final Fantasy XIV to launch a brand-new story, one that doesn't have to get wrapped up in all the details of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark tale that concluded with Endwalker. However, that doesn't mean that the new update won’t build on the game’s decade of storytelling and lore-building, and now we have a hint at where things could be going. During the Dawntrail media tour, director Naoki Yoshida detailed a couple of pieces of lore that he thought players should be familiar with before Dawntrail, so we’ll help break everything down.During a group Q&A that Inverse attended alongside the Dawntrail media tour, a pre-submitted question was asked about what lore should players be familiar with, and Yoshida, at first, seemed cagey on answering. After a few seconds of thought, he said “Myths of the Ream, the new Alliance Raid, would probably allow for some background information into more of the lore.”
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S43How Ford Could End Up Being America's Affordable EV King American customers are in dire need of more affordable EVs and Ford could be the one to deliver just that.In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley detailed more of the automaker’s strategy to shift towards low-cost EVs. We’ve previously heard some snippets about Ford’s plans to make more entry-level EVs, but we’re pleasantly surprised that the American automaker wants to compete with the tempting alternatives from Chinese companies like BYD.
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S44NASA Needs SpaceX's Starship to Work -- Starship’s fourth test flight launched at 8:50 am Eastern Time today, and both SpaceX and NASA are declaring the flight, which included splashdown of the Super Heavy first stage, plus re-entry and splashdown for Starship itself, a success. Flights of the world’s largest rocket are starting to seem almost routine this spring, but SpaceX is under tremendous pressure to have Starship ready to fly the Artemis 3 crew to the Moon — and land there — by late 2026. Starship’s test flights are also part of the key to making sure potential future missions to the Moon and Mars don’t run out of gas on the way. As SpaceX put it in a tweet shortly before launch, “The payload for these flights is data.”
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S45'House of the Dragon' Season 2 Review: Still the Reigning Champ of Prestige TV House of the Dragon is, for lack of a better phrase, a tragic farce. Where Game of Thrones itself felt like an all-encompassing riff on Shakespeare’s history plays — complete with The Bard’s crude humor and plenty of smug narrative twists — its prequel series could be classified more as a comedy of errors. Sure, it leans smarter than the medieval fantasy that kick-started our collective obsession with dragons, betrayal, and a good platinum wig. But its central conflict, and the characters caught within it, are actually... kinda stupid. That stupidity often makes for great television, though, especially as the blindsiding events of Season 1 give way to all-out dragon war in Season 2.With an action-packed return, House of the Dragon doubles down on everything that worked in its inaugural season. The meticulous melodrama finally gives way to the harrowing dread of a vicious civil war — and though it’s still slow to unleash the bloody battles fans have been waiting for, a game cast and transfixing tension allows this season to burn much hotter than its predecessor.
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S46Nothing's Phone 3 Could Make it the Nintendo of Smartphones -- Here's How Nothing has been busy — two new versions of wireless earbuds, a special edition Phone 2a, a bright orange phone under its CMF subbrand. And now, as a part of its torrential drip of new gadget hype, the yet-to-be-announced Phone 3 is getting some shine.According to CEO Carl Pei, the next generation of Nothing’s flagship phone has some big ideas, and to no one’s surprise, they could center around — dramatic pause — AI. So what does Nothing have to bring to the increasingly cacophonous AI conversation? At the risk of speaking too soon, it sounds like quite a bit, actually.
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S47Microsoft Thinks the Key to Making Chatbots More Reliable Is... More Chatbots AI chatbots have been a popular tool for getting in-depth answers, but they haven’t come without flaws — Google Search’s AI Overview recommending that people add glue to their sauce to prevent cheese from sliding off their pizza, for example.We would hope most people have the common sense to not do this in the first place, but it would be even better if there were a way to avoid nonsensical responses altogether. That’s where Microsoft’s AutoGen framework could come in, which uses multiple AI chatbots that can talk to and double-check each other to ensure a quicker, more reliable response.
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S48'Doctor Who's Latest Reboot is Setting the Stage for an Epic Finale It may seem unbelievable, but we’re already near the end of the first season of Doctor Who in years. Despite a season numbering reset, a new Doctor, and a new streaming home, returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has helped make these episodes feel like classic Doctor Who stories. But before we get to the thrilling two-part finale — and a conclusion to that mysterious recurring cameo — there’s one more adventure left, and it looks awfully familiar.Doctor Who Season 1 (or Season 14 if you’re a stickler) Episode 6, “Rogue,” will premiere on Disney+ on June 7, 2024. Sci-fi fans will be especially spoiled by Disney+ over the next few weeks, as new episodes of the Star Wars series The Acolyte premiere on Wednesdays and Doctor Who premieres on Fridays.
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S49Netflix's Wildest New Sci-Fi Show Reveals a Dark Truth About Streaming Services In October 2023, Max premiered the first season of Scavengers Reign. The series, a dark sci-fi adventure show about the crew of a cargo ship that crash land on an alien planet with no hope of being rescued, quickly became one of the most acclaimed new TV arrivals of the year. It was universally adored by everyone who watched it, and it's not hard to see why. Scavengers Reign announces itself early in its first season as one of the most distinct and beautifully realized pieces of sci-fi media in recent memory, and every one of its subsequent episodes delivers on the promise of those initial few chapters.Nonetheless, Scavengers Reign was canceled earlier this year by Max, much to the dismay and disappointment of its fans. Netflix, to its credit, swooped in and picked up the series. The streaming service has offered Scavengers Reign another chance by giving its first season a new home and leaving the door open for a second if it performs well enough.
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S50The Silver Bullet For Ending Food Waste On The Farm Technology has made great in-roads in reducing food waste from the farm. But it is only a start.An estimated 30 percent of produce in America never makes it off the farm. That means that for every two heads of iceberg lettuce shipped to a grocery store, one is left to rot. Likewise, for every two bunches of spinach or celery, for every two ears of sweet corn, for every pair of tomatoes, one is allowed to sit unharvested.
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