Innehållsförteckning för July/August 2019 från WIRED

Sunday nights find me not in the bosom of frivolity but at home, splayed on the sectional, shushing proximate noisemakers. Humans, animals, Alexas—be still! Fresh episodes of HBO shows are arriving, weekly brushes with a kind of divine, and they deserve an absolute, a religious silence. My sanctuary is simple. Along the walls, a sextet of smart sconces, dimmed via app to a lutescent movie-theater glow. On the credenza, an expansive television, positioned at optimal distance and viewing angle relative to its size. Finally, perched down in front, that which completes the picture, mon précieux: the sound bar. Papa Light, dearest father, you knew. You knew, when you came back from one of your divagations through Best Buy and “surprised” me with this mesh-encased yardstick of sonic enlargement, that my…

The earnest vanity that serves as the engine of Instagram seems generally harmless, sweetly human. The app’s natural topics are babies and gardens, sexiness and ease, wistfulness and longing. At its best—if you follow no celebrities, just people you’re fond of—it’s a castle on a cloud, where nobody shouts or talks too loud. And I’ll be damned if Instagram’s soft focus, and even the odd lurch into blessedness, doesn’t lower my defenses to advertising. The atmospherics of the joint just get me in the mood to shop. Lately I find myself blowing past the images of friends and yielding to the seductions of multinationals and over-funded startups. Travel clothes that fold up into the size of a deck of cards. A posture pillow that increases one’s airflow, improves productivity, and…

$2,000 ORU KAYAK HAVEN Storing and transporting a watercraft big enough for two can be a hassle. Portable options like inflatable kayaks are typically as maneuverable as couches. Not Oru Kayak’s new Haven. This boat is light and fast, and folds origami-style into a 30-inch square that’s just 15 inches deep—small enough to fit in a car trunk or hall closet. With a few assembly adjustments, it can become a two-seater for tandem trips or a one-person boat with room to carry food, water, and other gear for longer excursions. To fold it back up, the durable polypropylene shell collapses into layers. Just slide the seats, bulkhead, and other parts inside—the floorboards wrap around the whole package to form the shell of the suitcase. The 40-pound Haven is one of…

Shortly after noon on July 20, 1969, as they orbited some 70 miles above the surface of the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin detached their lunar lander from the Apollo 11 command module in preparation for descent. From his window aboard the command vessel, Michael Collins watched as the lander rotated away and pitched itself downward. In the lander’s cramped cabin, Aldrin and Armstrong could see the moon’s surface through small triangular windows. At elbow level was the console for the device that would direct the final stage of their approach: the Apollo guidance computer. For most of the trip, the astronauts had been passengers. The spacecraft had been guiding itself, relaying its position to Mission Control’s IBM mainframe—a contraption the size of a walk-in freezer, which in 1969…

In 2000 the US said measles was gone—defeated!—within its borders. Except, not quite. Cases still broke out sporadically. Now the country is in the midst of its worst outbreak in more than 20 years. From January 1 to May 24 of this year, 940 people, mostly children, in 26 states have been sickened with the disease. So how was measles declared eliminated, and does the current outbreak mean it’s back for good? The answer is more complicated than you might think. What does elimination mean? The word elimination sounds absolute. But when it comes to measles, it does not mean the US has zero cases. It means no current strains are native to the US. But the virus can still be carried in from another country. Elimination, a history In…

“A big question, especially from the perspective of the #MeToo era, was why victims in this story didn’t feel they could speak up more. Very few people were willing to discuss this case with an outsider. I tried every student I could find; I contacted teachers, guidance counselors, and former school staff. Eventually I got some responses. Their insights helped me understand a lot more about why these girls would’ve chosen to stay quiet.”—Stephanie Clifford, “I’ve Never Felt So Alone in My Life,” page 86 “When I came back from visiting the set of The Lion King and described it to coworkers, they reacted as if I were speaking Esperanto. The movie looks like live action, but it’s actually CGI, even though it was filmed in the style of a…

You’ve probably heard about the plague of plastic trash in the oceans. You’ve seen YouTube videos of sea turtles with drinking straws in their noses, or whales with stomachs full of marine litter. But how much plastic is out there? Where is it coming from? We don’t really know, because we haven’t measured it. “There’s a paucity of data,” says Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit focused on ending plastic pollution. Marine litter isn’t the only hazard whose contours we can’t fully see. The United Nations has 93 indicators to measure the environmental dimensions of “sustainable development,” and amazingly, the UN found that we have little to no data on 68 percent of them—like how rapidly land is being degraded, the rate of ocean acidification, or…

$300 BONTRAGER BLAZE WAVECEL MOUNTAIN BIKE HELMET This helmet’s honeycomb inner lining is made from a new material called Wave-Cel. On impact, the collapsible structure flexes and crumples, basically moving in all directions, depending on the angle and force of the crash. This means the helmet, rather than your head, will absorb the direct and rotational impact. Bontrager’s parent company, Trek, claims this design is 48 times more effective than a traditional foam helmet in preventing concussions. The claims seem plausible given Trek’s reputation, and I did find the WaveCel to be so breathable that my noggin stayed cool on long rides under the hot Arizona sun. $229 SENA R1 SMART CYCLING HELMET A few years ago, the motorcycle-helmet brand Sena adapted its Bluetooth four-way intercom system to road-cycling helmets.…

Meet two of the most unapologetic men on the internet. They're at war with the Feds. Silicon Valley had better hope they win. In Michael Lacey’s younger and more vulnerable years, his father gave him this advice: “Whenever someone pokes a finger in your chest, you grab that finger and you break it off at the knuckle.” Lacey grew up in the 1950s as a bright, bookish boy. His father, a sailor turned enforcer for a New York construction union, had little use for his son’s intellectual gifts. If Lacey lost a fight at school, he says, his dad “came home and beat me again.” But the boy toughened up, and he carried the lessons he’d learned into adulthood. He became a newspaper editor and earned a reputation as a…

Public health officials aspire to have 95 percent of people immunized against measles. At that level, you achieve herd immunity—that is, even those who can’t get shots will be protected by a wall of immunized neighbors. But in more than half of US states, student vaccination rates are lower than that. Some aren’t immunized for medical reasons, and nearly all states permit skipping shots for personal or religious beliefs. The result is that adults who aren’t fully protected and babies who are too young for their vaccines are vulnerable. A recent paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases identified 25 US counties most at risk for a measles resurgence, as seen on this map. The researchers based their conclusions not only on immunization rates and exemptions but also population size and—critically—proximity…

Pushback that helped get this issue out: Banning facial-recognition tech; not attending meetings at which I’m not expected to talk; skipping Avengers in favor of Agnès Varda; insisting on getting my news directly from respected news outlets rather than Facebook or Twitter; countering the neighbor’s baby-making music (and accompanying sounds) by blasting Death Grips; refusing to update my software; attitude from the resident 10-year-old; refusing to give up cooking oatmeal in a microwave even though it always, always explodes; no, I do not wish to receive notifications from your website; calling a bartender out for misogyny when he “didn’t like” the way I ordered a round of Boulevardiers and refused to make them until a male companion placed the order; a Muni fare-evasion citation; no more online food delivery—the gig…

Online fakery runs wide and deep, but you don’t need me to tell you that. New species of digital fraud and deception come to light almost every week, if not every day: Russian bots that pretend to be American humans. American bots that pretend to be human trolls. Even humans that pretend to be bots. Yep, some “intelligent assistants,” promoted as advanced conversational AIs, have turned out to be little more than digital puppets operated by poorly paid people. ▪ The internet was supposed to not only democratize information but also rationalize it—to create markets where impartial metrics would automatically surface the truest ideas and best products, at a vast and incorruptible scale. But deception and corruption, as we’ve all seen by now, scale pretty fantastically too. ▪ According to…

Help, I’ve been atomized! Obliterated! Shattered and scattered in the cyberether! My corporate overlords have heard the call: “Decentralized” is the new “disrupted.” It’s not just about putting stuff “on the blockchain” anymore—it’s fuzzier than that, hipper, more notional. Whatever can hold without a center, must. Ditch the banks for crypto; crowdsource justice; blow up Zuck’s public square. Is this what freedom looks like—dispersed floaters in an uncharted sea? At least disrupt started off as a compact, muscular verb, an implicit call to arms. Now it’s been traded for polysyllabic corporatese, a negation (de-) of an abstraction (centralize). I like Angela Walch’s formulation. She’s the legal scholar who refers to the “veil of decentralization,” a way for companies to obscure responsibility for their creations. Got hacked? Sorry to hear—take it…

In 2014, Brett Smith, the cofounder of Counter Culture Coffee, was expanding his company from a wholesale business into ecommerce, when he realized he needed a new way to reach customers—from better packaging to experiences to emails. “Communication has become a commodity,” Smith says. “We have to evolve how we connect with customers—pushing ourselves to engage people on a higher level.” Now, as part of its ongoing effort to better reach customers, Counter Culture has begun using a new all-in-one marketing platform that may redefine how the small business promotes coffee. According to a 2019 report by Gartner, companies that use AI-enabled multi-channel marketing systems are predicted to gain a 25% increase in response rates in the coming years. While enterprise companies have long had access to services that can…

You know that brutal final climb in spin class, the one that seems to just not end? Don’t beat yourself up over loosening the resistance dial. And the planned six-mile run that ended after four and change? Not your fault. Your poor performance can be blamed on your underpowered clothes. Your tights, your shirts, your sports bras: all pathetic slackers! So implies Under Armour’s new line of workout gear, at least. UA Rush apparel is infused with a fiber that purportedly reflects your body heat back to you, penetrating your skin to increase “tissue oxygenation”—and in theory, your stamina. It’s a tall claim, certainly, but not in the hyper-jargonated world of fitness tech, where optimization matters as much as perspiration, and mere mortals approach training like elite athletes. Exercise science…