They plugged GPT-4 into Minecraft--and unearthed new potential for AI

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They plugged GPT-4 into Minecraft--and unearthed new potential for AI     The technology that underpins ChatGPT has the potential to do much more than just talk. Linxi “Jim” Fan, an AI researcher at the chipmaker Nvidia, worked with some colleagues to devise a way to set the powerful language model GPT-4—the “brains” behind ChatGPT and a growing number of other apps and services—loose inside the blocky video game Minecraft. Continued here

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Rooftop Films, a New York Mainstay     The outdoor screening series from Rooftop Films has been a New York mainstay since 1997. Upcoming programs, at venues throughout the city (such as Green-Wood Cemetery, pictured above), include “In the Heights,” at Hinton Park, in Queens, and a première of the post-apocalyptic drama “Biosphere,” at Brooklyn Grange, in Sunset Park. A Juneteenth-weekend presentation of a documentary about the great jazz drummer Max Roach—in Herbert Von King Park, in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy—features a Q. & A. with the filmmakers and members of Roach’s family.© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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21 Surprising Things Your Nintendo Switch Can Do     We're still waiting to see if there will be a follow-up to the Nintendo Switch OLED, or even the original Switch or Switch Lite. Until then, you'll have to use what you have to play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. While you're playing, it's time to brush up on how to use it. There are plenty of hidden features and little tricks that can help you get the most out of the console, and we've rounded up the best ones here.We also have 11 Nintendo Switch Lite tips if you have the handheld-only version of the console. Continued here

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South Africa's role as host of the BRICS summit is fraught with dangers. A guide to who is in the group, and why it exists     South Africa will host the BRICS summit in August 2023. The event could offer the country an opportunity to exercise leadership in the BRICS’ efforts to reform the arrangements for global economic governance and in supporting sustainable and inclusive development in Africa and the Global South. However, the opportunity has morphed into an international challenge because Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, has indicated that he will attend. South Africa could face the wrath of its BRICS partners if it fulfils its international obligation and arrests him. On the other hand, if it does not arrest him, it could face sanctions from those countries that want to see Putin tried for war crimes. Hosting the 2023 BRICS summit is therefore fraught with dangers. The international environment is complicated, dynamic and unpredictable. South Africa can avoid embarrassment and capitalise on the opportunities presented by the summit only if it is able to skilfully manoeuvre in these choppy waters. Continued here

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Speaking up for the annoying fruit fly     Fruit flies can be truly annoying when they are buzzing around your living room or landing in your wine. But we have much to thank these tiny nuisances for – they revolutionised biological and medical science. Flies and mosquitoes both belong to Diptera, the group of insects that have only two wings (from the Greek di meaning two and pteron meaning wing). However, just as most people accept the bothersome as well as the positive traits of their friends, we shouldn’t judge flies for their negative behaviour alone. Continued here

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Ukraine war: Yevgeny Prigozhin and the 'warrior constituency' that could threaten Putin from the right     As he claimed victory in the battle for Bakhmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner private military company (PMC), gave another of his firebrand interviews. He lambasted, in unequivocal terms, the Russian minister of defence and his chief of staff, Russia’s “deep state” – namely, the presidential administration and the “quasi-defence” establishment – and the elites who shield their sons from the battlefronts. He revealed that he does not understand what the war in Ukraine is fought for, but “as long as there is a fight, we have to fight it well” – even though he added that the long war to come would take a huge toll. In this, Prigozhin spoke the bitter truth – which begs the question how he manages to get away with it, when others are being handed jail terms for far milder criticisms. Continued here

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What are the risks of being an older father?     This week, representatives for the actor Al Pacino, aged 83, confirmed he is having a child with his girlfriend 29-year-old Noor Alfallah. He'll be joined in the late fatherhood club by his occasional co-star Robert De Niro, who last month confirmed he is fathering his seventh child at age 79. The pair certainly aren't the first old dads: several other male actors, musicians, and even US presidents have had kids late in life. And the average age of new fathers in general has been creeping up over the years. Between 1972 and 2015, it increased by 3.5 years: the average father in the US is 30.9 years old, and 9% of dads were at least 40 years old when their child is born. Continued here

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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love     Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.Whatever fundamental reality might exist, we live out our lives in a subjective reality defined by what we agree to attend to. “An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer,” D.H. Lawrence wrote. But we live largely in the territory of the unanswerable because there is no pure attention — the aperture of our attention is constricted by myriad conditionings and focused by a brain honed on millions of years of evolutionary necessities, many of which we have long outgrown. How the brain metes out attention and what that means for our intimacy with reality is what the philosophy-lensed British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist takes up in his immense, in both senses of the word, book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (public library) — an investigation of how “the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the world so as to subject it to our control militate against a true understanding of it,” and what a richer understanding of those mechanisms can do for living in closer and more felicitous communion with reality. At its heart is the recognition that “the whole is never the same as the sum of its ‘parts’” and that “there are in fact no ‘parts’ as such, but that they are an artefact of a certain way of looking at the world.” Continued here

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You're Not an Imposter. You're Actually Pretty Amazing.     Do you feel like a fraud? Many of us do. Perhaps you started a new job and believe you have less experience than you need, despite being the perfect candidate on paper. Or maybe your boss trusted you with an assignment that you feel totally unprepared to lead, regardless of your flawless track record.  Continued here

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Bougna: fish stew with sweet potatoes     The pristine, remote waters that surround New Caledonia – a French island territory in the South Pacific – aren't just known for their beauty; they're famous for their fish. When Valentine Thomas, a world record spearfisherwoman and an international ambassador for ocean sustainability, received an invitation from local diver friends in Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia, to come and fish in the area, she said, "I could not have passed on that offer".Spearfishing, a form of underwater hunting that involves diving hundreds of feet below the water's surface without any oxygen, isn't for the faint of heart. And spearfishing in New Caledonia requires a particular kind of bravery – not only because the waters are teeming with sharks, but also because, on some of the islands, they're fiercely guarded by the Kanak. The Kanak are a Melanesian tribe indigenous to New Caledonia, dating back to roughly 3000 BCE. Today, the Kanak – who make up about 40% of the territory's population – actively work to protect what's left of their land, culture and identity. In certain places, if you dare to fish without a Kanak guide, Thomas said, "You enter at your own risk. Of getting shot." Continued here

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The 3 disciplines of Stoicism: A guide for living a life of meaning and intention     How does a person live a good, meaningful life? Many schools of philosophy and religion have attempted to answer this important question. The result of their efforts is a long history of diverse beliefs and etiquettes — some of which have aged incredibly well, others of which not so much. Stoicism is one such school of philosophy, and while its heyday appeared to have ended 2,000 years ago, it may in fact just be getting started.Founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BC, Stoicism unified logic, ethics, and metaphysics into a coherent philosophy of life. The school would evolve throughout the Hellenistic period and, like so much of Greek culture, would eventually migrate to the Roman Empire. There, it found some of its most well-known and influential voices: the former-slave Epictetus, the statesman Seneca, and the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism would decline around the time Christianity became the Empire’s state religion — though it would continue to influence thinkers such as Justus Lipsius, Baruch Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant — but its lengthy hibernation would lead to a surprising awakening around the middle of the 20th century. Continued here

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7 Brilliant Questions Emotionally Intelligent People Ask Themselves (Over and Over and Over)     Question 1: "Why?" Continued here

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Apple's Rumored VR Headset Has Sent Its Rivals Scrambling     Rumors that Apple will announce a virtual reality headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday have sent competitors into a frenzy. Meta announced its new Meta Quest 3 on Thursday. Lenovo released its latest ThinkReality VRX headset. Suddenly, a niche market that was struggling to capture a wide audience has many more eyes on it. Apple's expected entrance into the VR world comes at a time when hardware sales and general interest in the metaverse dream are languishing. Some companies, like Meta, have invested heavily in the idea, even as the public has lost interest. Apple has stayed away from the metaverse, but interest in the company's VR and AR plans has long loomed. Now, Apple may not eclipse competitors but instead back up their ideas and lead to more developments and uses for the tech.  Continued here

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Your LinkedIn doesn't need to be perfect - four ways to build an authentic profile to boost your personal brand     The idea of a “personal brand” might seem like the purview of celebrities and influencers. But if you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, you’ll know it’s something anyone can develop with well-crafted posts and engagement. In recent years, students and young professionals have turned personal branding into a tool for success in competitive, global job markets. A personal brand is about both how you differentiate yourself from others, and about how others perceive you. Continued here

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Dark Extinctions Are Popping Up Everywhere     Scientists keep discovering species in museum collections long after they’ve died out. What else have we missed?It could have been a scene from Jurassic Park: 10 golden lumps of hardened resin, each encasing insects. But these weren’t from the age of the dinosaurs; these younger resins were formed in eastern Africa within the past few hundreds or thousands of years. Still, they offered a glimpse into a lost past: the dry evergreen forests of coastal Tanzania. Continued here

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Voices of Preston's Windrush generation - when I first arrived, I said: 'Really? I thought there were no slums in this place!'     From the earliest arrivals of what would become Preston’s “Windrush generation”, the status of the Caribbean diaspora was hotly contested in this post-industrial Lancashire town, as elsewhere. Discrimination and prejudice dogged the daily lives of people from the Caribbean who made their home here.In 1955, the pages of the Lancashire Evening Post hosted intense debates about whether a “colour bar” existed in the town. And segregation still endured two decades later, when the national Race Relations Board challenged discrimination at Preston Dockers’ Labour Club, where black people were being denied service. Because of its status as a private premises, the club won the case in 1975. New legislation would be required to overturn such discrimination. Continued here

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The 'truther playbook': tactics that explain vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr's presidential momentum     While incumbent Joe Biden is the favoured Democratic pick for the 2024 US presidential nomination, another more controversial candidate is gaining popular support in the polls. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a self-described vaccine sceptic, announced his candidacy to run for president as a Democrat in April. Our new study on the rhetorical techniques used to spread vaccine disinformation partly explains Kennedy’s appeal to voters. We examined the strategies of RFK Jr and American osteopath Joseph Mercola, two prominent members of the “disinformation dozen”. Continued here

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Companies are using sneaky software and legal tricks to make you endlessly pay for stuff you already bought     Companies are using sneaky software, subscription fees, and legal tricks to make you endlessly pay for stuff you already bought. Continued here

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How teachers can stay true to history without breaking new laws that restrict what they can teach about racism     When it comes to America’s latest “history war,” one of the biggest consequences is that it has made many K-12 educators scared and confused about what they can and can’t say in their classrooms.Since 2021, at least 28 states have adopted measures that restrict how teachers can teach the history of racism in the U.S. Many more states have proposals on the table. The laws have been portrayed in the media as measures that would prevent teachers from teaching “divisive concepts” or lessons that would cause “discomfort, anguish or guilt.” Continued here

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Audi's New Super SUV Is an Overhaul for the E-tron     If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDMaybe it’s the nature of the technology and the pressure of change, but EVs seem to age more rapidly than their now doomed ICE forebears. Can it really be five years since WIRED first tried the Audi E-tron? Continued here

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More than 400 Grail patients incorrectly told they may have cancer     More than 400 patients who signed up to take a pioneering oncology detection test developed by US biotech company Grail received erroneous letters last month suggesting they may have developed cancer. Continued here

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The Windrush generation: how a resilient Caribbean community made a lasting contribution to British society     As a young boy in 1962, I remember arriving in England from Jamaica on a BOAC jet plane. It seemed to me like I was going to the moon – the air hostess who accompanied me was the first white person I had ever seen. My father greeted me eagerly at London’s Paddington station, amid the swirling smoke of steam trains. It had been two years since we last met, but I recognised him immediately.Fourteen years earlier, the arrival of the Empire Windrush at London’s Tilbury docks in 1948 was a pivotal moment in British history, marking the beginning of a significant wave of migration from the Caribbean. This became known as the Windrush generation, and signified a new chapter in the history of the United Kingdom. Since then it has assumed a symbolic status, commemorated annually on Windrush Day, observed on 22 June. Continued here

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The allure of the ad-lib: New research identifies why people prefer spontaneity in entertainment     We observed a preference for spontaneity in entertainment across several studies. First, we examined dozens of Buzzfeed articles from the past several years about spontaneity in film and TV, like “Here Are 21 TV Moments You Probably Didn’t Know Were Unscripted.” Compared with other Buzzfeed articles about entertainment that were published on the same dates, the pieces about spontaneity garnered nearly double the social media engagement in comments, likes and shares.We also ran an online raffle in which people could win a real, customized Cameo greeting from a celebrity of their choice. The vast majority of participants – 84.1% – wanted their chosen celebrity to record a fully improvised, off-the-cuff message rather than a scripted personal greeting. Continued here

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The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns     This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.There is a paradox at the heart of our changing climate. While the blanket of air close to the Earth’s surface is warming, most of the atmosphere above is becoming dramatically colder. The same gases that are warming the bottom few miles of air are cooling the much greater expanses above that stretch to the edge of space. Continued here

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Forget Transylvania. Dracula was inspired by an Irish cholera epidemic     An afternoon wind funnels down deserted Old Market Street, past shuttered shops and darkened restaurants. The rowdy Irish student town of Sligo has been frozen. It is two months into a strict nationwide lockdown enforced by the Irish government to combat the novel coronavirus, which has killed more people per capita in Ireland than in the U.S.The last time Sligo was this empty—this lifeless, this restricted—was 188 years ago. Cholera was the culprit. That epidemic spawned not just death, poverty, famine, chaos, and desertion but also a legendary vampire. Yet only in late 2018 did Irish researchers make this startling discovery: Dracula was born in Sligo. Continued here

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A general-purpose robot is entering the workforce     Tech startup Sanctuary AI has unveiled a general-purpose robot designed to perform many workplace tasks currently handled by people — working with humans or without them.The challenge: Robots have worked alongside people for decades, and traditionally, they’ve been incredibly specialized — a bot on a General Motors’ assembly line, for example, might move pieces of metal from one place to another over and over again. Continued here

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Juli     In a captivating, poetic ode to the beauty and strength of mixed languages, writer Julián Delgado Lopera paints a picture of immigrant and queer communities united not by their refinement of language but by the creative inventions that spring from their mouths. They invite everyone to reconsider what "proper" English sounds like – and imagine a blended future where those on the margins are able to speak freely. Continued here

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Wild, Wondrous Food Findings     This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.When we’re deciding what to eat (and what not to eat), human beings tend to rely on conventional wisdom. Junk food is bad for you. Eating too quickly is bad for you. And tasting an apple that’s been sitting alone in an office for at least 438 days? Really bad for you. Continued here

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You have 3 brains. This is how to use them.     The brain consists of three layers: the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex. The reptilian brain controls bodily functions like hormones, body temperature, and hunger. The limbic system handles emotions such as fear, anger, joy, and gratitude. The cerebral cortex is responsible for impulse control, decision making, and long-term planning.Understanding the functions of each part of the brain allows for more mindful thoughts and better decision-making. For instance, recalling a favorite memory or something that brings happiness can activate the reptilian brain, resulting in a decrease in body temperature and blood pressure. This can reduce stress and promote a more joyful experience throughout the day. Continued here

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A New Cold War Could Be Much Worse Than the One We Remember     China is a more formidable adversary than the Soviet Union ever was, and the world is less divisible.A new cold War has come to seem all but inevitable. Tensions between China and the United States are mounting in step with Beijing’s growing power and ambition. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has poisoned its relations with the West and pushed Moscow and Beijing closer together, pitting a democratic bloc anchored by the United States against an autocratic one anchored by China and Russia. Much as it did in the 20th century, Washington is teaming up with allies in Europe and Asia to contain the ambitions of its rivals. Continued here