Research: Leaders Undervalue Creative Work from AI-Managed Teams

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Research: Leaders Undervalue Creative Work from AI-Managed Teams     Because of AI’s ability to learn from vast amounts of data and maximize efficiency, companies have predicted that humans working with it will be able to free up their time and expand their creative efforts, thereby driving greater innovation. But, despite the enthusiasm of tech gurus and companies alike, is this really how adopting AI tools will play out? A series of experiments that how algorithmic tools changed the consideration and resources workers were given for creative and innovative work suggest that these tools — specifically, the algorithmic tools that oversee employee productivity — could actually undercut employees’ ability to do this work, and that companies that deploy these tools haphazardly could find their optimism souring. Continued here

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Baltimore Bridge Collapse Highlights Latino Immigrants' Crucial, Yet Risky Role in the Job Force     According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Latinos comprise 30 percent of the construction workforce nationwide, and reports indicate they face a higher likelihood of workplace injuries or fatalities compared to workers of other ethnicities. It's a statistic that experts say underscores the need for more safety measures to protect immigrant workers, who often take dangerous jobs to support their families. "It has been shown repeatedly that immigrants, particularly those who may not speak English and are most desperate to earn a living for their families, are often the most afraid to speak up, and therefore are most exploited and those who are exploited," says Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, a worker advocacy organization. Continued here

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Meet the digital David taking on the Google Goliath - The Economist (No paywall)     JEFF GREEN learned about marketing the hard way. In his late teens he was sent to Ventura, on the Californian coast, as a Mormon missionary. He spent 12 hours a day knocking on people’s doors, mostly to have them slammed in his face. His sales pitch was hardly compelling on the bikini-loving west coast, but as he tells Schumpeter: “If you can convince people to give up premarital sex, 10% of their income, no more alcohol, no more smoking or coffee or tea, and then go to church three hours on Sunday, then arguably you can sell anything.” Today he is head of a digital-advertising platform, The Trade Desk (TTD), which he co-founded and based in Ventura, his old stamping-ground. Its market value of $42bn is only slightly less than the combined worth of two of the most valuable ad agencies, Publicis and Omnicom. In digital advertising, the only firms bigger—albeit much, much bigger—are the Goliaths of big tech.Mr Green is no longer a Mormon. In 2021 the billionaire publicly parted ways with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, rebuking it for its accumulated wealth and intolerant stance on issues such as gay rights. But he remains a crusader. His latest fight is against Google. Following the lead taken three years ago by Apple, maker of the iPhone, this year Google aims to phase out cookies, bits of software code that enable marketers to track consumers digitally across third-party websites and target them with ads. Google’s justification for ending the practice is data privacy. But Mr Green says that is a figleaf, and that Google’s cookie removal benefits its own full-throttled advertising platform at the expense of others. “They kept their Ferrari…and said everyone else should ride bicycles,” he says. He is on a mission to ensure the digital-ad machinery remains on four wheels. Continued here

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AIs will make health care safer and better - The Economist (No paywall)     In 2015 Priscilla Chan, a paediatrician, and her husband Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) with the aim of helping science bring about a world in which all disease could be prevented, cured or managed. Unsurprisingly there was a tech-centric feeling to the undertaking. But it was not until 2020 that the Chan-Zuckerberg’s annual updates started to talk about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). Four years later it is hard to imagine anyone pursuing their goals not putting it front and centre.The proportion of biomedical research papers which invoke artificial intelligence was climbing exponentially well before the field started dazzling the world with “foundation models” like OpenAI’s various GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers), Meta’s Llama and Gemini from Google (see chart). Given the vast amounts of data that biomedical research produces, AI’s early application there is hardly a surprise. That past progress and promise, though, is a mere prelude to what is now under way. Continued here

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Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain     She sees some similarities in studies on people, which have found that a whole range of hands-on activities — such as knitting, gardening and coloring — are associated with cognitive and emotional benefits, including improvements in memory and attention, as well as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms. Continued here

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Vegetables are losing their nutrients. Can the decline be reversed?     Biofortification encompasses multiple technologies. One involves genetically modifying a crop to increase its nutritional contents, which allows for the rapid introduction of new traits. Another, agronomic biofortification, utilizes nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to concentrate particular minerals in plants. Lastly, selective plant breeding can produce new varieties, though it can take a decade or more to yield a single variety.Biofortification is an alternative to fortification, which has been part of the US industrial food system since the 1920s, when the nation began boosting table salt with iodine to reduce conditions related to mineral deficiency, such as goiter. Biofortification puts nutrients directly into the seed, as opposed to fortification, which adds nutrients into food once it’s grown. On the global stage, international stakeholders such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have deemed the development of nutrient-enhanced biofortified crops as one of their leading goals in achieving food security. Continued here

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How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup - Forbes (No paywall)     Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque took the stage last week at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California to roaring applause and an introduction from an AI-generated Aristotle who announced him as “a modern Prometheus” with “the astuteness of Athena and the vision of Daedalus.”But behind Mostaque's hagiographic introduction lay a grim and fast metastasizing truth. Stability, once one of AI’s buzziest startups, was floundering. It had been running out of money for months and Mostaque had been unable to secure enough additional funding. It had defaulted on payments to Amazon whose cloud service undergirded Stability’s core offerings. The star research team behind its flagship text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tendered their resignations just three days before — as Forbes would first report — and other senior leaders had issued him an ultimatum: resign, or we walk too. Continued here

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Gas trapped in Antarctic ice recorded the mass death of 56 million people     A recent discovery deep within Antarctica’s ice has given scientists new clues about major world events. At the bottom of the globe, data from the last 800,000 years has been locked into the polar ice caps dubbed the Law Dome and WAIS Divide.As snow falls year after year in the coldest place on the planet, the layers are compressed into solid ice. That snow contains particulates and chemicals that get trapped within the layers—which reflects what was going on in the world at that time. “As the snow was falling, it also trapped pockets of air,” says Amy King, a research scientist for the British Antarctic Survey. By drilling into the ice, scientists can extract a long cylinder called an ice core to analyze the air and gasses from the past. “Those are a sample of the atmosphere as it was at that time. So as we drill down into the ice, we retrieve these gradually older and older air samples, trapped as bubbles, and we can therefore measure older and older atmospheric histories.” Continued here

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Snap Is Cracking Down on Remote Work     Last week, Snap--the parent company of Snapchat--informed employees that they had 60 days to either come back to the office or leave the company, according to a report from The Information. A representative from Snap did not immediately respond to request for comment.  Back in 2022, CEO Evan Spiegel announced that employees would be expected to work in person 80 percent of the time starting in February 2023, as he believed that a "default together" approach, "while retaining flexibility for our team members, will help us to accelerate our growth and deliver on our strategic priorities of growing our community, reaccelerating our revenue growth, and leading in AR," according to a Bloomberg report.   Continued here

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Promotion Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them     Promotions can lead to divisions at work. The choice of whom to promote affects people personally and, if done poorly, can cause tension between employees. It can also hurt the company in the long run with lower rates of productivity and engagement.  Many organizations are so complex that promotions may be overlooked and sometimes rushed to fill an open spot. However, if you attempt to fill the open role with little consideration, your company will suffer down the line.   Continued here

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The Downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried and the Colossal Failure of FTX: A Timeline     Sam Bankman-Fried went from cryptocurrency golden boy to the face of the industry's collapse. The founder and former CEO of the massive cryptocurrency exchange FTX was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday after being convicted of fraud for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors. The collapse of one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world shook the digital currency world and sent prices plunging.Here is a timeline of how it happened.Nov. 2: Coindesk reports Alameda Reseach, Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency trading firm, holds a large amount of FTT, a token issued by FTX, suggesting the finances of the two are intertwined and Alameda faces a cash crunch. The report spooks participants in the crypto market. Continued here

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Canadian School Boards Sue Snapchat, TikTok and Meta for Disrupting Students' Education     Four of the largest school boards in the Canadian province of Ontario said Thursday they launched lawsuits against TikTok, Meta and SnapChat alleging the social media platforms are disrupting student learning."These companies have knowingly created programs that are addictive that are aimed and marketed at young people and it is causing significant harm and we just can't stand by any longer and not speak up about it," Chernos said. Continued here

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With 19 Words, Louis Gossett Jr.'s Oscar Acceptance Speech Taught a Bittersweet Lesson     Louis Gossett Jr. died Friday at the age of 87. It's sad news. As people mourn, I'd suggest looking back to a specific line in the late actor's 1983 Academy Awards acceptance speech, which carries a hidden note of optimism that I think is very relevant today.If you don't know Gossett, here's your binge-watching assignment: Start with the movie for which he became the first Black actor to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, An Officer and a Gentleman (it still holds up today), then go back and check out Roots, and work your way down his IMDB page. Continued here

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See Where Future U.S. Eclipses Will be Visible     Just how rare are total solar eclipses, which require a perfect alignment of the sun and moon?This article is part of a special report on the total solar eclipse that will be visible from parts of the U.S., Mexico and Canada on April 8, 2024. Continued here

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U.S. and Mexico Will Partner to Develop Semiconductor Supply Chain     The United States will partner with Mexico to explore semiconductor supply chain opportunities, the State Department said on Thursday, as the Biden administration pushes to reduce reliance on China and Taiwan for the technology.  Continued here

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6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart     Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks. Continued here

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Customers Prefer to Crowdfund Products They Can Improve     Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have not only broadened access to funding to companies that might struggle in the capital markets but have also transformed the way companies connect with consumers during product development, replacing focus groups with real customers who have a stake in the final product.  Despite crowdfunding’s many benefits, numerous campaigns still fail.  To understand why, the authorse embarked on an empirical analysis of 18,173 campaigns for physical products in the technology and design categories on Kickstarter. They found that many companies often present initial products that are so fully developed that customers don’t feel that their input will materially change the product and are reluctant to contribute as a result. Continued here

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How basketball’s biggest star is changing women’s sport - FT (No paywall)     March Madness puts the spotlight on Caitlin Clark and a new generation of players bringing greater interest — and money — to the game Continued here

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Understanding Dyscalculia, Dyslexia's Numeric Counterpart     The inability to process numeric information, dyscalculia is still poorly understood. Finding therapies may require looking beyond the numbersExperts estimate that 3 to 7 percent of the global population has developmental dyscalculia, though it often goes undiagnosed. The disorder may be poorly understood, but it is very real—and so are its consequences. Continued here

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Baltimore Bridge Collapse Will Teach Engineers to Build Safer Infrastructure     The loss of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after a cargo ship collision will teach engineers how to design structures better able to withstand disastersIn this aerial image, the steel frame of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sits on top of a container ship after the bridge collapsed in Baltimore on March 26, 2024. Continued here

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Chip Bergh, Former President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co     In this episode, Wharton experts speak with Chip Bergh, former President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co.Wharton’s Barbara Kahn and Americus Reed have a live LinkedIn Q&A with Chip Bergh, former President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., discussing global retail, online fashion, brand relevance, creating successful marketing campaigns, and more. Continued here

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Research: Leaders Undervalue Creative Work from AI-Managed Teams - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)     Because of AI’s ability to learn from vast amounts of data and maximize efficiency, companies have predicted that humans working with it will be able to free up their time and expand their creative efforts, thereby driving greater innovation. But, despite the enthusiasm of tech gurus and companies alike, is this really how adopting AI tools will play out? A series of experiments that how algorithmic tools changed the consideration and resources workers were given for creative and innovative work suggest that these tools — specifically, the algorithmic tools that oversee employee productivity — could actually undercut employees’ ability to do this work, and that companies that deploy these tools haphazardly could find their optimism souring.How will creative work be impacted by artificial intelligence (AI)? With AI’s immense and growing capabilities — it can do everything from structuring work schedules, managing administrative tasks, and giving advice to decision-makers — industry thought leaders are understandably optimistic about its potential. Much of this optimism hinges on the claim that, because of AI’s ability to learn from vast amounts of data and maximize efficiency, humans working with it will be able to free up their time and expand their creative efforts, thereby driving greater innovation. Numerous analyses and corporate reports have been written in favor of this claim. Continued here

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A Small-Business Lender Fires Back at the GOP Over Claims It Is Tied to China     The Denver-based small business lending platform sent a letter on Tuesday to top Congressional leaders in the House and Senate small business committees that shoots down claims about Funding Circle selling its small business lending company (SBLC) license and having an active Chinese investor. Funding Circle snagged its SBLC license last year when the SBA lifted a 40-year moratorium on granting new licenses, which allow lenders to dole out the SBA's most popular working capital loans. For about 40 years, the agency capped the number of licenses at 14, until lifting that moratorium last year. The agency also brought in non-bank lenders, like Funding Circle, to broaden out the lender pool. Continued here

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How Women in AI Get Attention--and Capital--in a Male-Dominated Field     When Angela Hood was just out of college and looking for engineering jobs, she wasn't getting many interviews. A mentor suggested she use her initials on her resume so she wouldn't give away her gender. "And sure enough, problem solved," she says, recalling that she immediately got more calls.When she launched Austin-based ThisWay Global in 2014, she knew she wanted to address the kinds of biases that keep companies from hiring the best candidates, and keep candidates from applying to certain firms. In fact, Hood says that, many years after her own experience, some candidates still use initials in place of their first names to avoid giving away their race, ethnicity, or gender. Today, her company, which uses artificial intelligence and skills-based screening to identify qualified candidates, counts IBM and staffing firm Randstad among its clients. It has raised more than $20 million in funding. Continued here

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The 16 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now     From Everybody's Talking About Jamie to Bottoms, these are the must-watch films on Amazon Prime Video. Continued here

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The 32 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now     From Mr. and Mrs. Smith to Three-Body, these are our picks for what you should be watching on the streamer. Continued here

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Do Stars Outnumber the Sands of Earth's Beaches?     Figuring out whether there are more stars in the universe than sand grains on Earth’s seashores requires math—and imaginationWhat’s the bigger number: all the universe’s stars, or all the sand on Earth’s beaches? Continued here

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Here's Proof the AI Boom Is Real: More People Are Tapping ChatGPT at Work     Ever since the rollout of ChatGPT in November 2022, many people in science, business, and media have been obsessed with AI. A cursory look at my own published work during that period fingers me as among the guilty. My defense is that I share with those other obsessives a belief that large language models are the leading edge of an epochal transformation. Maybe I’m swimming in generative Kool-Aid, but I believe AI advances within our grasp will change not only the way we work, but the structure of businesses, and ultimately the course of humanity.Not everyone agrees, and in recent months there’s been a backlash. AI has been oversold and overhyped, some experts now opine. Self-styled AI-critic-in-chief Gary Marcus recently said of the LLM boom, “It wouldn’t surprise me if, to some extent, this whole thing fizzled out.” Others claim that AI is mired in the “trough of disillusionment.” Continued here

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Yes, You Really Need a Budget     Like many people, I signed up for Mint because it was free. After all, that's what people who are good at money do—use things because they're free. And, by many standards, I am decent at managing money. I pay my mortgage monthly. I put aside money for vacations and savings, max out my retirement accounts. In the case that my checking account sometimes gets low, I never zero out. If I've never made plans beyond that, that hasn't seemed to be a problem.Intuit's announcement last year that it was shutting down Mint left me, like many others, scrambling for an alternative. I gulped and hesitantly entered my credit card information for You Need a Budget (YNAB). Continued here

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Pregnancy Increases Biological Age, but Giving Birth Changes it Back     Giving birth shifts a person’s DNA markings back toward a more youthful state, but this trend is less noticeable in new birth parents with obesity.Aches and pains aren’t all that pregnancy shares with ageing. Brewing a baby leads to changes in the distribution of certain chemical markers on a pregnant person’s DNA — changes similar to those that are a hallmark of getting older. But new research shows that, several months after a person gives birth, the chemical patterns revert to an earlier state1. The results strengthen previous work in mice and preliminary results in humans2. Continued here

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Chinese nationalists have issues with “3 Body Problem” - The Economist (No paywall)     The book is full of technical jargon, with copious references to particle accelerators and nanotechnology. The story, about Earth preparing for an alien invasion, is dark. Nevertheless, “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin has been a huge hit in China since it was published in 2008. It was translated into English in 2014 and quickly gathered awards and fans in the West, too. Most readers rejoiced when Netflix, an American streaming giant, announced in 2020 that it was turning the novel into a big-budget television series.The series, called “3 Body Problem”, launched on March 21st to positive reviews in America. Netflix is blocked in China. But many in the country managed to watch the show using pirate sites or software that can bypass official internet controls. It became one of the hottest-trending topics on Weibo, a social-media platform. Many commenters seemed to like this version (a previous adaptation was produced in China). Nationalists, however, did not. Continued here

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“I’m afraid I will lose my babies”: diary of a pregnant woman in Gaza - The Economist (No paywall)     There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. Most have had no prenatal care since the war started. Due to the lack of food and health services severe anaemia, a dangerous condition for pregnant women, is widespread. Some will be unable to give birth in a hospital because the facilities near them have shut down, and travelling is too dangerous. Those who make it to one of the overcrowded hospitals must contend with long queues for beds and dirty surfaces. Soumaya Massoud, a 31-year-old woman in central Gaza, spoke to 1843 magazine as she counted down the weeks until her twins were due.She has terrible nightmares. Sometimes they are about being buried in rubble. Sometimes her unborn twins appear in the form of birds, trying to fly without wings: “I fear that this is a sign they will leave me before I see them.” Sometimes she dreams the babies are crying for her and she can’t reach them. Sometimes she dreams their cribs are iron cages, and they call out in the darkness: “Mama”. Continued here

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NHL Analytics with Micah McCurdy     A conversation about the playoff push in the NHL, talent evaluation, player productivity, and more.Wharton’s Cade Massey, Adi Wyner, and Shane Jensen speak with mathematician and hockey analyst, Micah McCurdy, about the playoff push in the NHL, talent evaluation, player productivity, and more. Continued here

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Everything We Know About the Shocking Collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge     Lights flickered on the Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, before it lost power and veered off course while navigating the Patapsco River in Baltimore. It struck the 1.6-mile-long Francis Scott Key Bridge at around 1:20 a.m. on Tuesday, collapsing a portion of the steel structure and hurtling vehicles and likely at least eight individuals into the deep-channel water.Two people were immediately rescued, one of whom was sent to a local hospital, the University of Maryland Medical Center. Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said during a press conference that eight construction workers were on the bridge at the time of the incident, although it is unknown how many people were sent into the 48-degree water by the collision. The six construction workers still not found are now being presumed dead, according to the AP. Continued here

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Ask Ethan: How do symmetries lead to conservation laws?     In this Universe, there are certain physical quantities that are — quite importantly — always conserved. Laws like the “conservation of energy,” “conservation of momentum,” and “conservation of angular momentum” are cornerstones of theories ranging from Newtonian mechanics all the way to quantum electrodynamics and beyond, and apply equally to planets in the Solar System as they do to collisions taking place inside the world’s most powerful particle accelerators. But these aren’t just empirical laws that we observe to be true; they’re an inevitable consequence of certain symmetries that these theories exhibit: an unavoidable connection required by Noether’s Theorem.What’s the connection? That’s the topic of this week’s question from Kaleberg, who enjoyed this prior article on symmetries in physics and inquired with this follow-up: Continued here

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A 7-minute guide to the relationship between quantum mechanics and black holes     Physicist Brian Cox takes us into the mind-bending world where quantum mechanics, black holes, and the future of computing converge. In this interview, Cox shares the engineering challenges behind building quantum computers and the intricate dance of storing information in their notoriously delicate memory. However, black holes have an unexpected link to quantum information storage. Cox discusses how Planck units, holography, and redundancy could shape the future of computing.  Continued here

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Stephen Hawking's famous voice belonged to this pioneering MIT scientist     “Can you hear me alright?” I ask Brad Story at the start of a video call. To utter a simple phrase like this, I would learn later, is to perform what is arguably the most intricate motor act known to any species: speech. But as Story, a speech scientist, points to his ear and shakes his head no, this particular act of speech doesn’t seem so impressive. A technological glitch has rendered us virtually mute. We switch to another modern speech-delivery system, the smartphone, and begin a conversation about the evolution of talking machines — a project that began a millennium ago with magical tales of talking brass heads and continues today with technology that, to many of us, might as well be magic: Siri and Alexa, voice-cloning AI, and all the other speech synthesis technologies that resonate throughout our daily lives.  Continued here

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The Fed's Favorite Inflation Measure Cooled in February--But There's a Catch.     The personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE) rose by 0.3 percent in February, down from 0.4 percent in January, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday. The core PCE index, which strips out the more volatile inputs of food and energy costs, also increased by 0.3 percent last month, compared with 0.5 percent in January. Over the past 12 months, the core inflation measure climbed 2.8 percent, a slight retreat from the 2.9 percent annualized pace captured in January and the slowest pace in three years. Though when averaged out over the longer term, inflation still showed some signs of stubbornness.  Continued here

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14 Best Coffee Subscriptions to Keep You Wired (2024): Blends, Single-Origin, Small Batch, Decaf, Chains     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 WIREDA cup of coffee in the morning is not just about the caffeine (though that's certainly important). It's the ritual that starts the day. There's the whir of beans grinding, the toasted smell as it brews—even waiting for your finished cup is a part of the fun. It's time to start creeping toward wakefulness like the sun peeking over the horizon in an old-timey Folgers commercial—all fuzzy and warm and full of promise. Unless that is, you're out of coffee. Then it's dull, gray, and cold. Continued here

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26 Best Travel Accessories (2024): Neck Pillows, Plug Adapters, and Headphones     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 WIREDTravel isn't always as luxurious as the brochures make it seem. Sure, the destination may be intoxicatingly gorgeous, but the journey to get there is often one of cramped seats and uninterrupted noise. Traveling can be a gauntlet to be endured or, if you equip yourself properly beforehand, a mere speed bump to glide over. From travel pillows and noise-canceling headphones to luggage trackers, it turns out you actually can purchase peace of mind. These are the best travel accessories after years of traveling and testing. Continued here

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The Tale of the Snail Slime Wrangler     Mucus is a miracle of evolution, and some researchers are trying to re-create what nature makes naturally.Taylor Knapp: You know, initially I was like, “Sure, come on out and take some slime, if that’s what you need to do.” You know, I didn’t, I really didn’t ask him any questions. Continued here

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Customers Prefer to Crowdfund Products They Can Improve - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)     Crowdfunding mobilizes $1.3 billion for innovation funding annually and that amount is projected to more than double in the next five years. Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have not only broadened access to funding for companies that might struggle in the capital markets, but have also transformed the way companies connect with consumers during product development, replacing focus groups with real customers who have a stake in the final product. Continued here

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Best MacBooks (2024): Which Model Should You Buy?     in 2020, Apple's MacBooks entered a new era. The company announced it was moving away from the Intel chips it had been using since 2006; in their place it rolled out the first Macs with the Apple-designed M1. Cut to 2024 and the company now offers the choice between 11 custom processors, the latest of which is the M3 lineup—powering the latest MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch) and the new MacBook Air (13-inch and 15-inch).Like Apple's iPhones, the chips run on the ARM architecture and afford the company greater control over its hardware and software. These processors make Apple laptops more powerful and more power-efficient, meaning greatly improved performance and battery life. You get other perks, like the ability to run mobile apps originally made for iOS. Despite all these advances, choosing a MacBook is still difficult. Here's what you should spend your hard-earned money on. Continued here

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Ever Larger Cargo Ships Threaten Bridges, Ports and Other Structures     Cargo ships, like the one that caused the Baltimore bridge to collapse, are getting dangerously bigThe cargo ship Dali sits in the water after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland. Continued here

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WebMD CMO: The Pandemic Accelerated Technological Changes in Health Care     WebMD Chief Medical Officer explains how the pandemic accelerated virtual care and patients' level of comfort with itJohn Whyte, WebMD Chief Medical Officer, joins the show to talk about how the pandemic accelerated the use of telemedicine. This interview originally aired as part of Wharton Business Daily’s Business of Health Care special. Continued here

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Sony PlayStation Pulse Elite Review: The PS5's Perfect Wireless Headset     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 WIREDSony’s first-party PlayStation gaming headsets can be hit or miss. Good news! The latest version, the Pulse Elite wireless headset, is more of the former. It costs $150, can pair with multiple devices at once, and even comes with a wireless charging hanger. Continued here

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Beyonc     There’s a nasty not-so-secret secret no one likes to talk about, so it’s best to start there: Black women are among the most hated demographic worldwide. In America especially, anti-Blackness is the air. It’s everywhere even when you can’t see it. From the ivory halls of Washington to C-suites at Fortune 500 companies, Blackness is treated as less than. And because that is how it works and how it has worked generation after generation, not even Beyoncé, currently the most commanding force in music, can escape the fangs of misogynoir.Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A Black woman was told she did not belong, that she was not welcome in a certain space, so she paved a path all her own. That’s the story Beyoncé recounted in an Instagram post in March, the day she announced her new country album, Cowboy Carter. “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” she wrote. Unlike other musical genres, country is infamous in who it chooses to exclude. The genre’s history is rife with allegiances to the old ways of American prejudice, and no bearing or social position can change that. Continued here

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My Favorite Things an Amazon Echo Show Can Do (2024)     There are a ton of tricks that smart displays can do. But not all of them are created equal or are worth doing on this style of advice.The basics are easy—just about anyone knows how handy it is to ask any smart speaker or smart display to tell you the weather or play music. And you should! It's their best use case, especially since smart displays like the Echo Show can give you more weather details onscreen. But that's not all these handy devices do, and for the price you should get the most out of any smart display you buy. Continued here