Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i WIRED

SO YOUR ROMANTIC evening started with takeout by candlelight, and now you’ve gotten a little more comfortable, anticipating an epic “Netflix” sesh. But before you get down to business, find out what your partner likes, and be open about what you like, because it’s important that you both enjoy what’s coming. You see, some shows are meant to be savored, and you’ll want to make them last. You might be hooked after episode 2, but you take your sweet time to finish because anticipation makes the climax so much more intense. Other shows are devoured—before you know it, you’re done and left wondering if you made it last long enough. Don’t be afraid to mix things up; either way, you won’t regret it the next day. With exclusive data from…

groupalization n. / 'grüp- -l?-'z?-sh n / Yahoo’s idea for taking the personalization of online ads to the street. Billboards and signs outfitted with cameras, mics, and scanners would profile passing groups of pedestrians or motorists—inferring demographics from car models, say—to serve up targeted ads. vertical walking v. / 'v r-ti-k l 'w -ki? / Scooting from floor to floor in a building with a new arm-and-leg-powered lift. The effect is a little funny (picture shimmying up a utility pole— without the pole), but it uses no electricity, takes up minimal space, and is actually easier than climbing stairs. Asgardia n. / 'as-'gär-d?- / The first nation-state in space. Named for Asgard, home of the Norse gods, it’ll initially be located on a satellite to be launched this fall, at…

Keep It Casual Pros wear bodyhugging dance wear for the slight aerodynamic advantage at race speeds. For you, no measurable benefit. Most of the casual clothing in your wardrobe will do—just dress for the weather. It’s how most of the world does it, and if you have to costume up to take a spin, you’ll look dorky and ride less often. Find Your Sole The most satisfying pedaling technology is a rubber-soled shoe on a flat, semigrippy pedal. Kids start out like that, but racer worship kicks in with age and steers them astray. Resist. Wear shoes you like and can walk in. Sandals and sneakers work great. Don’t Break Your Heart The bike industry and media glorify long, fast rides that, over 20 years or so, can lead to…

Underrepresented minority graduates in computer science vs. minorities using those degrees in tech: RECENT PAST 18% / 5% Underrepresented minority graduates in computer science vs. minorities using those degrees in tech: NEAR FUTURE 19% / 6% What we want: to watch anything on any device at any time. Why we might not get it: Last fall, AT&T signed a deal to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion. That’s a problem, because AT&T previously just owned “dumb pipes.” The company’s business was to simply transmit TV channels and streaming content to our screens without regard to where it came from. But the merger means that AT&T will own CNN, HBO, and others. As a result, those channels may get easier and cheaper to watch for AT&T customers, while other stuff might…

FOR ALL THE BITS and bytes involved, cybersecurity is a human endeavor. To protect our networks and email and banking apps, we need flesh-and-blood programmers. The trouble is, humans can’t possibly find and patch every single hole—or even find them fast enough. So online services continue to get hacked. But last summer, Darpa, the research arm of the US Department of Defense, ran the first hacking contest open only to security bots (submitted by their human handlers) that can patch holes on their own. Turns out, the bots can find simple bugs faster than human engineers—and in some cases they can pinpoint the most complex of security holes, bugs that shape-shift every second. The contest included one of these tranformers, and a bot built by researchers in Southern California managed…

1 The Bluedouches will take over Your headphones will be wireless. And you’ll never stop wearing them, because they’ll connect to your voice assistant, your fitness tracker, and your universal translator. Last time we tried the “wear something in your ears all the time” thing, we got the Bluedouches. Guess that’s all of us now. 2 Your clothes will be gadgets Thanks to tiny batteries and tinier sensors, your Under Armour shoes will tell you how many steps you took, and you’ll change the song by swiping your hand across the sleeve of your Levi’s jacket. Because fitness bands will refuse to die. 3 Your house will be smart … Telling Alexa to turn off the lights is just a first step toward Alexa knowing when to turn them off without you even…

LIKE MOST HIGH SCHOOL seniors, Abdullahi Yusuf tried to avoid hugging his father in view of other teens. But on the morning of May 28, 2014, as he was being dropped off in front of Heritage Academy in southeast Minneapolis, the rail-thin 18-year-old, who went by the nickname Bones, startled his dad with a tender good-bye embrace. Unbeknownst to his father, Yusuf believed he’d never see any member of his family again. Yusuf snuck out of school after first period and walked two blocks to Dar al-Farooq Como, a plain brick mosque on 17th Avenue. A friend picked him up in a Volkswagen Jetta and took him to a light-rail station. There Yusuf caught a train to the airport: He was set to depart for Turkey that afternoon, with layovers…

Snack Attacks Two Utah teens broadcast themselves stealing tubs of frozen treats from an ice cream truck. A local saw the livestream on Periscope and called the authorities. OR A pair of ravenous Arizona stoners were caught trying (and failing) to work the fryer at a Taco Bell after hours, thanks to a giggle-filled video that went hyperlocally viral. Do Not Operate A Good Samaritan called 911 after seeing a livestream of a Florida woman saying “I am super drunk in the USA and the light is red” and “Let’s see if I get a DUI.” She did. OR One drunk outside Reno, Nevada, tried to hot-wire a bulldozer at a construction site. The Instagram video captured him falling off the machine and into a pit below. Creature Features Animal…

NIKE’S SHINY-NEW power-lacing HyperAdapt may be hogging the limelight these days, but the latest addition to the company’s iconic Air line also deserves some applause. A triumph of minimalism, the VaporMax uses less air than usual in its pressurized sole. But don’t be deflated: Nike’s designers used sensor-laden shoes to determine where their athlete-testers needed the most support, then placed air chambers only where necessary. The shoe contains less of most everything else too. Gone is the foam midsole, the rubber outsole, and three layers of glue, leaving just the sole and the FlyKnit body—breathable, nearly weightless polyester yarn that tightens along with the laces. At just 8.8 ounces, the VaporMax is strides ahead of the bulky Air Max shoes of yesteryear but still delivers the legendary bounce. Kicks this…

GREAT Sol Republic Relays Sport Wireless The soft plastic wheels around the Relays’ earpieces keep the buds in your ears and give these headphones the best fit in the sub-$100 club. An outdoor mode boosts the bass so you can hear Traffic instead of traffic. There’s an eighthour battery, but if you forget to juice them up before a run, a 10-minute quick charge gives you an hour of go time. $79 AWESOME Jaybird X3 Wireless Sport Headphones Step up to the Jaybirds and you get similar battery life with more fit options. If the silicone or foam ear tips feel loose, snap on a pair of the fins (choose from three sizes) to secure the earphones in place and keep your Drake distraction-free. The sound is better too, with…

RUSSIA HACKED OUR election and got what it wanted: The spies believed to have stolen and leaked thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee last year injected chaos and distraction into Hillary Clinton’s campaign and doubt into the minds of American voters about the legitimacy of the US electoral process. And the victory of Putin’s preferred presidential candidate means the Kremlin’s information warfare tactics will only get more aggressive. “They’re weaponizing information for the purposes of influencing elections,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, CTO of security firm Crowdstrike, which was the first to link the Russian government to the DNC hack, months before US intelligence agencies confirmed Russia’s involvement. “They’re going to absolutely attempt to do it again.” Unlike in that other cold war, the security world has yet to settle…

Drones are here, and they promise to change the world: beaming the internet everywhere, accelerating warfare, transforming televised sports, and, yes, shuttling impulse buys to our doorsteps. They’re already delivering packages to online shoppers in China and blood to hospitals in rural Rwanda. But in the US, the prospect of terrorists using UAVs to launch bombs or wireless malware attacks has spurred strict rules: no flying beyond the operator’s line of sight, at night, or over people. Now regulators are slowly giving commercial drones more liberty. In the past six months, the FAA has granted over 200 waivers exempting pilots from restrictions. CNN can glide over crowds; BNSF Railway can fly out of the pilot’s view; HBO can film at night; Disney World can choreograph a drone light show. Pilots…

1 Self-driving cars will be everywhere There are honestto- goodness selfdriving Ubers ferrying passengers in Pittsburgh; Baidu’s fleet of autonomous electric taxis is zipping around Wuzhen, China; and commuters in England and Sweden will start whizzing along the highways in Volvo carbots. 2 You will be tracked nsurance companies will use smart dashcams and tracking devices to adjust your rates. And now that electric vehicles pose an existential threat to gas taxes, state governments will experiment with mileage-based taxation. 3 Power trains get a power-up Expect 15 pure electric models to hit the US market this year, including the modestly priced and longer-ranged Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3. But petrolbased propulsion isn’t going away. It’s getting better. Nissan Infiniti’s insane (and insanely complex) variable-compression engine—which wrings diesel-level oomph and efficiency out of…

Across the country, evidence lockers are filling up with smartphones that contain potentially critical crime-solving information. But they’re locked, and at the moment it’s not clear whether the government has the right to require built-in access channels. True, the Apple-FBI showdown over the passcode-protected iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters ended with the agency backing down. But the transition to a Trump White House and a Republican-dominated Congress all but guarantees new legislation. (Remember, Trump is serious about “the cyber.”) And that’s worrisome: Congress seems unable to account for the nuance of tech evolution—last April it proposed legislation that would essentially make personal encryption illegal. But as pressure from law enforcement and intelligence agencies mounts, legislators will be more likely than ever to construct laws that bulldoze protections,…

AS A CHEMICAL ENGINEER who studies the motion of fluids, Bill Ristenpart deals with a lot of spattered blood and aerosolized pathogenic mouse phlegm. But when it comes to teaching wary freshman the basics of mass transfer and thermodynamics, the UC Davis professor relies on a less messy (and more potable) liquid: coffee. Beans go through so many complex chemical changes that they can easily form the basis of a whole curriculum. ¶ Called the Design of Coffee, it has become the most popular chemical engineering course in the country, enrolling a quarter of Davis’ freshman class each year. After spending the semester deconstructing coffeemakers and determining pH levels by taste, the 500-odd students compete to engineer the tastiest brew using the least amount of energy. Which isn’t easy, Ristenpart…

THE LIGHT BULB might be the symbol of innovation, but changes to its design over the years haven’t been very inspiring: Compact fluorescents are typically spirals of ugly, and LED bulbs tend toward a bland aesthetic. Now a startup called Plumen is sparking a shift with its latest bulb, the 003. Cofounder Nicolas Roope bills it as the Tesla of illumination—as luxurious as it is efficient. The $200 light (yes, that’s a lot of scratch, but the 003 is so stunning you should think of it as an objet d’art) houses an aluminum shade that was shaped by an artist. The anodized metal warms the light, directing bright rays downward while reflecting a glow to the side. “We’re seeing the swan song of the Edison bulb,” Roope says. “But what…

WHEN THE 2016 NFL SEASON opened with a rematch of the previous Super Bowl, it made headlines for the wrong reasons: Carolina Panthers quarterback and reigning MVP Cam Newton suffered a barrage of shots to the head yet was never checked for a concussion. It was a bruising reminder that, despite efforts to boost safety, dangerous collisions happen all too often. And when the season ends with Super Bowl LI in February, the league will still have failed to face its concussion epidemic head-on. ¶ The link between concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy is strong enough for the NFL to have settled an estimated $1 billion class action with retired players in 2015. The league has since strengthened its concussion protocol, which calls for any player showing symptoms to be…

LIKE ELVIS, I’m huge in Japan. I learned this after a breakup, when a spiral of depression led me to the conclusion that I needed to relocate to a part of New York where my chances for a rebound—I mean love!— were high. First, I downloaded the dating app Happn, which tells you when other singles are in a one-block radius. Unfortunately, an experimental jaunt indicated that the critical mass of available women lived in my ex’s new neighborhood. I now had to get out of the city entirely. I lacked the funds to Eat, Pray, Love around the world in person. But thanks to location-spoofing apps—I used FakeGPSFree—now you can globe-trot on Tinder, toggling from Spain to Sweden in two taps. After hours of testing, I determined that I…

1 Igneous Skis Dreamweaver The Igneous workshop in Jackson, Wyoming, custom designs its bigmountain skis for each rider’s style and builds them by hand with the ultimate materials: highenergy maple and white ash cores, sintered graphite bases for speed, and rock-proof Kevlar. All you need is a heli-lift to the peak. $1,600 2 Atomic Hawx Ultra 130 Boots These slippers put the stiff action and snow-feel of a 130- flex racing boot in an incredibly light package— an ideal mix of power and agility for ripping lines off-piste. With Atomic’s Memory Fit tech, the ski shop can mold them to hug your feet like a comfy pair of socks. $700 3 Pow Royal Gore-Tex Glove Gloves this warm usually have the dexterity of a catcher’s mitt, but these skipatrol favorites…

In recent years, the tightly choreographed, super-expensive stadium shows that have long been a music industry staple have morphed into multicity soap operas. Will Drake ignite (or defuse) a new beef? Will Taylor Swift strut out (and/or show off) one of her superfamous surprise-guest pals? What will Adele talk about during her off-the-cuff midset monologues? Will Bruce Springsteen try to set yet another live-show run-time record? All of these outings featured story lines that were played out between songs and then broadcast worldwide via social media, where they kept the artist in the news cycle long after the last encore had faded. And they were likely inspired by perpetual tour-de-forcer Kanye West: The confrontational/inspirational midshow spiels that were a staple of his 2013–2014 Yeezus tour proved that even the most…

Criminalizing drugs is as American as doing them. But the days of outright prohibition are over, as the prescription opioid crisis has burned through the suburbs and drastically shifted the public’s notion of addiction. “Opioid addiction is more relatable than the past perception of heroin junkies lying in the street,” says Katharine Neill, a drug policy expert at Rice University. Reframing drug abuse as a public health problem rather than a criminal one has prompted reform-minded legislation from both parties. And while prescription meds are now being held at arm’s length, recreational drugs are being embraced. Eight states voted to legalize weed in some form in the last election, bringing the total to 29, and researchers are studying the drug’s medicinal applications for everything from migraines to multiple sclerosis. Loosening…

OUR NEW VICE president has spent much of his career fighting gay rights. And the pain of his election for LGBTQ people is irrefutable. But here’s the thing: Culture is marching on. From modes of dress to pronoun use to gender roles, the world is breaking out of rigid binaries. We have a new crop of icons—trans rocker Laura Jane Grace of the band Against Me!; CoverGirl’s first cover boy, James Charles; Transparent’s Hari Nef—whose stars will continue to rise. (And we can’t wait to watch Laverne Cox play an Ivy-educated lawyer on the CBS drama Doubt.) What people can do is no longer tied to the sex they’re assigned at birth. Gender may not be over, but its limitations soon will be— no matter what Mike Pence tries to…

1 Brian Nosek had pretty much given up on finding a funder. For two years he had sent out grant proposals for his software project. And for two years they had been rejected again and again—which was, by 2011, discouraging but not all that surprising to the 38-year-old scientist. An associate professor at the University of Virginia, Nosek had made a name for himself in a hot subfield of social psychology, studying people’s unconscious biases. But that’s not what this project was about. At least, not exactly. Like a number of up-and-coming researchers in his generation, Nosek was troubled by mounting evidence that science itself— through its systems of publication, funding, and advancement—had become biased toward generating a certain kind of finding: novel, attention grabbing, but ultimately unreliable. The incentives to…

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDREW RAE PHOTOGRAPHS BY DARCY PADILLA One day last summer Chirag Bhakta and a friend were walking through the Tenderloin, the San Francisco neighborhood Bhakta has called home all his life. Wedged improbably between the city’s gleaming high-rises, tony Union Square shopping zone, and affluent Nob Hill district, the Tenderloin is a sprawl of code-red despair. People shoot up openly, stagger about in various stages of undress and untreated illness; nowhere else in town is such an intricate, root-bound extremeness of poverty on display. This level of misery is one of the most striking things a person can see in San Francisco, topped only by a relatively newer sight—that of well-to-do 23-yearolds gliding blithely through this scene while playing Twilight: The Movie Game on their phones. The socioeconomic…

TRENDS THAT HELPED GET THIS ISSUE OUT: Water bottle flipping; Yamato’s Richmen, the Lexus of noodle machines; doom metal bands led by women—Myrkur, Darker, SubRosa, and Esben and the Witch; the renewed relevance of The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt; grief reading; postelection Twitter and Facebook detoxes; hermits; karaoke night at Toad Hall; Frank Ocean’s Blonde; walking the Williamsburg Bridge at 2 am; snappin’ with Spectacles; feminism; Biden-Obama memes; criticizing Rory Gilmore’s journalistic ethics; criticizing Marie Kondo’s tidy, perfect life; WIRED’s Sunday Morning Motorcycle Ride Club; wild and free eyebrows; A Tribe Called Quest’s first album in 18 years, We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service; nun fashion; not moving to Canada. WIRED is a registered trademark of Advance Maga zine Publishers Inc. Copyright ©2017…