December 30, 2022 - 5 Things to Declutter to Prepare For a Productive 2023

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5 Things to Declutter to Prepare For a Productive 2023 Take time to remove these energy-draining items from your business. Continued here

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What You Should Know About Layoffs (Before, During, and After) On the morning of September 14, 2011, I received an Outlook invite to a meeting with my manager and HR. They informed me that my position was being terminated. “You have five minutes to write the last email before you leave your laptop in this room. Your account will be disabled. We will escort you to the exit,” the HR representative said. Continued here

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When Your Business Needs a Second Growth Engine Traditionally, the most reliable way for a firm to find its next wave of growth was to apply the capabilities of its core business in an adjacent market. But recently a new pattern has begun to emerge. More firms are learning the art of building large second cores—what Bain’s Zook and Allen call engine twos. Given that in the past five years, 60% of big public companies have seen their growth stall out or stagnate—often because of technological disruption—finding an engine two has become increasingly imperative. Continued here

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To Build New Habits, Get Comfortable Failing Every year, we say we’re going to change — to build new habits or reach grand new goals. But such resolutions don’t often produce long-term change because we don’t give any thought to what it would require. Running a marathon may sound great, until your first run and you’re out of breath by your second mile. We tell ourselves this setback is something to learn from, yet we let it stall our progress. Continued here

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Mastodon rejects more than five investment offers to stay a non-profit Open-source microblogging site Mastodon is holding on to its non-profit status, having rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, according to a report by The Financial Times published on Wednesday. Twitter rival Mastodon has seen a significant rise in users since Elon Musk bought Twitter in October. German software developer Eugen Rochko, who founded Mastodon in just 2016, told The Financial Times he had received offers from more than five U.S.-based investors to invest substantial amounts of money in his social media platform. Continued here

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All I want is one productivity app that can handle everything I’m an organized person. I have to be. Writing is a deadline-oriented job, and I have the working memory of an elderly goldfish. Gone are the days when I could store an entire week’s worth of events, deadlines, and schedules in my head. Now, all of that stuff needs to live somewhere tangible. Continued here

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Why Don't We Have The Lightsaber from Star Wars Who doesn’t want a sword that glows and makes you feel like a Jedi? For many Star Wars fans, it has been a dream to hold a real-life lightsaber in their hands at least once in their lifetime. About 55 years have passed since we got introduced to lightsabers in the first Star Wars film. It seems scientists have all the time in the world to develop robots and rocket engines, but not for a lightsaber. Well, “I find their lack of faith disturbing.” Continued here

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Why Brittney Griner was released now It was never about the gram of hash oil. But WNBA star Brittney Griner has been caught up in the new geopolitical conflict between Russia and the United States. She’s been imprisoned since her arrest at Moscow’s airport in February for carrying that gram. In August, Russia sentenced her to nine years in a penal colony. Continued here

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The Ringer's 52 Favorite Sports Moments of 2022 From Argentina’s long-awaited World Cup victory to Serena Williams’s farewell to the greatest 13 seconds of football in history, here are the sports moments that defined our year Continued here

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The Benefits of Laughing in the Office Don’t be afraid to laugh out loud in the office. A series of studies shows the positive impact humor can have in the workplace. For one, it can reduce stress. “When you start to laugh, it doesn’t just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body,” the Mayo Clinic explains. It enhances your intake of “oxygen-rich air,” increasing your brain’s release of endorphins. Laughter has also been shown to boost productivity. A group of researchers found that after watching a comedy clip, employees were 10% more productive than their counterparts. And another group of researchers found that cracking jokes at work can even make people seem more competent. So, within the bounds of decency, laughter on the whole is a good thing, and the benefits far outweigh the risks. Continued here

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Check out this footage of NASA's SWOT satellite unfolding itself in orbit NASA released a video of its Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft opening up in space after being sent into space successfully onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 earlier this week. But before it could use its sensitive remote sensing equipment, it had to put out its arrays of solar panels, which give the satellite power. After completing that critical phase, the satellite could then unfold its substantial mast and antenna panels. The program uses telemetry data to track and control the satellite. It also put four commercial cameras on the spacecraft to record what's happening. Continued here

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Why Don't We Have Invisibility Cloaks? Remember all those embarrassing times when you sunk low in your seat and wished for no one to see you? Or the tangent spurred on from that moment when you wondered when you would be gifted an invisibility cloak, just like the one Harry Potter did in the first movie? Oh, is it not just me, then? Aha! Well, those cloaks do not exist. Or do they? You see, when Harry first put the cloak on and his body disappeared, it was the Visual Effects Department who applied a green screen effect over this one-of-a-kind cloak made for the movie using a unique velvet fabric adorned with Celtic designs and ancient runes.  Continued here

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Will artificial intelligence ever discover new laws of physics? SPEAKING at the University of Cambridge in 1980, Stephen Hawking considered the possibility of a theory of everything that would unite general relativity and quantum mechanics – our two leading descriptions of reality – into one neat, all-encompassing equation. We would need some help, he reckoned, from computers. Then he made a provocative prediction about these machines’ growing abilities. “The end might not be in sight for theoretical physics,” said Hawking. “But it might be in sight for theoretical physicists.” Continued here

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Genius Ways To Earn Real Estate Passive Income One of the most common investment strategies is passive investing. Done correctly, once the initial due diligence is done, an investor will not have to devote large amounts of valuable time to tend to their portfolio positions. Others do the day-to-day work while the passive investor collects the proceeds as their reward for providing capital. Continued here

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Twitter suffers global outage, remains unavailable for thousands of users Twitter users across the globe from New York to Tokyo reported trouble using the service on Wednesday, December 28, between seven and 10 in the evening Eastern Time, Engadget reported. The issue peaked around 7:44 PM ET when over 10,000 users reported their problems at Dowdetector.com. The unavailability of the service was also reported directly to the CEO Elon Musk, who calmly tweeted back: Continued here S69 Defining Lionel Messi: An essay on greatness, immortality and unburdened happiness Fernando Signorini, Argentina’s former fitness coach, recalls seeing Messi stagger into their dressing room, zombie-like, after a crushing 4-0 defeat by Germany in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals, and collapse to the floor. There he sat, slumped in a gap between two benches, inconsolable, shouting, wailing, howling, “almost convulsing”. Continued here � S25 "It's Going to Be Epic": The Oral History of James Cameron From his early days as a special effects assistant to revolutionizing 3D filmmaking (again) with ‘Avatar: The Way of Water,’ one thing has always been clear: working with James Cameron is a singular experience Continued here S27 In the Digital Economy, Your Software Is Your Competitive Advantage Many companies respond to digital competition by embracing methodologies like agile, building “innovation centers,” acquiring startups, or outsourcing app development to consulting firms. But the true disruptors know that in the digital economy, whoever builds the best software wins. Companies that want to compete need to empower their developers and adopt a “software mindset”:  Assign problems to your team, rather than tasks; run a lot of experiments — and tolerate failures; become obsessed with speed; and keep your developers close to your customers. Continued here S37 How To Successfully Sell Your Mobile App In 2023 Everything you need to know to cash in on your digital assets this year. Continued here S17 The Burj Khalifa: The World's Tallest Building What’s the first picture that comes into your mind when you hear the word “Dubai”? I don’t know about you but for most people, it’s the image of Burj Khalifa — the iconic skyscraper that completely changed the way people perceive the Middle East, and especially the UAE. The Burj Khalifa tower is much more than just the world’s tallest building. For many people, it symbolizes the limitless power of the human mind.  Continued here S39 What really happens when babies are left to cry it out? In 2015, Wendy Hall, a paediatric sleep researcher based in Canada, studied 235 families of six- to eight-month-old babies. The purpose: to see if sleep training worked. By its broadest definition, sleep training can refer to any strategy used by parents to encourage their babies to sleep at night – which can be as simple as implementing a nighttime routine or knowing how to read an infant's tiredness cues. Tips like these were an important part of Hall's intervention. Continued here S58 Kyrsten Sinema and the Myth of Political Independence Pretending to be independent in a partisan system won’t improve America’s politics. But more parties might. Senator Kyrsten Sinema says she’s had enough of partisan squabbling. Who hasn’t? But the former Democrat’s switch to independent earlier this month won’t solve anything. Sinema is still bound by the parties, no matter which letter—D, R, or I—appears next to her name. Continued here S8 Why blockchain will remain a big deal in 2023 and beyond As 2022 draws to a close, the cryptocurrency market is under great scrutiny. From the crypto winter of 2021 that saw Bitcoin lose almost a third of its value and other cryptocurrencies follow suit to security issues with crypto exchanges, bridges, and web 3.0 apps, and of course, FTX’s dramatic failure, it’s almost impossible to disbelieve tales of gloom. However, looking at the forecasts for 2023, it appears the market may rebound, and now may even be an ideal moment to invest.  Web 3.0 and its emphasis on decentralization, token-based economies, NFTs, and the metaverse, rests on blockchain technology. New cryptocurrencies spring up every day, and crypto trading solutions like Dash 2 Trade promise a reliable algorithm that will help traders decipher what tokens to invest in. While it’s undeniable that cryptocurrency assets are still extremely risky investments and are reeling from some heavy losses, including those based on fraud, the industry isn’t done just yet. And if market cycle theories are anything to go by, we can assume that when assets are bearish (in decline), the most likely direction they will go – at some point in the future – is up. Let’s explore some of the reasons why blockchain will likely still be a big deal in 2023. Continued here S11 A special enzyme may be a target for future cancer treatments Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have uncovered a surprising discovery – an enzyme that normally defends human cells against viruses could contribute to the evolution of cancer towards more malignancy.  Through its ability to cause mutations in cancerous cells, this newly identified target holds potential for novel treatments aimed at battling deadly diseases. Continued here S59 The Surprisingly Profound Power of Thank-You Notes Looking back on the year, I make a mental list of everyone who supported me—and remember that no achievement is the result of my efforts alone. Certainly I’m not the first person to suggest, as New Year’s approaches, that a little reflection might be in order. Plenty of us take the opportunity to think about the year that has passed—what we’re proud of, what we could have done differently, how we changed—and set resolutions for the year ahead. As helpful as this contemplation can be, though, it tends to be somewhat self-involved: We focus on our own accomplishments, but not always on the people in our lives who made them possible. In recent years, I’ve tried something different. Continued here S20 How to Support a Loved One Going Through Depression You won’t get a notification when someone you love has entered an abyss of emptiness. There are no alerts for depression. And no matter how hard you try, sheer willpower will not be enough to get them through it. There'll be times, especially in the early stages, when you’ll feel helpless and wonder: “What should I do now?”, “Can I be useful?” or “What if I get sucked in, too?” Continued here S38 Was 2022 the Year of Resilience? When HBR asked readers what they learned in 2022, among the most common responses was “resilience.” That seemed fitting as we closed out a year marked economic uncertainty as well as continuing pandemic losses. In this article, HBR readers share what resilience meant to them in 2022, and what else they learned in the past year. Continued here S62 Our Strange New Era of Space Travel Humans last set foot on the moon 50 years ago. Now we’re going back, but the way we explore space has gone through some big changes. In December of 1972, astronaut Eugene Cernan left his footprints and daughter’s initials in the lunar dust. In doing so, he became the last man to set foot on the moon. Now, after 50 years, humanity is going back. But in the half-century since Apollo 17, a lot has changed in how we explore space—and how we see our place in it. Continued here S34 4 Reasons Why You Should Bring Your Employees Back to the Office Tech companies like Snapchat and Twitter are reversing course on remote and hybrid work policies, and for good reasons. Continued here S41 Electric Countdown Tells Sleeping Spores When to Wake Up Sometimes procrastination pays off. When their environment gets too stressful, many bacteria stuff some of their innards into ultratough packets called spores, which shut down and wait—potentially for centuries—for things to improve. How do these seemingly dead specks sense optimal conditions for revival? A new study in Science reveals that bacterial spores can decide when to wake up by setting an electric alarm. Starvation, radiation, scorching heat, freezing cold, even the vacuum of space—none is particularly concerning to a spore. But they seem “useless” otherwise, says study author and biophysicist Gürol Süel of the University of California, San Diego. “If you took these cells to the hospital,” he says, “they’d be pronounced dead on arrival.” Continued here S36 The 10 Most Terrible LinkedIn Posts of 2022 LinkedIn is supposed to be about networking. Sometimes, it goes off the rails. Continued here S68 Phone manufacturers: please give us the power button back Look, I get the logic. When phone screens got bigger, physical buttons like Apple’s home button were axed, and existing buttons had to pick up the slack. In the iPhone X, Apple re-homed the Siri function to the power button. Since then, turning your iPhone off has required pressing a combination of buttons. If you make the fatal mistake of long-pressing the power button in hopes of turning your phone off, Siri will start listening to you as you curse about how the power button doesn’t work how it should anymore. And woe to you if you don’t hold down the right button combination long enough — you’ll take a screenshot that you didn’t want and will have to delete later. Continued here S6 'Credible threat': 400 million Twitter users' private data allegedly at risk A private Israeli cybercrime company has warned of the "credible threat" of online criminals allegedly attempting to sell the privacy information of 400 million Twitter users, including well-known figures from around the world. Model Cara Delevingne, American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pop musician Shawn Mendes, and former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison are among the celebrities whose private information may have been exposed, according to the private intelligence firm Hudson Rock. Continued here S9 CES 2023: LG's 240Hz new display has only 0.03ms reaction time LG Display, the pioneer of display technologies in the world, will introduce its 27- and 45-inch UltraGear OLED gaming displays at CES 2023 in January, according to a press release published by the company today. The company hopes to improve its position as a leader in the high-end gaming sector through these state-of-art products. Continued here S60 How China Is Using Vladimir Putin Xi Jinping said his country and Putin’s Russia are friends with “no limits.” The reality is more complicated. Back in the 1960s, China and Russia squandered their chance to defeat the West when they became bitter rivals during the Cold War. Today, their presidents—who are expected to confer again this week—are trying to correct that fateful error. The world’s most powerful autocracies have joined forces for an assault on the liberal order led by the United States and its allies—a threat made all too real when Russia invaded democratic Ukraine in February with Chinese support. Authoritarianism was again on the march, and the world’s major democracies faced a grave challenge to their unity and resolve. Continued here S23 'It was like love at first sight': Six stories that explain Lions coach Dan Campbell Viewed through the lens of his viral video clips and off-the-cuff media encounters, initial impressions about Campbell centered on his passion and personality. To those who know him best, there is much more. He's the son of cattle ranchers who became one of the most competitive athletes his college coach at Texas A&M has ever seen; an unlikely source of inspiration and mentorship to fellow coaches, including one of the NFL's best and brightest; a compassionate and fiercely loyal leader to his players; and, yes, a guy who -- depending on whom you ask -- tossed chairs around the room when demonstrating blocking schemes during a job interview. Continued here S3 Researchers discovered a microscopic organism that eats viruses Viruses have long been thought off the menu for almost all organisms, but a new study shows that viruses might be a delicious meal more often than once thought. Researchers have found that some animals have learned to eat certain viruses and use them for food and energy. John DeLong and his colleagues at the University of Nebraska have discovered that a species of Halteria—microscopic ciliates prevalent in freshwater habitats worldwide—can consume a sizable number of infectious chloroviruses. For the first time, the team's laboratory tests have also demonstrated that a virus-only diet, or "virovory," can support an organism's physiological growth and even population increase. Continued here S7 The richest tech founders and executives lost $400 billion in 2022 Founders and CEOs of the world's biggest technology companies have together seen more than $400 billion wiped off from their fortunes in 2022, Markets Insider reported. Macroeconomic conditions have led to an outflow of money from tech stocks to safer havens, making billionaires poorer this year. The pandemic years saw a major bull run by technology stocks as investors pumped more money into these companies that looked poised to survive the economic backlash of COVID-19. It was during these years that the likes of Apple and Microsoft reached $2 trillion valuations and Tesla, although a carmaker, saw a meteoric rise in its stock price. Continued here S10 Did We Really Land On The Moon? Well, it’s 240,000 miles (385,000 km), and you’d be surprised to know that this call was made from the White House to the moon —- Yes, you heard that right “to the moon”. On July 20, 1969, US president Richard Nixon made a historic telephone call to congratulate Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for their successful moon landing.   The first moon landing was indeed a giant leap for many reasons. For the first time, humans really touched the moon and even walked on the lunar surface.  President Nixon made the longest call in human history, and NASA one-upped the Soviet space program like forever. Continued here S40 Highlights from a year of interviews with global tech leaders Every week, Rest of World sits down with a remarkable tech or policy leader in one of our regions for a three-minute blast of questions and answers. It’s a rare insight into the minds of some of the most entrepreneurial, driven tech thinkers across the countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. As we look over the horizon into an uncertain 2023, here are the “3 Minutes With” takeaways residing in our heads, rent-free. Don’t forget that crypto has a use case outside the U.S. “There are weeks when I think, ‘Oh my god, I’m totally drinking the Kool-Aid.’ If I were living in the U.S., I probably wouldn’t be this much of a fanatic. [But] in emerging markets, the context is totally different. Because we have a traditional financial system that is totally broken.” Christine Chang, venture partner at Rally Cap. 🇲🇽 Continued here S5 200 vehicles have been involved in a huge pileup in China According to official Chinese state media, CNN reports, a single individual was killed on Wednesday, the 28th of December 2022, in a major collision involving more than 200 automobiles in the city of Zhengzhou in central China. According to state-owned The Global Times, the pileup occurred on a bridge obscured by thick morning fog, which led to many vehicles colliding. Continued here S22 To peer into Earth's deep time, meet a hardy mineral known as the Time Lord Zircons studied by the research team, photographed using cathodoluminescence, a technique that allowed the team to visualize the interiors of the crystals using a specialized scanning electron microscope. Dark circles on the zircons are the cavities left by the laser that was used to analyze the age and chemistry of the zircons. Michael Ackerson/Smithsonian hide caption Continued here S61 The End of the Silicon Valley Myth The dramatic, multidimensional implosion of Meta; the nuclear train wreck of Elon Musk’s Twitter; the momentous labor uprising against Amazon—it wasn’t just an unusually disastrous year for America’s biggest tech companies. It was a reckoning. The tech giants that have shaped our lives, online and off, over the course of the 21st century have at last hit a wall. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple all saw their valuations fall, sometimes precipitously. Many slashed their workforces; at least 120,000 tech workers lost their jobs this year. The myth of the genius founder, which insulated so many of these giants from so much criticism for so long, was debunked before our eyes. Continued here S33 3 Tips to Help You Learn About Your Leadership in 2023 Follow these tips to be a better leader for 2023. Continued here S13 China reveals ambitious plans for Asia's largest optical telescope Peking University has ambitious plans to build the largest optical telescope in Asia, according to an article by Space.com published on Wednesday. The new telescope will have an aperture of 19.7 feet (6 meters) by 2024 while its mirror will be expanded to 26.2 feet (8 m) by 2030. The project in English is called the Expanding Aperture Segmented Telescope (EAST) and according to a statement "will greatly improve China's observation capabilities in optical astronomy."  Continued here S66 Gold from old SIM cards could help make future drugs Instead of relying on mined rare metals, recycled gold from SIM cards could make drug manufacturing more sustainable. By Zayna Syed | Published Dec 20, 2022 6:00 AM Continued here S44 The Case Against Hopewashing We are being pitched futures all the time. Every advertisement, every political campaign, every quarterly budget is a promise or a threat about what tomorrow could look like. And it can feel, sometimes, like those futures are happening, whether we like it or not—that we’re simply along for the ride. But the future hasn’t happened yet. We do, in fact, get a say, and we should seize that voice as much as we possibly can. But how? I’ve spent the past eight years making over 180 episodes of a podcast about the future called Flash Forward. Here, in a three-part series, are the big things I’ve learned about how to think about what’s possible for tomorrow. (This is part 1. Check back soon for parts 2 and 3.) In June 2012, the writer Jack Shepherd published a post on BuzzFeed called “21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity.” It wasn’t the first time someone had made a list with this conceit, but it was the first time a list like this went truly viral. Within a week the post had over 7 million views. “It was just stratospherically successful,” Shepherd tells me. “At the time it was one of the most-, or maybe the second-most, trafficked post in BuzzFeed history.” Continued here S16 Researchers could observe the middle corona of the sun in a world first Researchers have discovered web-like plasma structures in the Sun's middle corona, according to a recent study published in Nature Astronomy. The results bring us closer to solving a fundamental mystery about solar wind's origins and its connections with other solar system bodies.  Continued here S42 Your Cats Can Tell When You're Speaking to Them As any cat owner will tell you, talking to your cat is totally normal. And even though feline friends may seem indifferent to the adoring chatter, a new study in Animal Cognition suggests they really are listening. Researchers in France subjected house cats to recordings of their owner or a stranger saying various phrases in cat- or human-directed speech. Much like baby talk, cat-directed speech is typically higher pitched and may have short, repetitive phrases. The team found that felines reacted distinctively to their owner speaking in cat-directed speech—but not to their owner speaking in adult tones or to a stranger using either adult- or cat-directed speech. Continued here S55 New York governor signs modified right-to-repair bill at the last minute New York state governor Kathy Hochul has signed the Digital Fair Repair Act into law, months after it had passed both chambers of the state's legislature with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The bill had originally passed in June, but it was only formally sent to Hochul's desk earlier this month; the governor had until midnight on December 28th to sign the bill, veto it, or allow it to pass into law without her signature. Continued here S54 Suit accusing YouTube of tracking children is back on after appeal An appeals court has revived a lawsuit that accuses Google, YouTube, DreamWorks, and a handful of toymakers of tracking the activity on YouTube of children under 13. In an opinion released Wednesday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act does not bar lawsuits based on individual state privacy laws. Continued here S35 3 Uncommon Questions That Will Ensure You Get the Most Out of 2023 A better way to make change next year. Continued here S12 Why Don't We Still Have Flying Cars From Blade Runner Movie Isn’t modern technology supposed to make gadgets of the future a reality? What about those flying cars we have seen in the Blade Runner movies, and the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? When do I get to fly around in my Ford Mondeo? Surely with airplanes of all sizes being a common sight, flying cars can’t be all that hard to make. Syd Mead, an American neo-futurist concept artist, and industrial engineer, created the Spinners featured in the first Blade Runner film released in 1982. These Spinners could be operated as ground-based vehicles; they could take off vertically, hover, and make use of jet propulsion to cruise, just like the VTOL aircraft of today. Isn’t this everything we’ve wanted in our flying cars? Continued here S63 Sudden Russian Death Syndrome It’s not a great time to be an oligarch who’s unenthusiastic about Putin’s war in Ukraine. Here is a list of people you should not currently want to be: a Russian sausage tycoon, a Russian gas-industry executive, the editor in chief of a Russian tabloid, a Russian shipyard director, the head of a Russian ski resort, a Russian aviation official, or a Russian rail magnate. Anyone answering to such a description probably ought not stand near open windows, in almost any country, on almost every continent. Continued here S65 How to Build a Happier 2023 Rebecca Rashid, the producer of the Atlantic podcast How to Build a Happy Life, talks about the science of happiness. This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here S45 Machine Learning Could Create the Perfect Game Bosses It’s right behind you, breathing down your neck, seemingly aware of your every move. You turn left, then right, weaving between pillars to collect precious orbs while dodging its advance. For a moment, it seems you’ve lost it. But then your foe appears around a corner, and bam! It has you. The familiar Game Over screen appears—but then, just below, something different. “Please report difficulty level.” You lasted just a few seconds in this hair-raising chase, so, adrenaline still pumping, you tap “Hard.” Next time, the thing stalking your every step will be a tad less aggressive. Continued here S49 3 reasons “you” won’t return after this life This article was first published on Big Think in July 2017. It was updated in December 2022. Many people are deeply invested in what happens when they die. Entire religions are constructed around theories of the afterlife. Christianity and Islam promise special places to go to while Buddhism prescribes breaking free from the hamster wheel of existence to leave the cycle of death and birth. Is any of this actually possible? Continued here S43 The Singularity of Allison Williams On a chilly but humane November night in Toronto, Allison Williams and I slip into an expansive conversation about the polite ways one can manipulate an audience. Williams is an actress, one of the more self-aware of her generation; audience manipulation is her not-so-secret weapon. And I’m abundantly aware that, as a writer profiling her for a magazine, I’m an essential part of that audience. I have interviewed Williams several times over the years, and each time is as lovely and warm and full of mutual compliments as the last. I would say, at this point, we like one another. But also, do we? Can we? Is it possible to have an “authentic” connection during a press commitment between two people who know how the personality machine operates and are each trying to work it for their own advantage? Is it gauche to admit you’re both trying to have a nice time? Maybe, but let’s just lean into the ambiguity for now and enjoy ourselves. Continued here S64 People Are Fed Up With Rapid Tests At-home swabbing still works just fine, but we can't seem to escape false negatives. What gives? Max Hamilton found out that his roommate had been exposed to the coronavirus shortly after Thanksgiving. The dread set in, and then, so did her symptoms. Wanting to be cautious, she tested continuously, remaining masked in all common areas at home. But after three negative rapid tests in a row, she and Hamilton felt like the worst had passed. At the very least, they could chat safely across the kitchen table, right? Continued here S47 10 quantum myths that need to be busted For centuries, the laws of physics seemed completely deterministic. If you knew where every particle was, how fast it was moving, and what the forces were between them at any one instant, you could know exactly where they’d be and what they’d be doing at any point in the future. From Newton to Maxwell, the rules that governed the Universe had no built-in, inherent uncertainty to them in any form. Your only limits arose from your limited knowledge, measurements, and calculational power. All of that changed a little over 100 years ago. From radioactivity to the photoelectric effect to the behavior of light when you passed it through a double slit, we began realizing that under many circumstances, we could only predict the probability that various outcomes would arise as a consequence of the quantum nature of our Universe. But along with this new, counterintuitive picture of reality, many myths and misconceptions have arisen. Here’s the true science behind 10 of them. Continued here S52 Don't call it a refresh: The 6 most adventurous laptop designs of 2022 In a world of shiny clamshells and showy convertibles, laptop releases can feel repetitive. Some of the most successful, well-known designs don't always see massive overhauls from one year to the next. Stick in the latest CPUs or GPUs, maybe claim a slightly cooler build, and call it a day (or year). After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Continued here S53 CRISPR's quest to slay Donegal Amy In the 5th century, in early medieval Ireland, Conall Gulban, an Irish king, gave his name to an area of land at the northwest tip of the Irish coast. His kingdom was called Tír Chonall, the “land of Conall”—or, today, Donegal. Continued here S46 What is Wi-Fi 7? Everything You Need to Know While many people only recently upgraded to Wi-Fi 6, and some may be considering a jump to Wi-Fi 6E, their successor is already on the horizon. Wi-Fi 7 is the next significant advance, and, just like its predecessors, the new standard promises faster connections, lower latency, and the ability to gracefully manage more connections than ever before. If you are looking to improve your Wi-Fi today, Wi-Fi 7 is not the answer, because support will be scarce for some time to come. But early adopters will be excited by the news that the first batch of Wi-Fi 7 routers is set to land in early 2023. Realistically, it will be a good while before most of us should consider switching. If you need to upgrade pronto, first consider delving into how to buy a router before you check out our picks of the best Wi-Fi routers and the best mesh Wi-Fi systems. Continued here S48 Lab-grown blood used in transfusion for first time Human volunteers have received the first-ever transfusion of lab grown red blood cells in a groundbreaking scientific first. Volunteers received about 5ml-10ml of blood (around 1-2 teaspoons), which contained around 15 billion red blood cells. So far, volunteers who received the lab-grown blood cells are reported to be in good health.  To grow these red blood cells, researchers first extracted stem cells from a blood sample. They then directed these stem cells to grow into red blood cells in the laboratory. It’s hoped that these lab-grown blood cells may be used in the treatment of disorders that affect red blood cells – such as sickle cell anaemia and thalassemia. Continued here S4 A new head-up display could change how we drive in the future Continental AG, the German developer of pioneering technologies in mobility, has been picked to receive the Innovation Award for its Scenic View Heads-Up Display (HUD) at CES 2023, the company said in a press release. The CES is a technology trade show held in Las Vegas in January every year. Continental, a more than a century and a half old company, has developed technologies that enable safe, efficient, and intelligent movement of people and vehicles. According to its website, technologies developed by the company are used widely in popular brands such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Ford, including their recent offerings in the electric vehicle (EV) segment. Continued here S57 Bees like to roll little wooden balls as a form of play, study finds Many animals are known to engage in play—usually large-brained mammals (like humans) and birds. Now scientists think they have observed genuine play behavior in bees, which were filmed rolling small colored wooden balls, according to an October paper published in the journal Animal Behavior. Continued here S56 HandBrake video transcoder adds official AV1 codec support in latest release Hardware and software support for the royalty-free AV1 video codec has been steadily building over the last couple years. Hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding is becoming standard in more GPUs, phone SoCs, and other hardware, while streaming video services like YouTube and Netflix have begun serving AV1-encoded video to devices that support it. Continued here S51 What are the 10 best cars we drove in 2022? Ah, the annual end-of-year roundup, when it's time to sit down and think about all the vehicles we tested in 2022. Comparing this year to years past, it's notable how many electric vehicles make the list. Partly that's because the industry released some pretty compelling new EVs this year, but it's also a reflection of our coverage priorities—in the past, you've told us loud and clear you aren't that interested in reading about new gasoline or diesel models. Read on to find out what impressed us most in 2022. Continued here S50 Ars Technica's best video games of 2022 2022 was a bit of a weird year for video games. For a start, quite possibly the most anticipated game of the year came out in March, well ahead of the usual holiday season rush of releases. But that holiday rush was itself muted this year, thanks to delays of big-name franchises from Diablo to Starfield to The Legend of Zelda. Continued here S28 Research: To Excel, Diverse Teams Need Psychological Safety The promise of staffing a team with diverse members is that the different perspectives, ideas, and opinions will result in greater performance. The reality is that diverse teams often underperform because people from dissimilar backgrounds often clash. A study of 62 drug-development teams suggests that the key to getting them to work better together and tap the potential of diversity is to create a psychologically safe environment. This article discusses ways to do that. Continued here Contributors Dharmendra Kumar Priya Ranjan Powered by Blogger.