Eileen Isagon Skyers: In the age of AI art, what can originality look like?

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Eileen Isagon Skyers: In the age of AI art, what can originality look like?     What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future, showing how AI can stretch the scope of human imagination and help create worlds we could never design alone. Continued here

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How Midsize Companies Can Make the Most of Disruption     Midsize companies face the same level of disruption as their larger rivals, but they are more likely to see themselves as disruption’s victim, rather than its driver. Yet they are holding back from the big changes that might put them in the driver’s seat and make change an ally, not a foe. That doesn’t need to be the case. The middle market has a secret weapon in its openness to change among leaders and employees. Today, that weapon is used mostly as a defense — to react to change. But with the right planning — and the will to act — midsize companies can turn disruption to their advantage. Continued here

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How to Practice Reflective Thinking     Sitting in silence and self-reflecting activates multiple parts of our brain and helps us increase awareness of what matters most to us. However, in the busyness of our everyday lives, it can be hard to find the time to stop and reflect. All self-reflection takes is a little bit of MAGIC: mirror, aspirations, goals, ideas, and commitments. The author created this method, based on their experience and coaching practice, to help people unlock the power of silence and reflective thought. Continued here

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It's Time to Break the Cycle of Female Rivalry     Female rivalry happens when a woman uses her power to keep another woman down, whether it’s by mistreating her or unfairly competing with her. But women are not at fault. Sexism has been long normalized in many spaces, and many women have been taught to internalize these beliefs. Sexism in the workplace, for example, may heighten competition among women to fight for positions or opportunities that are more readily available to men. Here are a few actions you can take to break the cycle of female rivalry. Continued here

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How to Get Through the Workday When the News Is Terrible     Even when it feels impossible. Continued here

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How to Attract the Right Shareholders     Many companies go about investor relations all wrong, pitching their companies and plans to whatever audience they can and hoping some shareholders will buy in. This approach wastes time and valuable resources building relationships with the wrong shareholders who do not bring the right competencies, connections, and commitment to a business. Managers tasked with investor relations often believe their role is to “sell” the business — or the strategy the company pursues — with the sole goal of retaining and attracting as many shareholders as possible. Rather than selling a strategy in investor relations, managers need to think strategically about investor relations and the right shareholders they need for their business. By co-analyzing a company’s strategy with the shareholder landscape, managers can identify and attract strategic shareholders, who can help their business thrive. We have found this is best done with a five-step approach to strategic shareholder management. Continued here

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The VC Fund Closing Equity Gaps -- and Making Money     Much of the business world has bought into the idea of stakeholder capitalism. But Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor say that doing some good by doing well isn’t enough when the business impact still creates negative effects and broader disparities overall. Freada, with a background in social justice and empirical research, and Mitch, an entrepreneur and investor who got his start making early spreadsheet software, strive to invest in ventures that close the distance between those with wealth and privilege and those without. The founders explain their metrics and decision-making process at Kapor Capital. The profitable firm explicitly invests in tech startups serving low-income and underrepresented communities. Freada and Mitch wrote the book Closing the Equity Gap: Creating Wealth and Fostering Justice in Startup Investing. Continued here

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4 Strategies to Prepare for a Late-Career Shift     If you’re a senior professional who has decided to change careers, how will you compete in a new field with younger competition? Will prospective employers immediately dismiss you as a candidate because you’re overqualified? The author presents four strategies to use if you’re preparing to switch gears later in your career: 1) Own your age enthusiastically; 2) Identify multigenerational connections within your network; 3) Be prepared to 10X your job search; and 4) Practice your answers to tough questions. Continued here

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Want to cope with heatwaves? Look to Japan's creative cooling solutions     When our iPhones alerted us that the temperature had crept past 37C, we paused. Every sun-drenched step outside felt like we were wagyu steaks sizzling on the grill. Was honeymooning in Japan in July – one of its hottest, most humid months – really a good idea? From Osaka to Kobe to Kyoto, my wife Erin and I planned every day with one goal: avoid melting into puddles. Around us, hordes of tourists were in the same sweaty boat. But a few days in, I noticed something. The locals looked noticeably cooler, less crabby, more comfortable. Why? The answer should come as no surprise. Japan, a nation renowned for its design thinking and innovation, is armed with a fistful of ways to survive punishing heat. While they love air-con as much as the next heat-stricken country, they also find respite in creative remedies, from electrically ventilated clothes to water-based rituals. Solutions like these epitomise a nation where ancient traditions fuse with hyper-modern cities reaching endlessly towards the future. Here's six ways that locals cope with extreme heat.The Japanese concept mono no aware reminds us that all things are beautiful, fleeting and temporary – even sweltering heat (Credit: Andia/Alamy) Continued here

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The painful puzzle of diseases that have no name     Helene Cederroth has lost count of the number of times doctors have said this to her. Yet she knew, soon after her son Wilhelm was born in 1983, that something wasn't quite right with her second child."He looked like a perfect baby with red cheeks," says Helene. "Everyone at the hospital thought he was perfectly healthy." Continued here

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The exclusive network behind India's global tech success     Indian tech entrepreneur Kesavan Kandadai has many accomplishments under his belt: launching Amazon Prime Video in India and founding his own generative-AI startup, to name a couple. But at the age of 45, when people introduce him to a stranger, they always name-check his very earliest career achievement: graduating from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.“Even after 24 years,” Kandadai told Rest of World, “all the work I did, whether I had success or not, is secondary.” Continued here

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Tech Companies' New Favorite Solution for the AI Content Crisis Isn't Enough     From college plagiarism to cybercrime scams, generative AI is eroding trust in online content. Digital watermarking is no quick fix for the problemThanks to a bevy of easily accessible online tools, just about anyone with a computer can now pump out, with the click of a button, artificial-intelligence-generated images, text, audio and videos that convincingly resemble those created by humans. One big result is an online content crisis, an enormous and growing glut of unchecked, machine-made material riddled with potentially dangerous errors, misinformation and criminal scams. This situation leaves security specialists, regulators and everyday people scrambling for a way to tell AI-generated products apart from human work. Current AI-detection tools are deeply unreliable. Even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently took its AI text identifier offline because the tool was so inaccurate. Continued here

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The 4 Stages of Conspiracy Theory Escalation on Social Media     Conspiracy theory beliefs and (more generally) misinformation may be groundless, but they can have a range of harmful real-world consequences, including spreading lies, undermining trust in media and government institutions and inciting violent or even extremist behaviors.For example, some conspiracy theories claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax or a plot by a secret cabal to control the world population. Such beliefs can lead to a rejection of vital health measures, such as wearing masks or getting vaccinated, and thereby endanger the public. They can also erode the credibility and authority of scientific and political institutions, such as the World Health Organization or the United Nations, and foster distrust and polarisation. Continued here

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Grand Canyon Gains New Million-Acre Monument     President Biden is declaring a national monument around the Grand Canyon, protecting lands important to a dozen Native American tribes and prohibiting new uranium mining claims in the regionCLIMATEWIRE | President Joe Biden will create a new national monument in Arizona on Tuesday covering close to a million acres of lands surrounding the Grand Canyon important to nearby Native American tribes. Continued here

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A New Blood Test May Predict Your Alzheimer's Risk. Should You Take It?     More than 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia, and that number is expected to reach 14 million by the year 2060. Doctors and researchers have long sought a way to predict who will develop the devastating, memory-robbing illness. Now, consumers in the US can learn about their own risk from a new blood test.Made by New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics, the $399 test can be purchased online by anyone age 18 and older in most US states, who then must go to a Quest clinic for a blood draw. The test measures blood levels of a protein called amyloid beta. As a person ages, amyloid beta tends to accumulate in the brain and can eventually form plaques, which are linked to Alzheimer's disease. It's thought that these clumps build up many years before memory loss and confusion appear. Continued here

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The Glowforge Aura Laser Cutter Makes a Powerful Tool Easy     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 WIREDIf you’ve spent any time on Etsy, you’ve probably come across crafts made with a laser cutter. For sellers who have to cut wood, leather, or acrylic in bulk, Glowforge laser cutters are a mainstay, but previous models have been prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. The new Glowforge Aura has now delivered a perfect middle ground. Continued here

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The 17 Best (and Worst) Mattresses You Can Buy Online     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 WIREDHunting for the best mattress online is a waking nightmare, and picking the wrong one can literally cause bad dreams or kill your back. It doesn't help that the online market is flooded with options or that there are more dedicated mattress review sites than stars in the sky. It's a mess. A few years ago, we started this guide by filling a room with dozens of the top mattress-in-a-box models and spending several days examining, reclining, and even jumping on each of them. Continued here

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New 'Downfall' Flaw Exposes Valuable Data in Generations of Intel Chips     Intel is releasing fixes for a processor vulnerability that affects many models of its chips going back to 2015, including some that are currently sold, the company revealed today. The flaw does not impact Intel's latest processor generations. The vulnerability could be exploited to circumvent barriers meant to keep data isolated, and therefore private, on a system. This could allow attackers to grab valuable and sensitive data from victims, including financial details, emails, and messages, but also passwords and encryption keys.It's been more than five years since the Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities sparked a wave of revisions to computer chip designs across the industry. The flaws represented specific bugs but also conceptual data protection vulnerabilities in the schemes chips were using to make data available for processing more quickly and speed that processing. Intel has invested heavily in the years since these so-called speculative execution issues surfaced to identify similar types of design issues that could be leaking data. But the need for speed remains a business imperative, and both researchers and chip companies still find flaws in efficiency measures.This latest vulnerability, dubbed Downfall by Daniel Moghimi, the Google researcher who discovered it, occurs in chip code that can use an instruction known as Gather to access scattered data more quickly in memory. Intel refers to the flaw as Gather Data Sampling after one of the techniques Moghimi developed to exploit the vulnerability. Moghimi will present his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday."Memory operations to access data that is scattered in memory are very useful and make things faster, but whenever things are faster there's some type of optimization—something the designers do to make it faster," Moghimi says. "Based on my past experience working on these types of vulnerabilities, I had an intuition that there could be some kind of information leak with this instruction."The vulnerability affects the Skylake chip family, which Intel produced from 2015 to 2019; the Tiger Lake family, which debuted in 2020 and will discontinue early next year; and the Ice Lake family, which debuted in 2019 and was largely discontinued in 2021. Intel's current generation chips—including those in the Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, and Sapphire Rapids families—are not affected, because attempts to exploit the vulnerability would be blocked by defenses Intel has added recently.The fixes are being released with an option to disable them because of the potential that they could have an intolerable impact on performance for certain enterprise users. "For most workloads, Intel has not observed reduced performance due to this mitigation. However, certain vectorization-heavy workloads may see some impact," Intel said in a statement. Continued here

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The Mystery Genes That Are Keeping You Alive     Launched in 1990, the Human Genome Project unveiled its first readout of the human DNA sequence with great fanfare in 2000. The human genome was declared essentially complete in 2003—but it took nearly 20 more years before the final, complete version was released.This did not mark the end of humankind’s genetic puzzle, however. A new study has mapped the yawning gap between reading our genes and understanding them. Vast parts of the genome—areas the study authors have nicknamed the “Unknome”—are made of genes whose function we still don’t know. Continued here