General Motors drops entry-level Blazer EV as deliveries begin

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General Motors drops entry-level Blazer EV as deliveries begin     Chevrolet has begun customer deliveries of its new Blazer EV crossover. Announced at last year's CES keynote alongside a new Equinox EV, the electric Blazer makes use of General Motors' new Ultium battery platform, albeit with styling cues that call back to the gasoline version. Now, Chevy has released pricing information for the 2024 Blazer EV, and if you were hoping for a 1LT entry-level trim, there's some bad news, as that option has been dropped entirely. Continued here

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Desperate Chinese parents are joining dating apps to marry off their adult children     Since February last year, Wang Xiangmei, a retired factory worker from Zhejiang, China, has been on three different dating apps in search of the perfect husband — not for herself but for her 28-year-old daughter. On the apps, Wang, 52, set detailed requirements for her future son-in-law: he must hold a bachelor’s degree, be at least 173 centimeters tall, be 33 years old or younger, come from a loving family, and have a good character. Wang believes her daughter urgently needs to secure a boyfriend before all the good men are snapped up by other women. Her daughter must also give birth when Wang is strong enough to help raise the babies, she told Rest of World. Her daughter has not been dating, so Wang decided to take matters into her own hands. “I wanted to see if I could find someone suitable,” said Wang. Continued here

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The psychopathic path to success     Think of a psychopath and any number of Hollywood villains might come to mind, from charming killers like Hannibal Lecter to Anton Chigurh, portrayed with chilling menace by Javier Bardem in the film No Country for Old Men. But the traits and symptoms of psychopathy run along scales that range from weak to strong. So, someone may be mildly psychopathic or severely so. There could be a psychopath sitting next to you right now.Some psychologists argue that the focus on violent and criminal psychopathic behavior has marginalized the study of what they call “successful psychopaths” — people who have psychopathic tendencies but who can stay out of trouble, and perhaps even benefit from these traits in some way. Researchers haven’t yet reached a consensus on which traits distinguish successful psychopaths from serial killers, but they are working to clarify what they say is a misunderstood branch of human behavior. Some even want to reclaim and rehabilitate the concept of psychopathy itself. Continued here

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Bird Flu Has Never Done This Before     At bird breeding grounds this spring and summer, the skies have been clearer and quieter, the flocks drastically thinned. Last year, more than 60 percent of the Caspian terns at Lake Michigan vanished; the flock of great skuas at the Hermaness reserve, in Scotland, may have shrunk by 90 percent. Now more broken bodies are turning up: a massacre of 600 arctic-tern chicks in the United Kingdom; a rash of pelicans, cormorants, gulls, and terns washed up along West African coasts. In recent months, Peruvian officials have reported the loss of tens of thousands of pelicans—by some estimates, up to 40 percent of the country’s total population.The deaths are the latest casualties of the outbreak of H5N1 avian flu that’s been tearing its way across the world. In the past couple of years, more than 100 million domestic poultry have died, many of them deliberately culled; out in the wild, the deaths may be in the millions too—the corpses have just been too inaccessible and too numerous for scientists to count. “It’s been carnage,” Michelle Wille, a virologist at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, told me. “For many species, we are losing decades of conservation work.” Continued here

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If the U.S. Women's Team Loses the World Cup ...     Going into this year’s World Cup tournament, the U.S. Women’s National Team was looking to secure a three-peat—that is, win their third World Cup in a row. Now they are struggling. On Tuesday, they eked out a tie against ninth-ranked Portugal in a generally sloppy showing, and on Sunday they face a challenging game against third-ranked Sweden. For fans, this is heartbreaking. In the past two decades, the team has turned out talented players, scored a victory in the fight for equal pay, and showcased a viable model for girls to become successful athletes. It would be miserly to root against them, and yet it might be time.While the U.S. has been shoring up its women’s soccer league, teams around the world have been taking note. The U.K. franchises have started investing in their women’s teams, although to some they may be seen as second-class to the men's teams. Women’s teams across the globe are tasting fandom and legitimacy, and to build on that momentum, maybe the world is ready for a surprise winner. There is no drama in dominance. For women’s soccer to truly become a global sensation, the U.S. needs worthy rivals. Continued here

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To Get Happier, Choose to Read This Column     Even if you don’t quite believe you have free will, you’re better off acting as if you do.Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. Continued here

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Backblaze probes increased annualized failure rate for its 240,940 HDDs     Backblaze's quarterly updates on annualized failure rates (AFRs) for its arsenal of hard disk drives (HDDs) have provided unique insight into long-term storage use for over 10 years. Today, the backup and cloud storage company released Q2 2023 data, which explores an intriguing increase in AFRs. Continued here

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A study on "honesty pledges" became famous. Its data was fake     There’s a very simple method people use to save money on things like insurance premiums and taxes: They lie on forms. In 2012, a paper published in PNAS offered a cheap and easy way for organizations to discourage that sort of thing: The results showed that you can get people to be more truthful by having them sign an honesty pledge — the kind that says something like, “I confirm that the information I’m reporting is accurate” — at the beginning of the form rather than at the end.That 2012 paper has since been cited more than 500 times. Big Think published a video interview with Dan Ariely — a co-author of the 2012 paper and a high-profile name in the field of honesty research — in which he discussed the data. The paper was also mentioned in a 2016 report from the Obama administration’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team as a way to incentivize honesty on tax forms.  Continued here

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The Best Back-to-School Deals on Laptops, Backpacks, and Earbuds     Summer is Fading away, and school will soon be back in session. We scoured the internet for the best discounts on gadgets and gear for teachers, students, parents, and anyone else in the market for back-to-school fare. Be sure to check out our Best Dorm Gear guide for additional recommendations and gift ideas. Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here

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Hackers Could Have Scored Unlimited Airline Miles by Targeting One Platform     Travel rewards programs like those offered by airlines and hotels tout the specific perks of joining their club over others. Under the hood, though, the digital infrastructure for many of these programs—including Delta SkyMiles, United MileagePlus, Hilton Honors, and Marriott Bonvoy—is built on the same platform. The backend comes from the loyalty commerce company Points and its suite of services, including an expansive application programming interface (API). But new findings, published today by a group of security researchers, show that vulnerabilities in the Points.com API could have been exploited to expose customer data, steal customers' “loyalty currency” (like miles), or even compromise Points global administration accounts to gain control of entire loyalty programs. Continued here

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Even people who bought Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses don't want to use them     Even the people who spent money on Meta's Ray-Ban "Stories" smart glasses don't want to use them. That's according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing internal data and claiming to detail the letdowns that led to hundreds of thousands of Stories gathering dust. Continued here

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Is "groupthink" in science a problem or a myth?     Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. The Sun rose in the east and set in the west with a regular, 24 hour period. Its path in the sky rose higher and the days grewf longer until the summer solstice, while its path was the lowest and shortest on the winter solstice. The stars exhibited that same 24 hour period, as though the heavenly canopy rotated throughout the night. The Moon migrated night-to-night relative to the other objects by about 12° as it changed its phases, while the planets wandered according to the geocentric rules of Ptolemy and others.We often ask ourselves, “How was this possible?” How did this geocentric picture of the Universe go largely unchallenged for well over 1,000 years? There’s this common narrative that certain dogma, like the Earth being stationary and the center of the Universe, could not be challenged. But the truth is far more complex: the reason the geocentric model held sway for so long wasn’t because of the problem of groupthink, but rather because the evidence fit it so well: far better than the alternatives. The biggest enemy of progress isn’t groupthink at all, but the successes of the leading theory that’s already been established. Here’s the story behind it. Continued here

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No, the Gulf Stream isn't going to collapse     There’s a perverse joy in reading (and writing) about catastrophic climate change. You could say that it’s a secular version of the yearning for the Apocalypse, and perhaps proof that such apocalyptic yearnings are more universally human than merely religious.However, we must not let doom-scrolling get in the way of the facts. For example, recent shocking announcements of the demise of the Gulf Stream may be more than slightly exaggerated. Continued here

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Jimi Barber Died a Forgiven Man     A man’s sincere jailhouse conversion met the indifference of the capital-punishment system.So little is made of the spiritual transformations of incarcerated people that a particular epithet, “jailhouse conversion,” exists to dismiss the phenomenon. But it’s never been apparent to me that needing redemption in the way a person convicted of a heinous crime does makes that person’s desire for it necessarily dishonest; I’m more inclined to see it the opposite way. And in James “Jimi” Barber’s case, he needed the redemption. Continued here

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Qualcomm chip sales down 25 percent, plans layoffs     Smartphone sales are down across the board, and that means component vendors like Qualcomm are also feeling the heat. The company's Q3 2023 earnings (Qualcomm's fiscal year is October-September) have handset chip sales down 25 percent year over year, with net income down 52 percent year over year. The company also issued lower-than-expected guidance for the next quarter, all causing the stock to drop around 8 percent in the aftermath of the call. Continued here

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Angry Tesla customers sue firm over "grossly" exaggerated EV range     Tesla is facing a class-action lawsuit filed by customers who say they were misled by the company's exaggerated range claims. The lawsuit was filed yesterday, days after a report revealed that Tesla exaggerated its electric vehicles' range so much that many drivers thought their cars were broken. Continued here

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A mysterious C     Last spring, the Cincinnati Art Museum held a special exhibition showcasing works by five young French artists, who, in the 1860s, used the still life genre to experiment with new painting techniques. One of those artists was famed Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, and the exhibition included Still Life With Bread and Eggs, one of his earliest masterpieces and part of the museum’s permanent collection. While the gallery was being rearranged, Serena Urry, the chief conservator, decided it would be a good idea to bring it down to the conservation lab for some cleaning. It wasn’t an unusual thing to do, but what she found was anything but routine.Urry was unhappy with the way the varnish looked and wanted to remove some of it. She began the work with a thorough examination, where she noticed some cracks in really dark parts of the background. “I noticed that there was some white showing in the two areas of cracks,” she says. This often represents some type of layering problem. Because paints can dry (and contract) at different rates, it’s possible that layers of the oil paint were on different timelines. Urry hypothesized that a white layer may have been laid down before the dark one, hence the cracks. Continued here

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The 26 Best Shows on Hulu Right Now     Netflix may have led the way for other streaming networks to create compelling original programming, but Hulu’s best shows are history-making. In 2017 it became the first streamer to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for The Handmaid’s Tale. In fact, that was just one of eight Emmys the series took home in its inaugural season, and it has continued to rack up nominations and wins over the years. While more competition for streaming eyeballs has popped up since Hulu started gaining critical credibility, the network has continued to stand out for its carefully curated selection of original series and network partnerships that make it the home of FX series and more. Below are some of our favorite shows streaming on Hulu right now. Continued here

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Trans-Atlantic joint venture aims to build new 'international' space station     Voyager Space, one of several US companies formulating concepts for new commercial space stations, has established a joint venture with Airbus to co-develop an Earth-orbiting research outpost called Starlab. Continued here

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FCC slaps $300M fine on "largest illegal robocall operation" it's ever seen     The Federal Communications Commission today issued a record fine of $299,997,000 against a robocall operation that specialized in auto warranty scam calls, the FCC announced, calling it "the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated." Continued here

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Linux surpasses the Mac among Steam gamers     Apple's macOS has been the second most popular operating system on the Steam game distribution platform for a long time, but that has now changed. Linux has surpassed macOS for the number two spot, according to Steam's July user hardware survey. Continued here

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How the "Holy Grail" of audio technology rescued a 1964 Beatles performance     Our feelings about how things work in a recording studio are similar to our feelings about how things work on the training pitch at an elite football club. In both cases most of us will never be in a position to witness how this particular form of human interaction operates. In the absence of direct experience we combine our feelings about music — that it’s a matter of divine spark occurring between human beings with a shared purpose — and our feelings about people — that they are at their best when they are happy and inspired — to create a picture which satisfies our need to be emotionally invested in its making. In that sense, what Abbey Road represents in its position as the best-known and, from certain angles, the last recording studio in the world is a whole way of feeling about music. Music remains the same thing it always was. It’s the records that are always changing. For most of the 90-plus years since Abbey Road opened its doors, those records were clearly finished with once they were done. In the last 20 years powerful forces — the appetite of the pop market for endless alternative mixes of the tiniest successes, pressure from the producers of movies and video games for music they can play with, the archaeological instincts of the people who crave nothing more than a boxed set of things they have heard a million times before, and the irresistible power of whatever happens to be the latest toy — have combined to change all this. Continued here

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A Progressive City Debates Crime     Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Donald Trump is guilty of deplorable actions, under indictment for multiple crimes, and yet remains the most popular candidate with voters in the Republican Party’s presidential primary. Continued here

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OnePlus' Mechanical Keyboard Is Sturdy and Surprisingly Quiet     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 WIREDIt is possible I am the wrong person to review the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro. Yes, reviewing keyboards is a part of my job, but part of what makes mechanical keyboards so appealing is also what makes them so hard to review. Tastes and preferences vary so widely, and you can find (or build) a board perfectly tailored to you. That also means it’s possible to build a board that's everything you don't want in a keyboard. This might be mine. Continued here

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iPhone sales are down, but Apple's subscriptions are growing fast     Apple posted its third-quarter earnings for 2023, and they were a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, the company beat the expectations of analysts who were predicting things would be grimmer, but hardware revenue was down compared to last year. Continued here

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The Dream of Geothermal Energy Is Alive in Utah     If you haven’t already, go and read the WIRED feature article “A Vast Untapped Green Energy Source Is Hiding Beneath Your Feet,” which details the quest to tap into geothermal energy using drilling techniques originally developed for fracking gas.WIRED senior writer Gregory Barber followed Joseph Moore, a geologist at the University of Utah, on his quest to work out how to drill down thousands of feet into hot, dense granite, before using water to extract geothermal energy. Continued here

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Airlines Will Be Required to Make Bathrooms More Accessible     Single-aisle planes will face new rules from the U.S. Department of Transportation—but they won't go into effect for more than a decadeTravelers with disabilities face myriad challenges while flying, from airport staffers damaging or destroying their wheelchairs to cabin crew members making hurtful and humiliating comments. Continued here

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The Best Laptop Totes for Work and Weekends     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 WIREDNow more than ever, people work hybrid jobs that take them from home to the office to the corner coffee shop. Even if you work from home permanently, you'll occasionally need to go out into the world and bring your junk with you. A backpack will do the trick, but some of us want bags that look as nice as our outfits. That's where a good work tote or purse comes in. Continued here

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Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs     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 WIREDYou have probably given more thought to the mattress you sleep on than the chair you sit on. That’s fine! Sleep is extremely important. But if you spend several hours—more than eight, if you’re like me—at your desk, it’s a good idea to give the humble chair more attention. Finding the best office chair is not just about finding a comfortable seat. The right materials can whisk away body heat, and adjustability options can tailor the chair to your body. We’ve spent the past two years sitting on more than 45 office chairs, and these are our favorites. Continued here

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How the Recession Doomers Got the U.S. Economy So Wrong     One year ago, experts were certain that America was headed for a recession. But the 2023 economy is historically strong. What happened?This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week. Continued here