Tabla de contenidos para November 2017 en WIRED

WHO: Leslie Berlin, project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University LAST BOOK: The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley (2005) NEW BOOK: Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age, told through profiles of seven key pioneers FROM THE VALLEY’S VAULT: LUNCH GOALS Eating off-campus once promoted “cross-industry pollination,” Berlin says. Today’s in-house kitchens have their benefits, “but I do wonder what is lost.” MIXED FEELINGS Now, tech is a big critic of big government. But after facing competition from Japanese manufacturers in the ’80s, the microchip industry was saved only by tariffs and legislation. THE STARTUP MYTH “The Valley has always had huge companies, not just scrappy startups. They bring in all the engineers and then they all leave. That’s where startups…

BETWEEN ALL THE superheroes and supervillains, directing a Marvel movie takes an effort that verges on the superhuman. But when he was making Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi had to do more than wrangle Thor, Loki, and the Hulk; he also cast himself as Korg, the stoneman gladiatorial fighter who becomes Thor’s new mate. “I usually put myself in my films,” says Waititi, who played a vampire in his 2014 horror spoof, What We Do in the Shadows. Turning into Korg, though, required more than fangs and makeup. In addition to a mo-cap suit, he also had to lug around a camera rig, battery packs, and Korg’s face, all while acting (and joking) alongside Chris Hemsworth’s God of Thunder. Did he ever have to call “Cut!” on himself? “All the time,”…

CARTOGRAPHY IS THE new code. Increasingly, everything from your takeout delivery to your UberPool route is orchestrated not just by engineers but by cartographers. Between 2007 and 2015, the number of grads earning master’s degrees in cartography increased anually by more than 40 percent on average. And as advanced satellites, digital mapping tools, and open source geographical software progress, the demand for cartographers is projected to grow nearly 30 percent by 2024. Modern cartographers are as much data analysts as they are map producers. Flagship GIS systems by software companies like Esri have been democratized by an explosion of open source alternatives like Carto and MapBox. “We are absolutely inundated with volumes of geospatial data,” says Mike Tischler, director of the US Geological Survey’s National Geospatial Program, “but with no…

RECENTLY, ROB BESCHIZZA—a coder and the managing editor of Boing Boing—released a stripped-down blogging tool called txt.fyi. Write something, hit Publish, and voilà: your deathless prose, online. ¶ But here’s the thing: txt.fyi has no social mechanics. None. No Like button, no Share button, no comments. No feed showing which posts are most popular. Each post has a <meta> tag telling search engines not to index it, so it won’t even show up on Google. The only way anyone will see it is if you send them the URL or post it somewhere. txt.fyi is a tool for putting stuff online—but without the usual features to help something become a pass-around hit. ¶ I call it antiviral design. Most platforms work in precisely the opposite fashion. They’re casinos of quantification,…

1 Baratza Virtuoso Pro baristas will tell you that burr grinders are the way to go for a uniform grind. Baratza’s conical crusher excels at producing a wide range of grind sizes, and it cuts down on “fines,” the powdery bits that can make your brew bitter. $249 2 Acaia Pearl Scale Keep close tabs on the weight of beans and the amount of water you pour with this smart scale that’s accurate to within a tenth of a gram. Connect with the Acaia Coffee app to look up appropriate bean-to-water ratios and brewing times. $150 3 December Dripper Most pour-over drippers lack moving parts. The December’s cone twists so you can control the flow, modulating between three speeds or cutting it off completely by opening and closing the holes…

Tilit Color Block Apron You’ll be slinging flour, olive oil, and sauce, so you’ll need an apron. The waxed canvas and selvage denim Color Block will protect your street threads and make you look and feel like a real chef. Plus, chest and side pockets keep all your essential gear close at hand. $85 Dreamfarm Scizza Getting clean cuts on your sausage-topped slices can be a frustrating task. Ditch the flimsy wheel and wield some sturdy scissors instead. The Scizza’s lower blade includes a nonstick, nylon spatula tip that slides underneath the crust as you snip— making it a breeze to lift and serve once your slice is free. $30 Pizzacraft Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Oven Cramped kitchen keeping you from taking your crust to the next level? Fuhgeddaboutit— plop the…

WIRED has always been optimistic about the future. But we know things can get scary. In the September issue we looked at what we called the Great Tech Panic of 2017 to put our anxieties into perspective. James Surowiecki marshaled economic data to cut through the fear of AI replacing workers. Nicholas Thompson chronicled Instagram’s attempts to make its platform kinder, and Virginia Heffffernan meditated on how to escape from the uncanniest of valleys, the internet. In confronting fear, we swear by hard numbers, clear analysis, and respectful debate (and maybe some controlled breathing). Re: “The Confessions: What if your secrets became public?” “WE WOULD BECOME IMMUNE TO IT QUICKLY AND WOULD BE FURTHER DESENSITIZED.” Marley Mane on Facebook Re: “Mr. Nice Guy: Instagram’s Kevin Systrom wants to clean up…

Coffee Maker Avoid barista sideeye by getting your coffee from a six-axis robotic arm named Gordon. Built by Mitsubishi, Gordon has been steaming and pouring espresso drinks in a glassenclosed San Francisco kiosk, Cafe X, since January. It’s like a java ATM, minus overdraft fees. Greens Goddess Launched by Redwood City, California, startup Chowbotics in April, Sally is an Automat-style box filled with 21 canisters of chopped ingredients. She can whip up over 1,000 salad combinations—presumably while pondering the gender politics of whoever decided to name a calorie-counting salad robot “Sally.” Pizza Machine At Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley, robots prep dough balls into thin-crust pies, dispense and spread the sauce, and transfer pizzas to and from 800-degree ovens. The pizzas are delivered in trucks outfitted with dozens of smart…

SILICON VALLEY’S LATEST AXIOM: Move fast and build things. VC firms expect to invest $375 million in construction tech this year—a 420 percent increase from 2014. “It’s one of the last massive industries to be disrupted,” says Darren Bechtel, founder of Brick and Mortar Ventures (and kin to the eponymous construction giant). Investors like him envision streamlining a process that has traditionally required teams of contractors to build a single house. ¶ The so-called constructech industry’s unlikely darling, Katerra, builds homes by controlling every step of the process, from fabricating walls to installing doorknobs. Despite the fact that the founders have never worked in the building industry, the startup secured a $130 million Series C round earlier this year. Katerra CEO Michael Marks, former head of Flex and Tesla, argues…

To become a verb is even less common. “To Hoover” for “to vacuum” comes to mind. “To Skype,” meaning to make a video call, shows modest promise, but since video chatters need to agree on software, it’s unlikely Skype can ever stand in for FaceTime or WhatsApp. The rare tech company to achieve verbal dominion over a whole category of digital experience is of course Google, with “to Google.” Early on, Larry Page used the verb form two months before the company launched in September 1998. The cutie-pie locution showed up on a listserv for Google-Friends when the search engine lived at http://google.stanford.edu/. (Don’t bother; it’s too late to join Google-Friends.) After a brief update to his new product, Page signed off to his merry crew, “Have fun and keep…

COEN. WACHOWSKI. DUPLASS. There are a lot of famous siblings making movies and TV together, but right now there’s only one name in the identical-twins category: Duffer. That would be Matt and Ross, the 33-year-old North Carolina natives who pitched Netflix the eight-hour Spielberg movie otherwise known as Stranger Things. One year and 18 Emmy nominations later, the writer- directors are heading into season two of the pulp-culture sleeper hit with more on their minds than finding an ’80s-shaped stone they haven’t yet overturned. “We’re trying to introduce concepts and ideas that can sustain us for at least a few more seasons,” says Matt. (He’s the one with longer hair.) There’s still plenty of Reagan-era nostalgia on deck, from Ghostbusters to Dragon’s Lair, but the cast is deeper—and the Upside…

A: Sir John Hawkins was a British slave trader who voyaged through what is now Florida in 1565. The landscape Hawkins traversed was murky, disorienting, wild—a new world that no European could easily comprehend. Hawkins tried his best to make sense of what he saw. But in addition to being a morally despicable trafficker of humans, he was also, apparently, a moron. For example, when he saw animal horns being worn around native people’s necks, he decided they must be unicorn horns. From there, Hawkins employed his own special brand of extrapolative idiot-logic to deduce that there must be lions in Florida—because, as the historian Andrea Smalley writes, “the enmity between lions and unicorns was well known, and no beast could exist without its enemy.” ¦ Hawkins was only one of…

THE KEY TO SUCCESS in the #paleo lifestyle is consuming a great many meats, and the perfect implements for carving roast beast are these Stone Age– inspired slicers. The lightweight construction makes them easy to command, and the soft, graspable handles won’t punish your paws during marathon cubing seshes. The near-diamond-hard ceramic blades of all five knives—from the chef’s to the santoku—will hold an edge far longer than steel, so you’ll be able to shred through entire steers between sharpenings. Designer Christian Bird says the handsome implements borrow their angles from ancient flint tools, so it’s fitting that he also created a gorgeous sculpture-cum-knife block evocative of a boulder to keep up to 11 blades on free-floating display. Your prehistoric ancestors would be proud. $298…

YOU MUST WIELD A wicked scepter to rule the Land of Smoothies. With its 700-watt motor, Braun’s latest immersion blender blows through foodstuffs that lesser sticks can’t crack—ice cubes, raw potatoes, or even a peeled avocado with pit (if you crave those bitter tannins). Below the soft grip is a compression zone—push down and the spinning slicer moves closer to the bottom of your vessel, ensuring every last bit of basil and garlic becomes pesto. Squeezing the trigger speeds up the blades and takes your mix from chunky to smooth. No apron? No problem. Those funkily shaped feet are designed to keep splatter to a minimum. $150…

WHEN THE U.S. NAVY was shipping fighter planes overseas during World War II, it protected its birds from saltwater corrosion by spraying them with a new plastic film. Made out of polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) and dubbed Saran by its manufacturer, Dow, the wrap resisted moisture and chemical decay. Its tight molecular bonds even sealed in odors, a quality that led the Army to coat soldiers’ stinky boots with PVDC. But peacetime left Dow without a regular buyer. After aborted efforts to use Saran in car seats— static buildup shocked drivers’ butts—engineers found a way to eliminate its plasticky scent and unappetizing green tint, repackaging Saran as a food-friendly cling wrap. PVDC could be stretched over the top of any container, keeping meals fresh and preventing them from stenching up the…

EF-0 Wind speed: 65–85 mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 3 Likely damage: Tree branches snap Average frequency: 678/year EF-1 Wind speed: 86–110 mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 31 Likely damage: Tree trunks uprooted Average frequency: 378/year EF-2 Wind speed: 111–135 mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 111 Likely damage: Houses shift Average frequency: 110/year EF-3 Wind speed: 136–165 mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 246 Likely damage: Walls collapse Average frequency: 34/year EF-4 Wind speed: 166–200 mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 332 Likely damage: Houses destroyed Average frequency: 9/year EF-5 Wind speed: 201+ mph Total fatalities, 2007–16: 327 Likely damage: Use your imagination Average frequency: >1/year…

2002 REPLIEE R-1: Ishiguro’s first android was produced in 2002 and modeled on his 4-year-old daughter. It looked human enough, but its movements were all machine: jerky and creaky-gear-sounding. 2005 REPLIEE Q-1: The lab installed pneumatic actuators in this model, allowing for humanlike gestures. To boost authenticity, they added autonomic elements like breathing and posture shifting. The android debuted at Japan’s 2005 World Expo. 2006 GEMINOID HI-1: The first replica of its creator, HI-1 was also the lab’s first android to work via teleoperation: Ishiguro controlled his doppelbot via mics and webcams. 2010 GEMINOID F: The team simplified its new model, Geminoid F, for experimental use outside the lab, limiting the mobility of its limbs. It went on to appear in numerous international productions of a play written with the…

Tony Fadell is at the Grove, a spectacularly beautiful country estate outside of London. The event is Founders Forum: the ultraexclusive inviteonly tech conference. Prince William is in the house. The guest list is lousy with knights and lesser officers of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Marissa Mayer, the now exCEO of Yahoo, and Biz Stone, recently returned to Twitter, are mingling with the other hundred or so invitees. But this is really Fadell’s moment. It’s almost exactly 10 years since the iPhone was released, and the media buzz is inescapable. The press is having trouble coming up with superlatives to describe the impact of a device that has sold more than a billion units. A new book, The One Device, is lighting up the intertubes with…

brug n. / 'brug / A bug that’s a drug. An intestinal bacterium in the Prevotella genus, often lacking in people with multiple sclerosis, has been shown to suppress the disease if given orally. It’s proof that gut flora can fight diseases outside the gut. 1-D printer n. / 'wun-dē 'prin-t r / A device that makes robots by bending a length of wire (with inline motors) into fancy shapes. Tell it you need, say, a camera bot that can shimmy up pipe and it’ll design and build one in 15 minutes. angel particle n. / 'ān-j l 'pär-ti-k l / A subatomic particle that is its own antiparticle—matter and antimatter all at once. The spooky speck, recently detected in a lab test, could help make quantum computers viable.…

Taylor Swift, pop culture’s perfect princess, is a member of the serpent race. She knows this, Reddit knows this, the Trilateral Commission knows this. I couldn’t care less. What does make me squirmy, however, is that she has stopped trying to conceal her true slithering self from the public. Once, there was denial: Just last year, when internet truthers filled her Insta gram with snake emoji, Taylor had the platform rid her feed of snakes, Saint Patrick– style. Mirage, maintained. But now? She’s coming out. Teasers for her November album, Reputation, began with the image of ::shudder:: a flickering serpent head. “Look what you made me do,” she hisses repeatedly in the lead single, the video for which is seething with snakes. Sweet Taylor, she declares, is dead; Snake Taylor…

THE WAYS THAT bad guys take our digital stuff are constantly changing: Companies have gotten smarter about how they secure information, but hacking and phishing are rising—fast. Based on data from CyberScout and the Identity Theft Resource Center, we created a series of contour lines showing how frequently organizations were compromised by various methods over time. Areas with shallow slopes mean things are hovering around the status quo. Color bands that are close together mean the type of attack is quickly getting more (or less) frequent. So, don’t be the weakest link: Enable two-factor authentication, use a password manager, and never, ever click on that random attachment.…

Samuel L. Jackson “This is a typical ‘usie’ or ‘groupie’ photo. A celeb who constantly posts selfi es might be accused of being lonely or selfabsorbed. Here, Jackson is showing he’s social with a capital S; he’s messaging that he knows how to have a good time.” James Franco “Franco has been called the king of selfies. Celebs use ‘I woke up like this’ selfies to convey authenticity, but he’s using Insta gram to re- create a teen idol archetype. He doesn’t reveal anything: It’s all meant to capitalize on James Franco.” Lindsay Lohan “This is a classic meta selfie: The reflection in her sunglasses lends a heightened visual awareness. The car selfie is less deliberate than the bathroom selfie in that it’s usually taken out of boredom. But the…

POETS SEE THE WORLD in a grain of sand. Futurist architect Mat Cash found inspiration in a grain of corn. As group leader at Heatherwick Studio—the avant-garde design firm behind Google’s upcoming Mountain View and London campuses—Cash was tasked with transforming Cape Town’s century-old grain silo complex into the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. The building, shuttered in 2001, was once the tallest in sub-Saharan Africa, its 100-foot bins capable of storing 30,000 tons of grain. Cash’s design winks at the facility’s original purpose: He carved a kernel-shaped cavity into its heart using a 20-ton hydraulic breaker. The resulting cathedral-like atrium is now a celebration of art instead of agriculture. WHILE IN CAPE TOWN // EAT: SAMPLE WAGYU BILTONG—A KIND OF FANCY SOUTH AFRICAN BEEF JERKY—AT THE TEST…

Tasty One Top BEST FOR: Food-porn addicts Tasty’s smart kitchen appliance ties in with its app, which mimics the company’s mesmerizing recipe videos, slicing them into easy-to-follow steps. An on-burner sensor and a probe thermometer allow for precise cooking, from searing to sous vide. You’ll need your own induction-ready pan, but the low price makes that add-on purchase easier to swallow. $175 Hestan Cue BEST FOR: Dedicated chefs du home The well-designed 11-inch sauté pan has a secret: a built-in temperature sensor, allowing the app, pan, and induction burner to communicate. And since the pan’s sensor monitors the heat, you won’t scorch your caramel or vulcanize your mango-chili shrimp. After you get the hang of the appguided recipes, go freestyle and punch in the exact temperature you want. $500…

1 OXO Good Grips Thermocouple The circular hinge on this contortionist lets the probe pivot up to 225 degrees so you can use it with your right or left hand. The center button allows for rotation of the hot poker without singeing your skin. Flip the orientation and the screen auto-flips for right-side up display. $100 2 Etekcity Lasergrip 1080 Is that skillet hot enough to properly sear your sous vide filet mignon? With an infrared thermometer, you’ll always know. Point this gun’s red laser at any surface— be it grill, pan, or pizza ston e—and it can accurately gauge the temperature to the tenth of a degree from 14 inches away. $21 3 ThermoWorks ThermoPop The ThermoPop’s thin 4.5-inch probe is long enough to slide deep into the thickest…

RECENTLY, SOMEONE ASKED me if I thought people were cooking at home less frequently than they used to. I bristled at the query, probably because I was worried that it might be true. Wasn’t everyone out there watching cooking shows then turning off the TV, getting out their mason jars, and whipping up Alton Brown’s watermelon rind pickles? Anyone fretting over America’s culinary decline can attempt to find solace in the burgeoning popularity of meal kits, those boxes that arrive on your doorstep filled with every ingredient you need for (typically) three meals for two. Just unpack, follow the cooking instructions, and you’ve got a fresh, healthy repast, no grocery store trip necessary. Less than a year ago, meal kits had cultlike cachet. The startups offering these dinners-in-a-box sported aspirational…

It is summer 2002, mid-morning in a university research lab on the edge of Osaka, Japan. Two girls—both dressed in pale yellow, with child-puffy cheeks, black shoulder-length hair, and bangs—stand opposite each other under fluorescent lights. More precisely: One is a girl, 5 years old; the other is her copy, her android replica. They are the same size, one modeled on the other, and they are meeting for the first time. ¶ The girl stares hard into the eyes of her counterpart; its expression is stern and stiff. It seems to return her gaze. ¶ A man is videotaping the pair—he is the father of one, creator of the other—and from off-camera he asks, “Would you like to say something?” ¶ The girl turns to him, disoriented. She turns back…

The cargo ship Yacu Kallpa rode impatiently at anchor off Iquitos, Peru, a ramshackle city on a bend in the broad, turbulent waters of the Amazon River. She was a midsize ship, a tenth of a mile long, low-slung, with a seven-story superstructure in the stern and plumes of rust fanning down the hull from her main deck scuppers. She was like any other cargo ship in the world, but with a dark history. At that moment, in November 2015, she needed to get out of town fast. The captain and crew had a long run ahead, nearly 2,300 miles down the Amazon, then another 4,000 miles north to Tampico, Mexico, and finally to Houston, with lumber harvested from the Amazon rain forest. It was a route the ship and…

There are angel investors, and then there’s Tony Fadell. The engineer best known for inventing the iPod has spent the past eight years quietly investing in—and consulting with—startups through his fund, Future Shape. In size, Future Shape’s billion-dollar portfolio rivals medium- and large-size VC firms. But the investments come unencumbered by meddlesome limited partners or 10-year return horizons. So Fadell can, as he puts it, “go long.” Here’s where Future Shape is placing its bets.…