Tabla de contenidos para September 2018 en WIRED

When Daniel Alarcón, a New York–based writer and the executive producer of NPR’s Radio Ambulante podcast, began reporting on Hurricane Maria’s aftermath in Puerto Rico (page 84), one name kept surfacing: Jorge Bracero. The electrical utility worker had become a one-man news outlet, providing updates on the (painfully slow) progress in restoring power at a time when local distrust in government and media ran high. Alarcón even heard Bracero’s name in a comedy show in San Juan and marveled at the audience’s knowing reaction. “He was this cultural touchstone for people,” he says. “After that I was like, I’ve got to talk to this guy.” When Adrienne So joined WIRED as an editorial fellow more than a decade ago, part of her job was to fact-check stories about gadgets and…

IT’S AN ABNORMALLY hot day in September and I’m standing in a cattail marsh in eastern Wisconsin, trying to change the way my students view the world. They’re all distracted—by the heat, homesickness, or the fact that they’ve lost a phone signal. The guys on the university hockey team are snickering about something. I’ve brought them here, in the first week of our introductory geology course, to investigate a mystery: Just in front of us, rising improbably from the flat expanse of the marsh, is a hill. About 50 feet high and twice as wide, it is made up of layers of loose sand and stones of many types. As we climb to the top, we can see that the hill snakes across the landscape like an upside-down river valley.…

IF YOU WANT YOUR KIDS to actually get excited about astronomy, don’t fumble around with your telescope for 20 minutes while you try to locate Pegasus. BOR-ing. Leave the star-searching to this smartphone-connected scope from the French company Vaonis. The companion app streamlines heavenly gazing by precisely aiming the robotic telescope—at, say, Pegasus—in as little as a few seconds. The system uses Wi-Fi to display the live view on your phone, where it’s easy to capture photographs and video, and it tracks the target across the sky long enough for everyone to get a look. The 19-inch-tall instrument is more portable than a traditional scope, so you can carry it into the wilderness where light pollution fades or just gaze at the constellations from your own backyard. $2,999…

1 Spectra S1Plus Like the other pumps here, the S1Plus is a closed system—a barrier separates the pump and the collection components, discouraging bacterial growth. The 3-pound unit’s rechargeable battery lasts a few days. You can adjust the vacuum strength and cycle frequency to optimize your pump sessions. $200 2 Medela Sonata The portable and rechargeable Sonata has soft buttons that you can push with a toe or elbow if your hands are full. It connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, so you can use the MyMedela app to record the time and output of your sessions—and get 24-hour access to a lactation consultant. $400 3 Freemie Liberty Pump while working, driving home, or doing the dishes—no need to find a place where you can disrobe. The Liberty’s cups slide…

In 2017, the malware NotPetya spread from the servers of an unassuming Ukrainian software firm to some of the largest businesses worldwide, paralyzing their operations. Here’s a list of the approximate damages reported by some of the worm’s biggest victims. $870,000,000 Pharmaceutical company Merck $400,000,000 Delivery company FedEx (through European subsidiary TNT Express) $384,000,000 French construction company Saint-Gobain $300,000,000 Danish shipping company Maersk $188,000,000 Snack company Mondelēz (parent company of Nabisco and Cadbury) $129,000,000 British manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser (owner of Lysol and Durex condoms) $10 BILLION Total damages from NotPetya, as estimated by the White House…

Way back in the early 2000s, when the first Xbox came out, researchers discovered they could hack videogame consoles for scientific uses. It seems the devices’ graphic processing units, or GPUs, designed to render flying gore and mayhem, also ran physics simulations faster than the CPUs in ordinary computers. ¶ Today, researchers still use GPU chips, not just for modeling but for artificial intelligence. Since each one contains lots of mini brains that crowdsource the work in parallel, they’re good at big-data jobs like image recognition. Good, but not awesome. So companies are taking that idea and racing to create a new generation of chips just for AI. A startup called Graphcore (which just recently built a 2,000-teraflop AI supercomputer the size of a gaming PC) calls them IPUs. Get…

IN THE BEGINNING, there were 1s or 0s. Now there are 1s and 0s, existing in both states at once (sort of). Super position, it’s called, and it’s the physics underlying quantum computers. Say it with us: WTF. As a concept, quantum computing has been bewitching—and befuddling—researchers for nearly 40 years, promising exponentially more oomph than conventional machines. Finally, new hardware is making the possibility real. “This era feels like the late ’50s as the first microprocessors were being developed,” says Jerry Chow, who leads experimental quantum computing at IBM. His company and dozens of others love playing with these chandelier-shaped marvels (like IBM’s machine pictured here), convinced they might help improve everything from car batteries to drug discovery. Hardware Breakdown A. Processor A tiny silicon chip—studded with qubits (“quantum”…

Like you—like every delirious commuter—I savor podcasts. They’re a reprieve from my dead-eyed Twitter scroll. But unlike you, I don’t stress about missing an episode or four. In fact, I find comfort in the medium’s buffet of excess. Therefore I reserve special scorn for so-called podfasters: the tweakers who listen at 1.5X, 2X, even 3X speed. I see you over there—oblivious to the world, AirPods stuffed in your hearholes as, Joey Chestnut–style, you inhale content. Scads of apps aid you in this frantic endeavor. Rightspeed accelerates the pace every two minutes, turning Sarah Koenig’s soothing timbre into a chittery titter, while Overcast algorithmically cleaves thoughtful pauses from conversations. Google’s app offers no less than 16 speeds. My f-ing bike only has five! Listen to me, chipmunks—listen. Podcasting is an art,…

Riese & Müller Load BEST FOR: Post-nap urban adventures Strap two younger tots into the front box, clip panniers full of groceries on the rear rack, and glide home cushioned by front and rear suspension. A dual-battery Bosch motor provides four assist modes and a range of over 100 miles. This 7-foot-long carry-all is a bit awkward in traffic, but you’ll get used it by the weekend. $7,399 and up Yuba Electric Boda Boda BEST FOR: Elementary school drop-offs This (relatively) affordable ebike comes with a nimble e6000 Shimano Steps system that offers three levels of assistance. The motor juices your pedal strokes only when needed and can last up to 93 miles, depending on how hard you work it. Optional grab bars and padded seat for the rear rack…

WHEN OLE KIRK KRISTIANSEN imported a newfangled contraption called a plastic-injection-molding machine to Denmark in 1946, people thought he’d lost his mind. Kirk Kristiansen was a master carpenter who made wooden toys sold under the brand name Lego (abbreviated from leg godt, Danish for “play well”). The machine cost nearly 7 percent of the company’s annual revenue, but Kirk Kristiansen reckoned there was no limit to what he could manufacture with the new technology. He could even redesign old-fashioned building blocks so that they wouldn’t topple over. After making modest progress with interlocking indentations—a concept borrowed from another toy manufacturer—Ole’s son, Godtfred, set to work on a mechanism for binding blocks together. After years of trial and error, he perfected the stud-and-tube coupling system that defines Lego to this day.…

1__When observers near government air bases spot warplanes taking off, they enter the type of aircraft, heading, and coordinates into an Android app, which sends the info to Hala’s servers. 2__Sensor modules placed in trees or atop buildings collect acoustic data, which helps Sentry confirm the type of plane, its location, and flight path. 3__Software crunches all the data and compares it to past attacks, predicting the likelihood of an air raid, as well as when and where it might occur. 4__If the potential for an air strike is high enough, the system generates an alert that’s broadcast via social media. Hala has also set up air raid sirens that Sentry can activate remotely. The warning system now gives people an average of eight minutes to seek shelter. 5__Using a…

Prosperity fostered convenience, which encouraged inactivity—or so a doctor reportedly told the founder of Yamasa Tokei Keiki. In response, the company released the world’s first commercial pedometer, the manpo-kei. Kei means “meter,” and manpo, “10,000 steps.” In East Asia, 10,000 had long been shorthand for plenty, or even infinite vastness, but affixed to a fitness gadget the number solidified. Once a medical researcher endorsed 10,000 steps as the threshold for being an “active” adult, manpo crossed from idiom to science and, in the process, became the best kind of goal: exact, plausible, and resettable. A wave of walking clubs overtook Japan. Americans, wedded to their own conveniences, were slow to catch up. Sure, running took root as a pastime in the ’70s, and an ’80s fervor for “mall walking” led…

Two weeks after Hurricane Maria, Donald Trump flew to Puerto Rico, toured a relatively affluent neighborhood there, and expressed his relief that the storm had not been “a real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina. He jokingly chided Puerto Ricans for throwing the federal budget a “little out of whack.” In reality, Maria caused the largest blackout in US history, and the federal disaster response on the island was, at that point, a fraction of what residents of Florida and Texas had received during the same hurricane season. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, the storm and its aftermath ultimately killed more than 4,000 people. If the federal government’s response to Maria was a scandal, the tech industry’s initial reaction seemed, comparatively, like a source of hope. In the days…