Table of contents for Aug-15 in WIRED

DESPITE BIAS-BUSTING workshops and pledges of millions of dollars, Silicon Valley is still overrun by white dudes. A year after Google and Facebook released their damning diversity reports, the percentage of women at those companies is still around 30 percent. For African Americans and Hispanics, it’s a pathetic 2 percent and 3.5 percent. And those are the big companies, which can afford heads of diversity and fancy data-mining programs. But Nathalie Miller thinks she’s hit upon a scheme that can help keep startups from falling into the white-guy trap. ¶ Miller is the CEO of Doxa, which uses OkCupid-style algorithms to match women with startups. Its anonymous surveys, distributed at companies like Instacart and Lyft, look at data, both quantitative (pay gaps, say) and qualitative (are women expected to pick…

GOOGLE BUILT A SATELLITE CAMPUS HERE IN 2006. // LOCATED IN “THE NAPA VALLEY OF BEER,” BOULDER IS HOME TO 22 BREWERIES. // BOULDER’S TALLEST FLATIRON (IT’S A ROCK FORMATION, NOT A BUILDING) SOARS TO 7,628 FEET. // THE SECOND AMERICAN ASTRONAUT IN ORBIT, SCOTT CARPENTER, GREW UP HERE. “My post–Ironman 2014 meal was a Rueben’s Burger Bistro’s buffalo meat burger with sweet potato fries. I also love their boneless buffalo wings. (Allwhite-meat chicken balls—no bones!)” — Laura Bennett, professional triathlete It’s easy to dismiss Boulder as a granolasprinkled idyll, and it is a healthy kind of place: Triathletes flock here during the first week of August to compete in Ironman Boulder, a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run past creeks and parks on the Boulder Creek Trail.…

It’s tough to watch taste buds in action—you can’t clamp a microscope onto a subject’s tongue. As a result, researchers typically study taste cells in a petri dish. But for bioengineer Myunghwan Choi and his colleagues at Harvard, a disembodied taste bud is useless. “All the microarchitecture is destroyed,” Choi says. And without the microarchitecture— from taste pores to capillaries— scientists can’t fully understand how mice (and people) receive the flavor of Camembert at a molecular level. So, to examine a live mouse tongue under a microscope, Choi’s team invented an apparatus that wouldn’t look out of place in A Clockwork Orange. First, researchers stain the mouse’s tongue with dye formulated to glow under infrared light. Then they use a tiny suction hose to pull the anesthetized rodent’s tongue out,…

THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL and Prevention estimates that one in 68 children in the US are on the autism spectrum, a number that stands in staggering contrast to a 1970 study that put the figure at one in 14,200. Some people believe we’re in the middle of an autism epidemic. But autism has always been part of the human experience, as journalist (and wired contributor) Steve Silberman shows in his new book, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. It’s only recently, he argues, that we have become properly aware of it. We spoke to Silberman about how the modern world came to recognize autistic people and how autistic people helped shape the modern world. WIRED: In your book you write about Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger,…

Audioengine B2 BEST FOR: People who think Bluetooth can’t sound amazing Powered by a 60-watt amp and sheathed in your choice of walnut, zebrawood, or black ash, the Audioengine B2 is as muscular as it is handsome. A built-in 24-bit digital-to-analog converter and support for the high-quality Bluetooth aptX codec ensure that your streaming files sound their absolute best. $299 Griffin Twenty BEST FOR: Old-school audiophiles with vintage speakers Like the B2, the Griffin Twenty supports aptX audio streaming. Unlike with the B2, you’ll need to bring your own speakers to this party. The super-efficient 20-watt amp lets you hook up those passive loudspeakers stashed in your attic and recast them as a wicked wireless system. A digital input lets you hook up your Xbox or HDTV too. $150…

Back when 15 bucks was a lot of money to me, I bought Led Zeppelin’s debut album after listening to it on in-store headphones at HMV—every day for a week. The first play, though, is one of my most powerful musical memories: I felt those first two chords roll into my head and watched my arm raise up, hand in an autonomic rock-fingers salute. When I finally brought the CD home, I was so excited that I broke the jewel box trying to breach the security sticker. ¶ By college—aka the Napster era—I was no longer shelling out for music; but if time is money, I was still paying. I’d hear a song and get curious about the artist. Then I’d steal some tracks. A song could take an hour…

THIS IS JAY & MARK THEY'RE BROTHERS. THAT MOVIE YOU LIKE ? THEY MADE IT. OR WERE IN IT. OR FINANCED IT. MEET HOLLYWOOD'S UNLIKELY NEW JUGGERNAUT. THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN Austin are stirring blearily to life as the turducken street taco that is SXSW—a weeklong tech expo wrapped inside a film festival and finished off with a music showcase—shakes off the previous night’s revelry. But backstage at the Austin Convention Center, where he is due to deliver the film festival’s keynote address, directorproducer-writer-actor Mark Duplass is rested and alert. His father is here, and so is his agent, and so is a tray of pastries, which Mark eyes warily. Mark is a 38-year-old former athlete—he ran track in high school—and he possesses that strain of shticky carb anxiety common…

Lomekwian adj. / 'lō-'me-kwē-ən / The first known toolmaking culture. Lomekwian stone implements found at a Kenyan site called Lomekwi 3 are 3.3 million years old, probably more ancient than the Homo genus. Whoever used the tools must have been strong: The biggest weigh more than 30 pounds. thought vector n. / 'thot 'vek-tər / A sequence of numbers that describes the meaning of an entire sentence. Google scientists use this number sequence (or vector) as an abstract representation of the thought encoded by the words. In the future, thought vectors could help computers to communicate and reason like humans. autoendoliths n. pl. / o-tō-'en-də-liths / Microbes that fabricate their own limestone homes. Found near undersea methane vents, autoendoliths are the only organisms known to encapsulate themselves in rock—the kind…

Calamine The itch-relieving action starts with this eponymous pink stuff, a cocktail of zinc oxide and a little iron oxide. This skin protector helps to dry the oozy, weepy blisters from the poison ivy/oak/sumac triple threat—and zinc can prevent mast cells from releasing itch-causing histamine. As for the “-dryl” in Caladryl? It comes from Benadryl, an antihistamine that was removed from the formula in the ’90s because overapplication led to hallucinations in some kids. Pramoxine HCl Instead of an antihistamine, the current formula contains this local anesthetic. It interacts with nerve cell membranes to block movement of sodium ions, which transfer messages from one nerve to the next, all the way to your brain. If the ions can’t pass through the membranes, your brain can’t receive those itchy and scratchy…

THE ORIGINAL ARP Odyssey synthesizer debuted in 1972 and defined the sound of the era, adding mystical swooshes and bright passages to the funk of Herbie Hancock, the futurepop of Kraftwerk, and countless horror film scores. Though the all-analog Odyssey was widely praised, production stopped in 1981 when ARP folded due to cash flow problems. Working units grew increasingly rare until this year, when Korg, another legendary synth maker, resurrected it. The modular tone circuits in this reboot are faithful analog re-creations of the originals, but there are some 21st-century enhancements too: The original came in three versions, each with a different tone-coloring filter; the new model incorporates all three filters into one unit. The neo-Odyssey is also more compact and better suited to modern stages and studios, where the…

NOISEMAKERS Animoog The synth pioneers at Moog give the signature sound of their analog keyboards the digital treatment with this stellar app. Its infinitely customizable controls will impress pros, and its expressive playability will delight even nonmusicians. $6 ( OS) Caustic 3 Combine 14 synths and 16 audio effects to create funky keyboard sounds and sparkling melodies. The knobs, sliders, blinking lights, and virtual patch cables impart a note of skeuomorphic charm. $10 (ANDROID, OS) SONG BUILDERS Yellofier This app records snippets of noise—a piano chord, a hand clap, a cat’s meow— and plops them into colorful onscreen blocks. Arrange the blocks to make a beat, a melody, or an entire song. $3 (ANDROID, OS) Figure (shown right) Start by picking an instrument—myriad drum, bass, and “lead” sounds are offered—then…

It could really get out of hand. Spiny grass and scraggly pines creep amid the arts-and-crafts buildings of the Asilomar Conference Grounds, 100 acres of dune where California’s Monterey Peninsula hammerheads into the Pacific. It’s a rugged landscape, designed to inspire people to contemplate their evolving place on Earth. So it was natural that 140 scientists gathered here in 1975 for an unprecedented conference. They were worried about what people called “recombinant DNA,” the manipulation of the source code of life. It had been just 22 years since James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin described what DNA was—deoxyribonucleic acid, four different structures called bases stuck to a backbone of sugar and phosphate, in sequences thousands of bases long. DNA is what genes are made of, and genes are the…

CHARTGEIST Things We Can Alter 2016 Presidential Candidates Reboots THE 443-FOOT LONDON EYE was supposed to be temporary when it opened to ring in the millennium. But a funny thing happened on the way to slow, rotating views of London: People kept showing up. Fifteen years later, cities the world over are competing to build record-breaking observation wheels. And one engineering firm, Starneth, specializes in their design and construction. ¶ As with any supertall structure (the largest in the US need a Determination of No Hazard from the FAA), storm- and hurricane-strength winds and earthquakes pose the biggest risk to giant wheels. So Starneth tests components and scale models in wind tunnels to identify each wheel’s unique drag and vibration characteristics. As for onsite positioning, an axis parallel to the…

1 Pro-Ject RPM 1 Carbon Turntable A cool Benjamin can get you something that’ll spin your records at 331⁄3 rpm, but why cheap out on a key part of your stack? The stylish RPM 1 Carbon gives you audiophilegrade features like a rumble-resistant platter and a vibrationdamping tone arm for a decidedly non-audiophile price. $499 2 RCA Discwasher Vinyl Record Care System LPs are delicate— dust, fingerprints, and other gunk can ruin the aural atmosphere and decimate the lifespan of your stylus. This brush-andcleaning-solution set will eliminate snaps, crackles, and pops, keeping all your wax in the spin cycle. $15 3 GoldenEar Triton Seven The audiophile world is rife with specious claims, but here’s an immutable truth: Bigger speakers sound better. These 40-inch towers, each equipped with two main drivers,…

LOVE ISN’T ALWAYS RATIONAL. Witness magnetic tape. The analog technology, which uses a coating of iron oxide powder on a thin strip of plastic film to capture and store live audio, was commercially developed by the German company BASF in the 1930s. It was ubiquitous in recording studios until digital technology relegated it to boutique status a quarter century ago. Hissy, fussy tape is no match for a computer’s crystal clarity, but purists like D’Angelo and storied producer-performer Steve Albini (Big Black, Shellac) still swear by their reel-to-reel recorders. Those analog preamps running sound onto tape afford a natural compression that delivers a warmer sound. Also, tape reels can survive decades if properly stored—try retrieving a Pro Tools mix from 2004 and see if all your plug-ins from that era…

The gene-editing possibilities for Crispr-Cas9 are limited only by scientific creativity— and ethics. The mechanism was discovered in bacteria— it’s an immune response that destroys the genetic material of invading viruses— but smart lab work turned it into an unrivaled tool for rapid, affordable, and precise genome modification. Here’s how the process works. —VICTORIA TANG Find The Crispr-Cas9 system has two parts: a guide RNA (gRNA) that acts like a targeting device and a protein (Cas9) that acts like scissors. The gRNA—made of two subtypes, tracrRNA and crRNA—looks for specific genomic DNA in any organism and then sticks to corresponding bases. The tracrRNA/crRNA complex then grabs the protein Cas9, floating nearby. Cut Cas9 grasps and cleaves the double-stranded genomic DNA spotted by the gRNA. Replace With the free end of…

Her nonprofit helps people in developing countries get paid for digital labor, WIRED talks with Janah about putting them-and disadvantaged Americans-to work in the 21st century. Fresh out of Harvard in 2005, Leila Janah landed a job as a management consultant. One of her first assignments took her to Mumbai, where she traveled by auto-rickshaw to a sleek outsourcing center staffed by welleducated Indians from middle-class families. The ride took her past one of Asia’s largest slums, Dharavi, where cholera outbreaks are commonplace and children die of preventable diseases. Outsourcing might have been providing millions of jobs, but it wasn’t helping the country’s poorest. She began to think, “Couldn’t the people from the slums do some of this work?” Janah, 32, turned that idea into a nonprofit that connects poor…