Media
'Infinite Jest' Is Back. Maybe Litbros Should Be, Too
The notoriously challenging book is being re-released for its 30th anniversary. Its fandom is annoying, sure--but at least they read. The host had been grilling Wallace, ostensibly invited on to discuss his own literary and journalistic output, on range of topics: tennis, teaching, why women don't like Westerns, depression, and, yes, Anthony Minghella's Academy Award-winning epic war drama, which had by the time the interview aired already become a punch line . Watching the interview, it's clear Wallace, who died by suicide in 2008, bristles at being pressed to purvey rank punditry on the popular culture at large like some kind of dancing monkey. But the exercise revealed how Rose, and large swaths of American intellectual culture circa the late-1990s, thought of Wallace.
Revealed: The classic office words and phrases that Gen Z no longer understand - so, do you know your 'synergy' from your 'paradigm'?
Baffled Florida parents sue fertilization clinic after delivering someone else's baby Huge pancreatic cancer breakthrough as scientists achieve'permanent disappearance' of disease with new triple-threat approach tested in lab Bombshell new leaked audio that could sink Blake Lively: Listen to actress' four-minute voice note to Justin Baldoni The truth about the Sussexes at that Kardashian party is out - and it's a big, hot jelly of a mess: JAN MOIR Trump chooses'central casting' Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair Real estate tycoon accused of indecent proposal to realtor mom while enjoying an affair. Ryan Seacrest's gaunt face concerns fans as he congratulates Wheel Of Fortune co-host Vanna White on wedding Margot Robbie fans go wild over red carpet'slip-up' about her husband and joke she'must be in an open relationship' following red carpet moment Trump says'agitator Alex Pretti's stock has gone way down' after video of him spitting on and kicking an ICE vehicle emerged, saying he was'crazed and out of control' Boy, 5, in ICE custody after being detained in Minneapolis is'depressed, sad, and not doing great' Brooklyn Beckham is mocked by fans for showing off his'special' spaghetti bolognese recipe - but reveals he's run out of spaghetti - despite wife Nicola Peltz's $1m a month allowance from billionaire father Nelson Woke Democrats on verge of driving party's popularity off cliff again with this new slogan, former Obama advisor warns Nurse banned from working in his home state of Florida after saying he wouldn't anesthetize MAGA supporters Inside Kris Jenner's extremely risky surgery to transform the only remaining part of her body that betrays her true age Melania invited me to watch her new documentary inside the White House. Now I know why you wouldn't want to cross her: LINK LAUREN's movie review Full known list of Alex Pretti's battles with cops revealed before Minneapolis nurse was shot dead by DHS Lauren Sanchez has hit a despicable new low. I can't defend her any longer. Revealed: The classic office words and phrases that Gen Z no longer understand - so, do you know your'synergy' from your'paradigm'?
Theatre Review: "An Ark" and "Data"
Two plays soaked in technological anxiety. "An Ark" resembles a webinar with a staring contest, one that no human can win. Before you enter "An Ark," a "mixed reality" performance at the Shed, you check your coat and, more oddly, your shoes. Inside, there are three concentric circles of chairs arranged on a red carpet and, overhead, a white globe resembling a hot-air balloon. A docent explained that, through my virtual-reality headset, I would see four more chairs--and, ideally, they shouldn't float.
Our verdict on Annie Bot: This novel about a sex robot split opinions
Members of the New Scientist Book Club give their take on Sierra Greer's award-winning science-fiction novel Annie Bot, our read for February - and the needle swings wildly from positive to negative Annie Bot by Sierra Greer was the Book Club's January read The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December - Iain M. Banks's - to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer's, which won the Arthur C. Clarke prize in 2025. I must admit, I was nervous to announce this one to my fellow readers. is the story of a sex robot, owned by a controlling and abusive man. It gets very dark in places, it has a number of sex scenes, and I wanted to make sure you all knew what you were getting into before getting started. That cupboard scene, some way into the book, was super disturbing, for example. It turns out my wariness was warranted.
AI-generated news should carry 'nutrition' labels, thinktank says
The IPPR recommended standardised labels for AI-generated news, showing what information had been used to create those answers. The IPPR recommended standardised labels for AI-generated news, showing what information had been used to create those answers. AI-generated news should carry'nutrition' labels, thinktank says AI-generated news should carry "nutrition" labels and tech companies must pay publishers for the content they use, according to a left-of-centre thinktank, amid rising use of the technology as a source for current affairs . The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said AI firms were rapidly emerging as the new "gatekeepers" of the internet and intervention was needed to create a healthy AI news environment. It recommended standardised labels for AI-generated news, showing what information had been used to create those answers, including peer-reviewed studies and articles from professional news organisations.
Apple reports best-ever iPhone sales as Mac dips
Sales of the iPhone hit an all-time high in the final three months of last year, tech firm Apple reported on Thursday. Revenue rose by 16% compared to the same period last year to $144bn (ยฃ82.5bn) - the strongest growth since 2021 - thanks to a jump in sales in China, as well as Europe, the Americas, and Japan. However, sales in other parts of the company were less positive. Wearables and accessories, which include things like the Apple Watch and AirPods, fell by roughly 3%. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the iPhone's boost in sales meant the firm was in supply chase mode.
SpaceX in merger talks with other Musk companies ahead of IPO
SpaceX combining with xAI would bring Elon Musk's rockets, Starlink satellites, the X social media platform and Grok AI chatbot under one roof. NEW YORK - SpaceX is exploring deals with other companies helmed by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, leaving investors working through permutations between space, autonomous driving and artificial intelligence to analyze which combination makes the most sense. The rocket maker is in discussions to merge with xAI ahead of a blockbuster public offering planned for this year, Reuters reported on Thursday. The combination would bring Musk's rockets, Starlink satellites, X social media platform and Grok chatbot under one roof, according to a person briefed on the matter and two regulatory filings. The deal's value, timing or primary rationale could not be independently determined.
Learn-to-Distance: Distance Learning for Detecting LLM-Generated Text
Zhou, Hongyi, Zhu, Jin, Xu, Erhan, Ye, Kai, Yang, Ying, Shi, Chengchun
Modern large language models (LLMs) such as GPT, Claude, and Gemini have transformed the way we learn, work, and communicate. Y et, their ability to produce highly human-like text raises serious concerns about misinformation and academic integrity, making it an urgent need for reliable algorithms to detect LLMgenerated content. In this paper, we start by presenting a geometric approach to demystify rewrite-based detection algorithms, revealing their underlying rationale and demonstrating their generalization ability. Building on this insight, we introduce a novel rewrite-based detection algorithm that adaptively learns the distance between the original and rewritten text. Theoretically, we demonstrate that employing an adaptively learned distance function is more effective for detection than using a fixed distance. Empirically, we conduct extensive experiments with over 100 settings, and find that our approach demonstrates superior performance over baseline algorithms in the majority of scenarios. In particular, it achieves relative improvements from 57.8% to 80.6% over the strongest baseline across different target LLMs (e.g., GPT, Claude, and Gemini). The past few years have witnessed the emergence and rapid development of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT (Hurst et al., 2024), DeepSeek (Liu et al., 2024), Claude (Anthropic, 2024), Gemini (Comanici et al., 2025), Grok (xAI, 2025) and Qwen (Y ang et al., 2025). Their impact is everywhere, from education, academia and software development to healthcare and everyday life (Arora & Arora, 2023; Chan & Hu, 2023; Hou et al., 2024). On one side of the coin, LLMs can support users with conversational question answering, help students learn more effectively, draft emails, write computer code, prepare presentation slides and more. On the other side, their ability to closely mimic human-written text also raises serious concerns, including the generation of biased or harmful content, the spread of misinformation in the news ecosystem, and the challenges related to authorship attribution and intellectual property (Dave et al., 2023; Fang et al., 2024; Messeri & Crockett, 2024; Mahajan et al., 2025; Laurito et al., 2025). Addressing these concerns requires effective algorithms to distinguish between human-written and LLM-generated text, which has become an active and popular research direction in recent literature (see Crothers et al., 2023; Wu et al., 2025, for reviews).
'Uncanny Valley': Minneapolis Misinformation, TikTok's New Owners, and Moltbot Hype
We'll link all the stories we spoke about today in the show notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode, Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode, Matt Giles and Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode, Mark Leyda was our San Francisco studio engineer, Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.