Industry
We Asked Coffee Pros to Blind Test Coffee Machines. The Results Were Surprising
We Asked Coffee Pros to Blind Test Coffee Machines. For our latest WIRED Blind Test, we sat coffee industry professionals down to rank leading do-it-all coffee machines--and the winner wasn't what anyone expected. What do you love about coffee? Is it the caffeine boost in the morning, the creamy sweetness of a cappuccino or latte, the bucket of filter coffee you can sip on all day, or the quick kick of a good espresso? Or is it the zen-like ritual of it all, the measuring of beans and the precision of the perfect extraction? Good thing it's much better for you than science previously realized.
The New Wild West of AI Kids' Toys
These cuddly, connected companions could disrupt everything from make-believe to bedtime stories. No wonder some lawmakers want them banned. The main antagonist of, in theaters this summer, is a green, frog-shaped kids' tablet named Lilypad, a genius new villain for the beloved Pixar franchise . But if Pixar had its ear to the ground, it might have used an AI kids' toy instead. AI toys are seemingly everywhere, marketed online as friendly companions to children as young as three, and they're still a largely unregulated category.
I Went to See What's Happened to the Home of the TED Talk. It Was a Little Terrifying.
Meanwhile its Audacious Project --a funding initiative that gives mature nonprofits the opportunity to pitch "moonshot" plans to a coalition of philanthropists--has raised over $1 billion in each of the last two years, in an epic Robin Hood operation for a handful of large-scale projects on climate, health, education, and criminal justice: The Audacious recipients here this year are taking this brief break from their work preventing 16 million unsafe abortions, helping governments in 20 countries prevent lead poisoning, or intercepting 5 percent of the world's river-borne plastic before it reaches the ocean.
TikTok scales back AI-generated video descriptions after absurd errors
TikTok has rowed back on an AI feature which incorrectly summarised some videos on the platform, including claiming a celebrity was fruit. The company's'AI overviews' recently began appearing beneath content on the platform to describe what a video was showing, or provide more context. While only rolled out to some users in the US and the Philippines, the feature's incorrect and bizarre AI-generated summaries of TikTok content - seen beneath videos of celebrities like platform star Charli D'Amelio - have been shared widely. According to TikTok, its experimental summaries have been tweaked to only suggest products similar to those shown in videos. The changes were first reported by news outlet Business Insider .
Venom and Hot Peppers Offer a Key to Killing Resistant Bacteria
Researchers have developed three new antibiotics from scorpion venom and habanero peppers to combat tuberculosis and other drug-resistant pathogens. Researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have identified new ways to combat tuberculosis and reduce bacterial resistance, developing three new antibiotics derived from scorpion venom and habanero peppers. A team led by Lourival Domingos Possani Postay, from the Institute of Biotechnology's Morelos campus, created two drugs that demonstrated efficacy against the bacterium, responsible for tuberculosis, as well as against, a microorganism that in hospital environments can cause various clinical complications, from skin infections to potentially fatal diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, septicemia, and endocarditis. The antibiotics were derived from the venom of the scorpion, native to the state of Veracruz. The team was able to isolate two colorless molecules called benzoquinones--heterocyclic compounds that do not contain amino acids--from the arachnid's toxin.
Here's how technology transformed babymaking
Tech advances not only made IVF safer and more effective; they fundamentally changed the way we think about our reproduction. Technology is changing the way we make babies. The pioneering work of the scientists who invented IVF led to the birth of the first "test tube baby" in 1978. We've come a long, long way since then. This week, I've been working on a piece about the cutting edge of IVF technologies and what's coming next. Think AI and robots and, potentially, gene-edited embryos.
Another LIV golfer remains committed to staying put: 'I have full faith in the future of LIV'
Megan Rapinoe, in a shock to no one, backs Angel Reese skipping interviews as'taking power back' White House calls out Newsom as California girls' track and field controversy reignites Here's why the coaches association's 24-team College Football Playoff could ruin the sport Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown tells ESPN's Stephen A Smith to'be quiet and retire' President Trump on $1,000 World Cup ticket prices: 'I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest' Pirates vs. Diamondbacks betting preview targets the under as both offenses go cold in series Former LSU coach Brian Kelly uses AI to prepare for job interviews, proving he's just like the rest of us Mark Hamill is a'miserable human being': Sage Steele AOC is in'favor' of'robbing' the American people: Tiffany Smiley Iran's playbook is to talk and then fight, Lt Gen Keith Kellogg says Watters: If Iran doesn't sign this fast, the US will be a lot more violent US waits for Iran's response on peace proposal Authorities try to'connect the dots' on hantavirus infections Jesse Watters: Spencer Pratt is a'charismatic, common-sense populist' Greg Gutfeld: Dana White laughs off the'toxic masculinity thing' OutKick Another LIV golfer remains committed to staying put: 'I have full faith in the future of LIV' Thomas Detry says players'really love it' and calls on the entire roster to show cohesion and support Greg Palkot breaks down the announcement that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund will cease funding for the LIV Golf tour, putting its future in jeopardy. LIV Golf now seeks new investors while players attempt to rejoin the PGA Tour. Out of seemingly nowhere, the future of the LIV Golf Tour has been put in serious jeopardy. The breakaway golf tour previously relied on funding from the Saudi Arabia-backed Public Investment Fund to back extremely high purses and bring in top players with massive signing bonuses. But that funding is coming to an end after the 2026 season, throwing all of that progress into jeopardy.
Musk v. Altman Evidence Shows What Microsoft Executives Thought of OpenAI
Leaders at the tech giant were skeptical of OpenAI--but wary of pushing it into the arms of Amazon, according to evidence revealed during the trial. OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft, its longtime investor and cloud partner, has grown increasingly complicated over the years as the ChatGPT-maker has grown into a behemoth competitor . But Microsoft executives had reservations about sending additional funding to OpenAI as far back as 2018 when it was just a small nonprofit research lab, according to emails between more than a dozen Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, shown in a federal court on Thursday during the trial. The emails show how Microsoft, at the time, wavered over what has since been held up as one of the most successful corporate partnerships in tech history. Several Microsoft executives said in the emails their visits to OpenAI did not indicate any imminent breakthroughs in developing artificial general intelligence.
Horseshoe Forests for High-Dimensional Causal Survival Analysis
Jacobs, Tijn, van Wieringen, Wessel N., van der Pas, Stéphanie L.
We develop a Bayesian tree ensemble model to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects in censored survival data with high-dimensional covariates. Instead of imposing sparsity through the tree structure, we place a horseshoe prior directly on the step heights to achieve adaptive global-local shrinkage. This strategy allows flexible regularisation and reduces noise. We develop a reversible jump Gibbs sampler to accommodate the non-conjugate horseshoe prior within the tree ensemble framework. We show through extensive simulations that the method accurately estimates treatment effects in high-dimensional covariate spaces, at various sparsity levels, and under non-linear treatment effect functions. We further illustrate the practical utility of the proposed approach by a re-analysis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) survival data from The Cancer Genome Atlas.
A Novel Computational Framework for Causal Inference: Tree-Based Discretization with ILP-Based Matching
Yang, Tianyu, Noor-E-Alam, Md.
Causal inference is essential for data-driven decision-making, as it aims to uncover causal relationships from observational data. However, identifying causality remains challenging due to the potential for confounding and the distinction between correlation and causation. While recent advances in causal machine learning and matching algorithms have improved estimation accuracy, these methods often face trade-offs between interpretability and computational efficiency. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines a tree-based discretization technique, tailored for causal inference, with an integer linear programming-based matching algorithm. The discretization ensures approximately linear relationships for control datasets within strata, enabling effective matching, while the optimization framework optimizes for global balance. The resulting algorithm yields computational efficiency and less biased ATT estimates compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. Empirical evaluations demonstrate the proposed method's practical advantages over existing techniques in causal inference scenarios.