Let's cut to the chase--Samsung's latest QD-OLED computer monitor is absolutely awesome, and I've loved having it at my desk for the past month or so. Every game I play on it looks incredible, and it has quickly become the centerpiece of my battle station. Even so, I'm still having trouble recommending 4K high-refresh monitors to people who have to buy and build their own systems. Having a monitor with some room to grow is the right choice, but the gap between performance and capability can be frustrating if you're on otherwise budget-friendly hardware. If you're thinking of making an upgrade, really nice 1440p screens are available for under 400, and they might be a better performance fit for most people.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A smelly, sometimes toxic "killer belt of seaweed" might put a damper on Floridians' Memorial Day weekend plans. Sargassum is back just in time for the unofficial start of summer and this year's influx of the brown algae would be record breaking at 31 million tons. Sargassum is a genus of large brown seaweed. As a seaweed, it is also a type of algae.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. We like to think our brains are reliable recorders--but reality says otherwise. From misremembered childhood moments to mistakenly "recalling" that you took your pills when you didn't, false memories are surprisingly common. And in high-stakes situations like courtroom testimony, these errors can have devastating consequences. Wouldn't it be amazing if there were an objective way to measure just how accurate someone's memory really is? New research suggests we might be able to do just that--by watching the eyes.

It's well documented that AI is a power-hungry technology. But there has been far less reporting on the extent of that hunger, how much its appetite is set to grow in the coming years, where that power will come from, and who will pay for it. For the past six months, MIT Technology Review's team of reporters and editors have worked to answer those questions. The result is an unprecedented look at the state of AI's energy and resource usage, where it is now, where it is headed in the years to come, and why we have to get it right. At the centerpiece of this package is an entirely novel line of reporting into the demands of inference--the way human beings interact with AI when we make text queries or ask AI to come up with new images or create videos.

It would be hard to overstate the impact that Peter Thiel has had on the career of Sam Altman. After Altman sold his first startup in 2012, Thiel bankrolled his first venture fund, Hydrazine Capital. Thiel saw Altman as an inveterate optimist who stood at "the absolute epicenter, maybe not of Silicon Valley, but of a Silicon Valley zeitgeist." As Thiel put it, "If you had to look for the one person who represented a millennial tech person, it would be Altman." Each year, Altman would point Thiel toward the most promising startup at Y Combinator–Airbnb in 2012, Stripe in 2013, Zenefits in 2014–and Thiel would swallow hard and invest, even though he sometimes felt like he was being swept up in a hype cycle.

Microsoft 365 is kind of like that ex you simply can't get away from. It's because you keep going back to it every month, paying a pesky recurring fee for access, all while complaining on and on about how annoying it is. It's time to break up with Microsoft 365 and level up with Microsoft Office instead, especially since the 2024 edition is finally on the shelves. It's compatible with both Mac and PC, comes with AI tools designed for personal and professional use, and is yours for life once you pay the one-time fee of 159.97 (down from 249.99). You'll finally be freed from your ex (your old Microsoft 365 subscription) once you invest in this Microsoft Office lifetime license--and the savings will seriously add up after about 18 months.

Jobs traditionally done by women are more vulnerable to the impact of artificial intelligence than those done by men, especially in high-income countries, a report by the United Nations' International Labour Organization showed on Tuesday. It found 9.6% of traditionally female jobs were set to be transformed compared with 3.5% of those carried out by men as AI increasingly takes on administrative tasks and transforms clerical jobs, such as secretarial work. Human involvement will still be required for many tasks -- and roles are more likely to be radically changed rather than eliminated, the report said. Jobs in the media, software and finance-related roles are also at the forefront of change as generative AI expands its learning abilities. "We stress that such exposure does not imply the immediate automation of an entire occupation, but rather the potential for a large share of its current tasks to be performed using this technology," the report said. It called on governments and employers' and workers' organizations to think about how AI can be used to enhance productivity and job quality.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In 2021, Zia graduated from the University of Michigan–Dearborn with a degree in software engineering. With an internship under his belt, he had no shortage of job opportunities, and he landed a contract coding gig in January of 2022. It was good work, for a year and a half, until he got laid off in mid-2023. After taking a month to figure out what he wanted to specialize in, Zia decided that he'd go for the types of app- and site-building jobs that had been so plentiful when he was in school.

A UFO slammed into a US fighter jet over Arizona, cracking the canopy protecting the pilot, and forcing the 63 million plane to land, new reports have revealed. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the F-16 Viper fighter jet was hit by an'orange-white UAS' - which stands for uncrewed aerial system, better known as a drone - on January 19, 2023. Within a day of this collision, there were three more unidentified aircraft sightings over the Air Force's Barry Goldwater Range, where the fighter was damaged, the documents stated. Barry Goldwater Range is an expanse of desert along the Arizona-Mexico border where the military practices air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. The FAA's report of the F-16 collision revealed that the fighter was flying in restricted airspace near Gila Bend, Arizona, when it was hit by the object in the rear of the canopy, the glass bubble which protects the pilot.

This story is a part of MIT Technology Review's series "Power Hungry: AI and our energy future," on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. These somewhat unlikely partnerships could be a win for both the nuclear power industry and large tech companies. Tech giants need guaranteed sources of energy, and many are looking for low-emissions ones to hit their climate goals. For nuclear plant operators and nuclear technology developers, the financial support of massive established customers could help keep old nuclear power plants open and push new technologies forward. "There [are] a lot of advantages to nuclear," says Michael Terrell, senior director of clean energy and carbon reduction at Google.