Can't stop humming that tune? A lot goes into the successful'earworms,' including mathematical symmetry. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. While Super Bowl LX is over, the big game still echoes in the minds of many viewers. It's not your fault if a 30-second advertisement spot's melodic hook continues to keep you up at night, however.

Propaganda and disinformation campaigns have changed election outcomes, catalyzed insurrections, and hampered COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Left unchecked, these tactics threaten to derail global economic recovery and damage decades of social progress. What steps do governments and private-sector outfits need to take to stop the spread of disinformation?

For nearly a year now, the coronavirus pandemic rendered most summer vacations and holiday getaways impossible, rerouting itineraries to our living rooms. But there is a silver lining for those seeking a change of scenery amid our extended staycations. Already these past 12 months we've seen a rise in those spending their idle hours in video games, and certain titles can actually help scratch that itch to travel. Some games fit that need to hit the skies literally, such as "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020," which lets players fly a plane across a hyper-realistic Earth crafted from satellite imagery. Still, this doesn't replicate exploring a foreign country's culture or taking in the sights and sounds of a bustling city far from home.

On Friday 6 March, Professor Wajcman will deliver the inaugural Jessie Street lecture at the University of Sydney, during which she will explain why the hyperproductive – and often hypermasculine – work culture of Silicon Valley needs to be challenged. "Whether it's seat belts that don't protect pregnant women, voice-recognition technology that is less likely to understand women than men or smart houses that facilitate entertainment rather than housework; gendered stereotypes will inevitably affect the kinds of technology that we choose to develop and invest in," Professor Wajcman will explain. "My research has shown that too often, designers build technologies for people like themselves. A lack of diversity among designers or engineers will inevitably skew the kinds of technology that are developed." Last year Professor Wajcman was appointed as Turing Fellow and Principal Investigator on the Women in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence research project at the Alan Turing Institute in London.

When we think of ancient Greece we generally imagine ruthless highly-trained warriors or cloth clad philosophers pondering the schematics and perimeters of geometry, geography, architecture and the like. But a new book is about to present them as "skilled forecasters, accurately predicting the rise of artificial intelligence, killer androids and driverless cars." More than 2,500 years ago, Greek mythologists, according to American historian Dr Adrienne Mayor of Stanford University, "envisioned many of the technology trends we grapple with today including Killer androids, driverless technology, GPS and AI-powered helper robots." According to an article about Mayors finding in Greek Reporter, in her forthcoming book Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology the creations of Hephaestus, the god of metalworking and an invention in Homer's Iliad, were "predictions of the rise of humanoid robots." Dr Mayor, who according to the Stanford University website is an independent folklorist/historian of science investigating natural knowledge contained in pre-scientific myths and oral traditions, claims Hephaestus crafted'mechanical maid's from gold that were designed to anticipate their master's requests and act on them without instruction, much like modern machine learning software.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is aptly named. It is an enormous, meandering journey through ancient Greece at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war as the struggle between Sparta and Athens begins to reshape the Greek world. It will shock you with its breadth and depth: the sea hides sunken ruins, the detail of temple paintings is impeccable, authentically clothed characters wander enormous cities whilst chatting in Greek, soldiers clash on roads as citizens scatter. You play a mercenary, choosing between the equally statuesque and self-assured Kassandra or Alexios. There is an element of family drama that propels the story forward in counterpart to the overarching historical drama of the setting.

I don't know why the developers made that decision, although the map is certainly cluttered enough without these Historical Locations. It's too bad you could play through the whole of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey ($60 on Humble) without stumbling on this other layer though. There's a lot of interesting historical information contained within, and a lot of great pseudo-historical information as well--insight into the Ancient Greece of Odyssey that explains how and why it differs from the strictly historical Ancient Greece we might know.

I'll never forget the time I watched the trailer for 300, the iconic fantasy war film from 2006 about King Leonidas of Sparta and his clash against the Persians with a heavily outnumbered army. As soon as I saw the scene where Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, screamed "This is Sparta" at the top of his lungs and then kicked a dude down a deep concrete well, I knew the movie was going to be an instant classic. Less than a year after touring Egypt with Origins, Ubisoft is taking us to King Leonidas' world in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. The new game takes place in 431BC, right at the start of the Peloponnesian war between the competing cities of Sparta and Athens. As these two empires fight to establish broader power, your play as a young Spartan mercenary who goes on quest to help his people defeat the Athenians.

I thought for sure Assassin's Creed would be taking a break this year--it seemed like Ubisoft was switching to an every other year cycle, trading off with Watch Dogs. And yet here we are, a week before E3, and there's now confirmation of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. The news first came by way of a leaked "collectible helmet keychain" on the French site JeuxVideo. Ubisoft went ahead and confirmed it a few hours later though, with a brief video of one guy kicking another off a cliff, a title splash, and a "See you at E3" message. I guess if you're going to set a game in Ancient Greece, you pretty much have to copy that kick-a-guy-in-the-chest moment from 300.

Just hours after the leaked image of a keychain accessory revealed the game, Ubisoft has posted a quick teaser for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. With only five seconds of video, the teaser serves as a quick callback to the movie 300 as a Spartan-looking warrior boots his enemy off of a cliff, before flashing the game's logo with a familiar helmet in the middle. Along with the leak, an insider told JeuxvideoLive that this game follows Assassin's Creed: Origins with a trip to ancient Greece, where there's plenty of heroic tales, battles and mythology to mine. Kotaku reports other sources claiming that it should arrive during Ubisoft's fiscal 2019 period, and that it will include even more RPG-style elements than the last game. We'll find out more during E3