Tag Archive : CULTURE

San Francisco is a little bit more crowded than usual today, thanks to the 2018 Game Developers Conference. For a week each March, developers from all over the world come to learn, play new games, and hopefully get a job—while journalists congregate to report on the activity of said developers (and also to get jobs). GDC is possibly the most important event of the year for the army of engineers, artists, and businesspeople who make up the commercial videogame industry: a hub of networking, showcases, and creative reflection, a place for both announcements and edification.

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Yet, like videogames itself, the conference seems to be at a crossroads. As the event has continued to grow, and its profile in the industry has increased, its purpose has begun to shift. The usual excitement still exists among those in the professional gaming (not to be confused with esports) community, who change their Twitter names to include variations "at GDC" and who populate the conference's scheduling app with selfies and meeting requests, but it seems more than ever to be undercut with restlessness: Who is this conference even for, anyway? More than ever, huge platforms are taking a huge share of the show floor and speaking schedule. Facebook, Oculus, and even Magic Leap are all hosting multiple sessions this year.

It's not just that the industry-wide muddling of the lines between indie and triple-A creator has hit GDC, though that's part of it. The games ecosystem is home to a complex variety of types of developers, and the intense divide between indie and major is both fuzzier and more important than it's felt like in the past. Mid-tier titles like PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds or the free-to-play Fortnite can become dizzyingly popular in a relatively short amount of time (just look to this past weekend's record-breaking result when Drake joined forces with a popular Twitch streamer to play Fortnite's battle-royale mode) while the difference in costs and resources between small and big games continues to balloon. This year, at least for me, it's not quite clear what sort of games GDC is meant to showcase, and even less clarity about what sort of developers are meant to attend—and what they're supposed to take away from their time.

GDC is considered by many in the industry to be an essential event, the core platform for connecting with colleagues, scouting new recruits, and taking stock of the industry. But it's become increasingly clear in recent years how limited this event really is. Taking place in one of the most expensive cities in America, it's a stretch simply to afford accommodations for the week of the conference—and that's not counting expo passes, travel, and any extracurricular activities. For poor or disabled American developers, and especially for international developers, GDC represents a sizable, and difficult, investment. (Meanwhile, foreign developers now have to contend with the increasing risks of entering the country in the first place, particularly if they're from Muslim or non-white countries.)

So now, in 2018, discontent is running higher than normal, as many in the industry are wondering out loud if the Game Developer's Conference, once lauded as the Mecca of the industry, is really the event we need.

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Gaming

Video Game Sounds Explained By Experts

Four video game sound designers explain the thinking behind some of the world's most recognizable video game sounds.

Not long after I met my boyfriend, I put a tracking device on him.

I didn’t quite mean to do that. What I did, really, was follow him on Strava, the GPS-powered social app that maps your workouts.

I was 23, and a nonexerciser who stayed fit with a precarious regimen of genetics. My new boyfriend was a talented triathlete whose values included pain tolerance. So I bought running shoes and joined Strava.

We were a long-distance couple, separated by a bland two-hour bus ride, but Strava was an idyllic eradicator of distance. On it, I followed the contours of his day, mapped around his workouts. When he slowed down for me, so we could run together, he appeared on Strava as my “one other,” in the app’s unintentionally sweet language for exercise partners. Over three years, our running maps came to describe a geography intelligible only to each other, a digital landscape of Strava routes that he’d named for me.

If that sounds like the modern denigration of romance incarnate, I don’t disagree. But back then I was too in love, and too busy exercising, to see that.

On Strava, I exercised with 27 million other people. I recruited my mom, and she lovingly left “kudos” under all my runs. But I suspect that most of what we share on social media is for one person—a deniable missive to someone we hope will choose us. I put runs on Strava for him. When I ran at desolate hours or in dispiriting weather, faster than yesterday, I hoped he would think that I was just as worthy as the other women whose willpower he admired with kudos.

We are all on Strava, I’m pretty sure, to better ourselves with our own data. But on Strava, self-improvement meets social media. There are lots of apps that make living performative and competitive, but Strava overachieves in recreating begrudged necessity—exercise—as enviable experience. A runner’s workout on Strava, with a title and photos, is a declaration of who she is and, maybe, who you should be too.

Everyone on Strava is running and biking and hanging out together without you. Everyone deserves that beer in their Strava title, that creamy coffee in their photo, more than you. Everyone is more virtuous than you, exercising more than you, running faster than you, rising for more sunrises than you, improving themselves more than you.

One morning, lying in bed, I opened Strava and observed that another one other, a cyclist whose profile was set to public, had just burned 2,000 calories with my boyfriend. I had not yet put on pants.

I was curious, and Strava is a joyless data bank for the insecure. When The Washington Post reported in January that US military bases are visible in the GPS shadows of uniformed Stravites, I was not shocked. I had performed equally fastidious forensics on the cyclist’s Strava maps. Tracing her routes on that anxious morning and days to come, I could see where she lived, where she drank beer and got coffee. I knew how many calories she burned working out, and how often. I knew when and where and with whom she spent time (increasingly, my boyfriend).

She appeared to me as a pixelated avatar of who I thought my boyfriend wanted me to be, and I was obsessed. My boyfriend was appalled. “I can’t believe you want to fight about Strava,” he told me when I asked about her, not for the first time.

But we knew we weren’t fighting about Strava. We just were not the people we hoped we were when we met. One summer, his new one other invited him on a weekend bike trip to her parents’ vacation home. I dreaded my inevitable surveillance of its data, trying to confirm what I already knew to be true. Then we broke up. And after I watched their vacation on Strava, I quit the app.

I didn’t need it anymore. Somewhere in the maps—ours, theirs—I’d lost the one other I’d been on Strava to impress; I found, though, that I liked myself far better when I ran unwatched. My mom is still on Strava, tracking her runs and using the app the way it was perhaps intended, and not like those of us who are so unreasonable and in love. Recently she asked if I’d come back to Strava, so we could train together. I might, but this time, I’ll change my settings, and it will really just be the two of us.

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Inside Oracle High •
Call Me, Maybe •
The New Cyber Troops •
Comp Sci Diversity •
Paths to Early Stardom •
Why Teens Don't Drive •
Death of Middle School Romance •
Solving Health Issues at All Stages

Elizabeth Barber (@ElizabethKateri) is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.

This article appears in the April issue. Subscribe now.

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Science

Why It's Almost Impossible to Run a Two-Hour Marathon

One of the world's finest distance runners came so close to achieving the greatest feats of athleticism in history: a sub two-hour marathon. To do it, the Eliud Kipchoge should have maintained an average pace of at least 13.1 miles per hour. So, we timed how long WIRED staffers could run at that speed. Needless to say, we didn't last long. Here's why only a handful of people in the world could ever come close to a two-hour marathon.

Today, it came to pass. Five years after the breakout of House of Cards, a decade or so into the era of "prestige television," and a season or two into the decline of Game of Thrones, Netflix is finally the king of television. The streaming giant beat out HBO with 112 Emmy nominations, besting the cable network's 108 and ending its 17-year streak of getting the most Television Academy nods.

It feels like it happened quickly, but it was also a long time coming. Every year since 2013, when Netflix gained entry into the ranks of prestige television by earning a now-meager-seeming 14 nominations for its original programming, the service's ascent has been written on the wall. Year over year, it's pumped more and more cash into new programming (reports indicate Netflix could drop anywhere from $8 billion to $13 billion on content this year, way more than HBO). As it's done so, Netflix has been able to cast a huge net, pulling in viewers with big, expensive shows like The Crown, which earned 13 nominations today, and cult-y surprise hits like Stranger Things, which nabbed 12. (Other Netflix nominees included GLOW, Ozark, Queer Eye, Black Mirror, and Grace and Frankie.)

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And Netflix isn't the only streaming service shifting the equation. Last year, Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale took home quite a few trophies; a year before that, Amazon had a good showing thanks to Transparent. It marked the dawn of a new "Big Three"—NBC, CBS, and ABC being pushed aside by a trio of streaming services.

Of course, the actual Big Three have been lagging in the acclaimed-television for a while—pretty much ever since HBO, Showtime, and AMC started rolling out shows like The Sopranos, The Americans, and Breaking Bad. And HBO, for one, is feeling the pressure. At a recent town hall meeting in New York, AT&T executive John Stankey, who now oversees the network following AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, told employees HBO would need to broaden its offerings in order to attract more viewers, even indicating the network's new corporate parent would be willing to pony up for more original programming.

It doesn't help that as Netflix has ramped up, some of the prestige cable networks have lost steam. FX's The Americans, and awards stalwart, got five nominations today, but this was its final season. (Atlanta, though, is poised to pick up some of the slack for FX.) AMC, which did well for years thanks to Breaking Bad, only got one nomination for The Walking Dead. Showtime did well with 21 nominations for shows like Patrick Melrose, Twin Peaks, and The Fourth Estate. Last year pundits speculated that HBO had lost some steam only because Game of Thrones wasn't eligible for Emmy nominations, but even though this year the massive fantasy drama was—earning an impressive 22 nominations—that didn't stop the network from being bested by Netflix, despite Westworld having a good showing with nods for stars Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, and Ed Harris.

Whether or not any cable network will ever truly be able to catch up to Netflix is an open question. While the service is already spending astronomical figures on original content, it only plans to inject more. Analysts speculate Netflix could be spending north of $20 billion on content by 2022, and it's recently inked deals for new programming from hitmakers like Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Pose) and Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy, everything else you watch on Thursday nights)—as well as with former president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama.

Even if another cable network doesn't catch up with Netflix, though, another streaming service might. Amazon seems committed to original programming, with shows like Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail's adaptation of the podcast Homecoming and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins' series based on Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad in the offing. Hulu is going strong with Handmaid's and the forthcoming Stephen King-J.J. Abrams project Castle Rock. And Apple—oh yes, them, the other deep-pocketed tech giant not already in this conversation—is looking at its own slate of originals. The company is reportedly working with Oprah on content and has a show in the works with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Analysts suggest Apple's investment in original content will be on-pace with Netflix and Amazon in the next few years, and who even knows what Facebook and YouTube will do in that time.

But those are questions for 2020 and beyond. Right now, Netflix is king—and no one can challenge it for the throne.

Sacrilegious as it may be to ’90s kids, I was never a big Sonic the Hedgehog fan. I watched some of the (terrible) cartoons as a kid, but never having owned any Sega consoles, the history of the franchise itself is lost on me. So when Sonic Mania Plus was touted as improving upon last year's Sonic Mania with the thrilling additions of "Mighty the Armadillo" and "Ray the Flying Squirrel," I was confused. Deep-cut character additions can be revelatory for hardcore fans; for someone who doesn't have the Sonic rings as their ringtone, though, I worried whether there would anything compelling about the update.

To my happy surprise, I found something very compelling indeed: a remix.

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Games don't get remixed often. To remix a game the way one would a song—rearranging parts, adding in new elements, creating a renewed experienced that minimizes some parts of the original while emphasizing others—is a lot of work. The elements of a game aren't always recombinable, and the merged arts that contribute to a game are so fiddly that a remix can easily go awry, failing to capture whatever made its original inspiration work.

And yet even if it introduces new flaws, a good remix can be a thrilling means of encountering a fantastic game in an entirely new context. One of my favorite gaming experiences in recent memory is playing through Dark Souls 2: Scholars of the First Sin, a rejiggered version of the original Dark Souls 2 that moves around the enemies, adds new plot elements, and slightly changes the ending. It's a journey of discovery and surprise, the type of transformation that's able to make a familiar thing new.

Encore Mode, the centerpiece of Sonic Mania Plus, does the same thing for one of the best 2D platformers of the generation—and the game that won me over on Sonic in the first place. In additiong to tweaked color palette and stage designs, Encore Mode introduces the new characters, alongside the more familiar Tails and Knuckles, as consistent companions to Sonic. You collect these characters during the levels, and can switch between the two you've had for the longest amount of time. When one character dies, you don't start over—you just start as the next character. When you run out of characters, though, it's game over.

To further complicate this, each character has different abilities: Knuckles can glide, Tails can fly upward, Mighty has a powerful pound attack, and Ray can fly horizontally just about anywhere. Play, then, becomes an exercise in improvisation, mastering and strategically employing each character's skill set in a constantly changing situation. Combined with the increased difficulty of the new stages, Encore Made is less about speed than dexterity, less about excellence than survival. It's a more advanced Sonic for a more advanced player. I'm not that player, honestly, but the creativity on display is still exciting.

And as Caty McCarthy at US Gamer points out, it might be a promise: a suggestion of what this Sonic team, made up of ascended fans who deeply understand the franchise and its strengths, could do with a wholly original followup. Encore Mode suggests a deep insight into what makes Sonic Mania work, and though it's sometimes messy—punishingly hard at places, without effective tutorialization—it has the power to share some of that insight with the player. So far as I'm concerned, that's what a good remix does. It lets you see a thing you love that much better. By that metric, Sonic Mania Plus is a huge success.

For the entire history of moviemaking, men have been the focal point. There have been exceptions, of course, but the epic hero journeys, the buddy comedies, the spy thrillers—most of them revolved around dudes. Until recently. From calls for equal pay for actresses to calls for more women-led films, Hollywood has slowly been making strides to rectify its gender imbalances. There have been growing pains, but progress has been made. Things are working! There’s just one issue: The success of female-fronted movies is always measured against the boys who came before.

The most recent example, naturally, is Ocean’s 8, which opens today. A continuation of the Steven Soderbergh-helmed franchise starring George Clooney, it’s built around the conceit What if women had been involved in those heists? (Yes, I know Danny Ocean employed Julia Roberts in later installments, but Tess Ocean’s skill was playing a Julia Roberts lookalike, not, you know, hacking a security system.) As the story goes, Danny had a sister, Debbie (Sandra Bullock), who is also good at pulling off a job and has a whole cadre of other female friends who are too. Directed by Gary Ross (Soderbergh served as a producer), it’s 100 minutes of fast-talking, fast-acting fun. It's just like the Ocean’s movies that came before it.

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And that’s the problem. The movie’s critical and economic reception will forever be measured against those of the previous installments. As Hollywood has broadened its horizons to include movies led by women, written by women, directed by women, one question has always loomed: Will these films do as well as those from their male counterparts? Will critics like them? Will audiences go see them? Because the (very wrong) collective wisdom of Tinseltown had stipulated that audiences only wanted male-led films, movies that bucked that wisdom always got heaped with the burden of Having Something To Prove. It happened with The Hunger Games; it happened with the all-female Ghostbusters. It’s happening again with Ocean’s 8.

In a way, this can be a good thing. So far, the positive reviews have largely pointed out that it has the magic that the original three films did. When the movie’s early box-office tracking numbers came in, reports noted that it was in line to claim more cash than Ocean’s Eleven. (Though some were quick to wonder whether it would meet the same poor-performing fate as Ghostbusters.) By both of those counts, Ocean’s 8 is doing part of what it set out to do—prove that a previously bro-tastic franchise could be executed successfully with a cast of women. Behold: It is proven.

How it’s proven—and what it’s proving—is another story. In the lead-up to release, trade publications ran stories on how the movie's studio, Warner Bros., and theater chains were going to market the film. While the studio seems to be leaning on the movie’s stars—Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, and Helena Bonham Carter—theaters are drumming up interest with themed screenings. I went to one of these, a black-tie event at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn; it was a hoot, and the most dressed-up crowd I'd ever seen at an Alamo Drafthouse.

Thanks in part to the misogynist, racist reactions to movies like Ghostbusters, Wonder Woman, and even Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, fans now know that if they want to keep seeing movies like this, they have to show up in droves on opening night to prove they’re being serviced. No surprise that studios and theaters are more than happy to cater to that.

But that all side-steps the real issue. No matter how good Ocean’s 8 is—and it is—it will never be judged on its own merits. It’ll only ever be seen as an example of women being able to do something as well as men. And that’s the truly unfortunate thing. Ocean’s 8 is full of moments that speak to women’s experiences, moments that are more than just women doing things typically thought of as “guy stuff,” but because of the very nature of the “____, but with women” concept, they get drowned out.

Earlier this week, writing for Vulture about the fan trolling of Star Wars: The Last Jedi actress Kelly Marie Tran, Abraham Riesman wrote:

Movies in the Ocean’s franchise don't approach the scope of a Star Wars or Marvel film, but what he’s saying still applies. Ocean’s 8 holds its own, but it could’ve been better if that same group of eight fantastic women had been hired to pull off a job of their own design. When that happens, it will be clear that women can truly steal the show.

Over the past six months, on a patch of desert ranchland outside Marfa, Texas, one man's mysterious vision has been taking shape. First, nine massive chunks of quarried black marble were trucked in from northern Mexico and craned into a circular formation, echoing Stone and Bronze Age erections in the British Isles. Next, one of the megaliths, the "mother stone," was outfitted with a state-of-the-art solar array; at the same time, the other eight were carved to integrate LED lights and speakers. Soon—during a full moon, it is foretold—the whole thing will come to life.

According to artist Haroon Mirza, the layout of the stones was inspired by a 4,000-year-old site in Derbyshire, England, known as the Nine Ladies. There, if local legend is to be believed, nine women were turned to stone for dancing on the sabbath. Likewise, Mirza’s project, known simply as Stone Circle, seems frozen in time, juxtaposing long-forgotten cosmological and ritual uses for art with newfangled ways of harnessing and relating to the heavens.

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"It’s neo-Neolithic," Mirza says. "The idea of it is at least 50,000 years old. But the technology here is very contemporary, and almost, for this area, futuristic. In Marfa, since this project started people have only just become interested in solar energy."

Early in the process of developing Stone Circle, host arts organization Ballroom Marfa partnered with renewable-energy company Freedom Solar to install the panels on the "mother stone." Freedom Solar donated half the installation up-front and rebated additional money for every new solar customer that Ballroom Marfa referred. This incentivized local supporters of the project to experiment with solar panels on their homes and to talk about solar power with their neighbors.

Now the project has recovered nearly the entire cost of the installation, and at the same time increased solar kilowatts generated in and around Marfa by 3,000 percent. "By trying to fundraise, we ended up embarking on this campaign for solar energy," says Ballroom Marfa director Laura Copelin. "That was an unintended consequence—a surge in solar energy in West Texas."

Stone Circle may have launched an unexpected solar-energy movement in a part of the country best known for crude oil, but the project’s roots lie in its creator's fascination with far more ancient technologies. Mirza, 40, grew up in the UK as the child of immigrants and became fascinated by stone circles as an adult, touring archeological sites with his now-wife. "It's clear that they were referencing celestial objects," Mirza says of the ancient builders of sites like Stonehenge. "But why—whether it was ritualistic, whether it was a science experiment, or whether it was other reasons—is kind of unknown."

As his art began to focus on the applications of modern technology—earlier this year, he was an artist-in-residence at CERN, the research center in Switzerland that hosts the Large Hadron Collider—Mirza latched onto the mystery of how and why the ancient sites were built. He also began to think about how humans 2,000 years from today might similarly puzzle over our era's most cutting-edge constructions.

"When we look at a stone circle, we try to imagine the technology of a civilization that was active around that circle," Copelin says. "Mirza sees that same kind of effect playing out with CERN and some of the other large structures we have now. He's interested, in that sense, in colliding the past and the future, these two different sets of technology and different mysterious ways to mark a site.”

For art mavens, desert road-trippers, and anyone interested in the sorts of prehistory-referencing spiritual ceremonies popularized by Burning Man, Stone Circle will soon become a landmark on the West Texas tourist circuit. That circuit already includes Marfa’s Chinati Foundation, an Army base filled with Donald Judd’s minimalist sculptures; the McDonald Observatory, a major astronomical research locale; and Prada Marfa, a fake storefront deep in the Davis Mountains also managed by Ballroom Marfa, which has developed a minor celebrity among far-flung, semi-permanent outdoor artworks. (Mirza's work, however, won't be the only massive rock formation in that part of the country—Odessa actually has a Stonehenge replica.)

Stone Circle is intended to persist in the landscape for at least five years. Visitors can explore it on their own any time during Ballroom Marfa’s business hours. Full moon events, called "activations," will take place just after sunset. As the sky darkens, Stone Circle will come to life as a giant musical instrument, purring out all the stored solar energy captured over the previous month as a 40-minute program of surround-sound tonal buzzes. Mirza has composed music for the first few full moons, and he hopes to work with other composers to program new "solar symphonies" in the future.

Artist Haroon Mirza

Stone Circle was scheduled to have its first activation in late April, but a last-minute hailstorm threw a wrench in the plans. Such is life in the harsh environs of West Texas. The new target date for the debut of the sound-and-light show, with overhauled weather-proofing, is June 27. The event will reprise every full moon from then through 2023.

Mirza stresses that, while he hopes the full moon events will be festive, they’ll probably feel quite different from your typical outdoor electronic music event. As a musical instrument, Stone Circle is defined by its limitations—its tones can sound harsh and alien to the ear, and only three distinct notes can be played on any given stone. The musical result will be more Close Encounters of the Third Kind than Daft Punk.

"I don't think these compositions are going to be 'party,'" Mirza says. "I think it will bring people. I hope it brings people. But I don't really know what culture is going to form around it. I don't necessarily hope or expect people to come here for a rave. I think it might be a bit more contemplative than that."

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Technology

Visit an Audio Installation That Surrounds You With Sound

Envelop at the Midway is an experimental sound installation that promotes technology for making spatial audio. It’s also a performance space that fosters listening as a community.

It’s been 22 years since Tom Cruise infiltrated a CIA vault suspended from a wire in the first Mission: Impossible flick. This summer, Cruise reprises his role as secret agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible–­Fallout, the sixth installment in the $2.8 billion–­grossing series. Aside from its earworm theme song and stomach-clenching (and reportedly bone-crushing) stunts, the franchise is perhaps best known for its futuristic gadgets, often harbingers of tech to come. Our mission: consulting computer scientists, plan­etary physicists, engineers, and biohackers to find out what’s actually achievable and what’s still, you know, impossible.

Gecko Gloves

Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol
Hunt scales the exterior of the world’s tallest building using a pair of electronically powered gloves.
Analysis: In 2014, Stanford University researchers invented paddles that harness the science behind geckos’ sticky feet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing “gecko grippers” capable of grabbing space debris.
Status: Mission accomplished

Smart Contacts

Ghost Protocol
Agent Hanaway pops in a contact lens with facial-recognition abilities.
Analysis: Augmented-­reality-enabled smart contact lenses that superimpose information onto the user’s view could be available in three to five years, predicts Aleksandr Shtukater, president of lens startup RaayonNova. Google, Samsung, and Sony all have smart contact lens patents.
Status: Possible

Voice-Altering Strip

Mission: Impossible III
Hunt impersonates an arms dealer using voice-altering tech: a circuitry-embedded strip that goes over his throat.
Analysis: It’s already possible to imitate someone’s speech patterns using text-to-speech software. But a device that makes your vocal tract mimic someone else’s so your voice sounds like theirs? “That’s pretty far out there,” says Alan W Black, a language technologies professor at Carnegie Mellon. More realistic: Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at UC San Francisco, is developing a wireless device to translate brain signals into speech using a voice synthesizer.
Status: Impossible—for now

Gait Recognition

Mission: Impossible–Rogue Nation
Agent Dunn must bypass a gait-­analysis security system, which IDs people by the way they walk, to enter a closely guarded power plant.
Analysis: Mark Nixon, a professor of computer vision at the UK’s University of Southampton, developed a 3-D gait-­recognition system in 2008 that analyzes video to identify individuals by their strut. Now his newly improved system can ID a person from up to 100 feet away.
Status: Mission accomplished

Mag-Lev Suit

Rogue Nation
Agent Brandt dons a magnetic suit that—thanks to a magnet mounted on a remote-controlled vehicle below—levitates him above deadly fan blades.
Analysis: In 2009, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab levitated mice using a magnetic coil. But could the same science allow a human to hover? Perhaps. “The device would have to generate very large magnetic fields, like an MRI machine,” says planetary physicist Kevin Grazier.
Status: Possible

Tracking Implants

Mission: Impossible–Fallout
Hunt uses a “dermal stitcher” to implant tracking devices under people’s skin.
Analysis: Dozens of employees at Three Square Market, a Wisconsin tech company, volunteered to have microchips implanted in their hands last year, allowing them to unlock their computers with a wave. But the idea of tracking someone via a covert implant is impractical, says Amal ­Graafstra, CEO of biohacking company Dangerous Things. “Installing it would require scalpels and stitches, and it would only work at a very close range.”
Status: Impossible—for now

This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now.

If one thing's for certain, it's that Disney productions are tight-lipped affairs. Lucasfilm movies, Marvel flicks—these things are made under lock and key. So if you happen to ask people affiliated with those franchises, don’t be surprised if the answers they give are less than definitive.

Take, for example, Ewan McGregor, the man who played young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels. For months, rumors have circulated that the actor might reprise his role in a future film, but when he was asked about it during a WIRED Autocomplete Interview, his answer was one big shrug emoji. "Who knows," he replied. "I really don't know. I'm not sure. I'd like to!"

The same is true for his Christopher Robin costar Hayley Atwell, who was able to offer up a big "Not that I know of!" when asked if she was going to be in an upcoming Avengers movie. This, of course, seems far more likely to be true considering her Agent Peggy Carter is technically dead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But with movies based on comics, who knows?!

What other Google questions did McGregor and Atwell answer? Watch the video above to find out.

In Boots Riley’s trippy new film Sorry to Bother You, hunger is the main throughline. The hunger for truth. The hunger for justice. The hunger to succeed personally, and even more so in one’s professional life. At RegalView, a low-level telemarketing firm in Oakland, one path to success presents itself in the form of code-switching. The disaffected Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield) is hungry to prove himself.

He’s a damaged soul eager for anything other than failure and hardship. On the advice of a coworker (Danny Glover), Cassius begins to use a “white voice” when speaking with prospective customers—what white people “wished they sounded like,” Glover explains—and its pay-off is immediate as it is hilarious (Cassius's white voice is orated by David Cross). He becomes the company’s top salesman, earning the title of “Power Caller” and a promotion upstairs, where it’s required he talk in his white voice at all times.

But professional advancement comes with a moral clause. Cassius is wedged between doing what is right and what is profitable; one reason he took the job in the first place was to help his uncle save his home, which was in foreclosure. These are questions of survival Riley is volleying at us—what, exactly, are you willing to give up for the American Dream? Your friends? Your principles? For someone like Cassius, there are always conditions to Making It. For black people, in particular, success has its own fine print.

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Sorry to Bother You is a deliciously untame thing: an allegorical satire about the exploitation of labor and land. (It joins a cohort of black futurity coming to the screen in recent years, including Get Out by Jordan Peele and Random Acts of Flyness, which debuts in August on HBO; Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death is also in development at HBO.) Like reality, the film is a genre mash-up in the most satisfying of ways—part workplace comedy, part existential drama, with elements of science fiction. The movie’s heart centers on economic injustice and class struggle. It’s heavy stuff, and rightfully so. These are heavy times. But longtime activist and rapper Riley, who wrote and directed the film, never burdens the audience with too much at once: he garnishes the film’s steady unease with splashes of dark humor courtesy of its leading cast (an exceptional Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, and Armie Hammer).

The tsuris surrounding Cassius worsens as coworkers form a union and threaten RegalView brass with a strike. “Trouble’s already here,” Squeeze (Steven Yeun), the lead organizer, says at one point. “I’m just helping folks fix it.” But it’s too late for Cassius; intoxicated by the taste of success, he refuses to join their cause, even as his artist girlfriend, Detroit (a radically enchanting Thompson), finds his new situation at odds with her own beliefs. (According to one of her t-shirts: “The future is female ejaculation.”)

Riley’s gonzo dystopia begins to unfurl in greater detail once Cassius settles in on the executive level, where he sells slave labor “over the phone.” RegalView, as it turns out, is part of a larger corporation called WorryFree Solutions. Its deranged visionary of a CEO, the bro-y, coked-out Steve Lift (a role Hammer was destined to play) offers people lifetime employment, housing, and food in exchange for non-stop labor. WorryFree, however, is anything but paradise. Individuals who sign up live in prison-like accommodations, eat scraps, and work as indentured servants for the rest of their lives. It’s a perverse critique of human capital—the gig economy, mass incarceration, and an underpaid workforce collapsed into one sinister illustration—and an existence that doesn’t feel too far from what one possible future holds in false utopias like Silicon Valley. In this, Riley gives us one of the year’s sharpest pieces of political art. Sorry to Bother You arises from the best kind of fiction, one inspired from the fury and turbulence of real life.

In the film’s final and most revealing act Cassius is stirred from slumber. After a one-on-one meeting with Lift takes an absurd turn, he’s forced to reconsider the cost and question of his success (I won’t spoil the surprise here). For his part, Riley reconstructs the do-anything pursuit of capitalism into a collage of racial horror. The conclusion is both shocking and oddly poetic, but never once did it read as unbelievable. Throughout, the film’s aims remain locked on the issue of hunger. Only, in the end, Riley isn’t afraid to take it one step further and show how the powerless, and people of color in particular, no matter how much fight they put up, ultimately get swallowed whole.

The last seven days have been difficult for all kids of reasons, most more important than the [closure of the final Toys "R" Us stores], even though folks did need to take a moment to shed a tear at the site of mascot Goeffrey the Giraffe leaving the store one last time. (We’ll leave it to you to work out the importance of the World Cup on your own, because your mileage may vary.) As the world worries about how bad the upcoming Trump/Putin summit will be, take a moment to distract yourself with everything else the internet has been talking about over the last week here.

Justice Anthony Kennedy Announces His Retirement, America Announces Its Anxiety

What Happened: As one man announces his intention to leave the Supreme Court, the rest of America slowly begins to panic over what that will actually mean.

What Really Happened: By Tuesday, it seemed as if the Supreme Court had already made its bombshell news of the year by upholding President Trump's travel ban. But, it turns out, that was just a warm-up for an even bigger announcement on Wednesday—news that was at once half-expected and shocking.

Yes, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, creating the second vacancy on the court in three years. Why is this important? Well, because Kennedy was famously a swing vote on the court—called by some the court’s most important member for that very reason—and because of who’ll get to choose his replacement, and what kind of replacement he’ll choose.

Trump famously said, during the 2016 campaign, that all Supreme Court justices he’d choose would be anti-abortion, something he backed up with his short list for the open seat he, uh, "inherited" in 2017. In other words, don’t expect any new pro-choice Supreme Court justices any time soon, something that many are already thinking about, amongst other things.

You might remember what happened when the last Supreme Court seat came available. (If you don’t, just Google "Merrick Garland.") But that’s not going to happen this time, it seems.

Sure! Why wait when it’s your guy making the decision this time? Not to mention, this time around, thanks to what happened last year, it’ll be even easier to seat a controversial candidate.

The Takeaway: Take it away, Twitter.

Chief, Un-Staffed

What Happened: So much for the idea that John Kelly would bring discipline to the White House; instead, he’s apparently about to leave, likely for exhaustion.

What Really Happened: Cast your mind back just a year or so, to when Reince Preibus left the role of chief of staff for the Trump Administration, and was replaced by outgoing Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. He was, we were told "the perfect pick" for the job, a "beacon of discipline" who "won’t suffer idiots and fools." Seems great, right? So, how did it all work out?

For those wondering when “one year in the job” will actually be…

He started July 31, 2017, if you really want to know. But is he really leaving? Some poured doubt on the report…

…while others pointed out that, honestly, this is pretty much business as usual for the Trump Administration.

McMaster was fired days after Trump denied such a thing was a possibility, in case you don’t remember.

In many ways, this is a story people have been expecting for some time, especially considering Kelly had been reportedly sidelined and ignored for some time, prompting many to call for his resignation. Even as the media started to get its arms around the story, a follow-up report was already suggesting that Kelly could be gone much sooner than the end of July.

So what about those potential replacements named in the original report, anyway?

OK, so Mick Mulvaney seems to be counting himself out of the running, but what about that other guy, Nick Ayers?

Sure, but what about…

…Oh. That’s certainly an option, I guess?

The Takeaway: Worth noting: At least one rumor is placing former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks as a dark horse candidate for the position. Keep that in mind as we move forward.

Shine On

What Happened: As one vacancy opens in the White House, another—one that has been surprisingly empty for awhile—appears to close, with arguably the worst job applicant getting hired.

What Really Happened: Speaking of Hope Hicks—and of chiefs of staff, but we’ll get there in a second—this week, rumors started swirling that the White House may finally have found someone to replace her as the person in charge of communications after months of looking. He’s an … unexpected choice.

Yes, Bill Shine, the former Fox News co-president? In case you’re wondering why he left…

Oh, that’s right, he resigned amidst controversy surrounding sexual harrassment at the company. Still, surely he has some redeeming qualities.

But here’s the interesting thing: Later in the week, it turned out that he wasn’t going to take the job that everyone expected him to. (Indeed, he’d actually taken himself out of the running for that job months ago, according to reports.) Or, at least, he wasn’t going to take the job title…

Chief of staff for communications? No wonder John Kelly wants out. But as Shine officially accepted the gig—prompting some to wonder how much closer the White House/Fox News connection could become—others wondered just how someone went from "disgraced former network president" to White House official so easily. Apparently, it’s all to do with mutual friends.

So, for those keeping track: The White House has hired a man who was forced out of his previous job amidst allegations of covering up sexual harassment. Now he’ll be in charge of what the Trump Administration tells the American people—and it’s not as if the White House already has a credibility problem or anything—and, by the way, he got the gig because of the president’s close relationship with one of said network's hosts.

Surely someone has to be in favor of this move besides the president, right?

Oh, of course. It’s not as if O'Reilly has a horse or two in this race or anything.

The Takeaway: Even looking beyond the reasons why Shine might be ill-suited to the position, let’s just think about the turnover at the White House when it comes to people trying to shape the message.

So, About That Immigration Bill…

What Happened: When it comes to immigration, House Republicans really can’t get their act together, even with an all-caps assist from the president.

What Really Happened: Perhaps all of this is making you forget that children are still being held in cages at the border because of a Trump Administration policy that was said to have been halted by an executive order (that the president reportedly regrets signing). You might remember that, last week, House Republicans postponed an immigration bill in the hopes of getting it to a place where they could pass it. Certainly, the president sure did.

Last week, the postponed vote happened, and … let’s just say that the postponement didn’t appear to help its chances of passing.

That definitely didn’t go well. Indeed, it was a disaster all around. At least no one will portray it as a failure for President Trump specifically.

OK, sure; that positioning looks a little embarrassing for the president. Perhaps even more embarrassing is that support drew criticism from the media he normally relies on.

Meanwhile, the immigration system continues to be horrifically broken. If only someone was willing to step up and say something about how bad things are…

It’s a start.

The Takeaway: Protests against the administration's immigration policies started on Thursday with more popping up over the weekend. This is far from over.

The Annapolis Newsroom Shooting

What Happened: A newsroom is attacked by a gunman, and the person who said he was ready for "vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists" claims no one should try to connect him to it.

What Really Happened: Thursday afternoon, terrible news came from Annapolis.

The attack by a gunman on the Capital Gazette newspaper was reported by national media. But stunningly, reporters at the Capital Gazette itself kept updating the situation as it was going on.

The editor of the paper also took to social media after the fact, to address the press en masse on the matter.

The shooting happened just days after former Breitbart tech editor and internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos had made comments advocating journalists be shot. That didn’t go unnoticed on social media.

Such commentary didn’t go unpunished, either.

There might have been an alternate reason for that suspension, as it turned out.

But Yiannopoulos was unrepentant about his comments, instead posting to Facebook that his comments had been texted to a reporter at the New York Observer as a joke, and that, "if there turns out to be any dimension to this crime related to my private, misreported remarks, the responsibility for that lies squarely and wholly with the [Daily Beast] and the Observer for drumming up fake hysteria about a private joke, and with the verified liberals who pretended they thought I was serious." (As of this writing, the alleged shooter—and his motivations—are still being investigated.)

The Takeaway: Putting Yiannopoulos aside, let’s consider how incredible it is that the Capital Gazette did, in fact, publish a paper just hours after the shooting—and used its Opinion page to honor those killed during the shooting.