WIRED UK July / August 2022

THIS MAN IS AN ISLAND Winni Wintermeyer photographs Oleg Savitsky in Berlin this issue—but not without first getting some inspiration from the Endel founder’s trippy audio app: “I’ve tried a few mediation and relaxation apps before, but the ambient soundscapes the Endel app created sent me off in no time. It got me thinking about how Savitsky’s app works‚ creating an island of sound around you, so I decided to shoot him near some noisy highway off-ramps I know, but having him looking totally unperturbed, because he’s in a calm, chilled-out world of his own.” THE REAL DEAL Sam Chick got special access to shoot in eBay’s super-secure authentication facility this issue, where goods from luxury watches to hyped kicks come under expert scrutiny: “Besides the piles of sneakers, I heard I’d also…

On March 23, 2021, the container ship Ever Given captured the imagination of the entire world—and inspired countless memes—when it became stuck in the Suez Canal. Passing through the 120-mile-long waterway generally takes ships moving between Asia and Europe around twelve hours and saves a twelve-day, 6,000-mile circumnavigation of Africa. Approximately 12 percent of global trade and 30 percent of global container traffic traverse the Suez every year, transporting over $1 trillion worth of goods. The Ever Given had been sailing north of the Great Bitter Lake towards Port Said, when winds up to 40mph caused the vessel to begin to veer from port to starboard, eventually coming to rest at a 45° angle across the channel. All maritime traffic on the waterway came to a halt. The container ship blocked…

What happens when you put an artist and an engineer in the same room? Apparently, you end up with a rollercoaster. Italian firm Zamperla has been designing and manufacturing amusement rides since 1965—around 9,000 of then to date, including the iconic, Dumbo-inspired “Flying Elephants” ride in Disney World. Zamperla also owns the entire Luna Park in Coney Island. Rather than working to order, Zamperla designs its own rides from scratch and pitches them to parks the world over—with Asia and the US accounting for most of its business. CEO Antonio Zamperla—who recounts being first “forced” on a ride by his father when he was five—says the company’s blend of traditional carousel artistry and high technology is unique. It takes between six and 12 months to design a new ride, starting with…

Celestial White Noise, a video consisting of ten hours of droning sound playing over a still image of a nebula, has been watched—well, listened to—over 56 million times since April 2015. An identically named track on Spotify, also featuring hours of humming, was a chart-topper in 2020. Blame it on the pressures of modern life, the pandemic, or good old weltschmerz: people cannot do without listening to buzzing sounds with supposedly mind-clearing effects. A cottage industry has sprung up, claims tech blog OneZero, with dubious noise-producers recording the sound of air conditioners, car engines, or data centers, sure that they will be listened to by millions, and rapidly monetized. This phenomenon was the inspiration for Oleg Stavitsky, co-founder and CEO of Endel, an app that creates personalized soundtracks to increase users’ productivity.…

IT all started with a scrap of paper. Over dinner on an icy Stockholm evening in February 2019, industrial designer Tue Beijer sketched an electric scooter made of folded metal. His best friend, Jonas Nyvang, was skeptical. So, Beijer turned the paper into a tiny origami-style model. “He actually showed me our first curve-folded bike prototype,” Nyvang says. Today, their startup STILRIDE builds electric scooters using “industrial origami”, using paper over stainless steel, and folded by robotic arms. “We want something that’s curve-folded from as few sheets as possible,” says Beijer. “It forms strong, light structures, and reduces waste and environmental impact.” Curve folding has featured in furniture for decades, but it’s rarely deployed on an industrial scale. “When you work with flat-sheet steel you can either fold, cut and weld in…

Abdulrahman Khalid grew up in the chaos of Baghdad that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He spent most of his childhood in the safety of his home, while sectarian fighting between Shia and Sunni militias was killing thousands on the streets outside. Snipers covered every angle of the surrounding neighborhood. One day, an anonymous gunman killed two of Khalid’s uncles in the Shia-majority district of al-Kazimiyah. No one ever discovered which side the killer had been on. “It was mostly random,” Khalid says. Khalid’s father was secular—unusual for an Iraqi at the time. But his Iranian mother professed a devout faith in Shia Islam, so Khalid attended a school in the local Al Yassin mosque to study the Quran. In 2014, a year after Khalid started high school, ISIS…