Tabla de contenidos para May / June 2021 en WIRED UK

IN THE DRIVING SEAT This issue’s cover star, Lewis Hamilton – aka the world’s greatest F1 driver – was shot by New York-based photographer Mamadi Doumbouya, who specialises in bright, popping portraiture. “We’d set up a big rail of clothes according to the brief for the WIRED cover – chic, classic, nothing to distract from the subject. But Lewis had already been thinking about this,” says Doumbouya. “He knows his own mind and what he wants and doesn’t want. And he’d already got such a strong look – baggy sweater, braided hair, amazing jewellery – that was completely who he was, and we decided not to try to change that, but let it tell his story. I added the bright colours with lighting, but Lewis brought the personality.” DATA MAKING…

On March 14, 2018, Rio de Janeiro councillor and human rights activist Marielle Franco was murdered – shot multiple times in a crime that’s unsolved. Franco’s death caused commotion throughout Brazil, and even internationally, as she was a politician with a strong social commitment who had been denouncing the growth of armed militias in the city. But some of the first people to find out about the incident weren’t the local police force or the media, but users of an app called Fogo Cruzado, which alerts people to potential shooting incidents across Rio de Janeiro, so that they can avoid entering the area and placing themselves in harm’s way. “I was the person who gave the shooting alert in downtown Rio – only later I found out it was Marielle,”…

On New Year’s Day, 2016, Joshua Chibueze, a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Lagos, Nigeria, floated the idea on his Twitter feed of digitizing the kolo, a wooden box similar to a piggy bank, used in many Nigerian homes to save money. Odunayo Eweniyi (right), a fellow entrepreneur (and Twitter friend of Chibueze’s), was the first to reply to his tweet. “The conversation progressed from digitising to automating the kolo,” Eweniyi recalls. Alongside a third co-founder, Somto Ifezue, they built an online savings platform to help medium-to-low-earning Nigerians save small amounts daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. Launched as PiggyBank.ng in February 2016, today it is known as PiggyVest. Nigerians could sign up easily using their smartphones, automate savings and earn interest, with rates between six and ten per cent.…

As the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK in March 2020, Marc Warner stopped going to his usual work meetings. The NHS had put out a call for tech help, and so Warner, the CEO of London-based AI firm Faculty, rang investors and told them he would focus on the pandemic. “We joke that 2020 was so bad, I had to code again,” he says of the pandemic’s earliest days. “No one in Faculty wants that – I was never a great coder.” Faculty’s NHS work focused on two major areas. Firstly, the NHS Covid-19 Data Store, a collection of health datasets from NHS staff levels to Covid-19 deaths, was created with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir. It organises and makes data available to decision-makers. “Keeping data in a good state…

“The Ember2 is a Bluetooth mug that keeps your tea hot – it’s a bit Tomorrow’s World, but it’s actually a total gamechanger. My tea kept going cold and I realised I was wasting an outrageous amount of tea (and energy from the kettle) every day. Now it doesn’t – and I don’t.” “Matter, a social reading app, helps you discover, collect, promote and share text. It may be the reading solution the world’s Twitterati have been after for years. It’s a great way to handle the volume of written content out there, and the limited time we have to wade through it.” “I’ve been buying online since 2000: it always felt like a logical and sensible thing to do. Two second-hand e-commerce platforms I started using early on and…

At Instrumental, Conrad Withey has built a new approach to finding musical talent. Instead of relying on human preference, Withey looks only at data – social media and streaming numbers. The musical landscape is sparkling with “overlooked gems”, he says, because people are looking in the wrong way. After graduating from university in 1993, Withey worked at entertainment company PolyGram, developing projects for home video and learning an “audience-driven way of thinking” – analysing viewing figures across television, stand-up comedy and theatre, and targeting audiences with a VHS spin-off product. In music, it usually works the other way around – as Withey learned when he began working at Warner Music in 2006. Instead of capitalising on existing audiences, artists and repertoire (A&R) executives spot talent by listening to it, then…

Brand new for 2021, WIRED introduces its limited series of live broadcast events, designed as 90-minute episodes curated by the award-winning editorial team. WIRED INNOVATE Explore some of the startups using technology and innovation to help accelerate a change towards a sustainable, greener world. This episode will be part of the startup culture festival ViennaUP‘21. May 7, 2021 WIRED PULSE: QUANTUM Quantum computing could transform medicine, break encryption and revolutionise communications and artificial intelligence. Join us to explore the applications of quantum and its impact on society. May 7, 2021 WIRED BEAUTY Celebrating a sector that combines science, tech and innovation, our brand new event examines five exciting business trends, technologies and individuals paving the way to the future of beauty. June 16, 2021 WIRED LUXURY The luxury space has…

Wellbeing apps GoVox has developed an app that allows employees to answer questions about workplace stressors to help their employers identify and support at-risk individuals. Smart buildings WRLD3D and SmartCitti have created SafeDistance, an app that tracks movement within buildings to give employees a real-time map of high-traffic areas to be avoided. Distance-tech RightCrowd has updated its digital security card to incorporate a distance monitor and alarm if people get too close. Bristol-based SpaceBands put a similar system in a smart wristband. Screening apps Apple was a first-mover, with an app that prompts users to isolate or seek a Covid test. Others in the space include Blue Ocean Health Services, set up by Texas physician Kara Farley in July. Go contactless Minimising surface contact will be imperative. London startup Doordeck’s…

After three lockdowns, a 10pm curfew, and the inability to enjoy a tipple in a bar without a Scotch egg chaser, the last year has seen Brits get better acquainted with their drinks cabinets than ever. “People have become more interested in making their own cocktails – or slightly more intricate cocktails at least,” says Johnny Neill. “You see a lot more people putting photos and videos on Instagram and YouTube of themselves making their own cocktails, and being inspired.” Johnny Neill’s inspiration stems from long before lockdown – about 259 years, to be exact. The founder of Whitley Neill gin is an eighth generation gin distiller, with his family ties to the spirit dating back to 1762. The fundamental principals of distilling gin have changed very little. “For us…

From kimchi to kefir and kombucha, fermented foods are having something of a moment. The “live” and “raw” ingredients give your gut a much-needed boost of healthy microbes, the benefits of which have been linked to weight loss, allergy reduction and improved skin issues (all useful in a post-lockdown world). Health food shops have been selling fermented foods for decades – and kefir and kimchi can now be found in supermarket meal deals – but the process of extracting the lactobacillus (the good bacteria) from a glut of vegetables really isn’t that difficult to do at home, you just need to follow the rules and have a few tools. We would recommend laying your hands on a large, heavy, non-reactive pot. Any material will do as long as it isn’t…

Despite a deep-rooted (or should that be “seated”) love of toilet humour, discussing what goes on in the smallest room remains firmly off limits at times. This prudishness, however, means Brits are missing out on some serious toilet tech. In Japan, market penetration rate of these high-tech facilities is now more than 80 per cent, with bum rinsing, privacy singing and self-cleaning lavs found even in pub conveniences. Smart toilets are readily available in the UK, albeit at a premium. Roca’s In-Wash Inspira, the original Japanese smart toilet TOTO, and even Washlo – a thoroughly British alternative – are just a click away. If those still seem like a step too far, you can still upgrade your toilet routine so it’s less, er, crappy. SpotLESS Materials has developed a two-step…

IN the early 2000s, a Russian man named Boris Zhurid struck a deal to sell the Iranians a large collection of weaponry. He chartered a transport aircraft to make the delivery from Sevastopol, the largest city on the Crimean Peninsula, in the Black Sea, to the Persian Gulf. An old sonar manufacturer brochure describes what Zhurid was peddling as, “self-propelled marine vehicle[s], or platform[s]; with a built-in sonar sensor system suitable for detecting and classifying targets; and carrying an on-board computer… capable of being programmed for complex performance.” The cargo of Zhurid’s chartered plane? Twenty-seven animals, including dolphins, walruses, sea lions, seals and a white beluga whale. Dolphins attacking enemy divers with strap-on harpoons sounds like something from a James Bond movie, but both the United States and the Soviet…

The argument for a decentralised web is simple: the current system puts too much power in the hands of too few companies. Right now, every time we go online, we pass through invisible gateway servers. The hosts, Big Tech companies, can decide what’s allowed on the internet. The DWeb would be harder to regulate. Its contents would be hosted across users’ computers, removing the need for cloud servers. This parallel internet universe would still have browsers, but online activity wouldn’t depend on giving data to the tech companies providing the infrastructure. Browsing would be done securely over blockchain.…

Social networks are getting quieter. People will login to observe, but save their sharing for more covert channels, away from prying eyes and advertisers. Professionals are networking through invite-only WhatsApp groups; huge communities are sharing beauty tips in private Slack chats; and previously niche platforms are being adopted because of their privacy offerings. People are no longer willing to be fooled by an illusion of privacy. When WhatsApp sent out an alert reminding users of its terms of use in January, millions exited the platform. In the UK, rival Signal, which has a focus on privacy and security, briefly became the number-one downloaded app.…

In the internet’s earliest days, all we saw was its promise. The nascent technology was celebrated for its ability to connect strangers and to ease the purchase of staples. Internet evangelizers promised there would be a transformation in public dialogue and commerce – if law got out of the way, just as it had when the early railways and steam-run factories got their start. American lawmakers sided with the new inventors, young men (yup, all men) who made assurances that they could be trusted with our safety and privacy. In 1996, US Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which secured a legal shield for online service providers that under- or over-filtered third-party content (so long as aggressive filtering was done in good faith). It meant that tech companies…

New Culture Founded: 2019 Location: San Francisco, US Raised: $5.1 million Method: Uses recombinant protein technology to create genetically modified microbes that produce the milk protein casein TurtleTree Labs Founded: 2019 Location: Singapore Raised: $9.4 million Method: Grows mammalian cells (cow, goat, sheep or camel) in a lab, then places them in a bioreactor which encourages them to produce milk Impossible Foods Founded: 2011 Location: US Raised: $1.4 billion Method: The maker of plantbased meat alternatives such as the Impossible Burger has said it is now working on developing dairy products Legendairy Foods Founded: 2019 Location: Germany Raised: $4.7 million Method: Focuses on mixing microorganisms with sugar and fermenting them to create milk proteins suitable for cheeses Remilk Founded: 2019 Location: Israel Raised: $11.3 million Method: Using microbial fermentation, Remilk…

When rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, social media platforms could no longer deny their role in undermining democracy. Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the risk of allowing Donald Trump’s continued access to Facebook was “too great” after the then-US president appeared to be egging on the insurgents via his social media accounts. Twitter acknowledged that Trump’s tweets could “inspire others to replicate the violent acts” against the heart of US democracy. But Trump is not the only authoritarian world leader guilty of abusing social media, and America is far from being the only country to suffer from it. Variations of this story are playing out in the Philippines, Cameroon, Libya and a dozen other countries that rarely hit the headlines in western news outlets. The organisation we work…

Paystack Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, Paystack provided digital solutions for online and offline payments. In October 2020, it was acquired by John and Patrick Collison’s global fintech behemoth, Stripe, for over $200m. Farmcrowdy Nigerian low-income farmers often rely on crowdfunding to invest in their businesses, but finding sponsors can be difficult. Launched in 2016, Lagos-based Farmcrowdy connects potential investors to farmers in need. Bamboo Founded in 2019 by Yanmo Omorogbe and Richmond Bassey, Bamboo is an online brokerage service that allows users to buy, hold, sell, or gift stocks from a pool of over 3,000 listed in the US and Nigeria. In 2020, it joined Y Combinator’s winter cohort.…

PREDICTING SHORTAGES Faculty worked with one city’s fire service to combine staff data and human interviews into a system that predicts when crew shortages may be about to occur. RECRUITING RUGBY PLAYERS Harnessing player performance data, Faculty built an AI model that groups team members with similar playing characteristics. It’s used by one rugby club to spot talent. LONDON BUS SCHEDULING Faculty used historic data to help human bus-route operators plan departures – claiming it was 38 per cent better than their previous performance.…

“Is my cat happy or not?” – it’s a question that has been haunting owners of notoriously inscrutable felines since forever – but it may soon be answered, thanks to an AI-powered app. The prototype app – dubbed Happy or Not – was released by Sylvester.AI, a joint venture between Canadian Artificial Intelligence technology company AltaML and The Bar G, a portfolio of companies involved in sectors ranging from sleep gadgets to ranching and animal health – and it can use a photo of a cat to determine its level of happiness based on facial expressions. The app was launched after the developers at AltaML discovered the Feline Grimace Scale (FGS), a scientifically-validated tool for assessing acute pain in cats based on changes in facial expression, published in Scientific Reports…

It’s a wet, bleak mid-January afternoon in lockdown. Yet, in a room high above London’s Edgware Road, one tiny slice of the capital has been transformed. Daisies bloom in mid-air. A teddy bear, brought to life seconds ago, frantically paces the floor. Saturn’s rings orbit on the ceiling. The scene has been created in moments through augmented reality (AR), via a few clicks and scrolls from the Litho: a controller which possesses the power to summon the 3D visions and dreams of artists and free spirits. The conjurer is Nat Martin, Litho’s 26-year-old inventor. “No one has proven that mobile AR has consistently worked before – most Pokémon Go players quickly switched off the function,” he says. “With this, you can explore the virtual world while interacting with real life.”…

You’ve been looking at those walls for the best part of a year. It’s time to renew, renovate and repair your home – as well as the gear within it. Here’s our guide to everything you need to undertake those put-off chores, from high-end watch care to garden rescue and even our first ever “privy counsel”. Just as IKEA democratised the Allen key and revolutionised the furniture industry, tech-teardown specialists iFixit has created a range of tools that gives anyone the chance to explore, understand and repair their tech. This toolkit contains a 64-bit driver kit complete with a range of heads to fit the most recondite of screws, from Apple Watch Tri-Points to Nintendo “Gamebit” fasteners. There’s also an anti-static wrist strap, suction handles, prising tools, nylontipped tweezers, and…

Whether you have invested thousands or hundreds on a mechanical watch, it will need looking after. An official Rolex service, for example, will start from £600 for a Submariner, but although older models are recommended to be professionally checked every three years, new Rolexes only require servicing every ten years, which is a significant saving for careful owners. There are two things you should definitely do with your watch: clean it, and experiment with additional straps. With some simple kit, both can be done at home. Cleaning is simple, easy and needs only a slightly damp microfibre cloth and a toothbrush. Keep the lug spaces and the caseback clean. Not only will this keep your watch looking its best, it will stop it resembling the examples from which you cannot…

ON Sunday, August 2, 2020, Lewis Hamilton was piloting his black Mercedes F1 car around the final laps of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone when his front-left tyre exploded. It was a scorching summer day in the heart of England. Beyond the titanium ring of the car’s protective halo device, Hamilton could see picture-book clouds scudding across a brilliant blue sky, broken only by the angular shapes of grandstands kept empty by the pandemic. But the conditions – the heat, and a risky strategy brought on by an early crash – were wreaking havoc with the 20 vehicles that had started the fourth race of the truncated 2020 season. F1 cars are temperamental beasts and, in the current era of the sport, drivers must carefully manage the conditions and…

Ferret cleaners In the 1970s, the National Accelerator Lab (now Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, used a ferret named Felicia to scurry around their $250m particle accelerator to clean the instrument’s vacuum tubes. Felicia was eventually replaced by a machine – a “magnetic ferret”. Bat bombs During World War II, before automatic guided missiles, the US Army tested bomb casings that could hold 1,000 bats. The idea was to strap incendiary devices onto each individual bat, and then release the “bat bombs” over cities in Japan. The programme didn’t last. Honey navigators The honeyguide is one of the few birds that can digest wax. To access their food of choice, they have evolved to attract the attention of humans, then lead them to beehives. Once people have harvested the honey, the…

A common fallacy in thinking about content moderation is the mere practice of isolating and identifying the problem as such. It is enticing, especially to software engineers and computer scientists, to reduce the issue to a black box classification question, where we merely have to design a system that can take as input each piece of content and produce as output the answer to the question: “Is this OK or not?” Ideally, the inside of this box is a piece of software, but when the technology isn’t there yet, we can fake it by tucking some humans inside the black box – i.e. send the task out to low-paid workers sitting in content moderation farms. But the question of “Is this OK or not?” is never that simple. OK to…

For my grandmother, Valentina Rachman, leaving the USSR was a momentous and difficult choice. Making her way across Europe to a camp in Germany, and thence to a Displaced Persons ship that took her to Canada, meant facing enormous danger – including nearly being burned to death in an antisemitic arson attack in Poland – and then starting over in a new country where she had few contacts and could not speak the language. But even after she learned English and established herself and her family in Toronto, she continued to pay a heavy price for leaving: she was utterly cut off from her mother, brother, cousins and other family in Leningrad. She didn’t even know if they were alive. It was a decade before her phone rang and my…

Asking “who should have the right to a platform, and who should make decisions about what is allowed online?” is as old as the internet itself. Among the earliest instances of civil society collaboration with social media occurred in 2007, when Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas lost his YouTube account for posting videos depicting police brutality in his country. By removing the content, YouTube – a subsidiary of Google – was simply enforcing its own rules, but the story nevertheless made international headlines. Back then, YouTube’s rules were pithy. “Respect the YouTube community,” they began. “We’re not asking for the kind of respect reserved for nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons. We mean don’t abuse the site.” Regarding graphic violence, however, they were fairly clear: “Graphic or gratuitous violence is not…

Perfect Day • Take the genetic code for cow milk’s whey and casein • Genetically engineer microflora with the same DNA • Feed microflora on plant-based inputs (sugar, etc) for growth • Fermentation naturally produces the desired milk-proteins • The protein is then separated and dried into a powder • The powder is used with other ingredients to form the cheese Stockeld Dreamery • Plant proteins are activated to change their 3D structure • This enables them to mimic the behaviour of stretchy dairy casein • Combine it with vegetable oil and other secret ingredients • This “milk” is fermented by adding lactic acid bacteria • After incubating for several hours, the milk forms a solid curd • Place the curd in cheese moulds and press it into shape…

Like many of us do after dinner, Peter Juul Regnersgaard and his roommate Morten Ebdrup used to reach for some gum – until one meal in 2017, when the lurid neon hue of their chew, not to mention the wads of discarded gum dotting the pavements around their apartment in Copenhagen, gave them some food for thought. “We Googled how chewing gum is made,” says Regnersgaard, 33, who was working alongside Ebdrup at a small consulting firm at the time. The pair discovered a significant overlap between the ingredients of typical chewing gums and the raw materials that went into plastic bottles and bike tyres. To Regnersgaard and Ebdrup that seemed wrong – it was bad for the planet, and it made old gum harder to scrape off the streets.…

We’re entering a new era of space travel. But as private rockets take astronauts to the International Space Station, and Nasa plans its Artemis mission to Mars, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the impact space can have on the human body. “There are different types of space exposure,” says Peter Hodkinson, head of Aerospace Medicine at King’s College London. When US astronaut Scott Kelly spent 340 days on the ISS, scientists gleaned clues about the long-term effects of microgravity and solar radiation by comparing the changes in his body to those of his Earth-bound identical twin, Mark. New research has built on that study, finding an array of unexpected effects, on everything from gut bacteria to DNA.…

Smeg Cookware Collection Launching May, from £99.95 smeglondon.com Crafted from cold-forged aluminium, Smeg’s new cookware range features six-layered stainless steel bottoms, ensuring uniform heat distribution on all types of hobs. And while the tech is bang up to date, it still has plenty of Smeg’s signature 50s retro vibes. KEF Mu3 Noise Cancelling True Wireless Earphones £199 uk.kef.com Ergonomic and with an 8.2mm full-range dynamic driver, ANC, Bluetooth 5.0 and fast charging, KEF’s splash-proof Mu3 in-ear earphones offer a comfy, secure fit without compromising on sound quality. Dr.Jart+ Cicapair Collection From £12 drjart.co.uk Korean brand Dr.Jart+ fuses innovative skincare with playful artistic inspiration. With Tiger Grass at its core, the Cicapair Collection tackles daily skin stressors and irritators for a calmer complexion. Hermès H24 Refillable Eau de Toilette £87 for 100ml…

Zhanfeng cui, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Oxford, was travelling through Heathrow Airport on his way home from China in January last year. When he eventually arrived in London, Cui was surprised to find that there were no temperature checks or tests taking place at the airport terminal at a time when China was on high alert following the emergence of a new, highly-transmissible respiratory disease. “We [Cui and his colleagues] knew we had to contribute and help stop the spread of the disease in some way,” Cui says. So when Cui returned to Oxford, he approached Wei Huang, a professor of synthetic biology, and together they began working on a rapid coronavirus test that could be implemented at airport borders when passengers are making their…

Decorating that spare room is relatively facile; you simply pick a weekend, buy paint, rollers, brushes and masking tape, and do your best. Achieving a near-professional result, however, takes skill, experience and quality materials. WIRED can’t help you with the experience part, but assembling the right tools can go some way to achieving a decent finish. Airless spray painting is significantly faster than rolling, often requires only one coat, and results in the application of any area looking a little less, well, DIY. The Graco UltraMAX Cordless Handheld Airless Sprayer (£640 magnumbygraco.eu), uses 18V DeWalt battery packs for convenience, can spray 4.5 litres in a single charge and – with up to 138 bars of pressure – even thick paint is fanned out into fine droplets. By using a paint…

The average UK garden is 14m2, and if you’re lucky enough to own one, chances are you have been spending serious time and money on it. Between March and July 2020, Suttons Seeds sold 100 million lettuces, 25 million herbs and more than 15 million beetroot seeds, with sales 25 times the usual level. In 100 days of lockdown, 15 million people visited the Royal Horticultural Society’s website (rhs.org.uk), compared to 20 million for the whole of 2019. Meanwhile, online garden centres have seen a 25 per cent surge in purchases. The clamour for kale and cabbage seeds, and rapid emptying of garden centre shelves, was dovetailed by a peak in searches for “composting”. A traditional compost bin can loom large in a small space, but German startup Kalea has…

NEED TO BUILD A WALL? THIS ROBOT CAN USE POWER TOOLS TO ASSEMBLE ONE FOR YOU…

Given the increased clamour for government regulation of citizens’ online content in the UK, EU, Australia, Canada and many other jurisdictions, you might think that terrorists and violent extremists are rampaging across social media. This could not be further from the truth. Despite appearances, over the past decade governments have done little to define criminal thresholds for online content. Big Tech has filled this void by devising its own rules and regulations. At the international level, governments can’t even agree on the definition of terrorism, so Facebook was forced to make its own. Today, the vast majority of content that incites violence or is affiliated with designated terrorist organisations is automatically removed from large platforms before anyone sees it. The minority of content that does get through has typically been…

I joined Facebook in summer 2007. It was a few weeks before I was due to start sixth form, and represented a rare opportunity for reinvention. Before then, I, like most who grew up on the internet, had gone through clunkier patterns of online existence. I started with a Bebo website that was mainly about the anime series Beyblade. I used anonymous personas on MSN messenger and on forums. Even on Myspace, where I uploaded real pictures of myself, my image was heavily curated – reflecting the person I wanted to be seen as (in this case, an emo skateboarder) to a small group of friends. But Facebook changed all that. Rather than being highly customisable, everyone was given the same, standard-format finished profile. There was no more auto-playing music,…