WIRED October 2019

I recently decided to purchase a phone that had more of what I wanted (battery life!) and less of what I didn’t (news alerts, social media notifications, emails). I used to have a device exactly like this—a flip phone that could last a week on a single charge, and that didn’t act like a supercomputer that trained all its gigaflops on distracting me. So I marched into my carrier’s storefront and was disappointed to learn that I had exactly one option. It wasn’t that cheap. It included a clunky browser and was cluttered with all sorts of other apps I didn’t want. It also had terrible reviews; people said it broke down quickly and often. Not that any of that mattered, because I had no choice. I bought it—and it…

Today, technology is making it easier to be more productive in every aspect of your life. Leveraging a plethora of apps and tools can help you focus on wellness, both mind and body, allowing you to become the best version of yourself, personally and professionally. The Takeaway: + Use your calendar app to segment your day. Making a concerted effort to schedule time—whether for focusing on specific work projects, checking emails, or taking personal breaks—will help put your mind at ease in trying to remember to accomplish it all. + Commit to using a wellness app during the work week. These apps have been reported to improve attention span, alertness, and personal calmness—ultimately, making you more productive. + Use auto-transcription. It can be a useful tool to get your thoughts down and send messages…

Last year, Adam Banzhoff was living in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, working an IT job at a bank and feeling morose. “I was in a downswing, a little bit of a depression,” he tells me. Then one day, on a whim, he signed up for Horti, a new subscription service that ships members a plant every month. Soon a crispy wave fern arrived, a frisky-looking thing with rippling tendrils. When the first new leaf appeared, it gave Banzhoff an electric thrill. He was hooked. A year later, between Horti’s regular shipments and pots he bought on his own, Banzhoff had transformed his house into a riot of green, with more than 120 plants. Crucially, it lifted his mood. “It really taps into a different part of your personality. That sounds kind of…

WHAT ALGORITHMS REALLY ARE The next time someone mentions an “algorithm” in workaday chitchat—so, in T minus 17 seconds—ask if they have any idea what in the godforsaken digitized hell they’re talking about. “Um, you know, something something Netflix,” most will manage to mumble. Others (hipsters, mostly) will say the real question is what to do about the doomier evil of surveillance capitalism, which algorithms merely enable. Then there’s the small minority of the techishly semiliterate who will inform you that an algorithm, tut-tut, is simply a set of rules for a computer to follow. Though technically correct, I hate these stinking snoots the most. Nothing like a bare minimum of knowledge to make a person ultimately incurious about the true state of things, which is this: Grasping algorithms just enough,…

Say hello to the future face of high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor. Well, minus its nose. The power car under construction here is part of an 11-car train set, the first of 28 new ones that Amtrak ordered from French manufacturer Alstom. Soon the whole set, dubbed Prototype 1, will be hitched to a diesel locomotive. Its destination? Pueblo, Colorado, some 1,600 miles from Alstom’s Hornell, New York, factory. Engineers in Pueblo will hook up Prototype 1 to sensors and cameras and put it through eight or nine months of intensive testing to be sure it’s safe for riders. All for an extra 10 mph! Three years ago, Amtrak announced it would spend $2.4 billion to upgrade its popular Acela service, which runs between Washington, DC, and Boston. The new…

$35,695 2019 NISSAN LEAF Nissan calls the all-electric Leaf its “tech flagship,” which means that, along with 226 miles of range between charges (up from 84 in the original 2011 model), the car comes with ProPilot Assist. Like Tesla’s Autopilot, it uses cameras and radar to pick out the vehicles in front and the lane lines on either side of you, turning highway cruising into a pedal- and (almost) steering-free experience. Also like on the Tesla, you’re meant to keep your hands on the wheel or very near it. If ProPilot thinks you’re slacking off, it admonishes you with a sharp beep and an alarming buzz in the steering wheel. It does this for good reason—like similar systems, ProPilot doesn’t react to stopped obstacles, so zoning out can be deadly. $44,990 2019 TESLA MODEL…