CATEGORIES

Doing Their Homework

What it takes to convert office buildings into housing

The Age of the Chief AI Officer

Why businesses need one, and what they should look for

LIGHT THE WAY

PHOTONIC CHIPS COULD SPEED AI WHILE DECREASING ITS ENERGY USAGE

Turning Tables

Sustainable furniture keeping chemicals out of landfills

Dive On In

What scuba reveals about supply chain management

Making Connections THAT WORK

Acro Service Corporation supplies organizations with top tier talent while helping them reach their Tier One diversity workforce goals

GOODBYE, CANDID CAMERA

An inside look at the genesis and triumph of mobile security pioneer LiveView Technologies

Wood Works - How eco-friendly timber is enabling the rise of “ply-scrapers” around the world

Anyone considering future-proof career options—a data scientist, perhaps, or an AI engineer—may want to add woodworker or even lumberjack to their list. This is not in case we all suddenly find ourselves, in some postapocalypse scenario, in need of log cabins to live in. Rather, it is because a growing number of architects, working with new high-tech engineered wood products as strong as steel and concrete, are already imagining tomorrow’s cities with towering timber skylines.

World Fairs - As Art Basel prepares for its annual shows in Paris and Miami, CEO Noah Horowitz discusses the cultural and financial impact of the globe's premier contemporary art event

Art basel ceo Noah Horowitz isn’t used to doing things the old-fashioned way. Before stepping up to lead the largest, most prestigious art fair operator in the world, he was Basel’s director of the Americas, in charge of the company’s most contemporary-leaning show in Miami Beach. Now he turns his attention from one of the youngest major art cities in the world to one of the oldest: Paris.

Beyond the Beach - Why Miami's Coconut Grove is booming

Miami’s oceanfront neighborhoods may grab international attention, but other parts of town offer as much appeal. The entire city is booming with development, says Jaclyn Bild, a broker associate with Douglas Elliman who was born and brought up in Miami. “The beating heart of Miami is now on the mainland, whereas before it was all about the Beach,” she says. “Neighborhoods that have been around forever are transforming into trend centers, and others are burgeoning for the first time.”

Foreseeable Future - Marketing and advertising exec Mark Penn reveals how Al can enhance business travel

In 2015 Mark Penn, a pollster, trendspotter and former chief strategist at Microsoft, created a marketing services firm in Washington, D.C. He was convinced that by focusing on the digital domain and data analytics, his start-up, Stagwell, could trounce traditional ad agencies and plunder their clients. His biggest backer was ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who pitched in $250 million.

Dry Season - How resorts and wineries are adapting their programs to attract nondrinking visitors

Resort and Spa in Napa, California, it has always been about wine—with a location just minutes from top wineries, a restaurant with an extensive wine list, and rooms looking out over working vineyards. Since its opening in 2006, it has been inherently clear that this hotel caters largely to oenophiles. But after a twoyear $25 million renovation completed earlier this year, there have been a few notable additions to the premises: new rooms, a refreshed lobby and expanded bar, as well as a newfound emphasis on speaking to a sober or sober-curious audience.

A Body of Horrors - How The Substance turned Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley into one of the year's best movie monsters.

Coralie Fargeat's outré satire about modern beauty standards is a cautionary tale and 2024's wildest psychodrama, in which Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley slowly transform into a modern Frankensteined wonder. When Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a 50-year-old actress turned TV fitness instructor, is fired by a network executive who deems her too old, she makes a Faustian bargain, injecting herself with neon-green plasma that lets her live every other week as a sexy, spotless 20-something named Sue (Qualley). But each time Sue overstays her welcome, parts of Elisabeth's body age at punishing rates. Soon enough, she will become Monstro Elisasue, a distorted ogress who looks like Anjelica Huston in The Witches, if that movie had been 17 times more sinister.

Theater - Artificial Theatrics - Ayad Akhtar's play about AI is missing a human touch.

Here's an ai prompt: Write me a vehicle for a movie star intent on making a debut on Broadway. Let's say he's a veteran of superhero flicks, so we want a character akin to his persona and a subject that comes with some contemporary relevance; maybe, because he played a tech genius onscreen, we have him wrestle with the vanguard of technology onstage. He's also acclaimed as a dramatic actor, so let's throw in a few hefty themes: addiction, suicide, adultery, trauma, and, for that genuine flawed great man zing, a pinch of misogyny.

Boy Meets World - Actor Mark Eydelshteyn's first English-speaking role is a vape-smoking, frenzied son of a billionaire in Sean Baker's fairy tale gone wrong.

Mark eydelshteyn and I are in a car zooming down a mountain road on the first day of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The young actor sits in front, while I’m in the back with two of the film’s publicists. His eyes light up as the driver informs him that his seat has a massager; he can’t believe such a thing exists. A few minutes later, he exclaims, “Guys, it really works! Let’s stop in a few minutes and change seats so you can try it out.” ¶ About half an hour later, as we settle in for our conversation in a restaurant with a dramatic view of the valley below, his buoyant mood has changed somewhat. He looks at me and asks quietly, “In your eyes, who am I?” ¶ Even stranger is what he says next: “I’m nothing.”

Inside the Patriot Wing - January 6 rioters are running their jail block like a gang. They're leaving more adicalized than ever

Early in the evening of July 13 in an isolated cell block of the D.C. Jail, about two miles east of the Capitol Building, a dozen detainees charged with some of the most violent crimes committed on January 6, 2021, were participating in a thousand-burpee challenge. The group made up roughly half of the inmates held in the block, a special unit sequestered from the jail’s other prisoners and known to its residents as “the Patriot Wing.” The challenge was in honor of a former resident of the unit, a fitness evangelist, who had recently been transferred out to serve a five-year prison sentence for attacking police officers with a floor lamp, a shoe, a nightstick, and a spiked club made from a broken table leg and nails.

Neighborhood News: The World's Largest Plumbing Repair - New York City's principal water-supply aqueduct gets a bypass operation.

The Delaware aqueduct, 85 miles end to end, is the longest tunnel in the world. It invisibly brings about half of New York City’s water, just over 500 million gallons per day, down from the Catskills to a holding basin in Yonkers. It’s about as old as Joe Biden, and it has not been drained for repairs since he was in high school. The stretch where it crosses under the Hudson (from Newburgh to Wappinger) passes through crumbly limestone, and it has been leaking for decades, now losing up to 35 million gallons of water daily. The best solution has been, as with many aging circulatory systems, bypass surgery. Getting down there required digging a pair of holes, 900 and 700 feet deep, then boring two and a half miles across to connect them. Two billion dollars and a decade later, that new tunnel is ready to connect to the old, and that means shutting the aqueduct off for eight months. Even just draining it so work can begin is a huge job. This summer, there were practice “dewatering events,” as the Department of Environmental Protection calls them. It’s a winter project because we use less water then.

The System: Zak Cheney-Rice - Kamala's Comedown How the Harris campaign became a grim slog.

After an exuberant summer, an autumn chill has descended on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The joyous rallies that were all over the news between mid-July, when Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket, and the August convention, where she and Tim Walz accepted the party nomination, have quieted into more familiar spectacles. Her once-ascendant polling numbers have stalled and her campaign has become cautious, granting TV interviews mostly to a handful of local news channels in swing states. If the first month of her candidacy was an exhalation after the suffocating defeatism under Biden, the last weeks before Election Day have felt like a collective holding of breath.

THE RACE FOR ADVANCED ENCRYPTION

Strong encryption hasn't always been freely available to the public. Nate Drake tells the story of how the first Data Encryption Standard transformed the cryptography landscape

Rip the perfect media file

MEDIA FILES COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES, and things are further complicated by the fact that video (and audio) files are constructed using codecs, which are required to decode and encode the various streams.

US wants Nvidia & Apple to use Intel's foundries

THE US GOVERNMENT has been busy over the past year or two handing out large subsidies and grants to help boost local silicon manufacturing efforts. Intel was once the undisputed leader in the race for ever smaller and faster fabrication nodes, but after major stumbles in the transition from 14nm-class to 10nm-class technologies, TSMC passed it by.

Apple, AirPods & your hearing health

Can AirPods Pro really be an effective alternative to traditional hearing aids?

The Eagle has landed

Intel's Lunar Lake arrives on the mobile market

iPhone 16 Pro

Bigger and better in almost every way

What's next?

More Apple product releases and upgrades to come

Find files and apps quickly

THE WINDOWS SEARCH TOOL—accessible from the Taskbar—is OK as it goes, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

WHAT IS ZTNA?

Nate Drake explores the concept of ZTNA and the obstacles businesses face with its adoption

Belkin Auto-Tracking Stand Pro

Get your iPhone to follow your every move

RYZEN 9000 UNLEASHED

Zak Storey puts AMD's latest chips and motherboards to the test

THE ART OF ETHICAL AI

Is the advent of AI a force for good, or a ticking time bomb?