The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

Science routinely puts forward theories, then batters them with data till only one is left standing. In the fledgling science of consciousness, a dominant theory has yet to emerge. More than 20 are still taken seriously.

It’s not for want of data. Ever since Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of DNA’s double helix, legitimized consciousness as a topic for study more than three decades ago, researchers have used a variety of advanced technologies to probe the brains of test subjects, tracing the signatures of neural activity that could reflect consciousness. The resulting avalanche of data should have flattened at least the flimsier

The Ring Air makes suggestions based on your circadian rhythm and the time of day. Get sunlight in the morning, delay stimulants until adenosine has cleared, and remember to stop drinking coffee toward the end of the day. It also uses heart rate drop as an indicator of recovery (if your heart rate drops earlier in the night, you recover better) and suggests reasons why it may not have fallen as quickly, such as meals too close to bedtime or alcohol. This is all commonsense stuff, and there’s a fair bit of unnecessary jargon when simpler language would suffice, but it helps to

Have you ever looked at your cat or dog lounging peacefully in their fluffy bed and thought, I want to get in there? Me too. Several times, I even lay my head on one, but that wasn’t quite the same.

Finally, I know what it feels like to be cocooned in a pet bed. For the past few weeks, I’ve been napping, reading, lounging, and snacking in the very expensive Plufl, a human-sized dog bed.

Sleep Tight

Some people have busy schedules that keep them up and moving. That is not me. I’m a lounger. My hobbies are rewatching Parenthood and scrolling TikTok on a comfy

The Luddites arrived on the streets of San Francisco much as they did in the English factories two centuries ago: under cover of darkness and with iconic weapons in hand. In this case, traffic cones. An enterprising activist had observed (or perhaps gotten an insider tip) that placing an object on the hood of a self-driving car blocks the sensors it uses to see the road. The car freezes. Many objects would do, but cones were handy, undamaging, and happened to transform Cruise’s robotaxis into four-wheeled unicorns. Unless it happens to be carrying a sympathetic passenger, the simple remedy of removing the cone is unavailable to the car. For

Editi Effiong’s excitement is infectious. It’s less than three weeks since his crime thriller, The Black Book, premiered on Netflix, and the movie has already been watched more than 70 million times. “I’ve been in a very happy place,” Effiong says. “You create a thing and watch it go out in the world, it would make [anyone] happy.”

The Black Book is one of the most expensive Nigerian movies ever made, with a $1 million budget raised in part from Nigeria’s tech elite, including the cofounder of fintech unicorn Flutterwave, Gbenga Abgoola, and Piggyvest’s Odun Eweniyi. The movie’s success—it claimed the most-watched spot on the platform in South Korea and

We’re living in a golden age of mobile photography. The gear in this guide will up your game for making content at home or out and about, using just your smartphone. Our favorite Android phones and iPhones have outstanding cameras, but tripods, mics, and video lights can elevate the quality of your work. Here’s everything you need to turn your phone into a pro-grade powerhouse.

Check out our other buying guides, like Gear and Tips to Make Studio-Grade Videos at Home, Best Compact Cameras, Best iPhone 15 Cases, Best Pixel Phones, and Best Instant Cameras.

Updated October 2023: We’ve added the Lume Cube Creator Kit

With the Israel-Hamas war intensifying by the day, many people are desperate for accurate information about the conflict. Getting it has proven difficult. This has been most apparent on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, where insiders say even the company’s primary fact-checking tool, Community Notes, has been a source of disinformation and is at risk of coordinated manipulation.

Case in point: An explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday was followed by a wave of mis- and disinformation around the cause. In the hours following the explosion, Hamas blamed Israel, Israel blamed militants in Gaza, mainstream media outlets repeated both sides’ claims without confirmation either way, and people posing

At 22 millimeters thick and 3.1 pounds, the Flex 5i won’t win any portability awards, but it’s hardly obese. The plastic all-gray design also feels basic to a fault, despite the inclusion of an accent stripe in slightly darker grey on the left side of the lid. The same no-nonsense keyboard and trackpad found on most Chromebooks are accounted for here as well.

Fast to boot and fast to wake up, I found the Flex 5i to be consistently speedier than the Acer 515—but only marginally, besting it on benchmarks by less than 10 percent across the board. Battery power however suffered by a similar proportion, perhaps a necessity to

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Roman Empire fell more than 1,500 years ago, but its grip on the popular imagination is still strong, as evidenced by a recent trend on TikTok. Women started filming the men in their lives to document their answers to a simple question: How often do you think about the Roman Empire? 

“I guess, technically, like every day,” one boyfriend said, as his girlfriend wheezed out an astonished “What?” He wasn’t the only one, as an avalanche of Twitter posts, Instagram Reels, and news articles

When Hamas launched its attacks against Israel on October 7, it unleashed a flood of rockets as cover, while militants streamed through holes in the fence surrounding the Gaza strip. One particular clip released by Hamas, played on news stations the world over, provoked a particular bit of paranoia: video of balaclava-clad Hamas fighters standing in a desert landscape, launching a line of suicide drones.

Amid the terror and chaos, the video seems to underscore a long-held fear that Hamas—with the help of Iranian technology—had developed the ability to conduct air strikes on Israel. What’s more, these drones may prove more adept than Hamas’ supply of rockets at thwarting Israel’s