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Deepfake Porn Is Out of Control

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Google’s and Microsoft’s search engines have a problem with deepfake porn videos. Since deepfakes emerged half a decade ago, the technology has consistently been used to abuse and harass women—using machine learning to morph someone’s head into pornography without their permission. Now the number of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos is growing at an exponential rate, fueled by the advancement of AI technologies and an expanding deepfake ecosystem.

A new analysis of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos, conducted by an independent researcher and shared with WIRED, shows how pervasive the videos have become. At least 244,625 videos have been uploaded to the top 35 websites set up either exclusively or partially to

The Problematic Rise of Personalized Nutrition

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Chrissy Kinsella was looking for a more personalized approach to her health. “You know, what is good for you as an individual may not necessarily be good for the next person,” she says. So she reached for a subscription to Zoe—a personalized nutrition service cofounded by Tim Spector, a celebrity scientist and a genetic epidemiologist at King’s College London. Kinsella paid the £299 ($365) for a testing kit and later received a bright yellow package in the mail: a bundle of vials, patches, and muffins.

By testing, scoring, and monitoring how you respond to different foods, Zoe says, it can help with a whole host of problems. Its personalized recommendations

A ‘Green’ Search Engine Sees Danger—and Opportunity—in the Generative AI Revolution

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In the era of search wars fought between giants, it’s tough to be small. Berlin-based Ecosia offers a search engine for the climate-conscious, promising to be carbon-negative by investing all of its profits into planting trees—more than 180 million of them since it launched in 2009. It’s not likely to topple Google, but it has won a stable clientele of around 20 million users with that green branding and by repackaging search results from Microsoft’s Bing. But after a decade of little change in the search business, everything is now in flux, thanks to generative AI. “I’ve never seen so much change in the market as in the last

Millions of Workers Are Training AI Models for Pennies

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In 2016, Oskarina Fuentes got a tip from a friend that seemed too good to be true. Her life in Venezuela had become a struggle: Inflation had hit 800 percent under President Nicolás Maduro, and the 26-year-old Fuentes had no stable job and was balancing multiple side hustles to survive.

Her friend told her about Appen, an Australian data services company that was looking for crowdsourced workers to tag training data for artificial intelligence algorithms. Most internet users will have done some form of data labeling: identifying images of traffic lights and buses for online captchas. But the algorithms powering new bots that can pass legal exams, create fantastical imagery

15 Best Android Phones (2023): Unlocked, Cheap, Foldable

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We test a ton of Android phones. We like the ones below, but you’ll be better off with one of the options above. If you haven’t yet done so, check out our Best Cheap Phones guide for more.

Google Pixel 6A for $349: Google’s continuing to sell the 2022 Pixel 6A (8/10, WIRED Recommends) at a marked-down price (try not to pay more than $300). It’s still excellent value and a worthy purchase. It’s powered by Google’s first-gen Tensor chip, which means you’re getting some of the best performance for the money, and it supports all the same great (and helpful) software smarts as

5 Best Nanoleaf Smart Lights (2023): Shapes, 4D Kit, and Installation Tips

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Here are some tips and tricks we’ve learned from testing Nanoleaf products over the years,

Prepare before you install. Decide and map out what you want to do in advance. Nanoleaf’s lights attach to the wall with adhesive, so it’s possible to remove them without taking the paint off, but it’s easier to have your design already planned and set. Be sure to use a level to make sure they’re straight, since the geometric shapes will make it obvious if they aren’t.

Plan for power. Don’t just plan your design, but make sure your panels will end close enough to an outlet. You can also try to design your lights to

Best Gear and Tips to Keep Your Home Warm in the Winter (2023)

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We think of our homes as refuges from the outdoors. Sequestered away from the wildfire smoke and the pollution outside, we tailor our indoor environments right down to the degree as if we were all weather forecasters with magic wands. But homes leak an incredible amount of air. All that expensive heating you pay for during fall and winter mingles with the cold air continuously spilling in through windows, doors, floors, and electrical sockets. Buildings—even new ones—are a lot draftier than one would expect, and the volume of cold winter air that can seep through the tiniest crack or pinhole is mind-bogglingly significant.

There are ways to mitigate it with

Magnetic Minerals May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry

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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

In 1848, when Louis Pasteur was a young chemist still years away from discovering how to sterilize milk, he discovered something peculiar about crystals that accidentally formed when an industrial chemist boiled wine for too long. Half of the crystals were recognizably tartaric acid, an industrially useful salt that grew naturally on the walls of wine barrels. The other crystals had exactly the same shape and symmetry, but one face was oriented in the opposite direction.

The difference was so stark that Pasteur could separate the crystals under a magnifying lens with tweezers. “They are in relation to each other what

6 Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers (2023): Budget, Luxe, Tested by Experts

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There’s no such thing as the best mattress for everyone. Not when there are so many different sleeping positions. However, most people are side sleepers. The numbers vary by study and how rigidly you define a side sleeper, but between half and three-quarters of people sleep on their side. (The older and heavier you are, the more likely you are to be a side sleeper, and it’s recommended that pregnant women sleep on their side.)

Firm mattresses are nice for back sleepers, but side and stomach sleepers may typically prefer a softer

5 Tools to Help You Manage Email Newsletter Overload

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There are a lot of great email newsletters—you can find an excellent selection here—and they’re the perfect way to keep on top of the news and features you want to read without having to continually trawl the wilds of the web.

If anything, email newsletters are too convenient and appealing, which means they can quickly start piling up in your inbox. If you’re not managing them properly, you end up missing out on all the worthwhile content that’s been packed into them.

That’s where these tools come in: newsletter management apps that will make sure you’re not overloaded and have the time to catch up with all of the updates and