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Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller Gets an Accessible Box Design

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When the Xbox team at Microsoft first unveiled the Xbox Adaptive Controller back in May, the design drew applause from the gaming community. The fact that a prominent gaming hardware manufacturer was directly addressing the needs of disabled gamers with innovative product design was a moment worth noting. The controller, called the XAC, is remarkable for its simplistic design: On top, there’s a D-pad, a few menu buttons, and two giant round hand pads. Its back strip, though, has a multitude of ports that will let physically disabled gamers plug in any kind of assistive devices they need. The XAC is expected to ship later this year and will cost $100.

But when it came to inclusive design, Microsoft didn’t stop with the controller itself. The company’s designers took a hard look at the packaging for the XAC, both the cardboard that would contain the controller itself and the larger box it would would ship in. Gamers with mobility challenges don’t just need a controller that suits their needs, Microsoft’s thinking goes. They should also have an unboxing experience that makes them feel empowered. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in five Americans is disabled, with more than 13 percent of the population reporting mobility challenges or a physical disability; apply those numbers to the gaming population as a whole, and that means around 30 million gamers have some sort of physical disability.

In a video briefing with press last week, Microsoft’s design team shared more details on the research it’s done over the past year as it has designed the XAC package. The company said it plans to use the insights gained from the XAC packaging for future box designs, as well. “We treat packaging as part of the product,” said Kevin Marshall, creative director of design at Microsoft. “Packaging really has the potential to validate and shape consumer experiences.”

Getting Loopy

One of the first design elements of the XAC packaging that will stand out is its many loops—rings of plastic or ribbon placed strategically around the package at key access points. Through its research, Microsoft’s team of designers discovered that a lot of gamers with limited mobility use their teeth to unbox something. This is not only frustrating and potentially disheartening, but damaging to teeth. But if gamers can get an appendage through a loop, they can use that as a lever to open a box or remove a device.

As a result, there’s a looped ribbon at the seal of the product box. Pull on it and the box opens. The box’s top was designed with a hinge deep on the lower back of the box, “so you don’t need a broad stroke to lift the box top off,” Microsoft packaging designer Mark Weiser said. Once the box is open, there’s another loop, a wide, flat one that protrudes from underneath the controller. Pull on that loop, and the controller slides out. On that same “sled” with a loop handle—the one cradling the controller—is printed the XAC’s four-step, quick-start guide.

To get the controller out of the box, pull on the loop, lift from beneath the device, or just push the XAC out of its shallow tray.

Microsoft

If you order the XAC directly from Microsoft’s own website, even the cardboard “shipper”—the box that goes around the XAC box—will have a giant loop at one end of it. If you can grasp that, you can peel off the center strip of packing tape. After that, each side of the cardboard shipper falls out of the way, revealing the product box.

Getting the XAC out of the product box was another step in the process that was in desperate need of redesign. (Even gadget buyers without disabilities have struggled with unboxing. Apple is well known for its soothing and relatively hassle-free product extractions.) Microsoft says there will be three ways to get the controller out: you can lift it out using the negative space on the underside of the box; use the giant loop in front of the device; or use your hand to simply push the controller out of its shallow tray. The device’s cables also come in looped packaging.

Video by Microsoft

Weiser and Marshall said their team worked directly with around 100 members of the gaming community, across “multiple spectrums of mobility,” during their year-long research process. But they also stressed in last week’s briefing that they think this kind of design ethos will improve the unboxing experience for all gamers, not just those with disabilities. “We didn’t want to create something that was ‘othered’,” Weiser said.

Efforts by other console makers to create accessible products have been mixed. Sony’s PlayStation 4 console has settings that let gamers use text-to-speech features, remap controller buttons, and magnify text. Nintendo was rightly criticized by the AbleGamers organization in the early days of the Nintendo Switch for the console’s lack of accessibility; though some blind gamers have been able to play games like 1-2-Switch on it, thanks to a “rumble” feature that gives haptic feedback. (Portable gaming, in particular, can be challenging for vision-impaired gamers.)

Microsoft gained attention when it revealed the XAC not just because the controller itself is so intriguing, but because in the broader context of the accessible gaming world, it meant a giant tech company was paying serious attention to the challenges faced by some gamers. And that meant not just thinking outside the box, but also about the box itself.

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Maglite ML300L: The Illuminating Origins of This Tough Flashlight

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Back in the early ’70s, an ex-cop gave Tony Maglica a hot tip. He told Maglica—a machinist who churned out artillery shells—that police had a beef with their flashlights. The torches, usually plastic, broke too easily. The former deputy sheriff wondered if Maglica could make something solid, maybe out of aluminum. Maglica delivered a product so sturdy, it did double duty as a billy club. Patented in 1979, the rugged light anticipated needs that cops didn’t know they had—and made the inventor’s company hundreds of millions of dollars. A twist of the head could adjust the beam from flooding a crime scene to narrowing in on a suspicious bootprint. And there was the ingenious mechanism that rotated the battery contact, scraping away corrosion whenever the user clicked the power button. By the ’80s, the Maglite was standard gear for first responders. And a scaled-down version—powered by AA batteries instead of burly D-cells—made Maglite a hit with consumers. Newer models often use LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs. But most cops stick with the Maglite they got as a rookie. The dents are a kind of semaphore, signifying that the officer is as experienced as their knurled aluminum flashlight.

Maglite ML300L

$61

This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now.

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iLife V8s Review: Far From a Clean Sweep

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Designing a budget robot vacuum is an unenviable task. Most robot vacuums already operate within a very limited set of engineering constraints. They all have to be about the same size and make below a certain level of noise. The batteries have to operate for a certain length of time.

Within this set of constraints, the two dominant companies, Neato and iRobot, already offer affordable smart robot vacuums for under $300. You can buy iRobot’s entry-level vacuum for $299, and you can find Neato’s for a mere $200.

Can a budget robot vacuum offer something else that iRobot and Neato can’t? With the iLife V8s, the most obvious addition is a mopping function. Unlike with the Roomba 690 or the Botvac D3 Connected, you can switch out the V8s’s dustbin with a water tank and cloth mop to clean hard surfaces in your home.

But other than that, the V8s skimps on features. It isn’t Wi-Fi-enabled, so you can’t use it with Google Assistant or Alexa. You can’t check maps or a dirt detect function on your phone. It has a large dustbin, but it was hard for it to collect enough dirt and dog hair to fill it up. In sum, in the several weeks that I used it, this robot vacuum failed to convince me that it was worth it.

Run for Your Money

Setup was fairly simple: Just plug in the docking station and set the botvac on it to charge. I discovered that three hours on the docking station was usually long enough for it to charge fully. I measured the V8s at 12.5 inches in diameter and a little over three inches high, which makes it slightly shorter than the Roomba 690 and perfect for getting under low cabinets and furniture.

You control the vacuum with the included remote, which takes two AAA batteries. On the remote, you can select different cleaning styles—spot mode, path, or borders—stop, start, manually direct the vacuum, tell it to go home, or bump it up to max mode. You can also control it via several clear and easy-to-read push buttons on the top of the botvac, which are set underneath an illuminated LCD.

While it was running, I measured it at a relatively quiet 60 decibels in normal mode, which went up to 67 dB in max mode. Even on max mode, the V8s was able to operate for almost 1.5 hours without recharging.

Using the botvac’s buttons to set a cleaning schedule was a little like using predictive texting on a flip phone. It’s not hard, but it is time-consuming, and you find yourself irritated that you have to do it at all. First, you manually set the time, and then manually set the cleaning days. It’s a lot of tedious, repetitive button pushing.

I did like the vacuum’s mopping function. The water tank fits about 10 ounces of water, which was enough to mop my 12 x 12-foot kitchen. The water tank regulates how much water can soak through the mop so that it doesn’t soak a small patch of floor where you start it.

If you have an open floor plan, as I do, you can place the V8s at the edge of the imaginary barrier between your kitchen and living room, with the botvac’s sensors facing in the direction you’d like it to go. The botvac will then mop behind a virtual line starting from where it was placed. Unfortunately, the V8s was not great at detecting the edges of a low-pile rug, so I couldn’t use it to mop our living room automatically.

But other than that, the V8s’s navigational capacities were excellent. Although the botvac didn’t come with any barriers, I found that it didn’t get stuck, either. The robot’s 11 obstacle-avoidance sensors and three sets of floor sensors helped it navigate smoothly around my house. Its cliff sensors weren’t fooled by steps, and it stayed within the door jambs when I left the French doors open in the kitchen. In two weeks of testing, I never had to rescue it.

Dirt on My Boots

Of course, these great attributes are negated by the fact that the V8s was not that great at cleaning. Instead of a roller brush, the V8s uses tiny rubber flippers as carpet agitators, set around a small suction nozzle.

At a mere 5.9 pounds, the V8s doesn’t weigh nearly enough for these tiny flippers to agitate the carpet. It was ineffective at pulling dog hair out of our low-pile carpet, so much so that my spouse started using the push vacuum on our carpets and rugs after every cleaning cycle.

Each time I ran the V8s, it continued vacuuming for the full 1.5 hours until the battery drained. 1.5 hours should be fully sufficient to clean a 300-square foot house–some premium botvacs finish the job in around a half-hour–but I found high-traffic areas to still have dirt and dog hair when each run was finished.

One time, I ran the V8s only to find that it had pushed all the accumulated dog hair tumbleweeds out from under the couch, and laid them all precisely in a row where your feet go.

The V8s has a large dustbin capacity of 0.75 liters. At first, I was happy to not have to empty the dustbin once or twice during a run, until I realized that the V8s wasn’t filling the dustbin at all—even in my filthy, dog hair coated garage. I suspect that one reason for this was that the V8s’s suction nozzle kept clogging. Once or twice during a cleaning run, I had to flip the bot over and dislodge the wads of fur with a chopstick.

The large bin was also difficult to empty. The HEPA filter sticks down into the middle of the bin, and dirt and dog hair gets trapped behind it. I can empty most botvac dustbins by shaking them into the garbage can. But with the V8s, I used a cocktail shaker spoon to swipe out the dirt from behind the filter (don’t worry, I washed them both afterwards).

iLife’s Too Short

Excellent navigation is one of the most important attributes a robot vacuum can have, and it’s one at which the iLife V8s excels. It’s quiet, simple to operate, and well-priced. It also has certain thoughtful touches, like an automatic mopping navigation system that won’t cross into carpeted areas of your home.

However, if you’re looking for a robot vacuum to make a significant dent in the amount of futzy detritus lying around your house, you’ll be better served with another option. For just $30 more, you can control my mid-range pick, the Roomba 690, with your phone and get a much better clean.

So, I’m calling it: skip the iLife V8s. If you’re going to have to be a bot babysitter full-time, you might as well just pick up a Swiffer, and clean the floor yourself. Spend the time you might have devoted to digging around this robovac’s congested innards with your family instead.

Apple’s MacBook Pro Heating Problem Gets a Software Fix

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When Apple revealed its newest MacBook Pro laptops in New York City two weeks ago, it naturally emphasized the computers’ performance capabilities. Apple’s line of pro laptops is targeted toward creative professionals who do processor-intensive work on their PCs, and Apple was eager to appeal to them. There was just one issue, as some early buyers soon found out: In certain scenarios the machines were underperforming due to thermal throttling.

Apple now says it’s aware of the issue and is releasing a software fix to address it. In a statement released today, the company says it’s discovered a bug that’s been slowing down processor speeds when the machine gets hot. “Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down” under heavy loads on the new laptops, an Apple spokesperson said. “We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems.”

The fix will be available through a macOS High Sierra supplemental update going out today.

The fix will be available through a macOS High Sierra “supplemental” update going out today. It’s not just on the new 15-inch MacBook Pros running on Intel Core i9 processors (which is what many of the early complaints were about), but on all new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros. Apple plans to post the results of some of its latest internal tests—including a test that replicates a YouTuber’s experience running Adobe Premiere on a new MacBook Pro—on its website today.

The MacBook Pro software fix is the latest admission (verbal or otherwise) that newer models of Apple laptops may have scattered issues. It comes on the heels of Apple having to launch a repair program for the keyboards on newer MacBooks. But unlike the keyboard issue—which Apple has never apologized for and maintains has only affected a small percentage of users—the company is explicitly acknowledging here that it has found a bug in the software running on the new MacBook Pros.

Hot Metal

Apple first announced the new MacBook Pros earlier this month, in an airy Tribeca loft where a dozen Mac-happy professionals were on hand to vouch for the performance of the laptops. Initial reactions to the new machines (including my own) ranged from impressed—the 15-inch model is running on a six-core, Intel Core i9 chip for the first time, and can be configured with up to four terabytes of SSD—to sticker-shocked, since a fully loaded MacBook Pro costs $6,700.

There were also questions as to why Apple didn’t upgrade the 13-inch, non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro to include the latest Intel chips. This means that if customers want an Apple laptop running the absolute newest chips, they have to buy a MacBook Pro model with a Touch Bar. Buy a model without the Touch Bar and you’re running on outdated silicon.

But shortly after the new MacBook Pros began shipping, some early users and reviewers began to notice that their Core i9 machines weren’t performing as promised. It was assumed by many that the machine was being throttled so that it would generate less heat. One YouTuber, Dave Lee, demonstrated how his new Core i9 MacBook Pro actually performed worse than last year’s laptop running on an Intel Core i7 chip. He even ran a test of his new laptop in a freezer, rendering files in Adobe Premiere, and discovered that the render time was twelve and a half minutes less than it was when his laptop, well, wasn’t in the freezer. However, Jonathan Morrison, another YouTuber, ran a series of tests on two brand new 15-inch MacBook Pros—one with an Intel Core i7 chip and another with a Core i9—and didn’t have the same negative outcomes as Lee.

All of this happened after Apple estimated that its new, top-of-the-line MacBook Pro was “70 percent faster” than the previous model, all features and specs combined. (Apple doubled down in this claim in its statement today, repeating that customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70 percent faster, and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro to be two times faster, than previous models.)

Off Key

The software fix for MacBook Pros is also coming on the heels of “Keyboardgate.” Late last year writer Casey Johnston of The Outlinedetailed the issues she was having with her MacBook Pro keyboard, which were believed to be the result of particles getting stuck in the ultra-thin butterfly switch keyboards. Other customers came forward with their own stories of unresponsive keys on newer machines. Eventually, the company launched a free keyboard service program for any newer MacBook keyboard that has letters or characters that repeat unexpectedly or don’t appear at all; or if there are keys that feel sticky.

In order for something to be magic, it has to work in the first place.

At the MacBook Pro launch two weeks ago, Apple pointed out that the new keyboards were notably quieter (they are). But company representatives failed to mention one interesting detail, even when pressed by members of the media for more information about the keyboards: The keys on the new MacBook Pros now have a thin, silicone barrier beneath them, which was discovered by iFixit when the techs there tore down the new laptop. Though unconfirmed by Apple, it’s believed the keyboards were designed this way so debris wouldn’t get under the keys and the keys wouldn’t get stuck, not solely for the sake of quietude.

This may be a decent solution—you might even call it clever—to the sticky-key problem. But the real problem is larger, and that’s a lack of transparency on the part of Apple as to what’s really going on in the products it sells and how it’s managing the problems that arise.

You could rightly point out that Apple has always operated within a shroud of secrecy, so it’s not surprising that certain aspects of its engineering aren’t just blurted out in press briefings. But the recent issues with the MacBook Pro goes beyond the “magic sauce” it doesn’t want to share. In order for something to be magic, it has to work in the first place. These are premium products that don’t always live up to their maker’s promises. Apple sometimes openly acknowledges its products’ flaws, as it has now done with the software bug. But then again, it sometimes doesn’t.

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How to Make Instagram Stories: Ask Questions, Use Stickers, Save Highlights

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Since its launch in August 2016, Instagram Stories has been one of the premiere channels for everyday ephemera, a space for users to spontaneously share photos and short, often goofy videos.

Originally, stories were designed to vanish from your profile page—and your followers’ view—after just 24 hours. Now, stories aren’t so ephemeral. With the addition of Stories Highlights in December 2017, these short videos are automatically archived after the 24-hour period. You can put an archived story back onto your profile by marking it as a “Highlight” with no expiration date, thus curating your favorite moments for all to see.

The addition of Highlights is just one of the ways Instagram has been trying to establish an identity for Stories beyond that of a Snapchat copycat. In fact, Instagram has given Stories a slew of shiny new features, or “creative tools” in Insta parlance. Insta Stories are increasingly becoming less transient, more adaptable, and more interactive. We’ll show you how to use these features to flaunt your personality and tell a story all your own.

Get Started

You’re probably familiar with a story’s basic template: From your main Instagram feed, swipe right, or tap on the camera button on the upper-left corner, to access Stories. Take a photo with a tap of the shutter button, or record a video by pressing and holding. You can also repurpose a photo or video from your camera roll as a Story.

From there, you can swipe left and right on your Story to set the tone with one of 11 filter choices.

If you’re gramming on the go, you can also select, edit, and upload up to 10 photos and videos from your camera roll on your Insta story at a time. At the time of writing, this function is only available on Android, but an update to the iOS app is in the works.

Frame the Perfect Shot

The default camera format is Normal—basically, capturing a photo or video the same way your phone’s camera would. For more creative options, swipe through the menu that runs across the bottom of the screen (beneath the shutter button) to select different ways to capture content.

  • Type allows you to type text against a colored backdrop, no photo required. But if you’re so inclined, you can add a background photo by tapping the camera icon on the bottom right.Perfect for: Broadcasting a no-frills message.

  • Music lets you pick a song from Spotify to accompany your photo or video.Perfect for: Mannequin challenge revivals.

  • Live lets you broadcast a live video to your followers. Your followers will receive a notification to tune in.Perfect for: Fame!

  • Boomerang gives you a GIF-like video that loops forward and backward. The feature originated in a separate app from Instagram, but now you can access it directly in stories. Press and hold the shutter button to record a brief snippet of looping motion.Perfect for: Isolated action shots, like your cat doing a backflip or fireworks bursting open.

  • Focus focuses the camera on the subject’s face and slightly blurs the backdrop.Perfect for: Elegant portraits.

  • Superzoom automatically zooms into a subject. After recording, Superzoom adds theatrical music and effects.Perfect for: When you crave the drama.

  • Rewind plays your video backwards.Perfect for: Striking, topsy-turvy action shots, like a house of cards falling back together.

  • Hands-free lets you take your video without obliging you to keep your thumb on the shutter button.Perfect for: Elaborate Michael Bay-style camera maneuvers.

Add Visual Effects

If your image or video alone isn’t quite getting your message across, try Instagram’s native animations and illustrations.

Add text or drawings to your story by tapping the “Aa” icon or the paintbrush icon, respectively. For text, you can choose from a host of different fonts. For drawings, choose between three brushes and an eraser tool. Choose a preselected color from the bottom bar, or long-tap a color to access a more comprehensive spectrum.Perfect for: Making a statement about your art.

Almost all camera modes support augmented reality face filters. Choose from an array of masks and animations that embellish the nearest face. Having a glamorous photo shoot with a friend? Some face filters can identify two faces at a time. Taking a video? Certain face filters respond to audio, too.Perfect for: When you think you think your message would be best delivered if you were also a puppy. (Pro tip: Everything is more persuasive when you’re a puppy.)

The stickers icon at the top bar opens a menu of illustrations, some of which adapt based on the user’s time and location data. If you didn’t film with the music camera mode, you can choose to add a song with the music sticker. Access the GIF option from the stickers menu to peruse the multitude of animated stickers. The selfie sticker (which you can access by tapping the Instagram camera logo in a gray circle) is a thrilling one: use it to take a mini selfie and superimpose it into your story. When you’ve chosen the perfect GIF or sticker, pinch to resize it.Perfect for: Sometimes, nothing is more eloquent than the cranky coffee mug that has “Monday” emblazoned on it, or a rain of sparkling donuts.

Start a Conversation

Ready to really ramp up your Insta game? Instagram’s latest tools, found on the sticker menu, create more avenues for dialogue with followers beyond direct messages.

  • Mention other users in your stories by tagging them in text or by using the @mention sticker. Users you tag will receive a notification, and if your account is public, they’ll be able to add your image or video as a sticker to their own stories. Your handle is automatically visible and tappable, so their followers know where to give credit.Perfect for: Exchanging stories in a way that’s a lot quicker than regramming.

  • The hashtag sticker allows you to add a hashtag to your story. When users tap on a hashtag (via a sticker or via text), they’re redirected to the hashtag’s page.Perfect for: Every day of the week, from #mondaymotivation to #weekendvibes.

  • The poll sticker lets you ask your followers to weigh in between two options.Perfect for: Laurel or Yanny?

  • The emoji slider sticker lets you write a prompt that your followers can respond to by positioning an emoji along a sliding scale.Perfect for: The more nuanced questions in life, like “How ? is this?”

  • The questions sticker lets you write a prompt that your followers can respond to via a text-entry box.Perfect for: The default prompt reads “Ask me a question”, but you can also adapt it. Invite your followers to answer, say, “What are the best things to do in San Francisco?” or “What is the meaning of life?”

Quick PSA: When you respond to any kind of poll-type sticker, your response is not anonymous. For the sake of all that’s fun and good on the internet, know that the user can see responders’ handles.

The best way to boost your Insta stories is to experiment with the combination of creative tools that you think will tell your story best. If you’ve crafted a story you’re really proud of, add it to your highlights by navigating to the Story Highlights bar on your profile page, and your once-transitory story can grace your profile forever.

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The Best Trail Running Shoes (2018): Salewa, Vasque, Hoka One One, and More

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Instant Pot Max Review: Not Quite Instant Success

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Electric pressure cookers hit it big in American home kitchens a few years back because, along with the perceived lower risk of dinner on the ceiling, they cook food fast. Something like beef stew, which takes all day in a slow cooker, needs as little as 25 minutes under pressure. With an extra hit of power, Instant Pot’s new six-quart Max promises to take that speed and turn it up to 11, getting dinner to the table even faster.

Could it? I wondered. And what’s 11 mean, anyway?

Like many other electric “multicookers,” the Max has several functions beyond pressure cooking including browning, slow cooking, steaming, rice-cooking, and yogurt-making. Like a few fancier models, it can cook sous vide, though due to the size of the cooking pot, that’s of pretty limited utility. The big difference is that until now, electric models struggled to achieve 15 psi when pressure cooking, the way old-school stovetop pressure cookers could. Without that extra bit of pressure, electric pressure cookers couldn’t get quite as hot, and recipes took a little while longer than they did in stovetop models.

Now with 1,100 watts (compared with Instant Pot’s traditional 1,000 watts), the Max says, “No more!” It hits 15psi and gets dinner cooked an estimated 10 to 15 percent faster. It’s caught up to your grandma’s stovetop pressure cooker! It’s not as big a deal as the hype preceding the Max, but it’s a nice, solid step forward. For now, it’s only available in a standard 6-quart size and you’ll pay a premium—$200—for the improvements.

Now if only they could have boosted its searing capability. Searing is an electric pressure cooker’s weak spot, especially considering how many pressure-cook and slow-cook recipes use browning as a way to build flavor. Cookbooks and manufacturers like to tout the all-in-one-pot ease of multicookers, but I’ve always wished that the Instant Pots I’ve used could sear something in short order. They can’t. What I’ve learned with my own Instant Pot Ultra is to do the searing in a skillet on my stove, then to transfer the food to the pressure cooker, which saves a lot of time. Strangely, despite the power boost and several other incremental changes to the Max, the skimpy searing stays the same.

One thing I was excited to see addressed was slow cooking. Pressure cooking and slow cooking are extremely complimentary birds of a feather, essentially two different kinds of convenience and the two most important features of any multicooker. If you feel like prepping the night before, flicking a switch on the way out the door in the morning and coming home to dinner, then slow cook. Want to make it all happen after work or try something fancier on a weekend afternoon? Pressurize!

Figuring out those the improvements to the Max and how to take advantage of them was a little confusing when I started cooking. But fear not, I’ve done the screwing up for you.

Maxed Out

The changes to the Max means that it slow cooks like old-school slow cookers—slightly slower than multicookers’ slow-cook options—and pressure cooks with what’s essentially a turbo option. This means that the easiest recipes to follow with the Max will be old-school pressure cooker and slow-cooker cookbooks.

If you do use the Max setting with a multicooker pressure-cooker recipe, it’ll be done 10 to 15 percent sooner than it would be on the “high” setting. You can also skip the math and use the low/high pressure settings on the Max and it’ll cook just like the book says; having those options is a subtle touch, but clever and very helpful. If you use a multicooker cookbook’s slow-cook recipes, though, they’ll now take a little longer than the scheduled time in the Max, but that’s a good thing.

After reviewing America’s Test Kitchen’s new book, Multicooker Perfection, earlier this year, I learned that Instant Pots were the laggards of the slow-cooking game. The book gives pressure- and slow-cook instructions for each recipe and in a couple occasions, it goes as far as advising not to slow-cook some of its recipes in the Instant Pot Duo as that machine’s version of “low” ran at a significantly lower temperature than other models like the Fagor LUX LCD. Recipes like beef stew and ribs just took way too long to cook in the Duo.

I tried slow cooking Multicooker Perfection’s beef stew in the Max, before realizing I should have used the near-identical recipe in Slow Cooker Revolution. It meant that it wasn’t done as soon as I thought it would be, so I gave it a short blast under pressure and finished it in time for supper.

Lesson learned, I cracked open Slow Cooker Revolution and tried again. No dice! The cookbook said it should take nine to 11 hours on low and I started it cooking at midnight. I checked it at nine, I checked it at 11, and I kept checking it until four the next afternoon when I found the beef was still a bit chewy and the potatoes and carrots not yet cooked through. I gave up and swapped over to pressure cooking so I could have it in time for dinner.

As my wife Elisabeth put it: “Sixteen hours seems like a long time to not cook a potato.”

I tried again, this time making ribs from Hugh Acheson’s fantastic The Chef and The Slow Cooker. After eight hours bubbling away in a sauce made with gochujang paste and onions, they just squeaked in under the wire. They were good at the predicted eight hours (which is generous—some recipes call for six hours) but really hit their falling-off-the-bone sweet spot an hour later.

What puzzled me here was how Instant Pot could re-engineer a machine, seemingly address their slow-cooking deficiency but seemingly not try to cook the same beef stew and other dishes that had dinged their reputation just a few months prior.

Two other things you’ll want to watch: There’s been controversy around the Max’s ability to sous vide (which I didn’t test because I find it too small and clunky of a setup to bother) and canning, where it’s been rumored to skirt a bit too closely around food-safety rules.

What really had me scratching my head, though, was the E19 message that ground my machine to a halt. Having had my fill of beef stews, casseroles, and marinaras common to the multicooker and slow cooker cookbooks I’d been overdosing on, I swapped over to Dr. Uruvashi Pitre’s Indian Instant Pot Cookbook, being mindful to reduce the book’s proposed cooking times if I used the Max setting.

I started with baingan barta, searing eggplant on my grill, then combining it in the Max with onions, tomato, and spice blends like garam masala and goda masala, cooking it under pressure, then adding a little coconut milk once it was done. While that cooked, I prepped another dish from the cookbook, bundh gobi mutter, a simple mix of cabbage, peas, and onion with cumin and turmeric. When the eggplant dish finished, I quickly switched gears and used the Max to sauté the onion, cumin, garlic, and ginger, then added the rest of the ingredients, closed the lid and tried to pressure cook on low. A few moments later, the machine let off a series of beeps and the screen flashed “E19.” My friend Ted who was visiting and doing some armchair cooking said “that’s not good” then complimented the eggplant dish.

I let the machine cool down a bit and tried again, but the error message wouldn’t go away and I had a potluck to get to. The manual simply recommended contacting customer service. I swapped the cabbage over to my Ultra and finished it there.

The day after I made the eggplant, I was sure the Max would be up and running again, so I prepped the ingredients for Dr. Pitre’s famous version of murgh makhani—aka butter chicken—but I got the error message again and ended up cooking the dish in my Ultra. The chicken was fantastic, but apparently, my Max was fried.

Since the Max doesn’t hit the market until mid-to-late August, customer service was understandably unable to help. I asked a company rep and she said that “The error normally refers to the sensor in the lid being wet.” At first, I thought that since I’d rapidly swapped one recipe for the other that it might have been pushing the machine past expected limits, but then I remembered that there are plenty of pressure cooker recipes that suggest cooking for a while, then checking on things and pressure cooking for a few more minutes if the food isn’t fully cooked, which is essentially what I’d done.

The company rep also suggested that the glitch in the Max may have been due to it being “a pre-production model,” which is peculiar because we had arranged for me to receive a retail-ready production model for my testing. Still, the rep told me there are no differences between the machine I tested and the production models that will ship in August. So there’s all that. Make of it what you will. Maybe it was just a one-off bug with the model I reviewed.

That error message and the still-slow slow cooking really mucked up the works because the Max has so much going for it. If none of this confusion happened, I’d be wondering if it could unseat America’s Test Kitchen’s favorite multicooker, the Fagor LUX LCD. Instant Pot is not making staggering leaps forward, but like Apple does with MacBooks, the company made several smart, incremental changes to its current lineup to come up with the Max. It’s a little more powerful and there are additional little perks like a re-thought UI and a clever automation of the pressure release valve too.

Truthfully, you don’t need to replace your existing multicooker just to get this newest one—especially considering that it costs $200, and you can get a Duo on sale for well less than $100. Still, if that error message hadn’t cropped up and they had nailed slow cooking, it could have set a new standard.

If you are thinking about taking the plunge, the best tack might be to hold off for a few months and watch customer reviews to see if anyone else gets that E19 message, indicating a larger problem. I’d love to recommend the Max, but I can’t. Not yet, anyway. Your best bet might just be to stick with the one you’ve got and see if they ever put out a Max 2.

Charting Juul’s Face-Off With Legislators and Watchdogs

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Interesting things come out of teens’ mouths all the time, but one of the most controversial things to emerge recently is the wispy tendril of nicotine vapor from a Juul, a compact and discrete vaping device. Legislators and the FDA have been slow to move on the vaping craze, which has left the door open for companies like Juul to advertise and position themselves without the oversight many feel is necessary for products that have been proven to be physically addictive. Juul’s platform in particular has taken root in our youth culture thanks to its popularity among influential internet celebs. All of this has led to a chaotic marketplace that’s benefitted the vaping startups but made things rather sticky for everyone else. Nitasha Tiku joins the show to walk us through the weeds.

Podcast

Some notes: Read Nitasha’s latest story about Juul’s relationship with regulators and legislators. She also recommends the New Yorkerarticle on vaping from May, and Recode‘s story from July about the scrutiny faced by Juul’s investors. Nitasha’s first story about Juul from 2015, published at The Verge. David Pierce wrote about Juul for WIRED at the same time.

Recommendations this week: Killing Eve on BBC America, “Cult of the Machine” at the de Young, and the Hario ceramic coffee mill.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric, Nitasha Tiku is @nitashatiku, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Our theme song is by Solar Keys.

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Play Music app just by tapping here. You can also download an app like Pocket Casts or Radio Public, and search for Gadget Lab. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

We’re also on Soundcloud, and every episode gets posted to wired.com as soon as it’s released. If you still can’t figure it out, or there’s another platform you use that we’re not on, let us know.

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This Man Tried to Break the World Record for Paper Airplane Flight

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On Friday morning, an attempt to make history took flight: John Collins, otherwise known as The Paper Airplane Guy, tried to fly a paper airplane further than any paper airplane has flown before.

John and his “arm”—former arena football quarterback Joe Ayoob—had 10 attempts to break the current world record from the sprawling Pomeroy Sports Centre in Fort St. John, British Columbia. While several made it beyond the previous world record that Collins broke in 2012, none flew the distance of Collins’ current world record of 226 feet and 10 inches. Collins, though, was undeterred. “We had some planes we thought could do it, but you know, that’s why it’s a world record,” said Collins. “We had a great day, but not the best day ever, and that’s exactly what makes world records so incredible.”

With a moniker like The Paper Airplane Guy, it should come as no surprise that Collins takes the business of paper airplanes seriously. Besides the world record, his vigorous studies of aerodynamics and origami have led to the creation of a “boomerang” paper airplane that flies back to him and a “bat plane” that can flap its wings in mid air by itself. Earlier this year, Collins showed WIRED exactly how he made the world-record breaking plane.

In the days leading up to the attempt, Collins folded dozens of paper airplanes while Ayoob performed hours of practice. Collins says it takes about 25 minutes to make a competition-ready plane, and showed up with no less than 24 on the day of the attempt. That meant very little sleep, because when it comes to these perfected planes John says the fresher they are, the better.

WIRED livestreamed the event above, and on our Facebook and YouTube pages. If you want to attempt the world record yourself, you can learn how to fold five high-flying stunt paper airplanes like a pro.

The Best Backpacks for Work (2018): GoRuck, Peak Design, Chrome, Tom Bihn

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Post-Prime Day Deals: Dell, Bose, Urbanears

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We don’t know about you, but at WIRED, we are exhausted after perusing every spreadsheet and combing the Internet for every lastdeal after this year’s Amazon Prime Day. Most of you have probably used our unofficial national summer shopping holiday to pick up the noise-canceling headphones or the gaming monitor of your dreams. But with a little help from our friends at TechBargains, we’ve come up with a few items that you might still want to consider.

These Noise-Canceling Headphones Are Still On Sale

If you fly in crowded planes or work in a noisy office, you could probably use a pair of comfortable, noise-canceling over-the-ear cans. These wired Bose headphones are some of the best ones to be had for love or money. You can still pick them up for a third off their MSRP.

Buy the Bose QC25 Noise-Canceling Headphones for $199 (were $299).

A Few Other Great Tech Deals from TechBargains

When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works.

Small Business Tips

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Getting organized involves a lot more than just neatening stacks of papers and dusting off the clutter you have on your desk. Organization involves creating systems and procedures for all different parts of your business; this has the potential to help you become more productive and profitable. The ideas below include some of the best ways you can become more organized in your small business.

#1  Take Control of Papers and Documents

We’ll start with the paper since that is the biggest disorganization culprit for most of us. What do you do with documents after you take action on them? How do you store papers for future reference? If you don’t have a filing system and a digital archiving system in place, now is the time to build one. Start by taking a look at the papers you have laying around. Make a keep pile and a discard pile, then shred or recycle all of the newspapers, magazines, newsletters, cards, notes, etc. that made it to the second pile. If you’re not sure where to start, read this article from Staples that gives a thorough rundown on what documents you really should keep, and the rest is fair game for the shredder.

Now that you have a better idea about the type of documents you’re working with, it’s time to create — or improve — your office filing system. Susan Ward put together a helpful guide to creating a document management system that can help you create or fine-tune your paper process and get it organized.

If you decide it’s time to start moving toward a paperless office (read these pros and cons first), then you can start by scanning in and digitizing your receipts, using online invoicing and payment services like FreshBooks, moving to a digital signature program like DocuSign, and using the Cloud for data backup and archiving. If you collect business cards at events during the year, it may also be a good idea to invest in a business card scanner so you can digitize contact info immediately and ditch the paper cards.

#2  Use the Right Productivity Tools

We all have our favorite apps and tools we use every day, although some are probably more useful than others. In fact, for every one productivity-enhancing app you use, I bet there is another one that is just not the right fit, but you keep using it because you’ve been using it for so long and you’re used to it. This is why it is so important to — at least once a year — take stock of the apps and tools you are using in your small business and decide if they still meet your needs. This is also a great time to consider if you have some gaps and find the right tools to fill them. Below are some of the top areas where many small business owners find productivity tools useful. These should give you a solid starting point for getting your productivity tools organized this year:

Contact management. From keeping track of your customers to remembering people you meet while networking, every small business owner needs a system for managing contact information. You can opt for a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) system like Salesforce, or for smaller scale management you can set up your existing Contacts app to work for your business.

Meetings and communication. Whether you conduct meetings face-to-face, on the phone or via video chat services, there is a way to make the process more organized. You can use a service like Do to get your meetings more organized — before, during and after.
Accounting and bookkeeping. Organize and streamline the way you invoice, take payments, and manage cash flow with tools like Quickbooks Online, Xero, and Wave.
Travel and expense tracking. You can use apps like Expedia and TripAdvisor to make travel plans easier. Then, once on the road, apps like Expensify help you track expenses and make reporting when you get home a lot more organized.

Social media management. We all know how much time can be wasted on social media if you’re not approaching it in a systematic and organized way. This is why tools like HootSuite and Buffer can be invaluable for small business owners.

Email management. If you use Gmail in your small business, you have access to quite a few Google extensions that can quickly get your inbox organized. If you’re using another email app, try SaneBox for automatic filtering, reminders and more.
Project management. A good project management app will help you track tasks, share files and collaborate with teammates all in one place and it can be one of the best tools you can use to get your work organized. Try Basecamp or Asana for an all-in-one project management solution.

Productivity is a very personal process, and the apps you need will be specific to you the work you do and the way you tend to work. Take time to explore what your needs are before incorporating a new tool in your process. You may not need as many as you think. For more productivity tool inspiration, read this article with 101 small business productivity apps and explore these 27 time-saving apps.

#3  Get Your Computer Organized

This is a big one for any small business owner who does the bulk of his or her work on the computer. You probably know that it does not take very long for your desktop to become cluttered with icons, your Downloads folder to get so full of strangely named documents that it is impossible to find anything, or your email inbox to get so out of control you start to think it really might explode. Not only is this horrible for your productivity, but it can also slow down your computer’s performance significantly.

Here is a list of things you can do right now to get your computer organized and back into working shape:

Clean up your desktop. There are a couple of ways you can go here, and it all depends on your work style and how you use your computer. You can get rid of everything from your desktop except for your trash bin (remember that the app icons on your desktop are just shortcuts — all of your actual apps usually live in your Applications folder). Or you can add a few alternatives to your most frequently used apps and files. I tend to err toward the first option, going as streamlined as possible, but often using my desktop for easy access to files I am currently working on. Then I move them to their permanent home once I am finished.

Set up a digital filing system. Speaking of giving your documents a permanent home, this is where you create a filing system that makes complete sense to you so you can find the documents you need when you need them. This guide to file and folder organization provides a number of excellent tips to help you get started.
Update software. If your computer is set to automatically install the application and operating system updates, great. If it’s a manual process for you, you should check for updates at least bimonthly since many include security patches. Then, once a year, review the current versions of software you are using and make the decision if its time to upgrade.

Scan for viruses and performance issues. Regardless of what type of computer you have, all of them can get viruses or malware (yes, even Macs!). If you have a Windows-based computer, these PC maintenance tips from PCWorld will help you keep your computer healthy and running smoothly.

Verify the integrity of your data backup. You are backing up your data, right? If not, skip everything else for the time being and do this one first. You can either use a Cloud-based data backup service like Carbonite, Backblaze or CrashPlan or you can use an external hard drive that you plug into your computer (I do both). With either option, configure the service or drive to conduct continuous automatic backups so you don’t have to do anything manually. Then, once or twice a year, go into your backup service or drive and poke around to make sure everything is there and accessible should you need to pull copies to your local computer.

Wrangle your inbox. Many small business owners have a love-hate relationship with their email inbox. They love it because it’s a highly productive and efficient communication tool, yet they hate it because it can quickly get out of control causing unnecessary stress. There are things you can do to keep your inbox in line, such as using automation, streamlining what you receive on a daily basis, and limiting how often you check email during your day. Read this article for email management tips that will make your inbox a powerful productivity tool and not a significant time suck.

The tips above will help you get your small business more organized immediately, but remember how fast things can get out of control. Pair these activities with a resolution to conduct a quick and easy review of your papers, productivity tools, and computer status a few times a month so you can stay organized and prevent things from reaching overwhelming levels of disorganization.

What is Google My Business and why does it benefit your business?

Well, in a nutshell, it’s a tool provided by Google for businesses and organizations to use to “manage their online presence across Google, including Search, Google’s Local Pack, and Maps.” It allows you to manage business information, interact with customers, and expand your online presence.

For local businesses, claiming and verifying your business with Google My Business is one of the first steps that need to be taken to get started with a successful local SEO strategy.

Now, claiming and verifying your listing is just the first step. The work doesn’t end once that’s complete, in fact, the work to optimize your listing has just begun.

There is a bunch of basic business information you should include in your listing, including your address, local phone number, hours, business category, photos/videos, services/menu (when applicable), and website.

Filling in this information is not only informative for your audience, it can help deter competitors from filling in the rest of your listing. See “suggest an edit” in the screenshot to the right? People are actually able to make suggestions and edits to your listing, which you obviously don’t want them to do. Be sure to login into your GMB listing consistently to ensure all of the information is accurate.

In addition to the basic information, Google is now allowing people to add more substantial business descriptions to their listings, which is great for adding more detail for people to find out who you are and what it is that you do. Just be sure to adhere to Google’s guidelines when crafting the copy.

Boost Google reviews

Online reviews are becoming more and more critical for building trust with customers, and it is essential you get as many 5-star reviews on your listing as possible.

It’s also important to respond to all reviews on your listing, both positive and negative. It helps to show you are engaged with your audience and value their feedback.

Take advantage of Google Posts

This is still a relatively untapped area that not many people are taking advantage of. Google posts appear prominently on your listing (appearances-wise it kind of looks like a social media post). You can get creative with them by including images and CTAs. I’d recommend using this if you have an excellent recent blog post, an event coming up, a promotion…the list goes on.

these posts can be especially beneficial in mobile searches as that’s where they pop (this is a big deal considering the majority of searches on Google are now conducted on a mobile device.

Google My Business Mobile

It’s a very convenient way for users to get ahold of you, but you must decide if you want that kind of immediacy and those kinds of notifications, potentially on your personal phone (note, you can edit the number that appears in the text so that they don’t have access to your actual personal number).

Allow users to book through Google

If you have a business where customers have to make appointments, you can set it up so that they are able to do so through your Google My Business listing. This process can make it easier for both you and your customer. It’s basically a win-win.

Utilize Q&As

Customers like to feel like they can have a conversation with you. It helps to establish an emotional connection. Your listing has a Q&A section at the bottom. If you decide to use this feature, be sure to be responsive and active, because, like the suggestion feature, anybody can respond to the questions, so be sure to stay on top of it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media KPIs help brands to understand how well their campaigns are performing and whether they might need to make changes to their strategy.

Although there are countless metrics to measure on social media, the main things you should be paying attention to is,

  • Whether people hear about/see your brand
  • How often people engage with your company
  • The rate at which engagement transforms into conversions
  • The overall impact on your customer base

The key actions the viewers can take on your social media sites are these key social media KPIs,

1.          Clicks

2.          Likes

3.          Shares

4.          Comments

5.          Profile visits

6.          Active followers

7.          Followers or fans

8.          Impressions

9.          Traffic Data

WHAT DOES A GOOD INSTAGRAM CAPTION LOOK LIKE?

Well, put simply, a good Instagram caption is one that provides context, adds personality, and inspires your followers to take action.

 1# Use Consistent Brand Voice in Your Instagram Caption

Aside from the obvious tips on using proper grammar and spelling, one of the most important parts of any good Instagram caption is brand voice.

2# One of your best resources is other Instagram accounts!

Compile a list of your favorite Instagram accounts (and other accounts from your industry or business vertical) and see if any brand voice stands out to you.

3# Use Emojis in Your Instagram Caption

When you aren’t using emojis to draw attention to your call-to-action, you can use emojis to add personality to your Instagram caption.

 4# Add Mentions to Your Instagram Caption

Mentioning the handles of other Instagram users is an easy way to give back to your Instagram community and share in the Insta-love!

Mentions are a great way to connect with other Instagram users, and to promote one another to your own audiences.

 5# Disclose Your Sponsored Posts

With the recent spat of Instagram influencers getting in trouble for not disclosing when their posts sponsored, it’s more important than ever to be transparent about when you’re getting paid to promote a

6# Use Hashtags in Your Instagram Caption

Using hashtags to your Instagram caption isn’t mandatory, but it definitely helps!

Not only can hashtags help you gain more Instagram followers, but they’re a great way to connect with customers, find content created about you by your followers, and build long-term relationships with influential partners!

7#How Instagram Hashtags Work

Every Instagram post you create can be accompanied by a short message or caption and a few hashtags.

8# Be Strategic with Your Hashtags

In order to be successful with hashtags, it’s important to be strategic about your hashtag usage.

The narrower the scope of the hashtag, the more engaged the users are. You’ll be shocked and surprised by just how niche hashtags can get!

9# Keep Your Instagram Caption Clean

Adding hashtags to your Instagram caption is a great way to make your caption even better, but be careful about how many you add!

[democracy id=”current”]

Elizabeth Holmes’ Downfall Has Been Explained Deeply—By Men

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Maybe Elizabeth Holmes, whom the SEC indicted last month for “massive fraud,” never should have asked herself, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”

The eye-roller slogan adorned a plaque on Holmes’ desk at Theranos, her ignoble blood-testing startup. She seems to have gravely misread it. Rather than goading her to courage, the words blinded her to the obvious. In launching a company with a sub-Edsel product as a keystone, she could fail. And of course did.

In May, the journalist John Carreyrou, who made Theranos his white whale for years, published Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, a potboiler about the company; I devoured it. But it didn’t slake my thirst for enlightenment about that epochal evildoer: Holmes herself. Holmes herself.

Virginia Heffernan (@page88) is an Ideas contributor at WIRED and the author of Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art. She is also a cohost of Trumpcast, an op-ed columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and a frequent contributor to Politico.

Holmes is no one’s maidservant or adjunct. She’s not Imelda Marcos or Ivanka Trump or Kellyanne Conway. Holmes is the master puppeteer of Theranos. It’s clear in Bad Blood that it was she—and no one else—who managed to drive the company’s value up to $9 billion without a working product; and she alone who was able to win unholy investments of trust, as well as a whopping $900 million from superstar investors, including education secretary Betsy DeVos and her family ($100 million) and good old Rupert Murdoch ($125 million). Holmes, in the book and now the indictments, comes off like a cheat, a pyramid schemer, an evil scientist, for heaven’s sake.

She’s also a woman. And we’re not used to self-made young female oligarchs lying outrageously, fleecing the hell out of other billionaires and conducting thunderous symphonies of global deception. There’s no American template for a powerful woman gone so gravely wrong. Holmes wasn’t insane. She wasn’t dissembling all those years to care for a sick child, or pursue another altruistic, if desperate, end. It wasn’t men, either. Though some have tried, she can’t—as the facts are laid out in Carreyrou’s book—be explained away as a victim of her deputy, sometime boyfriend and codefendant Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. She wasn’t caving in to patriarchy.

There’s no American template for a powerful woman gone so gravelywrong.

So—how to understand Elizabeth Holmes? Is there a feminist framework for reading her that takes into account her gender and singular experience as a beginning chemical engineer and self-made female billionaire that doesn’t absolve her of traditional moral responsibility—or, worse, agency?

Kira Bindrim at Quartz has nominated Holmes as “our first true feminist antihero” and has even risked admiring Holmes for her deep dark arts. “There is something spectacular about watching her ignore, override, or shout down dozens of male voices,” Bindrim writes. “Her chutzpah does command a certain dumbfounded respect.”

Bindrim has a point. But Holmes’ chutzpah—if we’re to respect it—must be identified. Bad Blood yields almost no sense of how Holmes saw and sees the world. What made her think she could bluff and bluff and bluff on what must be the lowest hand ever played in Silicon Valley—no cards at all?

Whatever the gender of bona fide blackhats, it takes years to unravel their evil deeds as either banal or outstanding. No doubt Holmes’ particular malevolence will elude observers for some time to come. To my mind, Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi virtuoso who was arrested in 2008, only came into focus in 2011, when Steve Fishman conducted a masterpiece jailhouse interview with him. In it, Madoff makes a clean breast of his crimes, but he also describes feeling, as he ran his fraud, ill-used by his clients. He sees himself as the victim of their tyrannical greed. They treated him like a slave, he complains. The clients, Fishman writes, “became giants of philanthropy, happy to take public bows, while, in his view, it was Bernie from Brooklyn who thanklessly drove the engine.”

Is this how Holmes felt, too, old Holmes from Houston, indentured to her would-be partners—Walmart, Walgreens, the US military—and her intimidating investors? Maybe she became a woman in the Scheherazade mode, dazzling her captor with her intelligence lest she stop and be killed. That female archetype is where Madoff evidently sees himself. But Holmes, if you listen to her, does not seem to see herself as servile so much as preternaturally suspicious—particularly of anyone who would doubt her.

This is hard to tell from the reporting alone. In Bad Blood, Holmes is almost always filtered through a man’s apprehension of her. As man after man reports it in the book, her signature misdeed was seduction and betrayal. She’s described as “hypnotic,” and men repeatedly regard her as an enchantress, a blond cipher who spun a mesmeric tale about a world-historical blood-sucking widget. But in these stories the flip side of Holmes is—brace yourself—a bitch who crushed the men who questioned her.

“She had these older men in her life whom she manipulated,” Carreyrou said recently on This Week in Startups.

That’s fun for a cartoon. And each of the guys in Carreyrou’s book has a full spectrum of vices and virtues: greed, honesty, irony, arrogance, etc. But while the men get to be flesh-and-blood moral agents, with full subjectivities and rich imaginative lives, Holmes in their telling falls flat.

That’s why I decided to listen to Holmes herself. She didn’t talk to Carreyrou for his book, understandably; she has no jailhouse ramblings—yet. But she has been giving talks now for a decade. So I watched them all.

Holmes, if you listen to her, does not seem to see herself as servileso much as preternaturally suspicious.

The idiosyncrasy of Holmes’ brain was obvious almost from the second she started talking to audiences. It’s in her you-gotta-have-faith success creeds. She’s relentless with them, has no shame about even the worst speakers-circuit clichés—a combination of curdled prosperity gospel and you-go-girlism from the aughts. They seem to shape her vision of the world and herself during both her rise and her fall, and they put her—as she rose and rose—increasingly out of touch with truth.

In 2009, at 25, she told a small group at Stanford that the ticket to success was “conviction” that you could “make something work, no matter what.”

She went on to say, “The worst possible thing in the world is to have someone who doesn’t believe in you.”

Whoa. “Make something work, no matter what” is uncomfortable in hindsight. But the bleakness of that second thought seemed palpable even at the time.

And I understood Holmes’ young-woman fears of being doubted. American feminists from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Rose McGowan cite as devastating to women their representation as unreliable, unfaithful, unworthy of being believed—or believed in.

Fundamental to the modernist construction of gender was Freud’s sweeping and devastating decision that women who said they’d been raped as children had no hold on facts. He declared that these patients were delusional, hysterical, perhaps even expressing fantasies that their analysts would rape them. To “recover” for these female patients—in Freud’s scheme—was to realize first that they were sick in the head, cognitively untrustworthy and chronically lying.

No wonder doubt can seem like part and parcel of violence toward women. #BelieveWomen, as an imperative, predated #MeToo in contemporary feminism. But Holmes’ own resistance to being doubted—her conviction that anyone skeptical of anything she said or did wished her harm—seems at times to tilt into terror. Holmes often heard malice in even simple questions about Theranos—and she, as Bad Blood illustrates in story after story, went nearly to Weinstein-like lengths to savage and discredit her doubters.

Holmes therefore prohibited due diligence at Theranos, taking it as a personal affront when investors, employees, and board members asked for evidence of her outsized claims about the company. Skepticism, of course, is the sine qua non of any scientific—or financial—venture. Fear of doubt meant Holmes fired all doubters, thus guaranteeing the failure of Theranos.

Making empirical statements invites questions, so Holmes found ways to switch on a dime to airy platitudes when interviewers asked her for facts. When Charlie Rose asked her how she started Theranos, she looked at a point on the table to the right of Rose.

“I’ve always believed we’re here on this earth to try to make a difference,” she said.

Sometimes she celebrated the idea of asking questions even as she dodged questions.

In 2015, when rumors had surfaced that something was wrong at Theranos, Norah O’Donnell on CBS This Morning gently pressed Holmes on her technology. What if the pinprick Theranos used didn’t draw enough blood to test thoroughly?

“Every time you create something new, there should be questions,” Holmes said. “To me that’s a sign that you’ve actually done something that is transformative.”

On the very day of Carreyrou’s 2015 scorched-earth exposé of her company, Holmes joined Jim Cramer on CNBC by video. What did she think of Carreyrou’s article?

“First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world,” she said.

Not a good sign. (Trump used a version of that fake Gandhi quote on Instagram last year.)

Cramer pushed: What about the specifics of Carreyrou’s story? Holmes dismissed all of it as sourced by “the people who said to me there was no way I was going to succeed and be able to build this kind of company.”

In dog-and-pony shows for investors and the media, as Carreyrou‘s sources remember, Holmes relentlessly reprised a single argument: If you didn’t invest faith and money in Theranos you didn’t believe in the suffering of hundreds of millions dying for want of quick blood tests, and—worse yet—you didn’t believe in her personal capacity to save them.

That doubt, of course, would crush the Theranos market, which in turn would crush Theranos, which was mostly marketing. Holmes, for her part, seems to have believed, even as storm clouds gathered, that she needed only to suppress doubt more, and generate more faith that she could not fail.

She trafficked, quite literally, in blood; she promised Theranos wouldsave lives in hospitals, in homes, and on the battlefield.

Maybe that works for vision boards—the kind of magical thinking that some women, in the name of empowerment, have adopted as an antidote to self-doubt. Confidence is one thing. An absolute absence of rigor and self-inquiry is, of course, another.

Like many who sell blind faith, Holmes’ pitch turned on gravitas, pathos, and invocations of pain and suffering. She trafficked, quite literally, in blood; she promised Theranos would save lives in hospitals, in homes, and on the battlefield. Bernie Madoff would never have sounded so earnest. P. T. Barnum would never have played his con as morally urgent. But that’s why Holmes was—for a time—the billionaire they never were.

Eventually Holmes, like so many of us, got what she feared most: a whole universe of people who don’t believe in her. Holmes’s extraordinary gift was for tragedy. With Theranos, she pulled it off.

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The Challenge of Teaching Helicopters to Fly Themselves

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In the early hours of January 11, 2000, US Coast Guard helicopter pilot Mark Ward responded to a distress call from a ship taking on water, caught in a Nor’easter off the North Carolina coast. Battling 70-mph winds and 30-foot seas, Ward struggled to keep the chopper steady as he and his crew pulled all five fishermen to safety.

Ward recalls the mission as one of the most harrowing is the 22 years he spent as a search-and-rescue pilot. And now, he’s got a gig ensuring his successors won’t face the same dangers: He’s the chief test pilot in Sikorsky’s autonomous helicopter program. “Even a modest degree of autonomy, your workload goes way down and your stress and apprehension disappears,” he says. “The system sees things you can’t, and it processes information and reacts in a way you may not be able to.”

Even in a world where planes spend most of their time on autopilot and robo-cars are roaming cities all over the world, teaching a helicopter to fly itself is a gnarly problem. These workhorses must be able to hover over ships bobbing up and down on rough seas, and descend onto oil rigs in gusting winds. They have to dodge power lines and cell towers that may not show up on navigation charts, and balance single skids on sheer cliffs in order to rescue injured climbers.

“Helicopters have very high crew workloads and obstacle-rich environments,” says Chris Van Buiten, vice president of Sikorsky Innovations, the division of the Lockheed Martin-owned company that’s pursuing autonomous flight. A robo-chopper needs a lot more computation than a self-flying plane, he says, especially since the flights they take on don’t involve cruising between well-regulated airports. “You’re usually not called out to a sinking ship on a sunny day, but rather off the coast of Alaska at night in the rain,”

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The aviation industry is already deep into the challenge. In May, Boeing-owned Aurora Flight Sciences’s unmanned cargo delivery system, installed in an old Bell UH-1H helicopter, completed the first autonomous mission, bringing gas, water, and medical supplies to Marines in California. Lockheed Martin has been developing its K-MAX unmanned helicopter since 2007, beginning with remote-controlled and semi-autonomous versions that made supply deliveries in Afghanistan between 2011 and 2014.

Sikorsky’s version is the Matrix Technology system, which it’s been testing since 2013 aboard the Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft (SARA) testbed that Ward pilots, an adapted version of the company’s S-76 commercial helicopter. Its most basic functionality includes flying traffic patterns around airports and tracking moving objects on the water for approaches and landings.

More impressively, SARA has completed a 30-mile autonomous flight with takeoff, cruise, and landing—including landing-site evaluation and selection—all done by computer. That was enough to get it to the final phase of Darpa’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program, which seeks a system that will reduce crew requirements for existing aircraft. The company is also in the process of modifying two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with Matrix, to offer the Army “optionally-piloted” options for the aircraft. It will demonstrate these over the coming year.

Edging Toward Autonomy

The end-game for most of the companies pursuing helicopter autonomy is fully hands-off flight with human passengers, not just cargo. This will be key to the nascent air-taxi industry, and for military and commercial operators who may be facing pilot shortages. But it’s also the most demanding possibility, given the challenges of validating and certifying such systems to actually carry people on board.

“When we decided to go after this, the problem became reliability and safety,” says Igor Cherepinsky, Sikorsky’s director of autonomy programs. “We decided that if we’re going to do this, it needs to be just as safe as our other aircraft. That’s our guiding principle.”

That led to some counterintuitive strategies, like minimizing the role of artificial intelligence. “High-end artificial intelligence and deep learning are higher-order functions,” says Van Buiten. “Higher-order functions are difficult to certify. Until we know how to do so, we want to use more deterministic methods.”

That means using systems that don’t rely on interpretation or guesswork—which AI is essentially an advanced form of—but on defined and predictable behaviors. Cherepinsky adds that this is true across the board, from developing responses for when things go “off plan,” to applying computer vision data from the optical sensors. “Even our pattern recognition is done in a different algorithmic way. It’s very reliable and very flyable,” he says.

And where self-driving cars rely on high-definition maps of any environment they’ll explore, Sikorsky skipped the cartography and trained its aircraft to fly using only their real-time sensors.“There have been quite a few accidents where aircraft hit things that weren’t on their maps,” Cherepinsky says. “Companies are notorious for throwing up cell towers without notifying anyone, for example.”

Evaluating how all these elements and algorithms function in the air falls to Ward. On test flights, he evaluates the system’s decision-making to help fine-tune the flying, and streamlining the user experience (and stays ready to take control if needed). “We want a few taps on the tablet to replace ten minutes of playing around with the flight management system of a conventional helicopter,” he says.

On that rescue mission in 2000, once Ward got the helicopter in position to hover over the endangered boat, he had to keep working the stick, levers, and pedals to hold its position against the wind. With the Matrix’s level of automation, it’s a matter monitoring the system, making alterations such as position adjustments via slight nudges on a virtual joystick on the tablet. Sikorsky’s decision to develop the tech in-house speeds up the development process, allowing Ward to make recommendations about things like the placement or prominence of the tablet controls—and see the changes a few days, or even minutes, later.

The Human Touch

Full autonomy—the kind where no human pilot is required—will take longer to achieve, but these interim stages could pay huge dividends by simplifying a pilot’s work. “Just tracking alongside a vessel in a storm at sea is intensely challenging, but an autonomous system locks on, managing your airspeed, altitude and position even in the worst conditions,” Ward says, adding that many accidents result from pilots being overloaded during such scenarios and losing situational awareness. “When your stress level goes down, your situational awareness goes up, and you’re better able to focus on your crew and the mission.”

Indeed, full autonomy may not be appropriate for many of the missions helicopters fly. “There are lots of discussions about autonomy versus automation,” Cherepinsky notes. Humans can always use help, but it may not be wise to replace them altogether. “A machine cannot find its own mission. Creative humans do that—they plan them, decide what the machines do, choose who gets priority in rescues, and so on. Think of the Starship Enterprise. Five or six people on the bridge are making the decisions, but the machine actually takes the ship from point A to point B.”

And if you ever find yourself stranded at sea, you’ll probably be far happier to see the fully focused equivalent of Captain Kirk managing the situation when the helo arrives, with Scotty cheerfully beaming you up. Let the computer deal with the wind.

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Loon’s Internet-Slinging Balloons Are Headed to Work Over Kenya

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It’s been a big week for Loon. Just eight days ago, it was one of Alphabet’s moonshot projects, launching antennas attached to giant balloons into the stratosphere to beam internet down to Earth. Now it has announced its first commercial agreement: working with Telkom Kenya to provide internet service to parts of central Kenya, starting next year, and helping connect the citizens of a country where coverage hardly extends beyond major population centers.

Loon began life in 2011 as a Project Loon, inside Google X, the search company’s arm dedicated to incubating moonshot ideas. (In 2015, when Google restructured and formed parent company Alphabet, Google X became X.) After seven years in the incubator, Loon “graduated” this month and became an Alphabet company in its own right. That means it’s time to start making money, and this first deal (whose financial particulars have not been revealed) is a good early step.

Instead of building networks of ground-based cell towers that provide coverage spanning a few miles, Loon hangs antennas from tennis court-sized, helium-filled balloons flying 60,000 feet above Earth, far higher than commercial airliners, birds, and the weather. Each polyethylene balloon can provide internet coverage over 2,000 square miles and stay aloft for months, making them well-suited to connect areas where low population density or difficult terrain prohibits building out cell tower networks.

The balloons have no propulsion system and rely on riding the wind to get to where they need to be. (Loon has launch sites in Puerto Rico and Nevada, and while its balloons can circumnavigate the globe, it will likely consider setting up shop in Kenya.) In the early years of the project, the Loon team anticipated having many balloons in the air, each steadily moving around the planet. Then, around 2014, they realized they could direct the balloons where they wanted, and thus keep a few over a specific area.

The trick is that air currents at different altitudes head in different directions. Loon took mountains of data (gathered from various government agencies and the flight patterns amassed during their own tests) and a lot of machine learning (an Alphabet specialty) to turn those air currents into a new sort of map. Say a balloon is drifting east, away from where it wants to be. Its software will look for a current to take it west. If it’s a few thousand feet down, it uses a fan named Franz (for the SNL character who just wants to pump you up) to ingest air, which goes in a layer surrounding the bit filled with helium. The extra air works like ballast, dropping the balloon until it finds the west-bound highway. To go back up again, the fan pulls air out, making the balloon lighter. This sort of navigation meant that Loon didn’t have to start with hundreds of balloons covering an entire band of the globe. It could provide service to a specific area—like central Kenya.

Not that the folks checking Facebook on the ground know anything about it. Loon’s business strategy hinges on making deals with telecoms, and using its balloons to augment the service they provide their users. “You would have no concept that it was a different signal,” says Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth. “You’re just getting a standard LTE 4G signal, from the balloon.”

During its seven-year stay at X, Loon mastered a horde of problems. It developed a system that can launch a balloon every 30 minutes and keep them aloft for the better part of a year—right where they want. It built an 80-foot-long flatbed scanner that can spot microscopic defects in the balloon’s plastic. They trained flight engineers, designed their own shipping crates, and steadily improved the strength and speed of their signal (with no plans to offer 5G right now). In other words, they tackled all the things that make the idea of providing internet with high-flying balloons not just crazy, but nearly impossible.

But Loon’s departure from X brings a new, different sort of challenge: operating as a successful business. “Infrastructure plays are very complex,” says Westgarth, a telecom industry veteran who came aboard in early 2017. (When the recruiter who hired Westgarth said they were calling about Loon, he replied, “That still exists?”)

Along with a network of stratospheric balloons, he’ll have to build out and manage legal, policy, HR, and marketing teams—all the stuff X provided. He’ll have to strike deals with other companies, deliver the kind of service that actually augments their existing networks, negotiate with foreign countries, and work with regulators who manage telecoms and aviation.

“That ecosystem of partners is probably the single most complex thing,” Westgarth says. “It’s also what allows you to provide service.”

Loon hasn’t revealed any plans beyond this first deal in Kenya, but the CEO doesn’t expect to stop there. And he doesn’t expect to monopolize this new way of connecting the world. “Whenever there’s a large opportunity, other players will show up,” Westgarth says. But for right now, it’s just Loon, bobbing silently along, and headed for Africa.

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Man Senses Someone Watching Him — And Finds The Cutest Spies

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“They haven’t made it into my yard yet, but the puppy really tried,” Weiss said. “It was pretty comical to watch. He was on a mission to get into my yard, but he just couldn’t squeeze through.”

Though it was startling at first, Weiss has since gotten used to having a close relationship with his three furry neighbors.

“I joke with a friend that one day I’m gonna show my neighbor those pictures and tell her, ‘Look, you had a good run, but they’ve made their decision. They’re mine now,'” Weiss said.

“A lot of times I don’t even realize they’re there,” Weiss added. “I just turn around and there’s a snout sticking out from under the fence.”

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pit Bull Tied To ‘No Dogs’ Sign With The Saddest Note

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Though the note introduced the dog as Zanny, rescue workers gave him the nickname Folly, after the place where he was found, and the name stuck. A veterinary exam at the rescue revealed that, other than a rash on his stomach, Folly was in relatively good shape.

“Folly is a muscular boy whose tails wags nonstop,” Carrie Browning-Perez, marketing manager for Pet Helpers, told The Dodo. “It’s obvious he didn’t miss many meals.”

It was clear that the dog had been well taken care of at one point in his life, but if Niketas hadn’t come along when she did, things might have turned out differently.

“It was extremely hot on the day he was abandoned,” Browning-Perez said. “Just a matter of another hour or so could have greatly changed the outcome.”

Tiny Kittens Found Alone In Forest Weren’t Normal Kittens At All

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After the original sighting, people kept a watch on the kittens to see if the mom was coming back. After 24 hours, no mother arrived and the kittens had started to stray closer and closer to a road.

“It seemed likely they had been abandoned or orphaned and were in grave danger,” O’Donoghue said.

That’s when rescuers decided they needed to do something. They managed to capture the kittens while a wildlife filmmaker, Steve Piper, set out remote cameras to make sure their mother wasn’t looking for them.

Sea Turtle Found On Beach Died For The Saddest Reason

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“Sadly, this is not the first time we’ve seen a case like this,” Lexie Beach, communications coordinator for Sea Turtle Conservancy, told The Dodo. “Most commonly, the issue we see regarding beach chairs and sea turtles is that they actually run into them when trying to nest on the beach. Many times they’ve actually gotten stuck in a chair and rescued the next morning, or running into the chair causes them to false crawl (not nest) and head back to the ocean.”

For Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, every life lost is so significant. There are only around 1,000 left in the wild today, mainly due to habitat loss, illegal hunting and pollution.