Teachers can be some of the most important individuals in our lives. Whether you had one this past year that truly inspired you, or one that just made getting through the daily grind of classes easier, now’s a great time to show them your appreciation. If you want to skip the standard gift basket or bouquet of flowers in favor of something a bit more personal (or perhaps practical), these are some of the best gifts for teachers that you can surprise them with this year.

Hario cold brew bottles

We recommend the Hario cold brew tea maker in our gift guide for tea lovers because it makes a beautiful, functional gift for anyone who likes loose-leaf iced tea. The heat-proof glass exterior has a wine bottle shape and the green silicone top houses a mesh strainer that keeps tea leaves where they belong. If the teacher you know is more into coffee, you get them the equally attractive cold brew coffee maker from the same Japanese manufacturer. It brews up a batch in the fridge overnight and has graduated milliliter markings that make it look a little like a chemistry class beaker. – Amy Skorheim, Commerce Writer

Ember Mug 2

Many of us rely on caffeine to get through the day and teachers are no different. But dealing with students, lectures and other classroom activities may mean their beverage of choice grows cold before they can drink it all. The second generation of Ember’s smart mug, the Mug 2, doesn’t just keep tea or coffee hot — it keeps it at a steady temperature for a long time. The app integration lets you set the temp of the mug, while interior sensors shut the heat off when the mug’s empty or hasn’t been touched in two hours. The 10-ounce size has a battery life of up to an hour and a half and the 14-ounce capacity adds another 20 minutes. They can also stick the mug on the included charging coaster to keep their java warm all school day long. – A.S.

Aura Mason

If your teacher is a sentimental type, a digital photo frame like the Aura Mason can let them easily add and look back on their favorite snapshots. The Mason itself has a crisp, nine-inch, 1,600 x 1,200 resolution display and a minimalist design that should look normal on a work desk or a side table back home. It can display photos in portrait or landscape mode, and uploading photos (or videos) through the Aura app is uncomplicated. Just note that it can sometimes add black boxes around photos that don’t match its 4:3 aspect ratio.

If you want to save $50, the Aura Carver is a larger 10.1-inch frame with similar benefits, though it has a lower resolution (1,280 x 800) and only works in landscape. You could also gift a multi-function smart display like the Google Nest Hub, but those usually have lower-quality screens and aren’t as simple to mount on a wall. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Commerce Writer

Book of the Month

If you know a teacher who’s still a champion of the printed word, they might appreciate a Book of the Month subscription. I like how BOTM does the hard work of figuring out what’s new and good in fiction so all I have to do is read. The club selects seven or so books each month for members to pick from, and the selection is diverse enough that most readers will find something to meet their tastes. And if nothing looks good, they can always pick something from the back catalog or skip the month altogether. At first I thought it would be too much pressure to contend with a new book every month, but the option to skip effectively just extends their subscription, so there’s no pressure. You can gift a three, six or twelve month membership for $60, $100 or $200, respectively. – A.S.

Belkin BoostCharge Pro with MagSafe

A pick from our guide to the best wireless chargers, Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro is a compact charging pad that should be a useful addition for any iPhone-owning teacher’s desk. It’s MagSafe-compatible, so it can snap magnetically onto the back of any recent iPhone, and it delivers up to 15W of power, which is the fastest rate available for this class of device. It won’t be as quick as using a cable, but there’s a certain pleasure to simply plopping your phone down on it to recharge, and it can still deliver about a 70 percent charge to an iPhone 14 in an hour. The BoostCharge Pro also has a built-in kickstand for propping up a phone to watch videos and the like. This is far from the cheapest charging puck around, but as a gift, it’s a convenient way to top up. Just try to get it with a power supply, if possible. — J.D.

Blue light blocking glasses

Your favorite teacher or professor probably looks at a screen for just as long as you do every day. Blue light blocking glasses can be a great gift since they’ll make it easier for them to get work done while (hopefully) reducing eye strain, headaches and other ailments. These are probably best bought for educators who don’t wear prescription glasses already, since you don’t want to impede their actual eyesight with non-prescription lenses. Plenty of eyewear companies make stylish blue light glasses, but you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on a pair. Privé Revaux has a ton of options priced as low as $30 each, or if you have a feeling your teacher would like to swap styles more often, Amazon has a number of multi-packs to choose from. — Valentina Palladino, Senior Commerce Editor

Headspace

The most tenured college professor and the newest preschool teacher could likely use a little more calm in their day, and Headspace is one way to get it. The brightly colored app has a slew of meditations, guided breathing sessions and inspirational talks to choose from and each one lists its duration. I often just have a minute or two before I have to get back to what I was doing, and following even a one-minute-long breathing exercise can noticeably change my mood (and posture and general awareness). Headspace includes sleep programs too, like wind-down sessions, stories, white noise sounds and soundscapes. You can gift one year of the service for $70, or three months for $39. – A.S.

Kobo Clara 2e

We don’t want to make generalizations, but if there’s a segment of the population who likes to read, it’s probably teachers. The Kobo Clara 2E is our current favorite e-reader because it’s easy on the eyes, comfortable to hold and offers the right amount of customization. The waterproof design makes it a good candidate for vacations and pool-side reading, and the warm lights make it easy to read late into the night. Considering Kobo now has an unlimited read and listen subscription in Kobo Plus, the company's well-built devices are even better equipped to compete in a space where Kindles have dominated for years. – A.S.

Bellroy Desk Caddy

They say an organized desk is an organized mind. Whether that’s true or not, it can certainly be difficult to keep track of all the tech you need on a regular basis. Bellroy’s Desk Caddy has pockets, pouches and loops to keep cords, plugs, earbuds, and dongles in their place. The structured shape stands up when you load it, but is flexible enough to fit into a crowded backpack if you need to take it with you. We also like that it’s water resistant and made from recycled materials. – A.S.

Trade Coffee subscription

A Trade Coffee subscription can help the teacher in your life shake up their morning cup of joe. It offers a curated selection of more than 450 coffees from across the US and smartly personalizes which ones it recommends to each subscriber. Upon redeeming their gift, your teacher will be prompted to take a brief quiz that asks about their flavor and brew preferences, information Trade will use to suggest a specific bag catered to their taste. They can then give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to any coffee they receive, which the company considers to hone future recommendations. Managing all of this online is straightforward. You can gift anywhere from two to 24 bags, and Trade says any gift subscriptions will not automatically renew, so nobody will have any surprise charges to deal with down the line. — J.D.

Purist Mover

The Purist Mover is the closest thing to a “premium” water bottle that I’ve tried, with a clean, minimalist aesthetic and a satisfying textured finish. Its biggest hook, though, is the ultra-thin layer of glass that lines its interior. Apart from insulating your drink, this is designed to keep fluids from gaining a metallic taste or unwanted odors as quickly as they might with other bottles. The whole thing will still need washing every so often, but in my experience, this has actually worked.

The Mover is an 18oz bottle, but there are different size and lid options to choose from (the “Union” spout top is my preference, though it can be somewhat noisy, if that matters). No Purist bottle is especially cheap, but it should make hydrating a little more convenient for your teacher’s day-to-day, on top of providing a nicer piece of design for their desk. — J.D.

Tribit StormBox Micro 2

For audio-related lessons in class or just enjoying music while out and about, the Tribit StormBox Micro 2 is a highly portable Bluetooth speaker that pumps out good volume for its compact size. Its playback controls are simple to operate, and its built-in strap lets it connect to things like a bag or bike handlebars on the go. It can also double as a power bank and charge a smartphone in a pinch. A speaker this small will never be the fullest sounding, but for what it is, the Stormbox Micro 2’s audio quality is fine as well. If you like the idea of gifting a portable speaker but want something that sounds richer, though, you can check out our Bluetooth speaker buying guide for more recommendations. — J.D.

Criterion Channel subscription

If your teacher considers themselves a film buff, a Criterion Channel subscription might suit their tastes. This is the streaming service of The Criterion Collection, a video distribution company that restores and preserves a carefully curated selection of acclaimed films that span genres and languages. It doesn’t have the same deluge of content as a Netflix or Prime Video, but it also has a lot less trash.

The service bundles many films into helpful collections, from Afrofuturism to Foreign-Language Oscar Winners to Short Films by David Lynch. Various titles come with bonus features like cast interviews as well. Unfortunately, not every film in the Collection is available on the Channel at any given time. (There are gift cards that can go toward films that are only available in physical form.) Nevertheless, for movie-loving teachers who feel like they’ve watched everything on the usual suspects, the service should still provide hours of stimulating works. Gift subscriptions are available in one- to 12-month increments. — J.D.

The Sill plant gifts

You can’t go wrong with a gift of greenery to show your appreciation for a beloved teacher. You could pick up a flower arrangement locally or send them a fancy one from Bouqs or another online service, but something more unique like a plant from The Sill could be a gift they’ve never gotten before. The site has a bunch of options that will appeal to all kinds of people, from those who have never taken care of a plant before to green-thumbed veterans. There are even pet-friendly plant gifts you can buy for those teachers you know have little creatures in their households. The Sill also has regular deals on plants that you can snag (be it for someone else or yourself), so you don’t have to sacrifice even if you’re working with a tight budget. — V.P.

Amazon gift card

If you’re at a loss over what to get your favorite teacher to show your appreciation, an Amazon gift card is a good catch-all solution. Whether it’s supplies for their classroom, household essentials for their family or just something they’ve had on their wish list for themselves, most teachers will find a way to spend a few extra dollars at Amazon (or Walmart, Target or another retailer they prefer). — V.P.

A relaxing video game or two

For teachers who like to wind down with a video game after an aggravating day of work, a recommendation from our list of good relaxing games could make for a gift that’s both thoughtful and fun. A couple of standouts: PowerWash Simulator is a game about cleaning grimy environments that has a similar soothing effect as those deep-cleaning videos on YouTube, while Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a delightful puzzle game from Nintendo about exploring and reexamining diorama-like levels from new angles. — J.D.

Chromebooks have always been a popular option for schools due to the relatively cheap prices, but they exploded in popularity during the Covid pandemic as kids did their schoolwork from home. However, they may not be such a good deal after all, according to a new report called Chromebook Churn from the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). They found that many Chromebooks purchased just three years ago are already breaking, creating electronic waste and costing taxpayers money. 

Chromebooks in schools typically see rough use, and repairability is a key issue, due to a lack of parts and expensive repairs. For instance, 14 out of 29 keyboard replacements for Acer Chromebooks were found to be out of stock, and 10 of the 29 cost $90 each — nearly half the price of some models. "These high costs may make schools reconsider Chromebooks as a cost-saving strategy," the report states. In another instance, HP only stocked power cords and AC adapters for one model, but no other parts.

The devices also have built in "death dates," the report reads, after which software updates end. "Once laptops have 'expired,' they don’t receive updates and can’t access secure websites." Google does provide eight years of software updates for Chromebooks, but that's only from the date of release. Since many schools buy Chromebooks released several years before, support can expire in half that time. 

Chromebooks aren’t built to last. Professional repair techs tell me they’re often forced to chuck good Chromebook hardware with years of life left due to aggressive software expiration dates.

"Chromebooks aren’t built to last. Professional repair techs tell me they’re often forced to chuck good Chromebook hardware with years of life left due to aggressive software expiration dates," iFixit's director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain told PIRG. Those expiration dates also make it a challenge for schools to resell their devices. PCs and Macs may have a higher purchase price, but they can easily be resold after a couple of years and can get updates for longer periods of time.

The organization said that doubling the lifespan of the Chromebooks sold in 2020 (some 31.8 million) "could cut emissions by 4.6 million tons of CO2e, equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for a year. To do that, they recommend that Google eliminate update expirations and that its manufacturing partners production a 10 percent overstock of replacement parts, and that those parts be more standardized across models. They also say that consumers should be allowed to install alternative operating systems like Linux.

In a statement to Ars Technica, Google said: "Regular Chromebook software updates add new features and improve device security every four weeks, allowing us to continuously iterate on the software experience while ensuring that older devices continue to function in a secure and reliable manner until their hardware limitations make it extremely difficult to provide updates." 

It added that it's "always working with our device manufacturing partners to increasingly build devices across segments with post-consumer recycled and certified materials that are more repairable, and over time use manufacturing processes that reduce emissions."

Google needs to do better, though, according to the group. "The least we can do for students who rely on their laptops is ensure these devices are durable and repairable—not part of a constant churn," said PIRG's Lucas Rockett Gutterman. "With more tech in our lives and classrooms, if Google wants to be a trusted source for tens of millions of students, they need to make laptops that families and school districts can count on."

Google is making it easier for people with reading challenges, such as dyslexia, to be able to make out articles and text posts online. The tech giant has launched "reader mode" for Chrome, which takes a site's primary content and puts it into the sidebar to reduce clutter and distractions. Users will also be able to change the text's typeface, font size and spacing, as well as its color and background color, to find the combination that works best for them. 

Reader mode is but one of the new features and updates Google has rolled out for education users. Another new feature for Google Classroom gives educators the ability to add interactive questions to YouTube videos. That will allow students to answer them and get immediate feedback, giving teachers an insight on how well they understand the subject matter. 

Google is also giving teachers a way to share practice sets with other verified educators in their domain, so that they can expand the availability of materials their students have access to. For particularly difficult mathematical and scientific concepts, for instance, more examples mean more opportunity to better understand them. The company has released a new web player for Screencast on Chrome OS, as well, allowing users to watch casts in any browser on any platform. Plus, it has expanded language options for Screencast closed captions and for practice sets. 

Classes using Meet for online lectures will also find a new and useful feature: Hand raise gesture detection powered by AI. Apparently, when a student raises a hand in real life, the video conferencing app can now automatically activate its Hand Raise icon. In addition, two teachers can now also manage slides concurrently on Meet and co-present lectures together. Google has been growing and improving its education-related tools for years, though it has perhaps kicked things up a notch after schools shut down during the pandemic. It released a slew of updates to make virtual classrooms more usable since then, and it looks like it hasn't forgotten online-based education even though schools have mostly gone back to in-person learning. 

Trombone Champ is a blast to watch, but a beast to play even compared to some other rhythm games — you try nailing a slide during the "William Tell Overture." Thankfully, developer Holy Wow Studios is putting the game within reach of more players. It's introducing an "Autotoot" option that takes away the need to press buttons. If you have hand mobility issues, you'll have a better chance of squonking your way to an S rank. Your score is halved to prevent leaderboard cheating, but you can advance the story.

The update is also more streamer-friendly, with icons warning when a tune might be muted on services like Twitch. It's faster to restart a track when your performance goes askew, and you'll see your character in the points screen.

Trombone Champ quickly became a viral sensation after its debut last September. Anyone who's familiar with Guitar Hero or Rock Band will grasp the basic mechanics, but the laugh-'til-you-cry hilarity of playing trombone over classic pieces can't be overstated — this is one of those precious games where messing up is almost more entertaining than a perfect score. And that's before you throw in unofficial songs that put brass where it clearly doesn't belong.

Autotoot is also part of a larger trend of improving accessibility in games. Titles like The Last of Us now make accommodations for a wide range of mobility, hearing and vision abilities. Input devices like Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller and Sony's Project Leonardo are also making many games viable for people who can't use conventional gamepads.

In 30 minutes or less, TikToker and Chicago-based server Kristen Sotakoun can probably find your birth date. She’s not a cybersecurity expert, despite what some of her followers suspect, but has found a hobby in what she calls “consensual doxxing.”

“My first thing is to be entertaining. My second thing is to show you cracks in your social media, which was the totally accidental thing that I became on TikTok,” Sotakoun, who goes by @notkahnjunior, told me.

It’s not quite doxxing, which usually refers to making private information publicly available with malicious intent. Instead, it’s known in the cybersecurity field as open-source intelligence, or OSINT. People unknowingly spell out private details about their lives as a bread crumb trail across social media platforms that, when gathered together, paint a picture of their age, families, embarrassing childhood memories and more. In malicious cases, hackers gather information based on what you or your loved ones have published on the web to get into your accounts, commit fraud, or even socially engineer a user to fall for a scam.

Sotakoun mostly just tracks down an anonymous volunteer's birth date. She doesn’t have malicious intent or interest in a security career, she said she just likes to solve logic puzzles. Before TikTok, that was spending a ride home from a friend’s birthday dinner at Medieval Times discovering the day job of their “knight.” Sotakoun just happened to eventually go viral for her skills.

So, to show me her process, I let Sotakoun “consensually doxx” me. She found my Twitter pretty quickly, but because I keep it pretty locked down, it wasn’t super helpful. Information in author bios from my past jobs, however, helped her figure out where I went to college.

My name plus where I studied led her to my Facebook account, another profile that didn’t reveal much. It did, however, lead her to my sister, who had commented on my cover photo nine years ago. She figured out it was my sister because we shared a last name, and we’re listed as sisters on her Facebook. That’s important to note because I don’t actually share a last name with most of my other siblings, which could’ve been an additional roadblock.

My sister and I have pretty common names though, so Sotakoun also found my stepmom on my sister’s profile. By searching my stepmom’s much more unique name on Instagram, it helped lead Sotakoun to mine and my sister’s Instagram accounts, as opposed to one of the many other Malones online.

Still, my Instagram account is private. So, it was my sister’s Instagram account – that she took off “private” for a Wawa giveaway that ultimately won her a t-shirt – featuring years-old birthday posts that led Sotakoun to the day I was born. That took a ton of scrolling and, to correct for the fact that a birthday post could come a day late or early, Sotakoun relied on the fact that my sister once shared that my birthday coincided with World Penguin Day, April 25.

Then, to find the year, she cross-referenced the year I started college, which was 2016 according to my public LinkedIn, with information in my high school newspaper. My senior year of high school, I won a scholarship only available to seniors, Sotakoun discovered, revealing that I graduated high school in 2016. From there, she counted back 18 years, and told me that I was born on April 25, 1998. She was right.

“My goal is always to find context clues, or find people who care less about their online presence than you do,” Sotakoun said.

Many people will push back on the idea that having personal information online is harmful, according to Matt Edmondson, an OSINT instructor at cybersecurity training organization SANS Institute. While there are obvious repercussions to having your social security number blasted online, people may wonder what the harm is in seemingly trivial information like having your pet’s name easily available on social media. But if that also happens to be the answer to a security question, an attacker may be able to use that to get into your Twitter account or email.

In my case, I’ve always carefully tailored my digital footprint to keep my information hidden. My accounts are private and I don’t share a lot of personal information. Still, Sotakoun’s OSINT methods found plenty to work with.

Facebook and Instagram are Sotakoun’s biggest help for finding information, but she said she has also used Twitter, and even Venmo to confirm relationships. She specifically avoids resources like records databases that could easily give away information.

That means that there’s still a lot of data out there on each of us that Sotakoun isn’t looking for. Especially if you’re in the US, data like your date of birth, home address and more are likely already out there in some form, according to Steven Harris, an OSINT specialist that teaches at SANS.

“Once the data is out there, it’s very hard to take back,” Harris said. “What protects people is not that the information is securely locked away, it’s that most people don’t have the knowledge or inclination to go and find out.”

There are simple things you can do to keep attackers from using these details against you. Complex passwords and multi-factor authentication make it harder for unauthorized users to get into your account, even if they know the answers to your security questions.

That gets a bit more complicated, though, when we think about how much our friends and family post for us. In fact, Sotakoun said she noticed that even if a person takes many measures to hide themselves online, the lack of control over their social circle can help her discover their birth date.

“You have basically no control on your immediate social circle, or even your slightly extended social circle and how they present themselves online,” she said.

Science is the reason you aren't reading this by firelight nestled cozily under a rock somewhere however, its practice significantly predates its formalization by Galileo in the 16th century. Among its earliest adherents — even before pioneering efforts of Aristotle — was Animaxander, the Greek philosopher credited with first arguing that the Earth exists within a void, not atop a giant turtle shell. His other revolutionary notions include, "hey, maybe animals evolved from other, earlier animals?" and "the gods aren't angry, that's just thunder."

While Animaxander isn't often mentioned alongside the later greats of Greek philosophy, his influence on the scientific method cannot be denied, argues NYT bestselling author, Carlo Rovelli, in his latest book, Animaxander and the Birth of Science, out now from Riverhead Books. In in, Rovelli celebrates Animaxander, not necessarily for his scientific acumen but for his radical scientific thinking — specifically his talent for shrugging off conventional notion to glimpse at the physical underpinnings of the natural world. In the excerpt below, Rovelli, whom astute readers will remember from last year's There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important than Kindness, illustrates how even the works of intellectual titans like Einstein and Heisenberg can and inevitably are found lacking in their explanation of natural phenomena — in just the same way that those works themselves decimated the collective understanding of cosmological law under 19th century Newtonian physics.   

Riverhead Books

Excerpted from Animaxander and the Birth of Science. Copyright © 2023 by Carlo Rovelli. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Did science begin with Anaximander? The question is poorly put. It depends on what we mean by “science,” a generic term. Depending on whether we give it a broad or a narrow meaning, we can say that science began with Newton, Galileo, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, or Anaximander — or with an astronomer in Babylonia whose name we don’t know, or with the first primate who managed to teach her offspring what she herself had learned, or with Eve, as in the quotation that opens this chapter. Historically or symbolically, each of these moments marks humanity’s acquisition of a new, crucial tool for the growth of knowledge.

If by “science” we mean research based on systematic experimental activities, then it began more or less with Galileo. If we mean a collection of quantitative observations and theoretical/mathematical models that can order these observations and give accurate predictions, then the astronomy of Hipparchus and Ptolemy is science. Emphasizing one particular starting point, as I have done with Anaximander, means focusing on a specific aspect of the way we acquire knowledge. It means highlighting specific characteristics of science and thus, implicitly, reflecting on what science is, what the search for knowledge is, and how it works.

What is scientific thinking? What are its limits? What is the reason for its strength? What does it really teach us? What are its characteristics, and how does it compare with other forms of knowledge?

These questions shaped my reflections on Anaximander in preceding chapters. In discussing how Anaximander paved the way for scientific knowledge, I highlighted a certain number of aspects of science itself. Now I shall make these observations more explicit.

The Crumbling of Nineteenth Century Illusions

A lively debate on the nature of scientific knowledge has taken place during the last century. The work of philosophers of science such as Carnap and Bachelard, Popper and Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Quine, van Fraassen, and many others has transformed our understanding of what constitutes scientific activity. To some extent, this reflection was a reaction to a shock: the unexpected collapse of Newtonian physics at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In the nineteenth century, a common joke was that Isaac New‐ ton had been not only one of the most intelligent men in human history, but also the luckiest, because there is only one collection of fundamental natural laws, and Newton had had the good fortune to be the one to discover them. Today we can’t help but smile at this notion, because it reveals a serious epistemological error on the part of nineteenth-​­century thinkers: the idea that good scientific theories are definitive and remain valid until the end of time.

The twentieth century swept away this facile illusion. Highly accurate experiments showed that Newton’s theory is mistaken in a very precise sense. The planet Mercury, for example, does not move following Newtonian laws. Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and their colleagues discovered a new collection of fundamental laws — general relativity and quantum mechanics — that replace Newton’s laws and work well in the domains where Newton’s theory breaks down, such as accounting for Mercury’s orbit, or the behavior of electrons in atoms.

Once burned, twice shy: few people today believe that we now possess definitive scientific laws. It is generally expected that one day Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s laws will show their limits as well, and will be replaced by better ones. In fact, the limits of Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s theories are already emerging. There are subtle incompatibilities between Einstein’s theory and Heisenberg’s, which make it unreasonable to suppose that we have identified the final, definitive laws of the universe. As a result, research goes on. My own work in theoretical physics is precisely the search for laws that might combine these two theories.

Now, the essential point here is that Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s theories are not minor corrections to Newton’s. The differences go far beyond an adjusted equation, a tidying up, the addition or replacement of a formula. Rather, these new theories constitute a radical rethinking of the world. Newton saw the world as a vast empty space where “particles” move about like pebbles. Einstein understands that such supposedly empty space is in fact a kind of storm-​­tossed sea. It can fold in on itself, curve, and even (in the case of black holes) shatter. No one had seriously contemplated this possibility before. For his part, Heisenberg understands that Newton’s “particles” are not particles at all but bizarre hybrids of particles and waves that run over Faraday lines’ webs. In short, over the course of the twentieth century, the world was found to be profoundly different from the way Newton imagined it.

On the one hand, these discoveries confirmed the cognitive strength of science. Like Newton’s and Maxwell’s theories in their day, these discoveries led quickly to an astonishing development of new technologies that once again radically changed human society. The insights of Faraday and Maxwell brought about radio and communications technology. Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s led to computers, information technology, atomic energy, and countless other technological advances that have changed our lives.

But on the other hand, the realization that Newton’s picture of the world was false is disconcerting. After Newton, we thought we had understood once and for all the basic structure and functioning of the physical world. We were wrong. The theories of Einstein and Heisenberg themselves will one day likely be proved false. Does this mean that the understanding of the world offered by science cannot be trusted, not even for our best science? What, then, do we really know about the world? What does science teach us about the world?

Researchers understand the structure of brains and have mapped them out in some detail, but they still don't know exactly how they process data — for that, a detailed "circuit map" of the brain is needed. 

Now, scientists have created just such a map for the most advanced creature yet: a fruit fly larva. Called a connectome, it diagrams the insect's 3016 neurons and 548,000 synapses, Neuroscience News has reported. The map will help researchers study better understand how the brains of both insects and animals control behavior, learning, body functions and more. The work may even inspired improved AI networks.

"Up until this point, we’ve not seen the structure of any brain except of the roundworm C. elegans, the tadpole of a low chordate, and the larva of a marine annelid, all of which have several hundred neurons," said professor Marta Zlatic from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. "This means neuroscience has been mostly operating without circuit maps. Without knowing the structure of a brain, we’re guessing on the way computations are implemented. But now, we can start gaining a mechanistic understanding of how the brain works." 

To build the map, the team scanned thousands of slices from the larva's brain with an electron microscope, then integrated those into a detailed map, annotating all the neural connections. From there, they used computational tools to identify likely information flow pathways and types of "circuit motifs" in the insect's brain. They even noticed that some structural features closely resembled state-of-the-art deep learning architecture.

Scientists have made detailed maps of the brain of a fruit fly, which is far more complex than a fruit fly larva. However, these maps don't include all the detailed connections required to have a true circuit map of their brains. 

As a next step, the team will investigate the structures used for behavioural functions like learning and decision making, and examine connectome activity while the insect does specific activities. And while a fruit fly larva is a simple insect, the researchers expect to see similar patterns in other animals. "In the same way that genes are conserved across the animal kingdom, I think that the basic circuit motifs that implement these fundamental behaviours will also be conserved," said Zlatic.

The PlayStation VR2 delivers one of the best virtual reality experiences you can find—if you can stomach the $599 cost (on top of an already expensive console). That was the crux of our review a few weeks ago. But our impressions of the headset were also limited by the games we were able to preview. Since then, Sony has officially launched PS VR2 support for Gran Turismo 7, and Capcom has done the same for Resident Evil Village. Both are exclusive showpieces for the PlayStation VR2 (RE Village also has an unofficial PC VR mod), and exemplify everything Sony got right with this new hardware.

Now, I'm not much of a racing sim player, I'd much rather be zooming around Forza Horizon's open worlds, or revisiting the glory days of Ridge Racer Type 4 and Burnout Paradise. But with PS VR2 support, Gran Turismo 7 feels like a completely different game. In VR, you're right in the driver's seat — you can almost feel Polyphony Digital's obsessive attention to detail. The game also feels more exhilarating, as it delivers a far greater sense of speed (a consequence of having your entire field of vision consumed by the world of GT7).

PlayStation

I've always appreciated the Gran Turismo games from afar, but there was a stiffness to the actual racing experience that kept me away. GT7 doesn't fully fix that flaw, but it's less pronounced in virtual reality. The combination of the Dual Sense controller and the PS VR2's built-in haptics delivered a genuinely realistic driving experience, I could feel bumps in the road in my hands and occasional feedback from hitting walls or bumping into opponents. (I never said I was a great virtual driver.) I'm sure Gran Turismo obsessives would take away even more from the virtual reality experience, especially if they're using a decent steering wheel controller.

The more time I spent in GT7 VR, the more I appreciated the little details in the game, similar to my time with Flight Simulator VR. Instead of changing camera angles or hitting a button to scope out the competition, you simply look at your side and rear view mirrors. When you're changing gears, your in-game avatar correctly shifts between the steering wheel and shifter. I occasionally had to avert my eyes from the sun while rounding a corner, a testament to the bright 4K OLED display in the PSVR2.

At one point, I was blasting down a straightaway as the sun peeked through clouds behind me, its brightness perfectly reflected in my rear view mirrors. It cast realistic shadows throughout the world, and it was so bright I couldn't properly use that mirror – just like real life! While the game doesn't look perfect in VR — there are some noticeably low-res elements in some tracks, like guardrails, signage and audiences — it's good enough to make you feel like you're actually behind a turbo-charged monster.

There's no visible ray tracing while you're playing in virtual reality, but you still get an eye-full of that realistic lighting during replays, which are projected on the PS VR2's simulated 2D screen. You can also get an up-close look at the cars in your garage, which use ray tracing to deliver achingly perfect reflections and shadows. It's the closest you'll get without stepping into a luxury car dealer.

When it comes to Resident Evil Village, I expected Capcom to deliver a worthwhile VR experience after seeing what it did with RE7, one of the best titles on the original PS VR. Well, the company didn't disappoint. Thanks to the increased horsepower of the PlayStation 5, and the higher fidelity of the PS VR2, Resident Evil Village is transformed into a living nightmare in virtual reality. There should be a warning for people already skittish of survival horror games: Play at your own peril.

Just like with Gran Turismo 7, virtual reality lets you appreciate the work that went into Resident Evil Village in entirely new ways. Walking through the game's creepy Eastern European village is even more chilling when it fills your field of view. You can always look away from a 2D screen, in VR you're forced to confront the horrors in front of you. (Sometimes closing your eyes isn't enough, not when you can hear the werewolf-like creatures skittering around the cottage you're hiding in.)

Since it's a first-person game, Resident Evil Village acquits itself well to VR. Exploration is smooth and not nausea-inducing, thankfully. And fighting off the game's various baddies is all the more thrilling when you're realistically aiming guns and other weapons. And yes, Lady Dimitrescu, the tall vampire woman who launched a thousand memes on the internet, is indeed very tall and imposing in VR.

I didn't have time to play through all of Resident Evil Village in virtual reality, but my first few hours with the game left a striking impression. Perhaps the future of virtual reality depends more on games like this, which can be enjoyed both as traditional 2D titles and with immersive headsets. We looked to Half Life Alyx to prove flagship VR games were possible. But what if we just need to think about bringing VR into more flagship games?

The more time I spent with the PS VR2, the more frustrated I became with the state of the virtual reality industry. Everything I said in my review remains true: VR feels stagnant, and another expensive headset isn't going to fix that. Maybe it's okay if VR gaming never truly becomes mainstream, just like how not everyone plays racing games with steering wheels, or people can enjoy fighting games without expensive arcade sticks. Perhaps VR can just be another accessory — albeit one that takes a significant amount of development resources to support.

Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village both prove that the PlayStation VR2 is a gateway to truly immersive virtual reality gaming. But a part of me still dreams for PC compatibility. While it's understandable why Sony may want to lock down its hardware, it's sort of like forcing a lion to live in a small zoo. The PS VR2 can't truly roar until it taps into the wild world of PC VR, which offers more experimental games and far faster graphical hardware than the PS5. If Sony ever wants to return to its innovator roots, it needs to take more chances.

There is too much internet and our attempts to keep up with the breakneck pace of, well, everything these days — it is breaking our brains. Parsing through the deluge of inundating information hoisted up by algorithmic systems built to maximize engagement has trained us as slavering Pavlovian dogs to rely on snap judgements and gut feelings in our decision making and opinion formation rather than deliberation and introspection. Which is fine when you're deciding between Italian and Indian for dinner or are waffling on a new paint color for the hallway, but not when we're out here basing existential life choices on friggin' vibes.

In his latest book, I, HUMAN: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, professor of business psychology and Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic explores the myriad ways that AI systems now govern our daily lives and interactions. From finding love to finding gainful employment to finding out the score of yesterday's game, AI has streamlined the information gathering process. But, as Chamorro-Premuzic argues in the excerpt below, that information revolution is actively changing our behavior, and not always for the better.  

Harvard Business Review Press

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from I, HUMAN: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Copyright 2023 Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. All rights reserved.

Our Brain on Speed

If the AI age requires our brains to be always alert to minor changes and react quickly, optimizing for speed rather than accuracy and functioning on what behavioral economists have labeled System 1 mode (impulsive, intuitive, automatic, and unconscious decision-making), then it shouldn’t surprise us that we are turning into a less patient version of ourselves.

Of course, sometimes it’s optimal to react quickly or trust our guts. The real problem comes when fast mindlessness is our primary mode of decision-making. It causes us to make mistakes and impairs our ability to detect mistakes. More often than not, speedy decisions are borne out of ignorance.

Intuition can be great, but it ought to be hard-earned. Experts, for example, are able to think on their feet because they’ve invested thousands of hours in learning and practice: their intuition has become data-driven. Only then are they able to act quickly in accordance with their internalized expertise and evidence-based experience. Alas, most people are not experts, though they often think they are. Most of us, especially when we interact with others on Twitter, act with expert-like speed, assertiveness, and conviction, offering a wide range of opinions on epidemiology and global crises, without the substance of knowledge that underpins it. And thanks to AI, which ensures that our messages are delivered to an audience more prone to believing it, our delusions of expertise can be reinforced by our personal filter bubble. We have an interesting tendency to find people more open-minded, rational, and sensible when they think just like us. Our digital impulsivity and general impatience impair our ability to grow intellectually, develop expertise, and acquire knowledge.

Consider the little perseverance and meticulousness with which we consume actual information. And I say consume rather than inspect, analyze, or vet. One academic study estimated that the top-10 percent digital rumors (many of them fake news) account for up to 36 percent of retweets, and that this effect is best explained in terms of the so-called echo chamber, whereby retweets are based on clickbait that matches the retweeter’s views, beliefs, and ideology, to the point that any discrepancy between those beliefs and the actual content of the underlying article may go unnoticed. Patience would mean spending time determining whether something is real or fake news, or whether there are any serious reasons to believe in someone’s point of view, especially when we agree with it. It’s not the absence of fact-checking algorithms during presidential debates that deters us from voting for incompetent or dishonest politicians, but rather our intuition. Two factors mainly predict whether someone will win a presidential candidacy in the United States—the candidate’s height and whether we would want to have a beer with them.

While AI-based internet platforms are a relatively recent type of technology, their impact on human behavior is consistent with previous evidence about the impact of other forms of mass media, such as TV or video games, which show a tendency to fuel ADHD-like symptoms, like impulsivity, attention deficits, and restless hyperactivity. As the world increases in complexity and access to knowledge widens, we avoid slowing down to pause, think, and reflect, behaving like mindless automatons instead. Research indicates that faster information gathering online, for example, through instant Googling of pressing questions, impairs long-term knowledge acquisition as well as the ability to recall where our facts and information came from.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to fight against our impulsive behavior or keep our impatience in check. The brain is a highly malleable organ, with an ability to become intertwined with the objects and tools it utilizes. Some of these adaptations may seem pathological in certain contexts or cultures, but they are essential survival tools in others: restless impatience and fast-paced impulsivity are no exception.

Although we have the power to shape our habits and default patterns of behaviors to adjust to our habitat, if pace rather than patience is rewarded, then our impulsivity will be rewarded more than our patience. And if any adaptation is overly rewarded, it becomes a commoditized and overused strength, making us more rigid, less flexible, and a slave to our own habits, as well as less capable of displaying the reverse type of behavior. The downside of our adaptive nature is that we quickly become an exaggerated version of ourselves: we mold ourselves into the very objects of our experience, amplifying the patterns that ensure fit. When that’s the case, then our behaviors become harder to move or change.

When I first returned to my hometown in Argentina after having spent a full year in London, my childhood friends wondered why my pace was so unnecessarily accelerated—“Why are you in such a hurry?” Fifteen years later, I experienced the same disconnect in speed when returning to London from New York City, where the pace is significantly faster. Yet most New Yorkers seem slow by the relative standards of Hong Kong, a place where the button to close the elevator doors (two inward-looking arrows facing each other) is usually worn out, and the automatic doors of the taxis open and close while the taxis are still moving. Snooze, and you truly lose.

There may be limited advantages to boosting our patience when the world moves faster and faster. The right level of patience is always that which aligns with environmental demands and best suits the problems you need to solve. Patience is not always a virtue. If you are waiting longer than you should, then you are wasting your time. When patience breeds complacency or a false sense of optimism, or when it nurtures inaction and passivity, then it may not be the most desirable state of mind and more of a character liability than a mental muscle. In a similar vein, it is easy to think of real-life problems that arise from having too much patience or, if you prefer, would benefit from a bit of impatience: for example, asking for a promotion is usually a quicker way of getting it than patiently waiting for one; refraining from giving someone (e.g., a date, colleague, client, or past employer) a second chance can help you avoid predictable disappointments; and waiting patiently for an important email that never arrives can harm your ability to make better, alternative choices. In short, a strategic sense of urgency—which is the reverse of patience—can be rather advantageous.

There are also many moments when patience, and its deeper psychological enabler of self-control, may be an indispensable adaptation. If the AI age seems disinterested in our capacity to wait and delay gratification, and patience becomes somewhat of a lost virtue, we risk becoming a narrower and shallower version of ourselves.

Plex now has the capability to skip intros and credits, so you don't have to sit through them if you don't want to. The streaming media service has introduced its new "Skip Credits" feature, a couple of years after a similar feature debuted for intros, and it shows up as a button at the bottom right corner of the screen. It appears the moment credits start rolling, allowing you to play the next episode in a series or to automatically jump to a mid- or post-credit scene in a movie with a single click. 

This new credit detection feature is available throughout Plex's entire free streaming catalogue, giving it a viewing experience similar to Netflix's in that regard. But you can also enable it for your personal collection, so long as you have Plex Pass subscription, which will set you back $5 a month or $40 a year. The company said it developed its own Skip Credits technology by training a machine learning algorithm to be able to detect markers like text and dark frames. It admits that the feature might still have a few hiccups and might not work as intended all the time, but it said those cases "should be few and far between."

If you want to enable Skip Credits for your collection, you'll need to have the latest Plex Media Server and perform "Analyze" on your whole library. Plex will then analyze your collection, say as a scheduled task and whenever new media is added, in order to identify when credits begin in your shows and movies. Since analyzing users' libraries to detect end credits use a lot of processing power — and "all that processing isn't cheap," the company said — Plex built a cloud-based repository where it will store users' results. It will allow you to get back your results in seconds if you need to do a clean install or to rebuild your whole library.