Innholdsfortegnelse for 09/21/2018 i Newsweek International

LEO BRACALIELLO, A 2-YEAR-OLD child who has been diagnosed with autism, sits cross-legged on his white carpet, his big blue eyes fixated on the face of a robot, singing in monotone, “If you’re happy and you know it…” When the song finishes, Leo mumbles to his mother, “Again.” The robot obliges. It was one of Leo’s first sessions with Kaspar, a social robot on loan from the nearby University of Hertfordshire in England. Only a few of those early sit-downs resulted in what scientists call “gaze following,” a critical first step for social exchange that autistic children often have difficulty with. But in six months of hosting his mechanical friend, Leo began to memorize the robot’s gestures, songs and phrases and became increasingly excited by its games. About one in…

What is unique about the way NBA star Steph Curry lofts the basketball from beyond the 3-point line? How, exactly, does LeBron James take off toward the basket for one of his trademark dunks? For the development team at Visual Concepts, these aren’t idle questions. They’re obsessions. To put together NBA 2K19, the 20th game in the franchise dating back to 1999, Jeff Thomas and his team of designers paid close attention to detail and a technology called scanning. They traveled with NBA athletes during their regular-season games and filmed each person with a custom-made mobile camera rig—a kind of portable photo booth. The rig has 150 different camera lenses that can shoot the players from all angles and capture details such as beards, tattoos and facial expressions. The players…

Firefighters battle a massive blaze that engulfed Brazil’s National Museum on September 2. Most of the 20 million artifacts in the 200-year-old institution, including the oldest human fossil found in the Americas, were destroyed. Among the items rescued was the 5.9-ton Bendegó meteorite. Officials speculate an electrical short circuit might have sparked the overnight inferno. No injuries were reported, but the tragedy “serves as a lesson,” said Culture Minister Sérgio Sá Leitão. “Brazil needs to take better care of its cultural heritage.”…

IN AUGUST, NEARLY ONE YEAR after Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and plunged its 3.4 million residents into darkness, island officials heralded a milestone: The lights were back on. The state-owned electric company even tweeted a photo of a smiling family it said was the last to receive power. But Christine Nieves, an activist in Mariana, didn’t celebrate. She and her small mountain community near the southeastern coast had already restored electricity—on their own. Tired of waiting on the government’s halting repairs, she worked with a band of self-described “anarchistic organizers” from the mainland to install a small solar grid, one of more than a dozen like-minded efforts across Puerto Rico. By the time electric workers showed up, Mariana was two months ahead of them. (The Puerto Rico…

AKILLER IS STALKING THE STREETS OF England, taking more lives than Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy combined. Police, pathologists and amateur investigators are scrambling to solve the case as mutilated bodies pile up between winding rows of terraced houses, parks and even schools—more than 500 at the latest count. The victims are not people; they all walk on four legs: Foxes, rabbits and hundreds of cats. After each is bludgeoned, the killer slices off trophies, often taking the head, the tail or a paw. The bodies, or just the dismembered parts, are then displayed in places children are sure to find them—in front of homes, in the family rabbit hutch or, in one case, outside the gates of a school. While no one knows for sure,…

35 MILLION Amount, in tons, of plastic pollution produced globally each year. About a quarter of that ends up in the water. 7.5 million Number of plastic straws on U.S. shorelines. One Hundred Thousand Number of marine animals that die every year after ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic. 9% Percentage of plastic trash recycled in the United States. In China, it’s 25; in Europe, 30. Less than a fifth of all plastic worldwide is recycled. 1:1 Ratio of the mass of plastic that will be in the ocean in 2050 to the mass of fish (assuming current trends continue). 5,250,000,000 Number of pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans—more than all the stars in the Milky Way. 115 Number of water quality monitoring stations on the Florida coast (235 have closed…

Women protesting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s conservative views dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale, a hit TV series and novel set in a totalitarian society that forces women into sexual servitude, in the Hart Senate Office Building on September 4. Kavanaugh faced punishing questions from Senate Democrats over his views on abortion rights, as well as gay marriage and other issues. Democrats have rallied to block his confirmation.…

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF YOUR SMARTPHONE could call your hairdresser and book an appointment, or haggle with your favorite restaurant for dinner reservations? This past May, Google demonstrated software, called Duplex, that can do just that. The audience of techies was suitably astonished. But consider what it might be like to be on the other end of that conversation—to get a call from a computer sounding like a real human? That’s how good the next wave of AI is going to be, and it’s not just creepy; it’s dangerous. Security mavens are specifically concerned with “bots”—software on the internet designed to perform tasks with a high degree of autonomy. With software like Google’s Duplex, bad actors could use bots to impersonate not only people but people you know, such…

LARA CROFT, THE POP CULTURE star and hero of the popular Tomb Raider video games, has seen her share of tough times. She battled her way through two games of a planned trilogy, Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, thwarting the aims of evil men. In the third installment, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Croft herself is guilty of committing the game’s most evil act, with big consequences: She inadvertently triggers the apocalypse. The end of the world gives Croft a chance to display the qualities that have made her a legendary adventurer through 20 years of games and movies, including the 2001 film starring Angelina Jolie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. But she also gets a chance to blossom into the character she was always meant to be.…

“I told my wife that this was my Searching for Sugar Man moment.” MIKE SNIPER WAS WORKING AT a record store in Brooklyn, New York, when he got the call. A man had died and left behind a mountainous record collection. Could Sniper appraise it? The task was more harrowing than he had imagined. “It turned out the guy died in the apartment, and no one found him for, like, two weeks,” Sniper says. “It reeked of death.” The man had been a sci-fi critic and, based on his East Village apartment, a hoarder. “There were records in the stove and in the refrigerator. Tons of porn DVDs everywhere.” But there were treasures too: “Original Sun Ra records, really rare punk records, original Velvet Underground LPs....…