‘It’s not just alerts, it’s a state of mind’: How a wildfire monitoring app became essential in the US west

Watch Duty – which began in California and has expanded across 14 states – alerted the public to more than 9,000 wildfires in 2024Cristy Thomas began to panic as she called 911 for the second time on a warm October day but couldn’t get through. She anxiously watched the plume of black smoke pouring over her rural community in central California get larger.Then she heard a familiar ping.Watch Duty, an app that alerts users of wildfire risk and provides critical information about blazes as they unfold, had already registered the fire. She relaxed

‘Don’t feed the troll’: German chancellor responds to Elon Musk comments

When the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was asked in an interview about the barrage of insults being directed at him and other German leaders by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, his reply was: “Don’t feed the troll.”Speaking to the German weekly Stern, Scholz described the criticisms as nothing new. “You have to stay cool,” he said in the interview. “As Social Democrats, we have long been used to the fact that there are rich media entrepreneurs who do not appreciate social democratic politics – and do not hide their opinions.”He said he would make no efforts to engage with Musk, who has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in next month’s federal elections and will host a live discussion on his social media platform X with its candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel

Why Elon Musk’s Starship rocket is beating Nasa in the space race

It was one of the most striking technological events of the year. On 13 October, Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, blasted into space from a launchpad in Texas. Its main booster reached an altitude of more than 65km before it began to hurtle back to Earth at a velocity greater than the speed of sound.A crash was averted when the rocket – built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company – reignited its engines and slowed down until it hovered tantilisingly over the tower from which it had been fired aloft only seven minutes earlier. Pincer claws grasped the giant launcher and held it firmly in their grip, ready for refurbishment and relaunch

How Elon Musk’s X became the global right’s supercharged front page

As a business proposition, Elon Musk’s ownership of X, formerly known as Twitter, has so far been a disaster: since he acquired it in late 2022, the social media company, according to one estimate, has lost nearly 80% of its value.As a political proposition, however, Musk’s purchase may turn out to be one of the shrewdest investments of all time. Every week, the platform seems to supercharge a news issue that comes to dominate conservative discourse – and often mainstream discourse, as well – with real political repercussions.Sometimes these topics are inflammatory conspiracy theories, like a false rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had been eating cats and dogs, which became a talking point in the final days of the US presidential election and led to bomb threats and harassment against Springfield residents.Other times, X, often aided by Musk’s own posts, elevates fact-based but contentious stories – about illegal immigration, government waste, visa fraud, population decline, youth gender transition or government crackdowns on social media speech – that the mainstream media is perceived to have ignored or downplayed

How to deal with Zoom calls in 2025: in smaller groups with static backgrounds

Whether it’s a social catch-up with colleagues, or assembling to set new year objectives, many of us will be reconnecting via Zoom, Teams or Google Meet come Monday morning. Yet while such platforms have revolutionised flexible and remote working in recent years, scientists are increasingly waking up to the negative toll they can take on people’s energy levels and self-esteem. So how can we forge a healthier relationship with videoconferencing in 2025?Relatively early during the pandemic, psychologists coined the phrase “Zoom fatigue” to describe the physical and psychological exhaustion that can come from spending extended periods on videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom. It was found that people who have more and longer meetings using the technology, or have more negative attitudes towards them, tend to feel more exhausted by them.Further studies have linked the use of the self view function, which allows you to control whether your video is displayed on your screen during a meeting, to greater levels of fatigue

Football coaches could soon be calling on AI to scout the next superstar

Football coaches desperate to boost their team’s performance could soon find an answer in an artificial intelligence system aimed at conjuring the next superstar.A kind of sporting Aladdin’s lamp is within reach, technologists claim, which could allow managers to simply wish for a new player with the aggression of Erling Haaland or the poise of Jude Bellingham and for an AI to suggest the perfect prospect.A system that uses video and automated tracking to monitor the performances of nearly 180,000 mostly teenage footballers around the world underpins the services of Eyeball, a digital scouting company that already has relationships with more than a dozen Premier League clubs and other elite teams in Europe and North America.Using what it claims is the largest video database of global youth football – with players logged from 28 countries – the company says it can now determine which young players most fit the description of current or recent top stars as defined by one of eight archetypes. These include the ideal “box-to-box midfielder”, “modern No 9”, “playmaking No 10” and “inverted wing-back”