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‘Dune: Part Two’ Is a Religious Experience

‘Dune: Part Two’ Is a Religious Experience

The new movie Dune: Part Two, directed by Denis Villeneuve, adapts the second half of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune. Science fiction author Matthew Kressel was blown away by the film’s breathtaking visuals.

“I was on the edge of my seat for the whole movie,” Kressel says in Episode 563 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen.”

TV writer Andrea Kail, a lifelong Dune fan, calls Dune: Part Two a perfect movie. “It was like a religious experience,” she says. “Genuinely. It was awe-inspiring, the way you feel in church if you’re very religious.”

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley loved Dune: Part Two, but warns that Dune purists might need to adjust their expectations. “This movie seems like basically a rewrite of the book,” he says. “So many of the scenes I don’t think are in the book—I don’t remember them. So many things are changed pretty dramatically. They’re basically 99-100 percent good changes in my opinion, but it seems like they made pretty dramatic changes to the material compared to the first movie.”

Science fiction author Rajan Khanna had mixed feelings about Dune: Part Two, but is glad that it’s helping to create more Dune fans. “It’s exciting to have certain things enter the modern vernacular that I’ve had in my head for a long time, stuff about spice and sandworms and things,” he says. “I’m happy to see stuff like this succeed. Stuff that we love finally finding an audience and being done well is always great.”

Listen to the complete interview with Matthew Kressel, Andrea Kail, and Rajan Khanna in Episode 563 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Rajan Khanna on Dune vs. Dune: Part Two:

The first film had to set up a lot of the language, especially if you’re not used to Dune, how the world works, how the technology works, the shields and all that. They were very careful in the first film to show how the shields worked and the red meant that something was penetrating. So I think in this film they got to be like, “You saw the first film, you know how it works, now we can just unload it on you,” and I think that worked to its benefit for sure.

Andrea Kail on Paul Atreides and Chani:

In the book it’s more like, “Oh, he dreams about her and it’s destiny,” but we don’t see them actually falling in love. I don’t feel it. In this we see the love story, we see why they fall in love, and it’s sweet and it’s quiet and it’s real. I understand why they love each other. That’s one of the parts where I was crying, that dune scene where he’s telling her about the seas on Caladan, how you swim in the water, and the scene where she teaches him how to sandwalk. It was like watching two kids dancing. It was so beautiful. I was just tearing up.

Matthew Kressel on sandworms:

The earlier adaptations, the Lynch version and the Syfy version, when they ride the worms I’m like, “OK, that looks difficult. It’s like a rock wall in a gym. It looks really hard but I could probably do it.” In this movie, I’m like, “No way.” Just the speed of it and the enormity of it. How do they even see where they’re going? There’s so much sand blowing around. I just thought that was so cool, and the final battle scene where they’re riding the worms into battle and they’re flying the Atreides banner, and you’re like, “Holy cow.” I got chills from that.

David Barr Kirtley on film audiences:

The fact that this seems to have been embraced so fervently by a mass audience just to me is such an encouraging sign that you can make a big budget, serious science fiction movie, and not have to dumb it down, and not have to make it a “crowd pleaser.” So I think people have maybe not been giving audiences enough credit, that people will go to see this sort of movie, even if it’s three hours long and has a downer ending and everything, if it’s good. So that’s just another reason I love this movie and the phenomenon of this movie.


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The NSA Warns That US Adversaries Free to Mine Private Data May Have an AI Edge

The NSA Warns That US Adversaries Free to Mine Private Data May Have an AI Edge

Electrical engineer Gilbert Herrera was appointed research director of the US National Security Agency in late 2021, just as an AI revolution was brewing inside the US tech industry.

The NSA, sometimes jokingly said to stand for No Such Agency, has long hired top math and computer science talent. Its technical leaders have been early and avid users of advanced computing and AI. And yet when Herrera spoke with me by phone about the implications of the latest AI boom from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, it seemed that, like many others, the agency has been stunned by the recent success of the large language models behind ChatGPT and other hit AI products. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Person in a suit smiling in front of the American and National Security Agency flags

Gilbert HerreraCourtesy of National Security Agency

How big of a surprise was the ChatGPT moment to the NSA?

Oh, I thought your first question was going to be “what did the NSA learn from the Ark of the Covenant?” That’s been a recurring one since about 1939. I’d love to tell you, but I can’t.

What I think everybody learned from the ChatGPT moment is that if you throw enough data and enough computing resources at AI, these emergent properties appear.

The NSA really views artificial intelligence as at the frontier of a long history of using automation to perform our missions with computing. AI has long been viewed as ways that we could operate smarter and faster and at scale. And so we’ve been involved in research leading to this moment for well over 20 years.

Large language models have been around long before generative pretrained (GPT) models. But this “ChatGPT moment”—once you could ask it to write a joke, or once you can engage in a conversation—that really differentiates it from other work that we and others have done.

The NSA and its counterparts among US allies have occasionally developed important technologies before anyone else but kept it a secret, like public key cryptography in the 1970s. Did the same thing perhaps happen with large language models?

At the NSA we couldn’t have created these big transformer models, because we could not use the data. We cannot use US citizen’s data. Another thing is the budget. I listened to a podcast where someone shared a Microsoft earnings call, and they said they were spending $10 billion a quarter on platform costs. [The total US intelligence budget in 2023 was $100 billion.]

It really has to be people that have enough money for capital investment that is tens of billions and [who] have access to the kind of data that can produce these emergent properties. And so it really is the hyperscalers [largest cloud companies] and potentially governments that don’t care about personal privacy, don’t have to follow personal privacy laws, and don’t have an issue with stealing data. And I’ll leave it to your imagination as to who that may be.

Doesn’t that put the NSA—and the United States—at a disadvantage in intelligence gathering and processing?

II’ll push back a little bit: It doesn’t put us at a big disadvantage. We kind of need to work around it, and I’ll come to that.

It’s not a huge disadvantage for our responsibility, which is dealing with nation-state targets. If you look at other applications, it may make it more difficult for some of our colleagues that deal with domestic intelligence. But the intelligence community is going to need to find a path to using commercial language models and respecting privacy and personal liberties. [The NSA is prohibited from collecting domestic intelligence, although multiple whistleblowers have warned that it does scoop up US data.]

The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point

The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point

The phone or computer you’re reading this on may not be long for this world. Maybe you’ll drop it in water, or your dog will make a chew toy of it, or it’ll reach obsolescence. If you can’t repair it and have to discard it, the device will become e-waste, joining an alarmingly large mountain of defunct TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cameras, routers, electric toothbrushes, headphones. This is “electrical and electronic equipment,” aka EEE—anything with a plug or battery. It’s increasingly out of control.

As economies develop and the consumerist lifestyle spreads around the world, e-waste has turned into a full-blown environmental crisis. People living in high-income countries own, on average, 109 EEE devices per capita, while those in low-income nations have just four. A new UN report finds that in 2022, humanity churned out 137 billion pounds of e-waste—more than 17 pounds for every person on Earth—and recycled less than a quarter of it.

That also represents about $62 billion worth of recoverable materials, like iron, copper, and gold, hitting e-waste landfills each year. At this pace, e-waste will grow by 33 percent by 2030, while the recycling rate could decline to 20 percent. (You can see this growth in the graph below: purple is EEE on the market, black is e-waste, and green is what gets recycled.)

Graph displaying ewaste generation

Courtesy of UN Global E-waste Statistics Partnership

“What was really alarming to me is that the speed at which this is growing is much quicker than the speed that e-waste is properly collected and recycled,” says Kees Baldé, a senior scientific specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and lead author of the report. “We just consume way too much and we dispose of things way too quickly. We buy things that we may not even need, because it’s just very cheap. And also these products are not designed to be repaired.”

Humanity has to quickly bump up those recycling rates, the report stresses. In the first pie chart below, you can see the significant amount of metals we could be saving, mostly iron (chemical symbol Fe, in light gray), along with aluminum (Al, in dark gray), copper (Cu), and nickel (Ni). Other EEE metals include zinc, tin, and antimony. Overall, the report found that in 2022, generated e-waste contained 68 billion pounds of metal.

Graphs displaying recoverable and nonrecoverable metals in ewaste

Courtesy of UN Global E-waste Statistics Partnership

Trek’s FX+ 2 Electric Bike Is $500 off Right Now

Trek’s FX+ 2 Electric Bike Is $500 off Right Now

Here in the Pacific Northwest, spring has sprung. Yes, it is but a false spring, and by the end of the week, we will again be moping through chilly gloom and rain. But for the time being, the sun is shining on our gleaming white vampire limbs and we are frantically preparing ourselves for summer picnics, lakeside hangs, and, naturally, plenty of biking.

That makes this year’s TrekFest spectacularly well-timed. Trek holds its largest sale of the year from March 15 through April 30, and we noticed that our top electric bike recommendation for most people, the Trek FX+ 2, is $500 off. One of our favorite electric mountain bikes, the Trek Fuel EXe, is also $1,000 off. You can also shop the rest of the sale here—there are discounts on helmets and lights too.

As always, if you don’t see anything you like or need here, don’t forget to check out our Best Electric Bikes, Best Bike Accessories, and Best Bike Locks guides.

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Best Electric Bike Deals

Trek FX 2 electric bicycle

FX+ 2

Photograph: Trek

If you came to me and said, “I want an electric bike and I’ve never ridden one before,” I would consider a few items. You probably don’t want a 65-pound direct-to-consumer behemoth that will crush you at a standstill or require you to learn how to tune hydraulic brakes yourself. At a mere 40 pounds, the Trek FX+ 2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a relatively lightweight, aluminum city commuter made by a company with a wide network of retailers who can help you if things go awry. I’ve been testing electric bikes for years, and this is the first and only bike my dad, who is in his 60s, grabs to chase after my kids.

Before you murder me, I have to say that if you like mountain biking, $5,500 is not an insane price to pay for a super light bike with full suspension—even without an electric motor. Trek is offering a few different models for sale. This is the most affordable version; the quality of the components increases as you go higher on the price scale. However, this one still has a carbon frame with a quiet motor and the same specs as the model I tested. The modest 250-watt motor is just enough to keep up with your friends on the uphills so you can all enjoy the downhills together.

If you’ve dug your helmet out of the garage and discovered that the foam has all quietly rotted away during the winter, you need a new one. This is a modestly-priced helmet by Bontrager, which Trek owns. It features MIPS, or the Multidirectional Impact Protection System, which allows the helmet to slide relative to the brain and deflect impact.

9 Best Baby Monitors (2024): Wi-Fi, Radio (No Internet), and More

9 Best Baby Monitors (2024): Wi-Fi, Radio (No Internet), and More

New parents, here’s a tip: You might not need a baby monitor, since a healthy, hungry baby can shriek in tones piercing enough to bend metal. Nevertheless, baby monitors can provide high-quality audio and crystal-clear videostreams from the camera directly to a separate device like a smartphone or tablet. This means you can move freely around the house while keeping a close eye on the baby as they sleep or play contentedly in their crib.

We’ve tested baby monitors ranging from Wi-Fi-powered to radio-based and even audio-only, and consider the design, features, and picture and audio quality to figure out which ones are worth buying. These are the best baby monitors that can keep a watchful eye on your bundle of joy.

Be sure to check out our other baby gear guides, including the Best Strollers, Best Breast Pumps, Best Baby Gear, and Best Baby Carriers.

Updated March 2024: We’ve added the Nanit Pro Monitor as a new pick and the Maxi-Cosi See Pro 360°. We’ve also added new details on how we test baby monitors.

Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

Adrienne So contributed to this guide.

Never-Repeating Patterns of Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information

Never-Repeating Patterns of Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information

This extreme fragility might make quantum computing sound hopeless. But in 1995, the applied mathematician Peter Shor discovered a clever way to store quantum information. His encoding had two key properties. First, it could tolerate errors that only affected individual qubits. Second, it came with a procedure for correcting errors as they occurred, preventing them from piling up and derailing a computation. Shor’s discovery was the first example of a quantum error-correcting code, and its two key properties are the defining features of all such codes.

The first property stems from a simple principle: Secret information is less vulnerable when it’s divided up. Spy networks employ a similar strategy. Each spy knows very little about the network as a whole, so the organization remains safe even if any individual is captured. But quantum error-correcting codes take this logic to the extreme. In a quantum spy network, no single spy would know anything at all, yet together they’d know a lot.

Each quantum error-correcting code is a specific recipe for distributing quantum information across many qubits in a collective superposition state. This procedure effectively transforms a cluster of physical qubits into a single virtual qubit. Repeat the process many times with a large array of qubits, and you’ll get many virtual qubits that you can use to perform computations.

The physical qubits that make up each virtual qubit are like those oblivious quantum spies. Measure any one of them and you’ll learn nothing about the state of the virtual qubit it’s a part of—a property called local indistinguishability. Since each physical qubit encodes no information, errors in single qubits won’t ruin a computation. The information that matters is somehow everywhere, yet nowhere in particular.

“You can’t pin it down to any individual qubit,” Cubitt said.

All quantum error-correcting codes can absorb at least one error without any effect on the encoded information, but they will all eventually succumb as errors accumulate. That’s where the second property of quantum error-correcting codes kicks in—the actual error correction. This is closely related to local indistinguishability: Because errors in individual qubits don’t destroy any information, it’s always possible to reverse any error using established procedures specific to each code.

Taken for a Ride

Zhi Li, a postdoc at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, was well versed in the theory of quantum error correction. But the subject was far from his mind when he struck up a conversation with his colleague Latham Boyle. It was the fall of 2022, and the two physicists were on an evening shuttle from Waterloo to Toronto. Boyle, an expert in aperiodic tilings who lived in Toronto at the time and is now at the University of Edinburgh, was a familiar face on those shuttle rides, which often got stuck in heavy traffic.

“Normally they could be very miserable,” Boyle said. “This was like the greatest one of all time.”

Before that fateful evening, Li and Boyle knew of each other’s work, but their research areas didn’t directly overlap, and they’d never had a one-on-one conversation. But like countless researchers in unrelated fields, Li was curious about aperiodic tilings. “It’s very hard to be not interested,” he said.