All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Get WIRED's daily briefing in your inbox. Sign up here
IKEA wants you to shop using augmented reality
IKEA will soon allow customers to order furniture online via an augmented reality smartphone app (Reuters). The new app will combine the kind of augmented reality furniture-position we've previously seen in the IKEA Place app with full online shopping – something IKEA has limited to its website until now.
The service will be trialled in France and the Netherlands and is set to be rolled out to IKEA's top eight markets, including the UK, by the end of the year. The company says that it may reconfigure its stores with more warehouse space if its latest e-commerce venture is a success.
Poland has brought a legal claim against Europe's new copyright directive
The Polish government has announced that it's going to the European Court of Justice over Articles 13 and 17 of the recently-approved new European copyright directive (The Verge). Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski said that the directive, which calls for major online service providers to filter uploads for copyright-infringing materials, “may result in adopting regulations that are analogous to preventive censorship, which is forbidden not only in the Polish constitution but also in the EU treaties.”
Climbers are dying amid the crowds on Everest
Climbing the world's highest mountain has always been a risky proposition, but the popularity of Everest has created a new threat: exhaustion due to hours spent queuing for the summit (BBC News). Photographs show large numbers of climbers waiting in line to summit the mountain's busy Nepali side, with recent deaths during the descent from the mountain attributed to exhaustion after being stuck amid the traffic for over 12 hours.
What Facebook, Google and Tesla actually pay staff in 2019
Under a law that came into effect last year, publicly traded companies in the US must report the median pay of their employees and compare it to the CEO’s pay (WIRED). Now, as tech companies begin to report their median pay for a second time, the figures offer a further glimpse into the compensation of some of the nation’s highest-paid workers. But they also reveal the shortcomings of reducing the pay of tens of thousands of people to a single number.
Room temperature can impact men and women's test performance
A German study has found that women were able to answer more maths test questions as room temperature went up: 1.8 per cent more for every degree of temperature increase (Ars Technica). This resulted in increased test scores; by comparison, men's scores dropped slightly as temperatures went up, raising questions about the importance of appropriate test and working conditions that demand further study.
Elon Musk's wild space internet plan
Listen now, subscribe via RSS or add to iTunes.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
