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Some people are just likable. Others seem to think well of them without much effort on their part. And being likable can have its benefits, says Jenny Woo, founder and CEO of Mind Brain Emotion and creator of 52 Essential Relationship Skills, an emotional intelligence training game. “It does have a payoff, and it matters,” she says, noting that being likable helps you connect with others. When you can do that, you can communicate better and connect with people who are different from you, both of which can help you be more effective in the workplace.

But there’s a fine line between working on your likability and ease of connection versus people-pleasing, which can be detrimental, she adds. And it might not be surprising that likable people have some habits and traits that help them connect.

They are present

“The most likable people are not thinking about their likability,” says social interaction expert Patrick King, author of The Science of Likability: 27 Studies to Master Charisma, Attract Friends, Captivate People, and Take Advantage of Human Psychology. King says likable people are, instead, “present and just focused on the conversation, listening, and being curious about their conversation partner.” In other words, they are focused on creating a connection rather than their own impression or image management.

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Neuralink’s announcement of a first-in-human trial made a big splash not because of what the man was able to accomplish—scientists demonstrated using a brain implant to move a cursor in 2006—but because the technology is so advanced. The device is unobtrusive and wireless, and it contains electrodes so thin and fragile they must be stitched into the brain by a specialized robot. It also commanded attention because of the wild promises Neuralink founder Elon Musk has made. It’s no secret that Musk is interested in using his chip to enhance the mind, not just restore function lost to injury or illness.  

But Neuralink isn’t the only company developing brain-computer interfaces to help people who have lost the ability to move or speak. In fact, Synchron, a New York–based company backed by funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has already implanted its device in 10 people. Last week, it launched a patient registry to gear up for a larger clinical trial.

Today in The Checkup, let’s take a look at some of the companies developing brain chips, their progress, and their different approaches to the technology.

Most of the companies working in this space have the same goal: capturing enough information from the brain to decipher the user’s intention. The idea is to aid communication for people who can’t easily move or speak, either by helping them navigate a computer cursor or by actually translating their brain activity into speech or text.

There are a variety of ways to classify these devices, but Jacob Robinson, a bioengineer at Rice University, likes to group them by their invasiveness. There’s an inherent trade-off. The deeper the electrodes go, the more invasive the surgery required to implant them, and the greater the risks. But going deeper also puts the electrodes closer to the brain activity these companies hope to record, which means the device can capture higher-resolution information that might, say, allow the device to decode speech. That’s the goal of companies like Neuralink and Paradromics. 

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Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Envato, Synchron via Businesswire (device)

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5 days to go till the greatest day and the world’s largest celebration of #jazz – #InternationalJazzDay #April30
Be sure to watch the All-Star Global Concert from our host city #Tangier, #Morocco

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2012 Them There Eyes: @chakakhan @joelovanojazz @terence_blanchard @chrmcbride @vinniecolaiuta
#georgeduke #jimmyheath  #jazzday #chakakhan

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The ’90s was a time of epic soundtracks, from Clueless‘s pop extravaganza to Romeo + Juliet‘s swoony seduction to Trainspotting‘s frenzied club mix. But before all these came The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, featuring original songs from The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, and Stone Temple Pilots. While grunge was mainstream by 1994, a soundtrack this hard-edged — flaunting heavy metal alongside goth rock — was far from common. But this album did more than sing the song of the eponymous anti-hero; it also sang of the lost Brandon Lee. 

Inspired by James O’Barr’s comic books, The Crow was to be Lee’s launchpad to stardom. As the forlorn lover Eric Draven, who is resurrected from the dead on the anniversary of his fiancée’s murder to seek vigilante justice, Lee would get to flex his acting chops along with his physical prowess. However, the Alex Proyas-directed movie would define Lee’s legacy, not only because of his powerful performance as an avenging angel, but also because a notorious accident on set led to Lee’s death at 28. 

The Crow and its soundtrack went on to become a major hit, spawning sequels, a short-lived Canadian superhero TV series, a soon-to-hit reboot, and a legion of fans who’ve adored this tale of loss and love for decades now. 

As the soundtrack reaches its 30th anniversary, it hasn’t lost a bit of its entrancing power. Hitting play is like time-traveling back to my teen years, lured into the rush of hormones and emotions from the opening bird cries of The Cure’s “Burn.” Seeking to uncover how The Crow soundtrack came to be a three-time platinum hit that changed the soundtrack landscape and gripped a generation, Mashable reached out to Jeff Most, who produced the film and executive produced the soundtrack with Jolene Cherry, the music supervisor of the 1994 hit. 

In separate interviews, they shared their recollections of the long and difficult journey of two and half years to not only complete the film after the death of their beloved leading man, but also to pull together an album that extended The Crow beyond the movie. 

The Crow soundtrack began with Eric Draven getting a job. 

In the comics, it’s unclear what revenant Eric Draven did for a living, though — according to Most — creator O’Barr imagined he’d have a job like housepainter or something decidedly unglamorous. For Most, who had worked as a radio DJ and produced a television series called Top 40 Videos, making Draven a musician could give the character a sharper context for the movie. Plus, it would allow for a rocking soundtrack that could be a “very emotive way to show this artistic side of [Draven].”

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• Many philosophers and scientists have pondered if we live in a simulated universe, and University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson believes he has evidence.

• Using his previously formulated Second Law of Infodynamics, Vopson claims that the decrease of entropy in information systems over time could prove that the universe has a built-in “data optimization and compression,” which speaks to its digital nature.

• While these claims warrant investigation, they’re far from a discovery themselves, and would likely need rigorous proof for the scientific community at large to seriously consider this theory.

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.

University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.

“In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics,” Vopson said back in 2022. “One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that entropy—a measure of disorder in an isolated system – can only increase or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

Based on this famous law, Vopson similarly expected that entropy in information systems—which his previous research defined as a “fifth state of matter”—should similarly increase over time. But it doesn’t. Instead, it remains constant, or even decreases to a minimum value at equilibrium. This is in direct contrast to the second law of thermodynamics, which inspired Vopson to adopt the Second Law of Information Dynamics (or Infodynamics).

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