Let’s Get Swole
The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and maybe doing so in a little less clothing than...
View ArticleHow to Get Started Biking
For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic bicycle? What gear do you need while you ride? How do...
View ArticleAI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)
The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consumer-level artificial intelligence tools, the fear has...
View ArticleApple’s Vision Quest
After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at the company’s big developer conference in Cupertino,...
View ArticleWhat the Truck, Elon?
Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tried to show off the Cybertruck's "unbreakable...
View ArticleShop Talk
Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they have forever altered the way we buy things through...
View ArticleOur Clothes Are Making Us Sick
Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the day to find that the fabric has given you a skin...
View ArticleHave a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse
We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab cohost Lauren Goode and WIRED editor in chief Gideon...
View ArticleStop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen
Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked up over a hundred million users. It's a huge...
View ArticleElon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans
Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI. The timing of the launch is odd considering Musk...
View ArticleThe Future of Hollywood
Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike—partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use generative artificial intelligence tools to replace human...
View ArticleFarm-to-Table Internet
Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stored there, we can access it from anywhere and edit...
View ArticleNobody’s Driving That Car!
Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all have active programs testing their autonomous...
View ArticleThe Cruelest Summer
Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more frequent, more intense, and longer than any we’ve seen...
View ArticleThe Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods
Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up to class five minutes late. But in Illinois, such...
View ArticleI Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be believed, we are also incredibly bored with...
View ArticleWe Robloxed So You Don’t Have To
If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid’s shoulder while they’re using Roblox. The online platform is filled with free games, experiences, and social hangouts...
View ArticleYour Life, Your iPhone
It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company’s headquarters on Tuesday, Apple showed off regular and Pro...
View ArticleAlexa Gets an AI Makeover
Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, software, and services. The company reserved the spot at...
View ArticleMeta’s Sound and Vision
Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California....
View ArticleSearching for a Better Google
It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google only sells a fraction of the number of phones and...
View ArticleBusiness Wars: Living in an Artificial World
Artificial intelligence abounds, and it’s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular is an invention that seems destined to follow us far...
View ArticleMisinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It
Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on social media, usually by well-meaning people...
View Article23andMe and You
Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the company's lab can reveal the details of your ethnic...
View ArticleHappy 1-Year Muskiversary
Twitter may be officially called X now, but that rebranding is just one of the many changes that have hit the platform since Elon Musk took over. It's been one whole year since the mercurial...
View ArticleOh, the Humaneity
Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring at the screen? Humane, a company started...
View ArticleHow Three Teens Broke the Internet
In October 2016, a malware tool named Mirai took down some of the biggest sites and services on the web, including Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, and Slack. The blackout affected most of the East...
View ArticleGeoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has made headlines all year long, but the turn of events this week was extraordinary. OpenAI was thrown into chaos with the firing and eventual rehiring of CEO Sam Altman. There...
View ArticleJournalists in Studio Getting Coffee
Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There have been many research studies, technological...
View ArticleBlue Bubbles Versus Green Bubbles
When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This color coding signals to the iPhone user that the...
View ArticleTaylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger
Does your favorite movie star or pop singer really love the Kremlin? Though the ads in your Facebook feed may lead you to believe such a thing, it’s just not true. In recent months, a major...
View ArticleOops, All Recommendations!
It’s been a year, that’s for sure. Every week on Gadget Lab, we end the show by bringing you our recommendations for all of our favorite tech, books, TV shows, and life hacks. Now, at the end of the...
View ArticleLive on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li
Artificial intelligence was inarguably the biggest newsmaker in the tech industry this year. Whether it was ChaptGPT writing term papers, AI-generated Drake hits, or the board shakeup at OpenAI, the...
View ArticleAbortion Pill Orders Are Soaring
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights in the United States. Since then, many states have rolled back abortion services or made...
View ArticleC’ES la Vie
It's CES week. Yes, it's time to dive back into that glitzy, chaotic showcase where thousands of startups, companies, and general technology weirdos gather to show off all the new tech and futuristic...
View ArticleAI Hits the Campaign Trail
It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTube videos. This is also the first election of the...
View ArticleI Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of digital currency as a means of buying legal...
View ArticleApple’s Uncanny Valley Pro
Apple's first ever mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, arrives tomorrow. Apple has a knack for revitalizing and legitimizing a product category—something that the face computer market really needs...
View ArticleSeveral People Are Talking
At its core, Slack is a chat app. Every day, millions of people use it to communicate, share files, and gossip with coworkers or friend groups in one organized place. That style of free-flowing...
View ArticleThe Weird World of an AI Clickbait King
Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up an unused domain, then erect a new website filled...
View ArticleTech Workers Are Stressed Out
tech companies seemed immune to large-scale layoffs, and as their profits skyrocketed, those cushy jobs became highly sought-after. But economic headwinds, and the looming influence of AI, are leading...
View ArticleThe Non-Techie's Guide to Nvidia
Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics cards, among other tech, and has earned great success...
View ArticleGoogle’s ‘Woke AI’ Problem
The last few months have been rough for Google. Company executives have been in the hot seat because of some embarrassing missteps, the most awkward of which was the bungled launch of Google’s latest...
View ArticleThe TikTok Ban
You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray. On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives...
View ArticleA 3-Body Podcast
3 Body Problem is Netflix’s new big, meaty prestige sci-fi series. Based on the book of the same name by author Liu Cixin, the show about an impending alien invasion is also one about how humans react...
View ArticleDOJ Calls Out Apple in the Group Chat
Apple has gotten used to being a favorite target of rivals and government agencies. The company has been repeatedly scrutinized by regulators, and other tech companies have accused the company of...
View ArticleShopping for a New Social Feed
Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled Shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They're probably not even the most interesting things you can buy...
View ArticleFrom WIRED Politics Lab: How Election Deniers Are Weaponizing Tech To Disrupt...
Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling...
View ArticleA Chat About Airchat
Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express their every thought by posting short snippets of audio....
View ArticleWe Demystify the Internet's Acronyms
Do you know what TCP/IP means? (Hint: you’re using it right now.) What about CDMA? Or GPT? While the concepts and the execution of these technologies are clear to most of us who have been on the...
View Article
