This week we’re putting galaxies at center stage. There’s plenty of room; by now you may have heard that our universe is expanding, and will continue to move outward for all of time, until there isn’t any more time. But: In its early days, before the universe began expanding, it was much more compact. Massive […]
Read MoreUS wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon go out of their way to make expensive smartphones seem affordable. Why not buy a $1,000 Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus if you only have to pay $0 down and $30 a month for it? Whether you pay it at once or in 24 installments, you’re still blowing hundreds […]
Read MoreA little over half a century ago, chaos started spilling out of a famous experiment. It came not from a petri dish, a beaker or an astronomical observatory, but from the vacuum tubes and diodes of a Royal McBee LGP-30. This “desk” computer—it was the size of a desk—weighed some 800 pounds and sounded like […]
Read MorePassword managers are the vegetables of the internet. We know they're good for us, but most of us are happier snacking on the password equivalent of junk food. For seven years running that's been "123456" and "password"—the two most commonly used passwords on the web. The problem is, most of us don't know what makes […]
Read MoreMan, it's been a long week. Does anyone even remember it started with former White House counsel Don McGahn defying a Congressional subpoena at this point? Or that New York State had effectively closed a legal loophole that would allow them to charge people President Trump pardoned on a federal level? Does anyone recall the […]
Read MoreThis week, WIRED Transpo checked out a few bits of tech that might not sound alluring—but oh, magic lives in the details. General Motors’ new electronic platform should unlock a whole new world of in-car software, at exactly the moment when customers begin to expect their vehicles’ gizmos run even more smoothly than their phones. […]
Read MoreThe dogs still make Andreas Mershin angry. “I mean, I love dogs,” says the Greek-Russian scientist, in his office at MIT. “But the dogs are slapping me in the face.” He pulls up a video to show me what he means. In it, a black dog named Lucy approaches a series of six stations, each […]
Read MoreKids today are voracious technology consumers for sure, but they are also active participants—creators, collaborators, and even influencers. So parents have much more to wrestle with than some broad-brush notion of “screen time.” Whatever you think of Fortnite, when children play it they are working together as a team (that’s good!), in a tech-mediated environment […]
Read MoreAs facial recognition technologies have evolved from fledgling projects into powerful software platforms, researchers and civil liberties advocates have been issuing warnings about the potential for privacy erosions. Those mounting fears came to a head Wednesday in Congress. Alarms over facial recognition had already gained urgency in recent years, as studies have shown that the […]
Read MoreThe opening to Chris Hughes’ much-publicized New York Times essay yesterday—attacking the company that made him vastly wealthy—was almost Shakespearean in its drama. After describing his last personal meeting with the Zuckerbergs—in their house, sharing a hug in parting with Mark’s wife, Priscilla—he lays out in 6,000-word detail how the empire Mark Zuckerberg built should […]
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