The Complicated Case of Passing On Your Digital Estate
When a loved one dies, who downloads their important files from their cloud storage account?…
When a loved one dies, who downloads their important files from their cloud storage account? Who monitors their email inbox? Who decides what happens to the photos and videos on their social media accounts? And what if those tasks fall to you? Everyone will die, but not everyone has planned what they want to happen…
Why WIRED recommends: The compression and vibrating pairing is therapeutic, to say the least; it consistently left my legs feeling less stiff after workouts. Everything is controlled from an LCD screen built into the lead boot, so there’s no separate controller to keep track of. You can tailor every session to your preference, with durations…
The US Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, is circulating a proposed rule that would cease the collection of demographic data on racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people and prevent undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2030 census, according to documents viewed by WIRED. The decision could have far-reaching implications for federal funding,…
For decades, scientists had theorized that the sun’s surface must be crisscrossed by tiny plasma vortices, generated by the interaction between its intense magnetic fields and the constantly flowing superheated material. This week, the world’s most powerful solar telescope has just confirmed this. The latest image captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located…
Yiyang Zhuge learned last week that when you go extremely viral, the people you have been following for years suddenly start following you back. Zhuge logged onto X and found that a string of famous professors and scholars were in her list of new followers. A PhD candidate in political philosophy at Boston College, Zhuge…
The big screen is having a moment. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is breaking box office records, while Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has people dusting off Homer for the first time since high school. But television is keeping pace with a slate of can’t-miss new releases and beloved old favorites that are worth revisiting. While plenty…
Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future. In the heart of the tech industry, people are designing payment systems for agents, using them to automate their jobs, and most recently, trying to stop them from hacking into other organizations. But out in the real world, most people have never touched an…
The Albany Police Department did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Flock’s Savannah video centers on an interview with then major of police Robert Gavin, who praised how Flock facilitates data-sharing between different law enforcement agencies. “We spent a lot of time doing community talks about what we’re gonna use them for, what we’re…
The Department of Homeland Security is seeking neighborhood “rapid response” Signal group chats as it defends itself in a lawsuit accusing it of violating protesters’ First Amendment rights, according to recent court filings. Attorneys for protesters in the case argue that the move itself is a First Amendment violation. The case, Hilton v. Noem, was…
Agentic AI has permanently changed cybersecurity by making it quicker and easier to discover vulnerabilities in software and fix them—or develop so-called exploits to weaponize them. But longtime web security researcher James Kettle wanted to look beyond the bug-hunting apocalypse to explore a question that has taken on even more urgency as major AI organizations…