Squeeze More Juice Out of Your Dead Batteries—Using Physics

You’re walking the dog at night, and your little flashlight, which has been getting dimmer, conks out. Instead of stumbling home in the dark, wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow eke a little more energy out of the batteries inside? That’s not as crazy as it sounds. When a battery-powered device stops working,…

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This R-Rated Film Studio Wants to Be the HBO of AI

Demand for artificially generated smut is surging. But the quality of the visual content being created and shared—like on companion apps, where adult performers are selling their likeness to give fans a 24/7 experience, WIRED reported in March—isn’t exactly movie-level caliber. Rogue Studio, a cinematic AI-generator platform built around adult visual storytelling, is trying to…

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Astronomers Discover the Existence of a Black Hole Star

When Soundgarden Wrote “Black Hole Sun,” they may have inadvertently been onto something. In a new paper in Nature, scientists have chronicled a “black hole star” that’s the size of our solar system and glows bright red in the depth of space. The findings are based on observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, which…

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This Beautifully Weird Necklace Is Secretly a USB Drive

I’m already growing hoarse in Golden Gate Park as Charli XCX takes the stage at a San Francisco music festival. The crowd starts jumping as a guitar hook hits, and I reluctantly comply, bouncing around on these aging knees as my chunky Puff necklace almost flies off the chain. During a lull in the set,…

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The Best Movies to Stream This Month (August 2026)

It’s the depths of summer. It’s still stultifyingly, dangerously hot. Going outside is a fool’s game unless you have 500 SPF sunblock and a personal AC unit. Be sensible: Stay inside and enjoy some of the best movies currently streaming instead. August’s offerings include the return of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Paramount+, with a…

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The Next Big Influencer Is This 4-Foot-Tall Robot From China

When Edward Warchocki speaks with you, he sounds like a regular guy. “Not super intelligent, but very emotional, very easy to make friends with,” says Bartosz Idzik, the person who created him. But when he doesn’t talk, it’s harder to forget what Warchocki really is: a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot that’s wandering the city streets of…

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