The idea of starting a book club came to Valeen Heinle late one night in July. She was having a particularly bad argument with her Trump-supporting dad over Israel’s war in Gaza and its devastating impacts on children. “I’m begging you to just try and learn something that isn’t from Facebook, Fox, or Newsmax,” Valeen,…
Comparing the Best Alexa Speakers Honorable Mentions While I wouldn’t call these smart speakers my absolute favorites from Amazon, they have some excellent qualities that make them stand out among the vast lineup of Echo models. The Echo Studio (2nd Gen) is the best Alexa speaker for sound quality. This is the second version of…
Imagine you’re walking your dog. It interacts with the world around you—sniffing some things, relieving itself on others. You walk down the Embarcadero in San Francisco on a bright sunny day, and you see the Ferry Building in the distance as you look out into the bay. Your dog turns to you, looks you in…
Brian Barrett: They’ve got 80 billion or so to spend, 75 billion of that I think they have to spend in the next four years. So yeah, they’re going to keep expanding. And when you think of how much of an impact 3,000 agents officers had in Minneapolis alone, that’s like an eighth of the…
Whether you want to back up all your precious files, make it easier to share and collaborate, or create your own entertainment cloud, network-attached storage (NAS) devices are the way. These versatile servers can boost your home network and help you offload tasks from your computer and other devices. I’ve spent the last few months…
As the pet tech writer here at WIRED, I know just how far we’ve come as a pet-obsessed society. From automatic litter boxes with built-in cameras to interactive pet cameras on wheels that shoot out treats, if a human has dreamed it, our pets have probably been subjected to it. For a while, pet influencers…
After a six-week work trip Xiayun, an employee at a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley, had landed at her hometown in China for vacation when she saw the news about H-1B visas. On Friday afternoon, US president Donald Trump signed a proclamation saying that any H-1B visa holder’s entry into the US will be “restricted,…
Top Tier gasoline was developed in 2004 to go beyond the minimum standard for detergent additives to better protect increasingly sophisticated engines from carbon buildup and deposits on the intake valves, which can result in a rough idle, acceleration hesitation, knocking/pinging, and reduced fuel economy. Over the past 20 years, engines have become far more precise,…
Leaders at Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab confronted the startup’s cofounder and former CTO, Barret Zoph, over an alleged relationship with another employee last summer, WIRED has learned. That relationship was likely the alleged “misconduct” that has been mentioned in prior reporting, including by WIRED. To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, WIRED is…
“Unlimited” is a funny term. Unlimited cell phone plans often come with a long list of footnotes, terms, conditions, and exceptions. Mercifully, all of the Big Three cell companies have, by now, ditched throttling on their highest-paid tiers, and include 5G data access in all their unlimited plans. Yet there are still many differences in…