When Spike Jonze’s Her came out in 2013, the film about a lonely man falling for an artificially intelligent operating system won widespread praise. Watching today, the qualities critics celebrated at the time are still there—it’s a gentle, enjoyably melancholy story, twee but not damnably so—but something else stands out. Though set in the near-future,… Continue reading In the Age of AI, ‘Her’ Is a Fairy Tale
Author: Wired Magazine
The Startup That Transformed the Hack-for-Hire Industry
If you’re looking for a long read to while away your weekend, we’ve got you covered. First up, WIRED senior reporter Andy Greenberg reveals the wild story behind the three teenage hackers who created the Mirai botnet code that ultimately took down a huge swath of the internet in 2016. WIRED contributor Garrett Graff pulls… Continue reading The Startup That Transformed the Hack-for-Hire Industry
17 Gifts for People Who Really Need Some Sleep
Between anxiety and insomnia, I’ve always had trouble sleeping, and I’m not alone. Chances are, you or someone you know is not getting enough sleep, and that can have a serious impact on your health. In the last few years, a few of us on the Gear Team have worked tirelessly to transform our bedrooms… Continue reading 17 Gifts for People Who Really Need Some Sleep
Netflix’s Big Data Dump Shows Just OK TV Is Here to Stay
Netflix just did the unthinkable: It released viewership numbers. After years of withholding information on how many hours subscribers spent watching its shows and movies, on Tuesday the streaming giant released a huge trove of data. It covers 18,000 titles, breaking them all down by how many hours viewers have watched of each during the… Continue reading Netflix’s Big Data Dump Shows Just OK TV Is Here to Stay
School of Rock: The Physics of Waves on Guitar Strings
The rubber band example does indeed have two nodes—they are at the ends of the rubber band where your fingers hold it. We only have half a wavelength in the standing wave, but there is indeed a relationship between the length of the rubber band and the size of the wavelength. Guitar Strings It’s time… Continue reading School of Rock: The Physics of Waves on Guitar Strings
McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Hackers Say They Found the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Killed Their Startup
A little over three years have passed since McDonald’s sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald’s best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines. Until then, Kytch had been… Continue reading McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Hackers Say They Found the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Killed Their Startup
Massive Layoffs Hit Troubled Robotaxi Developer Cruise
Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving development subsidiary, will lay off almost a quarter of its workforce—about 900 employees—the company announced Thursday. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring to focus the robotaxi unit on a narrower path to commercialization. Instead of expanding its commercial robotaxi service to multiple US cities, the company will relaunch its… Continue reading Massive Layoffs Hit Troubled Robotaxi Developer Cruise
Microsoft’s Digital Crime Unit Goes Deep on How It Disrupts Cybercrime
The DCU’s hybrid technical and legal approach to chipping away at cybercrime is still unusual, but as the cybercriminal ecosystem has evolved—alongside its overlaps with state-backed hacking campaigns—the idea of employing creative legal strategies in cyberspace has become more mainstream. In recent years, for example, Meta-owned WhatsApp and Apple both took on the notorious spyware… Continue reading Microsoft’s Digital Crime Unit Goes Deep on How It Disrupts Cybercrime
My Surprisingly Unbiased Week With Elon Musk’s ‘Politically Biased’ Chatbot
Some Elon Musk enthusiasts have been alarmed to discover in recent days that Grok, his supposedly “truth-seeking” artificial intelligence was in actual fact a bit of a snowflake. Grok, built by Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company, was made available to Premium+ X users last Friday. Musk has complained that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is afflicted with “the… Continue reading My Surprisingly Unbiased Week With Elon Musk’s ‘Politically Biased’ Chatbot
Moms For Liberty Is Tearing Itself Apart
“This suggests that the political power is considerable and expanding in some states, but nearly absent and even waning in others,” Brown wrote. Research from the Brookings Institution published in October confirmed this, and found that while Moms for Liberty was attracting members in Democratic strongholds, it was winning school board elections only in staunchly… Continue reading Moms For Liberty Is Tearing Itself Apart