Author: Wired Magazine

A Phone Carrier That Doesn’t Track Your Browsing or Location

As marketers, data brokers, and tech giants endlessly expand their access to individuals’ data and movements across the web, tools like VPNs or cookie blockers can feel increasingly feeble and futile. Short of going totally off the grid forever, there are few options for the average person to meaningfully resist tracking online. Even after coming… Continue reading A Phone Carrier That Doesn’t Track Your Browsing or Location

A Glimpse of a Future Without White People

Whiteness is a seduction. Whiteness is also an illusion. These are the twin motifs on which Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid props up The Last White Man, his new novel about race metamorphosis and human morality. Anchored in the bare and elegiac prose Hamid has made his trademark style, the book springboards from a single unexplained… Continue reading A Glimpse of a Future Without White People

The Best Theragun (and Other Great Massage Guns)

Massage guns, also known as percussive therapy devices, help relax and soothe sore muscles, whether you’re an athlete or just hunching over a desk all day. Theraguns (made by Therabody) tend to be the best massage guns. We’ve tested to find the best Theraguns, as well as several of the more affordable alternatives available. Our… Continue reading The Best Theragun (and Other Great Massage Guns)

Samsung’s New Phone Repair Kits Are Better Than Nothing

Samsung officially introduced its repair kit program in the US this week. Now, anyone who owns one of the handful of Galaxy phones covered by the program can order the parts, tools, and instructions needed to fix their devices themselves. The company first announced its repair program in April. Thanks to some laws in Europe… Continue reading Samsung’s New Phone Repair Kits Are Better Than Nothing

The US Emergency Alert System Has Dangerous Flaws

Cryptocurrency tracing has become a key tool for police investigating everything from fraud and ransomware to child abuse. But its accuracy may soon be put to the test. This week, we reported on new court filings from the legal team representing Roman Sterlingov, who’s been in jail for 15 months, accused of laundering $336 million… Continue reading The US Emergency Alert System Has Dangerous Flaws

A Duo of Google Meet Apps Is Officially Here, and It’s Confusing

Google is officially kicking off the merger of its two video chat apps, Google Meet and Google Duo. Google announced the merger in June, with the plan to keep the Google Meet brand name while merging the best of both code bases into the Google Duo app. According to Google’s PR email (no links, sorry),… Continue reading A Duo of Google Meet Apps Is Officially Here, and It’s Confusing

A Slack Bug Exposed Some Users’ Hashed Passwords for 5 Years

The office communication platform Slack is known for being easy and intuitive to use. But the company said on Friday that one of its low-friction features contained a vulnerability, now fixed, that exposed cryptographically scrambled versions of some users’ passwords.  When users created or revoked a link—known as a “shared invite link”—that others could use… Continue reading A Slack Bug Exposed Some Users’ Hashed Passwords for 5 Years

We Interviewed Meta’s New AI Chatbot About … Itself

What kind of data are you trained on? Kuki can talk about everything from music to sports to politics and religion! And beyond that as well Would you like me to call you Kuki? Yes! Call me kuki please!!! It would be great if we could become friends!!! We could learn so much from each… Continue reading We Interviewed Meta’s New AI Chatbot About … Itself

BeReal and the Doomed Quest for Online Authenticity

On its ascent to the coveted top spot in app store charts, BeReal—the French photo-sharing app launched in 2020—has been heralded as the antidote to social media fakery. Staving off canny staging and slick curation, BeReal gives users just two minutes following a prompt to submit a dual front-camera/back-camera image. Only after posting their own… Continue reading BeReal and the Doomed Quest for Online Authenticity