Connects to Amazon Alexa If you aren’t in it for the music, the Amazon Echo Dot With Clock (4th Gen) and Google’s Nest Mini (7/10, WIRED Recommends) will give you most of the perks of owning a smart speaker, and you can use them to smarten up existing speakers on the cheap. The sound is… Continue reading The 8 Best Smart Speakers With Alexa or Google Assistant
Author: Wired Magazine
‘Prebunking’ Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread
The scene comes into focus: A car is driving down a winding mountain road at night. Suddenly, the headlights flicker, then fade to black. The car stops dead. Moonlight is all that’s left for our heroine, owls hoot, and vaguely ominous music plays in the background. You know that things are about to go south… Continue reading ‘Prebunking’ Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread
Explosion in Geofence Warrants Threatens Privacy Nationwide
Police around the country have drastically increased their use of geofence warrants, a widely criticized investigative technique that collects data from any user’s device that was in a specified area within a certain time range, according to new figures shared by Google. Law enforcement has served geofence warrants to Google since 2016, but the company… Continue reading Explosion in Geofence Warrants Threatens Privacy Nationwide
Why Florida’s Covid Surge Is Screwing With the Water Supply
On Wednesday, the Tampa Bay water utility announced a rather bizarre side effect of Florida’s out-of-control Covid surge: It wasn’t getting enough deliveries of liquid oxygen to treat its water. More than 17,000 Covid patients—who require supplemental oxygen to stay alive—are now hospitalized across the state, and there isn’t enough oxygen to go around. Even… Continue reading Why Florida’s Covid Surge Is Screwing With the Water Supply
A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an ‘Internet Apocalypse’
Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on… Continue reading A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an ‘Internet Apocalypse’
Vaccine Mandates Work—but Only If They’re Done Right
The point is, formal FDA approval wasn’t necessary for a mandate, but it’s turning out to be sufficient. Businesses, schools, and local governments that wanted to avoid a backlash over requiring “experimental” vaccines now feel like they have an even greener light. (This might’ve been a feint anyway; Texas governor Greg Abbott’s anti-mandate policy used… Continue reading Vaccine Mandates Work—but Only If They’re Done Right
The OnlyFans Porn Ban Reversal Does Not Reassure Creators
That didn’t last long. Less than a week after OnlyFans announced plans to ban porn from its platform due to pressure from its banking partners, the subscription site announced Wednesday that decision may have been premature. Instead of eliminating sexually explicit content on the site, the company said in a tweet, it had “secured [the]… Continue reading The OnlyFans Porn Ban Reversal Does Not Reassure Creators
The Stealthy iPhone Hacks That Apple Still Can’t Stop
It’s a shocking revelation: The Bahraini government allegedly purchased and deployed sophisticated malware against human rights activists, including spyware that required no interaction from the victim—no clicked links, no permissions granted—to take hold on their iPhones. But as disturbing as this week’s report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab may be, it’s also increasingly… Continue reading The Stealthy iPhone Hacks That Apple Still Can’t Stop
Would It Be Fair to Treat Vaccinated Covid Patients First?
Around the world, hospitals and clinicians have broadly agreed that both Covid and non-Covid patients should have the same triage principles applied, that care shouldn’t be first-come, first-served (because of differences in accessibility), and that the primary metric should be getting the greatest number of people to leave the hospital alive. Cultural values sometimes come… Continue reading Would It Be Fair to Treat Vaccinated Covid Patients First?
The 12 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride
The concurrent crises of the coronavirus pandemic and climate change have prompted many of us to rethink how we live our daily lives. For millions of Americans, that included hopping on an ebike, whether we rented one from a bike-share or bought our own. For years, electric bicycles were bulky, inconvenient, expensive machines whose usefulness… Continue reading The 12 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride