Uncanny Valley | WIRED

Will Meta Really Have to Sell Instagram and WhatsApp?

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The trial between the US Federal Trade Commission and Meta began this week—and the future of the company is at stake. The FTC wants Meta to sell off...

What The Actual Tariff

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been total chaos since President Trump announced tariffs last week. Despite the endless reporting on this story, none of it really makes any se...

Why the Market Is Going Crazy This Week

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED’s Louise Matsakis joins Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s Director of Business & Industry, to talk about this week’s market madness and why the U...

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian? (Re-Run)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's long been believed that Silicon Valley is a hotbed for libertarian ideals, but where did that idea come from? Aside from some high-profile tech f...

Good Quests, Christianity & Caviar Bumps

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The mission of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs has long been to change the world. But, how do you know whether a pursuit is good or bad? ACTS17 colle...

Who's Elon Musk’s Biggest Fan? His Mom

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

She sits in on his business meetings, defends him on X, and travels to give talks about how she raised him, the richest man in the world — but who i...

DOGE is Doing the Opposite of Government Auditing

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED’s Vittoria Elliot joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to discuss what real government auditors think of DOGE’s work, and what hap...

What's Lost When the Human Drivers Are Gone?

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve spent time in San Francisco or Phoenix in the last couple years, chances are you’ve probably seen a self-driving car making its way arou...

Why Elon Musk Has Wanted the Government Shutdown

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED Senior Editor Leah Feiger joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to discuss some breaking news about why Elon Musk would want a governme...

Do We Need To Have More Babies?

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Silicon Valley is obsessed with solutionism. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that when it comes to a declining birth rate some of the valley’s e...

Elon’s Twitter Playbook at DOGE

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED’s Director of Business & Industry Zoë Schiffer and Katie Drummond, Global Editorial Director, talk about credit card freezes and AI techn...

Deepfakes, Tesla Backlash and Chips Chips Chips

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been so busy at WIRED, covering politics, science, culture, security, gear and so much more, that this week we decided to do something a littl...

WIRED News Update: DOGE’s Many Conflicts of Interest & Elon’s Weekend Email Chaos

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED’s Deputy Editor Brian Barrett joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to talk about the many conflicts of interests within DOGE which a...

The Showdown Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between Sam Altman and Elon Musk goes back to the early days of OpenAI– then, a non-profit research lab. But now, the two men find ...

WIRED News Update: The Watergate-inspired Law That’s Fighting DOGE

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Couts, WIRED’s Senior Editor of Security and Investigations, joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to talk about how The 1974 Privac...

Are Dating Apps Getting Worse?

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dating apps have evolved a lot over the years, with apps dedicated to any romantic niche– dog lovers, astrology heads, and big, bushy beards. Despit...

WIRED News Update: Keeping Tabs on DOGE

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WIRED Politics Senior Editor Leah Feiger joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to talk about the latest at DOGE and the inexperienced enginee...

TikTok Stole Our Hearts, But Can It Last?

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On a Sunday in January, TikTok users were greeted with a notification in the app which said that TikTok was no longer available to use in the U.S., bu...

The World According to Marc Andreessen

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It wasn’t that long ago that one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and influential venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, was a major supporter of t...

Zuck Ends Fact-Checking. What Could Go Wrong?

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With the news that Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program, we dig into the future of content moderation. From Community Notes to automat...

We Turned Our Lives Over to AI Assistants

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes you just need a little help. That’s where the robots come in! But, have we actually reached a place where AI is more helpful than working ...

Musk Takes Washington

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do Dogecoin and the Department of Government Efficiency have in common? Elon Musk, of course. This new government committee led by Musk and Vivek...

From Critics at Large: Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a grou...

All of Our Hopes and Fears for Tech

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Wearable tech, self-driving cars and AI mishaps. There were a lot of new product launches this year – some more successful than others. This week on...

Is This The Year We Quit Social Media?

12 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a post-Twitter world, text-based social media apps have taken a new shape. X, BlueSky, and Threads are home to wildly different types of discourse....

In Sam Altman We Trust?

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Altman is the king of generative artificial intelligence. But is he the person we should trust to guide our explorations into AI? This week, we do...

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's long been believed that Silicon Valley is a hotbed for libertarian ideals, but where did that idea come from? Aside from some high-profile tech f...

How to Not Die in Silicon Valley

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Blood boys. Cryogenic freezing. Living by the algorithm. Silicon Valley is known for a culture of health optimization, but some recent biohacking vent...

Big Tech Wants You Back in the Office

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Much of the tech workforce has become accustomed to remote or hybrid jobs over the last several years. But lately, we’ve seen big tech companies dem...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Midlife Crisis

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For years, Mark Zuckerberg’s style could be summed up in a look: the hoodie. But now, he’s entered a new style era. One that involves gold chains ...

Welcome to Uncanny Valley!

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Join hosts Lauren Goode, Michael Calore, and Zoë S...

Some Personal News

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everybody wants to talk to their pet. Or to try to get them to listen, anyway. So it’s no wonder that some startups think the way to break through t...

How Should We Feel About Ring?

10 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ring cameras have come a long way. Since the security camera brand launched 11 years ago, its video doorbells and cams have become vigilant, constant ...

Semaglutide for the People

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ozempic has been hailed as a miracle drug. It is the most well known of the GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs that can help regulate appetite, diges...

Is Underwater AI Any Cleaner?

26 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AI data centers are so hot right now. Each time generative AI services churn through their large language models to make a chatbot answer one of your ...

Don't Feed the Neighbors' Kids

19 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One surefire way to go viral on Threads—the Meta-owned Instagram-spinoff social network with more than 200 million users—is to ask a ridiculous qu...

The First Real AI iPhone

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday of this week, Apple held one of its splashy media events. This one was used to show off its next round of iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watche...

Seriously, Use Encrypted Messaging

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Encrypted messaging is a godsend for mobile communications, whether you’re just sending standard texts to your friends that you want kept private, o...

Everyone's Pumped About Heat Pumps

29 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, ju...

The ‘Wild West’ of EV Charging

22 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Electric Vehicles are having a real moment. People by and large prefer EVs because they're greener, quieter, and often more fun to drive than gas cars...

Your Photos Aren’t Real

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At a splashy media event this week at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google announced four new Pixel phones. But the really important ...

Good Luck Selling Your AI Startup

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There has been a no wilder time than the present to build a company around artificial intelligence. The server bills are astronomical, for one. Also t...

Dating Games

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If the idea of going on a date makes you anxious, and all you’d really rather do with your evening is stay home and play video games, well, have we ...

The Ocean's Tipping Point

25 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re about to become intimately familiar with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This system of...

The Blurred Reality of Human-Washing

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Voice assistants have become a constant presence in our lives. Maybe you talk to Alexa or Gemini or Siri to ask a question or to perform a task. Maybe...

Semaglutide for the People

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ozempic has been hailed as a miracle drug. It is the most well known of the GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs that can help regulate appetite, diges...

Thinking About Buying a Hybrid Car? Listen Up

04 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number...

The Rise and Fall of Juul

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even if you’ve never taken a puff from a vape in your life, you know about Juul. At the company’s peak in 2018, its e-cigarette was one of the mos...

Good Search Borrows, Great Search … Steals?

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Web crawling—the act of indexing information across the internet—has been around for decades. It has primarily been used by search engines like Go...

Thinking Different About Apple AI

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This week, Apple executives used the keynote address of the company’s annual developers conference to debut all of the artificial intelligence capab...

Learning to Live With Google's AI Overviews

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Google has spent the past year lustily rolling out AI features across its platforms. But with each launch, it is becoming more clear that some of thes...

The Weird World of an AI Clickbait King

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up ...

Everyone's Pumped About Heat Pumps

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, ju...

The End of Google Search As We Know It

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Google held its annual I/O developer event this week. The company gathered software developers, business partners, and folks from the technology press...

How Black Twitter Defined Culture

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For all the influence Twitter has had on our culture, no community there has made quite as much impact as Black Twitter. The virtual community grew fr...

Thinking About Buying a Hybrid Car? Listen Up

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number...

We Demystify the Internet's Acronyms

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Do you know what TCP/IP means? (Hint: you’re using it right now.) What about CDMA? Or GPT? While the concepts and the execution of these technologie...

A Chat About Airchat

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express thei...

From WIRED Politics Lab: How Election Deniers Are Weaponizing Tech To Disrupt November

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyp...

Shopping for a New Social Feed

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled Shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They're probab...

DOJ Calls Out Apple in the Group Chat

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Apple has gotten used to being a favorite target of rivals and government agencies. The company has been repeatedly scrutinized by regulators, and oth...

A 3-Body Podcast

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

3 Body Problem is Netflix’s new big, meaty prestige sci-fi series. Based on the book of the same name by author Liu Cixin, the show about an impendi...

The TikTok Ban

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray....

Google’s ‘Woke AI’ Problem

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The last few months have been rough for Google. Company executives have been in the hot seat because of some embarrassing missteps, the most awkward o...

The Non-Techie's Guide to Nvidia

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics ca...

Tech Workers Are Stressed Out

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

tech companies seemed immune to large-scale layoffs, and as their profits skyrocketed, those cushy jobs became highly sought-after. But economic headw...

The Weird World of an AI Clickbait King

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up ...

Several People Are Talking

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At its core, Slack is a chat app. Every day, millions of people use it to communicate, share files, and gossip with coworkers or friend groups in one ...

Apple’s Uncanny Valley Pro

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Apple's first ever mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, arrives tomorrow. Apple has a knack for revitalizing and legitimizing a product category—s...

I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long th...

AI Hits the Campaign Trail

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTu...

C’ES la Vie

11 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's CES week. Yes, it's time to dive back into that glitzy, chaotic showcase where thousands of startups, companies, and general technology weirdos g...

Abortion Pill Orders Are Soaring

04 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights in the United States. Since then, many s...

Live on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li

28 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence was inarguably the biggest newsmaker in the tech industry this year. Whether it was ChaptGPT writing term papers, AI-generated...

Oops, All Recommendations!

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been a year, that’s for sure. Every week on Gadget Lab, we end the show by bringing you our recommendations for all of our favorite tech, boo...

Taylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Does your favorite movie star or pop singer really love the Kremlin? Though the ads in your Facebook feed may lead you to believe such a thing, it’s...

Blue Bubbles Versus Green Bubbles

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This ...

Journalists in Studio Getting Coffee

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There hav...

Geoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence has made headlines all year long, but the turn of events this week was extraordinary. OpenAI was thrown into chaos with the fi...

How Three Teens Broke the Internet

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In October 2016, a malware tool named Mirai took down some of the biggest sites and services on the web, including Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, ...

Oh, the Humaneity

09 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone,...

Happy 1-Year Muskiversary

02 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Twitter may be officially called X now, but that rebranding is just one of the many changes that have hit the platform since Elon Musk took over. It's...

23andMe and You

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the compan...

Misinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around...

Business Wars: Living in an Artificial World

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence abounds, and it’s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular i...

Searching for a Better Google

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Goog...

Meta’s Sound and Vision

28 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer confere...

Alexa Gets an AI Makeover

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, softw...

Your Life, Your iPhone

14 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company’s headquar...

We Robloxed So You Don’t Have To

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid’s shoulder while they’re using Roblox. The online platform is fi...

I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be...

The Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods

24 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up ...

The Cruelest Summer

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more ...

Nobody’s Driving That Car!

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all h...

Farm-to-Table Internet

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stor...

The Future of Hollywood

27 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike—partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use gener...

Elon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI...

Stop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked...

Have a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab co...

Our Clothes Are Making Us Sick

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the da...