Uncanny Valley | WIRED

Shop Talk

22 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they ...

What the Truck, Elon?

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tr...

Apple’s Vision Quest

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at t...

AI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)

01 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consume...

How to Get Started Biking

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic ...

Let’s Get Swole

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and...

Google Disrupts Itself

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Google would like you to know that it has been at the forefront of machine intelligence for decades, actually. Never mind that it was beaten to the ge...

Nothin’ but Bluesky

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online wh...

This Episode Is Nuts

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The most successful industries out there are the ones that play to consumers' insecurities. Many self-care companies prey on people’s anxieties abou...

I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin

20 Apr 2023

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...

Send in the Clones

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence continues to seep into every aspect of our lives: search results, chatbots, images on social media, viral videos, documentarie...

Like, Follow, Subscribe to Cars

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It used to be that when you bought a car, you just picked out the model and color you wanted and selected the optional extras. When the dealer rang up...

Sidewalk Surfin’

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Amazon has sold a lot of connected devices, and now it’s putting those devices to work. Millions of Ring cameras and Echo speakers sitting in homes ...

The Sacred Mountain of Chip-Making

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you're reading this, you can thank a semiconductor. Phones, tablets, computers—really any device more digital than pen and paper—all depend on ...

I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me

16 Mar 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...

ChatGPT in Schools

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The worst part of going to school is all the homework. Nothing strikes dread in a student’s heart quite like facing down a deadline on a seven-page ...

We Really Recommend This Episode

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The modern internet is powered by recommendation algorithms. They're everywhere from Facebook to YouTube, from search engines to shopping websites. Th...

Netflix Is No Longer Chill

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The promise of streaming TV was that you could watch whatever you wanted, when you wanted. And for a while, that was mostly true. But recently, stream...

Real Humans Chat About Chatbots

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The unstoppable march of artificial intelligence carries on. In mere weeks, AI has oozed into nearly everything we interact with on the internet, from...

I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin

09 Feb 2023

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...

Have We Reached Peak Smartphone?

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Phones have been pretty boring for a long time. Don’t get us wrong—phones are still amazing little devices! It just feels like we haven’t seen a...

Why the Kids Love TikTok Search

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

TikTok’s influence is expanding well beyond the social sphere. The app is increasingly being used for the types of internet searches one would norma...

We Need to Talk About Your Stove

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of ...

Oh, Deere!

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The tractor company John Deere has faced a lot of criticism for the tight hold it keeps over its products. If someone needs to repair their tractor, t...

CES 2023: We Live Here Now

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of consumer tech, there’s no palette-cleanser for the new year quite like the annual CES, the giant electronics show. What better way t...

Is It 2023 Yet?

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Keeping on theme with the roaring ‘20s, this year has been a doozy. Social media sites are aflame, all that hype over the metaverse has fizzled, the...

Plastic Rap

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across t...

The iPod of Crypto

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even if you own no Bitcoin, no Ether, and no NFTs, crypto wallets—pocket-friendly hardware lockers that store digital assets—will be a part of you...

ChatGPT for You and Me

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than ever, with a new crop of generative AI programs that are creating art, videos, humor, fake news, and ...

What the Hell is BNPL?

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Money is tight these days. Holiday shopping, ballooning inflation, and a looming recession have forced people to more carefully consider their finance...

The State of the Smart Kitchen

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Companies love sticking chips in everything. That's how you get a feast of connected kitchen tech: app-controlled Instant Pots, $400 touchscreen toast...

What Happens if Twitter Gets Hacked?

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Twitter doesn't work like it used to. Under new ownership, the site is operating with half its usual staff and an entirely new set of executive pressu...

Demystifying Mastodon

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Amid all the Twitter hubbub, the lesser known social site Mastodon has seen a surge of new users. Mastodon is a loosely connected network of individua...

Tweelon

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you've been on Twitter in the past week, you may have noticed that the platform has been emanating some slightly different vibes. Mostly because ev...

Plastic Rap

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across t...

OK, Car Computer

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modern cars are giant computers. They're packed full of chips and bits, all working toward the goal of making your ride smoother, safer, and more comf...

Zuckerberg's Innovation Dilemma

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As its new company name would imply, Meta’s making a big deal about the metaverse. The company formerly known as Facebook just announced a new VR he...

Life in Pixels

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even though it’s already October, we are somehow still seeing new products announced by the tech giants. This week, it was Google's turn to show off...

The State of the Smart Kitchen

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Companies love sticking chips in everything. That's how you get a feast of connected kitchen tech: app-controlled Instant Pots, $400 touchscreen toast...

Row Row Row Yourself

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Peloton's been weathering a rough year. The home workout company soared high in the early days of the pandemic, when demand for its stationary bikes a...

Visualizing VR’s Future

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Virtual reality has long been hailed as the next big thing in tech. It's pure escapism; strap on a headset and immerse yourself in a different world. ...

Welcome to Dynamic Island

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At a splashy media event this week, Apple announced four configurations of the new iPhone 14, as well as some new Apple Watches and an update to the w...

How YouTube's Tumultuous Past Will Shape Its Future

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Collectively, people stream more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every single day. That's a lot of eyeballs, and it means the platform has en...

How to Get Your Climate Tax Credits

25 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The United States government just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that allocates nearly $400 billion dollars to fu...

Tractor Hacks

18 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Farming has gotten quite tech-savvy. These days, there are all sorts of Wi-Fi-enabled, app-controlled, and autonomously piloted machines out there doi...

The Weird Phone Future

11 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Samsung's mobile phone design philosophy could best be described as "if it ain't broke, bend it." The company—one of the top smartphone manufacturer...

NFT Frames

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe you’re intrigued by NFTs. (They can often be pretty fun.) Maybe you’ve even felt the urge to buy a piece of digital art, only to give up onc...

Reel Talk About Instagram

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you've opened Instagram recently, you've certainly seen Reels. The photo-sharing app has started aggressively pushing the TikTok-like video feeds o...

Zucka Kappa Meta

21 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Facebook has nearly three billion users, which means that when it makes a change to its business, it affects nearly half the planet. Facebook's ambiti...

Too Cool for Juul

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Do you even vape, bro? Well if the United States Food and Drug Administration has its way, that answer might soon be a hard "no." Last month, the FDA ...

Seriously, What Is the Metaverse?

30 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Technologists have been crowing about “the metaverse” for a long time now, and here at WIRED we’ve written about it quite a bit, too. But someti...

The Zoomification of Slack

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you work in an office, chances are you spend a lot of time on Slack. The workplace messaging platform has become an even more important tool in the...

Streaming TV’s Many Possible Futures

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Streaming TV was supposed to be a thing you did to relax. But these days you might grab a drink, kick up your feet, and then sit there paralyzed by an...

Apple In Real Life

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Spring is in the air, so you know what that means: Developer conference season. Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference this week and used Mond...

Texting Is Broken

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The away message is a relic of desktop chat apps from decades past. But this simple feature helped keep boundaries between your online connections and...

WTF Is Web3?

26 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The cover story of this month’s issue of WIRED magazine is “Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution” by Gilad Edelman. We inte...

How to Get Started Biking

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic ...

Google Gadgets Galore

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It’s springtime again, which means developer conference season is in full swing. (Hoo-ray?) This week marks the return of Google I/O, the annual con...

Kara Swisher's Take on Twitter

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, remember how Elon Musk bought Twitter? It's been a chaotic week since then, both on and off the controversial social media platform. There are st...

Snap’s New Drone Takes Flight

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The social photo-sharing and messaging app Snapchat is bigger than you probably think it is. According to its parent company, Snap, the app has more t...

What Would Elon’s Twitter Look Like?

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It probably won't surprise you that Twitter's a bit of a mess right now. Last week, billionaire Elon Musk made a play to buy the whole company, statin...

Browse Better

15 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you may not give much thought to your browser. Once you find one you like (probably Google Chrome, if...

Peloton Bets Big on Body-Tracking

08 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Peloton has had a turbulent couple of years. After the ups and downs of the pandemic economy came a rash of bad press spurned by a series of tragic pr...

Who's Behind the Okta Hack?

01 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even if you aren't familiar with Okta, you've probably used it. The digital login system is used by thousands of companies across the world to manage ...

How You DAOing?

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you wanted to create an exclusive online community with a shared goal, how'd you go about it? If your answer is, "with crypto, obviously!" then you...

When Facial Recognition Tech Is Wrong

18 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Like a lot of tech solutions to complex problems, facial recognition algorithms aren't perfect. But when the technology is used to identify suspects i...

And Apple Marches On

11 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Apple held its first product announcement event of the year on Tuesday. It showed off a bunch of new devices, including a new iPhone SE, a revamped iP...

Swift Sanctions

04 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine has already exacted a terrible human cost. Thousands of people are dead and over a million have been displaced. In ...

Tracking Apple

18 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Apple has been sprucing up its mobile operating system, bolstering privacy and safety features and sprinkling in some new emoji to boot. But while the...

Samsung Gonna Samsung

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week, Samsung held its Galaxy Unpacked event, its annual product spectacle the company uses to announce new mobile devices. In addition to its ne...

Hitting Pause on Spotify

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You probably know Spotify as a streaming music juggernaut, but its business model has grown far beyond just music. Last year, the company paid a repor...

Help! My Family is Stuck in the Metaverse

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When the real world's a mess, the metaverse that Facebook (er, Meta) is pitching might seem like a welcome refuge. Just strap on a headset and play so...

Road to the Future

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For years, companies and techno-bros have been saying that self-driving cars are ready to roll. Now companies like the ride-hailing service Lyft are a...

Dry If You Might

14 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Many people are taking a break from alcohol this month, a cultural moment that’s come to be known as Dry January. Beyond trends fueled by new year’...

Live From CES 2022

07 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

New year, new chaotic mega tech exhibition. CES was this week, complete with all of its usual glitzy gizmos and gaudy gadgets. It was a strange year f...

Goodbye to All That

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Good thing 2021 was the year we fixed all of the brokenness of 2020, huh? OK, not even close. But for some people, 2021 was a year of reassessing, rec...

WTF Is Web3?

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Web3! It's the latest internet buzzword which encompasses an egalitarian vision of the web that's more reliable, based on trust, and, inevitably, buil...

A Conversation with Neal Stephenson

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Over his nearly four-decade career as a novelist, Neal Stephenson has built complex visions of future worlds that, looking back at them now, feel eeri...

What an Augmented World

12 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Zuckerberg may be busy pushing the idea of augmented and virtual reality worlds, but he is far from the first to start imaging them. Niantic CEO ...

Shipping and Shopping

05 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, how's that holiday shopping coming along? It's still a little early to start panicking in earnest, but right now is the best time to start buying...

Let’s Get Meta

29 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Facebook has a new name. This week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is changing its name to Meta. The title comes from something Facebo...

Big Macs, New Pixels

22 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Yep, it’s still product announcement season. This week, Google officially unveiled its new Pixel phones and Apple showed off new MacBook Pro models....

Facebook's Uncertain Future

15 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Facebook has once again found itself in the hot seat. Things heated up for the company after a whistleblower shared thousands of pages of Facebook int...

Andrew Yang on Micromobility

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Description:Andrew Yang, former presidential and New York mayoral candidate, really likes to ride his electric scooter. He's been a big proponent of m...

Amazon Bots

01 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

About this time every year, Amazon announces a slew of new products. Some of them are fairly normal: new Echo devices, smart screens, video doorbells....

Scratching the Surface

24 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's product announcement season, and this week was Microsoft's turn. The company slid out a few new Surfaces, a weird flippy laptop thing, and an eco...

iPhoning It In

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's September, which can only mean one thing: Apple's got some new products. This week, the company held a virtual event to detail its slate of upcom...

Boosters and Mandates

10 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On Thursday, President Biden announced a number of new policies to fight Covid-19. Chief among them: More vaccine mandates are coming. Now, businesses...

Power Problems

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week, Hurricane Ida swept through the southern US, hitting Louisiana and parts of Mississippi especially hard. The storm disabled the power grid ...

I Never Metaverse I Didn’t Like

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The metaverse. A simulated world, controlled with inputs from our reality to merge cyberspace and meatspace into one plane of existence. If this sound...

Pixel Party

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

By now, Google has gotten the hang of making solid affordable phones. Its new Pixel 5A has just about all the features most people need in a phone, an...

Apple’s Photo-Scanning Tech Explained

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Recently, Apple revealed some new technical measures in Messages, iCloud, Siri, and search that are meant to protect children from sexual abuse online...

I Can Haz Memes

06 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Internet memes seem harmless enough. A few pictures of cats with some grammatically incorrect text—what could go wrong? Well, memes have come a long...

Inside Black Twitter

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you've been on Twitter, then you've been on Black Twitter. No other subsection of social media has produced ideas and movements as influential or a...

Bezos in Space

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week, Jeff Bezos flew to space. Or, at least high enough into the sky for it to technically count. While his 10-minute joyride in a Blue Origin r...

Why WeWork Didn't Work

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the 11 years since its founding, WeWork has had a wild ride. At its core, it's a real estate company that subleases trendy office spaces to other b...

I Bike, You Bike, Ebike

09 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Electric bikes are exploding. Not literally—most of the time, anyway—but ebikes are certainly in demand. Companies that operate bikeshare networks...

Paging Dr. Algorithm

25 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. And increasingly, it's becoming a critical part of healthcare. Doctors use it to try to suss out symptoms of de...

Into the Great Wide Open

18 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

People are heading outdoors this summer. Transportation services—from airlines to rental car companies to public transit agencies—are offering dea...

Cutting to the Core of Apple

11 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Apple held its annual WWDC event this week, where it announced a whole bunch of new software features for its mobile and desktop platforms. It was als...