Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Episodes
Facial Recognition Tech Is Coming to a School Near You
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Despite a lack of evidence that more technology makes kids safer, facial recognition technology may soon be coming to a school near you. It’s part o...
It's Time to Put Down Your Phone
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How long have you gone without checking your phone in the past week? 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes while you’re awake? Our screens have commandeered our ...
Panos Panay Says Microsoft’s New Phone Isn’t a Phone
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft surprised just about everyone this week by showing off a pair of new mobile devices with two screens apiece. The pocketable Surface Duo and ...
Spot, the Robot Dog, Learns New Tricks
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For 25 years, Boston Dynamics has been building robots and releasing videos of the terrifying things running around, opening doors, and fending off st...
Your DNA Belongs on the Blockchain
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You may not realize it, but when you send a spit-filled tube off to a lab that’s going to analyze your DNA, you’re linking the most unique identif...
iPhones to the Max
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
New iPhones! A shinier Apple Watch! So many camera lenses! On this week’s episode of Gadget Lab, it’s Apple week yet again. Lauren, Mike, and Arie...
How Uber Went Down in Flames
06 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, there was a true unicorn, a startup named Uber. Led by CEO Travis Kalanick, the company broke all the rules of business and truly di...
Why It’s So Hard to Unlink Yourself From Facebook
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you have both an Instagram and Facebook account, chances are they are connected, whether you like it or not. But what if you didn’t connect them ...
You’ve Got Microplastics
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic is everywhere. No, really, it is everywhere. Tiny bits of plastic waste, called microplastic, have come to permeate nearly every part of the p...
How Google’s Secrecy Lead to Company Turmoil
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For years, Google has flourished in large part because of its famously open internal structure. Leadership encouraged active and vocal communication b...
Amazon's Quest for World Domination
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon didn’t become the behemoth it is by accident. Its services, like Amazon Prime, and products, like the Echo smart speaker, were designed to le...
Bumps in the Road to Our Robo-Car Future
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From fledgling startups to automotive giants like General Motors, there’s a whole lot of companies looking to develop fully self-driving cars. But t...
Why New York’s Revenge Porn Law Is Flawed
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill criminalizing the spread of nonconsensual pornography, or revenge porn. WIRED’s Emm...
Twitter’s Redesign Is Impressive. Is It Enough?
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, Twitter began rolling out its first desktop redesign in seven years. It was a mostly aesthetic makeover, with changes like a new layout, da...
Facebook's Libra and the Future of Money
13 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, Facebook announced its plans to get into the cryptocurrency race with Libra. A blend of blockchain and partnership with 28 companies, Libr...
Rebalancing Our Relationship With Tech
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week, a conversation with Aza Raskin, cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology at Stanford University, about the “asymmetric power relatio...
A Genius Move
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you thought an internet giant stole your hard work and claimed it as their own, how would you ever prove it? Well, what if you could booby trap the...
The Biggest News From E3
14 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week was E3, the trade show where the biggest names in gaming debut their latest shiny products and software. On this week’s Gadget Lab podcast...
Everything From Apple’s WWDC
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The iPhone is still undoubtedly Apple’s most important product. So why were some of the biggest announcements this week at the company’s annual de...
Making Surfing More Sustainable
02 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The great irony in the sport of surfing is that the process of making a surfboard puts a great deal of strain on the environment. The various chemical...
Samsung’s Innovation Dilemma
24 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What’s a giant consumer electronics maker to do when it notices that younger customers are more interested in paying for experiences, rather than th...
YouTube’s Latest Beauty Scandal
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Beauty product reviews on YouTube aren’t just about beauty products and internet capitalism. They’re a conduit for drama, loyalty politics, and “...
If You Build It, They Will I/O
10 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Developer conferences aren’t just a chance for tech companies to incentivize app makers and show off the latest tricks and tools in software. The ev...
The Making of Adam Savage
03 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You might know Adam Savage as the co-host of the television show MythBusters, as the editor of Tested.com, or as the host of countless web videos that...
Preserving Your Right to Repair Your Gadgets
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when your drop your phone and shatter the screen? Or when its battery starts to grow noticeably weaker? These common technological woes a...
What Happens to Uber After Its IPO?
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Uber filed to go public this week. No big surprise there; everyone in the industry has been waiting months for the ride-hailing giant to hit the accel...
Introducing Citadel Dropouts: A Game of Thrones Podcast
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’re confused about what exactly this hoped-for Targaryen Restoration is about, politically. And is Game of Thrones, like, good anymore? Laura Huds...
Reporting From Syria
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re joined by a special guest: freelance war correspondent Kenneth R. Rosen. Ken is working on a series of stories for WIRED about the ...
The Case for Male Birth Control
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hormonal male contraception is not a new idea––in fact, researchers have been working on solutions for men the pill was invented for women. But ea...
Game On at Google
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Google’s Project Stream, first unveiled last October, gave gamers a taste of what it would be like to stream heavy games directly from the cloud –...
Flickr Cofounder Questions Big Tech
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Should this exist?” is not typically a question that technologists ask themselves, Caterina Fake says. The Flickr cofounder-turned-investor says ...
How to Quit Your Tech Job
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Powell was the top communications executive at Google when she found herself Googling, in no uncertain search terms, how to quit her job at Go...
Alex Kipman’s Holographic Tendencies
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft just unveiled a brand new product, but it really doesn’t want to hype it. That’s according to Alex Kipman, technical fellow at Microsoft...
You’ve Got to Know When to Fold ‘Em
23 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At its flagship phone event this week in San Francisco, Samsung announced not one but four different versions of the new Galaxy S10: A phone with a 6....
The Treacherous Allure of OG Usernames
15 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Product designer and internet native Chris Messina was lucky enough to snag the username @chris on Instagram back when Instagram was known as Burbn, a...
The App Smackdown
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Move fast and break app store rules: That very well may have been Facebook’s motto for awhile now, only, we’re just learning about it this week. A...
Amazon Delivery Bots Are Here
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that’s what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center...
Nike’s Truly Smart Sneakers
19 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Self-lacing sneakers have been the dream since Marty McFly first rocked Nike MAGs in 1989, but most attempts at turning shoe leather into smart sneake...
The Best of CES
12 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We came. We saw. We touched a lot of gadgets. This week was the annual CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics show, and WIRED’s team...
The Year in Tech, in One Word
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you had to sum up the year in tech in one word, what word would you choose? That’s what we at the Gadget Lab asked ourselves as we looked to some...
Apocalypse Now
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people, at this point, believe that climate change is a real thing that will harm future generations of humans. And yet, a cognitive dissonance e...