Uncanny Valley | WIRED

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 businesses. But the workers at the company, lead by their charismatic CEO Adam Neumann and intoxicated by a $47 billion valuation, partied like it was a rebellious tech startup. Behind all the kombucha taps in WeWork’s offices was a culture of extrava...

Electric bikes are exploding. Not literally—most of the time, anyway—but ebikes are certainly in demand. Companies that operate bikeshare networks are upgrading their ebike fleets as they try to entice more riders to join up. And attracted by a combination of sleek looks and dead-simple operation, more riders than ever are investing in personal ebikes—for commutes, for recreation, or as a practica...

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. And increasingly, it's becoming a critical part of healthcare. Doctors use it to try to suss out symptoms of deadly infections like sepsis; companies like Google are developing apps to help you identify ailments just by uploading some pics.  But AI is only as good as the data sets fed into these systems. And when the data sets are flawed, or the results are n...

People are heading outdoors this summer. Transportation services—from airlines to rental car companies to public transit agencies—are offering deals and prizes to woo travelers onto their platforms after many long months of sagging business. But they also have to figure out how to handle the surge in demand, especially after being forced to make major cutbacks during the pandemic, when ridership n...

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 also yet another opportunity for Apple to insist that all you need to do to simplify your life is buy more Apple products. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior associate reviews editor Adrienne So and WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu join us to ta...

So, you want to vaccinate your populace. Sometimes it's not enough to appeal to people's basic sense of self-preservation. You have to find other ways to entice them. Governments in states like Ohio, California, and West Virginia have announced plans to offer vaccine lotteries. The premise is simple: Get vaccinated, and you could win upwards of $1 million. Now, private companies are following suit...

For as long as humans have existed, we've been obsessed with color. Everything from the color of your clothes to the brightly illuminated pixels on your screen is an attempt to recreate—and enhance—the vibrant hues found in the natural world. In fact, the pursuit of pretty colors (and how we understand them) can be seen as a driving force behind some of the biggest technological advancements and s...

Google made a slew of announcements at its IO developer conference this week. A whole new look for Android! New privacy features! Better smartwatch software! A friggin’ hologram booth! Some of the updates were weird, unfinished prototypes, while others are set to begin seeping into the software millions of people use in the coming weeks. On this episode of Gadget Lab, WIRED senior associate editor...

Few tech companies have charted a more fascinating course than Amazon. It's expanded from its humble beginnings as a bookseller to an absolute juggernaut that spans scores of product categories and service offerings. It's set out to change the way the internet is structured, the way we interact with computers, and the way we shop—online and off. On this episode of Gadget Lab, journalist and author...

There's no way the lawmakers who drafted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act way back in 1996 could have known that it would go on to determine the role user-generated content would play in the explosive growth of the internet. Those Congressmen probably also wouldn’t have guessed that Section 230 would end up, 25 years later, becoming a central sticking point in the debate over free spe...

Facebook, Apple, and Google may have very different approaches to user privacy, but they do have something in common: All three companies are currently being investigated for antitrust violations. Facebook is being accused of allowing its market dominance to erode its data privacy protections. Apple and Google are being investigated, in part, for enforcing their own privacy safeguards at the expen...

Facebook doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to keeping user data private. So when it revealed a few weeks ago that it was working on a prototype wearable computer that would interpret neuroelectrical signals, people had questions. The wearable—still very much just a concept—is designed to be worn on the wrist, where it could read a wearer’s nerve signals through their skin and transl...

This week marks the 500th episode of Gadget Lab. That is an astonishingly huge number; to pay proper tribute to it, we’ve invited some of Gadget Lab’s past co-hosts to come onto this week’s show and share their memories. Our guests Mat Honan, David Pierce, and Arielle Pardes speak in their own words about what it was like to work at WIRED and make a weekly show about personal technology. It’s a fu...

Tech companies are very good at serving up personalized content based on what they know about you. But they're not very good at picking up on big, sudden changes in your life. For example, Google Photos can show you pictures of a loved one taken three years ago, and Pinterest can suggest wedding-themed photos when your special day is right around the corner. But what if that loved one is no longer...

Last week, the cargo ship Ever Given got itself stuck in the Suez Canal for six days. The blockage completely disrupted maritime trade routes, captured worldwide attention, and became the subject of many online lulz. But even though the ship has been freed, the repercussions will be felt for months to come.  This week, WIRED transportation writer Aarian Marshall joins us to talk about why the Ever...

Vaccines are here, unemployment is down, and the pandemic is nearing its end. These are obviously good things. Still, the idea of returning to "normal" might seem daunting. That's because our brains aren't used to being in crisis mode for so long. All that anxiety and uncertainty that's built up over the past year is going to take a while to go away. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED science writer M...

How will we interact with computers in the future? When we finally evolve beyond keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and voice controls, what’s next? This month, Facebook hinted at how it’s thinking about the future of human-computer interactions. The company unveiled a concept for a wrist-worn wearable that can interpret the nerve impulses in the wearer’s arm to virtually mimic hand movements and fing...

When you think of digital media, you probably think of something like a YouTube video or a meme. Something you can access for free, any time you want. But some relatively new technologies are being used to make pieces of digital media sellable, thereby creating a high-stakes market for them. These NFTs—or non-fungible tokens—are the latest internet buzzword, and they’ve raised a lot of questions a...

While augmented reality has long been billed as the "next big thing" it hasn't quite arrived. Some pretty basic logistical problems get in the way. The headsets are too clunky, there aren't many decent apps, and the setup process can be a mess. But companies like Microsoft, Google, and (potentially) Apple are working on these problems, with the ultimate goal of creating consumer-level mixed-realit...

Hey, did you know that the new Mars rover is really cool? Its eyes see crazy different colors! It shoots out a helicopter drone! It can vaporize rocks with a laser! Plus, Perseverance traveled more than 292 million miles through space, so that makes it just about the best gadget ever. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior correspondent Adam Rogers joins us to talk about all the wild tech built int...

Do you have a PlayStation 5? If so, good for you. If not, well, join the club. Sony’s newest game console has been very difficult to purchase since it was released in November—so much so that folks have resorted to using sniper bots, inside sources, and other shady practices to sidestep the scrum and snag that PS5. This week, we’re joined by Alan Henry and Saira Mueller from the WIRED video games...

When Bitcoin first appeared out of digital thin air, it was hailed as having the potential to upend the way people spent money. But more than a decade later, cryptocurrency is still only trickling into the mainstream. This week, Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and said it plans to start accepting it as a form of payment for its electric vehicles. The price of Bitcoin immediately spiked...

Elon Musk made headlines again this week. As usual, it was something involving Mars, memes, Tesla, and ... monkey brain implants? These topics, among others, were the subject of a conversation Musk had on Clubhouse, the voice chat app that's big with Silicon Valley VC types. But Musk's appearance may have been a turning point for the app that moves it into the mainstream. After Musk's talk, Clubho...

Vaccines are here, but they’ve had a bit of a bumpy landing. In fact, the US is way behind on the distribution goals set by the federal government, and the longer the rollout drags on, the more complicated things seem to get. There are supply chain issues, confusion over how to get an appointment, and different eligibility requirements for different states. Meanwhile, new variants of the virus hav...

Look, last year wasn't great. And just because it's 2021 now, that doesn't mean things are magically better. If you feel burned out, stressed, or just plain exhausted, you're not alone. But there's good news on the horizon. Vaccine rollouts may be slow, but they're happening. Not long from now, life should return to some kind of normal and we'll be able to safely engage with the world again. The o...