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OnePlus phones have always had one core selling point: they’re as powerful as the latest flagship Android phones, yet cost hundreds of dollars less. That winning combination made the OnePlus 6 and 5T two of our top recommended phones of the past year. The new OnePlus 6T mostly continues that trend, but this time it’s bringing some cutting-edge innovation with it. Learn more about your ad choices....

For nearly two decades, I met Stan Lee for lunch about once every month or two. In the 1990s and into the 2000s I was writing for Wizard magazine, which at the time was kind of a catch-all, 800-pound gorilla in the comics business. And Stan, as we all learned from his many MCU cameos, knew the value of publicity. He liked seeing his name in print, which meant he was happy to sit down with a report...

Look at the latest data on US car sales, and you won't find much in the way of surprises. Ford's F-Series pickups reign supreme. SUVs and other pickups dominate the 20 most popular models in the country, along with cheaper sedans like the Toyota Camry and Honda Civic. Let your eyes fall to the bottom of the list, though, and you'll spot a newcomer: Elon Musk's Tesla Model 3. Learn more about your...

Board game designer Rob Daviau is shuffling through a deck of 3” x 3” cardboard tiles, each displaying a somber, aerial-view illustration of a room. He spies one, raises his eyebrows, and plucks it out of the pile. “This is the creepiest,” he says with a sly grin, turning the card’s face toward me. “There’s two things in here: The room is empty except for a crib and a teddy bear that’s been dismem...

Former intelligence official Richard A. Clarke says that Earth is virtually defenseless against incoming asteroids, and that an asteroid large enough to level a city could strike with almost no warning. “We do not have a plan for dealing with that,” Clarke says in Episode 334 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “We don’t have a rocket or a missile we can fire up right now, certainly not on...

In November 1981, Butterball introduced a toll-free hotline with a simple mission: to help Thanksgiving chefs turn out top-notch turkeys. And while the phone call remains the beating heart of the Turkey Talk-Line industrial complex, it has in recent years branched out. In 2008, Butterball took its first tips to social media. In 2016, it added texting to its toolkit. This year, it’s adding an Alexa...

As gray clouds cleared Wednesday morning, the feed that broadcast out of Trumpland beamed a bright, bloody red. Unsurprisingly, the ostensible victory—a continued firm hold on the Senate and critical, if slim, gubernatorial wins—emboldened many Republican acolytes whose loyalties lie with the president’s camp. Amongst Trump supporters, news moves at a dizzying, disorienting pace. Learn more about...

Wouldn’t it be really, really nice to get places really, really fast? That’s the promise of the hyperloop, a transportation idea popularized in the 21st century by none other than its Chief Engineer/Magician/Dreamer, Elon Musk. Five years after Musk wrote a white paper on the concept of a maglev train inside a frictionless, air-free tube, hyperloop has become a sort of legitimate business. Four co...

Earlier this month, people in Central Park noticed the presence of a majestic Mandarin duck. As quickly as he was there, he was gone. But he’s back. With his bright pink beak, mohawk of blue and gold, and proud chest feathers of royal purple, the mysterious visitor has returned—and quickly captured our collective heart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first statewide carbon tax in the United States almost certainly isn't going to happen. Washington votes by mail, so it ain’t over yet, but the No side of Initiative 1631 has just over 56 percent, with more than two thirds of the votes counted. It doesn’t look good. LEARN MORE The WIRED Guide to Climate Change That’s a disappointing end for a bill that some environmentalists and journalists ha...

Most things don’t happen the way they do in the movies. Changes are less sudden, incidents less surprising, humans less attractive. But when a runaway train tore through the Australian outback, the action sequence that followed seems to have come right out of a Tony Scott flick. The whole mess started when the engineer stopped the 268-car, four-locomotive train and hopped out to inspect one of the...

Like a college graduate ready to head off into the workforce and start a career, Apple has graduated the iPad from tablet school. As he prepared to lift the curtain on the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro last week, CEO Tim Cook explained that Apple sees the iPad as a personal computer now. Apple says that new designation makes iPad the top-selling line of PCs in the world. It’s a fair compariso...

Look at just about any rendering or essayistic sketch of the world’s transportation future, and you’ll notice two things about the cars, trucks, vans, and whatever elses tootling around the roads: They drive themselves and they run on electricity. The funny thing about that pairing is that there’s no inherent relationship between a vehicle’s ability to drive itself and what it uses to move its whe...

Homecoming, the latest series with prestige TV bona fides to come to Amazon, is about as subtle and mysterious as a thriller can get. Based on the podcast of same name, it is, on the surface, about a group of soldiers returned from combat and the facility—called Homecoming—that seeks to treat their PTSD. However, as seen in flash-forwards and tiny cracks in the veneer of each person's story, none...

If you’ve been driving your Tesla in the past week, you’re likely enjoying the major upgrade Elon Musk’s automaker just issued with a free, over-the-air software update. And if you believe the blog post trumpeting the advance, you’ve taken a major step towards chillaxing on the highway while the car handles the traffic for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To keep dog hair and toddler mess at bay, I use three separate vacuums: a heavy corded one for deep cleaning; a robot vac that I run daily for light maintenance cleaning; and a cordless handheld for quickly picking up small messes. However, it is possible to go overboard. You don't want your descendants to find you buried, a skeletal arm sticking out from under piles of dusty, decaying vacuuming d...

With the possible exception of Tom Cruise, learning to fly a helicopter demands months of classroom, simulator, and in-air training. The controls feature all the logic of Bop It: twist one hand, move the other to the left. Push one foot, then the other. Watch the instruments, but don’t forget to look at the horizon. I once spent a full day working with Airbus' top instructors, and by the end could...

Maybe you like business trips. The chance to go somewhere new, eat out for every meal, dry off with a fresh towel each morning, and be away from the daily life of the office (and the home) for a while. You do not, however, like filing your expenses when you get home. Uber thinks it can help. Today, it announced that it’s expanding Uber for Business to incorporate its Eats food delivery service, ai...

On October 16 of 2014, Apple announced a modest upgrade to the Mac Mini, the puckish computer that plays caboose in Cupertino's desktop train. And then... nothing. For four years, despite remaining for sale, the Mac Mini languished without any updates at all. But now, it's back with a vengeance. "There’s another small but mighty Mac our users have been waiting for,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook at an A...

Last month’s iOS 12 update gave us screen time tools, security updates, and a whole heap of new features that make your iPhone feel new again. Now, with iOS 12.1, you get even more ways to express yourself on your iPhone and iPad. With Group FaceTime, you can chat with up to 32 friends and family. You can also spice up your messaging life with 70 new emoji—including a freezing-cold smiley, a moonc...

The theme of Apple's second fall hardware show: throwbacks. The event, at Howard Gilman Opera House in New York City, featured a revival of the MacBook Air, a dusted-off Mac Mini, new iPads, and, for some reason, Lana del Rey. Did you miss the show? You can watch the whole thing here, catch up on the analysis from our liveblog, or simply read on for our TL;DR recap. Learn more about your ad choice...

The people most excited about Halloween are little kids. For humans aged between 2.5 and 10 years old, there’s really nothing better. They get to dress up and go out—at night!—and strangers give them candy. There are leaf piles to jump in and fake skeletons to scream at. But it can also be a nightmare, if they get too scared. Halloween works best for young kids when it's a mixture of spooky and sw...

On Halloween night, 41.1 million children in the US will roam the streets, decked out as ghosts, ghouls, and the year’s best memes. It’s trick-or-treating time, folks. The one fright you don't want to have as a parent is worrying about your kid on Halloween night. “You want to empower your kids to be a little more independent as they get older,” says Leticia Barr, founder of the Tech Savvy Mama bl...

Look, we won’t waste your time here. There are more important things going on in the world. But if you use any of Google’s G Suite products, you’ll be glad you read this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Richard K. Morgan has spent most of the past decade working on his fantasy trilogy A Land Fit For Heroes. The books were popular with readers, but Morgan has received a steady stream of emails urging him to write more science fiction in the vein of his 2002 debut Altered Carbon. His new novel Thin Air definitely fits the bill, delivering more of Morgan’s signature blend of mystery, sci-fi, sex, an...