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There are plenty of reasons for outrage coming out of Washington, DC, these days, but this week the divided region found a common enemy. The express lanes on Interstate 66 near DC, previously reserved for vehicles carrying two or more people, opened up to solo travelers. Except those single-occupancy vehicles have to pay a toll, one that fluctuates according to demand. The world watched, aghast, a...

The largest and most destructive fire burning in California continues to grow, consuming dry brush as it races not just through but across the canyons north of Los Angeles. Strong winds and dry conditions mean flames can leap large distances, prompting thousands to evacuate their homes. The Thomas Fire has now spread from Ventura County into Santa Barbara County, burning up 230,000 acres—an area l...

If you’re getting bored with pounding out the miles on a treadmill or a track, or if you’re anticipating a crowded gym once everyone makes their New Year’s resolutions, you should try trail running. It’s recreational hiking at high velocity. You get fresh air, scenic views, and a great workout, all in one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everybody loves a good #thread. You know the type: those long strings of related messages designed to tell a story or make a point that can't be expressed in a single tweet. They used to be called tweetstorms; now they're just threads. The Trump era has spawned many threads, and you can find good ones on everything from Starbucks zombies to Olive Garden fights to the deeply personal ramifications...

My daily coffee routine goes something like this: I arrive at the office, drop my bag next to my desk, grab my mug, and head to the kitchen. I fill it to the brim with the delicious Stumptown brews WIRED provides and bring it back to my desk. Then begins a careful countdown: I have to wait a few minutes for the joe to cool, then drink it as fast as possible before it gets cold. Learn more about yo...

Jaron Lanier may not have sired the term virtual reality—that honor generally goes to French playwright Antonin Artaud in 1938—but he’s one hell of a father figure. As the founder of legendary VR company VPL Research, he both popularized the term and helped create most of the enduring icons of early VR, from The Lawnmower Man’s snazzy headset and gear to the ill-fated Nintendo Power Glove. Learn m...

It is hard not to anthropomorphize robot vacuums. They live in your house. Some work with focused intensity, zipping back and forth; others bounce haphazardly from wall to wall. Some are loud, others quiet. Some will even bombard you with text messages while you’re at work. As I watched the Neato Botvac D5 Connected climb determinedly into a dog food bowl, the comparison that came most readily to...

I take sick joy in flying. Most people hate air travel. I get it—the atrocious lines, the cramped seating, the overpriced gum at Hudson News. I endure it because it provides many hours of blissful me time. I devour podcasts. Kindle books. Magazines. Entire Pink Floyd albums. I might even chat with my wife a little. (I never, ever, pay for Wi-Fi. It always sucks and it makes me think about work.) I...

If you want to cheap out on a new shirt—you’re heading, say, to Target instead of Bergdorf Goodman—you probably expect to get a totally fine piece of cloth to hang on your back, and won't get too upset when it inevitably falls apart. The same, tragically, does not apply to American roads. If you don’t pay what the street is worth, the street is going to be bad, for everyone: potholed, packed with...

At this point, it's safe to assume that everyone's been affected by one megabreach or another. But when the next Equifax debacle happens, know that there's plenty you can do to help dampen the fallout. When a big company that has your personal information—like passwords or credit card numbers—gets hacked, it means, in a way, that you got hacked too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

A hat made from Rambouillet wool is a perfectly nice hat. The fiber, shorn from a Rambouillet sheep, is fine and soft. Not at all scratchy. “They call it the American merino,” says Dan Widmaier, the founder of Bolt Threads, a biotech company that grows synthetic spider silk from yeast. Earlier this year, Bolt bought Best Made Company, a high-design outdoor brand that makes hand painted axes and fa...

The China trip was only supposed to last 10 days. For Konstantinos Karatsevidis, the 23-year-old CEO of a new gadget maker called Eve, it was just a quick check-in to make sure production was rolling smoothly on his latest product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There was a time when every gadget did something completely different. Your phone was fast and lasted three days in your pocket, but it could only do a few things. Your computer was massively capable, but so big you couldn't lug it anywhere. Everything had a purpose, and they rarely overlapped. But now? Now it's different. You can watch movies, play games, and do Very Serious Work on any number of...

Look, the news is hardly ever “normal” anymore. If we all got a CNN alert in the middle of the night that militarized guppies had taken over the southern tip of Florida, it probably wouldn’t even warrant sitting up in bed. That said, hearing that Quentin Tarantino has reportedly successfully pitched a new Star Trek movie that J.J. Abrams might produce is still a record-skip, halt-the-dancefloor mo...

During Sunday's NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Philadelphia Eagles, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson makes a pretty nice move. After taking the ball and running with it, he makes a quick pitch off to the side while faking out the defender. Looks pretty cool, but it probably wasn't legal. In the NFL, you can only toss the ball backwards once you cross the line of scrimmage. This s...

As the release date for Star Wars: The Last Jedi approaches at ludicrous speed, stories on the creation of the movie—and teases about what might happen in it, or even after it—are beginning to pile up on all sides of the information superhighway. Don't know what to listen to or who to believe? Dear friends, just trust in the Force and keep reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Let’s say you have to run an errand, a small-ish one. You’re stopping by your doctor’s office to pick up a prescription; you gotta return a regretted online purchase at the post office. How do you get there? A bunch of tiny factors contribute to your decision, but if you have a car one of the biggest is probably: Can I park? Thousands, maybe millions of people in your city are making small choices...

In the rearview mirror, innovation tends to look smooth, a clean progression from there to here. Living through that change is bit more herky-jerky. This week, I got a ride in General Motors’ self-driving car as it slowly made its way through San Francisco’s chaotic streets—with plenty of stops and starts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While the world's most famous automakers were pulling the covers off their latest, shiniest offerings at the Los Angeles Auto Show, a dark gray sedan circled the convention center, almost silently. Riding on 21-inch wheels, the Lucid Air cuts a muscular stance, its door handles flush with the body of the car, one thin bar of light bars stretching across its front, another along the slightly boxy r...

The rain is drenching Darryl "Curtains" Jackson. It's coming down in sheets from a machine overhead that's been programmed to dump water droplets at the rate of 3.25 inches an hour. "This is a nice, steady rain," he says, as drops fall from the ceiling and drain into the grated floor below. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Academics and researchers in relationships often face what is known as “the two-body problem,” in which they struggle to find positions for both people at either the same institution, or institutions that are close to each other. I also have a two-body problem, except neither of the bodies is mine. The bodies belong to my toddler and my infant, and the options for transporting both at the same tim...

For British photographer Tom St. George, diving is escape. But when he plunged into this underwater cave in Tulum, Mexico last month, he found himself on another planet entirely. Runoff stained with tannins from the forest had dyed the normally clear water a surreal, Martian shade of red. "It really did feel like being in outer space," he says The cave he visited is the Aktun Ha cenote, a submerge...

Nothing will make you hate humans—capricious, volatile, unplanned, erratic humans—like sitting in the back of self-driving car. When I hitched a ride in one, a white and orange General Motors Cruise autonomous vehicle during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, every movement was a cause for alarm. Two walkers darted out in front of the car during my roughly 20-minute, 3-mile ride, blissfull...

It's been years since I gave a second thought to my web browser. Safari's fine, Microsoft Edge is whatever, I think Opera still exists? None have ever offered much reason to switch away from Chrome, Google's fast, simple web tool. I'm not the only one who feels this way, either: Chrome commands nearly 60 percent of the browser market, and is more than four times as popular as the second-place fini...

Let's start this story at the end: You can't kill email. Attempting to do so is a decades-long tradition of the tech industry, a cliché right up there with "Uber, but for" and "The Netflix of X." AOL Instant Messenger tried to kill email. So did MySpace. Then Facebook took up the mantle, followed by Slack and Symphony and WhatsApp and HipChat. Through it all, email persists—always dying, never dea...