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What is a blacklight and how do you make one? This is the topic of a recent MacGyver episode in which he quickly creates an improvised blacklight to find hidden messages on a wall. You can watch the scene here-and a disclaimer, I am currently the Technical Consultant for the show. But still, there's lots a great science in this one little scene. What is "Blacklight"? OK, it's not really a black li...

Virtual reality needs motion controls, period. If you're an Oculus Rift owner, you may have had some fun times playing games that use the Xbox One controller packed in the box. Eagle Flight's pretty good. But eagles don't got no hands anyway. Any other situation, you're gonna want hands, and that means motion controls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pen-to-paper digital capturing tools like Wacom’s Bamboo Slate ($150) have been around for a while now, but they still seem like magic. There should be no way that you can draw a picture on a pad of paper, press a button, and have a perfect facsimile almost instantly pop up on your phone or your iPad. It defies the laws of… everything. Even if you know how it works, it still seems like it shouldn’...

Editor's note: We're proud to bring NextDraft-the most righteous, most essential newsletter on the web-to WIRED.com. Every Friday you'll get a roundup of the week's most popular must-read stories from around the internet, courtesy of mastermind Dave Pell. So dig in and geek out. The Mile Spry Club Like the US and many other countries, Britain has a childhood obesity problem. One teacher witnessed...

Playtime meets programming tool in Ozobot’s Evo, “the smart and social robot toy.” Well, let’s not get too carried away. Evo responds to programming, but that doesn’t exactly make it smart. I’m not sure a bunch of flashing lights, beeps, and whirrs qualify as social, but I suppose I’ve seen worse on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I was a young pup, I spent my first income tax refund on a pair of Cambridge SoundWorks bookshelf speakers. Those were my only speakers for more than ten years; they moved with me to six different cities. Later, I remember walking through the audio area of CES and stopping dead at the Tivoli Audio booth, impressed by how cool and retro the company’s little clock radios looked, and how surpris...

ZenBook is an awfully good name for the laptop we consider today. Careful meditation will come in handy when pondering whether to fork over a stratospheric $1,599 for a 12.5-inch ultrabook. Asus offers its latest ZenBook 3in two incarnations, both in the same 12.5-inch chassis. The $1,099 cheapie model offersstripped-down specs, while paying $500 more for theupscale version gets you all the bells...

In one corner of John Knoll’s office at Lucasfilm stand three racks of imposing black computer servers. The sleek 6-foot-tall towers, complete with mechanical switches and fans, flash blue LEDs. Each bears the insignia of the Galactic Empire from Star Wars and a name—Death Star 748, Death Star 749. Imperial computers, these are. As impressive and menacing as the machines appear, they aren’t real....

One day in early July, the poet Claudia Rankine was working in her study when her husband walked in. "I can't watch this," he said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You don't even have to watch the whole movie to get the best line from Doctor Strange. Let me set this up (mostly spoiler free). Stephen Strange (Doctor Strange) ends up meeting with The Ancient One and she shows him some seriously awesome stuff. Here is the conversation they have. Strange: How do I get from here to there? The Ancient One: How did you become a doctor? Strange: Study and practice-m...

In the pantheon of supercars, the McLaren F1 holds a special place. Even now, almost a quarter-century after its arrival, its 240.1 mph top speed makes it the fastest naturally aspirated production car ever. Although designed for the street, it dominated at Le Mans. And it remains a drop-dead gorgeous automobile that deserves every superlative used to describe it. A list of things that set the F1...

Whatever your politics, whatever your background, whatever your news sources, it seems fair to say that not many people saw the 2016 election ending this way. (Including, it appears, the guy who won the thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Headphones rarely have to leave your head. They make phone calls, let you query of Siri or Google Assistant, and they give you hours of bliss as you consume podcasts, books, and playlists en masse. Having a pair that can do it all well is crucial. The Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 is a very capable and pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones that will give you more than 20 hours of comfortable listenin...

What’s the best way to elevate a family holiday gathering? Tactical warfare! Nerf’s latest rolling drone should win a few battles. The Nerf N-Strike Elite Terrascout Remote Control Drone Blaster is basically a little remote-controlled tank. The non-flying “drone” cruises across rough terrain and shoots Nerf darts. The drone itself comes in two parts that need to be snapped together. Learn more abo...

We’ve written about Propel’s official Star Wars drones before, and frankly we’d write about them every day if we could find cause. Today brings actual news, though, of the flying speeder bike, X-Wing, Millennium Falcon, and Tie fighter that will be lighting up your living room this holiday season. You can pre-order them starting Tuesday, November 22, and they’ll cost $230 each. Learn more about yo...

Oh, to be young and touching yourself for the first time. You orgasm, and time stops. No, seriously. For a pubescent Suzie in Sex Criminals, the comic by writer Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarsky, that newfound superpower is real—and a cause for both excitement and confusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DJI’s Phantom line of consumer drones is the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. And now, the company’s latest flying machine, the Phantom 4 Pro, looks like it’s poised to be the new king of the skies. The Phantom 4 Pro is an upgrade from last year’s Phantom 4. You can now fly a full 31 miles per hour while obstacle avoidance is engaged. Previously, if you wanted to go that fast, you had to put the...

Acer says its latest ultrabook, the Swift 7, offers “unprecedented portability.” The basis for this claim? A laptop that is 12mm thick at its widest point and under 10mm thick if you ignore the rubber feet. That is thin! How thin? It’s thinner than an Apple MacBook Air (18mm) and thinner than the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (15mm with keyboard). At 10mm, it flirts with the thickness of many tablets, a...

When you’re contractually obligated to publish three books in a single year, you can’t dilly-dally in dreamland. Unless, of course, your subconscious is as weird and fecund as Jeff VanderMeer’s. From its depths spring images of creaky lighthouses and buried towers, great beasts moaning at dusk, and a brightness that grows inside you—just some of the features that haunt Area X, the mysterious wilde...

Juan Diego Calle’s grandfather bought a sky blue FJ40 Land Cruiser in 1968. He kept it for 14 years, then sold it and bought a sky blue 1982 FJ40. When he died, Juan’s cousin restored the old Toyota and showed it to Juan and his brother Nelson. “When we saw the work,” Juan says, “we said, ‘We have to own our grandfather’s truck.'” They brought the Land Cruiser from Bogota to Miami, and soon had th...

In his first address as president-elect, Donald Trump played the platitudes. He spoke of being a president for all Americans, of healing divisions, of unleashing potential. He avoided specifics of any kind beyond a few key areas, including infrastructure. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Trump said. “We’re going to reb...

With Eagle Flight, now you too can experience all the freedom and majesty of flight—coupled with all of the restrictiveness of a videogame. If you’re a VR early adopter, you should probably try out Ubisoft’s first-person eagle simulator. It’s been available for a little whileon Oculus Rift (which I played), is out this week on PlayStation VR, and is coming to Vive on December 20. Learn more about...

The lowly cooler is the last thing I would have ever expected to become a hipster status symbol. But Yeti has managed to make it happen, by transformingthe beverage chiller from a utilitarian device into a fashion accessory. The Yeti Hopper Flip 12, like the rest of its Hopper line, is a soft-side cooler, which makes for a generally more comfortable userexperience than a typical hard-side cooler....

The Mate 9 flagship phone thatHuaweiunveiled in Europe is a massive Android handset available with different specs at different prices—expensive, and crazy expensive. Like, $1,500 expensive. But that’s what happens when Porsche Design does your styling. We’ll start with the cheap one, if you can call a $775 phone cheap. The Mate 9 is roughly the same size as an iPhone 7 Plus, but sports a giant 5....

I'd be lying if I said unplugging my Amazon Echo didn't feel a bit like a breakup. "Alexa," I whispered while pulling the plug, "it's just for now." Butit wasn't Alexa, it was me. More specifically, it was someone else. I needed the space for Google Home. The $129 Home smart speaker playsa vital role inGoogle's futuristic vision of "a Google for everyone," powered by itsomnipresent Assistant. Lear...