Last month, former presidential hopeful Andrew Yang launched a new initiative called the Data Dividend Project that would force social media companies to compensate users for the use of their data. As Yang told the Verge, “That first day that people get paid their dividend through DDP for All is going to be such a…
The operating system on Apple’s computers and laptops, macOS, is stable, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing (the upcoming Big Sur update is especially pretty and clean). But Apple doesn’t often listen to its customers, stubbornly refusing to add simple features that would make the platform even easier to use. Plus, stock Apple apps often lack a…
The recent retraction of a research paper which claimed to find no link between police killings and the race of the victims was a story tailor-made for today’s fights over cancel culture. First, the authors asked for the paper to be withdrawn, both because they’d been “careless when describing the inferences that could be made…
Starting later this year, iOS users can tell their friends with a single emoji that they feel like badass ninjas while wearing face masks. Apple has revealed (via Engadget Japanese) 13 new emoji coming to its mobile platform, all of which were part of the selection Unicode Consortium approved back in January. The consortium showed…
Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch’s anticipated PS4 exclusive, is finally available. The open-world samurai action-stealth game launched on July 17, and according to Sucker Punch, it’s the studio’s biggest title to date. But how long does it take to beat the main story, and how much time will you spend completing the other activities in…
Epic Games has released the fifth and final core Aquaman challenge in Fortnite, and it can nab you an incredible item. This latest one asks you to claim your Trident at Coral Cove to earn a Trident of your own, but it also ties into the broader challenge to unlock Aquaman skins. If you’re a…
When security researchers piece together the blow-by-blow of a state-sponsored hacking operation, they’re usually following a thin trail of malicious code samples, network logs, and connections to faraway servers. That detective work gets significantly easier when hackers record what they’re doing and then upload the video to an unprotected server on the open internet. Which…
When WIRED’s editors asked me in February if I wanted to host and help launch a new flagship podcast for the magazine, I immediately said “Yes!” For nearly two years, I had been co-hosting the popular Gadget Lab podcast about consumer tech, which we’re still producing. But it became obvious that there was room for…
Bill Gates. Elon Musk. Barack Obama. Jeff Bezos. Mike Bloomberg. Joe Biden. Kanye West. Those are just a handful of the major, million-plus-follower Twitter accounts that were compromised Wednesday afternoon, each in service of a bitcoin scam that has already earned the hackers behind it well over $100,000 in a few short hours. And counting.…
Taking pleasure in the failure of others has long been considered a grubby, poisonous quality. So bad that philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called schadenfreude “the worst trait in human nature.” More recently, British tabloid The Daily Mail claimed in a headline that a person who enjoys others’ misfortune “may be a PSYCHOPATH.” A tad dramatic, but…
