Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express their every thought by posting short snippets of audio. All of these snippets are served in a never-ending feed, a la Twitter. There are replies, there are DMs, but there?s no typing; it?s all spoken audio. The platform is exclusively invitation-only for now, so the current user base is made up mostly of Valley insiders, optimistic venture capitalists, and crypto evangelists, which definitely informs the types of conversations you?ll find on the app. If you're thinking this sounds a lot like Clubhouse, the audio-based social space that flared up during the Covid-19 pandemic, well, you're not too far off.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk to WIRED?s Director of Special Projects Alan Henry about making mouth sounds on Airchat and whether the buzzy new social startup will appeal to anyone outside the Silicon Valley technosphere.

Show Notes:

Read Lauren?s story about Airchat.

Recommendations:

Alan recommends the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel. Lauren recommends Julian Chokkattu?s review of the Humane Ai Pin and Scoop, a movie about journalism that?s streaming on Netflix. Mike recommends our new sibling podcast, WIRED Politics Lab.

Alan can be found on social media @halophoenix. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their work was once fringe, its become mainstreamed in the Republican Party. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we focus on what these groups are doing, and what this means for voters and the election workers already facing threats and harassment.

Listen to and follow WIRED Politics Lab here.
Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.

Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled Shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They're probably not even the most interesting things you can buy on TikTok or Instagram. Just as the apps have thrived on a steady stream of feel-good content, they have also inundated their users with cheap, bright, and shiny stuff they can swipe through and buy with just a few taps. It's a trend that's spread out to every social site, and has taken a unique shape on TikTok through the platform?s new experimental TikTok Shop. Now, it's hard to get through a couple videos without being accosted by virility pills, fast fashion, and hangover cures.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover joins us to talk about the weird world of TikTok Shop, how its fee structure is evolving, and why it feels like every single social media service is pivoting to zany products.

Show Notes:

Read Amanda?s story about TikTok Shop raising its seller fees. Listen to our recent episode (#636) about the possibility of a TikTok ban.

Recommendations:

Amanda recommends the HungovrAF cap. Mike recommends the documentary Anselm, directed by Wim Winders. Lauren recommends Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks.

Amanda Hoover can be found on social media @byamandahoover. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Apple has gotten used to being a favorite target of rivals and government agencies. The company has been repeatedly scrutinized by regulators, and other tech companies have accused the company of anticompetitive practices. Apple?s most recent legal challenge is a doozy: an antitrust lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice and more than a dozen state attorneys general. The suit takes aim at the security and privacy features offered only on the iPhone, and accuses Apple of using that exclusivity to lock consumers into its ecosystem. At the center of the suit is the lack of true cross-platform encryption on Apple?s messaging platform?the green bubble-blue bubble divide?which the government alleges harms consumers by leaving them more vulnerable to attacks.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior security editor Andrew Couts about the encryption and privacy issues behind the DOJ's suit against Apple, and how the dreaded green bubbles on iMessage factor in.

Show Notes:

Read Andrew and Andy Greenberg?s WIRED story about how the DOJ is targeting Apple's iMessage encryption. Read Lauren?s story about how the antitrust case is all about the green bubbles, really.

Recommendations:

Andrew recommends profumo del chianti sea salt. Lauren recommends the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Mike recommends going to the Big Ears music festival next year.

Andrew Couts can be found on social media @AndrewCouts. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

3 Body Problem is Netflix?s new big, meaty prestige sci-fi series. Based on the book of the same name by author Liu Cixin, the show about an impending alien invasion is also one about how humans react to technological advancements and social movements that spiral out of control. Aliens aside, it tackles many of the same issues modern society is facing right now?political instability, fanaticism, and maybe an over-dependence on virtual reality. The new show is helmed by the former showrunners ofGame of Thrones and surprise surprise, this high-concept drama is in fact very good.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk all about 3 Body Problem?how the tech and cultural events in the show mirror the real world and how it stacks up against the likes of Game of Thrones and other prestige TV.

Read Amit Katwala?s interview with the main showrunners of3 Body Problem. Here?s Lauren?s story about crying in VR. Speaking of VR, read WIRED?s review of the Apple Vision Pro.

Kate recommends the showSilo on Apple TV+. Lauren recommends the movieOne Day on Netflix. Mike recommends theTransmissions podcast by Aquarium Drunkard.

Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray. On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives approved a bipartisan bill that, should it become law, would require TikTok?s parent company, the Chinese firm ByteDance, to sell the app or else see it banned on devices in the US. Lawmakers in the US have expressed concerns that data from American TikTok users is being shared with a Chinese company, and that therefore TikTok poses a threat to national security. 

This week on Gadget Lab, we?re joined by WIRED?s senior politics writer Makena Kelly to talk about those security concerns, what this bill means for the rest of the tech industry, and what could happen if TikTok is actually banned.

Show Notes:

Read Makena on the bill that would ban TikTok, and read Vittoria Elliott?s update on Wednesday?s vote. We also have instructions to get your videos off TikTok. Read all of WIRED?s TikTok coverage.

Recommendations:

Makena recommends going to the office. (Really.) Mike recommends Ener-C powdered vitamin drink mix. Lauren reiterates Kate Knibbs? earlier recommendation of American Fiction, the film that just won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. 

Makena Kelly can be found on social media @kellymakena. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

The last few months have been rough for Google. Company executives have been in the hot seat because of some embarrassing missteps, the most awkward of which was the bungled launch of Google?s latest image generator. The company launched it as part of its suite of GenAI tools named Gemini, but then quickly pulled it back after the generator produced some seriously weird results.

This week, we welcome WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave back to the show to talk about Gemini?s strange outputs. We also talk about some of the staffing pains Google has been going through recently, including layoffs and accusations of discrimination.

 
Show Notes:
Read more about the ?woke AI? controversy. Read Bloomberg?s story about Google?s layoffs to its trust and safety team. Read Paresh?s story about the Googler with a disability who alleges workplace discrimination at the company. Listen to our broader discussion about tech layoffs on episode 633.

Recommendations:
Paresh recommends the food blog The Fancy Navajo. Lauren recommends Lauren Mechling?s story in The Guardian about journalism; the Le Carré Cast podcast, particularly the episode about the secret life of the famous spy author; and Mike recommends the film collection ?And the Razzie Goes to ?? on the Criterion Channel.
Paresh can be found on social media @peard33.bsky.social. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics cards, among other tech, and has earned great success thanks to the strength of the gaming industry. But it's been nothing compared to the explosive growth Nvidia has enjoyed over the past year. That's because Nvidia's tech is well-suited to power the machines that run large language models, the basis for the generative AI systems that have swept across the tech industry. Now Nvidia is an absolute behemoth, with a skyrocketing stock value and a tight grip on the most impactful?and controversial?tech of this era.
This week on Gadget Lab, we welcome WIRED?s Will Knight, who writes about AI, as our guest. Together, we boot up our Nvidia® GeForce RTX? 4080 SUPER graphics cards to render an ultra high-def conversation about the company powering the AI boom.

Show Notes:
Read Lauren?s interview with Nvidia cofounder and CEO, Jensen Huang. Read Will?s story about the need for more chips in AI computing circles, and his story about the US government?s export restrictions on chip technology. Read all of our Nvidia coverage.

Recommendations:
Will recommends WhisperKit from Argmax for machine transcription. Mike recommends getting your garden going now; it?s almost spring. Lauren recommends Say Nothing, a book by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Will Knight can be found on social media @willknight Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

tech companies seemed immune to large-scale layoffs, and as their profits skyrocketed, those cushy jobs became highly sought-after. But economic headwinds, and the looming influence of AI, are leading to some tumultuous changes in the tech industry.

In just the first seven weeks of this year, Amazon, Google, Discord, Duolingo, Cisco, Instacart, and dozens of others all made deep staffing cuts. It all adds up to tens of thousands of jobs lost across the industry, and the cuts aren't slowing down. It doesn't help that interviewing for tech jobs is getting harder too, with employers asking for more and more work or rigorous testing before making a hire. 

This week, WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave joins us to talk about whether the layoffs will cool off, and why right now is a daunting time to be looking for a tech job.

Show Notes:

Read Paresh?s story about how Google has been cutting down on its acquisitions lately. Read Amanda Hoover on recent tech industry layoffs, and her story about the TikTok layoff videos folks have been posting. Read Lauren?s story about how tech job interviews are getting even more demanding. And of course, follow all of WIRED?s coverage of how AI and how it affects people?s livelihoods.

Recommendations:

Paresh recommends making an effort to connect and collaborate with your disabled colleagues. Lauren recommends the documentary The Eternal Memory. Mike recommends listening to Ty Segall?s new album Three Bells and watching his live show.

Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up an unused domain, then erect a new website filled with clickbait articles. If the domain name used to rank highly in search results, the new clickbait articles will also rank highly, guaranteeing the prospector a steady stream of visitors searching the web for common phrases. 

These zombie sites are all over the web; you?ve probably landed on them many times yourself. But this shady market is poised to grow exponentially thanks to the proliferation of generative AI tools. Text generators like ChatGPT make it easier for prospectors to crank out clickbait articles at greater speed, feeding an already raging river of pablum.

This week, Kate Knibbs tells us about her WIRED story on one of these entrepreneurs in the world of AI-generated clickbait hosted on squatted domains.

Show Notes:

Read Kate?s story about Neboj?a Vujinovi? Vujo and his clickbait empire. Also read Kate?s original investigation into what happened to The Hairpin, a popular blog for womens? writing that went defunct and was then reborn as a content mill.

Recommendations:

Kate recommends the novella Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler. Brian recommends the novel The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Lauren recommends giving up fancy, creamy coffee drinks for Lent. Mike recommends the social media platform BlueSky, which is now open to everyone.

Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs. Brian Barrett is @brbarrett. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

At its core, Slack is a chat app. Every day, millions of people use it to communicate, share files, and gossip with coworkers or friend groups in one organized place. That style of free-flowing interaction?which Slack didn?t invent, but made mainstream?has changed the way we talk to each other online for better and for worse. It?s brought us closer together and enabled global collaboration, but it?s also allowed conversations to follow us anywhere ? like when you get a notification at 10 pm that your boss has sent you a DM.

This week, MIT Technology Review editor in chief Mat Honan joins the show to chronicle the history of Slack as the software suit turns 10 years old. We dig into how it helped our work lives bleed into our personal time, and how the company is faring under the auspices of Salesforce and against its competitors.

Show Notes:

Read Mat?s 2014 story about Slack founder Stewart Butterfield and his boring startup. Here?s Lauren?s story about the Slack soft return and other office hacks you might want to use. Listen to the episode of WIRED?s Have A Nice Future podcast with former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones.

Recommendations:

Mat recommends Airtags and the ChatGPT sticker bot. Mike recommends the Raw Impressions podcast with Lou and Adelle Barlow. Lauren recommends using the soft return in Slack. 

Mat Honan can be found on social media @mat. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Apple's first ever mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, arrives tomorrow. Apple has a knack for revitalizing and legitimizing a product category?something that the face computer market really needs right now. But there are some hangups that could limit its initial success: the Vision Pro's exorbitant $3,499 price tag, the tethered battery pack, and the mere handful of apps available on the device at launch. These issues point to this headset being more of a development kit than a fully realized product for now. It's a beautiful machine, but its true potential may not be realized for some time.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu joins us to chat about the Apple Vision Pro and whether it's going to be the device that finally kicks off the face computer revolution. We also talk about the ways Apple is trying to make the headset disappear as part of the experience, both in the virtual space and in the physical realm.

Show Notes:

Read Julian?s hands-on experience with the Apple Vision Pro. Read Lauren?s story about the Apple Vision Pro?s battery pack. Read Boone Ashworth on the current situation with apps and developers. 

Recommendations:

Julian recommends Thumbtack, a platform to connect homeowners with service vendors. Lauren recommends butter lettuce. Mike recommends the Scottish police show Shetland.

Julian Chokkattu can be found on social media @JulianChokkattu. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you?ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn?t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of digital currency as a means of buying legal and illicit goods on the web with total anonymity, the fact is that nearly all cryptocurrency transactions leave a digital trail behind them that can point to your true identity. No matter how hard you try to hide, a dedicated sleuth with the right resources can find you.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior cybersecurity writer and author of the book Tracers in the Dark digs into all the ways investigators, government agents, and hackers can track down criminals online by ?following the money? exchanged in cryptocurrency transactions.

This show originally aired on February 9, 2023.

Show Notes

Andy?s book is Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency. You can read two excerpts from the book on WIRED.com: the six-part AlphaBay saga and the feature about the takedown of a website for sharing child sex abuse materials.

Recommendations

Andy recommends the deliberately frustrating game Getting Over It. Lauren recommends Andy?s WIRED story about the animal activists whose spy cams revealed the grim realities of pork slaughterhouses. Mike recommends the book Art Is Life by the art critic Jerry Saltz.

Andy can be found on social media @a_greenberg. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTube videos. This is also the first election of the AI era, where anyone can generate just about anything?an image, a Twitter bot, a speech?by typing a few lines of text into a prompt. Whether it's bad actors generating misleading deepfakes or candidates using text generators to write cringey campaign emails, AI is now firmly part of the election process.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior politics writer Makenna Kelly joins us en route from the Iowa caucus to talk about how scammers and political campaigns alike are using AI to influence voters at the polls.

Show Notes:

Read more from Makena about the Iowa caucus and the end of Vivek Ramaswamy?s campaign. Scroll through her TikToks about the caucus. Follow all of WIRED?s coverage of the 2024 election and artificial intelligence.

Recommendations:

Makena recommends Uniqlo under layers. Mike recommends the cringey Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone show The Curse. Lauren recommends the show Catastrophe.

Makena Kelly can be found on social media @kellymakena. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

It's CES week. Yes, it's time to dive back into that glitzy, chaotic showcase where thousands of startups, companies, and general technology weirdos gather to show off all the new tech and futuristic devices that will give us a glimpse of the year in tech to come. AI is in everything, we're getting ChatGPT in our flying cars, and TVs are getting so big and bright you need sunglasses to watch them.
This week on Gadget Lab, we come to you straight from lovely Las Vegas, Nevada, where CES is in full swing. We huddled together in a Vegas hotel room to talk all about the big trends, crazy tech, and just plain weird stuff we saw this week.

Show Notes:
Follow CES on our liveblog and check out many, many bizarre and wonderful things we saw at CES this year. Read Jeremy?s look at the Supernal flying car. Read Julian?s story about the Rabbit R1 AI personal assistant device. Check out wehead.com, if you dare. Follow all of WIRED?s CES coverage now and forever.
Adrienne So can be found on social media @adriennemso. Julian Chokkattu is @JulianChokkattu. Jeremy is @jeremywired. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights in the United States. Since then, many states have rolled back abortion services or made them outright illegal. That includes some states restricting access to abortion pills like mifepristone. Now, at the start of an election year in the US and a year that will bring more legal challenges to abortion rights, a new study shows that women are stockpiling abortion pills in record numbers?even if they aren?t currently pregnant.

This week, we welcome WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs onto the show to talk about abortion medication, the trend of ?advance provision? requests for mifepristone, and the coming legal fight over continued access to telehealth and in-person abortion services.

Show Notes:

Read Kate?s story about how women in the US are stockpiling abortion pills. Read our primer on menstrual regulation medications. Learn more about the upcoming US Supreme Court case that could change some Americans? access to the pills.

Recommendations:

Kate recommends the film American Fiction. Mike recommends the movie Godland. Lauren recommends embracing the theory of Dunbar?s number and focusing on your closest relationships.

Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Artificial intelligence was inarguably the biggest newsmaker in the tech industry this year. Whether it was ChaptGPT writing term papers, AI-generated Drake hits, or the board shakeup at OpenAI, the topic permeated the public consciousness and left people feeling varying levels of excitement and absolute terror about how this technology will shape our future. Generative AI seems poised to alter the direction of humanity, but it's up to the people to figure out exactly how it?s going to do that.

This week on Gadget Lab, we?re sharing a very special session from the recent LiveWIRED event celebrating WIRED?s 30th anniversary. Onstage, WIRED editor-at-large Steven Levy interviews renowned AI scientist Fei-Fei Li and LinkedIn cofounder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman about all the chaos at OpenAI and what generative AI will look like in the future.

Show Notes:

Read Steven?s story about what OpenAI really wants. Read more from WIRED about OpenAI and artificial intelligence. Check out the many other sessions from the LiveWIRED event.

Steven Levy can be found on social media @StevenLevy. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

It?s been a year, that?s for sure. Every week on Gadget Lab, we end the show by bringing you our recommendations for all of our favorite tech, books, TV shows, and life hacks. Now, at the end of the year, we?re going all-in on that idea with an entire episode dedicated to those recommendations. We talk about all the things that helped us get through 2023 and have us looking forward to 2024.

This week on Gadget Lab, we make the mistake of letting our producer Boone Ashworth grab a mic again. He joins Lauren and Michael to talk about the best gadgets, lifestyle changes, shows, and culinary curiosities of 2023.

Show Notes:

Our talk with Casey Johnston from May of 2023 can be found in episode number 598. Read more about ActivityPub and the coming federated social media landscape. Here?s our review of the new Valve Steam Deck OLED. See our list of our favorite electric kettles.

Recommendations:

Boone recommends running a half marathon or two, the new OLED Steam Deck, and Ableton Live software for making music (or at least pretending you understand how to). Lauren recommends lifting weights for fitness, an Oxo electric kettle, and the 2021 movie The Worst Person in the World. Mike recommends getting to know ActivityPub, watching the show Scavenger?s Reign on Max, and eating lots of chili crisp.

Boone Ashworth can be found on social media @booneashworth. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth. Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Does your favorite movie star or pop singer really love the Kremlin? Though the ads in your Facebook feed may lead you to believe such a thing, it?s just not true. In recent months, a major disinformation campaign has run rampant on Meta and X (aka Facebook and Twitter). The campaign uses fake ads that show existing photos of extremely famous celebrities?Beyoncé, Oprah, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Cristiano Ronaldo?which have been doctored to include fake quotes that back Russia and criticize Ukraine. The campaign, which is still in progress, was perpetrated by a pre-Kremlin group known as Doppelganger. Information shared exclusively with WIRED has also linked this disinformation campaign to Russia?s GRU military spy agency. 

On this week?s show, we talk with WIRED contributor David Gilbert, who reports on digital disinformation. David says Doppelganger has been acting in plain sight for over a year, buying targeted ads and using networks of bots and fake Facebook pages to get its pro-Russia propaganda in front of millions of people. 

Show Notes:

Read David?s story about Doppelganger?s campaign. Read all of David?s recent coverage. Also read our coverage of other online propaganda campaigns.

Recommendations:

David recommends the movie Saltburn. Mike recommends buying Italian blood orange soda instead of sparkling cider for your next holiday part. Lauren recommends supporting a union!

David Gilbert can be found wrangling all kinds of disinformation on social media @daithaigilbert. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This color coding signals to the iPhone user that the incoming text is arriving from outside the Apple ecosystem. But the divide goes beyond simple aesthetics. Photos and videos shared between the two mobile platforms don?t come through at full resolution. Neither do rich interactions like read receipts, typing indicators, and tapbacks. Group chats between the platforms are a total mess, filled with dropped messages and hurt feelings. A new app aims to bridge that blue-green bubble gap and make texting more seamless?and more secure with full encryption. It even turns Android texts blue! It?s what we?ve always wanted ? right?

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk about Beeper Mini, the app trying to make our text conversations easier. WIRED features editor Jason Kehe joins us to campaign against the trend of interoperability on our phones. As Jason sees it, these friction-free communication mechanisms are causing us to slip into bad habits, become more isolated, and feel less inclined to put down our phones and have a real experience.

Show Notes:

Read Lauren?s story about the new Beeper app and the teenage coder who helped make it work. Read more of Jason?s various other controversial opinions.

Recommendations:

Jason recommends piracy, and also a few works about pirates like the show Our Flag Means Death and the book Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly. Lauren recommends the new BlackBerry movie. Mike recommends pizzelle Italian cookies. Buy ?em or make ?em.

Jason Kehe can be found on social media @jkehe. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There have been many research studies, technological innovations, and passionate arguments dedicated to brewing a better cup of coffee. A recent wave of impressively designed coffee gadgets aims to dial it in even further. But too often, those flashy and high-tech solutions don?t make a mug of coffee that?s any more satisfying than the familiar methods that have been around for years?or centuries, even.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED contributor, cookbook author, and smart-kitchen expert Joe Ray joins us to chat about coffee: the optimal way to brew it, the best tech to use, and whether it's OK to shame people who use disposable K-cups. (Yes, it is.)

Show Notes:

Read Joe?s buying guide to find the best AeroPress coffee brewer, and check out his roundup of best cookbooks of 2023 (so far). Read all of Joe?s food and kitchen coverage for WIRED.

Recommendations:

Joe recommends Craft Coffee: A Manual: Brewing a Better Cup at Home by Jessica Easto and Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others by Amy Thielen. Lauren recommends giving honey as a gift and keeping a box cutter around the house. Mike recommends Mission Vegan: Wildly Delicious Food for Everyone by Danny Bowien and JJ Goode.

Joe Ray can be found on social media @joe_diner. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Artificial intelligence has made headlines all year long, but the turn of events this week was extraordinary. OpenAI was thrown into chaos with the firing and eventual rehiring of CEO Sam Altman. There was a shakeup in the company?s board of directors and fierce debates about how much influence ethics should have on the company?s direction. That uncertainty of how to philosophically approach artificial intelligence will keep casting a shadow over the tech industry even after the dust settles around the OpenAI drama. Researchers, proponents of ethical AI, and corporate customers of these new generative AI tools will continue to ask how these technologies are going to shape our future, and what influence they will have over our lives.

This week, we're bringing you an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast in which New Yorker writer Joshua Rothman talks to Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, about how rapidly AI has advanced and how it may alter the future of humanity.

Show Notes:

This episode originally aired on November 21, 2023. You can find a full transcript here. Listen to the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts. Read Joshua Rothman?s profile of Geoffrey Hinton in The New Yorker.

Tom Simonite can be found on social media @tsimonite. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Gadget Lab is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

In October 2016, a malware tool named Mirai took down some of the biggest sites and services on the web, including Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, and Slack. The blackout affected most of the East Coast of the United States, and the size and scope of the outage alarmed the cybersecurity researchers and law enforcement agencies tasked with thwarting such attacks. The code that caused this meltdown was created by three individuals, all in their teens or early 20s. The trio had built a tool that took control of internet-connected smart home devices and used them?like a massive zombie army?to knock the internet?s most vital servers offline. Now, years later, Mirai?s three creators have told their story.

This week, we talk to WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg about Mirai?s creation, how the code did its damage, and how the three hackers were eventually caught. 

Show Notes:

Read Andy?s epic feature story titled ?The Mirai Confessions: Three Young Hackers Who Built a Web-Killing Monster Finally Tell Their Story.? The story also graces the cover of the next issue of WIRED magazine.

Recommendations:

Andy recommends the book Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill. Mike recommends getting a wreath for Christmas instead of chopping down a tree. Lauren recommends Okinawan sweet potato haupia pie bars.

Andy Greenberg can be found on X as @a_greenberg and @agreenberg elsewhere. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring at the screen? Humane, a company started by a pair of ex-Apple employees, wants to squash the tyranny of the touchscreen. The company has developed a tiny device that magnetically pins to your clothing, where it can replicate a phone?s core functions like answering calls, sending messages, and translating speech. It uses voice controls, touch controls, and a camera to sense the wearer?s intentions, and it crafts answers using machine intelligence and displays them on your outstretched hand using a tiny projector. It's a weird and audacious device that Humane hopes will free its customers from having to carry their phones everywhere.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave joins us to talk about his hands-off experience with the Humane Ai pin and the future phone alternatives.

Show Notes:

Read Paresh?s story about his experience with the Humane Ai pin.

Recommendations:

Paresh recommends Kim?s Convenience on Netflix. Lauren recommends the biography of Robert Oppenheimer, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Mike recommends the new reissue of the Buddha Machine music box from FM3.

Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Twitter may be officially called X now, but that rebranding is just one of the many changes that have hit the platform since Elon Musk took over. It's been one whole year since the mercurial billionaire purchased Twitter, and in that time the social platform has undergone big shifts in its user base, business model, and culture. It's become chaotic and unpredictable?some would say it?s more dangerous than ever?yet even among all this upheaval, Twitter keeps on tweetin?.

This week on Gadget Lab, we're commemorating the one-year anniversary of a Muskified Twitter. WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs and Vox senior correspondent and host of the Land of the Giants podcast Peter Kafka join the show to talk about all the weirdness Twitter has gone through over the past year, and whether the platform is still as relevant as it once was.

Show Notes:

Listen to season seven of the Land of the Giants podcast, ?The Twitter Fantasy.? Read Kate?s ?Unverify Me, Daddy? story. Follow all WIRED?s coverage of the X (née Twitter) saga.

Recommendations:

Kate Recommends the book Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels. Peter recommends the book Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, and also the show What We Do in the Shadows. Mike recommends the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume with Christain Slater and Samantha Mathis. Lauren recommends the second episode of the Land of the Giants: The Twitter Fantasy podcast she cohosts.

Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the company's lab can reveal the details of your ethnic background and trace the many branches of your family tree. The popularity of such tests means these genomics and biotechnology companies hold a whole lot of very personal data about their customers, and hackers tend to see their databases as targets ripe for the picking. Earlier this month, the private data of millions of 23andMe customers was stolen and put up for sale on hacker forums. Most troublingly, the data gathered targeted specific ethnic groups, including Ashkenazi Jews and people of Chinese descent.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior writer Lily Hay Newman about the 23andMe hack, what it means for the people who were directly affected, and whether it's a good idea to give companies access to your genetic material and history in the first place.

Show Notes:

Read more from Lily about the 23andMe hack and some updates on how it has gotten even worse. Follow all of WIRED?s cybersecurity coverage.

Recommendations:

Lily recommends Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea, specifically the flavor Malty Biscuit Brew. Lauren recommends Pasta e Ceci. Mike recommends the episode of the New York Times podcast Popcast titled, ?Do We Need Album Reviews Anymore??

Lily Hay Newman can be found on social media @lilyhnewman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on social media, usually by well-meaning people who don?t know they?re sharing incorrect information. It's a big problem in the best of times, but the stakes become much higher during a heated crisis like the current Israel-Hamas war. As the violence in and around Gaza has continued to escalate, people are turning to places like X (aka Twitter) for the latest news on the conflict. But they've been met with a flood of bad info?old videos, fake photos, and inaccurate reports?that researchers say is unprecedented.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED reporter David Gilbert about how misinformation and disinformation spreads across social media, and how recent changes made by X before the Israel-Hamas war have made the problem even worse. We also talk about how the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools is making fake photos and videos look more believable. 

Show Notes:

Read David and Vittoria Elliot?s WIRED story about how disinformation is getting worse on X. Read David on the role misinformation played in coverage of the recent Gaza hospital explosion. Also read David?s story about how posts by X owner Elon Musk are seemingly making the platform?s misinformation problems worse.

Recommendations:

David recommends the book A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney. Mike recommends Bono?s memoir Surrender. Lauren would like you to send her workout playlists. (She prefers Spotify.)

David Gilbert can be found on social media @daithaigilbert. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Artificial intelligence abounds, and it?s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular is an invention that seems destined to follow us far into the future, so it?s best to try to make sense of where it?s headed.

This week on Gadget Lab, we're sharing an episode of Wondery's Business Wars podcast where we talk about the rise of AI over the past few years, where the future of artificial intelligence is going, and whether the many movies about AI actually predicted what?s to come.

Show Notes:

Listen to the Business Wars podcast at Wondery, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out their whole series, the Rise of AI. Follow all of our own AI coverage on WIRED.

Recommendations:

Lauren recommends the Classy podcast. Mike recommends the new movie Past Lives.

Business Wars can be found on social media @businesswars. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday?s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google only sells a fraction of the number of phones and smartwatches pumped out by Apple and Samsung, the company?s work in mobile software, large language models, productivity services, and computational photography make it just as much of a heavyweight when it comes to consumer tech. But Google?s reach also extends far beyond your pocket and your wrist. Let us not forget about the company?s dominance in search. In fact, it?s currently in the throes of a protracted antitrust trial brought by the US government. The feds have accused Google of stifling competition and using its reign over the search ecosystem to stuff the experience with ads and misleading sponsored results.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave about Google's ongoing antitrust trial and all the new gadgets and AI-powered services the company announced this week.

Show Notes:

Read Paresh?s other stories about Google?s antitrust trial. Read all about Google?s new Pixel 8 phones and Pixel Watch. Get all the details on the Pixel?s computational photography tricks. Read about the new Bard-powered Assistant in the Google phones. Read Lauren?s story about where memory ends and generative AI begins.

Recommendations:

Paresh recommends weathering the heat wave with some soft serve, such as Meadowlark Dairy. Mike recommends the Technothrillers collection on the Criterion Channel. Lauren recommends reading poetry, like that of Ada Limon, Louise Gluck, and Seamus Heaney.

Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to announce a new mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, as well as new smart glasses made by Ray-Ban that let the wearer livestream videos and interact with an AI-powered voice chatbot. Meta also showed off an array of celebrity-infused AI chatbots that can mimic big-name folks like Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner. You'd be forgiven for thinking all this feels a little bit like an episode of Black Mirror.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior AI writer Khari Johnson about the mixed reality hardware Meta announced this week, its voice-controlled smart glasses, its weird new AI chatbots, and where the company sits in the great AI arms race.

Show Notes:

Read Khari?s story about Meta?s many AI chatbots. Read Lauren?s story about the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset and chatbot-enabled Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Recommendations:

Khari recommends the new movie The Creator. Lauren recommends the ?90s movie Sliding Doors. Mike also recommends a ?90s movie, Dazed and Confused.

Khari Johnson can be found on social media @kharijohnson. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, software, and services. The company reserved the spot at center stage for Alexa, the voice assistant powering all of Amazon?s smart home ambitions. Researchers at the company have given Alexa a technological upgrade that enables it to be more competitive in the ChatGPT era. Alexa can now speak more naturally, hold a conversation without as many awkward interactions, and even make its responses sound more emotionally nuanced.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Will Knight joins us to talk about how Alexa is becoming more agile as a conversationalist. Will spoke to Amazon executives about their machine intelligence work, their training models, and how the company is riding the wave of excitement around generative artificial intelligence.

Show Notes:

Read Will?s report on Alexa?s latest upgrade. Read our roundup of everything Amazon announced at Wednesday?s media event.

Recommendations:

Will recommends Auto-GPT, a tool that turns ChatGPT an autonomous agent that manages all the boring parts of your life. Mike recommends the book No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating by Alicia Kennedy. Lauren recommends the episode of WIRED?s Have a Nice Future Podcast where journalist Paul Tough talks about college in the US and the future of higher education.

Will Knight can be found on Twitter @willknight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company?s headquarters on Tuesday, Apple showed off regular and Pro versions of the iPhone 15, as well as a couple of new Apple Watch models and a smattering of software enhancements that aim to make moving around with your devices easier. The big news?though something Apple quickly glossed over in its presentation?is that the company has finally eschewed its proprietary Lightning connector in favor of the ubiquitous (and European-Union-mandated) USB-C standard. It's a big change, but one that Apple doesn't exactly seem happy to have been forced into making.

This week on Gadget Lab, we dive into all the details about everything Apple announced this week, from the hardware to the software to the services.

Show Notes:

Dig into everything Apple announced at its September event. Read Adrienne?s story about the new Apple Watch models. Read Julian?s stories about the new iPhones 15 and why it matters that Apple has made the switch to USB-C. Also, check out Lauren?s story about Apple?s new expensive but massive iCloud+ plans. 

Recommendations:

Adrienne recommends Ripton hiker jeans. (Read her story about these technical jorts.) Julian recommends the AnkerWork M650 wireless microphone system. Lauren recommends the latest episode of SmartLess with guest Kara Swisher. Mike recommends shatta, a fermented chile pepper sauce you can find at your local Middle Eastern grocer.

Adrienne is on social media as @adriennemso. Julian is @JulianChokkattu. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid?s shoulder while they?re using Roblox. The online platform is filled with free games, experiences, and social hangouts that are designed and built by its users. Curiously, those users are often children; Roblox has 65 million daily active users, and around half of them are under 17.

But as Roblox grows, its users are growing up, and the company is making moves to appeal to the changing interests of its aging audience. This week, the company announced it?s bringing animated video chat to its virtual world. The new feature aims to combine the interactions of apps like Zoom and FaceTime with the creative energy of a video game environment. The addition of video chat could also convince older users to buy a premium Roblox subscription or invest in Robux, the platform?s digital currency.

This week on Gadget Lab, we dive into the virtual world of Roblox and how the company's offerings are expanding to attract older users, evolve its culture, and create its own version of the metaverse.

Show Notes:

Read Lauren?s story about Roblox introducing animated video chats to its platform. WIRED?s Will Knight has more about how Roblox is using generative AI. Follow all of WIRED?s coverage of Roblox and other video games.

Recommendations:

Lauren recommends getting rid of all your extra cables and watching the show Jury Duty on Amazon Prime. Mike recommends Andrew Hickey?s podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and ordering bitters and soda at a bar when you don?t want an alcoholic drink.

Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be believed, we are also incredibly bored with smartphones?so bored in fact that we?re buying far fewer of them than we used to.

This week, we talk about what the future looks like for smartphones. They?ll likely get more foldable, their voice features could grow chattier, and they might even come with a chip to recognize AI-generated nonsense and block it like spam. WIRED senior editor and noted techno-grouser Jason Kehe joins our conversation about the future of the phone and the future of our souls.

Note: This episode originally aired March 16, 2023. Read the full transcript.

Show Notes

Read Lauren?s interviews with five prominent technologists as they predict the phone?s future. The story is part of our WIRED 30 package celebrating our 30th anniversary as a publication.

Recommendations

Jason recommends Anaximander and the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli. Lauren recommends swimming and not podcasting. Mike recommends Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright.

Jason Kehe can be found on Twitter @jkehe. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up to class five minutes late. But in Illinois, such behavior was landing students in more serious trouble. Since a recent state law prohibited school administrators in Illinois from fining students for infractions, those same administrators turned to the police to handle disciplinary actions. A recent investigation by ProPublica found that local police in Illinois were issuing ticketed citations to thousands of middle school and high school students each year. Kids caught fighting, vaping, skipping class, or even ?causing a disturbance??a sketchily defined catch-all?were facing tickets with fines of up to $500, putting financial strain on the their families, causing them to miss school to attend hearings, and adding to the normal stresses of school life. One case, involving a student who was accused of stealing a pair of AirPods, recently went to a jury trial as the student tried to clear her name.

This week on Gadget Lab, ProPublica reporters Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards join the show to talk about their in-depth reporting of the case of the missing AirPods and how police overreach has affected students in Illinois.

Show Notes:

Read Jodi and Jennifer?s ProPublica story about the missing AirPods and follow all of their reporting about how police cite students in Illinois.

Recommendations:

Jennifer recommends putting up a hammock in your backyard. Jodi recommends the Scrub Daddy sponge. Mike recommends the Longreads Top 5 newsletter. Lauren recommends donating to ProPublica.

Jodi S. Cohen can be found on Twitter @jodiscohen. Jennifer Smith Richards is @jsmithrichards Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Summer isn?t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it?s already been a brutal few months. This year?s summer heat waves have been more frequent, more intense, and longer than any we?ve seen before. We?ve suffered through extreme weather events caused by those heat waves. We?ve seen wildfires that have been made more intense by climate change. We?ve had failures in infrastructure, industry, and the food supply. And of course, these problems are only getting worse. We?re looking at a future where extreme heat is just the new normal.

This week, we bring WIRED senior science writer Matt Simon onto the show to talk about where all the heat is coming from and what it?s doing to the environment. We also talk about how quickly the problem of excessive heat is accelerating, and what?if anything?humans can do to slow it down, or at least lessen the damage it causes.

Show Notes:

Read Matt?s stories about heat waves, the wildfires in Lahaina, Maui, and how the heat is affecting the ocean?s food chains. You can find all of Matt?s WIRED stories in one place. Also, listen to Matt?s appearances on two previous episodes referenced in this week?s talk, when we spoke about microplastics and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

Recommendations:

Matt recommends the 24 Hours book series that looks at different ancient societies. Lauren recommends the short film ?How to Catch a TikTok Thief? from The New Yorker. Mike recommends Connections, the new daily game from The New York Times.

Matt Simon can be found on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, @mrMattSimon. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all have active programs testing their autonomous vehicles in US cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin. Their cars have run endless loops around town to train their algorithms, zipping along city streets?and occasionally blocking them. While the tech has clearly gotten better and Waymo and Cruise now have permission to operate fully autonomously in California, the computer-powered taxis have also driven up some controversy with local governments, safety officials, city residents, and drivers.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED transportation writer Aarian Marshall joins us to talk about how a vote this week in California will affect robotaxi adoption in cities across the country, and what happens when our roadways are inundated with robots.

Show Notes:

Read Aarian?s story about how ride-hailing service drivers are responding to self-driving taxis. Read all of WIRED?s coverage of autonomous vehicles.

Recommendations:

Aarian recommends calling company customer support and trying to talk to a human sometimes. Mike recommends listening to comedy albums on streaming services. Lauren recommends her other podcast Have a Nice Future, particularly the episode with the artist Grimes.

Aarian Marshall can be found on Twitter @AarianMarshall. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stored there, we can access it from anywhere and edit things collaboratively with our friends and coworkers. It?s convenient and appealing?but only if you don?t mind that all your personal data is stored on servers run by giant companies like Google and Amazon. The local-first computing movement is advocating for a different kind of communal framework, one that?s more private, more secure, and powered by peer-to-peer software that runs just on the machines where the files are being shared. No giant server farms in faraway lands, no faceless corporations using your data to generate ad revenue. Just the good old internet, by the people and for the people.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Greg Barber joins us to talk all about the local-first computing movement and how its adherents hope to upend our reliance on cloud services using peer-to-peer communication.

Show Notes:

Read Greg?s story about local-first computing.

Recommendations:

Greg recommends the Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lauren recommends the Barbie movie if you somehow haven?t seen it already. Mike recommends the latest episode of The War on Cars podcast with Bob Sorokanich.

Greg Barber can be found on Twitter @gregoryjbarber. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike?partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use generative artificial intelligence tools to replace human writers and creators. This month, when the actor?s union SAG-AFTRA announced its own strike, things really started to heat up as some of the biggest and most recognizable movie stars joined the picket lines. Production in Hollywood has now mostly ground to a halt, negotiations with studios have stalled, and this stalemate looks as though it will persist for some time.

What do these strikes mean for the movies, shows, podcasts, and video games we consume? Will the celebrity podcasts and chat shows also go dark? Are our streaming options now going to be limited to reruns and reality shows? Senior writer Kate Knibbs joins us from WIRED?s Culture desk to discuss the shifts that technology, economics, and income disparity have wrought in Hollywood.

Show Notes:

Read our coverage of the WGA strike, the actors? strike. Learn how AI is being used in Hollywood and in video games. We also have a report from a Hollywood-less Comic-Con. Read WIRED?s entire series on the future of entertainment.

Recommendations:

Kate recommends two music artists, Nation of Language and Yaya Bey. Lauren recommends the episode of WTF with Marc Maron featuring Cillian Murphy. Mike recommends the film How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Kate Knibbs can be found on Twitter @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI. The timing of the launch is odd considering Musk still runs Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, and Twitter. Twitter in particular is causing him headaches, with both its sagging business and increased competition from rivals like Meta?s Threads. All of these developments are happening in the shadow of what feels like a lazy subplot on a bad sitcom?a proposed mixed martial arts cage match between Musk and his rival, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

This week, we talk with WIRED editor at large Steven Levy about the launch of xAI and its stated goal of ?understanding the true nature of the universe.? We also discuss the places generative artificial intelligence has yet to venture, and the ways in which xAI could make an impact in the field of deep learning. And of course, we talk about that cage match. Yech.

Show Notes:

Read Steven?s Plaintext newsletter, in which he urges Mark Zuckerberg not to take the bait. Will Knight outlines xAI?s biggest challenges. Amanda Hoover writes about Threads? threat to Twitter?s domain. Paresh Dave gives an update on AI regulation in Europe and the US. Read all of our generative AI coverage.

Recommendations:

Steven recommends Oppenheimer. So does Lauren. (We discuss it without spoiling it.) Mike recommends pretzel buns, because it?s not summer without them.

Steven Levy can be found on Twitter @StevenLevy. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked up over a hundred million users. It's a huge showing for parent company Meta that has Mark Zuckerberg and other execs celebrating. Meanwhile, current Twitter owner Elon Musk is fuming as Threads threatens to unravel his platform?s microblogging dominance. But despite its initial success, it's not yet clear whether Threads will emerge as the top social space. These early days of Threads may feel slightly less toxic than Twitter, but it's already being overtaken by cringey influencers and pseudo-sassy brand accounts. It's also just one more thing to sign up for, and could stretch just how much tolerance people have for all these new microblogging platforms.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior Kate Knibbs joins us to unspool the question of whether Meta's new social service is too much, too little, or just right.

Show Notes:

Read Kate?s story about how it?s time to stop making Twitter competitors. Read all about how Threads may be the thing that kills Twitter, and how to run Threads on your desktop. Or, you know, don?t sign up for Threads at all until it becomes clear how much of your data it is harvesting.

Recommendations:

Kate recommends the book Natural Causes by Dan Hurley. Mike recommends Life Examined from KCRW. Lauren recommends season two of The Bear on Hulu.

Kate Knibbs can be found on Twitter @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab cohost Lauren Goode and WIRED editor in chief Gideon Litchfield. The show features interviews with guests who have big, audacious ideas about the future. Lauren and Gideon dig into whether this is a future we want to live in, and what we can do about it now.

On this episode, Gideon and Lauren are joined by someone whose full-time job was to predict the future. Noah Raford spent nearly 15 years working as the UAE?s chief futurist, where he advised the government on how to prepare for all sorts of futuristic challenges, from pandemics to global warming. His advice? Get comfortable with discomfort.

This episode originally aired April 26, 2023. Listen to every episode of Have a Nice Future wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the day to find that the fabric has given you a skin rash? This is a problem that?s increasingly common as more and more chemicals are being added to our clothing when they?re dyed different colors or treated with additives that make them stain-, wrinkle-, or odor-resistant. Some of these chemicals are irritants that can cause breathing problems or skin issues. Some others are toxic enough to trigger life-altering autoimmune diseases. Since the fashion industry operates within loose regulations, the problem of toxic apparel isn?t going away anytime soon.

This week on Gadget Lab, we're joined by journalist and author Alden Wicker. Her new book is called To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick?And How We Can Fight Back. We discuss the wide range of chemicals, dyes, and treatments that get put into our clothes, and we offer tips on how to avoid the worst offenders while shopping for a new wardrobe.

Show Notes:

Alden?s book is To Dye For. It?s out this week from G.P. Putnam?s Sons; buy it wherever books are sold. Also read Alden?s reporting on the fashion industry for WIRED.

Recommendations:

Alden recommends Vermont. Lauren recommends tzatziki sauce. Mike recommends The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.

Alden Wicker can be found on Twitter @AldenWicker. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they have forever altered the way we buy things through their experiments with things like free shipping, competitive pricing, speedy delivery, membership services, and innovative brick-and-mortar experiences.

Amazon and Walmart are obviously different in many ways, but the two companies are also surprisingly similar. This becomes particularly evident when you chart the history of their rivalry, as they race to compete for online shopping gains, or when they battle it out to acquire the same companies. Journalist and author Jason Del Ray writes about the dueling giants in his new book, Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets, which traces the moves both companies have made in their decades-long slugfest.

This week, we talk to Jason Del Rey about Amazon and Walmart?s technological advances, their strategic acquisitions, and how the pandemic forced them both to change course.

Show Notes:

Jason?s book, Winner Sells All, is out now from HarperCollins. Read all of our Amazon and Walmart coverage.

Recommendations:

Jason recommends season two of The Bear on Hulu. Mike recommends ?Life After Roe,? WIRED?s series of stories about the current state of abortion rights. Lauren recommends buying gifts for people year-round, storing them in your home, then delivering them at the one time of year when you see them. 

Jason Del Rey can be found on Twitter @DelRey. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company?s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tried to show off the Cybertruck's "unbreakable windows" by hurling a metal ball at them. It promptly shattered the glass. Twice. It was an inelegant debut, but Tesla still seemed eager to develop the EV.

Turns out, the Cybertruck had a few other design flaws as well. Leaked Tesla documents from January of 2022 have revealed an array of problems with the handling, braking, suspension, and chassis of the Cybertruck?s prototype. Most of the Cybertruck?s physical problems appear fixable, but auto industry experts are shocked that Tesla was still encountering so many issues at such a late point in the vehicle?s development.

This week on Gadget Lab, we're joined by WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall and WIRED's innovations editor Jeremy White for a conversation about where the Cybertruck?s development went wrong and how the EV?s difficult birth affects Tesla?s larger EV vision.

Show Notes:

Read Jeremy and Aarian?s story about the leaked Tesla documents that revealed the Cybertruck?s design flaws. Check out all WIRED?s coverage of Tesla and electric vehicles.

Recommendations:

Aarian recommends Shokz Open Run headphones for running. Jeremy recommends that you get some proper tea, either loose leaf or PG Tips in paper bags. (And please only add the milk after you?ve poured in the hot water.) Mike recommends the podcast This Little Light, hosted by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Lauren recommends Jennifer Egan?s book The Candy House and the documentary series Smartless On the Road on Max.

Aarian Marshall can be found on Twitter @AarianMarshall. Jeremy White is @jeremywired. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at the company?s big developer conference in Cupertino, California. The new headset lets the viewer enjoy a fully immersive experience, or dial in a little bit of their visual surroundings to mix the real world and virtual elements together. It?s an impressive feat of engineering. When it goes on sale next year for $3,500, Apple hopes it will serve as its next big platform for app developers?and the usefulness of the apps that wind up on the Vision Pro are what its success or failure really hinges on.

Our own Lauren Goode got to try the headset, and she tells us all about it. We also welcome WIRED product writer and reviewer Brenda Stolyar onto the show to go over all of the other updates Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference, including new Macs, and new software features coming to iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches, and iPads.

Show Notes:

Read Lauren?s hands-on (face-on?) report of the Apple Vision Pro. Read Brenda?s roundup of the new features coming to macOS. Boone Ashworth asks if people really want to wear VR headsets. We also have a roundup of all the big WWDC announcements. Khari Johnson looks at why Apple didn?t talk about GenAI this week, even though it?s currently the hottest discussion topic in Silicon Valley.

Recommendations:

Brenda recommends watching all of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime Video.

Lauren recommends the outdoor consumer tech website, DC Rainmaker. Mike recommends the book The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross.

Brenda can be found on Twitter @bstoly. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode and @laurengoode.bsky.social. Michael Calore is @snackfight and @snackfight.bsky.social. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab on Twitter. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth, @boone.bsky.social). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consumer-level artificial intelligence tools, the fear has felt closer to reality these past few months than it ever has before. The generative AI craze has stirred up excitement and apprehension in equal measure, leaving many people uneasy about where the future of this obviously powerful yet still nascent tech is going. This week, for example, the nonprofit group Center for AI Safety released a short statement warning that society should be taking AI as seriously as an existential threat as we do nuclear war and pandemics.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior writer Will Knight about how dangerous AI really is, and what guardrails we can put up to prevent the robot apocalypse.

Show Notes:

Read Will?s story about the experts worried that AI is posing an existential threat to humanity. Read all WIRED?s coverage about AI.

Recommendations:

Will recommends the novel Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton. Mike recommends storing your food with Bee?s Wrap. Lauren recommends HBO?s Succession Podcast, hosted by Kara Swisher.

Will Knight can be found on Twitter @willknight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city?or even on suburban avenues?might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic bicycle? What gear do you need while you ride? How do you avoid getting hit by the great big gas guzzlers that take up most of the road? These are valid questions, and we've got answers. May is national bike month here in the US, and Gadget Lab is ready to get you rolling.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior associate reviews editor Adrienne So joins us as we cycle through all things bikes: How to start riding more, what to look for in an ebike, and what's the best frame color for your grocery-getter.

Show Notes: 

Read more about Adrienne?s guide to the best ebikes. Here?s our roundup of our favorite bike accessories.

Recommendations: 

Adrienne recommends the book A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. Mike recommends the Lil Guy hip bag from Road Runner Bags. Lauren recommends Adrienne So?s WIRED story ?A Letter to My Fellow Asian Mothers From the Multiverse.?

Adrienne So can be found on Twitter @adriennemso. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

This show originally aired May 19, 2022. Here's a full transcript.

The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and maybe doing so in a little less clothing than usual. So we?re dedicating this week?s Gadget Lab episode to fitness. Our guest is the author Casey Johnston, who writes about weightlifting, nutrition, and fitness trends in her newsletter, She?s a Beast, and her book, Liftoff: Couch to Barbell.

We talk to Casey about her own fitness journey, and how to navigate all the high-tech and low-tech solutions for achieving better health, from fitness trackers and online videos to finding a workout regimen that meets your goals.

Show Notes:

Subscribe to Casey?s newsletter. Check out her ebook about weightlifting. 

Recommendations:

Casey recommends the game Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Mike recommends saving your pickle brine and using it in other recipes instead of just dumping it out. Lauren recommends the podcast Wiser Than Me, hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Casey Johnston can be found on Twitter @caseyjohnston. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Google would like you to know that it has been at the forefront of machine intelligence for decades, actually. Never mind that it was beaten to the generative AI hype party by the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft Bing, because Google has big plans. At its I/O developer conference this week, in addition to announcing some new hardware (including a folding phone), Google turned on the firehose of AI. During a two-hour presentation, the company showed how it?s busily building generative technologies into nearly everything it does. Chatbots, text generators, and content creation tools will soon be embedded in Google?s devices, search pages, Android apps, and Google's Workspace suite of productivity apps like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk about the big news from Google?s I/O event and why the company is so dead set on sticking AI in absolutely everything.

Show Notes:

Read all of WIRED?s coverage from Google I/O, including everything the company announced, how Google is adding AI to search and Android, and the details of the new Pixel Fold (and why Google might not really care if you buy it.)

Recommendations:

Julian recommends going on vacation and also the new Legend of Zelda game. Lauren recommends Janet Malcom?s book Still Pictures. Mike recommends the JBL Reflect Aero earbuds.

Julian Chokkattu can be found on Twitter @JulianChokkattu. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.