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The documents reveal a DOGE affiliate is attempting to transfer the headquarters of an independent think tank, the United States Institute of Peace, to the government at no cost.

The documents reveal a DOGE affiliate is attempting to transfer the headquarters of an independent think tank, the United States Institute of Peace, to the government at no cost.

In a global exclusive, WIRED went inside TAG Heuer's Swiss factory to see exactly how the brand has brought back its classic entry-level race watch, but this time bigger than ever—and solar powered.

AI video startup Runway announced the availability of its newest video synthesis model today. Dubbed Gen-4, the model purports to solve several key problems with AI video generation.

Chief among those is the notion of consistent characters and objects across shots. If you've watched any short films made with AI, you've likely noticed that they're either dream-like sequences or thematically but not realistically connected images—mood pieces more than consistent narratives.

Runway claims Gen-4 can maintain consistent characters and objects, provided it's given a single reference image of the character or object in question as part of the project in Runway's interface.

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DOGE demanded full access to a US Department of the Interior system that handles even the Supreme Court's paychecks. When top staff asked questions, they were put on leave.

The Privacy Act Modernization Act would update 1974 legislation for the modern age, restricting government use of personal data and introducing new penalties, including prison time, for violators.

Apple dropped a big batch of medium-size software updates for nearly all of its products this afternoon. The iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, tvOS 18.4, and visionOS 2.4 updates are all currently available to download, and each adds a small handful of new features for their respective platforms.

A watchOS 11.4 update was also published briefly, but it's currently unavailable.

For iPhones and iPads that support Apple Intelligence, the flagship feature in 18.4 is Priority Notifications, which attempts to separate time-sensitive or potentially important notifications from the rest of them so you can see them more easily. The update also brings along the handful of new Unicode 16.0 emoji, a separate app for managing a Vision Pro headset (similar to the companion app for the Apple Watch), and a grab bag of other fixes and minor enhancements.

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MacOS 15.4 is here with a variety of new capabilities. Here’s how to install it and figure out which Macs are supported.

The news follows the breakout success of DeepSeek and growing pressure from rivals like Meta.

The news follows the breakout success of DeepSeek and growing pressure from rivals like Meta.

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gained access "to a payroll system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across dozens of agencies," despite "objections from senior IT staff who feared it could compromise highly sensitive government personnel information" and lead to cyberattacks, The New York Times reported today.

The system at the Interior Department gives DOGE "visibility into sensitive employee information, such as Social Security numbers, and the ability to more easily hire and fire workers," the NYT wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. DOGE workers had been trying to get access to the Federal Personnel and Payroll System for about two weeks and succeeded over the weekend, the report said.

"The dispute came to a head on Saturday, as the DOGE workers obtained the access and then placed two of the IT officials who had resisted them on administrative leave and under investigation, the people said," according to the NYT report. The agency's CIO and CISO are reportedly under investigation for their "workplace behavior."

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It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection of such stories. March's list includes fascinating papers on such topics as how the brain responds to speaking Klingon (or Dothraki, or Navi), the discovery of creepy preclassic Salvadoran puppets, the effectiveness of "dazzle camouflage," and how male blue-lined octopuses manage not to be cannibalized by their chosen mates.

Wind Cave’s rocks fluoresce under black light Several fluorescence measurements of a zebra calcite in Wind Cave were taken using portable spectrometers. Credit: Joshua Sebree

South Dakota's Wind Cave gets its name from the flow of air moving continually through its many passages and equalizing the atmospheric pressure between the air inside and outside—almost like the cave is "breathing." Its rock and mineral formations also boast a unique chemistry that fluoresces when exposed to black light, according to talks presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego. That fluorescence could shed light on how life can thrive in extreme environments, including that of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

University of Northern Iowa astrobiologist Joshua Sebree and several students have been mapping new areas of Wind Cave (as well as other caves in the US), recording the passages, rock formations, minerals, and lifeforms they encounter in the process. They noticed that under UV light, certain parts of Wind Cave took on otherworldly hues, thanks to different concentrations of organic and inorganic fossilized chemical compounds. Those areas seem to indicate where water once flowed, carrying minerals into the cave from the surface 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to their analysis of the fluorescent spectra. Sebree et al. found that Wind Cave was likely carved out by waters rich in manganese, producing zebra stripes that glow pink under UV light, revealing the calcites that grew within as a result of those waters.

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Xiaofeng Wang, a longtime computer science professor at Indiana University, has disappeared along with his wife, and their profiles on the school's website were wiped ahead of recent FBI raids.

2024 was "a year of growth," according to fire-suppression company Fire Rover, but that's not an entirely good thing.

The company, which offers fire detection and suppression systems based on thermal and optical imaging, smoke analytics, and human verification, releases annual reports on waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada to select industry and media. In 2024, Fire Rover, based on its fire identifications, saw 2,910 incidents, a 60 percent increase from the 1,809 in 2023, and more than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.

Publicly reported fire incidents at waste and recycling facilities also hit 398, a new high since Fire Rover began compiling its report eight years ago, when that number was closer to 275.

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Back in December, Elon Musk accused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of launching a purely politically motivated probe into his Twitter purchase. In a letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, Musk alleged that the SEC gave him 48 hours to accept a settlement or face fraud charges. Musk refused to pay the fine, demanding to know "who directed these actions," suspecting either former SEC Chair Gary Gensler or Joe Biden's White House.

Once the SEC lawsuit was filed in January, Musk's condemnation of the settlement was echoed in his claims that the SEC was "totally broken." These comments seemed to further his feud with the agency following a contentious 2018 Tesla settlement over Musk's tweets that resulted in the Supreme Court declining to hear Musk's arguments against his tweets being monitored by the SEC.

But after Donald Trump issued a February executive order declaring sweeping powers over independent agencies—including the SEC, which was accused of launching politically motivated investigations—it appeared that Musk might instead have been setting up the narrative to possibly get the probe squashed.

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The Natal Conference, which costs up to $10,000 to attend, features multiple matchmaking strategy sessions and onsite ministers so attendees can get married, WIRED has learned.

After weeks of “Tesla Takedown” protests, extremist groups are showing up to back Elon Musk’s beleaguered car company.