Technology News

Fossil fuel pollution is impacting the most vulnerable among us: children. Their future—and health—are at stake.

The ritual of giving up animal products for a month leads participants to see both meat and themselves in a different way, and could have lasting effects on people’s diets.

Whether you need workout earbuds or gaming over-ears, these WIRED-tested picks sound like a million bucks.

With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight. For me, the film provided a welcome excuse to read up on Dylan, who has always been a reputable source of enjoyably gnomic quotes, self-mythologizing, and enigmatic asides. Even in his old age, Dylan still delivers—especially when he gets going on technology, joysticks, and "dog ass" television programs.

Consider the interview Dylan gave to The Wall Street Journal in December 2022. (You can read the whole thing on BobDylan.com.) The piece was, notionally, about Dylan's book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. But it quickly morphed into a meditation on creativity in the era of on-demand streaming content, along with a discussion about how Dylan had spent his time during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Dylan claims that he spent the pandemic replacing door panels on a ’56 Chevy, painting some landscapes, and re-reading “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” while pondering the mysteries of opium. Okay. He also had time left over to stream some TV:

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Smoke exposure, researchers have found, raises the risk of dementia, poor mental health, fertility problems, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Plus: The FBI discovers a historic trove of homemade explosives, new details emerge in China’s hack of the US Treasury Department, and more.

Electric vehicle sales are growing globally overall, despite Tesla's recent slump.

It's difficult to comprehend what 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock would look like. It's even more difficult to imagine it being violently flung into the air. Yet the Yellowstone volcanic system blasted more than twice that amount of rock into the sky about 2 million years ago, and it has generated a number of massive (if somewhat smaller) eruptions since, and there have been even larger eruptions deeper in the past.

All of which might be enough to keep someone nervously watching the seismometers scattered throughout the area. But a new study suggests that there's nothing to worry about in the near future: There's not enough molten material pooled in one place to trigger the sort of violent eruptions that have caused massive disruptions in the past. The study also suggests that the primary focus of activity may be shifting outside of the caldera formed by past eruptions.

Understanding Yellowstone

Yellowstone is fueled by what's known as a hotspot, where molten material from the Earth's mantle percolates up through the crust. The rock that comes up through the crust is typically basaltic (a definition based on the ratio of elements in its composition) and can erupt directly. This tends to produce relatively gentle eruptions where lava flows across a broad area, generally like you see in Hawaii and Iceland. But this hot material can also melt rock within the crust, producing a material called rhyolite. This is a much more viscous material that does not flow very readily and, instead, can cause explosive eruptions.

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The US government finally got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33-year-old Korean national who built a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the "stablecoin" TerraUSD, only to see it all come crashing down in a wipeout that cost investors $40 billion.

As private investors filed lawsuits, and as the governments of South Korea and the United States launched fraud investigations, Do Kwon was nowhere to be found. In 2022, the Korean government filed a "red notice" with Interpol, seeking Kwon's arrest and his return to Korea. A few months later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with fraud in the US.

On September 17, 2022, Kwon famously tweeted, "I am not 'on the run' or anything similar"—but he also wouldn't say where he was. He didn't help his case when he was arrested in March 2023 by the authorities in Montenegro. At an airport. With fake travel documents. On his way to a country with no US extradition agreement.

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Last September, faulty door handle hardware caused Volkswagen to take the rather drastic steps of suspending sales and production of the electric crossover, as well as recalling almost 100,000 customer cars. Now, it says it has new parts that will allow it to fix existing cars, lift the stop-sale order, and soon, resume production at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The ID.4, like many new EVs, features flush door handles in service of the all-important effort of drag reduction. Instead of conventional mechanical handles that interrupt the laminar air flow down the side of the car, VW instead went with an electromechanical solution.

Unfortunately, the door handle assemblies weren't sufficiently waterproofed, allowing the electronics inside to corrode. Consequently, early last year VW started getting complaints of ID.4s with doors that would intermittently open while driving, with reporting almost 300 warranty claims by September, when it pulled the car from sale, issued the recall, and stopped the production line.

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A little over a year ago, Meta created Facebook and Instagram profiles for "28 AIs with unique interests and personalities for you to interact with and dive deeper into your interests." Today, the last of those profiles is being taken down amid waves of viral revulsion as word of their existence has spread online.

The September 2023 launch of Meta's social profiles for AI characters was announced alongside a much splashier initiative that created animated AI chatbots with celebrity avatars at the same time. Those celebrity-based AI chatbots were unceremoniously scrapped less than a year later amid a widespread lack of interest.

But roughly a dozen of the unrelated AI character profiles still remained accessible as of this morning via social media pages labeled as "AI managed by Meta." Those profiles—which included a mix of AI-generated imagery and human-created content, according to Meta—also offered real users the ability to live chat with these AI characters via Instagram Direct or Facebook Messenger.

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One year-end summary from Fable, a social app where people share what books they read, told the user, “Don’t forget to surface for the occasional white author, OK?”

One year-end summary from Fable, a social app where people share what books they read, told the user, “Don’t forget to surface for the occasional white author, OK?”

Apple has already pulled devices to comply with the European Commission’s new Common Charger Directive.

Nvidia is reportedly gearing up to launch the first few cards in its RTX 50-series at CES next week, including an RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070. The 5090 will be of particular interest to performance-obsessed, money-is-no-object PC gaming fanatics since it's the first new GPU in over two years that can beat the performance of 2022's RTX 4090.

But boosted performance and slower advancements in chip manufacturing technology mean that the 5090's maximum power draw will far outstrip the 4090's, according to leakers. VideoCardz reports that the 5090's thermal design power (TDP) will be set at 575 W, up from 450 W for the already power-hungry RTX 4090. The RTX 5080's TDP is also increasing to 360 W, up from 320 W for the RTX 4080 Super.

That also puts the RTX 5090 close to the maximum power draw available over a single 12VHPWR connector, which is capable of delivering up to 600 W of power (though once you include the 75 W available via the PCI Express slot on your motherboard, the actual maximum possible power draw for a GPU with a single 12VHPWR connector is a slightly higher 675 W).

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With Valve's impressive work on the Proton tool for Linux and the Mac's Game Porting Toolkit and CrossOver options, few games are truly "Windows only" these days. The exceptions are those with aggressive, Windows-based anti-cheating tools baked in, something that hit back hard against players eager to dive into a new superhero shooter.

Marvel Rivals, an Overwatch-ish free-to-play hero shooter released in early December 2024, has all the typical big online game elements: an in-game shop with skins and customizations, battle passes, and anti-cheating tech. While Proton, which powers the Linux-based Steam Deck's ability to play just about any Windows game, has come very far in a few years' time, its biggest blind spots are these kinds of online-only games, like Grand Theft Auto Online, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, and the like. The same goes for Mac players, who, if they can work past DirectX 12, can often get a Windows game working in CrossOver or Parallels, minus any anti-cheat tools.

Is there harm in trying? For a while, there was 100 years' worth. As detailed in the r/macgaming subreddit and at r/SteamDeck, many players who successfully got Marvel Rivals working would receive a "Penalty Issued" notice, with a violation "detected" and bans issued until 2124. Should such a ban stand, players risked entirely missing the much-prophesied Year of the Linux Desktop or Mainstream Mac Gaming, almost certain to happen at some point in that span.

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High-speed video of experiments on a robotic hula hooper, whose hourglass form holds the hoop up and in place.

Some version of the Hula-Hoop has been around for millennia, but the popular plastic version was introduced by Wham-O in the 1950s and quickly became a fad. Now, researchers have taken a closer look at the underlying physics of the toy, revealing that certain body types are better at keeping the spinning hoops elevated than others, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We were surprised that an activity as popular, fun, and healthy as hula hooping wasn’t understood even at a basic physics level,” said co-author Leif Ristroph of New York University. “As we made progress on the research, we realized that the math and physics involved are very subtle, and the knowledge gained could be useful in inspiring engineering innovations, harvesting energy from vibrations, and improving in robotic positioners and movers used in industrial processing and manufacturing.”

Ristroph's lab frequently addresses these kinds of colorful real-world puzzles. For instance, in 2018, Ristroph and colleagues fine-tuned the recipe for the perfect bubble based on experiments with soapy thin films. In 2021, the Ristroph lab looked into the formation processes underlying so-called "stone forests" common in certain regions of China and Madagascar.

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When Honda gave the 11th-generation Civic Hatchback a refresh late last year, among the changes were the addition of a hybrid option to the lineup. There was already a lot to like about Honda's compact, which eschews lamentable trends like an over-reliance on touchscreens for good old-fashioned physical controls. Now, a big efficiency boost makes it even more attractive.

The new powertrain is available in the $29,950 Sport Hybrid and the $32,950 Sport Touring Hybrid (the trim we tested). With an output of 200 hp (150 kW) and 232 lb-ft (315 Nm), it's both more powerful and torquier than the 1.5 L turbo previously found in the top trim Civics. And it uses a heck of a lot less fuel in the process.

The Civic uses a hybrid powertrain with two electric motors working with the 2.0 L, four-cylinder engine. One works as a generator to charge the 1 kWh traction battery from the engine under most conditions. The battery then powers the 181 hp (135 kW) traction motor, which is what mostly drives the front wheels, although like most other series hybrids of this nature, it operates as a parallel hybrid with the 141 hp (105 kW) gasoline engine directly driving the front wheels at highway cruising speeds, as that is actually more efficient. (For some reason, this supposed lack of engineering purity seems to really upset some people, who I am sure will let us know why in the comments.)

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Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years.

For example, he has rarely criticized NASA or its overall goal to return humans to the Moon through the Artemis Program. Rather, Musk, who has long preferred Mars as a destination for humans, has more or less been a team player when it comes to the space agency's lunar-focused plans.

This is understandable from a financial perspective, as SpaceX has contracts worth billions of dollars to not only build a Human Landing System as part of NASA's Artemis Program but also to supply food, cargo, and other logistics services to a planned Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon.

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Musk’s posts, which have racked up hundreds of millions of views on X, are his latest effort at inserting himself into UK politics.