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The air felt different at this year’s SXSW, the annual March festival where tech meets pop culture in Austin. I was reminded of the 2019 SXSW when people packed downtown, and snake lines formed out of local ventures. Attendees said it was like that again this year, though my friend, who lives in the area and has attended many times, admitted that some stuff has changed. For instance the festival is now two days shorter than it used to be. It was also “decentralized,” mainly due to the demolition of the Austin Convention Center, which scattered events and panels throughout downtown…
Cars didn’t always have steering wheels. The very first car—the 1885 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, invented by Karl Benz—used a tiller system: a horizontal bar with a handle mounted to a vertical bar. The lever-like handle was similar in many respects to a boat’s rudder. Amazingly, it would be another nine years before French engineer Alfred Vacheron saw sense and fitted the first known steering wheel to his 4-horsepower Panhard for the Paris-Rouen race. Just four years later, in 1898, Panhard made the infinitely preferable and safer steering wheel standard on all its cars. And we’ve been using them ever since.”A car…
Take a photo on any digital camera or smartphone and it’s not just the pixels that are saved. The image also gets a bunch of metadata appended to it, also known as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data, including details of when it was taken, the device that was used to capture it, and the camera settings that were used.If your phone or camera has a GPS chip and is tracking your location, then this gets invisibly stamped on to the photo as well. That’s good if you want to look back at all the pictures you’ve ever taken in…
One of the purported advantages of self-driving car tech is that every car can learn from one vehicle’s mistakes. Here’s how Waymo puts it on its website: “The Waymo Driver learns from the collective experiences gathered across our fleet, including previous hardware generations.”But in Austin, Waymo’s vehicles struggled for months to learn how to stop for school buses as drivers picked up and dropped off children. An official with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) alleged that the vehicles had, in at least 19 instances, “illegally and dangerously” passed the district’s school buses while their red lights were flashing and…
Here at WIRED, my colleagues and I test all headphones, including noise-canceling headphones, the way you use them. We wear them over multiple weeks to test their comfort, battery life, and the convenience and accessibility of their onboard controls. We listen to random tunes, podcasts, and videos, but also curated playlists full of music we’ve heard dozens of times.For me, that means samples from the Beatles, Radiohead, Fleetwood Mac, Beck, Nickel Creek, Snarky Puppy, Frank Sinatra, Depeche Mode, Anderson .Paak, and many more. Each of us has our own list, but the common factor is an array of genres to…
After a relatively quiet few months, Amazon is bringing back another of its famously invented shopping holidays. The Amazon Spring Sale is in its third year, running now through March 31. Like during last year’s event, Amazon is promising customers thousands of deals across various daily, themed categories.Of course, as we’ve seen in the past with Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, the true discounts on good products will likely be buried among junk deals on shoddy wares. The WIRED Reviews team tests gear all year long, and we fact-checked discounts on the products we actively recommend to our…
The team from Bluesky has built another app — and this time, it’s not a social network, but an AI assistant that allows you to design your own algorithm, create custom feeds, and, one day, vibe-code your own app. At the Atmosphere conference over the weekend, Bluesky’s former CEO, Jay Graber, now chief innovation officer, and Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee, presented the AI app, called Attie, for the first time. Conference attendees will become the initial beta testers for the new experience, which leverages Anthropic’s Claude under the hood to create an agentic social app built on Bluesky’s underlying protocol,…
While there’s been plenty of debate about the tendency of AI chatbots to flatter users and confirm their existing beliefs — also known as AI sycophancy — a new study by Stanford computer scientists attempts to measure how harmful that tendency might be. The study, titled “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence” and recently published in Science, argues, “AI sycophancy is not merely a stylistic issue or a niche risk, but a prevalent behavior with broad downstream consequences.” According to a recent Pew report, 12% of U.S. teens say they turn to chatbots for emotional support or advice.…
While the relationship between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg was once thorny enough that Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cagefight, things had warmed up by the early days of the second Trump administration — at least according to court documents published Friday. As reported by Engadget, these texts between Zuckerberg and Musk were released as part of Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. They were sent on February 3, 2025, around the time Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to complain that corporate America had become “emasculated.” Referring to Musk’s aggressive government-slashing efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Zuckerberg texted,…
Three frenetic days at Shoptalk in Las Vegas revealed tons of anxieties about the future of commerce—from uncertainty around what it will look like (chatbots or seamlessly baked into search?), big questions at companies like Home Depot and Stratacache, and big plays from powerhouses like Google and Meta.Here’s what I learned, based on conversations with dozens of retail media practitioners, adtech vendors, analysts, social platforms, and more. Google signals more retail media investmentGoogle’s deal with Kroger Precision Media lets brands target Kroger audiences on YouTube. Those Kroger advertisers will also be able to see if those YouTube ads lead to sales…
If you’re looking to explore your creativity, there are a number of iPad apps that can help you get started. Although the iPad started off as a simple device that could be used to stream content or browse the web on the go, Apple has essentially turned its iPads into powerful machines that can be used to do things like create digital art and edit videos. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best iPad apps for creativity that are available on the App Store. Before we delve in, it’s worth noting that although Adobe’s creative apps are often…
Earlier this month, it looked like all but two of Elon Musk’s 11 co-founders at his AI startup xAI had departed the company. Now, according to Business Insider, the remaining two co-founders, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have left as well. BI said on Wednesday that Kroiss had told people that he’s leaving xAI, then reported that Nordeen left the company on Friday. Musk recently claimed xAI “was not built right [the] first time around,” so it’s now “being rebuilt from the foundations up.” The company was recently acquired by Musk’s SpaceX, bringing SpaceX, xAI, and X (formerly Twitter) together…
Loop earplugs are some of the best reusable earplugs you can buy. I personally keep a pair attached to my car keys at all times. As a live music enthusiast that frequently travels to some of the loudest music festivals on the planet, I take earplugs seriously. I want to protect my hearing while also ensuring the sound isn’t muddy and muffled. These are worth it, especially when they’re even cheaper with a Loop earplugs discount code. They’re comfortable and reduce noise without obscuring the music, ensuring that you have an excellent experience without compromising your hearing the next day.Loop…
From blasting music on a boombox to watching a photo develop in your hands, many people are rediscovering the imperfect charm of older gadgets that smartphones and laptops just can’t replicate. Tech companies are leaning all the way in, blending nostalgic design with modern functionality. Here are some of the coolest retro-inspired devices out there right now. Digital typewriters Image Credits:FreeWrite In a world full of endless notifications, tabs, doomscrolling, and other distractions, smart typewriters are carving out a niche for a more focused writing experience. These devices strip things back to the essentials: just you, a keyboard, and your…
Top 5 360 Cameras ComparedHonorable MentionsPhotograph: Scott GilbertsonInsta360 X4 for $340: I’d recommend skipping this one unless you can get it on sale for under $300. The X4 Air is (usually) cheaper, smaller, and more capable, though the X4 does have a larger screen and the battery life is better (though again, the video quality is not as good as the X4 Air). If you can find a killer deal under $300, the X4 is worth nabbing. Otherwise though, stick with the X4 Air.Qoocam 3 Ultra for $539: It’s not widely available, and we have not had a chance to…
Whatever the final outcome for Anthropic from its feud with the Department of Defense, the attention it has generated — coupled with the company’s funny Super Bowl ads taking aim at OpenAI and the surging popularity of Claude Code — has made Anthropic more popular with consumers than ever. An examination of billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted for TechCrunch by Indagari, a consumer transaction analysis company, shows Claude gaining paid subscribers in record numbers. Now, as with all big-data analysis, caveats exist. While this data is substantive, it doesn’t include every consumer.…