Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News

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.” T

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 Hu

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.

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 23andM

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

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 (@boonea

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 Not

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

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

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

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 cul

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 NotesRead 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.RecommendationsJason recommends Anaximander and the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli. Lauren re

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 t

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

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

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

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. Lea

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

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

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.