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WIRED
The latest in-depth coverage covering the intersection of technology and culture will help you make sense of a world in constant transformation. Join us as we explore the ways technology is changing our lives.
Episodes
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Oct 24, 2018 • 8min
Regulatory Hackers Aren't Fixing Society. They're Getting Rich
Recently I was invited to join a panel to discuss Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups, a new book by venture capitalist Evan Burfield. The book is sort of a guide for new companies looking for a win-win—doing good by doing well—in highly regulated sectors like health and education. It argues that startups have the opportunity to make trillions of dollars solving global challenges that, in the past, would have been addressed by governments or nonprofits.

Oct 24, 2018 • 8min
To Find New Fans (and Their Money), Patreon Partners With Reddit
The promise of Patreon, the membership platform for independent artists and creators, has always been simple: If your fans like your work, they will pay you for it. No need to slough off cash from advertisers, or make shady deals with brands. It's just you, your fans, and the stuff you make for them. Patreon has slowly introduced new ways for creators to milk the most out of these fan relationships.

Oct 23, 2018 • 7min
It's Time You Fell in Love With a Small, Cheap, Electric Car
The thoroughbreds weren't running that morning. I was in the parking lot of the Santa Anita Park horse track, to the east of Los Angeles, for a different sort of race. The orange cones demarcate an autocross course that a solid driver in a high-performing car should be able to complete in about a minute. Ready? Yep. I slam my foot down, and the Bolt launches forward.

Oct 23, 2018 • 3min
How to Stream the 2018 World Series
If you were a baseball fan in 1921, you might have huddled around a radio to listen to the World Series. And when, in Game 8, you heard that George “High Pockets” Kelly of the New York Giants hit the title-winning grounder, you might have cheered—or if you were a Yankees fan, thrown your newsboy cap to the ground and uttered some old-timey obscenity. Today, our ardor for the national pastime hasn’t changed much, but we certainly have more devices to yell at.

Oct 22, 2018 • 6min
Skip Scooters Get a Latch So They Don’t Junk up the Sidewalks
A scooter nightmare for cities might look something like this: Thousands of unused, rickety twists of metal and tire, sprawled across sidewalks. No walking, no wheeling: Just private companies’ private property, littered across public space. Of course, no American city really looks like that, even though the scooter-share craze has reached well over two dozen major urban places.

Oct 22, 2018 • 4min
Netflix Is So Big It's Finally Canceling Shows. Good
Orange Is the New Black’s sentence is up. Netflix announced this week that the show’s seventh season, hitting the streaming service next year, would be its last. After that, it’s dunzo. For many viewers, this is sad news—the inmates of Litchfield have been a part of the conversation for a long time now. But for everyone else, and for the future of TV broadly, it’s a move that’s long overdue.

Oct 19, 2018 • 6min
Lime's New Scooter Is Hardier, Heavier, and Built for Life on the Streets
There are two things you need to know about my visit to Lime’s San Francisco office to see their new scooter, a thick, rugged white and green thing they’re calling Gen 3. The first is that I showed up almost 20 minutes late after getting caught in the city’s underground metro tunnel for half an hour. The second is that I walked-ran into the office building and onto its elevator, where I found Lime CEO and cofounder Toby Sun.

Oct 19, 2018 • 8min
Drivers Wildly Overestimate What 'Semi-Autonomous' Cars Can Do
Cars are getting smarter and more capable. They're even starting to drive themselves, a little. And they're becoming a cause of concern for European and American safety agencies and groups. They're all for putting better tech on the road, but automakers are selling systems like Tesla’s Autopilot, or Nissan’s Pro Pilot Assist, with the implied promise that they’ll make driving easier and safer, and a new study is the latest to say that may not always be the case.

Oct 18, 2018 • 7min
Review: Roku Premiere Plus (and Premiere)
A few years ago, I gave my parents-in-law a Chromecast for Christmas. They needed an easy way to watch Netflix and Chromecast was the hip, hot new thing. This will be perfect, I thought. I was wrong. The problems added up quickly. Their Wi-Fi was spotty, so the Casting icon didn't always show up on their phones, which was tough since casting video from their phones was a strange new concept to begin with. They also couldn’t stream Amazon Videos; Google doesn't support Amazon's app.

Oct 18, 2018 • 5min
The Temperature-Regulating Mug Learns a New Trick
Do you remember Ember? Maybe not by name, but perhaps you recall the company’s defining concept: a mug that keeps your drink at your preferred temperature, and not a degree cooler, for hours at a time. On Wednesday, it got just a little bit better. Please know up front that the latest news from the Ember Ceramic Mug and Travel Mug is about as iterative as it gets. In fact, it’s barely about the mugs themselves at all.