The Best of WIRED
20+ most popular WIRED articles, as voted by our community.
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Crispr Wants to Feed the World
The power to fight human diseases put genome editing on the map. But similar technology could help crops withstand the stress of climate change.
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The Work-From-Anywhere War Is Beginning
Forget return-to-office mandates. The most sought-after talent want ultimate flexibility. Their bosses need to get on board.
Welcome to Digital Nomadland
A Portuguese island created a village for remote workers, promising community to the newcomers and prosperity to the locals—then delivered on neither.
Stop Using Social Media Apps. The Web Version Is Often Better
It’s all the same features, but none of the distractions or annoying notifications.
Machine Learning Could Create the Perfect Game Bosses
The next generation of video game characters could be powered by AI, making them more engaging and challenging.
WIRED on Artificial Intelligence
How Amazon Rebuilt Itself Around Artificial Intelligence
The Alexa voice platform and other deep learning projects have made Amazon an AI leader.
AI Ruined Chess. Now, It's Making the Game Beautiful Again
A former world champion teams up with the makers of AlphaZero to test variants on the age-old game that can jolt players into creative patterns.
WIRED on Digital Life
A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
In 1995, a WIRED cofounder challenged a Luddite-loving doomsayer to a prescient wager on tech and civilization’s fate. Now their judge weighs in.
A New Tool Shows How Google Results Vary Around the World
Search Atlas displays three sets of links—or images—from different countries for any search.
WIRED on Facebook
Inside Facebook's Hellish Two Years—and Mark Zuckerberg's Struggle to Fix it All
How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all.
Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?
From protecting privacy to saving the free press, it may be the single best way to fix the internet.
WIRED on Facial Recognition
The Secret History of Facial Recognition
Sixty years ago, a sharecropper’s son invented a technology to identify faces. Then the record of his role all but vanished. Who was Woody Bledsoe, and who was he working for?
Why Is Google Slow-Walking Its Breakthroughs in AI?
The company’s new facial-recognition service comes with limitations to prevent abuse, which sometimes lets competitors take the lead.
WIRED on Gadgets
A New Artificial Intelligence Makes Mistakes—on Purpose
A chess program that learns from human error might be better at working with people or negotiating with them.
This Battery Breakthrough Could Change Everything
The green-tech guru is backing an energy storage breakthrough that could power the future.
WIRED on Quantum Computing
The WIRED Guide to Quantum Computing
Everything you ever wanted to know about qbits, superpositioning, and spooky action at a distance.
Watch an Expert Explain Quantum Computing to an 8-Year-Old
A researcher explains quantum computing in terms anyone can understand.
WIRED on Robotics
Is the Brain a Useful Model for Artificial Intelligence?
Thinking machines think just like us—but only up to a point.
The Pentagon Inches Toward Letting AI Control Weapons
Drills involving swarms of drones raise questions about whether machines could outperform a human operator in complex scenarios.
«So many robots were involved in the operation that no human operator could keep a close eye on all of them. So they were given instructions to find—and eliminate—enemy combatants when necessary.»
WIRED on Science Fiction
Why Science Fiction Is the Most Important Genre
Historian Yuval Noah Harari believes sci-fi has the power to shape public opinion.
What Sci-Fi Can Teach Computer Science About Ethics
Schools are adding ethics classes to their computer-science curricula. The reading assignments: science fiction.
WIRED on Technology
People Are Dating All Wrong, According to Data Science
Large data sets provide intriguing—and dismaying—insights into who we're drawn to and how much that matters for our romantic happiness.
AI is An Ideology, Not A Technology
At its core, "artificial intelligence" is a perilous belief that fails to recognize the agency of humans.
WIRED on Voice Computing
How a Chinese AI Giant Made Chatting—and Surveillance—Easy
Alexa can tell you the weather. Siri knows a few jokes. In China, voice-computing company iFlytek built similar smart assistants beloved by users. But its tech is also helping the government listen…
Hackers Can Use Lasers to ‘Speak’ to Your Amazon Echo
By pointing lasers tuned to a precise frequency at a smart assistant, researchers could force it to unlock cars, open garage doors, and more.
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The Confessions of the Hacker Who Saved the Internet
At 22, Marcus Hutchins put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.
Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t
You want to be productive. Software wants to help. But even with a glut of tools claiming to make us all into taskmasters, we almost never master our tasks.
«Whatever the cause, today this is known as the Zeigarnik effect, and psychologists who study task management say it’s part of why so many of us feel perpetually frazzled by the challenge of organizing work and life.»
The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder
Lee Holloway programmed internet security firm Cloudflare into being. But then he became apathetic, distant, and unpredictable—for a long time, no one could make sense of it.
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet
In this article for Wired, cultural correspondent Richard Clarke tracks the origins, the day-to-day functioning and the likely future of Wikipedia. He discusses how its founders first regarded it as an adjunct to another site; how “Wikignomes” keep the site up and running; how Alexa and Siri depend on Wikipedia for answers and will depend on it even more in the future; and why everyone who uses Wikipedia still remains slightly reluctant to cite it as a source. Clarke’s lively writing and lucid insights will captivate anyone who uses Wikipedia – that is, pretty much everyone.
The Teeny, Tiny Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill
All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a mysterious error in decades-old research.
«They plucked the size of the particle that transmits tuberculosis out of context, making 5 microns stand in for a general definition of airborne spread. Wells’ 100-micron threshold got left behind.»
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