Amazon Plans to Spend $200 Billion on A.I. and Other Projects This Year
The company reported a strong holiday quarter on Thursday. But its big spending on things like artificial intelligence and satellites is starting to make investors nervous.
Science/Tech
DNIB.com Reports Internet Has 386.9 Million Domain Name Registrations at the End of the Fourth Quarter of 2025
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), a global provider of critical internet infrastructure and domain name registry services, today announced that, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report from DNIB.com, the fourth quarter of 2025 closed with 386.9 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 8.4 million domain name registrations, or...
Loyalty Is Dead in Silicon Valley
Founders used to be wedded to their companies. Now, anyone can be lured away for the right price.
NASA Will Finally Let Its Astronauts Bring iPhones To the Moon
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that astronauts on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to carry iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and to the Moon — a reversal of long-standing agency rules that had left crews relying on a 2016 Nikon DSLR and decade-old GoPros for the historic lunar flyby. Isaacman framed the move as part of a broader push...
Bitcoin Price Drops as Crypto Industry Faces Another Slump
Despite strong support from the White House, the price of Bitcoin is now lower than when President Trump was elected in 2024.
At Ukraine’s Request, Starlink Denies Internet Access to Russian Troops
Moscow’s forces fighting in Ukraine are experiencing outages on the front, Russian military bloggers said, days after Elon Musk said his satellite service had cut them off.
ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are
ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn’t built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.
Musk Predicts SpaceX Will Launch More AI Compute Per Year Than the Cumulative Total on Earth
Elon Musk told podcast host Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison that space will become the most economically compelling location for AI data centers in less than 36 months, a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity supply: chip output is growing exponentially, and electrical output outside China is essentially flat. Solar...
Automattic and the Internet Archive Team Up To Fight Link Rot
Automattic and the Internet Archive have released a free, open-source WordPress plugin that automatically detects broken outbound links on a site and redirects visitors to archived Wayback Machine copies instead of serving them a 404 error. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer, which launched last fall and is available on WordPress.org, runs in the background scanning posts for dead...
Bonobos can play make-believe much like children, study suggests
An ape was able to identify the location of imaginary objects in pretend scenarios, researchers find
Whether it’s playing at being doctors or hosting a toy’s tea party, children are adept at engaging in make-believe – now researchers say bonobos can do it too.
While there have been anecdotal reports of apes using imaginary objects, including apparently dragging pretend blocks across the floor,...
‘Part of our biological toolkit’: newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in music, researchers find
Brain activity suggests newborns can detect and predict patterns relating to rhythm, study says
Newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in pieces of music, researchers have discovered, offering insights into a fundamental human trait.
Babies in the womb begin to respond to music by about eight or nine months, as shown by changes in their heart rate and body movements, said Dr Roberta Bianco, the...
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9 Great Deals on WIRED-Approved Valentine’s Day Gifts (2026)
These swoon-worthy deals on WIRED-tested date night boxes, sex toys, and other gadgets will make your Valentine’s Day extra sweet.
The 2026 Winter Olympics Will Have a Major Impact on the Region’s Snow
A recent report found that carbon emissions caused by the Milano Cortina Olympics could lead to the loss of 5.5 square kilometers of snowpack and millions of metric tons of glacial ice.
The Rise and Fall of the World’s Largest Gay Dating App
The new book The Wall Dancers explores the uneasy relationship between Chinese internet users and a government that is always watching.
The Latest Apple Watch Is $100 Off
Upgrade to a full day of battery life and new health features.
Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.6 as Its AI Tools Rattle Software Markets
Anthropic on Thursday released Claude Opus 4.6, its most capable model yet, at a moment when the company’s AI tools have already spooked markets over fears that they are disrupting traditional software development and other sectors. The new model improves on Opus 4.5’s coding abilities, the company said — it plans more carefully, sustains longer agentic tasks, handles larger codebases more...
Western Digital Plots a Path To 140 TB Hard Drives Using Vertical Lasers and 14-Platter Designs
Western Digital this week laid out a roadmap that stretches its 3.5-inch hard drive platform to 14 platters and pairs it with a new vertical-emitting laser for heat-assisted magnetic recording, a combination the company says will push individual drive capacities beyond 140 TB in the 2030s. The vertical laser, developed over six years and already working in WD’s labs, emits light straight down...
Amazon Plans To Use AI To Speed Up TV and Film Production
Amazon plans to use AI to speed up the process for making movies and TV shows even as Hollywood fears that AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape the industry. From a report: At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran entertainment executive Albert Cheng is leading a team charged with developing new AI tools that he said will cut costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a...
Unlicensed weight-loss drugs marketed on social media as ‘prizes’
‘Giveaway’ competitions on WhatsApp and Telegram for retatrutide and other drugs described as ‘extremely dangerous’
Hidden-market promoters of weight-loss drugs are running social media “giveaway” competitions that offer powerful, unlicensed medicines as prizes.
The Guardian has been monitoring WhatsApp and Telegram groups promoting substances such as retatrutide – a medicine unlicensed in...
Why is monogamy is in crisis? The animal kingdom could give us some clues | Elle Hunt
As fewer people choose to pair up, let alone marry, it could be that our species’ mating patterns are moving closer to the natural order
Monogamy, you may have heard, is in crisis. Fewer people are in relationships, let alone opting to be in one ’til death. And even those who have already exchanged vows seem to be increasingly looking for wiggle room. “Quiet divorce” – mentally checking...
Cyril Ramaphosa’s new university is only bushes and a dilapidated building
President Cyril Ramaphosa promised a new University of Science and Innovation in Ekurhuleni. However, the earmarked site only has bushes and a dilapidated building.