Hitman 2 Is My 'Forever Game'
Everyone is pining for a forever game. Hitman 2 might be mine. I first heard the term "forever game" during the press buildup for No Man's Sky. It denotes the idea of interactive infinity—a game that you can play forever, the one game to rule them all. A forever game means that you don't need…
Best-Ever Algorithm Found for Huge Streams of Data
It’s hard to measure water from a fire hose while it’s hitting you in the face. In a sense, that’s the challenge of analyzing streaming data, which comes at us in a torrent and never lets up. If you’re on Twitter watching tweets go by, you might like to declare a brief pause, so you…
Give Sandra Oh the Emmy, but Killing Eve Deserved More Nominations
All week, WIRED's Culture team will be writing endorsement letters for various Emmy nominees in advance of next Monday's awards ceremony. Next up: senior associate editor and aspiring assassin Angela Watercutter. In the spring of 2018, nearly three decades and some 75 roles into her career, Sandra Oh gave the performance of a lifetime. That’s…
The Robots Will Be Soft and Cuddly and Heal Their Own Wounds
Poke a hole in a human and something remarkable happens. First of all, you go to jail. But meanwhile, the wound heals itself, filling in the missing tissue and protecting itself from infection. Poke a hole in a robot, however, and prepare for a long night of repairs. The machines may be stronger than us,…
Watch the New Men in Black International Trailer Now
It's time for the final pre-holiday edition of The Monitor, WIRED's roundup of the latest in the world of culture, from box-office news to announcements about hot new trailers. In today's installment: the Men in Black are back; To All the Boys I've Loved Before is officially a Netflix franchise; and Aquaman is doing swimmingly…
Opioids Haven't Solved Chronic Pain. Maybe Virtual Reality Can
When someone walks or rolls into the emergency department at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles with food stuck in their throat, the ER staff calls someone like Brennan Spiegel. As a gastroenterologist, food-pulling-out is something he’s uniquely equipped to do. So when he got the call one day to see a young man admitted with…
Jack Dorsey Has Problems With Twitter, Too
It contributes to filter bubbles, he said. It risks silencing people, he said. And when it’s not silencing them, it might be incentivizing them to behave badly, or basely, he said. His biggest criticism of the social media site he runs was that it could be nudging its users in the wrong directions. “What does…
Get Lost in This Visualization of Interconnected Global Issues
The best sources of information are organized according to what you want to know and how you wish to know it. Want some fresh perspective on humanity's place in the tree of life? I recommend the Hillis Plot, a circular map of evolutionary relationships between thousands of animal, botanical, and microbial species. If it's straight…
Cantina Talk: Is Episode IX Called Balance of the Force?
Following a down period for rumormongering around December's Star Wars: Episode IX, things have really picked up in the last couple of weeks. Now all kinds of potential plot points, costume designs, and even maybe-possibly-kinda movie titles are being thrown around with wild abandon. Fans won't know for sure until the end of the year,…
Meet the Geek Who Tracks Rogue Satellites With Coat Hangers
Every 95 minutes, the Chinese satellite Zhuhai-1 02 makes a full pass around the planet, its solar-panel arms extending from its boxy body as it observes Earth. Sometimes, its path takes it over Pueblo, Colorado. There, more than 300 miles below, Mike Coletta’s receiving station can pick up Zhuhai’s transmissions. Because as sophisticated as space…