Technology News

Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus, and Elton John: Never Too Late are just a few of the movies you should be watching on Disney+ this month.

From consciously choosing wrapping paper to gifting more mindfully, WIRED has all the tips to help you reduce your waste this holiday season.

For months, popular fighting game YouTubers have been under attack. Even the seemingly most cautious among them have been duped by sophisticated phishing attacks that hack their accounts to push cryptocurrency scams by convincingly appearing to offer legitimate sponsorships from established brands.

These scams often start with bad actors seemingly taking over verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) with substantial followings and then using them to impersonate marketing managers at real brands who can be easily found on LinkedIn.

The fake X accounts go to great lengths to appear legitimate. They link to brands' actual websites and populate feeds with histories seemingly spanning decades by re-posting brands' authentic posts.

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There is no requirement that the Speaker of the House be an elected member of Congress. After Elon Musk all but killed a bill to fund the government, lawmakers now propose to cut out the middleman.

When the impossibly punctuated S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl released on November 20, after many delays (that included the Russian invasion of the developer's native Ukraine), it seemed like it could have used even more delays.

Stalker 2 had big performance issues and game-breaking bugs, along with balance and difficulty spike issues. Some things that seem "wrong" in the game are just going to stay that way. The first-person survival/shooter series has always had a certain wobbly, wild feel to it. This expresses itself in both the game world, where a major villain can off themselves by walking through a window, and in the tech stack, where broken save games, DIY optimization, and other unmet needs have created thriving mod scenes.

Developer GSC Game World has been steadfastly patching the game since its release, and the latest one should nudge the needle a bit from "busted" to "charmingly wonky." Amid the "Over 1,800 fixes and adjustments" in Patch 1.1, the big changes are to "A-Life." In porting Stalker 2 to Unreal Engine 5, the developer faced a challenge in getting this global AI management system working, but it's showing its weird self again.

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WIRED is following every copyright battle involving the AI industry—and we’ve created some handy visualizations that will be updated as the cases progress.

WIRED is following every copyright battle involving the AI industry—and we’ve created some handy visualizations that will be updated as the cases progress.

The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned drones over parts of New Jersey yesterday and said "the United States government may use deadly force against" airborne aircraft "if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat."

The FAA issued 22 orders imposing "temporary flight restrictions for special security reasons" until January 17, 2025. "At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure," an FAA statement said.

Each NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) affects a specific area. "No UAS [Unmanned Aircraft System] operations are authorized in the areas covered by this NOTAM" unless they have clearance for specific operations, the FAA said. Allowed operations include support for national defense, law enforcement, firefighting, and commercial operations "with a valid statement of work."

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Intel's Core Ultra 200S desktop processors—the company's biggest overhaul of its desktop platform since 2021—consume less power and run a lot cooler than the company's 13th- and 14th-generation Core CPUs. However, early reviewers found that the processors sometimes struggled to match, let alone beat, those older desktop CPUs in some tasks. This was particularly true for games, and people who build their own gaming PCs are a key constituency for these kinds of brand-new high-end chips.

Intel quickly blamed optimization issues for some of the problems, promising performance fixes sometime later in November or December, and the company has outlined the first batch of fixes in a lengthy support document. Of the five identified problems, Intel says it has fixed four; users can get those updates by installing Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.2161 or higher, updating their motherboard's BIOS to the latest version. Non-performance-related blue screens related to Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat software have also been resolved, and users should update to the latest version if they're still having issues.

The performance problems resolved via the Windows update are both related to a missing power plan specific to the Core Ultra processors—Intel didn't have those power plans ready for reviewers, who did all their testing using the generic power profiles provided with Windows. Intel said that this by itself could reduce performance by between 6 and 30 percent, depending on the software.

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Audi provided flights from Washington, DC, to San Francisco and accommodation so Ars could drive the Q6 and SQ6. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

HEALDSBURG, Calif.—Earlier this summer, Ars got its first drive of Audi's new Q6 e-tron on some very wet roads in Spain. Then, we were driving pre-production Q6s in Euro-spec. Now, the electric SUV is on sale in the US, with more power in the base model and six months more refinement for its software. But the venue change did not bring a change of weather—heavy rain was the order of the day, making me wonder if Audi is building its new electric vehicle on the site of an ancient rain god's temple?

Of all its rivals, Audi appears to have settled into a nomenclature for its vehicles that at least makes a little sense. Odd numbers are for internal combustion engines, even numbers for EVs, although it also appends "e-tron" on the end to make that entirely clear... and give francophones something to snicker about. (Yes, the e-tron GT does not fit into this schema, but nobody's perfect.)

The Q6 e-tron is also the most advanced EV to wear Audi's four rings. Built on a new architecture called PPE (premium platform electric), at its heart is an 800 V powertrain with a 100 kWh (94.4 kWh useable) lithium-ion battery pack that powers a permanently excited synchronous motor driving the rear wheels, and in the case of the quattro versions, an asynchronous motor. The electric motors have 30 percent less energy consumption than those used in the Q8 e-tron, and are smaller and lighter.

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Grupo Petrópolis significantly boosted employee productivity and mobile device uptime by implementing Android Enterprise.Grupo Petrópolis significantly boosted employee productivity and mobile device uptime by implementing Android Enterprise.

A snapshot of how top companies, governments, researchers and startups are enhancing their work with Google's AI solutions.A snapshot of how top companies, governments, researchers and startups are enhancing their work with Google's AI solutions.

In a widely anticipated test, Blue Origin may ignite the seven main engines on its New Glenn rocket as soon as Thursday at Launch Complex-36 in Florida.

This is the final test the company must complete before verifying the massive rocket is ready for its debut flight, and it is the most dynamic. This will be the first time Blue Origin has ever test-fired the BE-7 engines altogether, in a final rehearsal before launch.

The company did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but the imminent nature of the test was confirmed by a NASA official.

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The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals amid questions about quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch.

On December 16, Clarivate—a scholarly publication analytics company—removed the journal Chemosphere from its platform, the Web of Science, which is a key index for academic journals. The indexing platform tracks citations and calculates journal "impact factors," a proxy for relevance in its field. It's a critical metric not only for the journals but for the academic authors of the journal's articles, who use the score in their pursuit of promotions and research funding.

To be included in the Web of Science, Clarivate requires journals to follow editorial quality criteria. According to Retraction Watch, Chemosphere has retracted eight articles this month and published 60 expressions of concern since April.

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Learn how to use Pixel Screenshots, Pixel’s app for recalling and organizing information from your screenshots.Learn how to use Pixel Screenshots, Pixel’s app for recalling and organizing information from your screenshots.

A UK judge has ruled that Craig Wright violated a court order preventing him from bringing lawsuits based on his spurious claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin.

A UK judge has ruled that Craig Wright violated a court order preventing him from bringing lawsuits based on his spurious claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin.

LearnLM is our set of AI models and capabilities that infuses learning science into Gemini and the products it powers, including Search, YouTube and Classroom.In a recen…

Thousands of workers are striking, as picket lines formed outside seven Amazon distribution centers from New York to California Thursday morning.

Thousands of workers are striking, as picket lines formed outside seven Amazon distribution centers from New York to California Thursday morning.