Google can’t resist a moon shot, but this one is literal: A decade ago, the company announced the Google Lunar X Prize—$20 million for the first private firm to build a robot that can soft-land on the surface of the moon, travel 500 meters, and beam hi-def video back to Earth. Now, after multiple extensions […]
Just days after the massive layoffs at Activision Blizzard, the developer of Guild Wars announced this week it would be letting go dozens of members of its staff members. But that doesn't mean all the news in the world of videogames is bad. Fortnite's new season is here, y'all. Also, Pokémon! What else do you […]
The LeBron James era in Los Angeles began, predictably enough, with all the flash and drama of a Hollywood blockbuster: a home-court introduction from rapper-actor Ice Cube, a slew of replay-worthy dunks, and an end-of-game fracas against the Rockets that culminated in a miasma of ejections, suspensions, and fines. Just as predictably, the LeBron James […]
Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIRED's twice-weekly roundup of everything you need to know about the world of pop culture, from box office results to awards-season chatter. This week: Black Panther starts picking up trophies, Deadpool has a big weekend in China, and Amazon is shelling out major money […]
Last month, Phoenix enduring a blistering heat wave, with temperatures so high that airport officials had to cancel dozens of flights. The reason was two-fold. First off, some jet engines risk catching on fire in extreme heat. And when air gets hot, it expands and becomes less dense—so an airplane’s wings can’t generate enough lift […]
Youtuber Jake Paul is sort of like Gen Z’s Johnny Knoxville—if, in between ill-advised stunts, Johnny Knoxville rapped about how you should buy his merch and spit on his girlfriend on camera. He and his brother Logan (who infamously filmed a dead body in Japan’s Aokigahara forest earlier this year) leave chaos and scandal in […]
Space is a big place, but our upper atmosphere isn’t. Rapidly increasing numbers of satellites orbit there, in addition to innumerable bits of space debris, and rockets fly through it on missions to the moon, Mars, asteroids, and deep space. President Trump’s newly revived National Space Council will have to manage this busy region and […]
Welp, that was fast. Hot on the heels of the second trailer for Captain Marvel, Disney dropped the first trailer early Friday morning for what we now know is called Avengers: Endgame, the followup this spring's Thanos-kills-half-the-universe heart-stopper Avengers: Infinity War. And, to be honest, it's not quite the trailer everyone was expecting. Related Stories […]
Intelligence is not a quality to attribute lightly to microbes. There is no reason to think that bacteria, slime molds and similar single-cell forms of life have awareness, understanding or other capacities implicit in real intellect. But particularly when these cells commune in great numbers, their startling collective talents for solving problems and controlling their […]
It's been a difficult week for videogames, with tragedies and major struggles dominating the news. This week at Replay, let's take a look at what's happening and what might happen next. The Esports World is Reeling After a Tragedy Strikes We start with some hard news: a mass shooting last weekend at a Madden NFL […]