The Best Automatic Espresso, Latte, and Cappuccino Machines (2025)
Affetto is on the expensive side, and as an automatic machine can be finicky. Just make sure that it is topped up with water and beans, and that it cleans out the background container used regularly, and it works like a dream. Most Convenient, Easy CleanupWe love this machine. It's the best Keurig we've used (8/10, WIRED Recommendations) and...
Download: What’s next for AI, and stem cell therapy
Over the past few years, we've been trying to predict what's coming in AI. A silly game given how fast this industry moves. But we're on a roll, and we're doing it again. How do we calculate the end of the round? The four hot trends to watch out for in 2024 are pretty much nailed down by...
A New York legislator wants to take part of the California AI bill off
The bill only covers models that pass a certain threshold for the amount of computation required, usually measured in FLOPs (floating-point operations). In the bill, the guaranteed models are those that require more than 1026 FLOPs in training and cost more than $100 million. For reference, GPT-4 is estimated to require 1025 FLOPs. This approach can attract the...
2025 is a critical year for climate technology
One company, called Stegra, is close to launching the world's first commercial green steel plant, which will make the metal using hydrogen from renewable sources. (You may know this company by its former name, H2 Green Steel, as we were included in the list of 2023 Climate Technology Companies to Watch.) When I started following Stegra a few...
A New Superconductive Material Has Been Discovered
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 2024, superconductivity - the flow of electric current with zero resistance - was discovered in three different materials. Two instances of textbook understanding of the phenomenon. All three shreds are done. "This is an extraordinary form of superconductivity that many people would say is impossible," said Ashvin Vishwanath,...
Download: Greener steel, and what 2025 means for climate technology
By 2023, nearly 2 billion metric tons of steel will be produced annually, enough to cover Manhattan with a layer of more than 13 feet. Making this metal produces a lot of carbon dioxide. Overall, steelmaking accounts for around 8% of carbon emissions in the world-one of the largest industrial emitters and far more than sources such as...
How the US is preparing for a potential bird flu pandemic
I first covered the virus in an article published on January 7, 2020, titled "Doctors scramble to identify mysterious disease emerging in China." For that article, and many others to follow, I spoke with people who are experts in viruses, infectious diseases, and epidemiology. Often, the answer to my questions about the virus, how it spreads, and the...
Download: Pandemic risk rises, and ask anything on Reddit
I've been combing the internet to find the most fun/important/scary/interesting stories about technology. 1 Meta's new speech policy allows denigration of trans people The revised guidelines now allow insults and accusations that were previously prohibited. (Platformer $)+ The change made Meta employees feel ashamed and embarrassed. (404 Media)+ Axed fact-checkers hold emergency meeting after Meta says it no...
Anthropic’s chief scientist on 5 ways agents will be better in 2025
2 / The agent will understand the context "Claude needs to learn enough about the specific situation and the obstacles you face to be useful. Things like the specific role you play, what writing style or what you need and your organization. ANTHROPIC "I think we will see improvements where Claude will be able to browse documents, Slack,...
How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads
After Meta's decision to remove its third-party fact-checking system and release its content moderation policy, Google's search for how to remove Facebook, Instagram, and Threads has intensified. Those angered by the decision blamed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for displeasing the incoming Trump administration at the expense of making the company's social media platform more open to misinformation and polarized...
