WIRED February 2022

In our December/January special issue, wired used the release of The Matrix Resurrections as a launch point to explore the future of reality. Andy Greenberg argued that the original Matrix is the best hacker movie ever. Cecilia D’Anastasio wrote that we’re already living in a metaverse of Big Tech’s making. And Laura Hudson profiled the philosopher Timothy Morton, creator of the reality-blowing concept of hyperobjects. Also, in a report from Reveal and wired, Will Evans investigated how, for years, Amazon has failed to protect millions of customers’ data. Readers shared their bill proposals, film theories, and visions RE: “BEST HACKER MOVIE” “The Matrix isn’t the best hacker movie. It’s the best documentary.”—Micah Lerner (@micahlerner), via Twitter RE: “AMAZON’S DARK SECRET” As Amazon has captured a larger and larger slice of the ecommerce market, consumers have…

IF MOUSETRAP TECH is still the paradigm of Yankee ingenuity, it’s surprising how sluggish murine-assassination R&D is. The avant-garde “no touch, no see” blackbox traps that electrocute mice may seem impressive, but in my experience they only work once—and they’re nearly $20 apiece. The trap that still tops best-of lists is roughly the same as the one patented by James Henry Atkinson in 1899: a cheap quick-release spring that’s triggered by a naive rodent, and instantly snaps its neck. But three other household tools have improved, and vastly, since Victorian times: humidifiers, glue, and eyelash enhancers. All this ebullient disruption has taken place in the vapor, adhesive, and eyelash “spaces” without incubators, accelerators, fortresses of secrecy in Palo Alto, investor decks, NDAs, or glossy magazine stories about the genius of a…

YEARS AGO, I ASKED A FRIEND what kind of case she planned to buy for her shiny new flip phone. She paused, a little offended. “I don’t like to buy stuff for my stuff,” she said. Those words drilled directly into my hippocampus, never to depart. She’s right! I thought. Don’t buy stuff stuff! So simple! I have tried to keep to that principle ever since, and it has gone about as well as you would expect. Sure, I might spend $1,000 on a tech-giant-controlled smartphone, but I only do it every three years (nods sagely) instead of every two. This is how we win. The problem is that certain kinds of stuff simply attract more stuff. The home is an obvious one: It craves sofas, sweaters, buffet cabinets, chandeliers. Computers…

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BACK IN JULY 2020, a DJI Mavic 2 drone approached a Pennsylvania power substation. Two 4-foot lengths of nylon rope hung down from its rotor arms, and a thick copper wire ran between the ends, connected with electrical tape. The craft had been stripped of any identifiable markings and of its onboard camera and memory card, in an apparent effort by its owner to avoid detection. The likely goal, according to a joint security bulletin released by the US Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center, was to “disrupt operations by creating a short circuit.” The drone crashed on the roof of an adjacent building before reaching its ostensible target, damaging one of its rotors in the process. Its operator hasn’t been found. According to the bulletin,…

$100B Estimated value of 2021 purchases made through “buy now, pay later” apps like Affirm and Afterpay, up from $24 billion in 2020. 61% Percentage of US employees who say they would accept a pay cut in exchange for continuing to work remotely. 1.8TB Amount of leaked police helicopter surveillance footage posted online by the transparency activist group DDoSecrets, calling attention to the inherent risk of collecting and retaining sensitive data. $3.4M Amount invested in the “Squid Game” cryptocoin by the time its creators absconded with the funds in a “rug pull” scam. The value of the coin, which had peaked at $2,861, plummeted to a third of a cent in just 10 minutes.…