When Small entered the cemetery for the first time in the summer of 2012, she burned sweetgrass—a plant with spiritual significance across Native cultures. “The sweetgrass brings the spirits in, wakes them up,” she said. She spent her first days walking through the rows, cross-referencing a list of burial plots with the names carved into…
The music was blaring, the bar was overflowing, and the air was thick with weed smoke. Armed security holding long guns kept watch. It was a Saturday night in February, and around 300 people were partying hard at a near-5,000 square-foot Airbnb in rural Ohio. Then the cops arrived. As the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s deputies…
The US crypto business is having an identity crisis, which could become an existential one. Are cryptocurrencies commodities, like gold and pork bellies? Or securities, like stocks and futures? The Securities and Exchange Commission, America’s top financial regulator, is so convinced that cryptocurrencies are the latter that it’s suing one of the world’s largest crypto…
When Google revealed Project Gameface, the company was proud to show off a hands-free, AI-powered gaming mouse that, according to its announcement, “enables people to control a computer’s cursor using their head movement and facial gestures.” While this may not be the first AI-based gaming tool, it was certainly one of the first to put…
So what if you had a billion followers on Twitter? Meta’s new app, Threads, is rapidly growing, with 70 million sign-ups in the first couple of days according to a tweet … I mean Thread post, from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While the vibe on Threads is not for everyone (lots of brands/extremely Facebook), it…
Is it possible for a social media platform to plan for its own death? I’ve been thinking about that while enjoying Bluesky’s “fizzy, fuck-around energy,” as my WIRED colleague Kate Knibbs described the (still) invite-only Twitter alternative a few months back. The shitposting, the earnestness, the bad takes from novices trying to figure out the…
The Sunak government’s desire to attract crypto could give impetus to attempts to build a more comprehensive regime for the industry. But it could also create competing incentives. Critics of the government’s approach say they fear that expediting regulations and giving the crypto industry too much room to maneuver could lead to decisions that expose…
Shooed away, the Liberty parked up on the opposite riverbank, on the Serbian side, just outside Liberland territory. Its passengers disembarked on a makeshift ramp made of planks and a ladder. The others had already arrived. “You haven’t been arrested yet?” said Štern-Vukotić. “Well, the day is still young.” In spite of the police presence,…
Cristiano Lincoln Mattos, CEO and cofounder at Tempest, which also spun out of Cesar, attributes the very existence of his company to the ecosystem’s ability to translate expertise from the academic world into market needs. “We wouldn’t even be able to create the company if we didn’t have Cesar’s support at the start, especially considering…
A year ago, the idea of holding a meaningful conversation with a computer was the stuff of science fiction. But since OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched last November, life has started to feel more like a techno-thriller with a fast-moving plot. Chatbots and other generative AI tools are beginning to profoundly change how people live and work….