Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED

People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, just much more efficiently—have been outselling gas furnaces over the past couple of years. Their proliferation seems to be pointing more towards an energy-conscious electric future in people’s homes. And, four months ago, nine states in the US signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030.But, what exactly is a heat pump? How does it work? How much does it cost to replace your furnace with one, and how much money does making the switch actually save you in the long run? Let’s also consider the same question we’re asking about AI: how much will this change or displace existing jobs for the people who have been trained to install and service traditional HVAC systems?Former WIRED staff writer Matt Simon is our in-house heat pump expert. He joins us this week to tell us everything we need to know about these appliances he calls “climate superheroes.”This episode originally aired on May 23, 2024. Read the transcript.Show Notes:Read all of our heat pump coverage. Don’t miss Matt’s story about the heat pump technician shortage. Matt also took a look at the in-window heat pumps now hitting the market that look and operate like in-window AC units. WIRED’s Rhett Alain digs into the physics of heat pumps.Recommendations:Matt recommends the book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland. Mike recommends the book Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna. Lauren recommends taking a staycation.Matt Simon can be found on social media @mrmattsimon. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Electric Vehicles are having a real moment. People by and large prefer EVs because they're greener, quieter, and often more fun to drive than gas cars. But one sticking point in the EV revolution is charging. There are more charging stations now than there have ever been, but it’s still not enough. And how those stations are distributed can make driving long distances in an EV feel like a bit of a gamble.This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall joins the show to talk about the state of EV charging, the feelings of “charging anxiety,” and whether people really need to worry all that much about those EV battery fires in the news.Show Notes:Read Aarian’s story on the current state of EV charging prices. Aarian writes for WIRED about all things electric vehicle and transportation related.Recommendations:Aarian recommends three different episodes of PJ Vogt’s Search Engine podcast featuring Ezra Klein as a guest. Mike recommends Agnes Varda’s film The Gleaners and I from the year 2000. Lauren is out this week.Aarian Marshall can be found on social media @AarianMarshall. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

At a splashy media event this week at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google announced four new Pixel phones. But the really important stuff unveiled at the Made By Google event wasn’t the hardware itself, but rather all of the generative AI tools packed into the devices. Most notable are some AI-powered camera features that allow Pixel owners to easily add themselves to a group shot after they’ve taken the photo, or to alter any scene entirely by changing night to day and adding objects that were never really there. It’s an exploration of our limits—how convincingly technology can bring alternate realities to life, and how much of the computer-generated scenery we can tolerate.This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior reviews editor Julian Chokkattu joins the show to talk about Google’s fancy new photo tricks. We also talk about Gemini Live, the latest iteration of the company’s AI-powered voice chatbot. Finally, we ask the unaskable: Is Google Assistant finally dead, or just banished to Google’s attic?Show Notes:Read more about all the new updates from the Made By Google event, including Google’s Pixel camera updates. Learn how the company is using AI to reshape reality. There are some potentially life-saving new features on the Pixel Watch 3. Also read Reece Rogers’ WIRED story about ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker story about tweens and Sephora.Recommendations:Julian recommends folding flip phones. Lauren recommends Colorscience Sunforgettable Total Protection Face Shield Flex SPF 50 sunscreen lotion. Mike recommends the audiobook version of All Fours by Miranda July. (You can listen to it in Spotify Premium.)Julian Chokkattu can be found on social media @JulianChokkattu. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

There has been a no wilder time than the present to build a company around artificial intelligence. The server bills are astronomical, for one. Also the market for talent is red hot, and you’ll end up paying through the nose for good people. Even if you do get funding, staff up, get the product off the ground, and start making headway in a crowded field, there’s the specter of Big Tech looming overhead. The hypercarnivorous raptors of Silicon Valley—Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta—will fix their steely eyes on the plump prey of your best employees and your intellectual property.But they can’t just buy you. Not anymore; outright acquisitions could draw the attention of regulators in the US and Europe, where governments are ramping up their antitrust efforts. Now instead of gobbling you up, a big tech company will license your tech and bring your top talent into their offices to collaborate with their employees. This maneuver—not an acquisition, more like an acquihire with some partnerships included—is something we’ve seen a few times in recent months. And we can expect more.This week, we welcome WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave back onto the show to discuss the current trend of partnerships between small AI companies and the tech giants. We also talk about how regulators are really cracking down on Google in particular.Show Notes:Read about the US court ruling that found Google engaged in monopolistic practices to increase its search engine’s dominance. Read more about Character AI, Meta, and customizable chatbots. Read all of WIRED’s antitrust coverage.Recommendations:Paresh recommends playing games on Netflix, like Triviaverse. Mike recommends the new documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which is also on Netflix. Lauren recommends “Inside the Secret Negotiations to Free Evan Gershkovich” from The Wall Street Journal.Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If the idea of going on a date makes you anxious, and all you’d really rather do with your evening is stay home and play video games, well, have we got the app for you. Date Like Goblins, a new dating platform that debuted on Kickstarter this week and will launch later this year, invites you to go on dates that take place entirely inside your favorite video games. You play a few rounds of Fortnite or Final Fantasy with your date, while voice-chatting and getting to know each other. It’s cute!Date Like Goblins is one of many niche, interest-specific dating platforms. There are apps for farmers, Christians, jamband fans, rope bunnies—whatever you’re into. These smaller, more tailored communities can be seen as an antidote to fatigue that’s caused by the over-monetized and alienating experience of the big dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. This week, we’re joined by WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover to talk about Date Like Goblins and the other apps that have learned the cheat code for online romance.Show Notes:Read Amanda’s story about Date Like Goblins. Read Lauren Goode on “Date Me” docs. Read Jason Parham on Boomers on the apps. Read all of our dating coverage.Recommendations:Amanda recommends making butter coconut bars for your next summer potluck. Lauren recommends the recent episode of The Daily from The New York Times with Taffy Brodesser-Akner telling the story about her new book. Michael recommends Trickster: The Many Lives of Carlos Castaneda, a podcast about the wild, shadowy history of the famous author and counterculture figurehead.Amanda Hoover can be found on social media @byamandahoover. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re about to become intimately familiar with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This system of currents—which brings water up the Atlantic from the southern tip of South America, through the tropics, and all the way to the coast of Iceland before looping back down south—plays a key role in keeping our planet’s climate stable. It keeps northern European winters relatively mild, it provides nutrients to ocean life, and it brings much-needed rain to agricultural systems in equatorial zones.Researchers who study the AMOC say this system is showing signs of instability, and it could shut down entirely—and soon. If the current slows down or stops, it would potentially kick off an ecological disaster of epic proportions. Deep cold spells, crushed food systems, entire regions in drought. This week, we bring WIRED features editor Sandra Upson onto the show to talk about the AMOC, the research that’s being done on it, and what life would be like on Earth if the current reaches its tipping point. Buckle up. Show Notes:Read “How Soon Will the Atlantic Ocean Break? Two Sibling Scientists Tried to Answer That—and Shook the World,” Sandra Upson’s WIRED feature on the researchers who are studying the AMOC and who have estimated the current could collapse in the next 30 years or so. Read our previous coverage of the AMOC research that kicked off the present debate about when it could reach the tipping point.Recommendations:Sandra recommends watching trashy reality shows in a language you’re trying to learn as an informal and entertaining study aid. Mike recommends embracing Brat Summer—IYKYK. Lauren recommends the book The Wave by Susan Casey, which is about the science and joy and terror of big waves.Sandra Upson can be found on social media @sandraupson. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Voice assistants have become a constant presence in our lives. Maybe you talk to Alexa or Gemini or Siri to ask a question or to perform a task. Maybe you have to do a little back and forth with a voice bot whenever you call your pharmacy, or when you book a service appointment at your car dealership. You may even get frustrated and start pleading with the robot on the other end of the line to connect you with a real human.That’s the catch, though: These voice bots are starting to sound a lot more like actual humans, with emotions in their voice, little ticks and giggles in between phrases, and the occasional flirty aside. Today’s voice-powered chatbots are blurring the lines between what’s real and what’s not, which prompts a complicated ethical question: Can you trust a bot that insists it’s actually human?This week, Lauren Goode tells us about her recent news story on a bot that was easily tricked into lying and saying it was a human. And WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave tells us how AI watchdogs and government regulators are trying to prevent natural-sounding chatbots from misrepresenting themselves.Show Notes:Read more about the Bland AI chatbot, which lied and said it was human. Read Will Kight’s story about researchers’ warnings of the manipulative power of emotionally expressive chatbots.Recommendations:Lauren recommends The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. (Again.) Paresh recommends subscribing to your great local journalism newsletter or Substack to stay informed on important local issues. Mike recommends Winter Journal, a memoir by Paul Auster.Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Ozempic has been hailed as a miracle drug. It is the most well known of the GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs that can help regulate appetite, digestion, and blood sugar—and help those suffering from obesity or diabetes lose weight. Naturally, these drugs are very much in demand. But now there is a shortage of Ozempic and other GLP-1s, which has led to a swell of clones that purport to offer the same benefits and the same key ingredient, semaglutide, at lower prices. These clone drugs are easy to procure from telehealth providers, even if a buyer needs to lie about themselves a little bit to buy them.In this brave new weight-loss world, we're still coming to grips with how these drugs fit into our society. Part of that journey is the continued study about how GLP-1 drugs work—much of how they affect us is still unknown—and the continued debate about how much we should regulate and control their use.This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED writers Kate Knibbs and Emily Mullin about how GLP-1 medications like Ozempic work and what happens when they don’t. We also talk about the current drug shortage and how that may get resolved.Show Notes:Read Kate’s story about buying cloned Ozempic online. Read Emily’s story about how Ozempic doesn’t work for everyone. Read all the stories in WIRED’s The Age of Ozempic series.Recommendations:Emily recommends staying cool this summer however you can. Kate recommends the HBO series John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti. Mike recommends buying a used 35-mm film camera and shooting some rolls to flex your creativity.Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs. Emily Mullin is @emilylmullin. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number of battery-powered vehicles they’re putting on the roads. The government has mandated that by 2032, more than half of new cars sold must be electric. There are some caveats, namely that plug-in hybrid cars will fulfill the federal requirements for what a “battery-powered” vehicle is. This has led to a flood of hybrid cars hitting the market. This week, we talk about what this means for people who are considering buying a new car now, or in the next few years. We explain the differences between plug-in hybrids, full hybrids, and electrics, and we tell you what your options are if you live in an apartment without a convenient place to plug in your car while it’s parked. We are joined this week by WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall, who breaks down the facts, shatters the myths, and turns us all into hybrid car experts.This episode originally aired on April 2, 2024. Read the transcript.Show Notes:Read Aarian’s story about the new US emissions rules. Also read her story about automakers struggling to hit their US sales targets for electric cars.Recommendations:Aarian recommends going to one of those baseball games where you also bring your dog. (They let you run the bases!) Mike recommends The New York Trilogy by novelist Paul Auster, who died this week at 77. Lauren recommends The Lights, the newest book of poetry and prose by Ben Lerner.Aarian Marshall can be found on social media @aarianmarshall. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Even if you’ve never taken a puff from a vape in your life, you know about Juul. At the company’s peak in 2018, its e-cigarette was one of the most recognizable consumer devices on the planet, and Juul Labs was worth $38 billion. Just a few short years later, after being squeezed by government regulators and prohibition-minded anti-tobacco advocates, Juul’s valuation plummeted and its market share vaporized.The story of Juul—and its thousands of imitators—is outlined in Backfired: The Vaping Wars, a new nine-part podcast from Prologue Projects. The show traces the history of e-cigarettes, nicotine vaporizers, and synthetic nicotine by following the paths of Juul and its thousands of competitors as the vape companies gain public acceptance, fight for market share, and butt heads with government agencies. It’s a fascinating ride filled with new reporting, so even if you’ve read and listened to everything about Juul and vaping, you’ll hear some shocking new information in this series.This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with Backfired’s hosts, Arielle Pardes and Leon Neyfakh. Show Notes:Backfired is an Audible original, so go to audible.com/backfired to listen. Also check out Louise Matsakis’ story about the next generation of cheap, illegal vapes coming from China.Recommendations:Arielle recommends Timeshifter’s Jet Lag App. Leon recommends the Yoto Player for getting kids into podcasts. Lauren recommends The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray. Mike recommends Subpar Pool, a game by Holedown creator Martin Jonasson.Arielle Pardes can be found on social media @pardesoteric. Leon Neyfakh is @leoncrawl. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Web crawling—the act of indexing information across the internet—has been around for decades. It has primarily been used by search engines like Google and nonprofits like Internet Archive and Common Crawl to catalog the contents of the open internet and make it searchable. Until recently, the practice of web crawling has rarely been seen as controversial, as websites depended on the process as a way for people to find their content. But now crawling tech has been subsumed by the great AI-ening of everything, and is being used by companies like Google and Perplexity AI to absorb whole articles that are fed into their summarizing machines.This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs joins the show to talk about web crawling and the controversy over Common Crawl. Then we talk with Forbes’ chief content officer and editor Randall Lane about how Perplexity.AI repurposed a Forbes article and presented it as its own story, without first asking permission or properly citing the source.Show Notes:Read Kate’s story about how publishers are going after Common Crawl over AI training data. Read Randall’s story about how Preplexity.AI copied the work of two Forbes reporters.Recommendations:Randall recommends his new horse racing league, the National Thoroughbred League. Kate recommends the book Victim by Andrew Boryga. Lauren recommends the show Hacks on Max.Randall Lane can be found on social media @RandallLane. Kate Knibbs is @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

This week, Apple executives used the keynote address of the company’s annual developers conference to debut all of the artificial intelligence capabilities that are coming to iPhones, iPads, and Macs. The team showed off how generative tools will help users write emails, clean up iPhone photos, illustrate presentations, and make custom emoji characters. Adding AI to everything is par for the course in 2024, as all of the big tech companies have been loading up their software with similar generative features. But Apple is late to this particular party. The company has been perceived as being “behind” in generative AI, since OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and a whole bunch of startups have already made massive inroads. But is Apple really behind? And what makes Apple’s AI—cheekily named Apple Intelligence—different?This week, we welcome WIRED senior writer Will Knight back onto the show to talk about Apple Intelligence, the new Siri, and how Apple is trying to differentiate itself in the AI race.Show Notes:Read Will’s new story about Apple Intelligence’s launch, and his news analysis piece on how Apple will need to make sure its AI doesn’t disappoint, annoy, or offend iPhone users. Read Boone Ashworth’s roundup of everything Apple announced at WWDC. Lauren tells us why Apple’s AI play is also its best shot at getting you to upgrade your iPhone. Julian Chokkattu has a comprehensive overview of all the AI features coming to iOS. Read all of our WWDC coverage.Recommendations:Will recommends the AutoGen multi-agent conversational framework. Mike recommends Klean Kanteen’s Rise Food Box. Lauren recommends the Lunya washable silk sleep mask. Will Knight can be found on X @willknight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Google has spent the past year lustily rolling out AI features across its platforms. But with each launch, it is becoming more clear that some of these so-called enhancements should have simmered a little longer. The latest update to stoke equal parts excitement and ridicule is AI Overviews, the new auto-generated summary boxes that appear at the top of some Google search results.In theory, AI Overviews are meant to answer questions and neatly summarize key information about people's search queries, offering links to the sources the summaries were pulled from and making search more immediately useful. In reality, these AI Overviews have been kinda messy. The information the summary confidently displays can be simply, and sometimes comically, wrong. Even when the AI Overview is correct, it typically only offers a slim account of the topic without the added context—or attribution—contained in the web pages it’s pulling from. The resulting criticisms have forced Google to reportedly dial back the number of search queries that trigger AI Overviews, and they are now being seen less frequently than they were at launch.This week, we talk with WIRED writers Kate Knibbs and Reece Rogers about the rollout, how Google has been managing it, and what it's like to watch our journalism get gobbled up by these hungry, hungry infobots.Show Notes:Read Kate’s story about Google trimming the frequency of its AI Overviews. Read Reece’s story about how Google’s AI Overviews copied his original work. Read Lauren’s story about the end of Google Search as we know it.Recommendations:Kate recommends Token Supremacy by Zachary Small. Reece recommends the game Balatro. Lauren recommends the poetry book Technelegy by Sasha Stiles. Mike recommends the book Neu Klang: The Definitive History of Krautrock by Christoph Dallach.Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs (X) or @extremeknibbs (Threads/IG). Reece Rogers is @reece___rogers. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up an unused domain, then erect a new website filled with clickbait articles. If the domain name used to rank highly in search results, the new clickbait articles will also rank highly, guaranteeing the prospector a steady stream of visitors searching the web for common phrases. These zombie sites are all over the web; you’ve probably landed on them many times yourself. But this shady market is poised to grow exponentially thanks to the proliferation of generative AI tools. Text generators like ChatGPT make it easier for prospectors to crank out clickbait articles at greater speed, feeding an already raging river of pablum.This week, Kate Knibbs tells us about her WIRED story on one of these entrepreneurs in the world of AI-generated clickbait hosted on squatted domains.This episode originally aired February 15, 2024. Read the full transcript.Show Notes:Read Kate’s story about Nebojša Vujinović Vujo and his clickbait empire. Also read Kate’s original investigation into what happened to The Hairpin, a popular blog for womens’ writing that went defunct and was then reborn as a content mill.Recommendations:Kate recommends the novella Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler. Brian recommends the novel The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Lauren recommends giving up fancy, creamy coffee drinks for Lent. Mike recommends the social media platform BlueSky, which is now open to everyone.Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs. Brian Barrett is @brbarrett. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, just much more efficiently—have been outselling gas furnaces over the past couple of years. Their proliferation seems to be pointing more towards an energy-conscious electric future in people’s homes. And, four months ago, nine states in the US signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030.But, what exactly is a heat pump? How does it work? How much does it cost to replace your furnace with one, and how much money does making the switch actually save you in the long run? Let’s also consider the same question we’re asking about AI: how much will this change or displace existing jobs for the people who have been trained to install and service traditional HVAC systems?WIRED staff writer Matt Simon is our in-house heat pump expert. He joins us this week to tell us everything we need to know about these appliances he calls “climate superheroes.”Show Notes:Read all of our heat pump coverage. Don’t miss Matt’s story about the heat pump technician shortage. Matt also took a look at the in-window heat pumps now hitting the market that look and operate like in-window AC units. WIRED’s Rhett Alain digs into the physics of heat pumps.Recommendations:Matt recommends the book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland. Mike recommends the book Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna. Lauren recommends taking a staycation.Matt Simon can be found on social media @mrmattsimon. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Google held its annual I/O developer event this week. The company gathered software developers, business partners, and folks from the technology press at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, just down the road from Google corporate headquarters for a two-hour presentation. There were Android announcements, there were chatbot announcements. Somebody even blasted rainbow-colored robes into the crowd using a T-shirt cannon. But most of the talk at I/O centered around artificial intelligence. Nearly everything Google showed off at the event was enhanced in some way by the company’s Gemini AI model. And some of the most shocking announcements came in the realm of AI-powered search, an area where Google is poised to upend everyone’s expectations about how to find things on the internet—for better or for worse.This week, WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave joins us to unpack everything Google announced at I/O, and to help us understand how search engines will evolve for the AI era. Show Notes:Read our roundup of everything Google announced at I/O 2024. Lauren wrote about the end of search as we know it. Will Knight got a demo of Project Astra, Google’s visual chatbot.Recommendations:Paresh recommends The Pitch podcast. Lauren recommends Kristin Lueke’s newsletter “The Animal Eats.” Mike recommends the Pedro Almodóvar film, Julieta, which is based on short stories by Alice Munro, who died this week.Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

For all the influence Twitter has had on our culture, no community there has made quite as much impact as Black Twitter. The virtual community grew from a loose online hangout to an influential cultural force that directed conversations about race and culture not only on social media, but in our society at large. A new documentary miniseries from Hulu called Black Twitter: A People's History charts that monumental trajectory. This week on Gadget Lab, we chat about the rise and solidification of Black Twitter with showrunner Joie Jacoby, director and executive producer Prentice Penny, and WIRED senior writer Jason Parham, who wrote the WIRED cover story the docuseries is based on.Black Twitter: A People's History premieres on May 9th on Hulu. Read Jason’s three-part series of stories about Black Twitter. Recommendations:Joie recommends the Met Opera show Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Prentice recommends the YouTube channel Pitch Meetings. Jason recommends X-Men 97 on Disney+. Lauren recommends watching Black Twitter: A People’s History and reading Jason Parham’s story that inspired the show. Mike recommends trying the new instant coffees that are popping up. (Instant coffee is good now, he swears.) Jason Parham can be found on social media @nonlinearnotes. Joie Jacoby is @joiejacoby. Prentice Penny is @The_A_Prentice Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number of battery-powered vehicles they’re putting on the roads. The government has mandated that by 2032, more than half of new cars sold must be electric. There are some caveats, namely that plug-in hybrid cars will fulfill the federal requirements for what a “battery-powered” vehicle is. This has led to a flood of hybrid cars hitting the market. This week, we talk about what this means for people who are considering buying a new car now, or in the next few years. We explain the differences between plug-in hybrids, full hybrids, and electrics, and we tell you what your options are if you live in an apartment without a convenient place to plug in your car while it’s parked. We are joined this week by WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall, who breaks down the facts, shatters the myths, and turns us all into hybrid car experts.Show Notes:Read Aarian’s story about the new US emissions rules. Also read her story about automakers struggling to hit their US sales targets for electric cars.Recommendations:Aarian recommends going to one of those baseball games where you also bring your dog. (They let you run the bases!) Mike recommends The New York Trilogy by novelist Paul Auster, who died this week at 77. Lauren recommends The Lights, the newest book of poetry and prose by Ben Lerner.Aarian Marshall can be found on social media @aarianmarshall. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Do you know what TCP/IP means? (Hint: you’re using it right now.) What about CDMA? Or GPT? While the concepts and the execution of these technologies are clear to most of us who have been on the internet nearly our whole lives, the acronyms we use to define them are often inscrutable. On this week’s episode, we welcome WIRED’s AI reporter Will Knight onto the show. Along with our hosts Michael Calore and Lauren Goode, the trio takes turns quizzing each other on what exactly these acronyms stand for. Michael is asked to unpack various terms from the early internet era, Lauren is tested on acronyms from the mobile era, and Will tells us what all the AI-related abbreviations mean. Everyone does a pretty good job even if nobody earns a perfect score. Play along at home; maybe you can best our hosts with your arcane knowledge of internet minutiae.Show NotesRead Steven Levy’s story about the Google research paper that kickstarted the transformer-based AI boom.Recommendations:Will recommends the book The Rise and Fall of the EAST by Yasheng Huang. (Watch their conversation at MIT’s Starr Forum.) Lauren recommends the Forest app for the Pomodoro work method. Mike recommends The Jargon File.Will Knight can be found on social media @WillKnight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express their every thought by posting short snippets of audio. All of these snippets are served in a never-ending feed, a la Twitter. There are replies, there are DMs, but there’s no typing; it’s all spoken audio. The platform is exclusively invitation-only for now, so the current user base is made up mostly of Valley insiders, optimistic venture capitalists, and crypto evangelists, which definitely informs the types of conversations you’ll find on the app. If you're thinking this sounds a lot like Clubhouse, the audio-based social space that flared up during the Covid-19 pandemic, well, you're not too far off.This week on Gadget Lab, we talk to WIRED’s Director of Special Projects Alan Henry about making mouth sounds on Airchat and whether the buzzy new social startup will appeal to anyone outside the Silicon Valley technosphere.Show Notes:Read Lauren’s story about Airchat.Recommendations:Alan recommends the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel. Lauren recommends Julian Chokkattu’s review of the Humane Ai Pin and Scoop, a movie about journalism that’s streaming on Netflix. Mike recommends our new sibling podcast, WIRED Politics Lab.Alan can be found on social media @halophoenix. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.