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Plus: The Department of Homeland Security begins surveilling immigrants' social media, President Donald Trump targets former CISA director who refuted his claims of 2020 election fraud, and more.

These sweats strike the perfect balance between comfort and looks.

Plus: Nothing teases a new CMF smartphone, Specialized’s new mountain ebike starts at $8,000, and Teenage Engineering's big software update for its sampler.

The approximate 20 percent budget cut could force the closure of the Goddard Space Flight Center and would see projects such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope scrapped.

The Tamaulipan thorn forest once covered 1 million acres on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Restoring even a fraction of it could help the region cope with the ravages of a warming world.

There are few areas where AI has seen more robust deployment than the field of software development. From "vibe" coding to GitHub Copilot to startups building quick-and-dirty applications with support from LLMs, AI is already deeply integrated.

However, those claiming we're mere months away from AI agents replacing most programmers should adjust their expectations because models aren't good enough at the debugging part, and debugging occupies most of a developer's time. That's the suggestion of Microsoft Research, which built a new tool called debug-gym to test and improve how AI models can debug software.

Debug-gym (available on GitHub and detailed in a blog post) is an environment that allows AI models to try and debug any existing code repository with access to debugging tools that aren't historically part of the process for these models. Microsoft found that without this approach, models are quite notably bad at debugging tasks. With the approach, they're better but still a far cry from what an experienced human developer can do.

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For the past three days, DOGE and a handful of Palantir representatives, along with dozens of career IRS engineers, have been collaborating to build a “mega API,” WIRED has learned.

Debate around how much taxes US-based streaming services should pay internationally, among other factors, could result in people paying more for subscriptions to services like Netflix and Disney+.

On April 10, the United Kingdom's Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee reignited calls for a streaming tax on subscription revenue acquired through UK residents. The recommendation came alongside the committee's 120-page report [PDF] that makes numerous recommendations for how to support and grow Britain’s film and high-end television (HETV) industry.

For the US, the recommendation garnering the most attention is one calling for a 5 percent levy on UK subscriber revenue from streaming-video-on-demand services, such as Netflix. That’s because if streaming services face higher taxes in the UK, costs could be passed on to consumers, resulting in more streaming price hikes. The CMS committee wants money from the levy to support HETV production in the UK and wrote in its report:

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Shopping for a phone can be an ordeal. That’s why we’ve tested almost every Android phone, from the smartest to the cheapest—even phones that fold—to find those worth your money.

At Google Cloud Next 25, L’Oréal, Reddit, Deutsche Bank and more share how generative AI is creating exciting opportunities across industries.At Google Cloud Next 25, L’Oréal, Reddit, Deutsche Bank and more share how generative AI is creating exciting opportunities across industries.

European tourists who toted home bottles of water from a holy well in Ethiopia were likely hoping for blessings and spiritual cleansing—but instead carried an infectious curse and got an intestinal power cleanse.

Three people in Germany and four in the UK fell ill with cholera after directly drinking or splashing their faces with the holy water. Two required intensive care. Luckily, they all eventually recovered, according to a report in the journal Eurosurveillance.

The infections occurred in February after some of the patients reported taking independent trips to Ethiopia in January. Two of the German patients and three of the UK patients reported travel to the country, and several reported visiting a holy well called Bermel Giorgis (also spelled ‘Georgis’) in the Quara district. The German travelers and at least one of the UK travelers brought water home with them and shared it.

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Security and privacy advocates are girding themselves for another uphill battle against Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds.

When Recall was first introduced in May 2024, security practitioners roundly castigated it for creating a gold mine for malicious insiders, criminals, or nation-state spies if they managed to gain even brief administrative access to a Windows device. Privacy advocates warned that Recall was ripe for abuse in intimate partner violence settings. They also noted that there was nothing stopping Recall from preserving sensitive disappearing content sent through privacy-protecting messengers such as Signal.

Enshittification at a new scale

Following months of backlash, Microsoft later suspended Recall. On Thursday, the company said it was reintroducing Recall. It currently is available only to insiders with access to the Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 preview version. Over time, the feature will be rolled out more broadly. Microsoft officials wrote:

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Under the Trump administration, federal authorities are declining to charge crypto firms with a range of offenses, raising questions about which rules apply—and who will enforce them.

Under the Trump administration, federal authorities are declining to charge crypto firms with a range of offenses, raising questions about which rules apply—and who will enforce them.

The Internet might look a bit different on Android soon. Last month, Google announced its intent to make Chrome for Android a more immersive experience by hiding the navigation bar background. The promised edge-to-edge update is now rolling out to devices on Chrome version 135, giving you a touch more screen real estate. However, some websites may also be a bit harder to use.

Moving from button to gesture navigation reduced the amount of screen real estate devoted to the system UI, which leaves more room for apps. Google's move to a "dynamic bottom bar" in Chrome creates even more space for web content. When this feature shows up, the pages you visit will be able to draw all the way to the bottom of the screen instead of stopping at the navigation area, which Google calls the "chin."

Credit: Google

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If world events aren’t satisfying your dystopia itch, here’s WIRED’s guide to the new season of ‘Black Mirror.’

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts look at the impacts this trade war will have on the products we all use and how you can best navigate this new normal.

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts look at the impacts this trade war will have on the products we all use and how you can best navigate this new normal.

Radio signal broadcasts have their usefulness, but they eventually end (except, perhaps, for SETI). Every so often, we mark the public end of a once-essential wavelength, such as 3G cellular, analog television, or the Canadian time check. One of the most weirdly useful signals will soon end in the United Kingdom, with notable consequences if its transition is not properly handled.

Beginning in the early 1980s, UK homes could have electrical meters installed with a radio teleswitch attached. These switches listened for a 198 kHz signal from the BBC's Radio 4 Long Wave service, primarily broadcast from the powerful Droitwich Transmitting Station. These switches listened to 30 messages per minute, waiting for a certain 50-bit data packet to arrive that signaled that electricity was now at cheaper, off-peak rates ("tariffs" in the UK).

With this over-the-air notice, homes that bought into Economy 7 or Economy 10 (7 or 10 hours of reduced-price power) could make use of ceramic-stuffed storage heaters that stayed warm into the day, prepare hot water heaters, and otherwise make use of off-peak power. How the electrical companies, BBC, and meters worked together is fascinating in its own right and documented in a recent video by Ringway Manchester (which we first saw at Hackaday).

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The SSA’s shift to Elon Musk’s X comes as the agency plans to cut its regional office workforce by roughly 90 percent, WIRED has learned.