Technology News

Through his wealth and cultural influence, Elon Musk undoubtedly strengthened the Trump campaign. WIRED unpacks whether it really was his efforts that sealed the deal for the president-elect.

An international coalition of police agencies has taken a major whack at criminals accused of running a host of online scams, including phishing, the stealing of account credentials and other sensitive data, and the spreading of ransomware, Interpol said recently.

The operation, which ran from the beginning of April through the end of August, resulted in the arrest of 41 people and the takedown of 1,037 servers and other infrastructure running on 22,000 IP addresses. Synergia II, as the operation was named, was the work of multiple law enforcement agencies across the world, as well as three cybersecurity organizations.

A global response

“The global nature of cybercrime requires a global response which is evident by the support member countries provided to Operation Synergia II,” Neal Jetton, director of the Cybercrime Directorate at Interpol, said. “Together, we’ve not only dismantled malicious infrastructure but also prevented hundreds of thousands of potential victims from falling prey to cybercrime. Interpol is proud to bring together a diverse team of member countries to fight this ever-evolving threat and make our world a safer place.”

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We sent photographer Jamie Lee Taete on a road trip through Maricopa County, Arizona, during the US election.

"I am electric. I feel vindicated," said one January 6 rioter from jail.

Confirming previous rumors, Variety reports that Amazon will be moving ahead with producing a TV series based on the popular Mass Effect video game franchise. The writing and production staff involved might not inspire confidence from fans, though.

The series' writer and executive producer is slated to be Daniel Casey, who until now was best known as the primary screenwriter on F9: The Fast Saga, one of the late sequels in the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was also part of a team of writers behind the relatively little-known 2018 science fiction film Kin.

Karim Zreik will also produce, and his background is a little more encouraging; his main claim to fame is in the short-lived Marvel Television unit, which produced relatively well-received series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix before Disney+ launched with its Marvel Cinematic Universe shows.

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Subscribing to the Max streaming service is expected to become more costly in 2025. That could mean indirectly, like through another streaming password crackdown, or directly, like through increases to monthly and/or annual subscription prices.

Password crackdowns as a “form of price rises”

During the earnings call for parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for its fiscal Q3 2024, which ended on September 30, WBD signaled that it's gearing up to roll out its next strategy for growing streaming revenue—charging subscribers extra for sharing passwords—over the next few months. This will start with "very soft messaging" toward Max users before the crackdown intensifies in 2025 and 2026, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said.

Wiedenfels admitted that on their own, password crackdowns are “a form of price rises.” Netflix kicked off this form of price hike in the US in May 2023, and other streaming services have followed. That means Max is behind some rivals when it comes to implementing this restriction. Further, Max has been discussing its password crackdown since March, so subscribers could take some comfort in not seeing the restrictions launch sooner.

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The Republican who is likely to lead the Federal Communications Commission under President-elect Donald Trump detailed how he would run the agency when he wrote a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Carr, a longtime opponent of net neutrality rules and other broadband regulations, has also made his views clear numerous times when opposing rulemakings initiated by the current Democratic majority.

If Trump makes Carr the next FCC chairman after his inauguration, the FCC is likely to ditch consumer protection initiatives, like a recently announced inquiry into data caps, and attempt to regulate Big Tech companies while reducing regulation of Internet service providers. That could include forcing Big Tech companies to pay into a fund that subsidizes ISPs' broadband network construction.

A Carr-led FCC could also try to punish news organizations that are perceived to be anti-Trump. Just before the election, Carr alleged that NBC putting Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live was "a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule," and that the FCC should consider issuing penalties. Despite Carr's claim, NBC did provide equal time to the Trump campaign.

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Sega has put dozens of its Master System, Genesis, Saturn, and other console titles onto modern game stores over the years. But, like that Dreamcast controller stashed in your childhood garage, they're about to disappear—and getting them back will cost you a nostalgia tax.

Those who have purchased any of the more than 60 games listed by Sega from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo's Switch store, and the PlayStation store will still have them after 11:59 pm Pacific time on Dec. 26. But after that, for reasons that Sega does not make explicit, they will be "delisted and unavailable." Titles specific to the Nintendo Switch Online "Expansion Pack" subscription will remain.

As PC Gamer has suggested, and which makes the most sense, this looks like Sega is getting ready to offer up new "classics" collections on these storefronts. Sega previously rearranged its store shelves to pull Sonic games from online stores and then offer up Sonic Origins. The title underwhelmed Ars at the time and managed to pack in some DLC pitches.

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The 47-year-old Michigan man, who pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting a child, was highly active in the online criminal network called 764, which the FBI now considers a “tier one” terrorism threat.

One frustrated customer wants to force Intel to pay untold millions in damages, claiming the company deceptively marketed faulty 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs as "enabling amazing experiences to happen on the PC," when instead products were prone to crashes and blue screens.

In a proposed class action, a New York man, Mark Vanvalkenburgh, said that he regretted falling for Intel's marketing of its 13th-gen CPU as "the world’s fastest desktop processor" capable of delivering "the best gaming, streaming and recording experience" available today.

He and possibly millions of others "reasonably" believed both the 13th- and 14th-gen CPUs would "perform as advertised"—only to discover they'd purchased a reliably "unstable" product triggering "random screen blackouts and random computer restarts" that PC Mag warned perhaps caused "permanent" CPU damage.

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Donald Trump's approach to Big Tech has oscillated between calls for stricter regulations for some players and a hands-off approach for others. Here's how he might steer tech policy in a second term.

Donald Trump's approach to Big Tech has oscillated between calls for stricter regulations for some players and a hands-off approach for others. Here's how he might steer tech policy in a second term.

La La Land, Late Night With the Devil, and Kinds of Kindness are just a few of the movies you need to watch on Hulu right now.

The 4B movement, from South Korea, calls for women to not date, marry, sleep with, or have children with men. Women are calling for the movement to take off in the US after Donald Trump won the election.

If you've been wanting an electric car but everything seems too expensive, there's some good news on the horizon. A whole lot of EV leases are due to expire in 2026, which should lead to something of a glut, according to data analyzed by JD Power.

We have the revised IRS clean vehicle tax credit to thank. This was revamped under the Inflation Reduction Act, and while tough new battery sourcing rules and a requirement for final assembly in North America have meant many fewer EVs are eligible for the tax credit when bought new, a loophole that considers a leased vehicle to be a commercial sale means any leased EV is eligible for the $7,500 incentive, which can now be subtracted from the price of the EV at the time of sale or leasing.

Since there's also no price cap on the EV or income cap on the buyer, leasing is often a better idea than purchasing outright when it comes to new EVs, particularly for people who are worried about long-term battery degradation. (In fact, this is an overblown fear that is not backed up by data from older EVs, other than the early Nissan Leaf, which does not have active battery cooling.)

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What’s really behind these return-to-office mandates?

What’s really behind these return-to-office mandates?

Start Christmas morning off on the right foot with these excellent, tiny gifts.

Since the 1940s, baseball players have been spreading a special kind of "magic mud" on new baseballs to reduce the slick, glossy shine and give pitchers a firmer grip. Now, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified just what gives that magic mud its special properties, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Before magic mud came along, baseballs were treated with a mix of water and soil from the infield or, alternatively, tobacco juice or shoe polish. But these substances stained and scratched up the ball's leather surface. Lena Blackburne was a third-base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1930s when an umpire complained about that, so he hunted for a better mud. Blackburne found that mud in a still-secret location purportedly near Palmyra, New Jersey, and a baseball dynasty was born: Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud. Once harvested, the mud is strained, skimmed of excess water, rinsed with tap water, and then subjected to a secret "proprietary treatment" before being allowed to settle.

Yet there hasn't been much scientific research on the magic mud apart from one 2022 study. We do know quite a bit about the complex behavior of soil in general, including mud. Per the authors, mud is essentially "a dense suspension of predominantly clay and silt particles in water," sometimes with a bit of sand in the mix, although this has little effect on how mud behaves under shearing forces (rheology). Technically, it falls into the non-Newtonian fluid category, in which the viscosity changes (either thickening or thinning) in response to an applied strain or shearing force, thereby straddling the boundary between liquid and solid behavior.

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Google Play announces the 10 indie games studios receiving a share of $2 million and hands-on support as a part of the Indie Games Fund 2024.Google Play announces the 10 indie games studios receiving a share of $2 million and hands-on support as a part of the Indie Games Fund 2024.