Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED

By Wired

What's Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED about?

WIRED’s Gadget Lab podcast breaks down which gadgets, apps, and services you need to know about, and which ones you can move to the virtual trash bin. Learn how today’s tech shapes our lives—plus get your hosts’ personal recommendations at the end of each episode.

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Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED episodes:

04.25.2024
We Demystify the Internet's Acronyms
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...
04.18.2024
A Chat About Airchat
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...
04.11.2024
From WIRED Politics Lab: How Election Deniers Are Weaponizing Tech To Disrupt November
Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their...
04.04.2024
Shopping for a New Social Feed
Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled Shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They're probably not even the most interesting things you can buy on TikTok or Instagram. Just as the...
03.28.2024
DOJ Calls Out Apple in the Group Chat
Apple has gotten used to being a favorite target of rivals and government agencies. The company has been repeatedly scrutinized by regulators, and other tech companies have accused the company of anticompetitive practices. Apple’s most recent legal challenge is a...
03.21.2024
A 3-Body Podcast
3 Body Problem is Netflix’s new big, meaty prestige sci-fi series. Based on the book of the same name by author Liu Cixin, the show about an impending alien invasion is also one about how humans react to technological advancements...
03.14.2024
The TikTok Ban
You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray. On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives approved a bipartisan bill that, should it...
03.07.2024
Google’s ‘Woke AI’ Problem
The last few months have been rough for Google. Company executives have been in the hot seat because of some embarrassing missteps, the most awkward of which was the bungled launch of Google’s latest image generator. The company launched it...
02.29.2024
The Non-Techie's Guide to Nvidia
Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics cards, among other tech, and has earned great success thanks to the strength of the gaming...
02.22.2024
Tech Workers Are Stressed Out
tech companies seemed immune to large-scale layoffs, and as their profits skyrocketed, those cushy jobs became highly sought-after. But economic headwinds, and the looming influence of AI, are leading to some tumultuous changes in the tech industry.In just the first...
02.15.2024
The Weird World of an AI Clickbait King
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...
02.08.2024
Several People Are Talking
At its core, Slack is a chat app. Every day, millions of people use it to communicate, share files, and gossip with coworkers or friend groups in one organized place. That style of free-flowing interaction—which Slack didn’t invent, but made...
02.01.2024
Apple’s Uncanny Valley Pro
Apple's first ever mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, arrives tomorrow. Apple has a knack for revitalizing and legitimizing a product category—something that the face computer market really needs right now. But there are some hangups that could limit its...
01.25.2024
I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of digital currency as a means of buying legal and illicit goods on the web with total anonymity,...
01.18.2024
AI Hits the Campaign Trail
It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTube videos. This is also the first election of the AI...
01.11.2024
C’ES la Vie
It's CES week. Yes, it's time to dive back into that glitzy, chaotic showcase where thousands of startups, companies, and general technology weirdos gather to show off all the new tech and futuristic devices that will give us a glimpse...
01.04.2024
Abortion Pill Orders Are Soaring
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights in the United States. Since then, many states have rolled back abortion services or made them outright illegal. That includes some states...
12.28.2023
Live on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li
Artificial intelligence was inarguably the biggest newsmaker in the tech industry this year. Whether it was ChaptGPT writing term papers, AI-generated Drake hits, or the board shakeup at OpenAI, the topic permeated the public consciousness and left people feeling varying...
12.21.2023
Oops, All Recommendations!
It’s been a year, that’s for sure. Every week on Gadget Lab, we end the show by bringing you our recommendations for all of our favorite tech, books, TV shows, and life hacks. Now, at the end of the year,...
12.14.2023
Taylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger
Does your favorite movie star or pop singer really love the Kremlin? Though the ads in your Facebook feed may lead you to believe such a thing, it’s just not true. In recent months, a major disinformation campaign has run...
12.07.2023
Blue Bubbles Versus Green Bubbles
When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This color coding signals to the iPhone user that the incoming text is arriving...
11.30.2023
Journalists in Studio Getting Coffee
Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There have been many research studies, technological innovations, and passionate arguments dedicated to brewing a...
11.23.2023
Geoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has made headlines all year long, but the turn of events this week was extraordinary. OpenAI was thrown into chaos with the firing and eventual rehiring of CEO Sam Altman. There was a shakeup in the company’s board...
11.16.2023
How Three Teens Broke the Internet
In October 2016, a malware tool named Mirai took down some of the biggest sites and services on the web, including Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, and Slack. The blackout affected most of the East Coast of the United States, and...
11.09.2023
Oh, the Humaneity
Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring at the screen? Humane, a company started by a pair of...
11.02.2023
Happy 1-Year Muskiversary
Twitter may be officially called X now, but that rebranding is just one of the many changes that have hit the platform since Elon Musk took over. It's been one whole year since the mercurial billionaire purchased Twitter, and in...
10.26.2023
23andMe and You
Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the company's lab can reveal the details of your ethnic background and trace the many...
10.19.2023
Misinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It
Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on social media, usually by well-meaning people who don’t know they’re sharing incorrect information. It's a big problem in the...
10.12.2023
Business Wars: Living in an Artificial World
Artificial intelligence abounds, and it’s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular is an invention that seems destined to follow us far into the future, so it’s best to...
10.05.2023
Searching for a Better Google
It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google only sells a fraction of the number of phones and smartwatches pumped out by Apple and...
09.28.2023
Meta’s Sound and Vision
Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to...
09.21.2023
Alexa Gets an AI Makeover
Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, software, and services. The company reserved the spot at center stage for...
09.14.2023
Your Life, Your iPhone
It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company’s headquarters on Tuesday, Apple showed off regular and Pro versions of the iPhone 15, as well as a...
09.08.2023
We Robloxed So You Don’t Have To
If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid’s shoulder while they’re using Roblox. The online platform is filled with free games, experiences, and social hangouts that are designed and built by...
08.31.2023
I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be believed, we are also incredibly bored with smartphones—so bored in fact...
08.24.2023
The Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods
Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up to class five minutes late. But in Illinois, such behavior was landing students...
08.17.2023
The Cruelest Summer
Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more frequent, more intense, and longer than any we’ve seen before. We’ve suffered through extreme weather...
08.10.2023
Nobody’s Driving That Car!
Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all have active programs testing their autonomous vehicles in US cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin....
08.03.2023
Farm-to-Table Internet
Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stored there, we can access it from anywhere and edit things collaboratively with our friends...
07.27.2023
The Future of Hollywood
Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike—partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use generative artificial intelligence tools to replace human writers and creators. This month, when the actor’s union SAG-AFTRA...
07.20.2023
Elon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans
Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI. The timing of the launch is odd considering Musk still runs Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink,...
07.13.2023
Stop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen
Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked up over a hundred million users. It's a huge showing for parent company Meta that has...
07.06.2023
Have a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse
We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab cohost Lauren Goode and WIRED editor in chief Gideon Litchfield. The show features...
06.29.2023
Our Clothes Are Making Us Sick
Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the day to find that the fabric has...
06.22.2023
Shop Talk
Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they have forever altered the way we buy things through their experiments with things...
06.15.2023
What the Truck, Elon?
Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tried to show off the Cybertruck's "unbreakable windows" by hurling a metal ball at them. It promptly...
06.08.2023
Apple’s Vision Quest
After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at the company’s big developer conference in Cupertino, California. The new headset lets the viewer...
06.01.2023
AI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)
The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consumer-level artificial intelligence tools, the fear has felt closer to reality these past few...
05.25.2023
How to Get Started Biking
For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic bicycle? What gear do you need while you ride? How do you avoid getting hit...
05.18.2023
Let’s Get Swole
The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and maybe doing so in a little less clothing than usual. So we’re...

What's Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED episodes:

We Demystify the Internet's Acronyms

A Chat About Airchat

From WIRED Politics Lab: How Election Deniers Are Weaponizing Tech To Disrupt November

Shopping for a New Social Feed

DOJ Calls Out Apple in the Group Chat

A 3-Body Podcast

The TikTok Ban

Google’s ‘Woke AI’ Problem

The Non-Techie's Guide to Nvidia

Tech Workers Are Stressed Out

The Weird World of an AI Clickbait King

Several People Are Talking

Apple’s Uncanny Valley Pro

I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin

AI Hits the Campaign Trail

C’ES la Vie

Abortion Pill Orders Are Soaring

Live on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li

Oops, All Recommendations!

Taylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger

Blue Bubbles Versus Green Bubbles

Journalists in Studio Getting Coffee

Geoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence

How Three Teens Broke the Internet

Oh, the Humaneity

Happy 1-Year Muskiversary

23andMe and You

Misinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It

Business Wars: Living in an Artificial World

Searching for a Better Google

Meta’s Sound and Vision

Alexa Gets an AI Makeover

Your Life, Your iPhone

We Robloxed So You Don’t Have To

I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me

The Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods

The Cruelest Summer

Nobody’s Driving That Car!

Farm-to-Table Internet

The Future of Hollywood

Elon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans

Stop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen

Have a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse

Our Clothes Are Making Us Sick

Shop Talk

What the Truck, Elon?

Apple’s Vision Quest

AI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)

How to Get Started Biking

Let’s Get Swole