As Nendo explains, every item in the Kakao Friends Homekit (no relation to Apple HomeKit, apparently) revolves around a white bowl. The simple shape indicates that they're part of a single platform and can be controlled with a Kakao-themed companion app. Each piece also has a silicon "icon," according to Nendo, and a Kakao Friends-inspired…

Best Laptop: Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Chromebooks are awesome. They only run Chrome and Android apps (and Linux!), but that's honestly all most people need. Lightweight, powerful, and beautiful Chromebooks are even more amazing (not to mention few and far between), and that's why Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook is the new standard. It's the best way to…

With a pair of 200-kilowatt motors sending power to all four wheels, Sony’s first car can go from 0 to 62 mph in 4.8 seconds. It can hit a top speed of 149 mph, even though it weighs a hefty 5,180 pounds. The company hasn’t revealed how far the all-electric concept can go between charges,…

No, the ratio’s not dead yet. But Twitter is starting to imagine what the world might look like without it.At CES on Wednesday, Twitter revealed a number of experiments that would reshape key aspects of the platform in significant ways. The most impactful of these, at least at first glance—and certainly one that gained the…

If there was ever a metaphor for the newfound openness around women’s sex tech at the annual consumer electronics fest, it might be the Lora DiCarlo truck. The experiential box truck is made partly of goldenrod metal, but the side walls are mostly glass and completely transparent—save for one splotch of color where the catch…

On Tuesday, Iran launched more than a dozen missiles targeting two Iraqi military bases housing American soldiers. The attack was retaliation for the US drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top-ranking Iranian military general. In a televised speech on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said “minimal damage was sustained” during the attack and that no…

Certain ideas just sound objectively gross. Giving babies cigarettes, for instance, or mayonnaise-flavored Jell-O. The Circle, a US reality television show in its first season on Netflix, has exactly this sort of forthrightly nasty premise. The Circle pushes its contestants to behave as clout-chasing, manipulative shut-ins for the privilege of appearing on a streaming service…

Everyone is looking for a #release. In the political Twittersphere, it’s usually about paperwork. #ReleaseTheReport on Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Or, conversely, #ReleaseTheMemo that supposedly damned the entire inquiry. In the portions of the internet most consumed by fandom—stan Twitter, niche subreddits, meme YouTube—the release that people are chasing is often an…

Welcome to our CES 2020 liveblog! The WIRED crew is on the ground here in Las Vegas to touch, test, prod, and fondle all of the latest doodads, robot bartenders, underwater drones, and exoskeletons. This liveblog is the place where we'll report all of our findings. We'll have videos, photos, written dispatches, and since we're…

The days of June 1996 were honeyed with promise. In San Francisco's SoMa district, electronic music animated a loft dance floor as E. David Ellington and Malcolm CasSelle raised their glasses in celebration. Along with friends and colleagues, they had gathered to toast the success of their new platform, NetNoir Online, a hub of “Afrocentric…