One of the most important plot points in Gears 5 (no "of War", this time—it's cleaner) involves melting ice. You're isolated in a snowy tundra, a series of frozen ridges and sheets of ice covering what lies below, and you need to go down. So your job becomes to find a way to melt or…

Greetings, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIRED's culture news roundup. This week there's been some bad news for fans of Margaret Atwood and Jeremy Renner. Also, some good news for Disney. Again. Let's get started.Jeremy Renner Shut Down His App. Because TrollsFirst off, if you didn't know, Jeremy Renner had an app.…

In 1958, a Czech-born sociology professor named Nat Mendelsohn purchased 82,000 acres of land in the Mojave Desert, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, and founded the optimistically named California City. Intended to eventually rival LA in importance, California City was just one of the countless master-planned communities that sprouted up across the state…

In May, San Francisco banned city agencies like the police and sheriff’s departments from using facial recognition technologies over concerns they would be “coercive and oppressive.” The cities of Oakland and Somerville, Massachusetts followed suit this summer. Congress, too, is considering action.Despite the concerns, a new poll finds that a majority of Americans—56 percent—trust law…

There's an electric dump truck that's all over the internet right now: It's called the eDumper. What's so great about an electric dump truck? Beyond being electric, there are two cool things about it. First, it's huge—HUGE. It has a weight of 45 tons. Second, it doesn't need an external power source to charge the…

There are just some things that traditionally don’t go very well together. Oil and water. Thanksgiving and vegans. Sonos and Bluetooth.No, really. Sonos has spent the past 17 years eschewing Bluetooth audio; dismissing it, in many ways. Last year the company’s chief executive called products like Amazon’s line of Bluetooth Echo speakers mere “stepping stones”…

To go with a 0 to 60 mph time under three seconds, 750 horsepower, and the ability to refill its battery in just over 20 minutes, the engineers at Porsche gave their all-new, all-electric Taycan a two-speed gearbox. And while that feature is unlikely to grace any headlines, it represents a potentially major shift for…

Kentucky lawmakers thought requiring that judges consult an algorithm when deciding whether to hold a defendant in jail before trial would make the state’s justice system cheaper and fairer by setting more people free. That’s not how it turned out.Before the 2011 law took effect, there was little difference between the proportion of black and…

As a data-driven advertising company, Google's business model hinges on knowing as much about its users as possible. But as the public has increasingly awakened to its privacy rights this imperative has generated more friction. One protection Google has invested in is the field of data science known as "differential privacy," which strategically adds random…

The new fall semester is upon us, and at elite private colleges and universities, it’s hard to find a trendier major than Computer Science. It’s also becoming more common for…