The movies and books we’d give as gifts

PRODUCT SUMMARY Die Hard is a Christmas movie. You know this in your heart to be true. Buy it in 4K and give it to every John, Hans and Holly on your holiday shopping list. -- Andrew Tarantola, Senior Editor PRODUCT SUMMARY A millennial young woman's true coming-of-age story, set in Silicon Valley startups, Uncanny Valley is an incisive…

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A DNA Firm That Caters to Police Just Bought a Genealogy Site

Just two years ago, GEDmatch was still an obscure genealogy website, known only to a million or so hobbyist DNA sleuths looking to fill in their family trees. The site was free, public, and run by two guys with a knack for writing algorithms that helped relatives find each other. All in all, it was…

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IG Report Exonerates the FBI’s Trump Campaign Investigation

Maybe, just maybe, there’s no Deep State plot to get Donald Trump after all.For more than a year, Trump’s backers have held out hope that a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general would blow the lid off of a government-wide conspiracy. Everyone from Fox News to QAnon has speculated that the IG report…

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Green Monday Deals (2019): From Amazon, Ebay, REI, and More

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Christmas is a little more than two weeks away. If you aren't finished with your holiday shopping yet, these Green Monday sales might be of some assistance.Barely a decade old, Green Monday was first coined by eBay. It's called Green Monday because, historically, the second…

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Scientists Find a Weak Spot in Some Superbugs’ Defenses

In 2004, a 64-year-old woman in Indiana had a catheter put in to help with dialysis. Soon after the procedure, she came to a local hospital with low blood pressure and what turned out to be a dangerous antibiotic-resistant infection from a bacteria called Enterococcus faecalis. Today, that woman’s blood samples helped solve a long-standing…

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These Plastic Bunnies Got a DNA Upgrade. Next up, the World?

For the last nine months, Yaniv Erlich has carried a small, white, plastic rabbit wherever he goes—to work at Israel-based DNA testing company MyHeritage, to scientific conferences, through airports, and across international borders. The kumquat-sized bunny, cute as it may be, isn’t a toy or a good luck charm. But if you cut off its…

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The First Wonder Woman 1984 Trailer Is Here

Greetings! Welcome to this Monday’s edition of The Monitor, WIRED’s collection of the most explosive news in the world of pop culture. Usually, this roundup covers bits and pieces from all over the spectrum, but last weekend was pretty much dominated by Comic Con Experience (aka CCXP), the massive fan confab in Brazil. If you…

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Star Wars News: No, Finn and Poe Aren’t Dating, Sorry

Welcome, everyone, to the final installment of Cantina Talk before Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens. That's right, it's the last one of these before the Skywalker saga ends. However, the success of The Mandalorian on Disney+—and by that, what we really mean is that everyone loves Baby Yoda—ensures that, whatever the future of…

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Lessons From a Teenage Cyborg

“I was born in 2000, I have always lived my life with technology, there hasn’t been any moment without it.” So begins the story of Kai Landre, who recently traveled to the United States from Barcelona to explain his decision to become a cyborg.Strictly speaking, a cyborg is any human being who incorporates—imports into one’s…

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It’s Coders Versus Human Pilots in This Drone Race

On Friday night in an old newspaper printing plant in Austin, the future of drone automation lifted off, accelerated and flew, nearly fast enough to beat one of the best drone pilots in the world.Gabriel Kocher, known in the professional Drone Racing League as Gab707, sat behind a net, wearing video goggles and steering his…

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