A New Era for WIRED—That Starts With You

Tech-news algorithms, artificial intelligence, journalism, wired July 23, 2025

At WIRED, we’re obsessed with how the world is transforming—and lately, there’s been a lot to obsess over. From the breakneck pace of AI research to the tectonic transformation playing out across the US federal government, WIRED’s journalists, producers, and editors are committed to reporting from the front lines of these changes and bringing all of you along for the ride.

Our goal is to wake up every day and unearth what we describe as “Story Zero”: the story before anybody even knows there’s a story to tell. We endeavor to do that work in a way that’s conversational and accessible, fearless and definitive, and ultimately helps you understand what’s changing, why, and how it’ll affect your present and your future.

I’m incredibly proud that our work this year has often achieved the lofty goals we set for ourselves: WIRED journalists have produced groundbreaking reporting on DOGE’s disruption of federal agencies, unearthed ambiguities in the Jeffery Epstein video, delivered a constant drumbeat of clear-eyed coverage on AI’s real-world impact (and the AI industry’s outrageous talent wars), and found the time to execute on narrative stories that run the gamut, from an AI-inflected murder cult to the quantum apocalypse right around the corner.

We’ve also had a lot of fun. Our creative team is pushing the boundaries of digital design, creating interactives like our quantum encryption calculator and evocative digital packages, including our deep dive into the Frontiers of Computing. And we’re translating more and more of our journalism into new formats, including the vertical video you’ll often see embedded in our stories, and our new podcast Uncanny Valley.

There are so many reasons to be excited about WIRED’s future. But it’s important to recognize that we’re doing this work within an information ecosystem that’s transforming before our eyes: The platforms on which outlets like WIRED used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time; Facebook traffic disappeared years ago, and now Google Search is dwindling as the company reorients users to rely on AI Overviews instead of links to credible publishers. More and more users are also skipping Google altogether, opting to use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude to find information they once relied on news outlets for. Meanwhile, AI-generated slop and mis- and disinformation are seeping into the internet’s every pore, polluting social media feeds and drowning out news and human-driven storytelling.

At WIRED, our solution to this so-called “traffic apocalypse,” and the AI sloppification of the internet, is simple: connect our humans to all of you humans.

Here’s the plan: We’ll continue to produce top-tier journalism and storytelling, from written stories, scoops, features, and interviews to podcasts and audio narration, to bite-size videos and livestreams. And we’re inviting you to join us, directly on WIRED.com or in your inbox, with a new subscription offering that we think is more dynamic, more engaging, and more valuable. Most of all, we’re increasingly focused on creating a community and a shared conversation between WIRED journalists and all of you—our audience of curious, brilliant, future-focused people around the world. We want to answer your questions and solicit your input and ideas. We want to know what scares you, what excites you, and what we can do to help you navigate this strange new future.

As a WIRED subscriber, you will have access to a growing set of exclusive benefits.

You can receive any of five new weekly newsletters, each of them written by a WIRED journalist. These newsletters, available only to WIRED subscribers, will showcase top-quality reporting and analysis, written by reporters who are deeply sourced experts in their field.

You’ll also have access to WIRED’s new livestream AMAs: These streams, which will run at least twice a month, are designed to connect you directly with WIRED journalists, who’ll answer your pressing questions about the biggest story or trend in the WIRED universe.

Plus, you can join WIRED journalists and fellow subscribers in the comment sections of WIRED stories to discuss, debate, or ask and answer questions.

And finally, many WIRED articles are now available in audio form, with narrated versions created exclusively for subscribers.

To our existing subscribers, thank you for supporting our journalism. To our new readers, sign up today and unlock everything WIRED has to offer.

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Tag algorithms artificial intelligence journalism wired

MasterChef: Unseen series featuring Gregg Wallace and John Torode will be broadcast

OPPO Launches Filmmaker Accelerator Program in India With Discovery

Mobile photography used to be about taking the least muddied photo, but that’s not the case anymore. Smartphone photography is getting better every year, thanks to phones like the OPPO Find X9 Ultra. And OPPO clearly wants to be at the center of that movement in India. The company has now announced a new Filmmaker Accelerator Program, in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its newly launched OPPO LUMO Creator Program. The initiative is aimed at emerging Indian creators and focuses heavily on short-form mobile storytelling.

OPPO Wants Creators to “Meet Culture Anew”

This year marks the third edition of OPPO’s Culture in a Shot initiative. Previous themes focused on documenting traditions and celebrations, but the 2026 edition shifts toward something broader. The new theme, “Meet Culture Anew, Make Your Moment,” focuses on how younger creators reinterpret culture through everyday moments, fashion, food, travel, and digital expression.

The centerpiece here is the Filmmaker Accelerator Program, which OPPO and Discovery are positioning as a proper mentorship pipeline for young creators. Selected participants will receive guidance from industry professionals across storytelling, filming, and post-production. OPPO will also provide access to its latest smartphones and creator grants.

Speaking on the matter, Goldee Patnaik, Head of Communications at OPPO India, said

At OPPO, we believe technology should empower people to tell stories that matter.‘Culture in a Shot’ reflects our belief that culture is living, evolving, and best expressed through real people and everyday moments. With the introduction of a dedicated video category this year, we aim to inspire a new generation of creators to tell powerful stories through short-form visual content and share them with the world.

The biggest winner gets:

₹5 lakh cash prize

An OPPO Find X9 Ultra smartphone

An opportunity to direct a collaborative short film with OPPO x Discovery later this year

Official recognition across OPPO India platforms

To participate, creators need to upload original videos on Instagram, 30 seconds to 10 minutes long, using hashtags such as #OPPOxDiscovery, #CultureInAShot, and #ShotOnOPPO. The contest runs from May 5 to July 15, 2026.

#OPPO #Launches #Filmmaker #Accelerator #Program #India #DiscoveryOppo

#OPPO #Launches #Filmmaker #Accelerator #Program #India #DiscoveryOppo">

mwasimuddin125 0

OPPO Find X9 Ultra. And OPPO clearly wants to be at the center of that movement in India. The company has now announced a new Filmmaker Accelerator Program, in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its newly launched OPPO LUMO Creator Program. The initiative is aimed at emerging Indian creators and focuses heavily on short-form mobile storytelling.

OPPO Wants Creators to “Meet Culture Anew”

This year marks the third edition of OPPO’s Culture in a Shot initiative. Previous themes focused on documenting traditions and celebrations, but the 2026 edition shifts toward something broader. The new theme, “Meet Culture Anew, Make Your Moment,” focuses on how younger creators reinterpret culture through everyday moments, fashion, food, travel, and digital expression.

The centerpiece here is the Filmmaker Accelerator Program, which OPPO and Discovery are positioning as a proper mentorship pipeline for young creators. Selected participants will receive guidance from industry professionals across storytelling, filming, and post-production. OPPO will also provide access to its latest smartphones and creator grants.

Speaking on the matter, Goldee Patnaik, Head of Communications at OPPO India, said

At OPPO, we believe technology should empower people to tell stories that matter.‘Culture in a Shot’ reflects our belief that culture is living, evolving, and best expressed through real people and everyday moments. With the introduction of a dedicated video category this year, we aim to inspire a new generation of creators to tell powerful stories through short-form visual content and share them with the world.

The biggest winner gets:

₹5 lakh cash prize
An OPPO Find X9 Ultra smartphone
An opportunity to direct a collaborative short film with OPPO x Discovery later this year
Official recognition across OPPO India platforms

To participate, creators need to upload original videos on Instagram, 30 seconds to 10 minutes long, using hashtags such as #OPPOxDiscovery, #CultureInAShot, and #ShotOnOPPO. The contest runs from May 5 to July 15, 2026.

#OPPO #Launches #Filmmaker #Accelerator #Program #India #DiscoveryOppo">OPPO Launches Filmmaker Accelerator Program in India With Discovery

Mobile photography used to be about taking the least muddied photo, but that’s not the case anymore. Smartphone photography is getting better every year, thanks to phones like the OPPO Find X9 Ultra. And OPPO clearly wants to be at the center of that movement in India. The company has now announced a new Filmmaker Accelerator Program, in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its newly launched OPPO LUMO Creator Program. The initiative is aimed at emerging Indian creators and focuses heavily on short-form mobile storytelling.

OPPO Wants Creators to “Meet Culture Anew”

Speaking on the matter, Goldee Patnaik, Head of Communications at OPPO India, said

At OPPO, we believe technology should empower people to tell stories that matter.‘Culture in a Shot’ reflects our belief that culture is living, evolving, and best expressed through real people and everyday moments. With the introduction of a dedicated video category this year, we aim to inspire a new generation of creators to tell powerful stories through short-form visual content and share them with the world.

The biggest winner gets:

₹5 lakh cash prize
An OPPO Find X9 Ultra smartphone
An opportunity to direct a collaborative short film with OPPO x Discovery later this year
Official recognition across OPPO India platforms

#OPPO #Launches #Filmmaker #Accelerator #Program #India #DiscoveryOppo

Yes, Apple Is Reportedly Retooling Some Liquid Glass Problems for macOS 27
By providing a needed security patch to an older version of iOS last month, Apple tacitly—but unofficially—acknowledged that avoiding the Liquid Glass aesthetic is a valid choice. Now, according to anonymous sources who spoke to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, an upcoming update will address problems with Liquid Glass in macOS 26. If you haven’t updated because you hate it, or are worried the design flaws make it unusable, you are seen.

Gurman writes that Apple “is preparing what people internally consider to be a ‘slight redesign’ for macOS 27,” and that the company is looking to fix, “shadows and transparency quirks.” Gurman’s sources sound a bit defensive, however. They tell him the Liquid Glass update “didn’t necessarily suffer from design problems,” but instead had “a not-completely-baked implementation from Apple’s software engineering team.” The fixes, then, are supposed to “make Liquid Glass look the way Apple’s design team intended it to from the start.” Got it? The designers thought everything through from the beginning, but the artless neanderthals who built their designs into software—this thinking goes—let them down. My first impression was that it was overly generous of Gurman to give voice to this framing of the Liquid Glass story, but I have to admit that it’s also a genuinely plausible explanation for just how hated the design scheme ended up being. For instance, while Apple has already chipped away at some of the bigger problems, Tahoe shipped with some issues that were beyond annoying and actually interfered with usability, particularly for low vision people. Before the 26.3 update in February, as OS X Daily noted, choosing the option to reduce transparency “would leave considerable transparent effects, including in sidebars, headers, titlebars, search boxes, and more, leading to situations where text would overlap and interface elements would be washed out with blurry colors and interface elements.”

Then again, some designs were heavily criticized on an aesthetic basis, not as bad implementation. There’s probably no bigger Apple fan than John Gruber of Daring Fireball, and his take on the redesign of some of the icons was scorching: “I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “icons look cool” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible.”

Gurman has claimed in the past that Liquid Glass is sort of a long game, rolled out in advance of the release of the 20th anniversary iPhone, which he expects to be a huge design milestone for Apple. Supposedly, that phone’s overall vibe will benefit from Liquid Glass. When all is revealed, maybe the world will agree. In the meantime, macOS is getting some tweaks, and we should expect, Gurman says, “more of a cleanup and refinement effort aligned with the company’s wider push to polish its software this year.” #Apple #Reportedly #Retooling #Liquid #Glass #Problems #macOSApple,Liquid Glass,macos 27

mwasimuddin125 0

By providing a needed security patch to an older version of iOS last month, Apple tacitly—but unofficially—acknowledged that avoiding the Liquid Glass aesthetic is a valid choice.

Now, according to anonymous sources who spoke to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, an upcoming update will address problems with Liquid Glass in macOS 26. If you haven’t updated because you hate it, or are worried the design flaws make it unusable, you are seen.

Gurman writes that Apple “is preparing what people internally consider to be a ‘slight redesign’ for macOS 27,” and that the company is looking to fix, “shadows and transparency quirks.”

Gurman’s sources sound a bit defensive, however. They tell him the Liquid Glass update “didn’t necessarily suffer from design problems,” but instead had “a not-completely-baked implementation from Apple’s software engineering team.” The fixes, then, are supposed to “make Liquid Glass look the way Apple’s design team intended it to from the start.” Got it? The designers thought everything through from the beginning, but the artless neanderthals who built their designs into software—this thinking goes—let them down.

My first impression was that it was overly generous of Gurman to give voice to this framing of the Liquid Glass story, but I have to admit that it’s also a genuinely plausible explanation for just how hated the design scheme ended up being.

For instance, while Apple has already chipped away at some of the bigger problems, Tahoe shipped with some issues that were beyond annoying and actually interfered with usability, particularly for low vision people. Before the 26.3 update in February, as OS X Daily noted, choosing the option to reduce transparency “would leave considerable transparent effects, including in sidebars, headers, titlebars, search boxes, and more, leading to situations where text would overlap and interface elements would be washed out with blurry colors and interface elements.”

Then again, some designs were heavily criticized on an aesthetic basis, not as bad implementation. There’s probably no bigger Apple fan than John Gruber of Daring Fireball, and his take on the redesign of some of the icons was scorching: “I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “icons look cool” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible.”

Gurman has claimed in the past that Liquid Glass is sort of a long game, rolled out in advance of the release of the 20th anniversary iPhone, which he expects to be a huge design milestone for Apple. Supposedly, that phone’s overall vibe will benefit from Liquid Glass. When all is revealed, maybe the world will agree.

In the meantime, macOS is getting some tweaks, and we should expect, Gurman says, “more of a cleanup and refinement effort aligned with the company’s wider push to polish its software this year.”

#Apple #Reportedly #Retooling #Liquid #Glass #Problems #macOSApple,Liquid Glass,macos 27">Yes, Apple Is Reportedly Retooling Some Liquid Glass Problems for macOS 27

By providing a needed security patch to an older version of iOS last month, Apple tacitly—but unofficially—acknowledged that avoiding the Liquid Glass aesthetic is a valid choice.

Now, according to anonymous sources who spoke to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, an upcoming update will address problems with Liquid Glass in macOS 26. If you haven’t updated because you hate it, or are worried the design flaws make it unusable, you are seen.

Gurman writes that Apple “is preparing what people internally consider to be a ‘slight redesign’ for macOS 27,” and that the company is looking to fix, “shadows and transparency quirks.”

Gurman’s sources sound a bit defensive, however. They tell him the Liquid Glass update “didn’t necessarily suffer from design problems,” but instead had “a not-completely-baked implementation from Apple’s software engineering team.” The fixes, then, are supposed to “make Liquid Glass look the way Apple’s design team intended it to from the start.” Got it? The designers thought everything through from the beginning, but the artless neanderthals who built their designs into software—this thinking goes—let them down.

My first impression was that it was overly generous of Gurman to give voice to this framing of the Liquid Glass story, but I have to admit that it’s also a genuinely plausible explanation for just how hated the design scheme ended up being.

For instance, while Apple has already chipped away at some of the bigger problems, Tahoe shipped with some issues that were beyond annoying and actually interfered with usability, particularly for low vision people. Before the 26.3 update in February, as OS X Daily noted, choosing the option to reduce transparency “would leave considerable transparent effects, including in sidebars, headers, titlebars, search boxes, and more, leading to situations where text would overlap and interface elements would be washed out with blurry colors and interface elements.”

Then again, some designs were heavily criticized on an aesthetic basis, not as bad implementation. There’s probably no bigger Apple fan than John Gruber of Daring Fireball, and his take on the redesign of some of the icons was scorching: “I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good — Apple has mostly lost its “icons look cool” game. But the new ones in MacOS 26 Tahoe are objectively terrible.”

Gurman has claimed in the past that Liquid Glass is sort of a long game, rolled out in advance of the release of the 20th anniversary iPhone, which he expects to be a huge design milestone for Apple. Supposedly, that phone’s overall vibe will benefit from Liquid Glass. When all is revealed, maybe the world will agree.

In the meantime, macOS is getting some tweaks, and we should expect, Gurman says, “more of a cleanup and refinement effort aligned with the company’s wider push to polish its software this year.”

#Apple #Reportedly #Retooling #Liquid #Glass #Problems #macOSApple,Liquid Glass,macos 27

After three people died on a cruise ship struck by a hantavirus, authorities are actively tracking down 29 people who had left the ship. They’re trying to trace the spread of the virus. It’s a long, arduous, global process to find and notify people who might be at risk of infection.

Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be an app for that?

Contact-tracing apps were a global effort starting in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enabled by phone companies like Apple and Google, contact tracing was designed to use Bluetooth connections to detect when people had come in contact with someone who had or would later test positive for Covid and report as much. It didn’t do much to solve the spread of the pandemic, but tracking the virus became more effective at least. The same process wouldn’t go well for the hantavirus problem.

“There is no use of apps for this hantavirus outbreak,” Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an email response to WIRED. “The number of cases are small, and it’s important to trace all contacts exactly to stop transmission.”

On a smaller scale of infection like this, officials have to start at the source (an infected individual), then go person-by-person, confirming where they went and who they might have come into contact with. Data collected by apps from a broad swath of devices would not be anywhere close to accurate enough to give a good idea of where the virus might have hitchhiked to next.

Contact tracing on a wider scale, like, say, a global pandemic, is less about tracking the individual infections and more about understanding what parts of the population might be affected, giving people the opportunity to self-quarantine after exposure. But that depends on how people choose to respond, and how the technology is utilized by public emergency systems. During the Covid pandemic, contact-tracing via apps tended to work better in more carefully managed European countries, but did not slow the spread in the US.

Making devices accessible to that kind of proximity information has also brought all sorts of concerns about privacy, given that the technology would require always-on access to work properly. Contact tracing also struggled to maintain accuracy, and in some cases could be providing false negatives or positives that don’t help further real information about the spread of the virus.

Especially in the case of something like the Hantavirus, where every person on that cruise ship can theoretically be directly tracked and contacted, it’s better to do that process the hard way.

“During small but highly fatal outbreaks, more precision is required,” Gurley wrote.

#ContactTracing #Apps #Hantaviruscoronavirus,covid-19,viruses,health,pandemics">

Could Contact-Tracing Apps Help With the Hantavirus? Not ReallyAfter three people died on a cruise ship struck by a hantavirus, authorities are actively tracking down 29 people who had left the ship. They’re trying to trace the spread of the virus. It’s a long, arduous, global process to find and notify people who might be at risk of infection.Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be an app for that?Contact-tracing apps were a global effort starting in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enabled by phone companies like Apple and Google, contact tracing was designed to use Bluetooth connections to detect when people had come in contact with someone who had or would later test positive for Covid and report as much. It didn’t do much to solve the spread of the pandemic, but tracking the virus became more effective at least. The same process wouldn’t go well for the hantavirus problem.“There is no use of apps for this hantavirus outbreak,” Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an email response to WIRED. “The number of cases are small, and it’s important to trace all contacts exactly to stop transmission.”On a smaller scale of infection like this, officials have to start at the source (an infected individual), then go person-by-person, confirming where they went and who they might have come into contact with. Data collected by apps from a broad swath of devices would not be anywhere close to accurate enough to give a good idea of where the virus might have hitchhiked to next.Contact tracing on a wider scale, like, say, a global pandemic, is less about tracking the individual infections and more about understanding what parts of the population might be affected, giving people the opportunity to self-quarantine after exposure. But that depends on how people choose to respond, and how the technology is utilized by public emergency systems. During the Covid pandemic, contact-tracing via apps tended to work better in more carefully managed European countries, but did not slow the spread in the US.Making devices accessible to that kind of proximity information has also brought all sorts of concerns about privacy, given that the technology would require always-on access to work properly. Contact tracing also struggled to maintain accuracy, and in some cases could be providing false negatives or positives that don’t help further real information about the spread of the virus.Especially in the case of something like the Hantavirus, where every person on that cruise ship can theoretically be directly tracked and contacted, it’s better to do that process the hard way.“During small but highly fatal outbreaks, more precision is required,” Gurley wrote.#ContactTracing #Apps #Hantaviruscoronavirus,covid-19,viruses,health,pandemics

mwasimuddin125 0

After three people died on a cruise ship struck by a hantavirus, authorities are actively tracking down 29 people who had left the ship. They’re trying to trace the spread of the virus. It’s a long, arduous, global process to find and notify people who might be at risk of infection.
Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be an app for that?
Contact-tracing apps were a global effort starting in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enabled by phone companies like Apple and Google, contact tracing was designed to use Bluetooth connections to detect when people had come in contact with someone who had or would later test positive for Covid and report as much. It didn’t do much to solve the spread of the pandemic, but tracking the virus became more effective at least. The same process wouldn’t go well for the hantavirus problem.
“There is no use of apps for this hantavirus outbreak,” Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an email response to WIRED. “The number of cases are small, and it’s important to trace all contacts exactly to stop transmission.”
On a smaller scale of infection like this, officials have to start at the source (an infected individual), then go person-by-person, confirming where they went and who they might have come into contact with. Data collected by apps from a broad swath of devices would not be anywhere close to accurate enough to give a good idea of where the virus might have hitchhiked to next.
Contact tracing on a wider scale, like, say, a global pandemic, is less about tracking the individual infections and more about understanding what parts of the population might be affected, giving people the opportunity to self-quarantine after exposure. But that depends on how people choose to respond, and how the technology is utilized by public emergency systems. During the Covid pandemic, contact-tracing via apps tended to work better in more carefully managed European countries, but did not slow the spread in the US.
Making devices accessible to that kind of proximity information has also brought all sorts of concerns about privacy, given that the technology would require always-on access to work properly. Contact tracing also struggled to maintain accuracy, and in some cases could be providing false negatives or positives that don’t help further real information about the spread of the virus.
Especially in the case of something like the Hantavirus, where every person on that cruise ship can theoretically be directly tracked and contacted, it’s better to do that process the hard way.
“During small but highly fatal outbreaks, more precision is required,” Gurley wrote.

#ContactTracing #Apps #Hantaviruscoronavirus,covid-19,viruses,health,pandemics">Could Contact-Tracing Apps Help With the Hantavirus? Not Really

Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be an app for that?

Especially in the case of something like the Hantavirus, where every person on that cruise ship can theoretically be directly tracked and contacted, it’s better to do that process the hard way.

“During small but highly fatal outbreaks, more precision is required,” Gurley wrote.

#ContactTracing #Apps #Hantaviruscoronavirus,covid-19,viruses,health,pandemics

MasterChef: Unseen series featuring Gregg Wallace and John Torode will be broadcast

Army secretary wants to move more quickly on an agreement for Hawaii live-fire training lands

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OPPO Wants Creators to “Meet Culture Anew”

OPPO Wants Creators to “Meet Culture Anew”

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