business

Three years ago, bitcoin miners flocked to the state of Texas. The Lone Star State offered cheap power, plentiful supplies of renewable energy, and an accommodating regulatory climate. Some mining companies already operated there, but when China banned crypto mining in May 2021, a mass migration began. Texas was fast …

Whether through the frowning high-definition face of a chimpanzee or a psychedelic, pink-and-red-hued doppelganger of himself, Reuven Cohen uses AI-generated images to catch people’s attention. "I've always been interested in art and design and video and enjoy pushing boundaries,” he says—but the Toronto-based consultant, who helps companies develop AI tools, …

Citizens of the European Union live in an internet built and ruled by foreign powers. Most people in the EU use an American search engine, shop on an American ecommerce site, thumb American phones, and scroll through American social media feeds. That fact has triggered increasing alarm in the corridors …

Six months have passed since New York City all but banned short-term rentals like those offered via Airbnb. The policy was intended to free up apartments in America’s most congested city to become homes for long-term New Yorkers, instead of housing rotating out-of-town guests that bring noise, trash, and worse. …

More than 600 Google workers and counting have signed a letter addressed to Google marketing leadership demanding that it drop its sponsorship of Mind the Tech, an annual conference promoting the Israeli tech industry taking place in New York this week. “Please withdraw from Mind the Tech, issue an apology, …

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to describe his company’s mission as “making the world more open and connected.” Tuesday it did the opposite, as nearly all of Meta’s social platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger, experienced widespread outages around the globe for around two hours. Some people found …

Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results. “It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” …

Apple has a Spotify problem—and it just cost the iPhone maker a $2 billion fine from the European Commission. For years, the two companies have been at war as the streaming service lured users away from Apple’s iTunes and accused the tech giant of exploiting its dominance to stifle innovation. …

Lex Fridman has done many long interviews on his popular podcast. Even so, the episode with the legendary programmer John Carmack has an unhinged director’s-cut feel to it. Over five hours, Carmack dishes on everything from vector operations to Doom. But it’s something Fridman says, offhand, that really justifies the …

After a WIRED story last month described the sometimes ludicrous challenges heaped on tech workers applying for engineering jobs, some readers shared their own experiences with excessive test assignments and interviews. The responses in social posts and direct messages to WIRED underscore how the tech industry is undergoing a cultural …