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Amid a summer surge of Covid-19 infections, the US Food and Drug Administration just approved updated mRNA vaccines that more closely target the currently circulating variants of the coronavirus. The updated vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, target a variant of Omicron called KP.2, one of the several so-called FLiRT variants …

Amongst the sea of American flags and ubiquitous blue signs at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week prowled Jonathan Padilla, the “crypto guy.” Wearing a baseball cap and conspicuous pineapple-print shirt, Padilla tramped the halls of the convention, talking crypto policy with anyone who would listen. In a …

This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. A project to develop autonomous vehicles for self-driving taxis has begun in earnest in Japan. The plan put forward by Tier IV, a startup specializing in autonomous-driving technology, has been selected for a demonstration project by the …

On a recent Thursday afternoon, researchers Lanuza Faccioli and Zhiping Hu wheeled an inconspicuous black and white plastic cooler from an operating room at a hospital in downtown Pittsburgh. Inside was a badly scarred liver, just removed from a 47-year-old man undergoing a transplant to receive a new one from …

Moqadi Mokoena had been feeling uneasy all day. When he’d left his home on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, for his job as a security guard, he’d had to turn around twice, having forgotten first his watch and then his cigarettes. He had reason to be nervous. His supervisor …

Lithium-ion battery fires can be intense and frightening. As someone who used to repair second-hand smartphones, I’ve extinguished my fair share of flaming iPhones with punctured lithium-ion batteries. And the type of smartphone battery in your pocket right now, is similar to what’s inside of electric vehicles. Except, the EV …

Stories about AI-generated political content are like stories about people drunkenly setting off fireworks: There’s a good chance they’ll end in disaster. WIRED is tracking AI usage in political campaigns across the world, and so far examples include pornographic deepfakes and misinformation-spewing chatbots. It’s gotten to the point where the …

There’s good news about electric vehicle charging, according to new survey results from the analytics firm JD Power: Drivers are more satisfied with their public charging experiences than last year. In fact, it’s the second quarter in a row that’s seen happier EV drivers. When it comes to public fast …