Wired

When Formula E launched, it was ahead of its time. Not in the visionary sense—though it was racing EVs before owning one was cool—but literally: electrification was barely capable of supporting a high-end motorsport.

In 2014 Formula E cars were 100 mph slower than those in IndyCar and Formula One, and their batteries lasted only half a race. “You had this crazy kind of triathlon transition, where the drivers jumped out halfway and got into another racing car,” says Jeff Dodds, Formula E’s CEO.

For someone so new to celebrity, Bobbi Althoff sure is good at it. Gliding into a cramped, bohemian studio space tucked into the 14th floor of an office tower in Los Angeles’ Arts District, Althoff is well dressed, well coiffed, and appropriately entouraged—she arrives flanked by a makeup artist, a PR rep, and a woman shooting “BTS” (behind-the-scenes) footage of this interview for Althoff’s social media accounts.

Althoff, who’s 27 years old, just has it, that indescribable presence, that gravitational pull. A person who makes sense as somebody that everybody knows. And a lot more people know Althoff now than they did a few years ago: In 2021, her relentless attempts at taking off on TikTok finally stuck, and she established herself as a viral, albeit subversive, member of Mommy TikTok. That’s also where Althoff honed the awkwardly funny, deadpan persona that became her calling card and led to The Really Good Podcast, which is now in its third season.

In a cramped conference room in Bristol, Ilan Gur is trying to convince a group of plant biologists that they can change the world. The 44-year-old has the patter you’d expect from a Californian startup founder, but he’s also one of the UK’s most senior civil servants, so what comes next is unexpected.

Close your eyes, he asks the scientists, and imagine pushing past the very edges of your research. The attendees take a beat, shifting slightly on their uncomfortable chairs. Positive visualization is not quite what they had expected from a workshop introducing them to the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the UK government’s new high-risk, high-reward science funding agency.

23andMe is in trouble. Once a hot Silicon Valley startup, the genetic testing company has been in free fall since a major data breach last year that affected roughly half of its customers. The incident led to a class action lawsuit, which the company has agreed to settle for $30 million.

In August, the company shuttered its in-house drug discovery unit. And last month, all of the company’s board of directors resigned en masse over cofounder and CEO Anne Wojcicki’s “strategic direction,” which included a proposal to take the company private at 40 cents per share. Wojcicki had said she would consider third-party takeover offers but reversed course in a regulatory filing this week.

On Monday, the UK saw the closure of its last operational coal power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The closure of the plant, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, brought to an end to the history of the country’s coal use, which started with the opening of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal played a central part in the UK’s power system in the interim, in some years providing over 90 percent of its total electricity.

As the birthplace of prestige TV shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, HBO—and, by extension, Max (aka the streamer formerly known as HBO Max)—is best known for its impressive lineup of original series. The network has also been upping the ante with feature-length content that is the stuff of Oscar dreams. However, because Max is not (yet) a production powerhouse like, say, Netflix, hundreds of great movies come and go each month. So if you see something you want to watch, don’t let it linger in your queue for too long.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed a $2 million contract with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions, according to documents reviewed by WIRED.

The one-year contract between the company’s US subsidiary in Chantilly, Virginia, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Division 3 was signed on September 27 and covers a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance and training.”

Paragon has received the award under the FAR 6.302-1 rule reserved for unique and innovative services not otherwise available to the government and not via the typical competitive process.

Millions of people across the US South have gone without power or have been forced to evacuate following days of extreme downpours brought on by Hurricane Helene. North Carolina has borne the brunt of the devastation, with the state accounting for a third of all recorded fatalities to date. And as relief operations get underway, the eyes of the world are on a small town of about 2,000 in the western part of the state.

On Tuesday night, vice presidential nominees JD Vance and Tim Walz will debate each other for the first and only time ahead of the November presidential election.

Before becoming a Republican senator from Ohio, Vance built his profile as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir detailing his life as a young adult from Middletown, Ohio. In California, Vance connected with tech investors like the conservative Peter Thiel, who donated millions to his 2022 Senate campaign. Walz, a former US congressperson and current governor of Minnesota, was not as high-profile of a pick as Vance, but the Kamala Harris campaign has leveraged his background as a former teacher, football coach, and veteran to appeal to rural America. Walz has inspired much of the Democrats’ election messaging, like calling the GOP “weird.”

A select number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US highways hands-free, after the automaker pushed an update to vehicles this morning. Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy wrote on X that Cybertrucks will be the first Tesla vehicles to receive the “end-to-end on highway” driving feature, which the company says uses a “neural net” to navigate all parts of highway driving.

“Nice work,” Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk responded to his AI chief.