HBO Almost Cut the ‘Industry’ Season Finale’s Most Shocking Scene

In the volatile universe of Industry, all debts must be paid.

No one understands that better than Rishi (Sagar Radia), whose gambling addiction finally caught up with him in Sunday night’s season three finale, “Infinite Largesse.”

[Spoiler alert: The following includes spoilers for Industry’s third season finale.]

Rishi, for the uninitiated, spent much of the past season falling deeper into debt. As the finale concluded, Industry gave him one of the revelation-packed episode’s biggest twists when his bookie, Vinay, showed up and killed Rishi’s wife over £600,000 in unpaid gambling debts. It was the kind of gut-wrenching moment that has made HBO Sunday-night appointment TV—and, according to cocreators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, HBO almost nixed it.

[Read More]

The Pig Butchering Invasion Has Begun

More than 200,000 people in Southeast Asia have been forced to run online scams in recent years, often being enslaved and brutalized, as part of criminal enterprises that have netted billions in stolen funds. Such “pig butchering” operations have largely been concentrated in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, typically rooted in Chinese organized crime groups exploiting instability and poor governance in the region. Though they come at great humanitarian cost, pig butchering scams are undeniably lucrative and, perhaps inevitably, similar operations are now being uncovered on multiple continents and in numerous countries around the world.

[Read More]

How to Renovate Your Home for a Billion Children

If you’ve been on TikTok at any point in the past six months, chances are you’ve stumbled across them, as I first did during a fairly routine doomscroll one night this summer. For me it started with two videos somewhat incongruously tagged #homeremodeling and #housedesign. One of them featured a CGI man summoning a baby phoenix outside of a tree that he planned to turn into an apartment. Then a robotic AI voice started to narrate how the CGI man, identified as “Little John,” was going to build it. Over the next 90 seconds, Little John transformed the tree into a maniacally space-efficient luxury unit in an AI-generated ballet of flying galvanized square steel, ecofriendly wood veneer, and expansion screws.

[Read More]

How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet

Like a lot of us, Carlo Acutis spent an ungodly amount of his life staring at screens. Born in London in 1991, he grew up an only child in a newly connected world. He wore sweatshirts and Nike trainers. He played Halo and taught himself to code. But that’s where the similarities end—because next year, Acutis will officially be named a saint.

As well as the internet, Acutis revered another institution: the Catholic Church. From a young age, he was acutely interested in Eucharistic miracles—extraordinary events which, according to Catholics, see consecrated bread or wine suddenly become the actual body or blood of Christ. “To always be united to Jesus: This is my life plan,” he told his mother after his First Communion.

[Read More]

The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind

The original version ofthis storyappeared in Quanta Magazine.

It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight.

Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an external threat. Would you still feel afraid?

[Read More]

How to Get Started on Valve’s 'Deadlock'

When word got out that thousands of gamers were already playing Valve’s “secret” shooter Deadlock on Steam back in August, the first reaction from many was: How do I get my hands on this?

Since then, many more players have joined the invite-only playtest, allowing them to get their first look at the project. Valve made the game public on Steam a few weeks ago but hasn’t given the game a release date. “Deadlock is a multiplayer game in early development," Valve wrote on the game’s Steam page.

[Read More]

An International Space Station Leak Is Getting Worse—and Keeping NASA Up at Night

US space officials do not like to talk about the perils of flying astronauts on the aging International Space Station, elements of which are now more than a quarter of a century old.

However, a new report confirms that NASA managers responsible for operating the space station are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station, essentially a tunnel that connects a larger module to a docking port, which is leaking.

[Read More]

How to Customize Your Home Screen With iOS 18

if you’re bored with your home screen, I have good news for you. With iOS 18, you can finally personalize it however you’d like. You can now change the color of app icons and widgets (and even match them to your wallpaper), change the size to make them look larger, and place them anywhere you’d like on the screen. Below, we break down all the simple steps on how to customize your home screen.

[Read More]
wired  gear 

These Record-Breaking New Solar Panels Produce 60 Percent More Electricity

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

THIS ARTICLE IS republished fromThe Conversationunder aCreative Commons license.

The sight of solar panels installed on rooftops and large energy farms has become commonplace in many regions around the world. Even in the gray and rainy UK, solar power is becoming a major player in electricity generation.

[Read More]

A Lawsuit From Backers of a ‘Startup City’ Could Bankrupt Honduras

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Years later, Luisa Connor and Vanessa Cárdenas would look back ruefully on the day foreigners visited their beachfront village with plans for a development next door. They had no idea the effort was backed by Silicon Valley billionaires who wanted to build a “startup city” or that a relatively new Honduran law would allow them to establish this semiautonomous enclave. They could not foresee they would lead a fight against it that would launch their village into national politics and prompt an international legal dispute, threatening to bankrupt the country. They thought it was just another hotel.

[Read More]