Wired

Over the past few years, the United States has become the go-to location for companies seeking to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. There are a handful of demonstration-scale direct air capture (DAC) plants dotted across the globe, but the facilities planned in Louisiana and Texas are of a different scale: They aim to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year, rather than the dozens of tons or less captured by existing systems.

The thing about family, Josh Johnson wants me to know, as he scoots closer and angles his phone in my direction, is that they suck at boundaries.

It’s morning in New York City, a pinch shy of noon, and we are on the subject of family because Johnson’s phone won’t stop buzzing. At first I assume it’s work, and I want to ask if this is a common occurrence now, if his recent rise to semi-stardom has prompted a wave of attention. I want to know how he’s handling it, or not. I want to hear what has changed for him, and if his dad’s passing, in 2016, afforded him any perspective.

An unprecedented wave of small blasts erupted across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring nearly 2,800 after the wireless pagers of Hezbollah members began exploding, according to local officials.

Pagers started exploding at around 3:30 pm local time, according to a statement from Hezbollah officials, who say that “various Hezbollah units and institutions” were impacted in the incident. The blasts continued for more than an hour, according to Reuters. A Hezbollah statement says a “large” number of people were injured and said they suffered from a wide variety of injuries.

A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of singed metal, fell out of the night sky early on Sunday morning and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico not all that far from Key West.

The darkened waters there were carefully chosen from among dozens of potential landing spots near Florida. This is because the wind and seas were predicted to be especially calm and serene as the Crew Dragon spacecraft named Resilience floated down to the sea and bobbed gently, awaiting the arrival of a recovery ship.

Mark, a 64-year-old with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, uses Amazon Alexa all the time using his voice. But now, thanks to a brain implant, he can also control the virtual assistant with his mind.

ALS affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control over time. Mark, who asked that his last name not be used, has limited mobility as a result of his condition. He can walk and talk but has no use of his arms and hands. As part of a clinical trial, he received a brain-computer interface, or BCI, made by startup Synchron in August 2023.

Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected gunman involved in an apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida on Sunday, was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction more than 20 years ago.

“I figured he was either dead or in prison by now,” Tracy Fulk, the charging officer in the case, tells WIRED. “I had no clue that he had moved on and was continuing his escapades.”

The original version ofthis storyappeared in Quanta Magazine.

To understand the universe, scientists look to its outliers. “You always want to know about the extreme cases—the special cases that lie at the edge,” said Carsten Gundlach, a mathematical physicist at the University of Southampton.

Black holes are the enigmatic extremes of the cosmos. Within them, matter is packed so tightly that, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, nothing can escape. For decades, physicists and mathematicians have used them to probe the limits of their ideas about gravity, space, and time.

On Monday, United States prosecutors in Sacramento, California, unveiled a 15-count indictment accusing Dallas Erin Humber, 34, and Matthew Robert Allison, 37, of serving as core members of a virulent neo-Nazi propaganda network that solicited attacks on federal officials, power infrastructure, people of color, and material support for acts of terrorism both within the US and overseas.

The group, known as the Terrorgram Collective, has produced four publications to date—a blend of ideological motivation, mass murder worship, neofascist indoctrination, and how-to manuals for chemical weapons attacks, infrastructure sabotage, and ethnic cleansing. The screeds have directly inspired a series of ideologically motivated attacks around the world, including a 2022 mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia; successful attacks on power infrastructure in North Carolina and similar failed plots in Baltimore and New Jersey; and a stabbing spree in the Turkish city of Eskisehir.

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In Hollywood, the present is the future is the past. Twin strikes shut down production for six months last year, and with its workforce still on ice, the entertainment industry has been slow to recover. Domestic box-office revenue is expected to be 30 percent lower this year compared to 2019. By 2028, cable TV subscriptions are expected to decline by 10 million. And with the looming acquisition of Paramount Global by Skydance Media, the future of Hollywood is as it ever was: reliably uncertain. As one studio executive described it to the Los Angeles Times, it’s “something of an existential question mark.”

An election denial group is planning to create what one of its founders calls “a dropbox surveillance reality show” by donating “AI-driven” cameras to sheriffs in Wisconsin and other states to livestream drop boxes and remotely monitor people voting.

While WIRED found no evidence that the group has been able to recruit sheriffs or others to implement their scheme, local officials in charge of running elections in Wisconsin are concerned that round-the-clock surveillance could spur potential voter intimidation.