WIRED spoke with EA’s director of inclusive design about the business case for diversity, and how they rolled out Battlefield 2042’s first nonbinary character.

Big vessels spew sulfur, which brightens clouds to produce long “ship tracks.” These emissions cause environmental damage—but also help cool the planet.

Even if you’re not a developer, this reasonably priced, user-repairable Linux laptop from HP has plenty of attractive features.

Bloomberg: Apple announces a rare retail discount for the iPhone 13 Pro series, select AirPods, and Watches in China between July 29 and August 1  —  Apple Inc. announced a rare retail promotion in China on Monday, offering four days of discounts on its top-tier iPhones and related accessories in advance …

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: London-based Altruistiq, which offers SaaS tools to help companies analyze and reduce their carbon emissions, raised a £15M seed led by Molten Ventures  —  Eschewing the carbon counting and trading, London’s Altruistiq is going it’s own way and targeting the traditional bad actors …

Yogita Khatri / The Block: Bitfinex and Tether partner with P2P infrastructure developer Hypercore to launch the Holepunch protocol and peer-to-peer encrypted video calling app Keet  —  – Bitfinex and Tether have launched Keet: a peer-to-peer video calling app.  — The two companies have invested $10 million to date …

From smart collars to dog backpacks, we’ve had our furry best friends try it all. These gadgets lead the pack.

The next time someone wants to borrow your device to make a call or take a picture, take these steps to protect your privacy.

Chris Feliciano Arnold / Bloomberg: An in-depth look at the research collaboration between NASA and the FAA since 2017 to write new US airspace rules for safely accommodating millions of drones  —  “Please stay clear of the flight line,” warns Keith Hyde, director of U.S. operations for Wing.

New York Times: How Apple, Amazon, and Google are trying to win live sports streaming rights by persuading skeptical leagues to switch from traditional TV and cable networks  —  Competing for rights to broadcast games from the N.F.L. and other leagues could be hard for broadcast and cable companies that “aren’t playing by the same […]

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: the new “Pro” Apple Watch will have a ~7% larger screen, a new design, and a case with a more durable formulation of titanium to make it extra rugged  —  Apple is set to report earnings this week against the backdrop of an economic downturn and a plan to slow […]

Post within the two-minute window to share off-the-cuff photos with your friends—and the world.

Living organisms leave a huge geochemical imprint on the planet, a new taxonomic system reveals. It might help identify other worlds with life.

Connected car companies now charge owners to use physical hardware they already bought—but some are pushing back.

Karen Hao / Wall Street Journal: How China’s mass collection of personal info and its new, unevenly enforced data security rules contribute to a thriving underground market for stolen data  —  Government’s mass collection of personal information aids social control but undermines national security, cybersecurity researchers say

Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post: How the nearly two-year-old chip shortage upended Detroit’s car manufacturing, which a historian says may be the biggest disruption since the 1970s fuel crisis  —  The worst crisis for automakers in 50 years has left dealerships with little to sell as prices soar for consumers  —  Listen

Gilad Edelman / Wired: A look at the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which privacy experts say might finally give the US a strong federal data protection law  —  A bill with bipartisan support might finally give the US a strong federal data protection law.  —  Usually, when Congress is working …

The root vegetable cassava is a major food staple in dozens of countries across the world. Drought-resistant, nutritious, and tasty, it has also become a major source of income for small-scale, rural farmers in places like West Africa and Southeast Asia. But the utility of cassava has always been limited by its short postharvest shelf […]

Plus: The FCC cracks down on car warranty robocalls, Thai activists get targeted by NSO’s Pegasus, and the Russia-Ukraine cyberwar continues.

Plus: Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event returns, Amazon hoovers up some health care, and Facebook prizes growth above all else.

Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review: Gamers in China, where online porn is banned, are using the Steam app Wallpaper Engine as a cloud drive and a video player to exchange adult-only content  —  Wallpaper Engine has become a haven for ingenious Chinese users who use it to smuggle adult content as desktop wallpaper.  But […]

Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal: DoorDash and Uber Eats are moving beyond food, focusing on groceries and alcohol, as users cut spending due to high inflation and a potential economic downturn  —  Delivery apps look to move beyond food as they face high inflation, a potential economic downturn  —  Grubhub CEO on the Postpandemic […]

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: Uber admits it failed to inform the FTC of the November 2016 hack that affected 57M passengers and drivers, as part of a settlement to avoid US criminal charges  —  Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) on Friday accepted responsibility for covering up a 2016 data breach that affected 57 million passengers …

It’s a little more expensive, but this hair tool can dry and style your locks with less heat and in less time.

The cute exterior hides an ultra-short range, poor infotainment system, and substandard driving experience.

A long history of constraining the river through levees has led to massive land loss in its delta. Can people engineer a way out?

Kaoruko Ishibushi / Rest of World: Survey of 14K delivery drivers in Japan: most work 40 hours or less per week, 63% are satisfied with work, 82% would keep their jobs “for a while” or “forever”  —  Platform work has freed people from oppressive workplace culture.  For now.  —  • TOKYO, JAPAN

David Segal / New York Times: A look at Ukraine’s thriving tech sector amid war; National Bank of Ukraine: tech firms brought in $3.1B in revenue from January to May 2022, up from $2.5B YoY  —  Ukrainian technology companies have earned billions.  But with most executives unable to meet foreign clients, the good times may […]

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: A South Carolina bill would make it illegal to host, or provide access to, a website with information that is “reasonably likely to be used for an abortion”  —  More states could follow, setting up a battle over the future of online speech across the country.  —  Listen  —  Gift […]

It’s been one year since the harassment lawsuit that rocked the games industry. Employees say the company hasn’t changed enough.

In Slaying the Dragon, author Ben Riggs goes deep into the backstory of TSR to reveal a company in disarray.

There are dozens of ways to tote around your photo and video gear. We’ve tested more than 60 packs and have rounded up our favorites.

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology: Google fires engineer Blake Lemoine, who believed Google’s LaMDA conversational technology was sentient, citing employment and data security policy violations  —  Google has fired Blake Lemoine, the engineer who said he believed the company’s LaMDA conversational technology was sentient.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: T-Mobile agrees to pay $350M to settle a class action lawsuit over a cyberattack in 2021 that impacted 76M+ customers and pledges $150M in security investments  —  T-Mobile agreed Friday to pay $350 million to settle class-action lawsuits brought over an August 2021 cyberattack …

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: Entrust, an ID management company used by US Treasury, DHS, and others, confirms it was breached by a ransomware gang in June which stole internal data  —  Digital security giant Entrust has confirmed that it suffered a cyberattack where threat actors breached their network and stole data from internal systems.

Researchers experimenting with OpenAI’s text-to-image tool, DALL-E 2, noticed that it seems to covertly be adding words such as “black” and “female” to image prompts, seemingly in an effort to diversify its output

The development of high-speed strobe-flash photography in the 1960s by the late MIT professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton allowed us to visualize events too fast for the eye — a bullet piercing an apple, or a droplet hitting a pool of milk. Now, by using a suite of advanced spectroscopic tools, scientists at MIT and University […]

A research-backed guide to challenging groupthink.

Researchers found that companies assume talented men will job hop to further their careers, while talented women will stay loyal.

A new report finds LGBTQ+ employees are more likely to face mental health challenges at work — but are also positioned to champion better policies for everyone.

The Dark Knight has some pretty neat gear—but his gadget-enabled stunts require some juice.

Breville’s new countertop air fryer oven can be controlled by a mobile app. Unlike with many other connected appliances, that’s a good thing.

In-house gaming technology specialists play with and support the youngest patients. Plus, research shows that playtime gives literal health points.

Megha Paul / Tech.eu: Finland-based IQM, which is building on-premises quantum computers for supercomputing data centres and research labs, raises a €128M Series A2  —  The Finnish startup, building superconducting quantum computers for HPC centres, research institutes and businesses, will use the funding …

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu / Protocol: A look at Meta’s $150M Meta Immersive Learning project, through which it has partnered with Iowa-based VR startup VictoryXR to create 10 “metaversities”  —  During her inorganic chemistry class at Morehouse College in the spring of 2021, Dr. Muhsinah Morris launched a little experiment.

Rest of World: Instagram-based thrift stores in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal are making used clothes popular, even desirable, among young shoppers  —  Instagram-based thrift stores in South Asia are making used clothes popular — even desirable — among young shoppers.

An analysis of search results in the US and Germany found that the top 10 results from Google and other search engines differ widely

About a decade ago, deep-learning models started achieving superhuman results on all sorts of tasks, from beating world-champion board game players to outperforming doctors at diagnosing breast cancer. These powerful deep-learning models are usually based on artificial neural networks, which were first proposed in the 1940s and have become a popular type of machine learning. […]

This affordable midrange phone checks off all the boxes but no longer has a sizable lead with its camera and software support.

While cybersecurity and foreign meddling remain priorities, domestic threats against election workers have risen to the top of the list.