5 Best Sites to Learn the Basics of Music Theory

Advertisement Music makes the world go around, but do you actually know what it is? It’s one thing to say you enjoy music because you like listening to a lot of songs. It’s a whole different thing to really understand that music. If you love music and don’t know music theory, you’re doing yourself a great…

Westworld’s Creators Know Why Sci-Fi Is So Dystopian

Urs Hölzle and Google’s AI chip, the TPU 2.0.Cole Wilson for WIRED Urs Hölzle has a big job. As senior vice president of technical infrastructure at Google, he’s in charge of the hundreds of thousands of servers in data centers spread across the planet to power the company’s ever widening range of services. He’s also…

How Googlers Avoid Burnout (and Secretly Boost Creativity)

Adam*, is an engineer on Google’s self-driving car project (now its own division, called Waymo). He says the daily pace of work borders on fanatical. When he’s in the lab, the outside world disappears—we know this because he tells us so, and also because our text messages and emails to him almost always go unanswered….

6 ways to make the most of Android’s Clock app

Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got your Android phone handy? In the past year or so that I’ve relied on the Clock app on my Nexus 5X, I’ve rarely overslept. Now that I’ve got the hang of the Clock app’s various features and foibles, I’m close to replacing that "rarely" qualifier with a…

The time has come to remove Facebook from your life

Delete your Facebook account. No, but really.  This is not the exhortation of an internet troll, but rather the earnest advice of someone who has peered deep into the blue and white abyss and found only varying degrees of despair.  Facebook is unlike any other social media offering in numerous important ways, and while some…

PowerRay is an underwater drone for filmmakers or fishermen

The creator of the PowerEgg, an ovoid flying robot, has begun accepting orders for its newest creation, a submersible camera drone for home use. Dubbed the PowerRay, the waterproof device can find, attract and record fish. It operates at a depth of 30 meters, or about 98 feet, for up to four hours at a…

Courts Are Using AI to Sentence Criminals. That Must Stop Now

There is a stretch of highway through the Ozark Mountains where being data-driven is a hazard. WIRED OPINION About Jason Tashea (@justicecodes), a writer and technologist based in Baltimore, is the founder of Justice Codes, a criminal justice and technology consultancy. Heading from Springfield, Missouri, to Clarksville, Arkansas, navigation apps recommend the Arkansas 43. While…