When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Anker's reliable 60W USB-C cables are down to $4 each in this 2-pack Woot deal, with a 4-pack option for even less. These days, your USB-C cables should be rated for 60W minimum. There's no excuse to suffer slower charging, especially when you can grab a 2-pack of Anker 60W USB-C cables for $8 . Unless you've already stocked up on 100W or 240W cables, this Woot deal is a no-brainer--and you can save even more if you opt for the 4-pack for $14.

Plus: The US House has passed new youth online safety legislation. AI agents are not your "coworkers" Imagine coming in to work to learn that a new underling will report to you. The worker is not a person but an AI tool--one that your company nonetheless calls Alex, an "employee" with a title and defined responsibilities. How well do you think you would work with Alex? If you're anything like the managers studied by Boston University professor Emma Wiles, treating that AI as a coworker would lead you to do a worse job. They caught 18% fewer errors when the work was attributed to an agentic AI employee rather than a chatbot. This is an alarming glimpse of the future Silicon Valley is hurling us toward.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

Agriculture is ready for AI, but its data isn't Data accuracy, structure, and governance are foundational components required for agricultural AI. Artificial intelligence is transforming what is possible in agriculture, but industry leaders should be wary of investing in AI without first laying the groundwork. The use cases are promising, especially for an industry navigating volatile fertilizer costs, unpredictable weather, and margins that leave little room for error. Research shows AI-enabled predictive models can improve crop yield by 26%, reduce water use by 41%, and cut chemical usage by 33%. However, what AI vendors usually won't tell you is that these solutions are only effective if you have a clean, solid data foundation. However, at Reltio, we have experience in this area, including leading technology strategy at a major agricultural distributor and building a data platform used by enterprises worldwide-we've seen it first hand.

San Francisco's brightest minds are stuffing themselves into hacker houses. The living room of the Accler8 hacker house in San Francisco, where the author stayed for a week. O n a Friday in April, I hopped into an Uber to a fish market in San Francisco with a couple of tech founders on a mission to buy lobsters. Not for dinner, but for science: The duo dreamed of one day altering human consciousness, but they would start by toying around with some crustaceans. They intended to perform neurosurgery on the lobsters in the hopes of controlling them with an AI bot. Leading the way was Elliot Roth, a bearded 32-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with Longevity printed across the chest and a silver chain with a double-helix pendant. To push the boundaries of the five senses, Roth has implanted a magnet in his left ring finger.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG . Midjourney's wild body scanner scans you in water Debt collection letter for debt you don't owe?

Bitdefender VPN has an excellent starting price, even if it lacks the advanced features that privacy nerds may want. Lacks the most advanced privacy features. Pricing is less attractive after the first year. The internet is thick with VPN services . So thick, in fact, that it can feel a bit suspicious--and send you running back toward more familiar companies.

This story appears in the August 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst believe the future doesn't have to belong to slop. The art was way too heavy. In mid-March, the artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst were preparing an installation to coincide with the Venice Biennale, the prestigious international art festival, but the execution was becoming tricky. They wanted to suspend sculptures of a trippy cityscape upside down from the ceiling of an 18th-century palazzo. But the construction material they envisioned-- 3-D-printed sand--would weigh tons, which was more than the antique building could bear. The sculptures, they realized, might fall and crush someone. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. This was a rather analog problem for a married couple widely seen as technological prophets. Herndon, 46, and Dryhurst, 41, have reached the upper echelons of the art world thanks to a media-spanning output--music, images, software, and reams of commentary--with a cybernetic bent. They are high culture's most influential exponents of artificial intelligence, an invention that many people believe spells doom for the arts but that they think could lead to a renaissance. I met them on a cold, bright Tuesday in Berlin.

For decades, the senator has argued that concentrated wealth threatened American democracy. Now he's betting that frustration with Big Tech, billionaires, and unchecked AI is reaching a tipping point. It's hard to believe Bernie Sanders . Not because the longtime Vermont senator bears the hallmarks of a liar. Yes, he's a career politician, but the 84-year-old progressive torchbearer counts more viral memes than scandals to his name. Rather, it's hard to believe Bernie Sanders because, for decades, he's told Americans that this country can radically change, while championing ideas too far afield from the status quo to really have a chance. He wants to bring billionaires to heel, for one. And implement universal, government-run health care. If Sanders had his way, it wouldn't even exist. I believe it, and WIRED champions it. Sanders, though, is now hard at work adding one more big, improbable change to the pile: Since 2023, he's been advocating for firm and decisive regulation of the AI industry . In March of this year, Sanders and his frequent collaborator, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, proposed legislation that would halt data center construction until a series of safeguards are implemented. In June, Sanders announced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would essentially tax AI's richest companies and result in direct payments to American citizens. I wanted to talk to Sanders about those bills, and his perspective on AI more broadly. On a deeper level, though, I was curious about how Sanders sees the barriers to regulation--from tech oligarchs and deep-pocketed super PACs, to a federal administration happier to enrich itself via technology than actually govern it--and whether he thinks those seemingly intractable obstacles can be overcome. After a few months of haranguing, Sanders agreed to sit down, which is how I found myself in his modest DC campaign office watching the senator--thoughtful, genuine, vociferous as ever--grapple in real time with what he describes as "the most consequential, transformational technology in the history of humanity." Sanders and I spoke on Tuesday, June 23, as the New York Democratic primary was underway. I woke up the next day, our conversation echoing in my head, to find that a coalition of democratic socialists had swept their respective elections and sent party stalwarts into an existential tailspin. A few hours later, New Jersey representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, became the most mainstream member of the party to publicly support an AI data center moratorium .

Zurich has created a technology ecosystem nearing the density of Silicon Valley. Few places outside Silicon Valley can claim R&D hubs from all of these companies. Fewer still are concentrated in a city of just over 400,000 people--roughly half the size of San Francisco. Over the past two decades, however, many of the world's most influential technology companies have established R&D operations in and around Zurich, Switzerland. What began with Google's decision to build its largest R&D hub outside the United States has evolved into one of the world's most concentrated centers for AI research, talent, and commercialization, in certain areas at a higher density than Silicon Valley. The question is why so many technology leaders keep choosing the same place to build and scale.