WIRED goes on location--and on camera--with the cult hit. On March 16, 2026, at 5:45 pm in a leafy suburb of Atlanta called Sandy Springs, police pound on the door of a neglected French Country-style mansion, rifles at the ready, bodycams rolling. Minutes earlier, a distress call came from someone claiming to be hiding from a gunman in the mansion's downstairs bathroom. The dispatcher heard a gunshot ring out in the distance, then the line disconnected. "Open the door!" an officer yells. A calm young man with a mullet and woolly eyebrows steps out, hands raised. The police ask him who else is in the house. "Just my friends," he replies, as seven other young people, men and women, silently file out behind him, less evidently relaxed. They remain outside while two officers search the house. Inside the mansion there are no immediate signs of a massacre, but the decor alone arouses suspicion. All of the windows are frosted over, so only a chilly light leaks in. The place is a mess, and the walls are adorned with lurid, seemingly AI-generated art: a frowning baby holding an assault rifle, a rubber ducky bobbing in a mug of what looks like black coffee, a lidless and levitating eyeball crying into a martini glass. The rooms are painted primary colors, grass green and cherry red, like a kindergarten class. A vape dangles from a doorframe by a chain, suspended at mouth level. The pantry is practically empty. The bedroom is a dormitory featuring seven identical twin beds. No one is hiding in the bathroom. The call, it seems, was a prank. The police return to the driveway and ask, "What is it that you guys are doing here?" "We're just livestreaming," says a man in a camo hat named Matt. "You guys don't have any firearms or anything inside the house?" There are guns in the house, Matt says, for self-defense. Fans of their livestream can be obsessive, he explains, and tend to have perverse ideas about jokes. The officer asks to see their weapons, and they go downstairs. The room is cluttered with ergonomic swivel chairs, desks strewn with takeout containers and energy drinks, two flatscreen TVs, and a dozen computer monitors.

Since 2007 the Assassin's Creed series has allowed players to hack, slash and sneak their way through a range of historical settings. And the latest instalment, Shadows, creeping on to PS5, Xbox and PC from Thursday, grants fans' long-held wish for an adventure set in feudal Japan. It mixes the stealth gameplay of the recent Assassin's Creed Mirage with the combat-focused approach of mega-hit Valhalla and throws ninjas into the mix. But it's being seen by many as a make-or-break title for French publisher Ubisoft, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. After a lacklustre 2024, there's a lot of hope that the twice-delayed Shadows will replicate the sales of previous games in the Assassin's Creed series.

According to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – "single, but my dog is taken". He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants use to vie for 100,000, posting either as themselves, an embellished version of themselves or a fully fake identity, with ease. He seems so real," says Lauren, a fellow twentysomething hoping to build enough online alliances and secure enough positive peer reviews to win, upon seeing Max's profile. You just know the producers ate that up, because "Max" is the front for an AI chatbot, a new gimmick to up the ante in this middleweight reality show. The Circle has nowhere near the following of Love Island, but hasn't sunk to the bottom of the streaming service slush pile – and is the latest example of artificial intelligence's seemingly inexorable ...

Sony has unveiled an unusual mirrorless camera that essentially marries the FX6 cinema camera's tech with remote-controlled robotics. Called the FR7, it's the "world's first" pan-tilt-zoom full-frame interchangeable-lens camera with pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) robotic technology, according to the company. Priced at nearly $10,000 without a lens, it's designed for professional productions including reality shows, concerts, dramas, music videos and more. For instance, it could be mounted on dolly tracks, a crane or a tripod and remotely follow subjects around without getting in the way. It could also be fixed to a vehicle, with the pan-tilt-zoom capabilities giving the director more interesting angles and shots. The large sensor allows for a more cinematic image than typical robotic TV cameras, too.

In her 2018 book "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture," Racquel Gates explores the disruptive potential of stereotypical or so-called negative images of Black people onscreen: Flavor Flav on VH1's "Flavor of Love," for example, and the stars of "ratchet" reality shows such as "Basketball Wives." These images, Gates argues, intervene against narratives of racial uplift that are overly tethered to white and middle-class definitions of respectability. In her acknowledgments section, Gates, a professor of film and media studies at Columbia, invokes a scene from "Love & Hip Hop," in which an aspiring singer tells an entertainment manager, "I want to be on your roster." Gates writes, "While I was tempted to quote this bit of dialogue to my editor, Ken Wissoker, during our first meeting, I erred on the side of caution." Wissoker, who has been an editor at Duke University Press since 1991, has a formidable roster, and one could easily imagine a reality show about junior scholars fighting for a chance to work with him.

Titled "The Sims Spark'd," the show premieres July 17 at 11 p.m. ET. The show aims to bring "creativity, storytelling, and the community together in an entertaining new way," according to a press release sent to The Washington Post. Contestants will be given a slew of different challenges where they build specific characters, worlds and stories within "The Sims 4″ in an allotted time. Each round will bring eliminations, and the winner takes home $100,000 prize money.

I have 34 years as an engineer here at Intel. Almost all but about the last, I don't know, four or five has been mainly on the manufacturing side; all of our silicon manufacturing. Which, in many ways makes you a maker because you're producing a million chips a day. When I look at a 3D printer, I look at it as not only what can I build with it, but I understand exactly how that machine works. I could take it apart and put it back together.