*An entire subculture swapping semilegal gaming substances in here, ladies and gentlemen:
WIRED Ghost Stories
Five hauntings from the other side of technology.
Sony Wants You to Forget About Discs With Its Gorgeous Transparent Controllers
Sony has new, spiffy see-through controllers and covers for its PlayStation 5 that let you see the hardware guts inside.
Boone Ashworth
How the Xbox’s Disc-to-Digital Program Works
Microsoft is letting players digitize their game discs for free, but don't sell your physical collection just yet.
Matt Kamen
I Made Terrible Games With Google’s AI Playground
A long day’s haul in the video game slop mines.
Boone Ashworth
Gaming Can’t Afford More Games the Size of Grand Theft Auto VI
Between crushing layoffs, ballooning budgets, and bland end products, video game makers need to stop chasing AAA glory.
Matt Kamen
Please Let the Internet Die
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.
Miles Klee
Bluesky Is Blocking Links to a Major Leak of DHS Employee Records
Bluesky tells WIRED it blocked links to a leaked archive of information on 41,000 ICE, CBP, and other DHS workers because it contains people’s contact information, shared without their authorization.
Dhruv Mehrotra
People Are Creating ‘Survival Guides’ to Cope With the ‘AO3 Apocalypse’
The fanfic site could be down for weeks due to a “security incident.” Users are not taking it well.
Ej Dickson
Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race
The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.
Joel Khalili
A Supply Chain Attack Put Malicious Anthropic Claude Extensions on Thousands of Devices
Thanks to a lucky break, flawed code in a tainted Claude extension prevented the attacker from fully worming their way into some 5,000 developer machines.
Lily Hay Newman
‘Nightmare Scenario’: Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads
Researchers at The Citizen Lab have for the first time released technical evidence of sophisticated mercenary spyware being distributed via online advertising.
Matt Burgess
The Pentagon Hopes to Speed Up ‘Kill Chain’ AI Buys With 5-Minute Videos
The US government’s Tradewinds initiative has made it easier to throw millions of dollars at “nontraditional” defense contractors, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Maddy Varner