Perl was once everywhere. Or at least it felt that way. Around the turn of the millennium, it seemed that almost every website was built on the back of this scripting language. It processed massive amounts of text—mechanisms for doing this powerfully and easily were part of the language—and it was even used in bioinformatics, munging and churning through genetic data. Based on one list, the companies that used Perl ranged widely: Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Deutsche Bank, Akamai, Citibank, Comcast, Morgan Stanley, Mozilla. A lot of Craigslist was programmed in Perl.

Even at its peak use, the popularity of Perl was always a bit surprising. Perl

It’s a dark November night in Los Angeles. The car in front is lit by its rear lights only. After driving for 20 miles, it stops, suddenly, in the middle of the street. A man in a dark T-shirt gets out and runs toward an apartment. A woman appears and jumps up, wrapping her legs around him. They start making out before going to get tacos and, later, returning to her place.

At 6 am the next morning his car is still outside the woman’s apartment. A few hours later, they emerge holding hands, heading to a local farmer’s market where they kiss and hug publicly.

The whole time, a private

A team of astronomers from the University of Montreal has discovered a new potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf star L 98-59, 35 light-years from Earth. This discovery means there are now five confirmed planets in this solar system’s “temperate” or “habitable” zone, the region in a solar system where liquid water could exist on planets’ surfaces.

The newly discovered planet, called “L 98-59 f,” managed to evade previous observations because it doesn’t pass between Earth and its star when orbiting, known as “transiting.” Planets that transit their host stars are easier to spot, because the mini-eclipses they create when passing across the face of their star can be

Why does OpenAI’s monthly subscription for ChatGPT Pro cost $200? Because CEO Sam Altman said so. “I personally chose the price and thought we would make some money,” Altman wrote on X.

Launched late last year, the plan designed for power users includes almost unlimited access to ChatGPT as well as first dibs on feature launches, like OpenAI’s new agent. The plan attracted, well, power users. A month after its initial release, Altman claimed OpenAI was still losing money on the all-you-can-eat subscription.

Even though Altman admitted the $200 monthly tier was a money-loser, the release set a precedent and ushered in the vibe-based pricing era for

Familiar is a new woman-founded sex toy company that launched earlier this year, and it only sells three sex toys at the moment. None of them are what I’d call standard fare—there’s the Aurora, a dual G-spot and clitoral stimulator with an alien-like shape, and the Orbit, a wand vibrator with a unique round ball head. But the Nebula intrigued me the most.

Unlike most vibrators that come assembled, the Nebula is so big—even bigger than the Le Wand Dive, by a little over four inches in length—that it came in two pieces. It also came with a small (and matching!) remote control, a magnetic proprietary

It’s ironic, but we here at WIRED have long been wireless charging fans. Not having to fumble with cables is nice! Most wireless charging devices these days follow the Qi (pronounced chee) standard, which has taken its time reaching ubiquity. (The user experience has not always been great.) The Wireless Power Consortium, which manages the charging protocol, announced the next-generation version called Qi2 in early 2023. Qi2 wireless charging promises perfect alignment, with the potential for accessories to bridge the Android and iPhone divide.

Sadly, Qi2 has not rolled out as quickly or widely as we expected. While every iPhone (from the 12 series on) supports Qi2 now, there was

Honorable Mentions

As we said, WIRED runners pound hundreds of miles every year. Here are a few of the other shoes we’ve tested that you might want to consider if the above do not work for your foot. If you’re not familiar with a brand, we recommend going to a local running store for a test run before plunking down your credit card.

Diadora Nucleo 2 for $165: The Nucleo 2 isn’t a wow, high-energy, super springy shoe. But if you’re a fan of straightforward, no nonsense comfort and good inherent stability across a good range of paces, the Nucleo 2

The main way to tell how old a TV is? Look at the bezels. Until about 10 years ago, they were thick picture frames, but they’ve slowly gotten smaller and smaller as the models turned over. With its new QM8K QLED, TCL has removed them entirely.

Innovations in panel design mean that this blindingly bright screen looks like it’s floating in space on its pedestal mount. It’s a classy party trick that makes it easy to hide on the wall with images or artwork on it, and it improves the viewing angle to boot.

This flagship model costs a pretty penny more than TCL’s other value-first options, but that’s for good

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last Theorem, a central problem in number theory that had remained open for over three centuries. The proof didn’t just enthral mathematicians—it made the front page of The New York Times.

But to accomplish it, Wiles (with help from the mathematician Richard Taylor) first had to prove a more subtle intermediate statement—one with implications that extended beyond Fermat’s puzzle.

This intermediate proof involved showing that an important kind of equation called an elliptic curve can always be tied