ON THIS WEEK’S episode of Have a Nice Future, Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to the chief intelligence officer of Estonia, Luukas Ilves, about the country’s completely online government. In Estonia, citizens can access any government service, including voting, online. What would it take to create that kind of digital infrastructure in the United States?

Check out our coverage of government, politics, and voting. Read about why the US might look to Estonia to bolster cybersecurity and Estonia’s plan to use AI in the courtroom.

Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Gideon Lichfield is @glichfield. Bling the main hotline at

On the busy streets of suburban Berlin, just south of Tempelhofer Feld, a white Kia is skillfully navigating double-parked cars, roadworks, cyclists, and pedestrians. Dan, the driver, strikes up a conversation with his passengers, remarking on the changing traffic lights and the sound of an ambulance screaming past in the other direction. But Dan isn’t in the car.

Instead, he’s half a mile away at the offices of German startup Vay. The company kits its cars out with radar, GPS, ultrasound, and an array of other sensors to allow drivers like Dan to control the vehicles remotely from a purpose-built station equipped with a driver’s seat, steering wheel, pedals, and

It’s a perennial question at WIRED: Tech got us into this mess, can it get us out? That’s particularly true when it comes to climate change. As the weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, there are hopes that artificial intelligence—that other existential threat—might be part of the solution.

DeepMind, the Google-owned artificial intelligence lab, has been using its AI expertise to tackle the climate change problem in three different ways, as Sims Witherspoon, DeepMind’s climate action lead, explained in an interview ahead of her talk at WIRED Impact in London on November 21. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

WIRED: How can AI help us tackle climate change?

Sims

On December 25, 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail entered the grounds of Windsor Castle dressed as a Sith Lord, carrying a crossbow. When security approached him, Chail told them he was there to “kill the queen.”

Later, it emerged that the 21-year-old had been spurred on by conversations he’d been having with a chatbot app called Replika. Chail had exchanged more than 5,000 messages with an avatar on the app—he believed the avatar, Sarai, could be an angel. Some of the bot’s replies encouraged his plotting.

In February 2023, Chail pleaded guilty to a charge of treason; on October 5, a judge sentenced him to nine

Community Notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking program launched a year ago to tackle disinformation on X (formerly Twitter), has flown under the radar for much of its existence. But in the past week it has been heralded by Elon Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino as a key tool in tackling the toxic deluge of disinformation that has flooded social media, and in particular X, during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

On Saturday, the company wrote on its own platform that “notes across the platform are now being seen tens of millions of times per day, generating north of 85 million impressions in the last week.”

There’s much, much more to the rainforest than meets the eye. Even a highly trained observer can struggle to pick out individual animals in the tangle of plant life—animals that are often specifically adapted to hide from their enemies. Listen to the music of the forest, though, and you can get a decent idea of the species by their chirps, croaks, and grunts.

This is why scientists are increasingly bugging rainforests with microphones—a burgeoning field known as bioacoustics—and using AI to automatically parse sounds to identify species. Writing today in the journal Nature Communications, researchers describe a proof-of-concept project in the lowland Chocó region of Ecuador that shows the potential

A year ago, the US government introduced chip sanctions aimed at hobbling China’s ability to develop advanced artificial intelligence. But those sanctions had loopholes that allowed Chinese firms to keep buying and building chips used to train some of the world’s most advanced AI algorithms. Today, the US announced it is tightening controls to try to close those gaps.

The new restrictions, announced by the Commerce Department, also impose new rules for reporting the sales of other types of advanced chips, new controls on sales of advanced chipmaking equipment and design software, and statutes to prevent Chinese companies from obtaining chips through foreign subsidiaries.

“This

Every month seems to bring new sets of earbuds with longer battery life and more compact designs. As such, we can’t list everything we like. But if you’re still hunting, here are some other recommendations.

OnePlus Buds Pro for $130: These AirPods-esque earbuds sound great, look great, and work just about the same as the Apple product, though they’re designed for Android. If you want that, go ahead. I just happen to think some of the designs above are much sleeker.

JBL Tour Pro 2 for $250: When I first saw photos of these headphones at CES 2023, I

This month, the Cambodian government reported that two people there died of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1 bird flu, after being exposed to infected poultry. For people, the risk of getting infected is low, but outbreaks in animals have been rising worldwide, wiping out chicken flocks and wild bird populations. The virus is devastating to poultry producers, who are forced to slaughter infected flocks.

A growing number of countries are starting to vaccinate chickens against bird flu, while the United States and United Kingdom are still holding out because of uncertainties about immunization’s cost and effectiveness. Meanwhile, researchers in the UK have come up with another possible approach to

Google’s Pixel phones are our favorite Android phones here at WIRED, and they have been for a few years. They have industry-leading cameras, get speedy software and security updates directly from Google (like iPhones do from Apple), and are priced competitively. But choosing the right model can be tricky. Should you get the Pixel 7A? The Pixel 8? What about the crazy-expensive Pixel Fold? 

Don’t fret—here we break down the differences between the best Pixel phones and sort out the right one for you. We also have Pixel-exclusive tips to help you get the most out of your new phone, and we recommend some cases and accessories we’ve tested if