The tarantula hawk is actually a kind of solitary wasp, with a sting that causes a fiercely electric pain that could only be described as totally unacceptable. The post Absurd Creature of the Week: If This Wasp Stings You, ‘Just Lie Down and Start Screaming’ appeared first on WIRED.

Every week, WIRED Security rounds up the vulnerabilities and privacy updates you may have missed. The post Security News This Week: Your VPN Probably Isn’t Private appeared first on WIRED.

The fireworks that go boom so colorfully every Fourth of July are a chemical cocktail of explosives and pigments. The post What’s Inside Fireworks: Glitter, Starch, and Gunpowder appeared first on WIRED.

Each of James Boock's analog objects creates a different sound effect---tremolo, reverb, delay, and voice modulation---just as a digital tool might. The post Colorful Contraptions Show How Musicians Make Sound Effects appeared first on WIRED.

The A-10 Warthog is a hammer. But sometimes you need to hit some nails. The post Yo Air Force: Don’t You Dare Kill Off Our Toughest Warplane appeared first on WIRED.

This week's music video roundup has everything: love stories, ice cream cones, and Kendrick Lamar. The post Audio Visuals: These Ice Cream Cones Sure Are Emotional appeared first on WIRED.

Scientists are using a combination of outer space technology and crowdsourced observations to map the location of aurora. The post The ‘Aurorasaurus’ Maps This Year’s Spectacular Auroras appeared first on WIRED.

All eyes are focused on Comic-Con International these days, but a few superhero movie tidbits have come out in the lead-up to the big event anyway. The post Cape Watch: Which Black Panther Will We Get in Captain America, Anyway? appeared first on WIRED.

We interviewed some of the smartest people we know at the WIRED Business Conference in May to get a read on what they are most worried about vis à vis humanity’s relationship with technology. The widening wealth gap, as well as the lack of diversity among the ranks of those employed in the tech industry, […] The post #DiversityFail: More Representative Mix of Humans Should Make Tech appeared first on WIRED.

Let’s use an animation to estimate the mass of Pluto! The post Calculating Pluto’s Mass With Snapshots From New Horizons appeared first on WIRED.

Great technology always seems to weave its way seamlessly into our lives without us giving it a second thought. We originally adopted smartphones with no sense of the life-altering conveniences they’d offer–such as untethering us from our homes and offices–and for many, it’s now hard to imagine life without one. But tech is no panacea […] The post ICYMI: June’s #maketechhuman Debate Tackled Google, NSA, and Cyberwarfare appeared first on WIRED.

Open-world games like Batman: Arkham Knight don't unfurl on objective timescales, nor should they. The post No, Batman: Arkham Knight’s Stories Aren’t Broken appeared first on WIRED.

On Tuesday, LiquiGlide announced that it will use its super-slippery coating inside mayonnaise bottles---the perfect match for its viral ketchup-pouring video. The post The Physics Behind Those No-Stick Ketchup and Mayo Bottles appeared first on WIRED.

The Israeli artist Itamar Gilboa tracked how much he and and drank, then cast all of it in plaster. The post An Artist Sculpted Everything He Ate in a Year appeared first on WIRED.

The privacy of countless website owners is at risk, thanks to a proposal in front of the byzantine organization at the heart of the Internet: ICANN. The post An Unassuming Web Proposal Would Make Harassment Easier appeared first on WIRED.

From DIY fireworks to blowing up a car, the Pyrotechnics Guild International Convention is where the excitement's at. The post These Fireworks Fanatics Sure Know How to Blow Stuff Up appeared first on WIRED.

The latest humans vs. Skynet flick is a cat's cradle of confusing storylines, but it's also a decent way to spend two hours. The post Go See Terminator Genisys—Then Promptly Forget About It appeared first on WIRED.

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman has done his fair share of thinking about how drought conditions factor into our food decisions. The post Mark Bittman Wants You to Know the Drought Isn’t Your Fault appeared first on WIRED.

Pot, meet kettle. As Britain joins other Wassenaar nations in calling to prevent spying against human rights workers, it turns out it has been spying on Amnesty International. The post UK Gets Ironic by Spying on Amnesty International appeared first on WIRED.

Facebook has a new logo. It is, unfortunately, a bit plain. Turns out, that was the idea. The post Facebook’s Vanilla New Logo Is About Business, Not Design appeared first on WIRED.

A new earthquake swarm started off the coast of Iceland, the radius around a Japanese volcano has been evacuated, and the Fuego volcano in Guatemala has a plume more than three miles high! The post Eruption Update: Quake Swarms Hit Iceland, Japan Rumbles appeared first on WIRED.

To try to cut down on accidents, the Federal Railroad Administration is sharing data on all the country's grade crossings with Google Maps. The post Google Maps Could Make Train Crossings Less Deadly appeared first on WIRED.

Was the Blockbuster Fourth of July Weekend a moviegoer myth all along? Our WIRED Entertainment Podcast team is on the case. The post Entertainment Podcast: The Biggest Blockbuster This July 4th Is…Magic Mike XXL appeared first on WIRED.

Strap in for one of the most radically entertaining shows ever. The post WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: Queer as Folk appeared first on WIRED.

For the first time, researchers are able to link comet activity---the tendency for their jets to spew ice, dust, and gas into the cosmos---to features on a space rock's surface. The post Rosetta Found Sinkholes on the Surface of Its Comet appeared first on WIRED.

And this time around, Steve speaks. The post Trailer: Fassbender Fully Commits to This Steve Jobs Thing appeared first on WIRED.

Proving the artist’s case could come down to the minutiae of the shades of colors, and the angles of the shapes. The post Brooklyn Artist Says Starbucks Ripped Off Her Paintings appeared first on WIRED.

If watching the same thing at the same time is becoming rarer and rarer, though, what about the viewing party? Attending three of them gave us some insight. The post Watching TV Together Sucks appeared first on WIRED.

What’s a healthy baby worth? A pristine lake? How about the market value of a life without cancer? The post How the EPA Puts a Price Tag on Pollution appeared first on WIRED.

It's designed to use a radio connection to add a physical layer of obfuscation to an internet user’s location. The post This Online Anonymity Box Puts You a Mile Away From Your IP Address appeared first on WIRED.

A pool party goes awry in Ryan Shude's meticulously crafted photo. The post This Epic Party Shot Took 60 Frames and Lots of Champagne
 appeared first on WIRED.

Scientists have figured out how to see through just about anything using subatomic particles from space. The post Space Particles Are Helping Map the Inside of Fukushima appeared first on WIRED.

Cornell Tech's 12-acre estate will feature buildings designed to spur spontaneous interaction between students and industry leaders. The post Cornell Wants People to ‘Collide’ on Its New NYC Tech Campus appeared first on WIRED.

Choosing the right stick depends on the player you already are—and the player you want to be. The post Ace Hardware: 2 New Tennis Racquets to Improve Your Game appeared first on WIRED.

After a couple of false starts, Solar Impulse 2 is finally crossing the Pacific, the hardest part of its around-the-world journey. The post Solar-Powered Plane Begins a Risky Trip Across the Pacific appeared first on WIRED.

Jerry Brown just passed a law banning religious and personal belief exemptions to vaccines, turning California into a huge public health laboratory. The post California Is Now the Perfect Test Lab for Vaccine Laws appeared first on WIRED.

"Summertime ’06" is one of the most exciting rap albums of the past few years, and it conjures the spirit of a 21-year-old Cube. The post Vince Staples Is the Second Coming of (Old-School) Ice Cube appeared first on WIRED.

Watch the first teaser for Oliver Stone's film about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden here. The post First Teaser for Snowden Comes With a Big Dose of Mystery appeared first on WIRED.

This unusual project has less in common with road-rail vehicles than it does with "personalized rapid transit." The post A Smart Car on Train Tracks Won’t Fix Our Transit Woes appeared first on WIRED.

The beach's poetic smell comes, in part, from a not-so-poetically-named sulfur compound called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. The post What Gives the Beach That Smell? Sulfur-Making Algae appeared first on WIRED.

Bono and The Edge talk about how they came up with the music and lyrics for U2's "Cedarwood Road." The post Bono and The Edge Take You Inside U2’s ‘Cedarwood Road’ appeared first on WIRED.

It might seem obvious, but understanding how to use Lego can help you be a better architect. See how in this clip from A Lego Brickumentary. The post Clip: Architect Pitches a Building Using a Giant Lego Model appeared first on WIRED.

Technology may change in the wink of an eye, but the core values upon which a company is built can keep the turbulence of constant transformation manageable. Nokia, the Finland-based mobile technology company, is more familiar with that continuum than anyone: It just celebrated its 150th year in business. “We’re here to understand people and […] The post Barry French: ‘Technology May Actually Enable Humans to Survive’ appeared first on WIRED.

"I see myself, within Nintendo, as sort of an outsider," says Kensuke Tanabe. The post This Nintendo ‘Outsider’ Isn’t Making the Metroid You Expect appeared first on WIRED.

The past few years have seen a race to create the perfect VR video-capture solution; now, an early frontrunner is offering its solution to filmmakers. The post The Wild Camera Rig That Could Finally Crack VR Filmmaking appeared first on WIRED.

Joel Pomerantz has spent decades hunting for hidden springs and streams in San Francisco. Now he's made a map that shows a surprising abundance of freshwater sources inside the city. The post Mapping San Francisco’s Surprising Abundance of Springs and Streams appeared first on WIRED.

Formlabs' new resin can be turned into cyan chains strong enough to hoist cinder blocks. The post Nifty New Resin Solves a Major Problem With 3-D Printing appeared first on WIRED.

The leap second adds one second to a day to keep the year and a second synced. But do we really need it? The post What Is a Leap Second Anyway, and Why Do We Use It? appeared first on WIRED.

MIT says it's found a new, more efficient way to blend data mining with the privacy protections of encryption. The post MIT’s Bitcoin-Inspired ‘Enigma’ Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data appeared first on WIRED.

Accessing a surveillance camera, Andrew Hammerand becomes Big Brother over one small Midwestern town. The post Man Spies on a Suburban Town With Its Own Security Camera appeared first on WIRED.