Author: Elon Mark

Last Friday afternoon, in the lobby of a Marriott in downtown Stamford, Conn., attendees of the 47th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the annual confab of word nerds hosted by The Times’s puzzle editor, Will Shortz, joyously convened. Veteran puzzlers greeted old friends with the excitement of a homecoming. First-timers smiled nervously, eyeing others’ name tags in hopes of catching a glimpse of a favorite crossword constructor. Some broke off into groups to chat or work on one of the many crosswords stacked on the welcome table. “Electric!” I scrawled in my notebook, smiling eagerly at the scene despite my efforts…

Other Phones to ConsiderPhotograph: Julian ChokkattuWe test a ton of Android phones. We like the ones below, but you’ll be better off with one of the options above. If you haven’t yet done so, check out our Best Cheap Phones and Best Folding Phones guides for more.Google Pixel 9 for $649: The Pixel 9 is a great smartphone (9/10, WIRED Recommends), but between the Pixel 9a and the Pixel 9 Pro series, it struggles to stand out. It shares many features with its pricier siblings, but you can get a very similar experience with the Pixel 9a, all while saving…

The bedrock of the financial system trembled this week, with government bond yields rising sharply as the chaotic rollout of tariffs shook investors’ faith in the pivotal role played by the United States in the financial system.U.S. government bonds, known as Treasuries because they are issued by the U.S. Treasury, are backed by the full faith of the American government, and the market for Treasuries has long been deemed one of the safest and most stable in the world.But the Treasury market’s erratic behavior all week has raised fears that investors are turning against U.S. assets as President Trump’s trade…

In a time of great uncertainty about international trade, mattresses are one purchase you can make without losing sleep. Because they’re large and heavy, roll-packed bed-in-a-box mattresses are relatively expensive to ship. And because they shouldn’t be left compressed for too long, reputable makers try to avoid shipping them over the ocean. This means that even in this (possibly waning) era of international manufacturing, most mattresses are a domestic product.WIRED has a guide to the best mattress in the United States, made by sleep-testing hundreds of mattresses for a week each. We wanted to provide a similar story for our…

President Trump’s senior aide on Russia negotiations, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Russia on Friday, the Kremlin said, as American and Russian officials are trying to reignite talks over the war in Ukraine that have appeared stalled in recent weeks.Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters that Mr. Witkoff had flown into Russia but refused to say whether the envoy would meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Earlier, the Kremlin said that Mr. Putin would be working away from Moscow on Friday.If a meeting takes place, it would be Mr. Witkoff’s third with Mr. Putin since Moscow and…

Continuous learning has been a recurring theme for Francisco Gallegos. Born in El Salvador, he moved to the United States at 15. When he arrived, everything was new. “The basic language, system, how people work—I didn’t even know what a GPA was,” Gallegos says. But he was intrigued by business, leading him to study finance at Florida International University. After his first year as an accountant, Gallegos decided to expand his knowledge by enrolling in Harvard Business School Online’s Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB) program. “One of my biggest dreams was to attend Harvard,” he says.…

Among the UVW-CWA’s goals, as listed by that zine: drafting video game worker bill of rights to standardize working conditions, including hiring inequality, crunch, contractor healthcare In theory, this would give organizers a shared vision. “Our struggle does not happen in isolation, and we’ll need all the help we can get in the face of the most anti-worker administrations of our lifetimes,” it reads.Previous video game unions have formed under specific departments like quality assurance, within a single development team. United Videogame Workers-CWA is open to any game industry worker located in the US and Canada, regardless of where they…

Every waiter knows the type: the volatile diner who barges in with a list of demands, orders an off-the-menu item that sends the kitchen into a panic and then at the last minute changes his mind and decides he’ll just have the steak.So if anybody knows how to handle President Trump’s stunning reversal on tariffs, it’s people in the restaurant business. Still, it’s safe to say that they’ve had a rough week.Chefs who had been furiously calling their suppliers, stockpiling imported ingredients ahead of what seemed certain to be drastic price jumps, got a temporary reprieve on Wednesday. Hours after…

The season 7 episode, titled “Plaything,” is an homage to—or possibly a horror story retelling of—Brooker’s time as a video game journalist in the 1990s. Brooker wrote for a games magazine called PC Zone, which plays a role in the show, and once had to review a life sim game called Creatures. ”That’s as autobiographical as this gets, because then all sorts of horrible things happen,” Brooker says. The episode’s protagonist pays a visit to Poulter’s character, who sets him down the show’s dark path. Brooker wanted “the juxtaposition of making it look as cute as possible and having quite…

An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City neighborhood killed 23 people on Wednesday, including eight children, and left more than 70 wounded, Gaza’s Civil Defense service said. About 20 people remained missing, but rescuers had little equipment to pull them from the rubble, the group said.The Israeli military said it had been targeting a Hamas operative who it said was responsible for planning attacks. It did not name the operative or give further details. Civil Defense’s death toll, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, could not be independently verified. Gaza’s Health Ministry had not yet released a death…