Author: Elon Mark

For some products, bland can be good. I’d argue that wireless earbuds are the pinnacle of this concept. You just want something that fits, works, and sounds good, more than you want a flashy, status product. Even AirPods buyers I know aren’t buying them for aesthetics; they’re buying them because they’re among the best earbuds to pair with an iPhone, in terms of function.Beyerdynamic’s Amiron 300 lack superlatives, and yet I’ve really enjoyed my time with the brand’s new high-end earbuds. They’re not the best-sounding out there, they don’t have the best noise canceling, and they don’t have the best…

A Russian missile strike Friday on Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine, killed at least 18 people, including nine children, and wounded more than 60, local officials said. It was the latest in a series of Russian attacks on urban centers in recent days, despite ongoing cease-fire talks, that have caused significant civilian casualties.Serhii Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Kryvyi Rih, said on social media that the missile struck a residential neighborhood, with a playground nearby. Other officials warned the death toll could rise as rescuers continued to search the rubble for victims.Russia’s defense ministry…

Investors around the globe this week sent President Trump a clear message about his new tariff policy, announced triumphantly as a remaking of the economic order.They don’t like it.The S&P 500 fell 6 percent on Friday, bringing its losses for the week to 9.1 percent. Stocks hadn’t fallen this far this fast since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic — it was the steepest weekly decline since March 2020.As then, the S&P 500 is quickly approaching bear market territory, a drop of 20 percent from the latest high that marks extreme pessimism among investors. By Friday, the index was…

“DOGE’s actions at the VA are putting veterans’ lives at risk,” representative Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, tells WIRED. Veterans, he adds, risk being “stripped of the care they need and deserve because [President Donald] Trump and Elon have turned the VA over to lackeys who do not know the first thing about what it means to serve your country.”VA employees have expressed concern about the changes the DOGE staffers have already started to make to the agency. “These people have zero clue what they are working on,” a VA employee tells WIRED.The VA did not…

An American tourist set off alone last week on an inflatable boat for the remote island of North Sentinel in the Indian Ocean. He had packed a Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering for the highly isolated tribe that lives there, and had brought along a GoPro camera in hopes of filming the encounter, the Indian police said.Guided by his GPS navigation, the man, Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, reached the northeastern shore of the island at 10 a.m. on March 29, according to the police. He scanned the land with binoculars, but saw no one. So he climbed…

U.S. employers accelerated hiring in March, a surprising show of strength that analysts warned might be the high-water mark for the labor market as the Trump administration’s economic policies began to play out.Employers added 228,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, a figure that was far more than expected and was up from a revised total of 117,000 in February. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent, from 4.1 percent.The data, based on surveys of households and businesses conducted in the second week of March, do not reflect the sweeping tariff announcement that rattled markets this week,…

The activation process is quick—you turn it on, charge it, and download the HMD OffGrid app on your phone. Once connected, the app walks you through the settings. I charged it for about an hour to get it to 100 percent, and the battery lasted from Monday through Thursday and got to about 35 percent. However, none of our outdoor excursions lasted longer than four hours, so the OffGrid probably doesn’t have enough battery life to live-track a weekend backpacking trip. (Then again, your phone doesn’t either.)The OffGrid has a few different capabilities, along with the aforementioned SOS service and…

South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Friday upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, removing him from office four months after his short-lived imposition of martial law on Dec. 3.Protesters who have been demanding his ouster erupted in cheers at the ruling, waving flags and pumping their fists in the air. For weeks leading up to the ruling, hundreds of thousands of people protesting for and against Mr. Yoon have lined the streets of Seoul, often enduring freezing temperatures, rain and snow.At 11 a.m. local time, the court’s acting chief justice, Moon Hyungbae, began reading the ruling, which came after…

John Thornton, a financier who leveraged his wealth and influence to embark on the seemingly quixotic mission of reviving local journalism in a time of crisis, by founding The Texas Tribune, a seminal regional nonprofit news organization, and the American Journalism Project, which supports local digital newsrooms around the country, died on Saturday in Austin, Texas. He was 59.His death, by suicide, followed a long mental health struggle, a spokesman for the American Journalism Project said.Mr. Thornton helped change the financial model for sustainable local journalism when, in 2009, he founded The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, digital-only, nonpartisan media organization.…

In 2017, Hulu made television history by becoming the first streaming network to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, thanks to the phenomenon that was The Handmaid’s Tale.While Netflix has largely cornered the streaming market on original movies—and even managed to persuade A-listers like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martin Scorsese to come aboard—Hulu is starting to find its footing in features too, securing the exclusive rights to a large number of Oscar-nominated movies like A Real Pain and Anora. Below are some of our top picks for the best movies (original and otherwise) streaming on Hulu right now.Still looking for more great…