Table of contents for Jan-16 in WIRED

Wander around WIRED’s San Francisco headquarters on any given day and you’re likely to encounter quite a zoo: hoverboard-riding video shooters dodging begoggled editors who are testing beta VR hardware; one of our favorite TV makers coming in for a meeting; security writers debating the latest cyberwar skirmish around the corner from a conference call with the founder of the Valley’s latest unicorn company; and dogs (10 of them, by my count).¶ But this time of year, the always lively view from my desk takes on an especially electric feel as we train our focus on a new horizon. So to give you a sense of what we’re gearing up to cover in 2016, I tapped the hive mind of writers and editors and pulled together a list of the…

MARK SPONSLER is surrounded by eight computers as he studies a spinning pink blob over the North Pacific on one of the screens. He’s looking for a storm—one big enough to send a massive swell barreling toward the California coast. Ideally, that swell will slam into an underwater ridge a half mile off Pillar Point, creating waves 60 feet high. And a handful of lunatics will descend on Northern California to surf them. ¶ The founder of Stormsurf.com, Sponsler is responsible for collecting the data needed to green-light the Titans of Mavericks big-wave competition held between November and March at the notorious break. The contest doesn’t happen every year; waves must be more than 40 feet high and surfable—as in, not exploding with Poseidon’s rage. That’s where Sponsler comes in.…

Water Many “vape juice” flavor formulations include good old H20. A reservoir for liquid and a heating element are the basic components of e-cigarette devices. A wicking material such as cotton pulls the liquid toward a metal coil, where heat turns it into droplets that are tiny enough to inhale. Vegetable Glycerin You’ve probably consumed this sugar alcohol in food as a low-glycemic sweetener, a preservative, or a texture enhancer that boosts thickness. (It’s also an ingredient in skin moisturizers.) Many e-cig aficionados credit the syrupy vegetable glycerin for the pea soup density of the billowing clouds they exhale. Propylene Glycol A tasteless, odorless, colorless alcohol that’s used in antifreeze solutions to lower the freezing temperature of water. While it’s generally considered safe for topical use and consumption, it’s also…

megasupramolecules n. pl. / 'me-gə-'sü-prə-'mä-li-kyülz / Fuel additives that can prevent explosions in crashes. These long-chain polymers stop fuel droplets from dispersing on impact. social credit n. / 'sō-shəl 'kre-dit / A personal trustworthiness rating, mandated by the Chinese government for implementation by 2020. bitplain n. / 'bit-'plān / A data storage format that preserves readability of photos and videos in perpetuity by recording all the bits encoding each pixel. micro pig n. / 'mī-krō 'pig / A genetically modified pig designed to grow no larger than a midsize dog. Initially created to fit in cramped medical labs, micro pigs will soon be sold in China as house pets.…

1 Nike Aeroloft Flash Vest This vest might be featherlight, but it offers heavy-duty warmth. The 800-fill down provides superior insulation, while tiny perforations enhance breathability. When it’s time to shed the extra layer, the whole thing stuffs into its own back pocket. $280 2 Jaybird X2 Bluetooth Headphones Runners need buds that stay put. Jaybird’s epic-sounding wireless earphones come with several different sizes of ear tips and fins, pretty much ensuring that you’ll find a fit that locks into your lobes. The battery is tiny but lasts eight hours. $180 3 New Balance Vazee Pace Protect Pack Don’t let the winter drizzles slow you down. The weatherresistant closedmesh upper makes these running shoes ideal for even the poorest conditions. The design of the midsole won’t alter your foot’s natural…

THE 1993 SHOW THE X-FILES created our modern television landscape, with its dense story arcs and gory forensic police procedural elements. Many of the sci-fi drama’s writers went on to develop or produce their own highly influential shows. Now, series creator Chris Carter is overseeing a new X-Files miniseries, and several former scribes have also signed on. “I tried to put the band back together,” Carter says. wired took a look at the impact of several X-Files writers. Working on new X-Files Vince Gilligan Episodes: 30 One was “Drive,” costarring Bryan Cranston. “I thought, ‘This guy is so good, I have to work with him again,’ ” Gilligan says. “Chris would say that we want episodes to look like miniature movies. I took that to heart.” Breaking Bad, Better Call…

A Recently, I watched David Kwong do some sleight of hand in a crowded theater lobby. Kwong is a magician who often consults on Hollywood films. (When a director needs, say, Jesse Eisenberg to learn a magic trick, they send him to Kwong.) Anyway, Kwong sauntered over to a guy with a deck of cards and asked him to pick one. ¶ Honestly, I don’t know how to describe what happened next. For 30 minutes, Kwong made cards materialize in outrageous, stupefying ways, as though he were nonchalantly sliding them in and out of a parallel universe. Someone’s card flew out of the deck, spinning through the air. Another turned up in a guy’s back pocket—and not just in his back pocket, but buried deep, between his wallet and a…

LAST FEBRUARY, more than 114 million viewers tuned in to Super Bowl XLIX, making it the mostwatched television program of all time in the US. Among that audience: the crew of the International Space Station. ¶ Kickoff was at 6:30 pm eastern time, but the ISS circles Earth about 16 times in a 24 -hour period, obliterating any traditional sense of day and night. Astronauts stick with Greenwich mean time, putting the game’s start at a much less reasonable 11:30 pm. ¶ Watching movies and TV shows in space isn’t novel; in fact, the ISS was recently outfitted with an HD projector and specially designed 65-inch screen. But the content arrives in a tremendously expensive, and painfully infrequent, way. On DVD. On a rocket ship. ¶ “Every crew can request…

SPACE IS LOUSY with profits. Consider the asteroid Ryugu: It’s made of so many tons of nickel, iron, cobalt, and water, it’s worth an estimated $95 billion. Venture into deeper space and there’s even richer plunder—like Davida, an asteroid that the wanna-be space mining company Planetary Resources values at more than $100 trillion. That’s more than five times the GDP of the US. ¶ These jaw-dropping payloads are why extraterrestrial mining is becoming an increasingly serious endeavor. Companies like Planetary Resources, backed by the likes of Googlers Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, are already launching satellites to scan for the most promising asteroids. Space experts say some firm could be ready to launch a mission within 10 years. But are they allowed to? Of course, anyone can reach an asteroid—…

WHY IS AN old-school machine like the WaterRower still popular? Don’t credit its cameo in House of Cards as Frank Underwood’s stent deterrent. That’s strictly window dressing. The real draw is efficiency: Since its introduction almost three decades ago, nobody has invented a better cardio machine. It exercises 84 percent of body muscle mass, burns more than 1,000 calories an hour, calls for a full range of motion, and is low-impact. Thanks to hydrodynamic drag, it can also be a hellish workout. Doubling your rowing speed produces an eightfold increase in resistance. That’s not just pain. That’s exponential pain. The thing doesn’t look bad, either. Propped up next to a sofa, it could pass for a Dada-esque sculpture. Your fancy digital treadmill can’t keep pace with that. $1,495 JOSEPH SHIN…

SR. GARCIA IN THE US, we lump workers into two categories, employee or independent contractor, neither of which were designed for Fasil Teka. Teka, 41, joined Uber five years ago in Seattle. He drives roughly 40 hours a week as an independent contractor. He’s also a party planner and sometimes shuttles guests for a local hotel. Teka loves the flexibility of having multiple gigs and driving only when he wants. When one income source wanes, another waxes. But the risks are mounting. He missed the 2014 deadline to sign up for Obamacare and had to do without health insurance. And last New Year’s Eve his car got totaled, knocking him off of Uber for three weeks until he leased a new one. Most frustrating for Teka, Uber changes his fare…

JURASSIC WORLD WAS FILMED PRIMARILY AT A 150-ACRE ABANDONED THEME PARK IN EAST NOLA. // THE MYSTIC KREWE OF THE SILVER BALL ROTATES 200 CLASSIC MACHINES THROUGH ITS PINBALL PARLOR GALLERY. // NEW ORLEANS’ RATIO OF STARTUPS TO ADULTS IS 56 PERCENT HIGHER THAN THE NATIONAL AVERAGE. “Tuesday night, go to the Maple Leaf to see the Rebirth Brass Band. They’re Grammy winners now, but they still play this tiny little bar. It’s something crazy, but it’s a regular thing every Tuesday.” — Melissa Weber, aka DJ Soul Sister, host of an acclaimed rare-groove show on WWOZ MARDI GRAS—like New Orleans itself— encompasses more than you expect. Case in point: the Rouge-Orleans race. While many revelers stay up for 48 hours during the city’s huge party, competitors in this 126.2-mile…

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA rents are ridiculous, that much is clear. But tech workers at hot companies are choosers, not beggars. “If you’re making good money, picking where to live is more about lifestyle,” says Zillow senior economist Skylar Olsen. She crunched the numbers for wired using census data and her company’s estimates and found that employees at older, more-established tech companies (like Apple) congregate in affluent suburbs, while workers at younger companies (think Twitter, Uber, and Pinterest) are more likely to live in hip urban areas near where they work.…

BUILDING A HIGH-END racing bike has traditionally been an exercise in compromise. Aerodynamic models slice through the wind with their flattened frame tubes, but they’re stiff and ponderous to pilot. Lightweight climbing bikes sail over the Galibier, but they have inferior aerodynamics and can flex too much when you’re mashing the pedals. Trek’s Madone model eliminates these trade-offs, fusing a sleek design with the comfort of a springier ride. Airfoil-shaped tubes and inside-the-frame cable routing reduce air friction, and the tube-within-a-tube seat post design decouples the saddle from the frame, dampening vibrations. The result is a speed freak with a warm soul—like an F1 car with a cushy suspension and plush seats. $13,000 JOSEPH SHIN…

TaylorMade M1 BEST FOR: Swing tinkerers needing maximum adjustability Key to TaylorMade’s carbon-fiber-andtitanium beauty is the ability to customize it to correct your swing issues. A weight in front slides from side to side to straighten out habitual slices or hooks, while one in back moves fore and aft to adjust launch angle and ball spin. With a proper setup from a pro fitter, this club will work for almost any golfer. $500 Ping G30 BEST FOR: Golfers seeking forgiveness on off-center hits Ridges on the G30’s crown improve aerodynamics and increase your swing speed. But it’s not just for golfers with fast hands. Weight in the head sits low and toward the back, ensuring off-center hits deliver more ball speed. Some drivers earn you more distance on perfect hits,…