It’s time to stop collecting USB adapters like they’re Pokémon.

The most important USB adapter to keep

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Other adapters you might want to hold onto

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Adapters you don’t need anymore

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Keep an eye on USB specs, too

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Dean met Nicole on Bumble in 2018, and they immediately bonded over their shared Chicago upbringing.

Nicole had kids, and they talked often about “wanting more than what we saw growing up in the environment we did,” Dean, a 37-year-old independent contractor, tells WIRED. They also both considered themselves more spiritual than religious, and were mentally, emotionally, and physically compatible. Best of all, “we rarely had a fight,” he says, “and could talk about any- and everything.”

They eventually moved in together and even talked about getting married, though he says the idea was one-sided. “She wanted to. I secretly didn’t.”

In 2022, four years into the relationship, Dean says “she allowed her mind to be polluted” by “gender wars” discourse. As he saw it, she became one of those people who “attach themselves to feminism” and complained about men all the time. Even though Dean claims he is progressive, he says, “it wasn’t my thing” because Nicole had become overly negative.

It was around then that he started to get the ick. His mind was made up: Instead of talking to her about his frustrations, he blocked her phone number and social media accounts, one afternoon while she was at work.

In the months that followed, as Nicole attempted to get in contact with him through family members, Dean didn’t feel an ounce of remorse, only relief. “Like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I no longer had to bear her energy.” (Citing privacy concerns, the ghosters WIRED spoke to for this story asked that they be identified by their first name only.)

Even now, he says he “absolutely” made the right decision.

With dating apps and social media determining so much of how people connect, ghosting—ending a relationship by ignoring or blocking the other person’s calls and texts, effectively icing them out—has become the breakup mode du jour.

According to a Thriving Center of Psychology survey, 84 percent of millennials and Gen Z say they’ve been ghosted at the end of a relationship. But while ghosting is widely accepted among singles during the initial stages of getting to know someone via the apps or as a means to end a situationship, it’s far less typical for multiyear relationships. In late June, Vogue UK shed light on the trend of “the disappearing boyfriend.” The article detailed the painful aftermath of women grappling with their partner’s sudden and shocking disappearance, noting how “many of these ghostings occur after things were seemingly going well.”

To address this new normal, Dating.com recently announced that it was hiring a “chief breakup officer” who, for $3,000 a month, would be tasked with ending other people’s relationships for them.

Naturally, ghosting is a lot easier when you’re communicating with strangers or people you know you’ll never run into again. When you know someone offline, there can be a greater sense of accountability, but even that doesn’t seem to always be the case anymore as expectations around communication are in decline.

In the r/ghosting subreddit, stories of long-term relationships ending when one person decided to completely vanish have become alarmingly common, as Redditors have tried to understand the psychology behind such abrupt and seemingly cruel detachment.

“I dated a girl for a year and a half. Out of the blue she said something in a normal discussion, and instead of having a conversation with her [about what upset me], I completely ignored her, walked away, refused to speak to her when she asked, and blocked her until she found out from someone else that we were done,” one commenter from r/ghosting tells WIRED over direct message.

The big picture: A growing fight over data center development is pulling in an unexpected group of critics: country music stars. In the past few weeks, artists including Brad Paisley, Tanya Tucker, Gavin Adcock, and Willie Nelson have all spoken out against new projects. While their politics vary, their concerns overlap. They are pushing back on how these facilities are being placed in or near rural communities.

Paisley was among the first to draw attention to the issue, opposing a proposed data center in Nashville that would be located about 500 yards from the city’s zoo. He criticized both the scale and the setting of the project. “It would be an enormous monstrosity, an absolute eyesore and detract in every way for not only that zoo, but also that area,” Paisley wrote in a social media post urging people to sign a petition. Other artists quickly backed him, helping bring the issue into the wider spotlight

The conversation has since expanded beyond Tennessee. In Texas, where data center development is accelerating, Tanya Tucker warned about environmental strain tied to the projects. “It’s going to hurt our health, our wildlife, our water table, our water resources,” she posted. “It’s going to scar our land forever.” The scale of development is significant, with about 248 data centers planned across the state.

Gavin Adcock, who often takes a more confrontational tone, focused on the impact on rural communities. In a video posted online, he argued that farmers and landowners are being forced to deal with the downsides of projects driven by outside investors. “These people are getting punished for living in the country,” Adcock said, pointing to pressure on land, water, and local resources.

Willie Nelson made a similar case, tying the issue to broader concerns about rural identity and land use. Writing about potential development near his hometown of Abbott, Texas, he said, “The last thing we need is a loud, water-thieving, light-polluting, data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter).” He continued, “The strength of rural America has never come from big industrial footprints. It comes from generations of people, open spaces, local businesses, and a connection to the land… let’s not allow our own demise or give up control over necessary resources in the US and especially in Abbott.”

The debate centers on the real-world demands of modern data infrastructure. Facilities built to handle AI workloads require large amounts of electricity, dense server capacity, and extensive cooling systems. Those cooling systems often rely heavily on water, which has become a major sticking point in areas already dealing with resource constraints.

Public opinion appears to be lining up with that concern. A Gallup poll in May found that only 7% of Americans strongly support building data centers in their communities.

Researchers say the resistance is less about rejecting technology and more about how it is being implemented. “Amid so much partisan division, opposition to data centers seems to be the thing that unites Americans right now,” Megan Mullin of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation told Rolling Stone. “It’s tempting to attribute this resistance to a growing wariness about technology and the titans who control it, but in reality it’s rooted in the one thing that has always united Americans: our deep affinity for where we live.”

For some artists, the issue also ties back to AI itself. Paisley tied the issue to broader concerns in the music industry, saying AI is already affecting artists and rights holders without their approval. He argued that the same lack of consent applies to the proposed data center near the zoo, where he said the people most affected were not being given a real say.

Not everyone in the industry has taken a clear position. John Rich, who was recently appointed “Special Envoy for American Landowners” by President Trump, suggested there may be a middle ground. He echoed a line he attributed to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, saying there is a proper way to build a data center and an improper way to do it, while suggesting that more guidance from Washington may be coming soon.

Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook has presented his final earnings call, the quarterly financial phone meeting the company has with analysts, and just as at WWDC, he made a relatively quiet farewell.

In a change to the usual format of these earnings calls, Cook took a moment to talk both about himself and how the handover to John Ternus is going.

Before we get into questions, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of from our shareholders, particularly our long-term shareholders, who have put their trust in us for so many years, to the analysts who have followed our company so closely. As you know, this will be my final earnings call, and John will lead these calls going forward. The transition is going seamlessly, and I am beyond excited. for John to step into his new role and lead Apple into its next era.

He is truly one-of-a-kind and there is no better person to take the helm of the company. As I’ve said, I couldn’t be more confident in his leadership, in our executive team, and in the extraordinary people at Apple who are determined to lives of our users all over the world. We have a bright future ahead, and I truly have never been more optimistic. So thank you all.

Having said all of this, Cook then resumed the regular format of the call by taking questions from analysts. So far, every one has thanked Cook for his time in charge of the company.

Fifteen years of earning calls

Every quarter since at least 2011 when he took over as Apple CEO, Cook has led an earnings call discussing profits and generally side-stepping analysts’ questions. Despite having an audible head cold in many of them, he has not missed one in those 15 years, either.

There are reports, though, of just how seriously Cook takes these calls, and what he does to relax afterwards.

If you ever listen to them, the first half is chiefly Cook or the Chief Financial Officer reading prepared statements. Then the second half is both of them telling analysts that no, they won’t reveal details about the iPhone 6, iPhone X, or iPhone Fold.

Peeking behind the scenes at AppleInsider a bit, we count how many times variations of “we do not comment on unannounced products” are said during an earnings call. One 2018 call resulted in eleven, which is the standing record.

Anyway, these calls are mandatory, and every cent Apple makes is studied and debated afterwards by analysts. The calls themselves, though, don’t sound that pressing, yet after each one, Cook says he takes a walk across Apple Park to decompress.

“When I do something like our quarterly earnings call, after the earnings call, I come out here,” he said in 2020. “The sound and the look [of Apple Park] is unbelievable.”

“Just the sound itself makes these big problems and big challenges of the day seem so small,” he continued. “This is like working in a national park for me, it provides that kind of feeling.”

More than 60 earnings calls

If Tim Cook had only contributed to Apple’s quarterly earnings calls since he became CEO, he would now have completed around 60 of them. But he’s done many more, including back when Steve Jobs was in charge, and when Apple was seeing the start of its incredible financial growth.

Jobs left these calls to Tim Cook and then-CFO Peter Oppenheimer, until October 2010. That was the last earnings call Jobs spoke on before his death.

“As most of you know, I don’t usually participate in Apple’s earnings calls since you are all in such capable hands with Peter and Tim,” he said according to a transcript on Seeking Alpha. “But I just couldn’t help dropping by for our first $20 billion quarter.”

In that call, Jobs talked up the success of the then-new iPad, and Tim Cook backed it up with some figures about its adoption by enterprise firms. Then financial analysts asked for specifics such as what Apple’s margins were on the latest iPhone 4, and Cook declined to answer.

Flash forward to 2026, and the figures are dramatically different as Apple recently touched a $5 trillion market cap.

Sometimes it’s hard to criticize a company’s quarterly earnings, although without fail Apple’s share price always dips after them. Even now, AAPL is down about 8% after-hours on yet another record-breaking, and Wall Street prediction shattering earnings report.

Launch a single static binary executable, send someone a QR code or URL (or failing that, text a numerical code or shout it across a room), and they’ll get an encrypted terminal in their browser. No VPN, no port forwarding, no firewall modifications, and no account setup required. It’s BitBang by [Rich LeGrand], and there is a lot to go through in this one.

The best part? It’s not actually limited to just firing off a terminal. It’s a whole open framework for establishing an encrypted peer-to-peer connection between two systems over WebRTC without needing either a trusted central authority, or any special network configuration.

Opening a remote terminal, transferring files, or accessing web apps on a remote machine’s network is done with bitbang-cli, an implementation of BitBang focused on providing simple, zero-config remote access.

Before we go on, we want to mention that BitBang does require a lightweight, trustless signaling server only to broker the initial connection, but more on that in a moment.

On the machine to be shared, one first downloads the binary. Easiest way to do that is to go to bitba.ng and download manually, or copy and paste the one-line installer to auto-detect one’s system, download the correct release, and verify the checksum.

After the binary is downloaded, simply run it in a terminal and receive a QR code to scan, a URL to copy & paste, or a numerical code if those are inconvenient. One the remote side, one accesses the signaling server and the connection is made — one gets a terminal on the target machine open in the browser tab, with added options for file sharing and accessing web applications on the target network.

The signaling server isn’t involved in authentication or encryption, and couldn’t see private data between the two ends even if it wanted to. Prefer not to use someone else’s regardless? Run your own local instance with bitbang-server.

Originally developed as an easy way to securely make telepresence robots reachable over the Internet with nothing more than a QR code, today it’s a whole framework.

It includes not just the remote-access tool mentioned above, but also a BitBang Octoprint plugin for cloud-free remote access to 3D printers, and bitbang-python is a library for turning local Python web applications into a URL that can be opened from anywhere.

We’re sure some of you are getting more than a few ideas from this. If it lets you bring a project over the finish line, let us know on our tips line.

Two prominent science fiction authors have decried the impact of AI on their craft.

“I do not want or need a large language model to write my fiction for me. I write fiction compulsively – before I was published I wrote for many years as a hobbyist – so why on earth would I pay someone else to take my fun away?” wrote Charles Stross in a Saturday post. Stross graciously mentioned The Register in his Laundry Files novels.

“I maintain that any serious author should shun LLMs like the plague,” he added. “Did I mention the ‘stealing’ thing? This isn’t hyperbole: I’m one of the parties to the settlement in the class action lawsuit against Anthropic AI for pirating eBooks to train their LLMs.”

“That’s not my only grievance, either. You may have noticed this blog performing sluggishly or crapping out from time to time over the past few months. That’s because my server is old and feeble and periodically gets swarmed by Chinese and other foreign botnets scraping data for training LLMs.”

Stross labelled AI companies “absolute scum.”

“They’re stealing copyrighted material to train an LLM that is intended to compete for revenue with the authors of the works they stole, and they’re fine-tuning their LLMs to make them as addictive as possible in order to maximize future revenue once they pivot to token sales as their main source of income,” he wrote.

“In other words, they’re no different from a burglar who robs you one day then comes round to sell you your stuff back the next morning. Back in the 18th century we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman makes me question the wisdom of having stopped.”

Scalzi, whose best-known works include the Old Man’s War series and Hugo Award-winning novel Redshirts, on Friday commented on a recent article about a hotly tipped debut novel being pulled from publishing and film or television consideration over concerns that AI had been used to write it.

“The issue appears not to be that ‘AI’ material isn’t copyrightable, the issue is that ‘AI’ is trained on copyrighted material, so prose generated from it could be contested by the original copyright holders,” Scalzi wrote.

He expects publishers to look for signs of AI use, although the available detection tools are notoriously unreliable. He predicts that this will disadvantage new writers who lack a body of work dating from before the arrival of ChatGPT.

“Which is unfair,” Scalzi wrote. “It’s especially unfair when the makers of the tools writers use to write  – I’m looking at you, Microsoft and Google – are frantically stuffing ‘AI’ tools into the programs writers rely on.”

Then Scalzi dispensed with the diplomatic language.

“No, Microsoft, I don’t fucking want Copilot to ‘help me write’ in Word, and no, Google, I don’t fucking want Gemini to ‘help me write’ in Google Docs. The very fact these ‘AI’s are hovering around my writing at all is bad enough from a provenance standpoint. These ‘AI’ tools are making it harder for all writers in this regard, not easier.”

Stross raised a related concern: “If I was crazy enough to feed the outline of a story I was working on as a prompt to ChatGPT or Claude in hope of getting the stochastic parrot to do my homework for me, then it would be only my own fault and nobody else’s if the next model from the company in question was been trained [sic] on my book outline and could reproduce part or all of it for someone else.”

Scalzi advised authors not to “incorporate ‘AI’ into any part of your publishing process, either: Don’t use ‘AI’ editing, don’t use ‘AI’ art, don’t use ‘AI’ translation, don’t use ‘AI’ anything that calls into dispute whether your work is actually yours. Using ‘AI’ cover art, for example, will immediately call into question what else in the book is ‘AI.’ Every other aspect of the book is implicitly tarred with the same ‘AI’ brush. When I say that I have it in my contracts that I require every aspect of my book production to be done by humans, it’s not just because I want to honor human work and input. It’s also because I’m protecting my own reputation by doing so.”

Stross, however, admitted he “can see some circumstances where being able to train a local model on my work could be useful to me.”

“I’d quite like a tool (running entirely locally on my own hardware, with no cloud service and no copyright-thieving grifters making bank on it via subscription fees) that digests a manuscript and derives a scene-by-scene timeline, that I could then query interactively and use to plan my next round of edits,” he wrote.

He also allowed that “being able to map out where and when each protagonist and minor character shows up, and see a frequency distribution heat map of names in the manuscript, would be useful.”

“But such a tool would be useful to me in the same way a spelling checker is useful – as a decision-support tool, not as a substitute for doing the hard work (and having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf). The value of such a tool is considerably less than the value of a well-trained brain that can do the entire job the hard way, if necessary.”

Stross has also found one use of LLMs he thinks is valid: as a device in his work. To illustrate that, he shared the following excerpt of a space opera he has written and is currently editing:

The events described in this account have been translated into your language from the original source material using a non-sapient large language model.

Certain terms have been approximated, where possible, by using culturally appropriate cognates. Names of individuals have been replaced by equivalents. Similarly, institutions, ranks, religions, proverbs, idioms, quotations, and other culturally-determined signifiers have been translated into terms that will be familiar to the reader.

Units of duration and distance have also been converted.

We apologize in advance for any hallucinations our LLM may have inadvertently introduced in the process of generating this rough translation.

Neither author mentioned the fact that George R R Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels adapted for television as Game of Thrones, writes on a PC that has no internet connection and runs DOS plus the ancient WordStar word processor. Perhaps drafts and revision histories from such setups will become another way for authors to demonstrate that their words are their own. ®