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For all the heavy-lifting that goes into making every Star Wars movie—the casting, the elaborate sets, the VFX, the massive international marketing campaigns—it’s amazing any of them get completed. Yet no Star Wars production to date has seemed as fraught as that of Solo: A Star Wars Story. The second standalone movie after Rogue One, the Han Solo prequel/origin story lost its initial directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and saw them replaced by veteran Ron Howard. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Back in the bygone era before videogames, “playing” meant screwing around with physical toys—action figures, dolls, bugs, whatever. In my house it mean turning wrapping paper tubes into swords and hitting your father with them. (Sorry, Dad.) When gaming consoles came along, though, play for many kids, myself included, got a lot more sedentary. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Before we delve into the darkness of the world this week, let's consider these two tweets from the past seven days that really tell any outside viewer exactly what they need to know about the platform that is Twitter (in addition to the stuff about Nazis and harassment, of course). Oh, social media! So many fascinating characters... But that’s not what you came here for. This is what you came here for. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The last time and place you want to hear someone compliment your ski apparel is when you are in the bathroom, fiddling with the butt zip. As I started to examine the zippers in my general crotchal area, I heard someone exclaim, “Sweet onesie!” I looked around and saw another woman giving me a thumbs up. I should’ve gone into a stall first. But such is the attention-grabbing nature of Airblaster. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I must confess. I don’t yet own a 4K TV. I’ve stared at them for countless hours in the office and at trade shows, but when it comes time to spend my own money, I haven’t pulled the trigger. And why should I? I’m still sitting cozy with a wonderful 2011 60-inch Panasonic Viera plasma HDTV that works beautifully and has some of the best picture quality possible for its resolution. Throughout the years, TV makers have tried hard to get me to upgrade. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We're a month into the new year, so why are you still using that busted-up old laptop or game console? Valentine's Day is around the corner so it's a perfect time to treat yourself or someone you love to some new tech. Thanks to our friends at TechBargains, we have a handful of solid deals on computers, Xbox Ones, and even the iPad Pro. When we reviewed the Xbox One X last year, we were impressed with its compact footprint and graphics performance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Come with me, back to a simpler time. It's 2015, and Apple's MacBook Pros are on the top of the world. The 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro was one of the best notebooks anyone could ask for. It had everything–USB-A ports, Thunderbolt 2, an SD card slot. Everything was great, until—smash cut to late 2016, when Apple did a major redesign of the entire Pro lineup. Suddenly, USB-C and Thunderbolt were the only ports for charging and input, throwing users into an awkward spot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Full disclosure: Unbeknownst to my editors, I wore a Timex Ironman watch for over a decade. My Timex did everything I needed a watch to do. I wore it traveling, snowboarding, swimming, running, snorkeling and surfing. I could set an alarm, check my pace, and show up when I said I would. It also lit up, so when unexpected noises woke me while camping, I could huddle in my sleeping bag, check the time, and note that the bears had decided to eat us at precisely 1:34 am. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Some days are crushingly cold and sloppy. Bring the right equipment and you won’t suffer. When the snow is ripping sideways, you’ll need a sturdy shield to block the freeze. Constructed from a composite material with a waterproof exterior and a wicking inner fabric, Columbia’s jacket can keep you going long after your friends have bailed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

January has so far proven to be one of the busiest months for the transportation industry. CES in early January was flooded with car news, including the debut of a new $45,000 electric SUV by a Chinese Tesla competitor called Byton. Then, just days after CES wrapped, we had the Detroit auto show, where America’s largest car-makers trot out their designs for the next year. WIRED transportation editor Alex Davies pays close attention to all of these announcements and developments. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There’s nothing like skiing under dazzling blue skies. Don’t ruin it by dressing for a blizzard. 1. Trew Men’s Wander Jacket A simple wind-blocking shell is all you need in epic weather. The trim cut of this one means it doesn’t feel like you are wearing a tent, and the lightweight construction makes it easy to pack or stuff in a backpack. If wind and clouds suddenly appear, no prob: You’re still protected. $419 2. Faction Dictator 2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Whether on Android or iOS, you likely already use Google Maps for navigation. You use Gmail for email. You use YouTube to watch videos. And you’re right to do so. You’d be even more right to ditch whatever junk keyboard your smartphone shipped with for Gboard, another Google staple that works like a dream. Lots of Android devices—including the Pixel line of premium phones—already use Gboard by default. It's been widely available to download for a year and a half. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Robots can walk, talk, run a hotel … and are entirely stumped by a doorknob. Or a mailbox. Or a dirty bathtub—zzzzt, dead. Sure, the SpotMini, a doglike domestic helper from Boston Dynamics, can climb stairs, but it struggles to reliably hand over a can of soda. That’s why some roboticists think the field needs to flip its perspective. “There are two approaches to building robots,” says Maya Cakmak, a researcher at the University of Washington. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My sister Gina is a fantastic cook who does not suffer crappy cookware gladly. Her pans are battle-tested All Clads that have been roughed up over the years, but they take the abuse she dishes out with a shrug. Once, though, I noticed damage to a T-Fal pan of hers that wasn't up to the task; the bottom of the pan had a bit of a dome shape to it, meaning hot oil within the pan pooled around the outer rim but did not cover the higher center. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Super Bowl is upon us, and this year we get to watch The New England Patriots face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. If that sounds familiar, it’s because they both faced off in the 2005 Super Bowl. The Patriots won then, but that doesn’t mean they’ll win again. With fans so dedicated that they’ll climb up Crisco’d light poles to celebrate, Philly may just have the spirit to overcome. The big game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, February 4 on NBC. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The worst part of breast pumping? The logistics. Ask any working, breastfeeding mom and she'll describe the hassle of finding a private room, disrobing, and hooking up to a machine to pump every three to four hours. And then, after she's sat there for 20 minutes, she still needs to store the milk, wash everything, and put it all away. As an ER doctor and mom of preemie twins, Stella Dao had to pump four to six times a day. She had a big incentive to improve the existing technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Let’s face it. Phones cost too much money. Yes, the $1,000 iPhone X is awesome, but for those who don’t need to keep a status symbol in their pocket, $350 feels much more reasonable, and that’s what the HTC U11 Life offers. You can buy two or three of these for the price of a top-tier Android phone, like the Pixel 2, and that’s the point. It’s an unabashed value version of HTC’s fancier U11. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech. "I think hard times are coming," the writer said at the National Book Awards in November 2014, "when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope." Three years and change. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You can get a drone in a wide range of sizes. Some of them fit in your palm (like the Syma X20) while others are quite large. But have you noticed anything about the flying time? Many of the super small drones have flight times that are less than five minutes. The larger drones (like the DJI Phantom 4) have a maximum flight time of closer to a half hour. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Randal Miles woke up from a nap during his flight from Paris to Los Angeles last week, he opened the interactive map on his seat-back screen to see how much longer he'd be in the air. But the number that caught his eye was the jet's speed. The Norwegian jet was flying at 770 mph—about 200 mph faster than its standard cruising velocity. “I thought, ‘Damn, this thing is hauling ass,’” Miles says. “I thought I was either sleepy or it was reading wrong. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nintendo has sold a lot of Switches in the last year thanks to the console's unique ability to play games on a TV and on the go, but also thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Though they came from 30+ year-old franchises, both games helped millions fall in love with them all over again. In 2018, Nintendo is setting its sights in a direction it hasn't aimed at before: the do-it yourself crowd. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Growing up, my black and faux woodgrain GE Digital Alarm Clock Radio was essential. I trusted it to tell me the time and make sure I wake up each and every morning—regardless of how many times I pressed its 9 minute snooze. Time has not been kind to that, now-vintage alarm clock. Somehow, it still does what it was designed to do, but in the last decade, my phone has taken all of its responsibilities. It now sits under my nightstand, wrapped in its own power cord like a straitjacket. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the crowded Las Vegas airport on my way home from CES 2018, I wedged myself into an empty spot of wall next to an outlet. The outlet didn’t work. For a half-hour, I watched people wander up hopefully, charging block in hand, try it, and shuffle away, defeated. “It doesn’t work,” I said. “Sorry, it doesn’t work,” I’d say again. Over and over and over. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For a species that’s conquered Earth and traveled through space and invented the Slapchop, we humans sure are insecure when it comes to technology. Our greatest fear: the singularity, when the abilities of AI and robots surpass those of humans, growing so advanced that civilization is forced to reboot as humanity spirals into existential dread. Or worse, the machines turn us into batteries, à la The Matrix. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My test kitchen tends to be a pretty happy place to work. Case in point? I got to make fried chicken the other day. For it, I put the bird parts in a salty buttermilk bath for the afternoon, then cooked them using the brand new One Top from Tasty. I'd tell you more about that first batch of chicken, but in the frenzy, my notes were obliterated by hot sauce and the grease on my fingers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Suffice to say the Nintendo Switch is a hit beyond what anyone could have expected. The versatile, modular console sold more than 10 million units in its first 10 months, and became the fastest-selling console in US history. That's all the more impressive given Switches were nearly impossible to find in the console's early months, as Nintendo (like everyone else) seriously underestimated its appeal. For Nintendo, then, 2018 becomes a year of doubling down. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A Mustang and an Explorer wheel into a Detroit factory. This is not, tragically, the beginning of a joke. Rather, it’s a new (and weirdly ‘80s themed?) Ford promo video. Lightning flashes, synthesizers synthesize, and we behold the carmaker's next great machine, to debut in 2020: an all-electric SUV, good for 300 miles of driving between charges, called the Mach 1. Well, we behold a glowing sign that reads "Mach 1"—Ford has yet to debut the car, even as a concept or prototype. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As I sit down in Nissan’s simulator, I prepare myself for the fact that a cohort of researchers could scrutinize my skills as a wheelman with more rigor than the most aggravating backseat driver. And, I accept that this process involves wearing what looks like a too-small, sideways bicycle helmet, which holds 11 electrodes poking through my hair. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

First released last year for a bevy of other platforms, Furi is all boss fights. With pounding synth-heavy music and a visual style riffing off of anime and cyberpunk, it's an unending stream of big-bad showdowns, the sort of challenging, mano a mano fights usually served up as level or quest climaxes in other games. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One might think that rumors out of the galaxy far, far away would subside once Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit theaters. One would be wrong. Even as director Rian Johnson's film continues to get headlines for its costume choices, box office hauls, and lost scenes, gossip about the future of the franchise was spreading throughout the internet. Just what's going on with the next film coming out of the Star Wars universe? Read on. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week Facebook decided that maybe it should make some changes to the information people see on the platform; also, a lot of people got very interested in the pay discrepancies between Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams. But, beyond that, it was also a week where everyone learned that a school kid could play the Cantina Band song from Star Wars with a pencil. Yes, it was yet another strange, wonderful week on the internet. But what else happened? Here we go. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Get great results from your action cam as you capture your heroics ... and your epic bails. When to Slo-Mo The GoPro Hero6 can shoot 1080p video at 240 frames per second—meaning that when you slow it down 10X, it looks amazing. But hitting the brakes doesn’t work for everything. Slo-mo is garbage for point-of-view angles. Save it for when you’re shooting video of your friends—place the camera at ground level to film a trick—or when you’re (sigh) using a selfie stick. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

CES is still a TV conference. Even as the tech industry experiments with augmented reality, self-driving cars, and the outer limits of what you can embed in a refrigerator, everything in Vegas still revolves around the big screen. The 2018 crop mostly marches along the same path manufacturers have been following for decades: Everything's a little bigger and sharper, and there are new inscrutable acronyms everywhere you look. All in the hopes this is the year you finally spring for a new set. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you think shopping is tedious, try juggling 200,000 products in a Walmart. Not literally, of course, but somehow keeping the shelves stocked over an area of tens of thousands of square feet. For that you need a worker with a barcode scanner and an enviable amount of patience. Or you could unleash a hard-working robot from a company called Bossa Nova. At over six feet tall, it roams the aisles, blasting shelves with light and snapping photos. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The folks at Moog Music aren't content just making ridiculously fun synthesizers, iPad apps, and effects boxes for creative musicians. The company now is dipping into percussion—it's newest product, announced today, is a drum machine called the Drummer From Another Mother. Well, hang on. It's not exactly a drum machine. It's a monophonic, semi-modular, analog percussion synthesizer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm's vice president of product management, sticks his head into a Cadillac SUV and points up at a gaping rectangular hole in the ceiling. A hole in this ceiling is hardly remarkable: the whole car looks like a bomb went off inside. Seats face the wrong direction, and wires dangle from places you didn't even know there were wires. A few feet away, two more cars—a Ford and a Maserati—sit in roughly the same condition. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Happy New Year, dear readers. It’s comforting—no, wait, what’s opposite of comforting?—to see that, despite still being able to laugh at Oregonians and gas problems and accidental movie reference mix-ups in news reports, 2018 actually got off to a terrifyingly fast start. Even though we took a week off for the holidays, everything you’re about to read has happened in the past seven days. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s 12:21 pm on a Tuesday, and the new coat from Outlier is going live. For the obsessed fans of this technically minded menswear house, Tuesday drops are always a big deal. This one is bigger than most. The Shelter From the Storm is Outlier’s first breathable waterproof shell. That’s the kind of thing that, if you care about it, you care about it a lot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just about everyone agrees virtual and augmented reality are going to be important. The tech already sort of works, and will get better quickly from here. Gadgets offering the ability to truly feel as if you've been transported to another place, or to superimpose the digital world on the real one, will be transformative. Somehow. Eventually. For some reason. No one knows exactly what AR and VR will be good for, or when. They just know it's coming. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

From its title to its premise, Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy reads as a dark joke. Whether that a joke includes you or not, though, is impossible to say. It's true that the PC game is uproariously, darkly funny. It has a simple aim: climb this mountain. The only problem is that your character is a man stuck inside a pot, his only climbing implement a hammer he can swing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At the world's biggest gadget show, everything is always amazing. Every year, more than a hundred thousand CES attendees pour into Las Vegas to convince each other and the world that everything before was crap and everything to come will change that. They go to see the biggest and thinnest new TVs, the fastest and lightest new laptops, the headphones and the phone cases and the drones and the refrigerators. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Shortly after we installed the Nest home security cameras, my spouse arrived home from work scowling. He opened the Nest app and started scrolling through the day’s footage. “What’s going on?” I asked, certain that a package had been stolen or some other grave injustice had been done. “Did those [unprintables] forget to pick up the garbage?” he asked. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Every human who gets down with the Gregorian calendar can celebrate New Year’s Day, that rare 24-hour stretch when soldiering through a hangover is expected, and precious little work gets done. Too bad that this year, they only got one day before it was back to work. Good thing WIRED's transportation team was here to cover it all. Jack provided context for Tesla’s (disappointing, but unsurprising) new production numbers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

McLaren built its reputation on high-tech, high-spec, top priced racing cars. Borrowing engineering acumen from its (historically great, currently weak) Formula One team, the British company has produced some truly wondrous road cars, starting with the three-seater F1 in the nineties—the world's fastest production car for a decade—up to the all-new, million-dollar Senna, with a 789-horsepower engine in a vehicle that weighs just 2,461 pounds. But McLaren has larger aspirations. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last year was the first one in a while that made Americans stop, pause, and ask themselves if they could survive the end of the world. Whether you're a Silicon Valley billionaire or a regular schmo making minimum wage, it's worth considering a bug out bag in 2018—some insurance against the apocalypse. If you're an entire American city, however, your prepper sack needs more than batteries and a good knife. Things are shifting quickly in the world of urban mobility. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

UPDATE: On Wednesday, January 3, Tesla revealed it has pushed back its production targets for the Model 3 sedan, yet again. In its latest Vehicle Production and Deliveries report, Tesla says it is focussing on quality and efficiency, rather than just pushing for the max volume in the shortest time, and so is aiming for a production speed of 2,500 Model 3s per week by March, and double that by the end of June. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In bag-loving circles, GoRuck’s origin story has become the stuff of legend. In 2008, founder Jason McCarthy left the Special Forces, had his heart broken, and out of the rubble of his life built a bag based on his experiences overseas that could tackle both urban commutes and battles against insurgents. Their flagship bag is the GR1, which I have been using as my everyday bag for the past two weeks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Three decades after Watchmen's release, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' dark, cerebral graphic novel remains one of most critically celebrated works of the superhero genre. On the commercial side, the comics world of the Justice League (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) contains some of the most well-known superhero stories of all time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If Baby Driver taught folks anything this year, it's that finding just the right song at just the right moment is like kismet. You can't predict it, but when it happens you have to let it wash over you. Typically these jolts of joy occur to individuals listening alone, but every so often they happen to the public at large. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first sighting of the dancing hot dog in the wild happened in June. By the Fourth of July, it had made its way around the world, breakdancing at bars and barbecues, at weddings and bar mitzvahs. It turned otherwise banal videos of the grocery store into cinematic masterpieces starring the hot dog, surmounting the refrigerated Oscar Mayers like a pile of carnage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices