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Congratulations, Los Angeles! You’ve got the worst traffic in the world. In exchange for the sunshine, gorgeous beaches, and A-plus tacos, you’re forced to whine incessantly about all those damned cars clogging the 405. You don’t live in LA and you’re sick of hearing about how bad they’ve got it? Well, have some sympathy. You’d whine too if you spent 104 hours a year slogging through traffic. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You already have yourreasons for hating San Francisco. The tech bros. The housing crisis. Twitter. The jerks on Lombard Street trying to charge a toll to drive down their stupid winding street. If you need another, consider the traffic. Oh god, the traffic. San Francisco Bay Area commuters spend an average of 78 hours creeping through gridlocked traffic each year, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our language and our conception of time have much in common. Both proceed as a march, one thing after another. (You’re not reading this sentence backward, just as you can’t travel back in time.) From that, well, straightforward observation spring the wondrous complexities of Ted Chiang’s 1998 sci-fi short story, “The Story of Your Life” (the basis for last year’s hit movie Arrival). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In this golden age of TV, when there’s more on offer than you could pack into six lifetimes, it’s still way too difficult to find anything to watch. All your favorite shows and movies residein different apps, on different boxes, plugged into different ports on your TV. And so you end up paralyzed. How many times have you sat in front of your TV, watching a video on your phone? A medium once so blissfully mindless that people called it the Idiot Box has become an unsolvable puzzle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Like John Oliver and baseball, unlimited data plans are back! To be fair, they never left for some people. But one of the weekend’s biggest bits of news is that Verizon just reinstated its unlimited monthly data plan. For Verizon customers, an all-you-can-eat data plan hadn’t been available for new subscribers since 2011. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the last couple of years, Chromebooks have quietly infiltrated the computer market. Google's affordable "just a browser" devices are the best-selling computers in schools, and they're percolating around boardrooms and cubicles. Last fall, more people bought Chromebooks than Macs-and that's not going to switch back anytime soon. Now Google's out to convince you, regular human, person of sound mind and reasonable budget, that you ought to buy a Chromebook. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A couple of years ago, the luxurious leather-wrapped Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H7s were our favorite Bluetooth headphones. The over-ear H7s sounded as gorgeous as they looked, and they even smelled great. The problem, if anything, was the price. At $400, the H7s weren’t the cheapest options by any means. And while the new $300 Beoplay H4s aren’t exactly bargain-bin cans either, they offer nearly the same roster of specs as the H7s for $100 less. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Flipboard exists in stark contrast to your Facebook News Feed or Twitter timeline. It doesn't rely on your high school friends to share whatever junk they're reading, nor does it ask you to follow the right combination of 800 people. Flipboard's always been a quieter place that you can fill with news stories you like. Today, Flipboard is rolling out a brand-new version of its platform that introduces what it calls "Smart Magazines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Vizio, which makes popular, high-quality, affordable TV sets, agreed to pay a $2.2 million fine to the FTC. As it turns out, those same TVs were also busily tracking what their owners were watching, and shuttling that data back to the company’s servers, where it would be sold to eager advertisers. That’s every bit as gross as it sounds, but Vizio’s offense was one of degree, not of kind. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What do a Web 1.0 pioneer, a Russian-born fisherman, and a scientist who shoots lasers into poop for a living have in common? America’s first 100 percent vegetarian trout. Bill Foss, Kenny Belov, and Rick Barrows have spent years weaning their farmed fish off of industrial fish food. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You know what gaming PCs look like, right? Big, LED-lit cubes that look ready to hatch tiny evil cyborgs. Lesser Doctor Who villains. Mean but tidy igneous rocks. You get the idea. The Volta V, from Computer Direct Outlet, disagrees. It thinks a gaming PC looks like a beautiful, handcrafted wooden box. Thank goodness. The Volta V, which ships this March, provides a high-powered option for people who equally value inner strength and outer tranquility. It’s a 5. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Here at WIRED Book Club, we tend to read newer writers. Ted Chiang isn’t exactly that. Since publishing his first short story, “Tower of Babylon,” in 1990, he’s averaged less than a story a year, quietly cultivating a modest but devoted fan base that recognizes his work for what it is: sharp, spare, intensely thought-through science fiction. “Literary,” as some like to call it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Binti: Home doesn’t pick up exactly where its Hugo-winning predecessor left off. In that novella, Binti—a brilliant Himba woman in what is possibly a future Namibia—jets off for the galaxy’s finest university. The trip goes horrifically wrong, but by the end, she’s there, has a new friend, and is ready to start learning. So you might expect the sequel, released yesterday, to cover Binti’s first year at school. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Editor's note: We're proud to bring NextDraft-the most righteous, most essential newsletter on the web-to WIRED.com. Every Friday you'll get a roundup of the week's most popular must-read stories from around the internet, courtesy of mastermind Dave Pell. So dig in and geek out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Toy Fair is almost upon us, which makes this week basically Christmas Eve for Nerf fans. Here are three blasters you can unwrap early: the Raptorstrike, which uses Nerf’s most accurate darts yet; the Twinshock, the first blaster to shoot two Mega darts at once, and the Modulus Regulator, which… well, it’s dope. While these three aren’t the full extent of Nerf’s 2017 arsenal expansion, each adds a new dimension to what blasters can do. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s a tedious task you’ve been putting off for what could be years. But this is finally the weekend you do it; you’re going to clean your computer inside and out. That means scrubbing down those keys, wiping the fossilized fingerprints off your screen and deleting all the files that secretly downloaded when you were trying to figure out how to make a GIF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Elon Musk is supes annoyed with LA's atrocious traffic and wants to dig a tunnel under it all. It's true that getting around Los Angeles is a pain, but this is a tremendously stupid idea. Not because tunnels are expensive (true), or because he'd need a pile of permits to start boring(also true), but because his harebrained scheme won't actually help. I am actually going to do this - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016 Exciting progress on the tunnel front. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are two types of people in the world: Thosewho just know they could never get away with using an iPad as their only computer, and everyone else. And the odds are you're one of those true believers. The truth is, you can (probably) totally do this. Unless youspend your days in Photoshop or Premiere, or you absolutely need some kind of esoteric accounting software, you don't need all the computer you have. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the fall of 2016, when Nick Fox, Google's vice president in charge of messaging products, first showed me the new Allo messaging app, he started with a slide. "This is our overall approach and strategy to communications," he said, pointing at a bunch of app icons separated into three columns. On the left, consumer products-Allo and Duo. On the right, enterprise, which is where Hangouts is going. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a recent episode of MacGyver, Angus (that's what his REALLY close friends call him) builds a Leyden jar with some very simple components. Of course there is some awesome physics here, so I will obviously go over this. Full disclosure-I'm currently the Technical Consult for the MacGyver show. What is a Leyden Jar? A long time ago, humans were just starting to figure out this whole electricity thing-in particular the study of electrostatics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This afternoon, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th and final President of the United States. In addition to all of the usual pomp and circumstance—OK, well, maybe not the usual pomp and circumstance, because we understand he had some trouble lining up performers—there will be a full slate of fine entertainment. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The camera market has long been segmented into three basic categories: Cameras for professionals, models for the so-called “serious hobbyists,” and models for the newcomer. From DSLRs to action cams and point-and-shoots, most cameras are squarely aimed at one of these three markets. The market for aerial photography (aka drones with real cameras on them) is about 150 years younger, and therefore somewhat less segmented. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The best place on the planet to watch a movie is almost certainly from the center seat in the second-to-last row of the David Keighley Theater at IMAX’s headquarters in Playa Vista, CA. The theater seats 95, all in the shadow of a screen 60 feet wide and 42 feet tall. Twelve channels of sound project from the walls, the ceiling, and the deep recesses of your soul. Everything is black, with deep blue lighting that disappears as soon as any of the six laser projectors starts up. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It is not enough to resolve to read more in the New Year—as something like 12 percent of Americans do. You must have a plan, a program, a structure. And, crucially, a group of wonderful, intellectually adventurous people to be accountable to. Welcome to WIRED Book Club, back for 2017 and better than ever. If this is your first time, here’s how it works. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

So, Nintendo’s Switch is pretty fantastic. Or, rather, it could be if it gets some killer games. But after watching the company’s livestream today and playing around with the new console, we had questions. Fortunately, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president and chief operating officer, was there to answer them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s exciting in general to get yourhands on a gaming machine for the first time, asI did this morning in New York at Nintendo’s first big Switch preview. But it’s doubly fun because Switch, coming March 3 for $299, is sounique. At its core, it’s a tablet with a 6.2-inch screen (a little bigger than an iPhone 7 Plus). You can slip it into a dock that hooks up to your TV if you want to play on a big screen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you’ve ever witnessed a 4K OLED television playing HDR video, you’ve seen the pinnacle of TV tech. The black levels look like deep space. The contrast is perfect. The colors are stunning. Every frame mesmerizes, a twinkling, tack-sharp work of art. At CES, incredible OLEDs from LG and Sony and equally stunning LCDs from Samsung dominated the news. With good reason. They’re all gorgeous. But while OLEDs are coming down in price, the cheapest ones still run a couple grand. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Every smartphone is a good smartphone now. Doesn’t really matter who makes it—huge companies like Apple and Samsung, upstarts like Nextbit and Blu—or which flashy features it has or doesn’t have. As long as you have around $250 to spend, you’re positively spoiled for choice. That’s great news for you, and it’s been terrible news for HTC. HTC’s last phone, the HTC 10, was a very good phone: It did all the good phone things in all the good phone ways. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Apple set out to build a smartphone, the team tasked with doing so didn’t planon changing the world.It didn’t foresee theApp Storebecoming a billion-dollar business full ofbillion-dollar businesses like Uber, Snapchat, andWhatsApp. It wasn’ttrying to reinvent howpeople communicate, shop, and even hook up. It was tryingto buildan iPod that made phone calls. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Heading into the craziness ofCES 2017, it was hard to see how LG could make its OLED televisionsany better. Cheaper? Sure. But better? We’re talking about TVs that some say offerthe best picturein the history of television. Yet LGmanaged to crank up thewow factor. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Ezra Edelman set out to make the documentary O.J.: Made in America, he had one goal: To make a five-hour movie about howthe 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case a flashpoint for talking about race and the American criminal justice system. Not only didhe hit his goal, but he overshot that runtime by about three hours. “No sane person would do this,” Edelman says now, sitting in a lounge in New York’s Post Factory, where his doc was edited. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Now that Chrome OS users can get the millions of apps in Google’s Play Store, tech firms are developingentirely new kinds of devices for the platform. After months of speculation, rumors, and delays—which may have had something to do with the Note 7 battery scandal—Samsung announced the new Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro today at CES. The Plus and Pro are two flavors of one device, but it’s hard to say what kind of device that is. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Watch out, LG. Sony is entering the OLED television arena with a fetching TV. We’ve long known Sony could build a sweet OLED. It rolled into CES a few years ago with a stunning 56-inch 4K OLED set, but it never went anywhere. And because Panasonic doesn’t sell its OLED here in the US, LG has had the market to itself. That ends this year. Sony’s Bravia OLED A1E is gorgeous, it’s slim, and it sports a cool stand so you canprop it up like a giant picture frame. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One of the most enduring views of CES happens to be one of the first things anyone sees there. You squeeze through the crowds of businessmen, hangers-on, and professional conference-goers, and push through the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center. You walk down the hallway that's somehow already filthy, even though the show started just 16 seconds ago, and you look to your right. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In November, WIRED published a special issue guest-edited by President Obama. The magazine’s features editor Maria Streshinsky says that working with the president was an exciting opportunity for everyone at WIRED, especially editor in chief Scott Dadich. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a lab buried under the Apennine Mountains of Italy, Elena Aprile, a professor of physics at Columbia University, is racing to unearth what would be one of the biggest discoveries in physics. She has not yet succeeded, even after more than a decade of work. Then again, nobody else has, either. Aprile leads the XENON dark matter experiment, one of several competing efforts to detect a particle responsible for the astrophysical peculiarities that are collectively attributed to dark matter. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

2016 was a year that felt entirely out of control. At times, it was a blur a blur; at others it was dreadfully long, challenging moments personal and collective stretching into little eternities. This year’s videogames weren’t explicitresponses to anything that happened this year—games rarely works like that, especially where multi-million dollar development cycles are concerned—but entertainment and realityoften intersected in disconcertingways. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sure,withThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildthere’sone more high-profile game coming to Wii U. But Nintendo is also releasing the new Zelda for its upcoming new console, Nintendo Switch. And it’s not even promising that the game will be there for its March launch, just a vague “2017.” By the time Zelda finally ships, you may have already upgraded your console. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ifirmly believethat thekitchen isan incredible source of knowledge, and that you can’t truly understand something you love until you try making it yourself. If you love beer, these truisms yield a glorious thing. Homebrewing is somethingof a national passion, but I’ve never delved into it, mostly becausethere’s so much great beer producedby people who know what they’re doing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You know the space agency best for the way it uses probes, landers, telescopes, and satellites to show you worlds beyond your own, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has plenty of tools for taking a close look at Earth, too. To study the home planet’s atmosphere, weather, ice masses, and oceans, NASA operates a diverse fleet of aircraft planes, from the high-fling ER-2 to the Global Hawk drone. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Audioengine enjoysa strong reputation for high-quality speakers at prices that won’t make you cry. TheHD3 desktop speakers retail at $400, which places them at the upperend of Audioengine’s desktop line of powered boxes, but below the top-endHD5 speakers. I held high expectations for the HD3s. AsI unpacked them, I felt pangs of nostalgia over the wires and cables. It’s been awhile since I plugged a pair of nice speakers into my computer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With each new Star Wars movie, fans wait to see how their favorite characters, new and old, will be styled. And, with some of the most iconic and influential hairstyles in pop-culture history, the franchise has a high bar to clear when it comes to its characters’ tresses. Because as Yoda says, “Hairdo. Or do not hairdo. There is no try. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Not everyone wants to—or can—spend the holidays next to a fire or gorging on fowl and carbs. Some people (read: us) see holidays as a chance to catch up on movies and gorge on popcorn and Starburst. Luckily for those folks, there are a lot of good movies in theaters right now—and even more ways to see them. But going to the movies can be stressful. There are lines, jockeying for good seats, and the high prices of concessions to worry about with every trip to the multiplex. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s that time of year again—the time when we all look back at the past 12 months and try to figure out what the hell just happened. Here on The Monitor, things are no different. In fact, that’s what this week’s entire episode is about. Yes, this week the WIRED Culture team started talking about 2016 and realized: Hey, you know what? This was a pretty good year for pop culture. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It was Valentine’s Day. I made a dinner reservation at Milano just in case, and the needles from the Christmas tree were everywhere. I even found some in the bathtub. I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but neither does the fact that I got a birthday card from President Bush in the mail. The guy hasn’t been in office for years, not to mention I’m a Democrat. Anyway, the box that flashes, the People Meter or whatever they call it, it stopped flashing, so I contacted Richard. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My host’s expression went cool. He was a middle-aged man with a wide face and shoulders and pale stubble on his cheeks and chin that held the promise of a lush beard. In the four hours I’d spent in his home since the evacuated rail from Nové MÄ›sto had deposited me in Sagrado, he’d been nothing but jovial and expansive. His warmth and his pleasure in having a guest had lulled me into feeling safe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Lately this feeling or maybe it's a thought what's the difference great another thing to think about add it to the list. Hard. To feel. Sure about anything it's in the CUPBOARD. NEXT TO THE MOUTHWASH. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you want to know what's coming next from Shinola, the hipster-chic brand of watches, bikes, and seemingly all things leather, walk into the company's store in midtown Detroit. Go through the minimalist cafe; around the table of branded footballs, briefcases, and ping-pong paddles; and past the jewelry case. Then look right, through the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass. That's where I findSteve Welbourn, a quiet guy with wispy facial hair and a navy hoodie. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

That five-inch phone in your pocket, the one you absolutely can't live without, does damn near anything these days.It is the Great Usurper, rendering everything from newspapers to music players to actual human interaction all but obsolete. People embraced smartphones faster than any other gadget in the history of the world, creating a trillion-dollar industry that is expected to reach more than six billion people in the next four years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Do you love getting onto an airplane? Because, let’s be honest, nobody is their best self when trying to muscle an overstuffed rolling bag down a narrow aisle and then up into an overhead bin that’s exactly, precisely, slightly too small for it. Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore! Because starting in 2017, United Airlines is taking away your right to put a bag in the overhead altogether. OK, not exactly. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices