TechpediaLocal Stories, Global Reach

Culture News

15 articles in culture

We Found Two Theaters With Sold-Out ‘Melania’ Opening Day Screenings

We Found Two Theaters With Sold-Out ‘Melania’ Opening Day Screenings

A WIRED analysis of nearly 1,400 Friday showtimes of Melania found only two with no tickets available. Both are before 3 pm.

wired.com
Jan 29
CultureCulture / MoviesPolitics / Politics News
The 50 Best Shows on HBO Max, WIRED’s Picks (February 2026)

The 50 Best Shows on HBO Max, WIRED’s Picks (February 2026)

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, The Pitt, and Industry are just a few of the shows you need to be watching on HBO Max this month.

wired.com
Jan 27
CultureCulture / TV
Jimmy Wales Will Never Edit Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Page: He ‘Makes Me Insane’

Jimmy Wales Will Never Edit Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Page: He ‘Makes Me Insane’

On this week’s episode of The Big Interview podcast, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales talks about maintaining neutrality in an online ecosystem increasingly hostile to facts.

wired.com
Jan 20
BusinessCulture
Wikipedia’s Existential Threats Feel Greater Than Ever

Wikipedia’s Existential Threats Feel Greater Than Ever

As the free online encyclopedia turns 25, it’s facing political opposition, AI scraping, dwindling volunteers, and a public that may no longer believe in its ideals.

wired.com
Jan 15
CultureCulture / Digital Culture
Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess

Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess

Kids are being identified as adults—and vice versa—on Roblox, while age-verified accounts are already being sold online.

wired.com
Jan 13
CultureCulture / Video Games
The 40 Best Movies on HBO Max Right Now (January 2026)

The 40 Best Movies on HBO Max Right Now (January 2026)

One Battle After Another, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, and It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley are just a few of the movies you should be watching on HBO Max this month.

wired.com
Dec 25, 2025
CultureCulture / Movies
Disney to invest $1bn in OpenAI, allowing characters in Sora video tool

Disney to invest $1bn in OpenAI, allowing characters in Sora video tool

Agreement comes amid anxiety in Hollywood over impact of AI on the industry, expression and rights of creators Walt Disney has announced a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI, enabling the AI startup’s Sora video generation tool to use its characters. Users of Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that draw on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters as part of a three-year licensing agreement between OpenAI and the entertainment giant. Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Dec 11, 2025
BusinessOpenAIWalt Disney Company
Silicon Valley Is All About the Hard Sell These Days

Silicon Valley Is All About the Hard Sell These Days

Sam Altman’s appearance on The Tonight Show is part of a larger charm offensive currently being waged by the tech establishment.

wired.com
Dec 10, 2025
CultureCulture / Digital CultureCulture / TV
The 46 Best Movies on Netflix, WIRED’s Picks (December 2025)

The 46 Best Movies on Netflix, WIRED’s Picks (December 2025)

Frankenstein, Troll 2, and A House of Dynamite are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.

wired.com
Dec 6, 2025
CultureCulture / Movies
My family’s excitement about Outer Worlds 2 was short-lived | Dominik Diamond

My family’s excitement about Outer Worlds 2 was short-lived | Dominik Diamond

It’s always crushing when a wildly anticipated game turns out to be a dud, but this RPG’s awful story and clunky dialogue gave my son and I something to talk about It was an exciting November for the Diamond household: one of those rare games that we all loved had a sequel coming out! The original Outer Worlds dazzled our eyeballs with its art nouveau palette and charmed our ears with witty dialogue, sucking us into a classic mystery-unravelling story in one of my favourite “little man versus evil corporate overlords” worlds since Deus Ex. It didn’t have the most original combat, but that didn’t matter: it was obviously a labour of love from a team totally invested in the telling of this tale, and we all fell under its spell. Well, when I say all of us, I mean myself and the three kids. My wife did not play The Outer Worlds, because none of those worlds featured Crash Bandicoot. But the rest of us dug it, and the kids particularly enjoyed that I flounced away from the final boss battle after half a day of trying, declaring that I had pretty much completed the game and that was good enough for a dad with other things to do. Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 28, 2025
GamesCultureXbox series S/X
T​he era-defining Xbox 360 ​reimagined ​gaming​ and Microsoft never matched it

T​he era-defining Xbox 360 ​reimagined ​gaming​ and Microsoft never matched it

Two decades on, its influence still lingers, marking a moment when gaming felt thrillingly new again • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Almost 20 years ago (on 1 December 2005, to be precise), I was at my very first video game console launch party somewhere around London’s Leicester Square. The Xbox 360 arrived on 22 November 2005 in the US and 2 December in the UK, about three months after I got my first job as a junior staff writer on GamesTM magazine. My memories of the night are hazy because a) it was a worryingly long time ago and b) there was a free bar, but I do remember that DJ Yoda played to a tragically deserted dancefloor, and everything was very green. My memories of the console itself, however, and the games I played on it, are still as clear as an Xbox Crystal . It is up there with the greatest consoles ever. In 2001, the first Xbox had muscled in on a scene dominated by Japanese consoles , upsetting the established order (it outsold Nintendo’s GameCube by a couple of million) and dragging console gaming into the online era with Xbox Live, an online multiplayer service that was leagues ahead of what the PlayStation 2 was doing. Nonetheless, the PS2 ended up selling over 150m to the original Xbox’s 25m. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, would sell over 80m, neck and neck with the PlayStation 3 for most of its eight-year life cycle (and well ahead in the US). It turned Xbox from an upstart into a market leader. Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 26, 2025
GamesCultureGames consoles
Kirby Air Riders review – cute pink squishball challenges Mario for Nintendo racing supremacy

Kirby Air Riders review – cute pink squishball challenges Mario for Nintendo racing supremacy

Nintendo Switch 2; Bandai Namco/Sora/HAL Laboratory/Nintendo It takes some getting used to, but this Mario Kart challenger soon reveals a satisfyingly zen, minimalist approach to competitive racing In the world of cartoonish racing games, it’s clear who is top dog. As Nintendo’s moustachioed plumber lords it up from his gilded go-kart, everyone from Crash Bandicoot to Sonic and Garfield has tried – and failed – to skid their way on to the podium. Now with no one left to challenge its karting dominance, Nintendo is attempting to beat itself at its own game. The unexpected sequel to a critically panned 2003 GameCube game, Kirby Air Riders has the pink squishball and friends hanging on for dear life to floating race machines. With no Grand Prix to compete in, in the game’s titular mode you choose a track and compete to be the first of six players to cross the finish line, spin-attacking each other and unleashing weapons and special abilities to create cutesy, colourful chaos. Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 26, 2025
GamesRacing gamesNintendo
16 brilliant Christmas gifts for gamers

16 brilliant Christmas gifts for gamers

From Minecraft chess and coding for kids to retro consoles and Doom on vinyl for grown-ups – hit select and start with these original non-digital presents Gamers can be a difficult bunch to buy for. Most of them will get their new games digitally from Steam, Xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation’s online shops, so you can’t just wrap up the latest version of Call of Duty and be done with it. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful accessories and fun lifestyle gifts to look out for, and gamers tend to have a lot of other interests that intersect with games in different ways. So if you have a player in your life, whether they’re young or old(er), here are some ideas chosen by the Guardian’s games writers. And naturally, we’re starting with Lego … Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 25, 2025
GamesCultureChristmas
Xania Monet’s music is the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully her AI ‘clankers’ will be limited to this cultural moment | Van Badham

Xania Monet’s music is the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully her AI ‘clankers’ will be limited to this cultural moment | Van Badham

While a robot pop star may be novelty now, young people are maturing with a scorn for generic digital products Xania Monet is the latest digital nightmare to emerge from a hellscape of AI content production. No wonder she’s popular … but how long will it last? The music iteration of AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, Xania is a composite product manufactured of digital tools: in this case, a photorealistic avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words. Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 20, 2025
Artificial intelligence (AI)MusicTechnology
How generative AI in Arc Raiders started a scrap over the gaming industry’s future

How generative AI in Arc Raiders started a scrap over the gaming industry’s future

The use of AI in the surprise game-of-the-year contender has sparked a heated cultural and ethical debate, and raised existential questions for artists, writers and voice actors • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Arc Raiders is, by all accounts, a late game-of-the-year contender. Dropped into a multiplayer world overrun with hostile drones and military robots, every human player is at the mercy of the machines – and each other. Can you trust the other raider you’ve spotted on your way back to humanity’s safe haven underground, or will they shoot you and take everything you’ve just scavenged? Perhaps surprisingly, humanity is (mostly) choosing to band together, according to most people I’ve talked to about this game. In a review for Gamespot , Mark Delaney paints a beguiling picture of Arc Raiders’s potential for generating war stories, and highlights its surprisingly hopeful tone as the thing that elevates it above similar multiplayer extraction shooters: “We can all kill each other in Arc Raiders. The fact that most of us are choosing instead to lend a helping hand, if not a sign that humanity will be all right in the real world, at the very least makes for one of the best multiplayer games I’ve ever played.” Continue reading...

theguardian.com
Nov 19, 2025
GamesCultureShooting games