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How’s this for a midseason plot twist: We’re about to flip the calendar to January and suddenly unranked Baylor has become the Black Hat of college basketball. Before I explain why BU coach Scott Drew is catching heat, here’s the need-to-know background on how college basketball has reached a new level of the bizarre in an increasingly volatile roster-building environment. On the morning of Christmas Eve, the NCAA sent word to Baylor’s compliance staff that 7-foot Nigerian-born center James Nnaji had been cleared for competition. The controversial decision was groundbreaking in men’s college hoops. Nnaji is the first person to…

As social media becomes increasingly reliant on algorithmic feeds, creators are navigating a new normal: Just because you post something doesn’t mean your followers will see it. “I think that 2025 was the year where the algorithm completely took over, so followings stopped mattering entirely,” LTK CEO Amber Venz Box told TechCrunch. This isn’t news to creators – Patreon CEO Jack Conte has ardently banged this drum for years – but throughout the year, the industry at large has reacted to this phenomenon in different ways, from the influencers to the streamers. According to the executives that TechCrunch spoke to…

I grew up in a family that regularly ate seafood, but other than a brief phase of liking lobster when I was 5, it never appealed to me. No matter how it was prepared, something about the look, smell, and texture of fish and shellfish always made me queasy. But my feelings toward seafood changed two years ago when I tried caviar at a dinner party. I put a tiny spoonful on a potato chip, took a bite, and fell in love. It didn’t smell funky, it didn’t have a fishy taste—just nice and salty. This was the kind of…

When I heard that French actor and animal activist Brigitte Bardot had died at 91 on Sunday, my first thought was of blasting her song “Les Cheveux dans le vent” non-stop with my mom when I was a kid, and she was introducing me to the Gallic yé-yé pop and its various offshoots that had soundtracked her own childhood. My second thought, though, was somewhat less nostalgic and pleasant. I recalled Bardot’s late-in-life shift to supporting right-wing political candidates, her way of coldly dismissing actresses who came forward about their experiences of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement, and how…

It was a strange year in cyberspace, as US president Donald Trump and his administration launched foreign policy initiatives and massive changes to the federal government that have had significant geopolitical ramifications. Through it all, the steady drumbeat kept pounding of data breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, digital extortion cases, and state-sponsored attacks that have unfortunately become a backdrop of daily life.Here’s WIRED’s look back on this year’s most significant breaches, hacking sprees, and digital attacks. Stay alert, and stay safe out there.Salesforce IntegrationsAttackers grabbed data from the sales management giant Salesforce in at least two breaches this year—but they didn’t…

Brett OkamotoDec 29, 2025, 12:06 PM ETCloseBrett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN since 2010. He has covered all of the biggest events in combat sports during that time, including in-depth interviews and features with names such as Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Georges St-Pierre. He was also a producer on the 30 for 30 film: “Chuck and Tito,” which looked back at the careers and rivalry of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. He lives in Las Vegas, and is an avid, below-average golfer in his spare…

Michał Kiciński, co-founder of CD Projekt, total ownership of the DRM-free video game storefront GOG. The digital video game platform was started by CD Projekt in 2008 with a stated mission to “Good Old Games” (hence the GOG acronym). CD Projekt is known for its game studio CD Projekt Red, the developers The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.GOG said Kiciński bought 100 percent of its shares for PLN 90.7 million ($25 million). The acquisition was fully financed through committed funding secured at the sale’s closing and did not involve the sale of any of Kiciński’s CD Projekt shares.The storefront will…

A selection of one kilogram silver bars at Conclude Zrt bullion dealer arranged in Budapest, Hungary, on Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. Akos Stiller | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesOne of the best trades of the year just staged a massive reversal overnight.Silver futures slid 7% on Monday, after topping $80 an ounce for the first time ever in overnight trading. The precious metal was last trading at $71.79 an ounce. The move is even more dramatic on an intraday basis. Peak to trough, silver plunged 15%, a parabolic move that is the biggest high-to-low change going back to August 2020 when…

Love them or hate them, more than half of the world’s population interacts with algorithmic recommendations in some way every day. Algorithmic recommendations play an integral role in how users discover new content across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. It can be nice to be fed a stream of fresh posts, pictures, and videos that are already tailored to our interests instead of manually hunting for content to engage with, but algorithms don’t always show you what you actually want to see.Many online platforms provide features that aim to help you fix this. The algorithms they deploy are,…

If 2026 is the soccer feast that U.S. soccer fans can’t wait to devour, the past year was an appetizer of savory treats and sour bites.A summer before the World Cup is served across North America — at exorbitant market prices, mind you — the head chef in Zurich overcooked the Club World Cup and cozied up to political clientele.AdvertisementThe finest table was in South Florida, where an ageless artist continued wowing audiences with unforgettable dishes. The vanilla chain that employs him spiced things up with German and Korean flavors while also voting to embrace European sensibilities by changing its…