With commutes cut, gyms closed, and pandemic cleaning completed, you might be finding it difficult to keep up with all of your podcast downloads. Here are some tips to manage a flood of streams. 1/ wired.trib.al/3MxdJIW
Find new ways to multitask: Driving, exercising, and cleaning are popular activities during podcasts, but heavy users incorporate episodes in many other ways: Walking the dog, grinding for levels in video games, or cleaning out email, to name a few. 2/
Organize your listening with playlists. They can create the right mood for the activity accompanying your podcast, and ensure you don’t fumble for the next show while exercising or driving. 3/
Find the right app: Overcast is great for creating playlists, Apple Podcasts is great for searching, and Pocket Casts makes it easy to sync across multiple devices. Which one do you use? 4/
This one’s divisive: you can try listening at 1.5X speed or even 2X speed. Has that worked for you? Expect some derision and lament if you do this, especially from podcast producers. 5/
Make it a habit: Designate a specific time of day for podcasts, especially with Covid-19 already disrupting our daily routines. 6/
Take a pause when you’re done: Take a couple minutes to think about what you listened to and be intentional about how, or if, you want to keep listening. 7/ wired.trib.al/3MxdJIW
Looking for a good podcast to get you started? May we humbly suggest you listen to the latest episode of our new podcast, Get WIRED: 8/ wired.trib.al/6MyQ2NU
What are some of the best podcasts you’re listening to right now? 9/
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DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope. wired.com/story/doge-col…
The scale at which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including sensitive biometric data, has never been done before, raising alarms with experts who fear it may lead to disastrous privacy violations. wired.com/story/doge-col…
“They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,” a senior DHS official tells WIRED. “It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS as well as voter data.” wired.com/story/doge-col…
American police are spending hundreds of thousands on Massive Blue’s unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on “college protesters,” “radicalized” political activists, and suspected traffickers.
Massive Blue calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an “AI-powered force multiplier for public safety” that “deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels.”
404 Media obtained a presentation showing some of these AI characters. These include a “radicalized AI” “protest persona,” which poses as a 36-year-old divorced woman who is lonely, has no children, is interested in baking, activism, and “body positivity.”
The audit covers DOGE’s handling of data at several Cabinet-level agencies, including:
–the Departments of Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services
–the Treasury
–the Social Security Administration
–the US DOGE Service (USDS) itself wired.com/story/gao-audi…
It's being carried out after congressional leaders’ requests and is centered on DOGE’s adherence to privacy and data protection laws and regulations.
A Congressional aide said the requests followed media reports on DOGE’s incursions into federal systems. wired.com/story/gao-audi…
Dozens of federal employees tell WIRED that Trump's federal return to office order has resulted in chaos (including bad Wi-Fi and no toilet paper), with productivity plummeting and public services suffering. wired.com/story/federal-…
One effect of all this, many federal employees tell WIRED, is that they are travelling long distances in order to spend all of their time in virtual meetings.
A Treasury employee says they spend most of their time at the office on video calls as well. wired.com/story/federal-…
It isn’t just traveling to work to sit on Zoom calls—it’s that there may be no place to take the call, or no working internet to connect to it.
WIRED granted employees anonymity to speak freely about their experiences. wired.com/story/federal-…
SCOOP: Elon Musk’s DOGE has plans to stage a “hackathon” next week in Washington, DC. The goal is to create a single “mega API”—a bridge that lets software systems talk to one another—for accessing IRS data, sources tell WIRED. wired.com/story/doge-hac…
DOGE ops have repeatedly referred to the company Palantir as a possible partner in the project, sources tell WIRED.
SCOOP: Shortly after senior Trump officials discussed the bombing of Yemen in a Signal group chat that just happened to include the Atlantic's editor in chief, a subset of the group feasted at a secret dinner featuring Trump where guests were asked to pay $1 million apiece to join. wired.com/story/trump-of…
The date was Saturday, March 15. President Donald Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago estate attending a “candlelight” dinner that wasn’t on his public calendar. On the lawn outside, luxury cars were on display: a Rolls Royce was parked near a Bugatti and Lamborghini.
Earlier that day, the United States had bombed Yemen, targeting Houthi leadership. At least 53 people, including children, were killed.