In 2019, @LaurenGoode canceled her wedding and ended an eight-year relationship. But the painful decisions didn’t end there: As an avid user of technology, she found that it was impossible to escape the digital remnants of the relationship 1/ wired.trib.al/Mr98Ziw
For months afterwards, Goode saw wedding-related ads, anniversary reminders, and photo memories of her ex on all of her devices. Pinterest continued to suggest collages of wedding paraphernalia. Even her Apple Watch would surface painful memories. 2/
Pinterest has an internal name for this: “The miscarriage problem.” Algorithms show people more of the content they’ve searched for, but don’t always take into account when a life event ends—when the wedding is canceled, when the baby isn’t born, or when someone passes away. 3/
Goode spent months talking to technologists, trying to better understand the complicated algorithms of the software services we all use. One takeaway: It's now foolish to think the internet would ever pause just because we do. 4/
Is the answer to just go nuclear—to delete everything? That feels like a path to emotional bankruptcy. Digital footprints likely include joyful memories in addition to miserable ones. 5/
Will the internet ever let us forget? And what does this mean for our memories and our grieving processes?
SCOOP: Edward Coristine (“Big Balls”), Luke Farritor, and Ethan Shaotran were part of the original DOGE crew. They were brought in under short-term “special government employee” status. Supposed to be temporary. Spoiler: it’s not. wired.com/story/big-ball…
As of May 31 (Coristine & Farritor) and April 10 (Shaotran), the trio officially became full-time federal employees. Their roles at the General Services Administration (GSA) are now permanent.
According to documentation viewed by WIRED, they each maintain their “senior advisor” titles.
Their pay? GS-15 for Coristine & Farritor, one of the highest government salary grades. Shaotran’s at GS-14—just one step below. wired.com/story/big-ball…
In fact, federal workers from at least six agencies tell WIRED that DOGE-style work is escalating in their departments, and Trump himself said in a press conference today that “Elon's really not leaving.” wired.com/story/doge-elo…
Members of Musk’s early DOGE team, including Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, have met with a number of departments and agencies in recent days, seemingly continuing business as usual, WIRED has learned.
Over the last week, federal workers have been asked to urgently review contracts across the government, and sources say the pressure to slash contracts has drastically increased in recent weeks. wired.com/story/doge-elo…
NEW: Tulsi Gabbard, now the US director of national intelligence, used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts including a personal Gmail account and Dropbox over a period of years, leaked records reviewed by WIRED reveal. wired.com/story/tulsi-ga…
The password associated includes the word “shraddha,” which appears to have personal significance to Gabbard: This year, WSJ reported that she had been initiated into the Science of Identity Foundation, which ex-members have accused of being a cult. wired.com/story/tulsi-ga…
Security experts advise people to never use the same password on different accounts precisely because people often do so. As director of national intelligence, Gabbard oversees the 18 organizations comprising the US intelligence community.
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…