Last week, somewhere amid the World Cup frenzy, a now-viral video circulated of Norwegian striker Erling Haaland mid-mouthed in a restaurant, glancing left and flinching at his own reflection. One post on sharing the video racked up more than 31 million views in mere days. But here’s the thing: It isn’t him. Fact checkers traced … Read more
The Instagram Close Friends Story for @miles.sumrall shows an affable-looking guy with curly dark hair and an expertly groomed mustache beaming as he floats on the water. “You’re receiving this because you’re exactly the type of person we’re building this for,” the caption reads, accompanied by a code for an invite to a “members only … Read more
Meta is pausing a divisive employee tracking program after an internal security issue exposed potentially sensitive data collected through the initiative to other workers. “We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while … Read more
You got a World Cup ticket. It arrived in your inbox with a QR code, professional branding, and a confirmation email that looked like the real thing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. For years, spotting a scam was relatively simple. A suspicious email address, broken English, or an obvious typo were often enough to raise suspicion. But … Read more
Meta did an The “atrocious” job of rolling out a new artificial intelligence division and will aim to “rekindle” a more cheerful internal culture through better communication, career growth, and even snacks, a top executive told employees on Monday in an internal post seen by WIRED. The comments made by Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology … Read more
Two prompts that were used to generate material on Grok were rejected by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Anthropic’s Claude as inappropriate when tested by WIRED. Google’s Gemini did create an image of one celebrity being held in the hand of a giant, though it rejected another prompt. Google declined to comment. One Grok Imagine … Read more
The polar bear video has millions of views. Set to a haunting piano score that’s become ubiquitous on TikTok, it shows a lone bear swimming between increasingly distant ice floe. The comments section overflows with teenage grief, rage, and helplessness. Beside my laptop screen lies the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Same … Read more
The California-based reggae The band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like “Angels Above Me” did this past week. The six-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in … Read more
Hasan Piker spends seven to eight hours a day, seven days a week, streaming on Twitch. The far-left political commentator got his start in 2013 interning for (and sometimes hosting) the Young Turks. More than a decade later, he’s a powerhouse newsfluencer with the number-one channel in Twitch’s Politics and Commentary category. More than 3 … Read more
Last week, Taylor Swift filed a trio of trademark applications to protect her image and voice. One is meant to cover a well-known photograph of the pop singer holding a pink guitar during a concert on her record-breaking Eras tour, while the two sound trademarks are for simple identifying phrases: “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and … Read more