“I don’t think an AI model should have that kind of power over people’s lives,” Pegram says. Photograph: Alice Zoo In response to WIRED’s public records requests, Avon and Somerset Police provided a huge trove of performance data for 13 risk models used between 2017 and 2024—including those used to predict missing people, antisocial behavior, … Read more
Some trolls experience buyer’s remorse, Margera says, chuckling. He says a man from Texas recently emailed the morning after spending $5,000 sending variations of the message, “Wake up, pussy!” He pleaded his case: He was drinking and blacked out. Margera wasn’t sympathetic. “Eat a dick!” he said. “That’s what you get.” The team welcomes me … Read more
Weeks later, out of curiosity, I requested the transcripts of everything Sensi was recording in my father’s home. Reading his personal conversations, I suddenly felt like a spy, with the device as my silent conspirator. I’d pushed for the thing in the first place, but now I felt uneasy about it. My father, meanwhile, didn’t … Read more
By chance, a few months before the 2019 Mississippi River flood, Wellenkamp learned about a new, little-known form of insurance that was quietly expanding in disaster-prone areas around the world—not a way to cover individual homes but a means to insure entire towns and ecosystems against calamities. It had started taking off in the farmlands … Read more
Another respondent is a 45-year-old pursuing a master’s program in Seoul, while her husband is an immigrant living in the US. “I’ve been too scared to return there because of ICE and immigration stuff—it’s way too risky, and neither of us want to be responsible for being vanished.” The Resident Who’s Bunking Down With Extended … Read more
The pair had already discovered a shared zeal for unusual homes and big projects. In 1982, they impulsively paid $8,000 for the bones of a dilapidated wooden tugboat. “The wood was so rotten, you could grab handfuls of the bulwarks with your bare hands,” Brand wrote in How Buildings Learn. The tugboat, named Mirene, was … Read more
In the days leading up to the 2026 World Cup, the streamer IShowSpeed—one of the most watched people on the planet, who occasionally moonlights as a rapper—released the music video “World Cup (Champions),” a song about flexing national pride where he mentions all 48 teams. As with everything the 21-year-old born Darren Watkins Jr. does, … Read more
Activists in San Francisco’s Mission District weren’t giving up easily. David Campos had taken the baton from Chris Daly as the city Supervisor leading the anti-gentrification advocates, who were anchored in a handful of nonprofit community groups. During the springtime festivities for Cinco de Mayo in 2015, Campos called for a moratorium on all new … Read more
In February, high school students throughout Utah tested positive after a state wrestling tournament at Utah Valley University in Orem. A dashboard monitoring measles viruses in wastewater lit up with notifications around the state. “Wrestling really feels like our turning point,” said Nicholas Rupp, communications director at the Salt Lake County Health Department. Salt Lake … Read more
Joseph Edgar Foreman is still getting high. In a makeshift greenroom made from curtains at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Afroman, as he’s better known, inhales a blunt rolled by his videographer, who’s wearing a tight cocktail dress and clear sky-high heels. The 51-year-old rapper seems unconcerned that several thousand people are waiting for … Read more