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RFK Jr. Orders HHS to Give Undocumented Migrants' Medicaid Data to DHS

WIRED

With demonstrations ramping up against the Trump administration, this week was all about protests. With President Donald Trump taking the historic step to deploy US Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles, we dove into the "long-term dangers" of sending troops to LA, as well as what those troops are permitted to do while they're there. Of course, it's not just the military getting involved in the LA protests against the heavy crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There's also Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which further escalated federal involvement by flying Predator drones over LA. And there are local and state authorities, who've used "nonlethal" weapons and chemical agents like tear gas against protesters.


Fujifilm's X-E5, New Bose Speakers, and Qualcomm's Smart Glasses Chip--Your Gear News of the Week

WIRED

Fujifilm announced a new camera this week, the X-E5, the latest in its X-E rangefinder-style mirrorless camera series. Think of the X-E as an interchangeable lens version of the X100. The big news in the X-E5 is Fujifilm's latest 40-megapixel APS-C sensor and 7-stop in-body image stabilization (IBIS). This is the first X-E series camera with IBIS, which Fujifilm says will gain you about 7 stops of handholding. The new sensor also means video specs jump to 6.2K at 30 frames per second (with a 1.23 crop) and 4K 30 fps full sensor video. The X-E5 regains the focus mode switch on the side of the body (notably absent from the X-E4), and adds a new film simulation dial.


Ahead of Protests, Waymo Scales Back Robotaxi Service Nationwide

WIRED

Waymo will temporarily limit robotaxi service in all of its nationwide markets, the company said Friday, as US cities prepare for a wave of protests of federal immigration policies and law enforcement and military crackdowns on demonstrators. The Alphabet subsidiary will stop service in Los Angeles altogether. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp confirmed the service pause and adjustments but declined to comment further. There is no indication how long the service changes will last. The adjustments will affect service in San Francisco; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Phoenix, Arizona.


The Chatbot Disinfo Inflaming the LA Protests

WIRED

In recent days, Los Angeles residents have taken to the streets to protest the Trump administration's immigration policies and the increasingly frequent ICE raids. WIRED's senior politics editor Leah Feiger joins Zoรซ Schiffer, director of business and industry, to discuss the related flood of information on social media, and how AI chatbots like Grok and ChatGPT are delivering incorrect and at times, inflammatory answers. Mentioned in today's episode: AI Chatbots Are Making LA Protest Disinformation Worse by David Gilbert I Joined Every Class Action Lawsuit I Could Find, and So Can You by Andy Vasoyan Vibe Coding Is Coming for Engineering Jobs by Will Knight Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.


This Chatbot Tool Pays Users 50 a Month for Their Feedback on AI Models

WIRED

To show off how easy it is for users to earn money by using his new chatbot platform, Pankaj Gupta offers to cash out 1 worth of Yupp credits, sending it to me over Venmo or PayPal. I'm talking with Gupta in the WIRED office during a prelaunch demo of Yupp, which comes out of stealth mode today. Journalistic ethics forbid accepting gifts from sources, so I politely decline. He proceeds to send it over PayPal to his Stanford alumni email. Gupta is the CEO of Yupp, which is free to use and available globally.


The Meta AI App Lets You 'Discover' People's Bizarrely Personal Chats

WIRED

"What counties [sic] do younger women like older white men," a public message from a user on Meta's AI platform says. "I need details, I'm 66 and single. I'm from Iowa and open to moving to a new country if I can find a younger woman." The chatbot responded enthusiastically: "You're looking for a fresh start and love in a new place. This is just one of many seemingly personal conversations that can be publicly viewed on Meta AI, a chatbot platform that doubles as a social feed and launched in April.


Unpacking AI Agents

WIRED

In the past six months, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others have released web-browsing agents that are designed to complete tasks independently, with only minimal input from humans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has even called AI agents "the next giant breakthrough." On today's episode, we'll dive into what makes these agents different from other forms of machine intelligence and whether their capabilities can live up to the hype. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link.


AI Agents Are Too Cheap for Our Own Good

WIRED

In 2007, Luke Arrigoni, an AI entrepreneur, earned 63,000 at his first job as a junior software developer. Today, he says AI tools that write better code than he did back then cost just 120 annually. The numbers don't sit right with him. Arrigoni, who runs Loti AI, a company that helps Hollywood stars find unauthorized deepfakes, worries that underpriced AI tools encourage companies to eliminate entry-level roles. He wants to flip the incentive structure so people's careers don't end before they begin.


Vibe Coding Is Coming for Engineering Jobs

WIRED

On a 5K screen in Kirkland, Washington, four terminals blur with activity as artificial intelligence generates thousands of lines of code. Steve Yegge, a veteran software engineer who previously worked at Google and AWS, sits back to watch. "This one is running some tests, that one is coming up with a plan. I am now coding on four different projects at once, although really I'm just burning tokens," Yegge says, referring to the cost of generating chunks of text with a large language model (LLM). Learning to code has long been seen as the ticket to a lucrative, secure career in tech.


An Experimental New Dating Site Matches Singles Based on Their Browser Histories

WIRED

Imagine, for a moment, that your most clandestine internet searches--anxiety-riddled deep dives on WebMD, Google queries wondering if your cat is trying to kill you, or why farts smell the way they do--were the key to finding a soulmate. Would you sign up for a dating site that guaranteed connection in return for your browser history? For more than a decade, developers have tried to perfect the science of compatibility. Bumble let women make the first move. Grindr was a gay utopia (until it became overrun with ads).