The Fulu Foundation, a nonprofit that pays out bounties for removing user-hostile features, is hunting for a way to keep Ring cameras from sending data to Amazon--without breaking the hardware. Usually, when you see a feel-good story about finding a lost dog, you don't immediately react with fear and revulsion. But that was indeed the case in response to a Super Bowl commercial from Amazon-owned security camera company Ring. There's now a group offering to dole out a $10,000 bounty to wrest back control of the user data Ring controls. The ad showed off a new feature from Ring called Search Party.

Donald Trump Jr.'s Private DC Club Has Mysterious Ties to an Ex-Cop With a Controversial Past The Executive Branch has a reported membership list that includes Trumpworld elites like David Sacks. A WIRED review of corporate filings reveals an under-the-radar player: a notorious former DC police officer. When the Executive Branch soft-launched in Washington, DC, last spring, the private club's initial buzz centered on its starry roster of backers and founding members. The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is one of the club's several co-owners, according to previous reporting. Founding members reportedly include Trump administration AI czar David Sacks and his podcast cohost Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as crypto bigwigs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

No matter how well your favorite streaming service's algorithm knows you, come February, sometimes even the smartest technology can be swayed by the power of Valentine's Day. But love--romantic or otherwise--can be found in the oddest of places, including the radioactive wasteland of postapocalyptic Los Angeles, Westeros in the rare midst of relative peace, or behind the scenes of the latest MCU blockbuster. Whether you're in the mood for a reliable sci-fi gem or an enlightening new docuseries courtesy of director Josh Safdie, February's streaming lineup offers plenty of options to swoon over. Here are the 10 shows we're falling for right now. Picking up from roughly where Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman's left off when it ended in 2024, might be best described as for the TikTok age or simply the franchise's horniest iteration.

On TikTok, Chinese manufacturers are advertising signal-blocking weapons with the breezy cadence of consumer lifestyle advertising. "Pew, pew, pew!" a woman wearing sneakers and high-waisted pink trousers says cheerfully in a video uploaded to TikTok. She is standing on what appears to be an industrial rooftop while demonstrating how to use a black device resembling an oversized laser tag gun. "Jamming gun, good," she adds, flashing a thumbs up. These days, nearly any product imaginable is available for purchase on TikTok straight from Chinese factories, ranging from industrial chemicals to mystical crystals and custom pilates reformers.

Workers describe a deteriorating culture at Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, where layoffs continue and employees are expected to use AI tools daily. After hundreds of workers were laid off in early February from Jack Dorsey's Block, some of the people remaining at the company say the internal culture has devolved to a point where performance anxiety is running rampant, using generative AI is required, and overall morale is rapidly deteriorating. Block is the parent company behind the merchant payment processor Square and the payment app Cash App. "Morale is probably the worst I've felt in four years," reads an employee complaint submitted to Dorsey in a recent all-hands meeting, a transcript of which was seen by WIRED. "The overarching culture at Block is crumbling."

The Boston startup uses AI to translate and verify legacy software for defense contractors, arguing modernization can't come at the cost of new bugs. Code Metal, a Boston-based startup that uses AI to write code and translate it into other programming languages, just closed a $125 million Series B funding round from new and existing investors. The news comes just a few months after the startup raised $36 million in series A financing led by Accel. Code Metal is part of a new wave of startups aiming to modernize the tech industry by using AI to generate code and translate it across programming languages. One of the questions that persists about AI-assisted code, though, is whether the output is any good--and what the consequences might be if it's not.

The AI search startup once predicted advertising would be a massive business. Perplexity is abandoning plans to put ads in its AI search product as the industry looks for sustainable business models that won't hurt user trust. The changes are part of a larger strategic shift for the company, which has long focused on disrupting Google Search's business. Google is changing to be like Perplexity more than Perplexity is trying to take on Google, said a Perplexity executive at a press briefing on Tuesday. Executives spoke to the press on the condition of anonymity.

"If you are interested in helping shape and deliver the next chapter of Palantir's work across DHS, please reach out," a Palantir executive wrote to employees about the massive purchasing agreement. The Department of Homeland Security struck a $1 billion purchasing agreement with Palantir last week, further reinforcing the software company's role in the federal agency that oversees the nation's immigration enforcement . According to contracting documents published last week, the blanket purchase agreement (BPA) awarded "is to provide Palantir commercial software licenses, maintenance, and implementation services department wide." The agreement simplifies how DHS buys software from Palantir, allowing DHS agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to essentially skip the competitive bidding process for new purchases of up to $1 billion in products and services from the company. Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lifting weights can keep you carrying groceries and riding bikes even as you get older. To join or not to join a gym: That is the question. If you opt out of building a home gym, you can join a club and have access to more weights and machines. Friends and classes motivate you to keep coming, and that monthly bill keeps you disciplined. On the other hand, gym memberships are steep, workouts can get hijacked by bullies, and going to the gym is an additional commute.

Gay men have long been rumored to run Silicon Valley. No one can say exactly when, or if, gay men started running Silicon Valley. They seem to have dominated its upper ranks at least the past five years, maybe more. On platforms like X, the clues are there: whispers of private-island retreats, tech executives going "gay for clout," and the suggestion that a "seed round" is not, strictly speaking, a financial term. It is an idea so taken for granted, in fact, that when I call up a well-connected hedge fund manager to ask his thoughts about what is sometimes referred to in industry circles as the "gay tech mafia," he audibly yawns. "This has always been the case." It had been the case, the hedge funder says, back in 2012, when he was raising money from a venture capitalist whose office was staffed with dozens of "attractive, strong young men," all of whom were "under 30" and looked as though they had freshly decamped from "the high school debate club." "They were all sleeping with each other and starting companies," he says. And it is absolutely the case now, he adds, when gay men are running influential companies in Silicon Valley and maintain entire social calendars with scarcely a straight man, much less a woman, in sight. "Of course the gay tech mafia exists," he continues. "This is not some Illuminati conspiracy theory. And you do not have to be gay to join. They like straight guys who sleep with them even more." Ever since I started covering Silicon Valley in 2017, I've heard variations of this rumor--that "gays," as an AI founder named Emmett Chen-Ran has quipped, "run this joint." On its face, a gay tech mafia seemed too dumb to warrant actual investigative inquiry.