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01.27.26
SECURITY
Judge Delays Minnesota ICE Decision While Weighing Whether State Is Being Illegally Punished
BY DELL CAMERON | 5-MINUTE READ
A federal judge ordered a new briefing due Wednesday on whether DHS is using armed raids to pressure Minnesota into abandoning its sanctuary policies, leaving ICE operations in place for now.
POLITICS
Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti
BY MAKENA KELLY | 5-MINUTE READ
“In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.
✚ Also in the news: Redditors are mounting a resistance against ICE
PART ONE
He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive
BY ANDY GREENBERG | 35-MINUTE READ
A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.
PART TWO
Leaked Chats Expose the Daily Life of a Scam Compound’s Enslaved Workforce
BY ANDY GREENBERG, LILY HAY NEWMAN, AND MATT BURGESS | 12-MINUTE READ
A whistleblower trapped inside a “pig butchering” scam compound gave WIRED a vast trove of its internal materials—including 4,200 pages of messages that lay out its operations in unprecedented detail.
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CULTURE
Age Verification Is Reaching a Global Tipping Point. Is TikTok’s Strategy a Good Compromise?
BY JASON PARHAM | 5-MINUTE READ
TikTok’s new age-detection tech seems like a better solution than automatically banning youth accounts. But experts say it still requires social platforms to surveil users more closely.
BUSINESS
TikTok Data Center Outage Triggers Trust Crisis for New US Owners
BY ZEYI YANG AND VITTORIA ELLIOTT | 4-MINUTE READ
The technical failure coincided with TikTok’s ownership transition, leading users to question whether videos criticizing ICE raids in Minnesota were being intentionally censored.
✚ Also in the news: TikTok is now collecting even more data about its users. Here are the 3 biggest changes
GEAR
After 5 Years, Apple Finally Upgrades the AirTag
BY JULIAN CHOKKATTU | 2-MINUTE READ
The second-generation AirTag features Apple’s newer Ultra Wideband chip and has a louder speaker and better range.
SCIENCE
No One Is Quite Sure Why Ice Is Slippery
BY PAULINA ROWIŃSKA | 6-MINUTE READ
A thin, watery layer coating the surface of ice is what makes it slick. Despite a great deal of theorizing over the centuries, though, it isn't entirely clear why that layer forms.