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WIRED Roundup: Groypers Are Going Mainstream

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WIRED Roundup: Groypers Are Going Mainstream


Zoë Schiffer: Our colleague, Dell Cameron, reported that according to the findings, the 2,000 total files include people who’ve actually never been formally charged with a crime, and about 95 minors. There were also dozens of cases where CBP agents left the charges field blank in the paperwork. In other files analyzed by Georgetown, officers invoked civil penalties as the justification for taking the saliva swabs, which were how they were getting the DNA samples, that federal law typically reserves for criminal arrests.

Jake Lahut: Oh, and this is a recurring theme with Dell’s reporting, but it’s hard to separate a lot of this stuff from basic things we gave up in terms of personal liberties, the ability of law enforcement to collect all sorts of evidence after the war on terror. And suddenly, you end up in a situation like this, where it’s unclear what anyone can really do about it.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think that that’s the issue, is just we don’t exactly know what they’re doing with this information because it does appear, at least according to this report, to be taking place outside the confines of the statute and there isn’t a lot of oversight. And so we just don’t know, and I think that that’s the problem. Turning to the White House, President Trump appears to have a new favorite billionaire, and this headline comes from your reporting. You wrote this week about tech billionaire, Larry Ellison’s increasingly cozy relationship with President Trump. In your piece, one of your sources even refers to Ellison as the shadow president, which really stuck out to me because I feel like that’s a term we typically have reserved for Elon Musk. So, talk to me about how these two men got this close.

Jake Lahut: So, that’s the interesting thing about Ellison, is that he’s sort of been orbiting on the periphery of Trump world for a while. He used to be a really reliable supporter of Democrats. Now notably, even though he is a centibillionaire, he’s always actually been a little stingy as far as the donations go, of someone of his caliber. He’s not like Elon, pumping $300 million into a campaign. But his transformation starts around the Obama era, where the former president’s relationship with Bibi Netanyahu starts to deteriorate. Ellison is a very staunch supporter, not just of Israel and the Israeli government, but particularly the IDF and the Israeli military, and he starts to become a more reliable donor for Republicans. So, I have a source who knows the Ellison family telling me in this story that about 10 years ago, Larry Ellison was going around telling people that he wanted Marco Rubio to be president.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh, wow.

Jake Lahut: In the 2024 primary, he backs Tim Scott, which seemed like, OK, you’re supporting a rival of President Trump’s, that should make you persona non grata. Turns out, a lot of Trump advisors, and they were telling me this at the time during the campaign, they thought Larry Ellison supporting Tim Scott was actually basically a favor for them, and he was pledging a lot of money. How much of it actually ended up with Super PAC supporting Tim Scott, separate story. But essentially, Tim Scott was like an insurance policy in the event that the primary was closer and it got drawn out and people like Ron DeSantis and particularly Nikki Haley would’ve still been around, both Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are from South Carolina. So then he kind of comes in with the rest of the tech guys over the summer, and the difference with Ellison is that one, he kind of has eyes and ears everywhere, is what I hear from people who are familiar with how he operates. He doesn’t use donor advisors and a whole entourage to give him the lay of the land with politics. Instead, he likes to scout his own candidates, and he’s made some early bets on people who were in the Trump Administration. Most notably, he was an early donor and fundraised for Tulsi Gabbard back when she was a Democrat. Perhaps uncoincidentally, Larry Ellison owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai among other flashy purchases he has made. So at this point, with the Oracle server business, it allows him to fly a little under the radar because servers and software as a service, not really the most sexy business compared to a lot of these other guys who are around Trump. And then you add in his son, David, who is running the Skydance parent company of Paramount, which might also acquire Warner Brothers, Discovery. That means the Ellison family wouldn’t only be in control of CBS and all these entertainment properties, but also potentially CNN. And suddenly, when you zoom out, you’re looking at a family that has begun to consolidate in the areas of data and human attention in the way that a Gilded Age family like the Vanderbilts or the Rockefellers would’ve done for railroads and oil. So, it was a really fascinating piece to report on just in terms of how Ellison doesn’t even necessarily need to say things to Trump to make things happen. He’s just that well-connected, you know?



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6 Great After-Christmas Deals to Spend Your Gift Cards On

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6 Great After-Christmas Deals to Spend Your Gift Cards On


After-Christmas deals are an excellent way to redeem any gift cards or cash you got for Christmas. You can purchase something you actually want, and you can do it for less money than usual. I’ve scoured the Internet for truly good after-Christmas deals on the gear that we’ve hand-tested on the WIRED Reviews team. Many of these sales will end this weekend, so keep that in mind while you’re shopping. Find all the highlights below.

For more inspiration, check out some of our recently updated buying guides, including the Best Office Chairs, the Best Cheap Phones, and the Best Space Heaters.

WIRED Featured Deals:

Anker Laptop Power Bank for $88 ($47 off)

We love this beefy power bank. Its 25,000-mAh capacity is more than enough for fully charging your iPhone between 4 and 6 times, and it can deliver up to 165 watts to two devices meaning that you can charge your laptop, gaming console, or anything else you fancy. The built-in USB-C cable doubles as a carrying loop. There’s also a nifty display that’ll give you at-a-glance information on remaining battery, temperature, charging speeds, and more. It has pass-through charging support and only takes about two hours to fully recharge. This deal price matches what we saw on Black Friday.

Google Pixel 10 for $599 ($200 off)

  • Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

  • Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

  • Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Google

Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Pixel 10 Pro XL

There was an on-page coupon (PIXEL10) that had the best price we’ve tracked for any of the phones in the Google Pixel 10 lineup. That coupon is not available as of Saturday morning, but it may be back—clip it if you see it. This is still a good deal on the smartest Android phones you can buy, with fantastic cameras, snappy processors, gorgeous displays, and more AI integration than the average person needs. Check out our dedicated buying guide to figure out which Google Pixel 10 is right for you. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, now is a good time to buy considering that we’ve never seen any phone in this flagship lineup sell for less.

Bruvi BV-01 Brewer Bundle for $228 ($120 off)—Clip the Coupon

Image may contain: Cup, Box, Beverage, Coffee, and Coffee Cup

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

I’ve tested a lot of pod coffee makers, and the Bruvi BV-01 is my favorite. This deal price is the best we see outside of special events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The brewer is cute and looks great on a counter, with a large reservoir, an intuitive touchscreen display, and a built-in wastebin that collects used pods for you. The best part are the proprietary B-Pods, which are designed to biodegrade in a landfill. The bundle gets you the machine plus an assortment of bestselling coffee and espresso pods to get you started.

Fitbit Charge 6 for $100 ($60 off)

Fitbit Charge 6

The Fitbit Charge 6 has been at the top of our fitness tracker buying guide since we first tested it. It’s attractive, affordable, accessible, and on sale for a match of the best deal we’ve seen. It’ll play well with iOS and Android, and it has a solid suite of features that’ll cover almost anyone’s needs—including skin temperature, heart rate readings, ECGs, activity and workout tracking, and more. The battery lasts for at least a week on a single charge. This deal comes with a six-month subscription to Fitbit Premium, which normally costs $10 per month.

Hydro Flask Standard Mouth Water Bottle for $30 ($10 off)

Hydroflask Bottle

Photograph: Dick’s Sporting Goods 

Hydro Flask

Standard Mouth Water Bottle

This budget-friendly deal gets you a steal on the best reusable water bottle. Hydro Flask bottles are durable, portable, and easy to cover in all the stickers you’ve been hoarding. The handle is flexible, the bottle is leakproof, and every component is dishwasher safe (though you may want to opt for hand-washing if you do end up plastering it in stickers). A few different colors are on sale at this price.

Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 for $200 ($50 off)

Left: Selfie of a person with short hair wearing Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds in orange. Right: curved, around-the-ear earbuds and an oval-shaped case.

If hitting the gym is one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2026, the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 are worth considering. They’re the best workout headphones we’ve tested thanks to their comfortable and ergonomic fit, noise cancelation, spatial audio, a heart rate monitor, and the fact that they play well with both iOS and Android phones. The sound is solid, the battery life is good, and they’re water-resistant. This deal price comes within $20 of the best we’ve seen. Every color—orange, lavender, grey, and black—is on sale.


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Hyperkin’s Competitor Upgrades the Xbox Controller by Copying Sony’s Design

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Hyperkin’s Competitor Upgrades the Xbox Controller by Copying Sony’s Design


The most immediately striking difference is that Hyperkin’s product swaps the typical Xbox approach of asymmetric thumbsticks for the PlayStation’s horizontal layout. It also separates the D-pad (it’s one piece inside the pad, but splits its cardinal directions so each appears to be its own button), while the ABXY face buttons are spaced slightly further apart. Where the DualSense’s touchpad would sit, we have the Xbox home, menu, view, and share buttons, all blended in rather smartly. An LED ring around the home button just about echoes the lights running the periphery of the DualSense’s touchpad, although it’s really more of an inversion of the regular Xbox controller, where the home button itself lights up.

The Competitor’s thumbsticks come equipped with thumbcaps that mirror the PS5’s, an outer ring with a convex central point, but a pair of Xbox-standard concave caps are included. These easily pop on and off, and can be mixed and matched, if you were so (strangely) inclined.

There are two areas where this departs from both the standard Xbox and PlayStation controllers in terms of inputs. The first is the presence of two programmable rear buttons, M1 and M2. By default, these duplicate the input of the A and B buttons, but holding down the Mode button between them lets you remap them. There are also physical button locks to prevent their use entirely. The other is that while the Competitor boasts a 3.5-mm headphone jack like Microsoft’s official pad, it adds a built-in audio mute button, hidden in the black between the thumbsticks—a nice little upgrade.

Oddly Familiar

In use, the Competitor feels … well, a lot like a PS5 pad. The slightly wider grip fits in the hand comfortably, all inputs are accessible, and those symmetrical thumbsticks sit nicely in reach for all but the smallest hands. A microtextured underside provides a solid grip that, when coupled with its 232-gram weight, makes the Competitor feel particularly suited to longer play periods. It’s all very familiar if you’re already a multiformat gamer, to the extent that it sometimes slightly threw my muscle memory off, reaching a thumb out to do a PlayStation touchpad function and finding only the Xbox system buttons.

Photograph: Matt Kamen



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In Cryptoland, Memecoin Fever Gives Way to a Stablecoin Boom

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In Cryptoland, Memecoin Fever Gives Way to a Stablecoin Boom


When US president Donald Trump launched his own meme cryptocurrency on January 17, days before his return to the White House, I was halfway up a Swiss alp, attending a crypto conference in the town of St. Moritz.

Memecoins, which typically have no purpose beyond financial speculation, were having a moment. The previous year, millions of new memecoins had flooded the market; a few, like Fartcoin, had rocketed to billion-dollar valuations. Pump.Fun, a platform for launching and trading memecoins, had become one of the fastest-growing crypto launchpad businesses ever. Now, the soon-to-be president was getting in on the act.

Over lunch on the second day of the conference, beneath the ornate stucco ceiling and golden chandeliers of the venue’s dining hall, I located a table designated for a conversation about memecoins. Whereas other tables were half full, the memecoin workshop was oversubscribed; latecomers pulled up chairs to create two full rows.

The discussion was led by Nagendra Bharatula, founder of investment firm G-20 Group. Bharatula had recently coauthored a paper arguing that memecoins, despite their juvenile spirit, had a place in professional investors’ portfolios. In the six months prior, a basket of 25 “bluechip memecoins”—an oxymoron if ever there was one—had outperformed bitcoin by 150 percent, he pointed out. Some of the attendees murmured their approval.

Since then, the shine has come off the memecoin market. The paper value of Trump’s coin, which climbed to a peak of $14 billion two days after its launch, has cratered to roughly $1 billion. Hundreds of thousands of small investors lost their shirts. Pump.Fun’s daily revenue, a proxy for the overall appetite for memecoin trading, is barely more than a tenth of what it was in January. The memecoin gold rush has spawned a raft of litigation.

Next up: the stablecoin. If memecoins are symbolic of reckless abandon and unflinching profiteering in cryptoland, stablecoins are a symbol of the industry’s search for purpose and respectability. Designed to hold a steady $1 valuation, stablecoins are pitched by proponents as a faster and cheaper way to make everyday payments and international money transfers.

In a year in which the US has declared itself open for crypto business, where previously crypto firms feared regulatory backlash under the Biden administration, stablecoins have supplanted memecoins as the coin à la mode—and punctured the mainstream.

Though stablecoins have been around since 2014, they have predominantly been used by crypto traders as a safe harbor during bouts of market volatility, not by regular people. The concept has also faced resistance from regulators skeptical of a new form of money; Diem, a stablecoin venture incubated at Meta, famously shuttered in 2022 in the face of broad-based opposition.



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