You forgot about the radio towers that have been in Belarus that allow Russia to control long range drones. Ukraine took a few out already, but there are likely more. (I’ll have to check recent drone paths to see if there are still issues.)
May 19, 2026 3:00 PM _Meta Employees Are Scrambling to Use Up Benefits Ahead of Ahead of Meta’s latest round of mass layoffs tomorrow, some employees are deserting offices, abandoning their work, and loading up on perks they might soon lose, several people at the company tell WIRED.
Two employees describe a widespread rush to use up an annual $2,000 flexible benefit, which can cover a variety of expenses including health and wellness activities. A separate triennial credit of $200 toward the purchase of audio gear has led to a scramble to purchase Apple AirPods and other headphones. Another source says Meta offices have been largely empty this week, as people prioritize polishing their résumés and gather offsite to commiserate with friends for what may be their final time as colleagues. Employees are variously “paralyzed,” “coasting,” and “panicked,” sources say.
Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am Singapore, London, or San Francisco time depending on their location, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday. The cuts are coming at a time when the social media giant behind Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook is enjoying record-high profits.
But CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists that the company must free up cash to invest in AI data centers, and that Meta can perform just as well with fewer employees because of AI technologies that augment human labor.
Are you a current or former Meta employee who wants to talk about what’s happening? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at peard33.24 and ChaoticGoode.12. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. The company has undergone three previous large rounds of layoffs since 2022, including as part of Meta’s one-time “year of efficiency” drive in 2023. But even though the latest round is smaller than a couple of those, it is drawing widespread scrutiny because it comes at a time of societal anxiety about AI’s impact on jobs.
Inside Meta, the imminent cuts are among several concerns that have sunk morale to unprecedented depths, according to 16 current and former employees who recently spoke to WIRED. Employees also have been frustrated by being “drafted” onto a new AI team without any choice and the rollout of surveillance software that tracks US workers’ laptop use to train AI models.
Meta also plans to internally restructure as it conducts sweeping layoffs, transferring 7,000 remaining staff to “AI initiatives” and converting more managers into individual contributors. That would bring the total number of those affected—either laid off or placed in a new role—to 20 percent of the current workforce, Reuters reported on Monday. WIRED independently confirmed this reporting. Some parts of the company have been told they won’t be affected at all.
But in recent days, employees who are bracing for changes have shared checklists internally about benefits to take advantage of, and are saving documents such as performance reviews and pay stubs, according to one worker. Some teams are meeting up at bars and restaurants near Meta offices in New York and Menlo Park on Tuesday and Wednesday to eat and drink away their sorrows, several employees said. Management has encouraged employees not to come into offices on Wednesday.
Update, May 19, 11:40 PM EDT: WIRED corrected the time zones when layoff notices will be emailed. _
I am staunchly anti-hype and a firm “whatevers” on the rest of AI. Like you said, it has its place. The biggest issue I have is that it is being pushed as another dopamine fix. I ain’t gonna lie, turning an idea into code in 5 mins is really fucking cool. Unfortunately, its really fucking addictive so I give myself multi-day breaks after a day or two of coding and fucking around with my homelab.
(Tinfoil hat time) If anyone hasn’t noticed, there are some clear distinctions between enterprise LLM tools and regular consumer LLM tools. The consumer-grade plans are more prone to random mistakes and forgetfulness. My theory is that more “mistakes” and resulting fixes not only burn more tokens, but also push dopamine levels higher and lower. Aside from coding blatantly obvious security issues, enterprise LLMs are much more reliable.
LLMs are a tools. You solve problems. If an LLM is solving all of your problems, you are the tool.
Nobody said anything about taking a shower.
000, 666 and 900-999 are invalid area numbers and any digit group of all zeros is also invalid. Thanks for playing!
I am making a slightly different point and have a bias to this perspective: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/SD/19230.pdf
I am saying that an SSN can be part of a larger validation scheme, not the only key to the castle. Specifically for government sites, SSNs can be linked to IRS data to verify places of last residence. A person generally needs to verify multiple items that are referenced by the SSN before basic authentication can be established and set by the user. (This is part of the full Authentication, Authorization and Access Control triad.)
An SSN is just a broad level identifier. If you look at many laws around the release of SSNs, the redaction is usually in place to prevent the linking of different documents and other data points.
If I released my SSN in this chat, I could be fully doxxed in a matter of seconds. It’s mainly because there are many legal systems in place that use an SSN as a primary key, of sorts. (It’s a bit more than that, as SSNs can be duplicated in some circumstances.)
So to say, at a high level, an SSN is considered private is absolutely correct. However, it’s so easily referenced and obtainable it really isn’t fully private either.
If I was to generate a full list of every possible SSN in the US (which I have done, multiple times), that list is effectively useless to anyone who obtains a copy of it. So, by itself, an SSN is effectively public.
SSNs are generally considered public information but how the SSN is linked to other information is usually the more difficult bit to find and it’s generally pay-walled. (Any jackass with a business license and a credit card can usually buy background check information for ‘hiring’.)
But no, it shouldn’t be solely used for authentication. That is just dumb. However, it can be used as part of a larger verification and validation scheme while building authentication/authorization profiles. In most systems that I have seen that use full or partial SSNs, it is always linked to several other identifiers that need to match.
Please don’t teach kids to insert all-caps words into their sentences. If you need to emphasize a word on the Internet, you can italicize.
I doubt he got bored. That mechanical hand probably felt like someone else’s until the nerves fully adjusted.
That’s fairly bold to ask for ~6% of the total world economy as well as a sizable chunk of the world’s energy.
Things looked bleak for Joe, but they were even worse for mankind.
As Joe and Rita lay dormant, the years passed… and mankind became stupider at a frightening rate.
Some had high hopes that genetic engineering… would correct this trend in evolution.
But sadly, the greatest minds and resources… were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.