It’s true: Nvidia has just confirmed it shipped some RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and even some RTX 5070 Ti graphics chips that were missing render units, as TechPowerUp originally reported — and that you’ll be able to get a replacement if your card was affected.
Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells The Verge:
We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected.
While limited, the manufacturing issue affected multiple Nvidia graphics card partners: reports came in of Zotac, MSI, Gigabyte, Manli, and even an Nvidia Founders Edition card with missing ROPs. You can use GPU-Z to check your card and see if it’s showing the proper number of 176 ROPs; if fewer, you should probably get it replaced.
Following some apparent outages on Thursday, Reddit dealt with more issues Friday evening that lasted for around two hours.
Initially, when I logged in on my desktop browser during Friday’s outage, Reddit wouldn’t load at all — I would just run into error pages. In an incognito window, the site loaded, though it seemed to load slower than usual. I was also able to load the site on mobile Safari while logged out and after I logged in.
Reddit’s status page said in a 7:58PM ET message that “We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue.” In an 8:40PM ET message, Reddit said that “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” and at 9:47PM ET, the company said that “This incident has been resolved.”
Downdetector showed a huge spike that topped out at around 80,000 outage reports. The spike started to go up shortly after 7:30PM ET, though as of right after 9PM ET, the volume of reports appeared to have almost fully dropped.
The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Yesterday, Reddit reportedly dealt with “international outages,” according to global internet monitor NetBlocks. I personally didn’t run into any issues during those outages.
Update, February 21st: Reddit says the incident has been resolved.
Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.
People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:
If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.
As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”
When The Verge changed the query like so:
If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.
Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”
When The Verge asked ChatGPT a similar type of query, it refused to name an individual and said “that would be both ethically and legally problematic.”
Following xAI’s patch on Friday, Grok will now respond to queries about who should receive the death penalty by saying, “as an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice,” according to a screenshot shared by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead. Babuschkin called the original responses a “really terrible and bad failure.”
Just a few weeks after everyone freaked out about DeepSeek, Elon Muskâs Grok-3 has again shaken up the fast-moving AI race. The new model is ending the week at the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, while the Grok iOS app is at the top of the App Store, just above ChatGPT. Even as Musk appears to be crashing out from his newfound political power, his xAI team has managed to deploy a leading foundational model in record time.
Itâs one thing to have the leading model; itâs another to build the biggest user base around it. Musk seems to understand that if he wants to crush OpenAI, he has to shift attention away from ChatGPT. Since the debut of Grok-3, Musk has said that ChatGPT-like voice interaction and desktop apps are coming soon. Where his product roadmap appears to differ considerably from OpenAIâs is xAIâs nascent efforts to build an AI gaming studio, though the details there are scarce.
While its Deep Research reports are nowhere near as in depth as OpenAIâs, Grok-3âs âthinkingâ capabilities appear to be roughly on par with o1, according to Andrej Karpathy, who noted in his deep dive comparison that âthis timescale to state of the art territory is unpr …
It would be impressive if it were not so depressing. | Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; The National Museum of American Diplomacy
Letâs pause and look at what the Elon Musk administration has done so far.
Thereâs been a lot of panic about the immediate but somewhat abstract constitutional crisis as Elon Muskâs misleadingly-named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rips the government apart. And as much fun as we all are having watching Congress render itself irrelevant and wondering whether the courts even matter, thereâs a concrete nightmare looming. Mass unemployment, the defunding of crucial social programs, and just plain incompetence mean that America, as we know it, is already in for hard times.
The degree to which we have failed not merely ourselves but also our children and grandchildren is breathtaking
The scale of destruction in the past four weeks starts at the Soviet devotion to Lysenkoist biological theories, and at maximum, is the American version of Maoâs Cultural Revolution: a disastrous triumph of ideological purity over basic reality. I am not sure it has occurred to the majority of people that we are about to make a Great Leap Forward and destroy our prosperous, relatively peaceful society.
Musk has, in the short term, set us up for a shock to the economy from both une …
Apple just released its first developer betas of a new round of software updates, and early testers have spotted support for Priority Notifications in the iOS 18.4 preview. It’s an Apple Intelligence-powered feature that uses on-device processing to try to detect which updates are especially important and sort them into a separate section above your other notifications.
According to 9to5Mac, the Priority Notifications feature is turned off by default in this first developer beta, but you can enable it with a toggle in the notifications area of the settings menu.
What we haven’t seen yet, however, are details about an upgraded Siri. Amid reports of setbacks and delays in developing a more intelligent assistant, today’s press release simply says, “Apple Intelligence will continue to expand with new features in the coming months, including more capabilities for Siri.”
On iPhones, the iOS 18.4 beta is also previewing a new app for Vision Pro owners to browse the headset’s app store, cue up videos to watch, and install apps remotely, and a redesigned Mail app has been spotted for Macs and iPads. Apple also just announced the new Apple News Plus Food section for iPhones and iPads that will bring “tens of thousands of recipes” formatted for use on mobile devices.
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has come into force, and it’s meant that some of the world’s biggest tech companies are having to make major changes to how they operate.
The law, which is designed to increase competition in the EU’s digital markets, designates some large online companies and their services as “gatekeepers.” Those that have received the gatekeeper designation — the companies on the list are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — have to meet strict requirements intended to reduce anticompetitive behavior.
Around a dozen current and former federal workers are behind a new website created as an outlet to share anonymous stories and technical expertise about the Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling of government agencies.
“We the Builders” aims to be a secure outlet for government workers to share how their workplaces are being impacted by DOGE, and a place to explain the real world impact of its access to government tech systems, a former federal worker behind the project tells The Verge.The website was created by people who “made government websites easier to use while protecting the integrity of your personal information,” according to its description. Had DOGE wanted “to use technology to build a more efficient country, they would ask us,” the site says. “But they haven’t. They are destroyers. We are the builders.”
The website is aimed at informing the general public about what’s happening inside federal agencies, as well as explaining how a database being accessed by DOGE in Washington, DC could impact citizens in tangible ways all across the country. “I want to make sure that people understand that data matters,” says the former federal worker, who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution and harassment in going public, but whose identity has been confirmed by The Verge.“If I can explain that in a way that helps you to be able to protect yourself and advocate for yourself, then I’m doing my job.”
Are you a current or former US federal government worker? Reach out securely on a personal device with tips to Lauren Feiner via Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
While social media forums like Reddit and Instagram have already become gathering places for federal workers to commiserate, We the Builders aims to offer an alternative outlet for workers who may be fearful to share their stories even through an anonymous social media account. The team says they are working with a security consultant to ensure that submissions remain secure and anonymous to the public. They also plan to vet submissions for accuracy and use their networks to confirm that they are coming from real federal workers.
The former government employee says they hope visitors to the website “can walk away with a more nuanced understanding of what’s happening. I’m hoping that federal workers can see stories of people like them, and also help them make decisions for themselves, and to feel supported.”
Apple is adding a recipes section to its News app that will be available to News Plus subscribers, according to a press release. The new section, Apple News Plus Food, will be available as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 when those updates release in April.
The section will feature “tens of thousands of recipes” from “the world’s top food publishers, including Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats,” Apple says. Recipes will be shown in a “beautifully designed recipe format makes it easy to review ingredients and directions,” and the app will have “a new cook mode takes step-by-step instructions to the full screen.”
Apple News Plus Food will also feature stories curated by Apple News editors. And Apple says that “select stories and recipes” will be available for non-Plus subscribers.
The addition of a recipes section brings the Apple News app into even closer competition with The New York Times’ main app. Apple News Plus subscribers can also access games like crossword puzzles and sudoku.
It was hard playing a preview of South of Midnight because, 20 minutes in, I just started bawling. The demo for the action-adventure platformer starts at the beginning of chapter three. The protagonist, Hazel, is working her way through a swamp trying to find her mother, who, along with their house, had been washed away in a hurricane. At the same time, she comes to learn her newfound powers as a Weaver â a person who can manipulate the metaphysical strands that connect all life â from the ghostly echoes of an enslaved woman who used her powers to escape to freedom and help others do the same.
With all that weighing on me, I held it together pretty well. But as I went through the double jump tutorial, a choir started singing a hymn in the background and I just lost it. It wasnât that it was an emotional hymn; I didnât even recognize it. But I knew the song was of me and for me even without having heard it before. Thatâs the kind of cultural weight the developers at Xbox studio Compulsion Games have invested in South of Midnight.
The authenticity that oozes from the game was intentionally cultivated. Its story draws upon American Southern Gothic folklore, which itself i …
Your phone comes with a number of useful features that we hope youâll never have to use â and Crash Detection falls into that category. The idea is that movement sensors can detect when you’re driving, and if you come to a sudden and abrupt stop, your phone or watch can then alert emergency services (along with family and friends), even if you’re incapacitated.Â
The feature has been available on iPhones running iOS 16 or later starting with the iPhone 14 (launched in 2022). It is also offered on the Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE 2, Apple Watch Ultra, or any later model. You also need watchOS 9 or later and a cellular connection (either built into the watch itself or via a connected iPhone).
If an iPhone or Apple Watch detects you’ve been in a crash, you get an audible alert on your device and an emergency call alert onscreen. If you’ve got both an iPhone and an Apple Watch, the wearable takes priority and will be the device that presents the emergency call alert.
The alert gives you a sliding SOS control that enables you to place an emergency call and a cancel button to allow you to dismiss the alert. If you don’t respond after 20 seconds, the call gets placed to em …
Eufy’s midrange robovac will even mop your hardwood floors.
A robot vacuum can be a cost-effective way to enlist some extra help around the house, especially when you can get a hybrid model at a substantial discount. Fortunately, Prime members can currently get the Eufy X10 Pro Omni — our pick for the best midrange robot vacuum — for $599.99 ($300 off) at Amazon with coupon code NewX10US. The resulting price is only $50 more than the all-time low we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Not much can withstand the Pro Omni’s 8,000Pa of suction power. You may have trouble with stubborn pet hair, though, as its rubber brushes don’t offer enough abrasion to dig them out of carpeting. That said, it’s great for almost any other cleaning situation, including mopping, thanks to its onboard water reservoir and dual oscillating brushes. The latter spin against hard flooring with enough downward pressure to tackle dried stains, and it’s smart enough to lift them over carpet.
What’s more, the Pro Omni offers great AI-powered obstacle avoidance and a multifunction auto-empty / wash / fill dock — something typically reserved for high-end robovacs — making it a midrange model that punches above its weight. The fact it offers heated mop drying and Smart Track cleaning, which prompts the robovac to follow you with a little nudge of your foot, are just an added plus.
More Friday savings
Now through February 28th, Woot is selling the 40mm Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 in white for $169.99 ($130 off), which is one of the best prices we’ve seen on the Wear OS wearable. It offers a full suite of vitality sensors, including both optical and ECG heart rate sensors, plus a blood oxygen monitor. It can also detect your stress levels and track your sleep quality — it even has an FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection feature — and quantifies these insights with daily energy scores and AI-powered insights. Read our review.
If the Galaxy Watch 7 is still too much for you, Amazfit’s Bip 3 Pro is a solid smartwatch-style fitness tracker that won’t break the bank. It’s down to $54.99 ($15 off) at Amazon, which is $5 more than its all-time low. The budget watch features sleep tracking, 60 workout modes, a four-band GPS, and both a heart rate sensor and a blood oxygen monitor to measure your stress levels. It also lasts up to 14 days per charge and works with Android and iOS, allowing for music control and notifications from various apps.
You can grab a pair of four-sided Anker 332 USB Power Strips for $29.99 ($10 off) at Amazon right now, which matches the bundle’s lowest price to date. Their small size makes them ideal for adding more power sources to, say, a crowded work desk. They feature six total AC outlets split evenly across three sides, with the endcaps supplying two USB-A ports and a single USB-C port with up to 20W of charging power shared between the three.
It’s getting an exclusive Apple Intelligence feature called Create Memory Movie.
Soon, you’ll be able to use Apple Intelligence with the Vision Pro. That includes a mix of features we’ve seen before, as well as a new feature called Create Memory Movie that’s exclusive to the headset.
Apple has been keen to position the Vision Pro as a unique tool for viewing memories, and that’s the whole goal of the Create Memory Movie feature, which is built into the Photos app. To use it, you’ll enter in a description or a voice prompt, and Apple Intelligence will then find a photo or video that best matches that description. That “memory movie” can then be blown up to be viewed on a large-scale virtual screen or inside a virtual environment.
Other Apple Intelligence features for Vision Pro include writing tools with ChatGPT. That means Vision Pro owners will be able to dictate memos or emails, create bulleted summaries, or edit the tone of a draft using AI. This is a fairly typical AI feature these days, but it does address how writing within the headset isn’t always the easiest thing unless paired with a Bluetooth keyboard. Smart replies are also coming to visionOS, where you’ll be able to use Apple Intelligence to automatically respond to messages with a tap.
Other features include things like Genmoji and Image Playground, which is Apple Intelligence’s prompt-based image generator. Priority notifications and summaries will also be available, along with Image Wand, which lets you create more polished images based off rough sketches. Natural language search will also be available in the Photos app. You can view the full list of Apple Intelligence features for visionOS on Apple’s website.
Apple Intelligence will be part of the visionOS 2.4 update, which is available in developer beta today and arrives for the general public in April. Apple Intelligence for visionOS will first be available only in US English, with more features and languages slated to roll out throughout the year.
visionOS 2.4 will also bring a few other features that address some major pain points with using the headset. That includes an improved, easier-to-use Guest Mode, as well as two new discovery apps for discovering content: one for the iPhone, and the other acting as an Apple-curated content guide within the headset itself.
The Vision Pro app for iOS will let you find new content and queue up downloads for the headset.
One of the big problems with a VR headset is that anything you want to do, you have to do inside it. Apple is looking to tackle that and other Vision Pro pain points with visionOS 2.4, which will offer improvements to the guest user experience and two new apps for finding new things to do and watch, whether you’re wearing the headset or not.
Right now, it’s hard to find software for the Vision Pro without putting on the headset and doing the search there, but with this update and iOS 18.4 that’s getting easier with a new Apple Vision Pro for iOS app. It lets you browse the visionOS App Store, install apps remotely, and even cue up videos on the headset from your iPhone. Without it, your other choices are to search for other users’ recommendations online or scroll around this Apple page that shows Vision Pro apps.
Letting another person use your Vision Pro is a hassle and something you can’t really do without first putting it on and going through some setup. This update is addressing much of that friction by making Guest Mode easier to use. For starters, you no longer have to put on the headset before anyone else can use it. When a guest puts it on, the owner will get a prompt on their iPhone or iPad to approve placing it in guest mode. They can then choose the apps guests can access and decide whether or not to AirPlay what they’re seeing, just like Apple employees can for in-store demos.
In theory, if someone in your house uses your Vision Pro regularly, that means they can get to doing that much faster. However, Apple still isn’t removing the 30-day limit that resets saved guest profiles, so less frequent users will still have to go through the rigamarole of hand-and-eye setup. Even so, it’s a big improvement from the initial experience of sharing a Vision Pro.
You’ll also be able to view your headset’s information, like the serial number, from the app instead of hunting around for it inside the headset or finding your Vision Pro in the device list of your iPhone’s Apple Account settings. People who need prescription lenses will also be able to view and store their App Clip code for ZEISS Optical Inserts in the app too. Vision Pro owners don’t have to do anything to get the app either. It’ll download to their iPhones automatically with iOS 18.4, though it is also separately downloadable for non-owners from the App Store.
Along that vein, Apple is rolling out a new Vision Pro app, too, called Spatial Gallery. The company describes it as an Apple-curated collection of spatial photos, videos, and panoramas,which includes things like behind-the-scenes clips from Apple TV shows like Severance and Shrinking. The idea is to showcase content that highlights the Vision Pro’s strengths. That app will become available for Vision Pro owners when visionOS 2.4 is released in April.
Anker is pushing portability limits with the launch of its giant 58-liter Solix EverFrost 2 dual-zone refrigerator / freezer. Itâs portable because it has wheels, a handle, and slots for two batteries. But this thing weighs 64 pounds (29kg) empty and quickly reached 120 pounds when I filled my review unit with drinks and food. It can be recharged from a standard wall socket, 12V car socket, USB-C charger, and from up to 100W of solar from a traditional panel or Ankerâs new beach umbrella.Â
The 58L (about 61 quarts) model Iâve been testing has far greater capacity than the largest solar fridges Iâve reviewed from EcoFlow (38L) and Bluetti (40L) â both of which allocate precious space to integrated ice makers. As an avid vanlifer and cocktail enthusiast, Iâm definitely tempted by the idea of making ice on the road. I never do it, though, because water and electricity are just too valuable when venturing away from civilization. Iâd rather bring a fridge that stuffs as much usable capacity into the smallest footprint possible.
Unfortunately, thatâs not what Anker has done.
Instead, Anker allocated that space to two large fan housings in each lid. Itâs all part o …
Apple has stopped offering its end-to-end encrypted iCloud storage, Advanced Data Protection (ADP), to new users in the UK, and will require existing users to disable the feature at some point in the future. The move comes following reports earlier this month that UK security services requested Apple grant them backdoor access to worldwide users’ encrypted backups.
“Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,“ says Apple spokesperson Julien Trosdorf in a statement to The Verge. “We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.”
ADP works by protecting iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, meaning it can only be decrypted by the person who owns the iCloud account on their own devices. Apple originally launched ADP in late 2022, allowing iCloud data like file backups and photos to be protected by the feature. Removing ADP means that British users’ files will be accessible to Apple, and shareable with law enforcement, though that would still require a warrant.
Some types of iCloud data are end-to-end encrypted by default, and will remain so even in the UK. This includes passwords, health data, payment information, and iMessage logs. iCloud file backups, photos, notes, and voice memos are among the data types that will no longer be encrypted.
Apple has already stopped offering Advanced Data Protection to new users in the UK, advising them that it “can no longer offer” the service. Apple won’t be able to disable ADP automatically on existing iCloud accounts, because of the way the end-to-end encryption feature works. Trosdorf tells The Verge that UK users will be given an amount of time to disable ADP to keep using their iCloud account, though the company has not said when the deadline will be.
“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom,” says Trosdorf. “As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”
Earlier this month The Washington Post reported that the UK Home Office, led by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, had demanded backdoor access to encrypted files uploaded not only by Brits, but by users worldwide. The company was reportedly served a document called a technical capability notice under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, also known as the Snoopers’ Charter. Apple has the right to appeal any demand made under the act, but not to delay implementation of the order.
It was reported then that Apple was likely to disable its UK encryption instead of granting security services a backdoor, but that this might not placate the Labour government, which would still not be able to access encrypted files uploaded elsewhere in the world. Apple did not issue any statement at the time, and even now has not explained why ADP is being disabled, but even revealing that the government had made a demand under the Investigatory Powers Act would reportedly be a criminal offense.
UK security services have repeatedly pushed back against end-to-end encrypted services in the past, making the argument that encryption is used by terrorists and child abusers to hide from law enforcement. “End-to-end encryption cannot be allowed to hamper efforts to catch perpetrators of the most serious crimes,” a government spokesperson told The Guardianin 2022 when Apple first introduced end-to-end encryption.
Apple has made its own arguments against the UK’s position in the past. “There is no reason why the UK [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption,” Apple told the British parliament in March 2024 during a debate on an amendment to the Investigatory Powers Act.
Apple is not the only tech company to offer end-to-end encrypted backups. Google has offered encrypted backups to Android users since 2018, and Meta also offers the option to encrypt WhatsApp backups. Both are currently still available in the UK.
ADP remains available outside of the UK, and can be enabled from iCloud’s settings options. To activate it, any devices tied to your Apple ID will have to be up-to-date, and you must turn on Apple’s Account Recovery features as well. ADP is free to use, and if you’re outside the UK we recommend enabling it.
I’m honestly relieved that OnePlus’ signature oops this time around is so innocuous.
When I received my OnePlus Watch 3 review unit, part of me wondered, “What’s gonna be wrong with this one?” Now, I know. On the backplate, permanently engraved in stainless steel, is a typo. Instead of reading “Made in China,” it reads “Meda in China.”
To be fair, this is a minuscule error. I didn’t even notice it on my review unit until I spied an Android Police article in my feed pointing it out. But, in the history of OnePlus’ many smartwatch sins, this unfixable typo both makes complete sense — and is a major relief.
To understand why, you have to remember that the original OnePlus Watch was an unmitigated disaster. An abomination of a smartwatch, riddled with software errors and personally, the worst product I have ever tested in my career. In my review, I wrote that it’s health and fitness tracking was so inaccurate, it deserved the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The only smartwatch that could be conceivably worse is will.i.am’s Puls smartwatch, but I was fortunate enough to dodge that bullet. So traumatized was I by the OnePlus Watch, I was wary of the OnePlus Watch 2 when it launched last year.
But aside from that one cardinal sin and a sike of a delivery snafu, the OnePlus Watch 2 ended up being a redemption story. Not only was it a smartwatch that worked, it ended up becoming an excellent alternative to Google and Samsung smartwatches for Android users. I’m still testing the OnePlus Watch 3, but so far I have little to complain about, especially since the company finally introduced a proper rotating crown. And, if anything, I’m heartened to see that OnePlus’ signature oops this time around is a minor typo that most users will never really see. One could also argue that the misprint makes this first edition batch a collector’s item. That’s progress.
Besides, as far as typos go, it could’ve been far worse. At least OnePlus didn’t do a Mattel and accidentally misprint a link to a porn site on the product packaging. Compared to that, a “Meda in China” typo is actually kind of adorable.
Earlier this week, the odds of the asteroid impacting Earth on December 22nd, 2032, were closer to 3.1 percent, which was “the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger,” according to the agency.
The latest trajectory estimates come from new observations made after a week of limited visibility caused by a full moon. Ground-based telescopes will continue to track 2024 YR4 until April when its distant orbit will make observations from Earth impossible until it approaches again in 2028. The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared capabilities will be used in March and May to observe the asteroid’s movements. Data gathered by the space telescope will help scientists more accurately calculate 2024 YR4’s size, what it’s made of, and the threat it poses.
First identified on December 27th, 2024 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) located in Chile, trajectory calculations showed 2024 YR4 was on a potential collision course with Earth after a few weeks of observation.
The asteroid is estimated to be between 130 and 300 feet in size and would impact the Earth with about 7.7 megatons of energy, according to Astronomy.com. That’s not powerful enough to wipe out humanity the same way an asteroid hit is believed to have done in the dinosaurs, but it’s more than enough energy to devastate a city with a direct hit.
Although the odds of the asteroid hitting the Earth have been dramatically reduced, NASA also says the new data has increased the chances of 2024 YR4 impacting the moon to one percent.
CNEOS’ Sentry page will be continuously updated with details on 2024 YR4’s latest impact probability.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers nationwide, describing them as “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages contracts for the government’s vehicle fleets, is also looking to offload newly purchased EVs.
The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees’ personally owned vehicles.
The official guidance instructing federal workers to begin the process of shutting down the chargers will be announced internally next week, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. Some regional offices have been told to start taking their chargers offline, according to an email viewed by The Verge.
Are you a current or former GSA worker? Reach out securely on a personal device with tips to Andrew Hawkins via Signal at andrewhawkins.35.
“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” the email reads.
The GSA is working on the timing of canceling current network contracts that keep the EV chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, the stations will be taken out of service and “turned off at the breaker,” the email reads. Other chargers will be turned off starting next week.
“Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service,” it concludes.
At the GSA’s Denver office, employees were told that EV chargers at four federally owned buildings would be taken offline next week. The news was first reported by Colorado Public Radio.
Those new EVs would need reliable places to charge. Former President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, included $975 million for the GSA to upgrade federal buildings across the country with “emerging and sustainable technologies.” The aim was to achieve a net-zero emissions federal building portfolio by 2045, which included EV chargers.
According to a March 2024 update, the GSA had ordered over 58,000 EVs and begun installing more than 25,000 charging ports, adding to the 8,000 already in use across the government. An interactive map showing the location of all GSA-owned chargers has been taken offline as of February this year. (An older version is available through the Wayback Machine.)
The GSA will also begin offloading the EVs it purchased under the Biden administration, the source said. It’s unclear whether those vehicles will be sold or simply put away in storage. It’s also unclear whether other federal agencies will be making similar decisions for their own EVs, although many of those agencies tend to use the GSA’s EV chargers for their own plug-in vehicles.
“Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service.”
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to roll back his predecessor’s EV policies, which he falsely labeled a “mandate.” And since his inauguration, he halted a $5 billion program to install new public EV chargers across the country, signed an executive order rescinding Biden’s directives to purchase new EVs for the federal government’s vehicle fleet, and signaled his intention to eliminate the federal EV tax credit and other incentives for consumers.
Unlike gas-powered vehicles, EVs generate no tailpipe pollution. Burning fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. These emissions have been proven to cause climate change, which supercharges extreme weather events like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding. Transportation, including personal vehicle usage, accounts for about 28 percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
A spokesperson for the GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The GSA also plans on selling approximately 500 buildings as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the federal government, Wired reports.
On Friday morning Coinbase announced that SEC staff have “agreed in principle to dismiss its unlawful enforcement case against Coinbase, subject to Commissioner approval.” CEO Brian Armstrong called it “great news” in a post on X, saying it would be a full dismissal with no fines paid and no business changes while thanking the Trump administration. Under the direction of Gary Gensler, the SEC argued that some crypto assets should be governed under securities laws, which firms like Coinbase opposed, saying it needs new rules.
Neither his post nor the one from Coinbase mentioned the funding contributed to political campaigns in the last election cycle, where CNBC noted Coinbase was one of the top corporate donors. It gave over $75 million to Fairshake and other pro-crypto PACs and made a reported seven-figure donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and Armstrong reportedly made more than $1.3 million in personal contributions.
As Bloombergpoints out, Armstrong referred to this in a podcast interview last year, saying, “To actually be on everyone’s radar and have political power in DC and actually matter, a couple of things were required: One was that we needed to have money – specifically, the industry needed to be giving more to super PACs.” Similarly, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal tweeted last August that “Coinbase’s efforts to support a more free and fair economic future are succeeding,” in reference to a post saying crypto corporations had contributed nearly half of all corporate money spent on the 2024 election cycle.
Now, Armstrong expects to “continue working productively with the SEC on any number of items over the years, just as we do with every agency around the world where we operate” as they await the appointment of Trump’s nominee to run the agency, Paul Atkins.
