Skype was Microsoftâs biggest-ever acquisition in 2011, a deal brokered by former CEO Steve Ballmer when the company was trying to compete with the rise of the iPhone. But after spending $8.5 billion on Skype, Microsoft dropped the ball again and again over the past 14 years, to the point where Skype was so irrelevant during a global pandemic that everyone used Zoom instead.
Skype has been relegated to a forgotten relic of an era before Google and Appleâs mobile dominance, and Microsoft is now laying it to rest alongside other failed mobile efforts like Windows Phone. It wasnât always this way, though.
In early 2012, a few months after Microsoftâs acquisition, I visited the Skype offices in Stockholm that engineers had just moved into. Skype had just passed 41 million concurrent users, more than even Steamâs recent record. Skype was so popular at the time that people kept stealing the Skype signs outside its offices, so the company simply stopped replacing them.
Inside the Skype Stockholm office, I met engineers who were excited and nervous about Microsoftâs acquisition, but who had been reassured by a visit from Ballmer, who shook their hands and promised that Micr …
Reddit is introducing some new features for posts that should make it easier to know if your post meets a subreddit’s rules and if it’s for the appropriate community, according to a blog post.
The new Rules Check will flag a potential issue as you’re writing the post. As shown in a GIF of the mobile app, you’ll see a red notification badge above your keyboard on a little magic wand icon, and if you tap that, the app will display a pop-up showing rules that your post might be breaking.
This feature will be tested first on iOS and Android. If your post is removed for breaking the rules, Reddit will show a prompt suggesting that you try instead to post it to a different subreddit.
The new Community Suggestions feature will offer recommendations on which subreddit a post might be a fit for. And the Clear Community Info tool you might see before posting will let you know a subreddit’s specific posting requirements.
Reddit is also offering insights on your posts, including “views, upvotes, shares, and more,” per the blog post.
Telo Trucks, the company building a compact, modular electric pickup truck, revealed its new preproduction prototype in Los Angeles. The San Carlos, California-based startup recently closed a $5.4 million funding round and is working with bespoke manufacturing partner Aria Group (which has built EV restomods including for companies like Everrati) to enter the next development phase towards the final mini-truck.
The company said they have over 5,000 preorders for the mini-truck, which is now known as the Telo MT1, that “represents over $250M+ in customer commitments.” The EV was first revealed in 2023 and showed off a clever modular design where the truck cab can open for more bed space, or enclosed like a van. There’s also a “Monster Tunnel” storage compartment across the truck’s width where you can carry long items, similar to Rivian’s gear tunnel.
The overall design of the latest MT1 looks nearly identical to the original reveal, save for a relocation of the side body indentations. The interior has LCD screens housed in separate cut-out plates, making the instrument cluster look more analog. And it uses materials like biodegradable cork throughout the cabin.
The front of the vehicle is still entirely flat, which helps give the truck its spectacularly short design that makes it perfect for urban environments. Although a flat front seems like it lacks crucial crumple zone space, Telo says it’s continuing “rigorous safety and durability testing.” Telo expects to achieve homologation “sometime next winter.”
Meanwhile, the company’s co-founder and CEO Jason Marks is calling for more investors, partners, and customers to help make MT1 happen. Telo also has industrial designer Yves Behar on board, who has worked on products for Jawbone and Herman Miller. And co-founder and CTO Forrest North, who previously founded motorcycle company Mission Motors, is helping build the MT1’s battery technology.
Telo MT1 reservations are still open for $152, the same number of inches as the vehicle’s length. The US could use some small pickup trucks, where the best we’ve got is the 200-inch Ford Maverick Hybrid. The market is still dominated by extra-large gas-powered trucks like the Ford F-150 (and it’s EV versions aren’t doing too well).
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ended last year, but authorities have finally apprehended a pair of thieves who managed to steal hundreds of tickets by exploiting a loophole in StubHub’s back end.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, two cybercriminals who stole and re-sold hundreds of digital tickets to different concerts and sporting events like the U.S. Open have been arrested by police. Tyrone Rose and Shamara Simmons have been charged with grand larceny, computer tampering, and conspiracy. If found guilty, the pair could face anywhere from 3-15 years in prison. Rose and Simmons are set to appear in court and submit their pleas this Friday, but the police’s investigation will continue as they are said to have worked with a number of accomplices — at least one of whom is now dead, while another has yet to be caught.
According to the Queens District Attorney’s Office, Rose, Simmons, and other members of the crime ring obtained the tickets by intercepting legitimate StubHub URLs generated after legal ticket purchases. Those ill-gotten URLs would then be passed along to other participants in the scheme, who would use them to resell the tickets on StubHub itself.
Between June 2022 and July 2023, the crew managed to re-sell about 900 tickets for shows including Swift, Adele, and Ed Sheeran for about $600,000. It’s not entirely clear how the group’s plan first came together, but it seems as if they were able to discover the exploit because some of them worked for Sutherland Global Services, a Kingston-based IT contractor. In the wake of the news, StubHub terminated its working relationship with Sutherland.
In a statement about the case, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said that the crime ring wanted to “use the popularity of Taylor Swift’s concert tour and other high-profile events to profit at the expensive of others.”
Katz added that “This takedown highlights the vigilance of my office’s Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency Unit as well as the importance of working with our industry partners to combat fraudulent activities and ensure the protection of consumers.”
The MagicX 40 could arrive as early as April 2025 with a vertically-oriented touchscreen and physical controls. | Screenshot: YouTube
With Nintendo exhausting its supply of DS repair parts, fans of the dual-screen handheld may have another way to play when their original hardware finally dies. The MagicX Zero 40 is yet another handheld emulator but with a peculiar design incorporating a four-inch vertically-oriented 800×480 touchscreen display allowing emulated DS titles to be played like they are on Nintendo’s devices.
The Zero 40 is expected to be released sometime in April 2025 for around $75, according to Time Extension. MagicX isn’t as well known as companies like Anbernic that have been making handhelds for years, but the company debuted its first Android-powered gaming device, the Mini Zero 28, earlier this year, to favorable reviews.
The company is taking a similar approach with the Zero 40 as Nintendo did with its 2DS, and not just when it comes to skipping 3D. Although all of the folding devices in the DS lineup featured two separate displays, the 2DS used just a single panel that was made to look like two separate screens by the handheld’s plastic casing. That’s likely part of the reason the Zero 40 could launch as comparatively cheap as the 2DS.
The Zero 40 will be powered by an Allwinner A133P processor paired with 2GB of RAM and a 4,300mAh battery that MagicX says will be good for between five and seven hours of gameplay. Like the Mini Zero 28, the Zero 40 will run Android, although don’t expect the latest version of Google’s mobile OS as the company’s last device shipped with Android 10 a month ago. It will rely on the Drastic emulator for DS titles, which was made free last March for Android devices.
Aside from MagicX recently sharing a video demonstrating gameplay on the Zero 40, there haven’t been any hands-ons or reviews of the device, so its capabilities aren’t yet known. But the company says it should be able to emulate N64, PSP, and Dreamcast titles, in addition to DS games. It’s nowhere near as powerful as the clamshell Ayaneo Flip, but that DS alternative was priced close to $1,000. If it launches close to $75, the MagicX Zero 40 could fill a void with handheld emulators at a reasonable price.
I was on a flight back to New York the other day, and something really odd happened when we landed: the passengers burst into applause. I’ve only ever seen that happen after a flight with really bad turbulence or a big delay. But this was a totally boring flight that took off and landed on time with no drama whatsoever. So why the clapping?
Well, you know why: there have been a lot of plane crashes, or near crashes lately — and it’s all against the backdrop of the Trump administration and Elon Musk firing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees and talking about upgrading everything with Starlink, or whatever they’re posting about on social media today.
Just this week, news reports have detailed exactly how Musk has wedged his way into the agency to force SpaceX into the conversation — including a move to take over an existing Verizon contract and even threatening FAA employees with termination if they don’t get fully onboard.
So the reason it feels less safe to fly — the reason people are clapping when the plane lands — isn’t just the tragic accidents. It’s that the system we took for granted to keep us safe and solve problems when they occur is being destabilized right in front of our eyes, and actually improving that system takes more than posts and bravado or conflicts of interest so intense it causes a constitutional crisis. It’s actually a complicated dance of people, technology, and policy — you know, Decoder stuff.
So today I’m talking to Andy Hawkins, The Verge’s transportation editor, about what’s going on in the skies. He just edited a big piece for us by writer Darryl Campbell that helps put a lot of what’s happening in air travel right now into perspective. There’s some very reassuring data about how safe it is to actually fly, but there are also some big questions about what we need to do next to regain our confidence in air travel.
He and I talked about how safe it really is to fly right now — extremely safe — and how the current air traffic systems might change for the better and the worse. And, of course, we talked about Musk.
If you’d like to read more on what we talked about in this episode, check out the links below:
What’s the deal with all these airplane crashes? | The Verge
How Elon Musk muscled his way into the FAA | Bloomberg
Elon Musk says upgrade of FAA’s air traffic control system is failing | CNN
FAA targeting Verizon contract in favor of Musk’s Starlink, sources say | Washington Post
FAA officials ordered staff to find funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink | Rolling Stone
FAA announces ‘hiring supercharge’ for air traffic controllers | Forbes
Air traffic control trainees to get raise, in nod to cost of living | NYT
Some of the 400 jobs that were cut at the FAA helped support air safety | AP
DC plane crash marks first major commercial crash in US since 2009 | ABC
Netflix is airing another live boxing match. The service will exclusively stream a rematch between Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor on Friday, July 11th, according to an announcement on Thursday.
Though Netflix’s livestream ran into some technical hiccups during the Paul vs. Tyson match, the company seems to have stepped up its game since then. Its live Christmas Day NFL games aired without issue, and most of its WWE Monday Night Raw streams have been free of major glitches.
Netflix’s livestreams have only gotten bigger since then, with a hot dog eating contest between storied rivals Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. On November 15th, 2024, a live boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul raked in 108 million average viewers, making it “the most-streamed sporting event ever,” according to Netflix.
It’s internet safety law season again. After a narrow failure to pass the Kids Online Safety Act in 2024, Congress is now advancing the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII, once dubbed “revenge porn,” including AI-generated content) and sets requirements for web platforms to remove it. The bill has gained support from First Lady Melania Trump, and President Donald Trump touted it during his joint address to Congress on March 4th, promising he would sign it. In a normal world, this could be a positive step towards solving the real problem of NCII, a problem that AI is making worse.
But we are not in a normal world. Parts of the Take It Down Act are more likely to become a sword for a corrupt presidential administration than a shield to protect NCII victims â and supporters of both civil liberties andBig Tech accountability should recognize it.
The typical discourse around a bill like the Take It Down Act works this way: lawmakers propose a rule that’s supposed to do a good and popular thing, like help victims of nonconsensual sexual images get those images taken down. Civil liberties advocates go “wait a minute, this has a lot of bad side …
At 233 mph, the 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is now the fastest car ever built by a U.S. auto manufacturer. | Image: GM
Last October, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 set a top speed of 233 mph on consecutive runs around a closed track. That’s not the fastest street-legal production car in the world: the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ will, as the name implies, top 300 mph. What’s special about the ZR1, then? Its $174,995 starting price may sound expensive, but it’s a steal compared to the Bugatti, which costs somewhere north of $4 million. The ZR1 is officially the world’s fastest production car available for less than $1 million.
The ZR1 achieved that speed on a massive test track in Papenburg, Germany, a place where the banking is so steep that the drivers suffered through 1.7 vertical Gs on the turns. That’s just one number out of an endless series of figures that the team behind that record-setting run calculated well in advance, tapping into simulations usually reserved for more utilitarian jobs, like figuring out how steep a grade a Silverado can tow up before blowing a gasket.
Here, the only number that really mattered was top speed â a figure that, in simulation, differed from reality by less than half of one percent. This is how they did it.
A new home tab option in 1Password provides faster access to saved passwords based on your location. | Image: 1Password
1Password introduced a new feature today that will make it easier to find the login, password, or access code you’re looking for, based on where you’re using the app. It will now let you add a specific physical location to items, and they’ll automatically appear in the new Nearby section of the app’s home tab, depending on how close you are to that spot.
The password manager already makes it easy to quickly access frequently used or favorited passwords on the mobile app’s home tab without searching. But both of those sections can get cluttered if you have a long list of passwords you regularly access. The addition of location data will help ensure only the most relevant passwords are presented when opening the mobile app — like your health card at the doctor or travel documents at the airport — minimizing the need to scroll through a long list or remembering exactly how you named an item in order to find it through a search.
Locations can be added to new or existing items saved in 1Password either while at the specific location or by dropping a pin using a new map view that lets you search for a place while you’re elsewhere.
You can also limit the number of items that show up in the app’s home tab by range. You can only be presented with passwords associated to locations within 50 feet or up to 10 miles away — although that could negate the usefulness of the feature if you’re once again presented with an overly long list of items.
The app’s new map view also allows you to browse all the locations associated with passwords and other saved items in your account.
AgileBits, 1Password’s developer, says that “your location data is never stored, shared, or tracked,” and the 1Password app does its checks for nearby items locally so your current location never leaves your device. The company also added an additional layer of security around the loading of map data by giving users the option to turn off this feature entirely at any time.
Being able to specify locations for passwords is a feature originally introduced through 1Password labs, a section of the app where the company lets users try out and provide feedback on new and experimental features before they’re rolled out to all users. Experimental features are made available in the 1Password mobile and desktop apps in the labs tab under Settings, and users can turn unreleased features on or off at any time.
It’s been 47 years since the twin Voyager spacecraft started their historic mission. Having travelled through interstellar space, farther from Earth than any other human-made objects, their nuclear batteries are depleting — but NASA is taking measures to squeeze as much life out of the aging probes as possible.
The Voyagers’ radioisotope power system loses around 4 watts each year, so to preserve power, NASA engineers have been shutting down some of the science instruments carried by each probe. Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem experiment was turned off on February 25th. When the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 2 is shut down on March 24th, both spacecraft will have three out of the ten identical science instruments they launched with remaining operational.
“Electrical power is running low,” said Voyager project manager, Suzanne Dodd. “If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission. The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible.”
Instruments aboard the probes have been turned off for this purpose before. The only equipment that remained powered after both spacecraft had completed their final flyby of the solar system’s gas giants was prioritized to collect data about the heliosphere and interstellar space. With the latest shutdowns, NASA says the Voyager probes should have enough power to keep operating for another year.
The Voyagers have greatly surpassed the lifespan expected from their two-planet exploration mission. Both were only built to last five years, but the scientific data they’ve collected since is unique, motivating NASA to extend their chances of survival. The agency managed to fix Voyager 1 when it stopped transmitting viable data in 2023, 15 billion miles away from Earth, bringing it back online again in June last year.
Future energy saving plans include turning off the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 1 next year, and Voyager 2’s cosmic ray subsystem in 2026. With these efforts, NASA engineers believe the two probes could continue operating with at least one science instrument into the 2030s — providing unforeseen challenges don’t arise.
“Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where no spacecraft has gone before,” said Voyager project scientist Linda Spilker. “That also means every day could be our last. But that day could also bring another interstellar revelation. So, we’re pulling out all the stops, doing what we can to make sure Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their trailblazing for the maximum time possible.”
DuckDuckGo has big plans for embedding AI into its search engine. The privacy-focused company just announced that its AI-generated answers, which appear for certain queries on its search engine, have exited beta and now source information from across the web — not just Wikipedia. It will soon integrate web search within its AI chatbot, which has also exited beta.
DuckDuckGo first launched AI-assisted answers — originally called DuckAssist — in 2023. The feature is billed as a less obnoxious version of tools like Google’s AI Overviews, designed to offer more concise responses and let you adjust how often you see them, including turning the responses off entirely. If you have DuckDuckGo’s AI-generated answers set to “often,” you’ll still only see them around 20 percent of the time, though the company plans on increasing the frequency eventually.
“We’d like to raise that over time,” Gabriel Weinberg, the CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo, told The Verge. “That’s another major area that we’re working on … We want to kind of stay conservative with it. We don’t want to put it in front of people if we don’t think it’s right.”
Some of DuckDuckGo’s AI-assisted answers bring up a box for follow-up questions, redirecting you to a conversation with its Duck.ai chatbot. As is the case with its AI-assisted answers, you don’t need an account to use Duck.ai, and it comes with the same emphasis on privacy. It lets you toggle between GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, Llama 3.3, Mistral Small 3, and Claude 3 Haiku, with the advantage being that you can interact with each model anonymously by hiding your IP address. DuckDuckGo also has agreements with the AI company behind each model to ensure your data isn’t used for training.
Duck.ai also rolled out a feature called Recent Chats, which stores your previous conversations locally on your device rather than on DuckDuckGo’s servers. Though Duck.ai is also leaving beta, that doesn’t mean the flow of new features will stop.
In the next few weeks, Duck.ai will add support for web search, which should enhance its ability to respond to questions. The company is also working on adding voice interaction on iPhone and Android, along with the ability to upload images and ask questions about them. Weinberg said that while Duck.ai will always remain free, the company is considering including access to more advanced AI models with its $9.99 per month subscription.
DuckDuckGo isn’t going to join OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and maybe even Meta in creating a separate app for its AI chatbot, however. “We think the end state is that really the ultimate app mixes all these things,” Weinberg said. “We think some queries are better to start with chat, some are better to start with search. A lot of them, you could start with either. Then sometimes you want to flow between. And if you’re flowing between, kind of fluidly like that, it’s a better experience to have it in one app.”
You can try out DuckDuckGo’s chatbot on the Duck.ai website or the DuckDuckGo browser, as well as find AI-assisted answers in the DuckDuckGo search engine.
Aside from a new color, the M4 MacBook Air looks a whole lot like last year’s model. And we’ve got the hands-on experience and pictures to prove it.
Apple’s got five main updates for its refresh of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs for 2025. First, it’s got a similar M4 chip to the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, though here it starts with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU. Also inherited from the MacBook Pros, the Airs now use the 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam that’s wider and can track you within the frame. And you can now (finally) use two external monitors and keep the lid open, essentially giving you a fancy triple-monitor setup with the lowly MacBook Air.
As for that new color option, sky blue, it replaces space gray. Starlight, silver, and midnight are still around from last year (and midnight is unchanged, so expect some fingerprint smudginess). The new blue is a very pale metallic finish. You could mistake it for a silver if you didn’t see them side-by-side. I think the best way I could describe it is 2003 Toyota Matrix blue. In other words, it’s nice but not blue enough. Apple should call it non-committal blue.
But the fifth thing that’s new for the MacBook Air, and likely the one many of us will care most about, is that it starts at a lower price. The 13-inch model starts at $999 while the 15-inch starts at $1,199. This is actually a return to form for the 13-inch, which used to start at that price before an increase during the M2 generation. The M4 Air may be an otherwise subtle chip-bump of an upgrade with a new bland-ish metallic finish, but $100 off makes all the difference.
In addition to our hands-on with the MacBook Air we also got our first look at the new Mac Studio duo, one with the M4 Max chip and one with a new, all-out M3 Ultra. The Studios don’t look any different, but the changes inside are pretty major for hardcore pros doing some heavy-duty creative work or local AI stuff.
And the new iPad Air with M3 chip? Well, it’s an iPad. Cool. I guess?
Apple’s new Macs and iPads are due out next week and already up for order. Check out our smattering of photos.
MacBook Air M4
Mac Studio M4 Max / M3 Ultra
iPad Air
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today it has criminally charged 12 Chinese nationals it says are behind attacks that hit more than 100 US organizations, including the Treasury, in a string of attacks going as far back as 2013.
The DOJ accuses the people of carrying out their attacks either on their own or at the behest of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). It says two are officers of the MPS, while eight others are employees of an “ostensibly private” Chinese company called i-Soon, which allegedly had the capability to hack Gmail and Microsoft Outlook inboxes, as well as Twitter and X, using the latter to help the Chinese government monitor public opinion overseas. It called that last tool the “Public Opinion Guidance and Control Platform,” according to the government’s indictment.
The last two are members of a group called APT27, or Silk Typhoon, which has been behind hacks of organizations like healthcare systems and universities, according to the DOJ. The group has more recently focused on IT systems that include management software, recent Microsoft research concluded. Such software was the target of the Treasury hack reported in late December.
The DOJ says the hackers were motivated by money, as the “MPS and MSS paid handsomely for stolen data.” Of the i-Soon group:
i-Soon and its employees, to include the defendants, generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue as a key player in the PRC’s hacker-for-hire ecosystem. In some instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions at the request of the MSS or MPS, including cyber-enabled transnational repression at the direction of the MPS officer defendants. In other instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions on its own initiative and then sold, or attempted to sell, the stolen data to at least 43 different bureaus of the MSS or MPS in at least 31 separate provinces and municipalities in China. i-Soon charged the MSS and MPS between approximately $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully exploited. i-Soon also trained MPS employees how to hack independently of i-Soon and offered a variety of hacking methods for sale to its customers.
And of Silk Typhoon:
The defendants’ motivations were financial and, because they were profit-driven, they targeted broadly, rendering victim systems vulnerable well beyond their pilfering of data and other information that they could sell. Between them, Yin and Zhou sought to profit from the hacking of numerous U.S.-based technology companies, think tanks, law firms, defense contractors, local governments, health care systems, and universities, leaving behind them a wake of millions of dollars in damages.
Other victims of hacks from i-Soon include two New York newspapers, the US Department of Commerce, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and more.
None of the defendants is in custody, the DOJ says. The US government is offering as much as $10 million for information that helps it identify any of those accused of directing or carrying out “i-Soon’s malicious cyber activity.” It’s also offering “up to $2 million each for information leading to the arrests and convictions, in any country, of malicious cyber actors Yin Kecheng and Zhou Shuai,” the two Silk Typhoon members.
Reddit will now issue warnings to users who “upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies” within “a certain timeframe,” starting first with violent content, the company announced on Wednesday.
“This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content,” a Reddit employee says in the announcement post. In comments on the post, a user expressed concern that the new policy could make people “paranoid about voting,” but the employee says that “this would be an unacceptable side effect, which is why we want to monitor this closely and ramp it up thoughtfully.”
“We have done this in the past for quarantined communities and found that it did help to reduce exposure to bad content, so we are experimenting with this sitewide,” according to the main post. Reddit “may consider” expanding the warnings in the future to cover repeated upvotes of other kinds of actions as well as taking other types of actions in addition to warnings.
The Trump administration may soon demand the social media accounts of people applying for green cards, US citizenship, and asylum or refugee status. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) â the federal agency that oversees legal migration, proposed the new policy in the Federal Register this week â calling this information ânecessary for a rigorous vetting and screeningâ of all people applying for âimmigration-related benefits.â
In its Federal Register notice, USCIS said the proposed social media surveillance policy is needed to comply with President Trumpâs âProtecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threatsâ executive order, issued on his first day in office. That order requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other government agencies to âidentify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.â
The public has until May 5 â 60 days after the noticeâs publication in the Federal Register â to comment on the proposed policy.
The Senate voted on Wednesday to strip a key financial regulator of its ability to monitor digital platforms like X, as the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk, has become the public face of the government office seeking to shrink the agency’s workforce.
With the CFPB’s digital authority now in danger, two Democrats are calling on the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to probe Musk’s compliance with federal ethics laws, given his financial interests and work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a letter shared exclusively with The Verge, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are asking the OGE to preserve communications about Musk and DOGE’s compliance. They ask whether Musk has recused himself from DOGE’s work at the CFPB or if he’s been issued ethics waivers to address conflicts of interest that might be raised by his ownership of X and leadership at Tesla, which offers financing to auto customers.
The White House has previously offered vague assurances that Musk would not work on matters that present a conflict of interest
The CFPB rule that Republicans are trying to get rid of would let the agency keep tabs on digital services like X’s planned venture into payments for fraud and privacy issues. That raised concerns that Musk could be serving his own financial interests in kneecapping a regulator that would have direct oversight of at least one of his businesses. The White House has previously offered vague assurances that Musk would not work on matters that present a conflict of interest, but he hasn’t done much to distance himself publicly from DOGE’s work at the CFPB. He posted “CFPB RIP” on his X account in the wake of an initial stop-work order issued to the agency.
“Notably, the CFPB has taken steps in recent years to protect consumers from fraud on digital payment apps and collects proprietary information from the digital payment industry,” Warren and Schiff write in their letter to the OGE. “Mr. Musk is also the founder and CEO of Tesla, which offers customers the option of working with Tesla to finance their auto purchases. The CFPB plays a critical role in supervising the auto lending industry and protecting consumers from corporate malfeasance and scams. Therefore, actions by Mr. Musk and DOGE at the CFPB have the potential to directly benefit X, Visa, and Tesla—and by extension, Mr. Musk.”
Musk has been dubbed a “special government employee” by the Trump administration, which the lawmakers point out makes him subject to conflict of interest laws. “Therefore, if Mr. Musk has taken actions in his federal role that will benefit his financial interests without receiving appropriate waivers and approvals, he may have violated the criminal conflict of interest statute.”
Ahead of the Senate vote on Wednesday, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) framed the choice to his colleagues succinctly: “A vote in favor of this resolution is a vote to strip federal oversight of Elon Musk’s payments company.”
Apple is bringing AI-generated review summaries to the app store with iOS 18.4. As spotted by Macworld, the latest developer beta for iOS and iPadOS adds brief summaries of user reviews to some App Store listings.
The summaries are generated by large language models to “compile highlights and key information from users’ reviews into short paragraphs,” according to details on Apple’s developer site.
Based on Apple’s example, the summaries use natural language to highlight what users say about the app, starting with positive feedback and finishing with negative feedback. Apple says the summaries will be refreshed at least once a week as new reviews are added, and users will be able to tap and hold on a review to report any problems with the feature.
The summaries will initially be available in the US App Store for apps and games published in English, and only to those with enough reviews to generate a summary. They will be available in other countries and languages later this year.
Apple’s move follows Amazon’s addition of AI-generated review highlights to its e-commerce site in 2023. These short paragraphs “highlight the product features and customer sentiment frequently mentioned across written reviews” and appear above the full reviews.
In theory, review summaries should be helpful, saving you from reading through a bunch of reviews to get the “highlights.” But they also feel potentially ripe for gaming and will likely only encourage unscrupulous companies to flood review sections.
From my experience with Amazon’s summaries, I find that its focus on the positive aspects first can feel disingenuous. I review products for a living, and if something is bad, that will absolutely be the first thing I say.
Samsung’s next Galaxy Z Flip phone may have a new all-screen outside cover, according to reputable leaker OnLeaks. The new Z Flip 7 renders shared by OnLeaks and Android Headlines are based on leaked information and show that Samsung’s upcoming device resembles its main form-factor competitor, the Motorola Razr Plus. The new screen goes edge-to-edge on the cover and has hole punches for the cameras and flash.
OnLeaks has a history of accurate leaks, revealing the designs of the Pixel 8 Pro, 9 Pro, Nintendo Switch 2, and more. These new renders come shortly after both OnLeaks and Android Headlines shared a different Z Flip 7 design that looked all too similar to the current Z Flip 6, including a tab-shaped screen that did not touch the camera lenses. In a post on X, OnLeak’s Steve H. McFly says they “misinterpreted” the data, and the updated renders now show an edge-to-edge cover screen that is about four inches — larger than the one on the Motorola Razr Plus.
The other change with the Z Flip 7 is that the inner display is growing to 6.8 inches from the previous model’s 6.7 inches and it may have a less visible crease in the middle. Android Headlines says it expects the new device to come with 12 GB of RAM and options for 256GB or 512GB of storage with pricing expected to start at $1,099.
