Towards the end of Mark Zuckerbergâs testimony in a Washington, DC courthouse, a smile flashed across his face.
Metaâs lead attorney, Mark Hansen, had asked the CEO if he was âhappyâ about paying $19 billion for WhatsApp in 2014.
Zuckerberg flashed a grin, took a brief pause, and responded, âIâd do it again.â
Over the last decade, the growing scale of Instagram and WhatsApp cemented Meta as one of the most powerful companies on earth. Now, the US government, via a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit, is trying to unwind those acquisitions through a trial that began on April 14th. Zuckerberg spent roughly 13 hours across three days answering questions from the FTC and Meta lawyers. Much of that time on Wednesday was devoted to attempting to refute one core argument: that he bought both apps to take them out and not to make them better.
The FTC contends that WhatsApp was acquired because Zuckerberg and his executives were worried at the time that private messaging apps would grow into fully-fledged social media businesses. From the witness stand, Zuckerberg acknowledged that it was âsomething I thought about,â but that he thought it would be âextremel …
Gemini Live’s feature that lets it see and respond to what’s on your camera and your screen will now be free for all Android users via the Gemini app, Google announced today.
The AI-powered feature officially launched earlier this month for everyone on Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 using the Gemini app. At the time, Google said the feature would launch “soon” for all Android users though would only be available with a Gemini Advanced subscription. But the company has changed its mind and is now making it available for free.
“We’ve been hearing great feedback on Gemini Live with camera and screen share, so we decided to bring it to more people,” Google said on X.
The feature will roll out to all Android users with the Gemini app starting today, and the rollout will take place “over the coming weeks.” If you want to get an idea of how the feature works, check out this video from Google. In it, a person holds their phone with the camera open at an aquarium so that Gemini can see the animals and share information.
Today, Microsoft announced that its similar AI tool, called Copilot Vision, is available now for free in the Edge browser.
Copilot Vision, Microsoft’s AI assistant feature that can interpret what’s on your screen and help you use apps, is now available for free use within the Edge browser, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, announced on Bluesky today. Vision is a “talk-based experience,” as Microsoft calls it, meaning you use it by speaking into the air, then waiting for Copilot to respond.
Suleyman says if you opt into the feature, Copilot Vision can “literally see what you see on screen.” Suleyman suggests having Copilot Vision guide you through a recipe while you cook or having it “decode” job descriptions “and jump right into customized interview prep or cover letter brainstorming.” (Although it might not be the best idea to use AI for your resume.) According to a Microsoft support page, “Copilot Vision may highlight portions of the screen to help you find relevant information,” but it doesn’t actually click links or do anything on your behalf.
Broader, system-wide Copilot Vision features are still limited to Copilot Pro subscribers. With a subscription, Vision expands beyond Edge, letting you ask it to help you use features in Photoshop or video editing software, or guide you through a game like Minecraft, as it did for The Verge’s Tom Warren earlier this month.
To try out Copilot Vision, open this link to Microsoft’s website in the Edge browser. That should give you a prompt to opt into the feature, and once you’ve given permission, you can open the Copilot sidebar while on a website, click the microphone icon, and your Vision session begins, signified by a chime and your browser changing its hue.
Or that’s how it should go. In my case, it took a couple of tries before Edge asked if I wanted to opt in. And once I could opt in and initiate a Vision session, the controls never appeared — as of this writing, I simply have a message floating over the bottom of my browser that says “One moment…” But I’m using a fairly old, underpowered laptop, so your mileage may vary.
According to Microsoft, the company logs Copilot’s responses to you but doesn’t collect your inputs, images, or page content while in a Copilot Vision session. When you’re ready to stop sharing your screen with Copilot, you can either end the session or close the browser window.
Right-wing influencers are shilling an app that purportedly lets people earn crypto for reporting sightings of undocumented immigrants. ICERAID, a âGovFi protocol that delegates intelligence gathering tasks to citizens,â has recently been promoted by the likes of conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, Proud Boy-turned-media personality Jacob Engels, and disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
âItâs like a citizenâs arrest, but with Wi-Fi,â Gaetz said on a recent episode of his One America News Network show. âForget driving Uber or DoorDash for extra change. Snap a pic, save the day, and stack some digital cash while youâre doing it.â
ICERAIDâs website describes it as a âGovFiâ â government finance, a term coined by ICERAID founder Jason Meyers â protocol on Solana that ârewards citizens for capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity.â (To be clear, ICERAID has no connection to the government.) And ICERAID isnât just soliciting images of suspected immigrants. âYou can snap a picture of someone committing animal cruelty or homicide, kidnapping, terrorism â you see someone scraping a Tesla, thatâs domestic ter …
Its planet-heating pollution shrank by 800,000 metric tons last year compared to 2023, about a 5 percent drop. Looking back over the past decade, Apple says its global greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by more than 60 percent. That’s no easy feat, especially now as the AI arms race pushes other techcompanies’ emissions higher.
Apple says its global greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by more than 60 percent
Procuring renewable energy, designing more sustainable products, and pushing its suppliers to follow suit are key pillars of Apple’s climate plans. The company says its suppliers avoided close to 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions last year through renewable energy purchases and gains in energy efficiency.
On top of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, Apple has to grapple with super potent fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-GHGs) that come from making semiconductors and flat-panel displays. The company says that all of its direct display suppliers have committed to abating at least 90 percent of F-GHGs from facilities used for Apple products. Twenty-six of Apple’s direct semiconductor suppliers have made the same commitment, although Apple hasn’t clarified how big of a chunk that is of its total supply chain for computer chips.
The company also used more recycled materials last year, adding up to nearly a quarter of the materials it shipped in its products. More than 80 percent of the rare earth elements shipped in Apple products — used primarily in magnets for phones and other devices — came from recycled sources in 2024 compared to 75 percent the previous year. Around 99 percent of tungsten, 71 percent of aluminum, 53 percent of lithium, 40 percent of gold, and 76 percent of cobalt in its products came from recycled sources last year, Apple said. Until May 16, the company is offering a 10 percent discount on accessories to customers who bring an eligible item to one of its stores for recycling.
Apple still produced 15.3 million metric tons of gross carbon dioxide emissions in 2024, roughly equivalent to the pollution from 40 gas-fired power plants over a year. The company considers 2015 its baseline year for measuring progress, when it produced 38.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Zoom suffered a major outage this afternoon that prevented people from connecting to video calls and accessing its website. As shown by Cisco’s ThousandEyes platform, site connectivity dropped off at around 2:40PM ET before coming back online nearly two hours later.
Users acrossX posted about the outage, with some getting an “Unable to Connect” error message when entering meetings, and others unable to sign in at all. The Zoom website was also completely down, as it displayed a 502 Bad Gateway error, and its press email didn’t work either.
As noted in the Reddit post, the domain registry issue was fixed at 4:12PM ET, but it might take some time for Zoom to come back online for everyone, as DNS servers pick up and propagate the corrected information.
“Service has now been restored after the earlier outage, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding,” Zoom said in a post on X at around 5PM ET.
The Verge reached out to Zoom and GoDaddy with requests for more information but didn’t immediately hear back.
During Meta’s antitrust trial today, lawyers representing Apple, Google, and Snap each expressed irritation with Meta over the slides it presented on Monday that The Verge found to contain easy-to-remove redactions. Attorneys for both Apple and Snap called the errors “egregious,” with Apple’s representative indicating that it may not be able to trust Meta with its internal information in the future. Google’s attorney also blamed Meta for jeopardizing the search giant’s data with the mistake.
Details about the attorneys’ comments come from The Verge’s Lauren Feiner, who is currently in the courtroom where proceedings are taking place today. Apple, Google, and Meta did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. Snap declined to comment.
Snap’s attorney maligned Meta’s “cavalier approach and casual disregard” of other companies swept into the case, and wondered if “Meta would have applied meaningful redactions if it were its own information that was at stake.” Meta attorney Mark Hansen suggested using a third party that’s not involved in the trial team to work on redactions.
Even prior to the discovery of the redactions issue, Snap had been upset about what it called confidential information being shared during opening statements. (The company didn’t specify precisely which information it considered confidential.) Hansen said yesterday that he didn’t believe he revealed anything confidential in the company’s opening statements, an assessment Snap’s attorney disagreed with.
As for why Meta didn’t let Snap know it would be including the information, Hansen said that he didn’t want to give the company a heads up about what it’s presenting at trial because “very clearly, Snap is working with the FTC. Snap is a major competitor.”
Though clearly redacted for a reason, as they shared information from inside other companies that wasn’t intended for public viewing, the unredacted documents didn’t reveal particularly juicy information. One segment mentioned that iPhone users tend to prefer Apple’s own Messages app to those of Meta and Snap, while another slide, labeled “Snapchat in 2020: Competitors Are Succeeding and Not Just Meta Apps,” noted that its competitors, including Meta’s apps and TikTok, were “thriving.”
To Snap and the other companies, how juicy the details were isn’t the point. Snap’s attorney accused Meta’s lead attorney of openly referencing Snap’s competitive assessments that should have been private.
Xbox is finally rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC, as well as sign up for Game Pass directly from its mobile app. But there’s a catch: you’ll no longer be able to access remote play within the Xbox app.
The update is arriving for beta testers on iOS and Android, but Xbox says it will be available to everyone “soon.”
Xbox president Sarah Bond first announced plans to let players purchase and play games within the Xbox app in October – just days after a court ruled that Google must crack open Android to third-party app stores. But users won’t be able to play games within the app as initially promised. The feature was supposed to arrive in November, but Bond blamed a “temporary administrative stay” for holding it back.
Once Microsoft officially launches in-app game purchases, you’ll see a “Buy” button on game pages if you already have a form of payment saved. You’ll also be able to preorder games and set them to preinstall in your Xbox, as well as redeem Game Pass Ultimate perks. With this update, Xbox has done a complete reversal, as its app previously let users purchase games without remote play.
Though remote play will no longer be available in the app, Xbox notes that you can still access it from your mobile browser. Xbox is also bringing remote play to supported Samsung TVs, Amazon Fire TV devices, and Meta Quest headsets.
A few other updates are coming to Xbox as well, including the ability for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to stream select games they own from Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, which means they won’t have to download games before they can play. Xbox recently added more titles to its “stream your own game” collection, including Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed and Subnautica 2.
There’s also a new game hub feature on Xbox that pulls up “relevant information” about a game, such as player stats, achievements, friends currently playing the game, events, and available add-ons.
In recent years, Do Not Disturb has evolved on both iPhones and Android phones: it’s no longer just a simple block on notifications and distractions, but rather a selection of modes you can customize to suit all the different scenarios in your life (like driving, sleeping, working, or exercising at the gym).
This means you have more control over which apps and contacts can interrupt you and when. If you want Slack to be able to send you alerts during office hours but not family time, for example, you can set this up with just a few taps.
It’s worth spending a few minutes getting these various modes configured to suit you and your schedule, as it’ll make your phone less distracting without causing you to miss anything important.
Android being Android, the exact details for Do Not Disturb vary by manufacturer, but you’ll find instructions below for a Pixel 9 running Android 15 and a Galaxy S25 running One UI 7 â if you’re using anything else, the process should be similar. If you’re on an iPhone, you can try Focus modes.
Do Not Disturb on Pixel phones
In previous versions of Android, Do Not Disturb had its own category in Settings. However, starting from Android 15, you can f …
OpenAI is releasing two new AI reasoning models today: o3, which the company calls its “most powerful reasoning model,” and o4-mini, which is a smaller and faster model that “achieves remarkable performance for its size and cost,” according to a blog post.
The company also says that o3 and o4-mini will be able to “think” with images, meaning they will “integrate images directly into their chain of thought.” That could be useful if you show the models things like sketches or whiteboards. OpenAI says that the models will also be able to adjust images by zooming in on them or rotating the image “as part of their reasoning process.”
Introducing OpenAI o3 and o4-mini—our smartest and most capable models to date.
For the first time, our reasoning models can agentically use and combine every tool within ChatGPT, including web search, Python, image analysis, file interpretation, and image generation. pic.twitter.com/rDaqV0x0wE
In addition, OpenAI is announcing that its reasoning models will be able to use all ChatGPT tools, including things like web browsing and image generation. The tools will be available today for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users in o3, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high, and will come to o3-pro in “a few weeks.” (o1, o3-mini, and o3-mini-high will be phased out from those tiers.)
Today’s announcements follow OpenAI’s reveal of its flagship GPT-4.1 AI model on Monday, its successor to GPT-4o.
Like the original Scribe, the 2024 model is a 10.2-inch e-reader that comes with a stylus so you can write directly on the device. But this version introduces meaningful software upgrades that make the note-taking experience more intuitive, many of which are also available for the original Scribe. You can now directly annotate ebook pages and scribble notes in expandable margins, for example. Plus, if you’re connected to the internet, you can take advantage of new AI-based tools that let you summarize notes taken in the e-reader’s built-in notebook or clean up your handwriting with a single tap.
When it comes to hardware, the Scribe also continues to impress. The new model features slimmer bezels and a textured display that more closely mimics the feel of writing on paper (it’s also available in a beautiful green hue). Amazon also ditched the Basic Pen and opted for the Premium Pen as its default stylus, providing you with a built-in eraser and a customizable shortcut button. And, like its predecessor, the 2024 Scribe retains a 300ppi display with an adjustable warm light, making it just as easy to read at night as it is during the day.
You can buy Google’s latestGoogle Nest Cam at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store for $69.99 ($30 off), which is $5 shy of its best price to date. Along with offering three free hours of event video history, the indoor security camera offers smart alerts that can distinguish between people and pets. With a subscription to Google’s Nest Aware plan (starting at $8 a month), the 1080p camera can even identify specific individuals and provide access to 24/7 recording. The wired camera also works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa for hands-free control. Read our review.
Now that the new Twelve South AirFly Pro 2 is here, we’re starting to see some deals on the original AirFly Pro, which is down to an all-time low of $41.99 ($13 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. The handy Bluetooth adapter allows you to connect your wireless headphones or earbuds to in-flight entertainment systems via a built-in 3.5mm cable. You can also use it to listen to music or podcasts wirelessly via treadmills, gaming consoles, and anything else that uses a standard audio jack. The last-gen model just lacks the Pro 2’s dedicated volume controls and more advanced Qualcomm QCC3056 processor, which should result in better sound.
Anker’s Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds are currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Soundcore for $119.99 ($30 off), their best price to date. The excellent sleep buds are designed to help you sleep better by reducing external noise passively, and are particularly comfortable to wear for side sleepers. They also provide a range of soothing sounds designed to lull you to sleep — including white noise and several snore-masking tracks — as well as sleep tracking and Bluetooth support, so you can switch to listening to music and podcasts. Read our review.
Lyft said it is acquiring mobility platform FreeNow, giving the ridehailing company its first major presence in Europe after years of operating exclusively in the US and Canada.
FreeNow aggregates taxis alongside private vehicles, including luxury rides. The acquisition of FreeNow nearly doubles Lyft’s potential market and will aide the company as it seeks to compete with the dominant player in ridehailing, Uber. While Lyft oversees several bikeshare brands in Europe, including Santander Cycles in London, it has yet to expand its ridehailing operation beyond North American borders.
“We’re on an ambitious path to build the best, most customer-obsessed mobility platform in the world, and entering Europe is an important step in our growth journey,” said Lyft CEO David Risher in a statement.
“Entering Europe is an important step in our growth journey.”
FreeNow operates in over 150 European cities, including Dublin, London, Athens, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid, and Hamburg, with luxury vehicles making up a significant portion of its fleet. Taxis accounted for approximately 90 percent of the company’s gross bookings in 2024, which Lyft says will continue to be the “backbone” of its business. The company said in September it had achieved break-even status, on the back of a 13 percent year-on-year increase in 2024 revenue and its focus on taxi operations, according to Reuters.
Lyft is buying FreeNow from its parent companies, BMW and Mercedes-Benz for €175 million ($198.40 million). The company emerged from a $1 billion mobility deal between BMW and Daimler back in 2019 aimed at creating new entities focused on autonomous cars, ride-hailing, electric scooters, car-sharing, and electric car charging. In addition to FreeNow, there was ReachNow for multimodal services; ChargeNow for EV charging; ParkNow for parking; and ShareNow for car-sharing.
FreeNow will keep its own branding, but the companies say that a future rebranding is possible.
“Over time, the companies will focus on integration and any changes will be gradual, respectful, and made in consultation with appropriate stakeholders,” Lyft spokesperson Stephanie Rice said in an email.
Although much larger than an inkjet printer, Anker’s UV Printer E1 is much smaller than commercial-grade UV printers. | Image: Anker
Falling somewhere between a 3D printer and the inkjet you use to churn out color photos, Anker’s eufyMake brand has announced what it’s calling the “industry’s first 3D-texture UV Printer designed for personal use.” The UV Printer E1 is closer in size to a 3D printer than an inkjet, but is designed to produce 2D images on various surfaces – such as paper or glass – with a subtle raised texture that can simulate the feel and appearance of materials like wood or even crocodile skin.
These types of printers are typically used in large printing and manufacturing facilities who have the budget and the room to operate what’s traditionally bulky and expensive hardware. For example, several years ago at CES, Casio demonstrated a $50,000 printer offering similar functionality. eufyMake is launching its UV Printer E1 later this month through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign with a standard bundle priced at $1,899. But those willing to reserve one now with a $50 deposit can get the E1 discounted to $1,499.
As the name implies, UV printers use a specially formulated ink that cures and dries instantly when exposed to ultraviolet light after it’s been applied to a surface. The process typically produces prints that are more durable than other printing techniques, and it can be applied to multiple surfaces, not just paper. To create 3D textures, a thicker ink is laid down and cured first, in a process similar to 3D printing. eufyMake says the E1 can create textures as thick as five millimeters deep.
Supported materials include wood, metal, glass, leather, and acrylic which can be placed on a moving bed measuring around 13 inches by 16.5 inches in size. But using an optional rotation unit, the E1 can also directly print on rounded objects like mugs and water bottles, improving the accuracy of applications by eliminating the need to manually transfer designs.
For further ease of use, the E1 includes a self-cleaning system to prevent clogs from forming that could put the machine out of use. It also uses a combination of cameras and lasers to measure and determine the location of objects being directly printed on, such as smartphone cases.
The E1’s pricing will help make UV printing accessible to a wider variety of makers and smaller companies, but eufyMake hasn’t revealed the pricing of replacement ink cartridges, or how long they’ll last. The E1 uses a set of six UV inks including CMYK plus white and an ink that creates a glossy finish. They’re included with the UV printer as part of a bundle that eufyMake says is worth $299, but details on how many projects can be printed before cartridges run dry have not been revealed.
“We want the E1 to shift the UV printing experience away from factory walls, and into homes, studios, small businesses and art markets around the world,” says eufy general manager Frank Zhu. But depending on the price of those UV inks, the UV Printer E1 may end up only being affordable for those able to sell their creations.
While Natasha Lyonneâs Charlie Cale can always tell when someone is lying, the new trailer for Poker Faceâs upcoming second season makes it pretty hard to tell which of its characters are murderers hiding in plain sight. Clearly, thereâs something up with that strange little girl, but is she a killer? You be the judge.
“We’re flattered that you agree ‘Dev Mode’ is the ideal name for a software tool that helps bridge the gap between design and development,” Figma said in the letter shared by Lovable co-founder Anton Osika on LinkedIn. Figma told the startup that Dev Mode has been “extensively” used in connection with its own software, and that it needs to “protect our intellectual property,” asking Lovable to “cease all use of ‘Dev Mode’” in connection with the company’s products.
Dev mode is just a very common abbreviation of “developer mode,” a level of editing access that essentially every software platform on the planet has. Many companies use the two terms interchangeably, and in cases like Atlassian and Wix, have done so for far longer than Figma has held the Dev Mode trademark. Lovable’s Dev Mode feature, which allows users to preview and edit their project code without connecting to GitHub, is also completely distinct from Figma’s Dev Mode tool, which is designed to make design files easier to convert into code.
We have asked Lovable if it intends to honor the cease-and-desist. When asked for comment, Figma told The Verge it had “nothing to add beyond what was shared in the letter.”
The sudden protectiveness around Figma’s brand identity may be indicative of some big changes on the horizon. Following Adobe’s failed attempt to acquire the company for $20 billion in December 2023 (in which Figma netted a cool $1 billion termination fee), Figma announced yesterday that it’s now taking steps to go public, pending review by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
DJI’s new drone accessory is designed to ensure public safety and emergency officials are heard loud and clear — and I mean really loud. Its enterprise-focused Zenmuse V1 speaker can broadcast the sound of someone’s voice at up to 127 decibels at 1 meter, a number DJI says is “on par with the sound level of a jet taking off.”
The speaker, which can be mounted on DJI’s enterprise Matrice 350 RTK and Matrice 300 RTK drones, can broadcast sound at up to 500 meters. To transmit a message, users can make a recording, use text-to-speech, or upload an audio file within the DJI Pilot 2 app.
DJI says the speaker is useful for public safety, emergency rescue, and other applications, but the video shared by the company also suggests it could be used for security. One scene shows the drone blaring a message above a busy road, saying: “No parking. Please drive away.”
In addition to a speaker, DJI revealed a Zenmuse S1 spotlight that can be mounted on the Matrice 350 RTK and Matrice 300 RTK drones along with it. The spotlight features something called Laser Excited Phosphor (LEP) technology “for enhanced light penetration.” It offers low-beam and high-beam light modes, and can also enable both at the same time for a maximum observation distance of up to 500 meters.
DJI still hasn’t released the pricing or availability of the new accessories yet, but the future of its products in the US remains in question, as it still faces a potential ban.
TikTok has announced “Footnotes,” its own take on the community notes features that started on Twitter and have been spreading to other social networks. As elsewhere, it’s a crowd-sourced approach to moderation — TikTok says contributors will be able to “add relevant information to content on our platform.”
US users can apply to become Footnotes contributors starting today, as long as they meet TikTok’s requirements, including that they must have been on TikTok for more than six months, must be 18 or older, and can’t have violated any community guidelines in the previous six months. The company says it will also notify US users who already fit its requirements.
Here’s how TikTok describes the process for publishing Footnotes:
Footnotes will use a bridge-based ranking system designed to find agreement between people who usually have different opinions, inspired by the open-sourced system that other platforms use. It works by allowing contributors with differing opinions to leave and vote on the helpfulness of a footnote. Only footnotes that meet the threshold for “helpful” will be visible to the community, at which point the broader community can vote on it, too. The more footnotes get written and rated on different topics, the smarter and more effective the system becomes.
TikTok says the feature will be “tested in the U.S. for short form videos” and that it will open access to contributors “over the coming months.”
After debuting on Twitter in 2021 as Birdwatch, a fact-checking program reacting to online misinformation, crowd sourcing context has become a popular alternative to platform-led moderation, having spread to YouTube and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in recent months. TikTok reportedly laid off an unknown number of its trust and safety staff in February, but today says this feature “augments our existing suite of platform integrity measures and features.”
The government will continue funding the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. In a statement to The Verge, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) spokesperson Jared Auchey said it “executed the option period on the contract to ensure there will be no lapse in critical CVE services” last night.
On Tuesday, MITRE, the government-funded organization behind the CVE program, warned that its contract to continue managing the system was set to expire on April 16th. The CVE program is used by major companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Intel to identify and track cybersecurity vulnerabilities around the globe.
In response, CVE board members announced an initiative to make the program a nonprofit foundation, saying it will “focus solely on continuing the mission of delivering high-quality vulnerability identification and maintaining the integrity and availability of CVE data for defenders worldwide.”
The CVE Foundation said it would share more details “over the coming days,” but it’s not clear whether it will continue now that the government has renewed its contract with MITRE. Though CISA doesn’t say why it waited so long to extend its contract, the last-minute renewal comes as DOGE continues to slash funding and cut jobs throughout the federal government.
“The CVE Program is invaluable to the cyber community and a priority of CISA,” Auchey said. “We appreciate our partners’ and stakeholders’ patience.”
Microsoft has started testing an early version of its Copilot for Gaming experience. Sources familiar with Microsoftâs Xbox plans tell me that employees can now access Copilot within the Xbox mobile app, and that while it looks similar to the existing Copilot chatbot, itâs designed to tap into your Xbox account.
Announced last month, Copilot for Gaming will eventually be available across multiple devices â including Xbox consoles â to act as a companion or assistant that can guide you through games, download and launch titles, and more.
To my understanding, the early version available to Microsoft employees â which might change before release â includes the ability to pull up your recent Xbox achievements, get game recommendations based on your play history, and ask for tips about completing games. Youâll also be able to use this assistant to download and install games on your Xbox console.
Much like the existing Copilot, you can type to this Xbox chatbot or use voice to ask questions. You can also pick between a variety of voices: energetic, wise, chill, or heroic. Microsoft is also working on Copilot characters that will be animated versions of the AI assistant …
Spotify is down according to widespread user reports across the US and Europe, with issues preventing the platform from loading or streaming music. At 8:45AM ET on Wednesday morning, the Spotify Status account on X said it was “aware of some issues” affecting the service right now, and is currently “checking them out.”
It’s unclear what is causing the outages or when users can expect regular service to be restored. As of 10:39AM ET, Spotify says it’s working to resolve the outage “as soon as possible,” and that “reports of this being a security hack are false.”
We haven’t heard from Spotify about the issue, but just before noon ET, most users are reporting things are working again, and the number of reports has decreased sharply. For more updates, you can follow the Spotify help page about the April 16th outage.
While most of the early outage reports were made in Europe, the issues have since escalated across the US. Downdetector is reporting a spike in US outages, and various colleagues at The Verge across the UK and US are currently unable to access the Spotify service. The outage map provided by ThousandEyes suggests the issues are impacting users globally.
The issues have affected the Spotify web player, desktop app, and iOS app. Some desktop users met with a black screen that refuses to load entirely, while others are able to select songs, but are unable to play them. Some songs may be playable on iOS, but only if Spotify cached them before the outage.
Update, April 16th: Added details of users reporting the service is working again.
