Earlier this week, when it seemed as though TikTok’s fate in the US would actually be decided by April 5th, everyone — from Amazon to the founder of OnlyFans — was coming out of the woodwork to buy it.

As it turns out, none of them had a chance. And now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariff war, no one may get to buy TikTok. 

People familiar with the matter tell me that, despite all of the bids for the app, the White House was only seriously considering an Oracle-led consortium, which included many of ByteDance’s biggest investors who were set to roll their stakes into a new, US entity. 

The proposal, which would have licensed the app’s algorithm from China and shuffled some shareholder money around to make TikTok look more independent from ByteDance, was set to be announced before President Trump went nuclear on tariffs. As others have reported and I’ve independently confirmed, his tariff announcement on Wednesday torched any immediate chance of the TikTok proposal being blessed by the Chinese government. 

On Friday, less than an hour after Trump said he was pushing back the clock on banning TikTok by another 75 days to finish working out a deal, ByteDance …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has infiltrated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency that has a say over resources Musk needs or could benefit from for some of his private sector business, The Verge has learned. 

Three people who have been identified as DOGE staffers are listed in a public directory called “Finding People at the FCC.” Tarak Makecha, Jordan Wick, and Jacob Altik are all listed in the FCC directory, with email addresses associated with the agency. Each is listed under the office “OCH,” which in other agency documents refers to the Office of the Chairman.

Makecha is a finance executive who, according to LinkedIn, has most recently worked in a drone detection software company and previously worked at Tesla. Makecha has reportedly been involved through DOGE at OPM and the State Department. Wick is a former Waymo engineer who’s reportedly been given access to systems at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Altik is a lawyer who’s reportedly been involved at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). 

DOGE has recently expanded into other enforcement agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, as The Verge reported earlier on Friday. The FCC’s authority over radio, TV, broadband, and satellite intersects with Musk’s businesses, like granting certain permissions for SpaceX’s Starlink operations. Its role as a regulator and enforcer also means it stores information on SpaceX and its competitors in order to make decisions. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has previously said that Musk would recuse himself from potential conflicts. The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what the DOGE staffers’ role will be at the agency or what restrictions there will be on their data access.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff returned to Amazon this week, coming back to the company just about two years after he left, Bloomberg reports. He’s now a vice president at the company, and he will be heading up the Ring, Blink, Amazon Key, and Sidewalk teams. 

Siminoff is replacing Liz Hamren, who had taken over following Siminoff’s initial departure. Hamren and the team “have done an awesome job driving the business, delivering strong results, and bringing a lot of delightful experiences to neighbors,” Siminoff says in an Amazon Q&A. He adds that the “AI transformation happening right now” is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

In the Q&A, Siminoff also says that he and Panos Panay, Amazon’s SVP of devices and services, have talked “a lot” about “experiences we can create with devices that are awesome on their own, but even better together. I think you’ll continue to see a lot of that from us moving forward – helping customers stay safe, connected, and informed as part of a magical connected experience.”

The day after Siminoff originally left Amazon, Siminoff sold a new company, Honest Day’s Work, to Latch, which he helped rebrand to Door.com. The company announced late last year that he would be moving into an advisory role in 2025.

Nice economy you have there, said President Donald Trump’s administration. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

The something, announced earlier this week, is a set of globally applied tariffs that make no sense on their face. No sane economist would endorse this. Through a combination of stupidity, incompetence and sheer gangsterism, the Trump administration has decided to levy a series of taxes that encourage blatant corruption, entirely fail to encourage American manufacturing growth, and leave people and companies poorer. That is, assuming that the taxes come into play at all.

The central, persistent thing Trump seems to misunderstand about tariffs is that they are paid in the US by people in the US. A reasonable person might also remember that he tried them a few years ago in a trade war, to negative effect. We have, as a nation, shot ourselves in the dick. But don’t take my word for it! Here are some actual experts:

• “This is the craziest of the crazy things we’ve seen thus far,” says Chris Barrett, professor of economics at Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Business.
…

Read the full story at The Verge.

President Donald Trump’s additional 75 day delay to TikTok’s sale-or-ban deadline leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground, and, according to one influential Democrat, is straight-up “against the law.”

After Trump announced the extension on Friday, 12 Republican members of the House Select Committee on China, including Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), released a joint statement in response. The statement did not address legal concerns with the second extension, but it said that “any resolution must ensure that U.S. law is followed, and that the Chinese Communist Party does not have access to American user data or the ability to manipulate the content consumed by Americans.” The letter says signatories “look forward to more details” on a proposed deal.

In a separate statement, three Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) struck a similar note, saying that, “any deal must finally end China’s ability to surveil and potentially manipulate the American people through this app.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) was more critical in a phone interview with The Verge. “The whole thing is a sham if the algorithm doesn’t move from out of Beijing’s hands,” Warner said. “And close to 80 percent of Republicans knew this was a national security threat — will they find their voice now?”

Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office delaying enforcement of the TikTok divestiture law, a move legal experts already found questionable. Then, he failed to announce a deal before the new April 5th deadline amid chaos over new global tariffs. Letting the delay expire would have put US companies that serviced TikTok after the deadline at even greater risk of hefty penalties.

The original Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support to address what lawmakers insisted was a pressing national security threat, then upheld by the Supreme Court in January. TikTok has long denied that the Chinese government could access US user data or put its thumb on the scales of the recommendation feed through ByteDance, but many lawmakers have consistently doubted that defense. 

As the Trump administration has opted to effectively ignore the law, however, Congress has been relatively quiet.

A few Senate Democrats, including Ed Markey (D-MA), recently warned Trump that another extension would only introduce more legal uncertainty, and some expressed doubt that some of the reported deal scenarios could even resolve the app’s legal concerns. In a statement after Trump’s second extension, Markey says while he’d like to see the deadline pushed, “Trump’s unilateral extension is illegal and forces tech companies to once again decide between risking ruinous legal liability or taking TikTok offline.” He called the move “unfair to those companies and unfair to TikTok’s users and creators.” Instead, Trump should go through Congress to pass Markey’s bill to the extend the deadline, he says. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a member of the China Committee who’s criticized the law and warned it will harm free expression and creators’ livelihoods, also wants to see a solution go through Congress, but is seeking a full repeal of the law. Still, he called Trump’s delay a “good step.”

The new statements from China Committee and E&C Republicans appear to be the first coordinated moves to put a firm line in the sand on the topic. Some Republicans who support the divest-or-ban law have previously urged Trump’s compliance in one-off statements or writings. Moolenaar previously warned in an op-ed that an adequate deal must fully break ties with ByteDance after reports that Trump was considering a deal with Oracle that would potentially leave some ties intact. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told reporters earlier this week that if a deal doesn’t comply with the statute, he “would advise the President against it.” If he can’t get a deal to sell the company in a way that fully complies, Hawley thinks Trump “ought to enforce the statute and ban TikTok. This middle way, I don’t think is viable.”

Warner maintains that lawmakers want a TikTok sale that keeps the app in the US, and he says the Biden administration should have been more aggressive in getting negotiations started. He remains concerned that TikTok’s ownership structure could allow a foreign adversary government to influence young Americans. 

“During the negotiations, we saw the enormous bias in TikTok on things like the Uyghurs, the Hong Kong protests, the conflict in Gaza,” says Warner. “That was how we got 80 percent of the vote.” Warner says he remains concerned about the security of US user data, but sees the potential for TikTok to be used to “shape public opinion” as the more serious threat. Still, lawmakers seem unlikely to do much beyond (maybe) trying to pass a new law should Trump continue to flout the existing one. “Congress,” says Hawley, “we don’t have an enforcement arm of our own.”

President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on all auto-related imports have been called “a debacle of epic proportions” and a sure-fire way to tank the auto market by crushing demand. Analysts have been predicting everything from $12,000 per vehicle price hikes to the possible “Cubanization” of the US car fleet.

Now that they’ve had a few days to process the news, the automakers are starting to get their ducks in a row and make some moves.

Here’s how each company is responding:

Audi

Now that the tariffs are in effect, the German automaker is holding all vehicles assembled in Mexico and overseas at US ports until further notice, according to Automotive News. Audi currently has 37,000 units in dealer stock and at port — which remain unaffected by the new import fees and are ready to sell. Audi reportedly said it would be marking unaffected units with a $0 “No Added Import Fee” option code for easy tracking.

“We are evaluating how to best proceed for our customers and our dealers,” Audi spokesperson Mark Dahncke said.

BMW

BMW hasn’t announced any specific response yet, but the company said last month that it expected a €1 billion hit to its 2025 …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Four Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers have access to the government’s data on an untold number of immigrants, FedScoop reports. 

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles legal immigration, recently granted access to Kyle Shutt, Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, and Edward Coristine — the 19-year-old DOGE employee who also goes by “Big Balls” — according to an internal agency memo obtained by FedScoop. 

The March 28 memo asks Troy Edgar, the deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to have the department provide direction for the four DOGE staffers’ access to what the memo refers to as USCIS’s “data lake,” USCIS Data Business Intelligence Services, described as a “cloud-based centralized repository of data ingested from disparate USCIS applications and source data.” 

According to the memo, this system is accessed through Databricks, “an analytics platform that connects disparate sources of data into a unified system.” The memo also requests that DHS review and give direction for DOGE staffers’ access to both Databricks and Github.

The memo FedScoop obtained doesn’t explain wh …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta’s US fact-checking program will come to an end by Monday afternoon. In a post on X, Meta’s global policy head Joel Kaplan said there will be “no new fact checks and no fact checkers” across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by that time as the company replaces it with Community Notes.

Meta first announced its plans for an X-style Community Notes program in January, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying it would be “less prone to bias.” With Community Notes, contributors can write and rate notes that provide extra context for certain posts.

The company started testing Community Notes on March 18th but said it wouldn’t publicly publish the notes to start. Now, Kaplan says Community Notes will start “appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, with no penalties attached.”

Meta still relies on its third-party fact-checking program in countries outside the US. It plans on bringing Community Notes to more countries in the future.

In the second major disruption of today’s 50th anniversary event at Microsoft’s headquarters, another employee stood up and began yelling at Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates — the company’s current and past CEOs — in protest of Microsoft’s dealings with the government of Israel.

“Shame on you all. You’re all hypocrites,” said Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, as some in the crowd began to boo. “50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you. Shame on all of you for celebrating on their blood. Cut ties with Israel.” The protestor then mentioned No Azure for Apartheid, the group that coordinated today’s protests both inside and outside the venue. It’s been a long-running movement among some employees at the company.

Gates chuckled and said “alright,” before returning to the discussion. “I think Steve and I almost cared too much, and our life was the company, and Satya has this ability to care as much as we did, but with more of a team,” he continued.

Microsoft used its 50th anniversary celebration as a showcase for the company’s latest Copilot / AI advancements, but the interruptions definitely shifted the tone at times. Earlier at the event, another employee named Ibtihal Aboussad called Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman “a war profiteer.” A larger rally led by the protest group was occurring outside while Microsoft executives were speaking.

Shortly after Agrawal disrupted Microsoft’s three CEOs, sources at the company tell The Verge that she sent a mass email to employees noting that her last day at the company is April 11th. Here’s Agrawal email in full:

Hi all,

My name is Vaniya, and after 1.5 years as a software engineer at this company, I’ve decided to leave Microsoft. My last day is next Friday, April 11.

You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary.

Here’s why I decided to leave the company, and why I spoke up today.

We are witnessing a genocide

A year and a half ago, I joined Microsoft just as I started to witness the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel, which started in 1948. I’ve seen unspeakable suffering amidst Israel’s mass human rights violations – indiscriminate carpet bombings, the targeting of hospitals and schools, and the continuation of an apartheid state – all of which have been condemned globally by the UN, ICC, and ICJ, and numerous human rights organizations. And as I write this, Israel has broken the ceasefire and resumed its full-scale genocide in Gaza. Just days ago, it was revealed that Israel killed fifteen paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza, executing them “one by one,” before burying them in the sand — yet another horrific war crime. Meanwhile, our labor powers this genocide, and I cannot, in good conscience, be part of a company that participates in this violent injustice.

We are complicit

Like most, I joined Microsoft believing in its mission to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” I believed in its “commitment to respecting and promoting human rights.” I believed that Microsoft was dedicated to philanthropy and promoting fundamental rights around the world.

But, over the past 1.5 years, I’ve grown more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex. Recent reports by the AP have exposed Microsoft’s critical role in enabling Israel’s apartheid regime and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The article details “a $133 million contract between Microsoft and Israel’s Ministry of Defense,” highlighting how Microsoft Azure and AI fuel the occupation’s mass state surveillance and contribute to indiscriminate targeting and bombing of an entire indigenous Palestinian people. Further, leaked documents reveal how Microsoft AI powers the most “sensitive and highly classified projects” for the Israeli military, including its “target bank” and the Palestinian population registry.

Microsoft cloud and AI enable the Israeli military to be more lethal and destructive in Gaza. It is undeniable that Microsoft’s Azure cloud offerings and AI developments form the technological backbone of Israel’s automated apartheid and genocide systems. Microsoft is so deeply connected to the Israeli military that it was just yesterday designated one of the priority boycott targets of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) campaign.

All this begs the question, which “people” are we empowering with our technology? The oppressors enforcing an apartheid regime? The war criminals committing a genocide? Unfortunately, at this point, it’s irrefutable that Microsoft is complicit – they are a digital weapons manufacturer that powers surveillance, apartheid, and genocide. And by working for this company, we are all complicit. Even if we don’t work directly in AI or Azure, our labor is tacit support, and our corporate climb only fuels the system. This is why, just before I handed in my resignation, I signed this important petition to demand Microsoft cut ties with genocide. And I urge you all to do the same.

Call to Action

As time goes on, I find it more and more difficult to continue giving my time, energy, and care to a company that is on the wrong side of history. Leaving my job at Microsoft has become the obvious choice for me, and I see no alternative but to use my last few days at Microsoft to speak up however I can, whether by disrupting Satya’s talk, or by sending this email today. Microsoft leadership must divest from Israel and stop selling lethal technology to power apartheid and genocide.

I know that leaving Microsoft is not an option for many. If you must continue to work at Microsoft, I urge you to use your position, power, and privilege to hold Microsoft accountable to its own values and mission:

• Sign the No Azure for Apartheid petition: We will not write code that kills. And join the campaign to add your voice to the growing number of concerned Microsoft employees.
• Join me in showing our discontent in this thread. If you also feel tricked into deploying weapons which target children and civilians, urge leadership (CC’ed) to drop these contracts.
• Don’t stop speaking up. Urge SLT to drop these contracts at every opportunity.
• Start conversations with your co-workers about the points above – so many employees may not know!
• If any part of this message resonates with you, forward this email to someone who could benefit from reading it.

Know that Microsoft’s human rights statement prohibits retaliation against anyone who raises a human rights-related concern: Human rights statement | Microsoft CSR

Farewell and Free Palestine,

Vaniya

AI companies can’t figure out if the Trump tariffs are about to decimate them – and the fact that no one has a clear answer is sending them, and the tech industry overall, into a confusion spiral. 

The markets are in disarray. Nvidia is down 7.59%, TSMC is down 7.22%. In San Francisco, sources tell us that this isn’t a big deal. But in DC, people are panicking. The core question is whether GPUs – the graphics processing units that are crucial to AI computing and other industries – are exempted from Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, and the answer is startlingly ambiguous. 

Inside AI labs, researchers expect that their industry will be granted a tariff exemption. “I fully expect this to be a situation where Trump again gives companies he views as important/on his side/whatever a hall pass,” similar to what the President did with Apple during his first term, one source inside a major AI lab told The Verge. 

In Washington, however, nobody seems sure what the current state of play is. The Trump administration spelled out an exception for the semiconductor chips at the heart of a GPU, but for now, complete electronic products that contain chips will apparently be subje …

Read the full story at The Verge.

French satellite network company Eutelsat has been providing Ukraine with much-needed internet access for almost a year with the help of the German government, Reuters reports. Eutelsat’s OneWeb division operates low-orbiting satellites that communicate with terrestrial terminals for internet connectivity — similarly to rival SpaceX’s Starlink network, which has been the primary supplier of satellite internet for Ukraine’s government.

At Eutelsat’s Paris headquarters on Thursday, CEO Eva Berneke revealed that Germany has been providing the funding (of an undisclosed amount) to run the company’s satellite internet access in Ukraine. Right now, Eutelsat has less than a thousand terminals there compared to Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, which has about 50,000 Starlink terminals working in the country, mostly funded by Poland and the US.

However, Berneke says Eutelsat could get 5,000 to 10,000 more into Ukraine “within weeks.” Eutelsat spokesperson Joanna Darlington tells Reuters that they are still under discussion on whether Germany or other financial sources will help with that expansion. Bernerke also said it is in talks with the EU under the EU-backed SpaceRISE consortium, where it and other members are working to build a secure satellite constellation known as IRIS².

A Eutelsat expansion couldn’t come at a more crucial time as the US-Ukraine relationship unravels under the Elon Musk-backed Trump Administration. The European Commission’s defence chief Andrius Kubilius told Reuters at a news conference on Wednesday that, in the event of “unexpected developments,” which Kubilius didn’t elaborate on, there are solutions in place in case they need alternatives to Starlink.

Donald Trump’s initial 75-day delay against enforcement of the TikTok ban law would’ve expired this weekend, but on Friday, he announced on Truth Social that “I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”

This week, Trump announced new taxes on products coming into the US, including a 34 percent tariff rate against China. He has said that he would consider lowering that rate in exchange for China agreeing to a TikTok deal, but with the deadline closing in, it’s Trump who decided to extend the delay instead of having TikTok’s app shut down again.

Despite several publicly announced bids to buy TikTok, its Chinese owner, ByteDance, has shown no inclination to sell or reduce its stake in the company as required by the law passed last year. After the delay was announced, ByteDance commented publicly on the deal talks for the first time, without specifying what “key matters” needed to be resolved before a potential solution could be reached.

The post on TikTok’s website reads:

ByteDance has been in discussion with the U.S. Government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S. An agreement has not been executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.

Later on Friday, the Associated Press cited anonymous sources in a report saying White House sources had believed they were nearing a deal this week, until the Chinese government said it wouldn’t approve the arrangement without negotiations about trade and tariffs.

At the moment, interested parties that have been reported include Oracle, Blackstone, Frank McCourt, Amazon, Applovin, and Perplexity, among others.

When the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act took effect just ahead of Trump’s inauguration, TikTok voluntarily turned its service off for a day. At the same time, Google, Apple, and others removed it and other ByteDance-owned apps from their stores as required.

After his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order telling the Attorney General and Department of Justice to “…take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act.” But with the law still on the books after the Supreme Court declined to delay it and with the risk of billions of dollars in penalties, the app took nearly a month to return to US app stores before they were apparently satisfied by the AG’s assurances.

Until we hear more about any potential deal that actually could be used to delay the law as it’s written, it’s probably a good idea to keep your TikTok app updated just in case its listings disappear again.

Trump:

My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days. We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to “go dark.” We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Update, April 4th: Added ByteDance statement and a report from the Associated Press.

A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI.

“Shame on you,” said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all.”

Sources at Microsoft tell The Verge that shortly after Aboussad was ushered out of Microsoft’s event, she sent an email to a number of email distribution lists that contain hundreds or thousands of Microsoft employees. Here is Aboussad’s email in full:

Hi all,

As you might have just seen on the livestream or witnessed in person, I disrupted the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during the highly-anticipated 50th anniversary celebration. Here’s why.

My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org. I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice. This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue. For the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim community at Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and doxxed, with impunity from Microsoft. Attempts at speaking up at best fell on deaf ears, and at worst, led to the firing of two employees for simply holding a vigil. There was simply no other way to make our voices heard.

We are witnessing a genocide

For the past 1.5 years, I’ve witnessed the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel. I’ve seen unspeakable suffering amidst Israel’s mass human rights violations – indiscriminate carpet bombings, the targeting of hospitals and schools, and the continuation of an apartheid state – all of which have been condemned globally by the UN, ICC, and ICJ, and numerous human rights organizations. The images of innocent children covered in ash and blood, the wails of mourning parents, and the destruction of entire families and communities have forever fractured me.

At the time of writing, Israel has resumed its full-scale genocide in Gaza, which has so far killed by some estimates over 300,000 Gazans in the past 1.5 year alone. Just days ago, it was revealed that Israel killed fifteen paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza, executing them “one by one,” before burying them in the sand — yet another horrific war crime. All the while, our “responsible” AI work powers this surveillance and murder. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have concluded that this is a genocide, with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

We are Complicit

When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to “empower every human and organization to achieve more.” I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families. If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians (source), I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights.

According to AP news, there is “a $133 million contract between Microsoft and Israel’s Ministry of Defense.”

“The Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft and OpenAI artificial intelligence spiked last March to nearly 200 times higher than before the week leading up to the Oct. 7 attack. The amount of data it stored on Microsoft servers doubled between that time and July 2024 to more than 13.6 petabytes.”

“The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to compile information gathered through mass surveillance, which it transcribes and translates, including phone calls, texts and audio messages, according to an Israeli intelligence officer who works with the systems. That data can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house targeting systems.”

Microsoft AI also powers the most “sensitive and highly classified projects” for the Israeli military, including its “target bank” and the Palestinian population registry. Microsoft cloud and AI enabled the Israeli military to be more lethal and destructive in Gaza than they otherwise could.

Microsoft has also been providing software, cloud services, and consulting services to the Israeli military and government, totaling millions in profit. War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly mentioned his strong ties to Microsoft. A list of these contracts with the Israeli military and government can be found here: An Introduction to Microsoft’s Complicity in Apartheid and Genocide

In fact, Microsoft is so deeply connected to the Israeli military that it was just yesterday designated one of the priority boycott targets of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) campaign.

Regardless of your political stances, is this the legacy we want to leave behind? Is working on deadly AI weapons something you can tell your children about? Do we want to be on the wrong side of history?

Even though your work could be unrelated to the cloud that the military uses, your work benefits the company and allows it to take on the contract. Regardless of your team, you serve a company that is arming the Israeli occupation. It is undeniable that part of your compensation, no matter how small, is being paid by genocide.

Whether you work on AI or not, you will be complicit if you do nothing. It is now OUR job to take a vocal stand against Microsoft AI’s involvement in crimes against humanity.

This is why I decided to speak up today, and why I signed this important petition to demand Microsoft cut ties with genocide. And I urge you all to do the same.

Call to Action

Silence is complicity. But action always has a reaction, no matter how big or small. As workers for this company, we must make our voices heard, and demand that Microsoft does the right thing: stop selling technology to the Israeli military.

If you are also concerned about this news, and you also want your work to be used ethically, I urge you to take action:

Sign the No Azure for Apartheid petition: We will not write code that kills. And join the campaign to add your voice to the growing number of concerned Microsoft employees.

Join me in showing our discontent in this thread. If you also feel tricked into deploying weapons which target children and civilians, urge leadership (CC’ed) to drop these contracts.

Don’t stop speaking up. Urge SLT to drop these contracts at every opportunity.

Start conversations with your co-workers about the points above – so many employees may not know!

Microsoft’s human rights statement prohibits retaliation against anyone who raises a human rights-related concern: Human rights statement | Microsoft CSR

Our company has precedents in supporting human rights, including divestment from apartheid South Africa and dropping contracts with AnyVision (Israeli facial recognition startup), after Microsoft employee and community protests. My hope is that our collective voices will motivate our AI leaders to do the same, and correct Microsoft’s actions regarding these human rights violations, to avoid a stained legacy. Microsoft Cloud and AI should stop being the bombs and bullets of the 21st century.

Sincerely,

A concerned Microsoft employee

Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were spotted at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week, sources tell The Verge.

Gavin Kliger and Emily Bryant were seen in the building and are now listed in the FTC’s internal directory under the Office of the Chairman with their own agency emails, according to the sources. FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson told Axios, which first reported the news, that DOGE is there “to root out waste, fraud and abuse.”

It’s unclear what DOGE will target now that it is under the hood of the FTC. It’s a fairly lean agency with fewer than 1,200 employees tasked with consumer protection and antitrust enforcement. A small number of probationary workers were cut earlier this year. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson has already made clear that he believes regulatory agencies should operate under the control of the president, not as the independent bodies they’ve traditionally been.

The agency has access to a vast trove of nonpublic information on businesses it investigates and studies, including material for an upcoming antitrust trial against Meta. Much of the FTC’s case records are physically stored onsite, while document …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sphere Entertainment has announced two new immersive experiences coming to its 516-foot wide spherical venue in Las Vegas. An enhanced version of The Wizard of Oz will premiere on the Sphere’s 160,000 square foot screen on August 28th, 2025, while a new film by Academy Award-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) featuring climber Alex Honnold and other elite athletes is scheduled for 2026.

For The Wizard of Oz, Sphere Entertainment is collaborating with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google, and Magnopus – a studio who has previously created immersive experiences for Disney, Sony, and NASA. “Sphere will use cutting-edge technologies to enhance the original film,” according to the company. “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere will maintain the integrity of the original while pushing the boundaries of Sphere’s experiential medium.”

Although The Wizard of Oz received a 4K HDR restoration in 2020, the Sphere’s screen has a much higher resolution of 16,000 pixels by 16,000 pixels. The venue also offers multi-sensory experiences through sound and haptics and can recreate environmental elements like heat, wind, and scents, but details on what the immersive version of The Wizard of Oz will include haven’t been revealed yet.

From The Edge will feature extreme sports and five premier athletes – rock climber Alex Honnold, free diver Alenka Artnik, skier Markus Eder, surfer Kai Lenny, and BASE jumper Katie Hansen Lajeunesse – and is currently filming in locations including Jordan, Dubai, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Austin, Las Vegas, and Maui.

Both productions are coming from Sphere Studios, the company’s Burbank-based production studio that launched nearly two years ago and developed Sphere Entertainment’s Big Sky ultra-high-resolution camera system that’s currently being used to capture footage for From The Edge.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, the ex-Meta employee who authored Careless People, will testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee next week. On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wynn-Williams will address Facebook’s “cooperation with the Communist regime in China, including FB’s plan to build censorship tools.”

Despite Meta’s attempts to silence Wynn-Williams with a gag order preventing her from promoting her book, Careless People topped the New York Times bestseller list upon release.

Careless People provides Wynn-Williams’s account of her time as Facebook’s director of public policy. One of the chapters outlines Facebook’s initiative to get unblocked in China, during which the book says the company “proposed all kinds of byzantine arrangements involving China-based partnerships, data collection and censorship tools that it hoped would satisfy China’s ruling Communist Party,” according to The New York Times’ Careless People review.

Hawley, who serves as the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, says the hearing will also address Facebook’s alleged plans to “make American users’ data available for Chinese use.” He says more details about the hearing are “forthcoming.”

The US government isn’t the only one interested in hearing more from Wynn-Williams. Her motion to lift Meta’s gag order says members of the European Union and the UK have also asked to speak with her.

As it marks its 50th anniversary, Microsoft is updating Copilot with a host of new features all at once that bring it more in line with alternatives like ChatGPT or Claude. The AI assistant, which uses many OpenAI models, now supports memory, personalization, web-based actions, podcast creation, camera and screen analysis, deep research, and even more.

With Memory, Copilot will now be able to keep track of your preferences, interests, and details like your birthday, and use the information to tailor responses and advice or make proactive suggestions. Microsoft says that users can choose what information they want Copilot to remember, or opt out entirely.

It’s part of an ongoing effort to make Copilot more personal. Microsoft says that the company is “early in this thinking,” but that “soon” you’ll be able to give Copilot a personalized appearance — and yes, that does include the option to bring back Clippy.

“Copilot is more than an AI, it’s yours,” says Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Each will have its own unique style and blend of attributes that distinctly suit each and every one of us.”

Beyond personalization, Copilot is getting more powerful. A new Actions feature gives the AI the ability to carry out tasks using a web browser, similar to OpenAI’s Operator agent or Amazon’s recently announced Nova Act model. Microsoft suggests it could be used to book show tickets, reserve restaurants, and make purchases, especially when combined with new shopping functionality that sees Copilot research products and look for discounts and sales.

Copilot Vision, which began rolling out in the web tool in December 2024, is now expanding to the Windows and mobile apps. On Windows, Copilot will be able to “see” what’s on your screen across other apps and files to answer questions or interact with files and content, while on iOS and Android it will be able to discuss anything that’s visible from your phone camera, or the photos in your camera roll.

Deep Research allows Copilot to analyze large numbers of documents or online sources for complex projects, and its research abilities are being integrated with Bing to deliver AI-powered responses inside the search engine. Like other AI tools, Copilot can also now use its research to generate podcast-style audio to explain a topic, while a new Pages feature allows it to organize notes and research across documents into a single canvas.

Microsoft says that many of the new features are rolling out starting today in “initial versions,” and improving “in the coming weeks and months,” with availability varying by feature, platform, and market. None of these features are firsts — ChatGPT added memory features last year, Google Gemini has a vision mode, and absolutely every AI company wants to build personalized AI agents — but adding them all at once shows that Microsoft is committed to keeping up with the competition, not to mention getting the most out of its investment in OpenAI.

Update, April 4th: Added confirmation that Clippy will be a Copilot personalization option.

Microsoft is bringing its Copilot Vision feature to Windows and mobile, moving it beyond the web. Copilot Vision was a big part of Microsoft’s Copilot redesign last year, but so far, it has been limited to Edge webpages to help guide you through what you’re seeing.

Copilot Vision will now be able to analyze real-time video from a mobile camera, allowing the AI assistant to offer tips for keeping plants healthy or decorating advice for your home. Microsoft is launching Copilot Vision inside the Copilot app for iOS and Android today, and a similar feature is also coming to Windows soon.

The Copilot app on Windows is being updated to support Copilot Vision across your entire PC. This lets Microsoft’s AI assistant do things like coach you through using Adobe Photoshop features, or analyzing the photos and webpages you’re looking at.

This is different than Microsoft’s Recall feature on Copilot Plus PCs. Recall automatically takes snapshots if you enable the feature, whereas Copilot Vision is more like screen sharing an app or your entire desktop in a Microsoft Teams call.

Copilot Vision on Windows will be available to Windows Insiders next week, and Microsoft says it will roll it out more broadly once testing is complete. The company is also updating Copilot with a host of new features today. The AI assistant now supports memory, personalization, web-based actions, podcast creation, deep research, and more. You can read about all of Copilot’s new features here.

Related:

Microsoft is making changes to Copilot that will allow the artificial intelligence assistant to complete online tasks for you. Using “simple chat prompts,” these “Actions” can be performed in the background while you work on other tasks, according to Microsoft, and can do things like book restaurant reservations, event tickets, and purchase items to ship to your friends.

Launch partners include Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viater, Vrbo, and Priceline — a host of travel and vacation-focused services that will allow Copilot to help users plan any upcoming trips — alongside Open Table for meals, and 1-800-Flowers.com for buying floral arrangements. Microsoft says that Copilot’s Actions feature will “work with most websites across the web,” and can sort out “the ride home” for you after events, suggesting it will also support taxi or ride-sharing services.

Actions is launching alongside other personalization features like a tool that turns online content into AI-generated podcasts, another for buying and finding deals on products, and the ability for Copilot to see and react to things on your camera. Microsoft hasn’t gone into any detail about how Actions will work, but it’s a similar concept to features that have already been announced by other AI providers. 

Amazon launched its Nova Act AI agent in March that’s capable of performing tasks in a user’s browser, such as searching the web, purchasing products online, and answering questions about what’s on the screen. OpenAI has its own spin on this called Operator, Google has Project Mariner, and Anthropic released a “computer use” beta feature for its Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI model in October that can autonomously click around and perform online tasks.

Those similar solutions are largely still in development or early access, however. By contrast, Microsoft says it’s rolling out the initial version of Copilot’s Actions feature starting today, with availability expanding “in the coming weeks and months” subject to platform, market, and language. That makes it one of the first automatic task-performing AI services to hit the general public, and could give us an early indication of how practical or reliable these types of AI partner tools are to use.

In a multi-part interview with Nintendo about newly-announced Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods, director Hidetaka Miyazaki tried to dispel worries that developer FromSoftware is shifting focus away from single-player games. The studio known for single-player dark fantasy epics like Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series is now working on two multiplayer games.

As a side note, please allow me to address one thing. As previously mentioned, this is an online multiplayer title at its core, but this doesn’t mean that we as a company have decided to shift to a more multiplayer-focused direction with titles going forward.

The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Elden Ring was also announced, and we still intend to actively develop single player focused games such as this that embrace our more traditional style.

The three–part interview also goes into much further detail on The Duskbloods than we saw in the Nintendo Switch 2 direct teaser. The new game certainly looks Bloodborne-adjacent, but its multiplayer format is a significant departure. It also differs quite a bit from the other upcoming FromSoft multiplayer game, Elden Ring Nightreign — which is directed by Junya Ishizaki and due out in late-May. Where Nightreign is a fully co-operative players vs enemies (PvE) battle royale experience, Duskbloods supports up to eight players in a PvPvE format.

Players will be able to choose from over a dozen characters, called “Bloodsworn.” They’re vampiric protagonists with superhuman abilities like super-jumps and double-jumps thanks to their consumption of special blood. Miyazaki noted, “As a general concept, they’re similar to vampires, but they are not portrayed as the horrifying monsters you might associate with traditional vampirism.” It sounds similar to the class-based system of Elden Ring Nightreign, but Miyazaki mentions the characters “can be customized to a certain extent.” (Fashion Souls fans, rejoice.)

Bloodsworn will compete for “first blood” across various maps with gothic and Victorian settings and vibes. Rounds will have varying objectives, with the de facto last player standing format sometimes tasking players to instead work together to take down a notable boss. But the emphasis isn’t solely on challenging combat, as players can earn “victory points” based from non-combat objectives as well. That may help those for whom PvP isn’t exactly their style — as Miyazaki confesses, “That was the intention. I personally am not much of a PvP person, and I wanted to make something that’s satisfying even for players like me.”

What may also appeal to the single-player crowd typical of FromSoftware’s fanbase is The Duskbloods will have its own dashes of deep-seeded lore that in some ways may connect to other Souls titles. For example, the winged rat at the end of the trailer is actually an “elderly gentleman” who “shares a similar role with the fire keepers from the Dark Souls series” and will be an NPC players can seek advice from in the hub world.

The Duskbloods may have swerved some of us by looking the part of Bloodborne but turning out to be Switch 2-exclusive multiplayer battler, but personally I’m all for FromSoftware experimenting with different ideas. We’ll get a sampling of the studio’s multiplayer ambitions next month, when Elden Ring Nightreign launches May 30th, while Miyazaki has much more time to cook with The Duskbloods until it comes out in 2026.