Making Instagram a separate company. Buying Snapchat. Wiping everyone’s Facebook friends. Creating a feed of only ads. 

These were some of the ideas that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered over the years as he built his social media empire. Over the past two days, he talked about them from the witness stand at a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, where Meta is fighting the Federal Trade Commission on an antitrust case that could ultimately require it to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Zuckerberg has so far testified for roughly nine hours. He’s expected to continue testifying on Wednesday, followed by Sheryl Sandberg. So far, the FTC has prodded him to confirm its theory of the market and understand his motivation for acquiring nascent rivals. 

The FTC’s theory of the case is that Meta gobbled up newer competitors by buying Instagram and WhatsApp in the early 2010s, when it feared they would grow to challenge its dominance. The agency is trying to show that Meta has monopoly power in a market it calls personal social networking services, which is focused on connecting with friends and family and includes the apps Snapchat and MeWe.

Meta argues that the FTC has craf …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Every gaming platform has its own app for managing games, such as Apple’s Game Center, for example. But for those who have multiple consoles, GamePal is a great companion app that helps players keep track of their entire game library.

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Modi’s government seeks private sector backing to scale up LLMs and spur research

America is trying to create a chip industry through isolation and protectionism, when what allowed it to emerge in Asia is the opposite: collaboration

Claim follows Mr Musk's own lawsuit earlier this year against OpenAI's Sam Altman.

Skullcandy has made a name for itself in recent years with well-featured budget earbuds that don’t sound awful. Although its new Method 360 ANC earbuds are launching with a “special $99.99 introductory price” (that will eventually go up to $129.99) making them one of the brand’s most expensive offerings, the company has partnered with Bose to help ensure they’re Skullcandy’s most comfortable and best-sounding earbuds.

Like the Motorola Moto Buds Plus that debuted a year ago, the Method 360 ANC feature licensed technology and audio tuning by Bose to deliver “Skullcandy’s most advanced audio experience to date,” the company said in a press release. That includes three different sizes of ear gels and fit fins designed to comfortably keep the earbuds in place while effectively blocking out unwanted sounds. 

Don’t expect audio and ANC performance on par with Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra earbuds, but you’ll be potentially saving yourself close to $200 by instead opting for Skullcandy’s latest.

While most wireless earbuds include a charging case with a clamshell design, the Method 360 ANC’s charging case has a sliding design – similar to the company’s Dime Evo earbuds – with an O-ring clip on one end that functions similar to a carabiner. The case isn’t tiny by any stretch of the imagination, but boosts the earbuds’ battery life from 11 hours to 40 hours, or from nine hours to 32 hours with ANC turned on.

Available in five color options including black, bone, primer, plasma, and leopard, the Method 360 ANC also feature a four-microphone hybrid ANC system with a Stay-Aware mode for boosting ambient sounds plus a low latency mode that helps ensure audio stays in sync when gaming or watching videos.

Wear detection automatically connects the earbuds to a device and pauses playback when you remove them from your ears, while multipoint pairing streamlines switching between devices. The Method 360 ANC also have an IPX4 rating against sweat and water (you won’t want to dunk them), support Spotify Tap and Google Fast Pair, and connect to Skullcandy’s Skull-iQ mobile app allowing the function of the earbuds’ shortcut buttons to be customized as well as EQ adjustments.

Mohsen Mahdawi had a feeling his naturalization appointment would go awry. A week before his meeting with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Mahdawi called his friend Chris Helali and told him he was concerned. “He thought it was likely — and I agreed — that he would be arrested, that they would ambush him at this interview,” Helali tells The Verge. Mahdawi had been so fearful of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that he had reportedly been in hiding for weeks. But Mahdawi couldn’t miss the appointment. According to USCIS, “failure to appear for a scheduled interview” almost always “results in denial” of a person’s application.

The interview was scheduled for 11AM on April 14th. Helali waited outside the building. “We started to realize that something was amiss,” Helali says. Around noon, the group was told Mahdawi had been handcuffed. Three minutes later, he was escorted out of the building by two Department of Homeland Security officers. Helali captured the arrest, first reported by The Intercept, on video.

EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Columbia student and Palestinian Mohsen Madawi was just arrested during a visit to the i …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The U.S. has just cut off one of Nvidia’s fastest-growing markets, triggering billions in fallout. The export crackdown may have ended the company’s biggest bet outside America. Nvidia said Tuesday it will take a $5.5 billion charge this quarter after […]

The post Nvidia’s China dream collapses; stock falls 6% after $5.5 billion charge linked to China AI chip export ban first appeared on Tech Startups.

Looking for a new cloud storage service? pCloud might offer exactly what you need.

Finding the perfect spot to use a projector isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to portable projectors and outdoor environments. That’s why XGIMI recently launched its own portable outdoor screen for projectors.

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Float will test demand for tech listings as US tariffs rock markets

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government […]

The numbers $3.7 billion — Omnicom Group’s Q1 2025 revenue, a 1.6% increase year-over-year. 3.4% — Organic revenue growth for Q1, led by its media and advertising (7.2%) and precision marketing […]

OpenAI has revealed the “advisors” for its new nonprofit commission: Dolores Huerta, Monica Lozano, Dr. Robert K. Ross, and Jack Oliver. The company says the four advisors will help “inform OpenAI’s philanthropic efforts,” according to an announcement on Tuesday.

Huerta was a prominent labor activist during the 20th century, while Lozano was the president and CEO of the College Futures Foundation and is a member of Apple’s board of directors. Ross previously served as president and CEO of the health and wellness foundation The California Endowment, and OpenAI says Oliver is a “leader in government, technology, business and advocacy.”

Their appointment comes just months after OpenAI announced its plan to shift into a for-profit company. Several former OpenAI employees opposed the change in a proposed amicus brief supporting Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company, which accuses it of abandoning its original mission of helping humanity. A coalition of nonprofit, labor, and philanthropic leaders have also urged California Attorney General Rob Bonta to probe OpenAI’s transformation into a for-profit company. 

“As we’ve said, OpenAI’s nonprofit isn’t going anywhere—and this commission will be key to expanding its reach and impact,” OpenAI says in the announcement. “The commission’s goal is to help ensure that our nonprofit becomes a force multiplier for communities and mission-driven organizations tackling urgent global challenges—from health and education to public service and scientific discovery.”

After testing started in earnest last October, Google Chrome is beginning to roll out the bottom address bar option on Android to the stable channel.

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Serena Joy Waterford continues to reveal more layers in the Hulu show's sixth season.

This kind of deal is very difficult to find in the current market.

The rate of autism in a group of 8-year-olds in the US rose from 2.76 percent (1 in 36) in 2020 to 3.22 percent (1 in 31) in 2022, according to a study out Tuesday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report's authors—researchers at the CDC and academic institutions across the country— suggest that the slight uptick is likely due to improved access to evaluations in underserved groups, including Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities.

The data comes from the CDC-funded Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. The national network has been tracking the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 8-year-olds at a handful of sites since 2000, publishing estimates every two years. In 2000, ASD prevalence was 1 in 150, with white children from high-income communities having the highest rates of the developmental disability. In 2020, when the rate hit 1 in 36, it was the first year in which higher ASD rates were seen in underserved communities. That year, researchers also noted that the link between ASD and socioeconomic status evaporated in most of the network.

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Trump administration’s curbs send chipmaker’s shares sliding in after-hours trading

Design software startup Figma announced Tuesday it has filed its confidential paperwork for an IPO. We won’t know more until that paperwork becomes public, which, best-case scenario would be in about a month. However, with the stock market in groundhog mode — seeing its shadow with every new gyration of the Trump administration’s trade policies […]