Valve co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell, the company behind Half-Life and DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike and preeminent PC game distribution platform Steam, has long toyed with the idea that your brain should be more connected to your PC. It began over a decade ago with in-house psychologists studying people’s biological responses to video games; Valve once considered earlobe monitors for its first VR headset. The company publicly explored the idea of brain-computer interfaces for gaming at GDC in 2019.

But Newell decided to spin off the idea. That same year, he quietly incorporated a new brain-computer interface startup, Starfish Neuroscience — which has now revealed plans to produce its very first brain chip later this year.

Starfish’s first blog post, spotted by Valve watcher Brad Lynch, makes it clear we’re not talking about a complete implant yet. This bit is the custom “electrophysiology” chip designed to record brain activity (like how Neuralink can “read your mind” so patients can interact with computers) and stimulate the brain (for disease therapy), but Starfish isn’t claiming it’s already built the systems to power it or the bits to stick it into a person’s head.

“We anticipate our first chips arriving in late 2025 and we are interested in finding collaborators for whom such a chip would open new and exciting avenues,” writes Starfish neuroengineer Nate Cermak (bolding theirs), suggesting that Starfish might wind up partnering with other companies for wireless power or even the final brain implant.

But the goal, writes Starfish, is a smaller and less invasive implant than the competition, one that can “enable simultaneous access to multiple brain regions” instead of just one site, and one that doesn’t require a battery. Using just 1.1 milliwatts during “normal recording,” Starfish says it can work with wireless power transmission instead.

Here’s the chip’s current spec sheet:

• Low power: 1.1 mW total power consumption during normal recording 
• Physically small: 2 x 4mm (0.3mm pitch BGA) 
• Capable of both recording (spikes and LFP) & stimulation (biphasic pulses) 
• 32 electrode sites, 16 simultaneous recording channels at 18.75kHz 
• 1 current source for stimulating on arbitrary pairs of electrodes 
• Onboard impedance monitoring and stim voltage transient measurement 
• Digital onboard data processing and spike detection allows the device to operate via low-bandwidth wireless interfaces. 
• Fabricated in TSMC 55nm process

Neuralink’s N1, for comparison, has 1,024 electrodes across its 64 brain-implanted threads, a chip that consumed around 6 milliwatts as of 2019, a battery that periodically needs wireless charging, and the full implant (again, not just the chip) is around 23mm wide and 8mm thick.

Starfish says it could be important to connect to multiple parts of the brain simultaneously to address issues like Parkinson’s disease. “there is increasing evidence that a number of neurological disorders involve circuit-level dysfunction, in which the interactions between brain regions may be misregulated,” Cermak writes.

In addition to multiple simultaneous brain implants, the company’s updated website says it’s working on a “precision hyperthermia device” to destroy tumors with targeted heat, and a brain-reading, robotically guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) system for addressing neurological conditions like bipolar disorder and depression.

In case you’re wondering how any of this might make its way back to gaming, I’ll leave you with Valve’s talk from GDC 2019 about brain-computer interfaces.

The winners of the $TRUMP meme coin contest did get to see President Donald Trump speak at a private dinner closed to the press - but his speech was probably the least exciting part of their night. They did get a better, more valuable, and potentially more lucrative experience: the opportunity to network with the biggest crypto traders in the game, win watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and attend a not-so-exclusive afterparty at the Capitol Hill Marriott afterward - all without having to complete particularly thorough background checks.

After being whisked behind the gates of the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, past a throng of journalists snapping photos and protesters screaming at them for being corrupt, the 220 attendees went through security and had their IDs checked. According to one attendee, many were wealthy but some were living on normal-ish paychecks. The other guests, he said, were largely foreigners from overseas, all with an extremely high risk tolerance for gambling with crypto. The attendee said the vetting process for entering the dinner was a "pretty light" …

Read the full story at The Verge.

After three seasons, Amazon’s live-action take on Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s Wheel of Time series is coming to an end.

Though The Wheel of Time‘s third season was hailed by fans as the show’s strongest chapter yet, Deadline reports that Amazon has decided not to bring it back due to its relatively high production costs and flagging viewership numbers. Similar to Amazon’s Rings of Power series, The Wheel of Time was clearly a play to produce another Game of Thrones-style hit. When the series first debuted in 2021, it managed to capture an impressively large audience and become one of Amazon’s most-watched programs. But those numbers dwindled in subsequent seasons, leading Amazon to call it quits.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter back in April right after The Wheel of Time‘s third season concluded, showrunner Rafe Judkins said that when when he and his team were first shopping the series around to studios, they ultimately chose Amazon as a production partner because it “felt like a place where they do want to invest in shows for the long term.”

“There are not a lot of places doing that anymore,” Judkins said. “For Wheel of Time, it’s really important for us to be somewhere that does want to invest in shows for the long term and not just for the splash and leave.”

The leaders of OpenAI and Google have been living rent-free in each other's heads since ChatGPT caught the world by storm. Heading into this week's I/O, Googlers were on edge about whether Sam Altman would try to upstage their show like last year, when OpenAI held an event the day before to showcase ChatGPT's advanced voice mode.

This time, OpenAI dropped its bombshell the day after.

OpenAI buying the "io" hardware division of Jony Ive's design studio, LoveFrom, is a delightfully petty bit of SEO sabotage, though I'm told the name stands for "input output" and was decided a while ago. Even still, the news of Ive and Altman teaming up quickly shifted the conversation away from what was a strong showing from Google at this year's I/O. The dueling announcements say a lot about what are arguably the world's two foremost AI companies: Google's models may be technically superior and more widely deployed, but OpenAI is kicking everyone's ass at capturing mindshare and buzz.

Speaking of buzz, it's worth looking past the headlines to what OpenAI actually announced this week: it's paying $6.5 billion in equity to hire roughly 55 people from LoveFrom, including ex-Apple design leaders E …

Read the full story at The Verge.

President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to strip Harvard of its ability to enroll international students — an effort blocked by a federal judge on Friday, just hours after the university filed a lawsuit claiming Trump was violating its First Amendment rights.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded Harvard’s access to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a government database of international students attending universities in the United States. The students’ visas weren’t canceled, but DHS’s revocation of Harvard’s SEVIS certification could, in theory, make nearly 6,800 international students enrolled at Harvard deportable immediately.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” DHS secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.”

A month earlier, DHS demanded that Harvard turn over information on its international students, including their “known illegal activity,” “known dangerous or violent activity,” “known threats to other students or university personnel,” and “known deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel.” The department also requested information on any disciplinary action that had been taken against international students who participated in protests. DHS threatened to rescind Harvard’s SEVIS certification if the university didn’t turn over student records by April 30th.

Since taking office, Trump has used allegations of antisemitism at universities across the country to retaliate against students involved in campus protests against the war on Gaza — and against the universities themselves, which the administration claims haven’t done enough to quell antisemitism on their campuses. In addition to pulling billions of dollars in federal funding, the administration has also had Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest several students over their pro-Palestine activism. Some of these students, like Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, are green card holders whom ICE has accused of engaging in behavior that is contrary to the US’s foreign policy interests. Others are international students whose visas were revoked by the State Department, thus making them deportable.

Instead of targeting individual students at Harvard, the Trump administration is going after the university’s ability to enroll international students altogether. Unlike Columbia, which capitulated to a list of Trump’s demands, Harvard has generally refused to comply with the administration’s requests that it hand over data on its international students; “audit” its academic programs, as well as students’ and faculty’s political views; and change its governance structure and hiring practices.

Harvard sued the administration on Friday. In a complaint filed in Massachusetts federal court, the university’s lawyers called DHS’s revocation of its SEVIS certification a “blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

“It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” the complaint alleges. “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission.”

Moreover, the suit claims, revoking Harvard’s SEVIS status puts students in an impossible position. “Termination of SEVIS records presents student visa holders whose school loses its certification with two bad choices,” the complaint claims: transferring immediately, or leaving the country.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked DHS’s attempt to revoke Harvard’s SEVIS certification. The university’s international students are safe — for now.

The Google I/O keynote may have been all about AI, but there were a handful of other meaningful updates that didn’t make it to the main stage. In addition to updates coming to Google Wallet, the company’s developer sessions also revealed handy features that will roll out to smartwatches, the Google Play Store, and Google TV.

Here are some of the updates Google didn’t highlight during the keynote.

Live Updates are coming to your smartwatch

Google is preparing to bring Live Updates — a feature that lets users track the status of certain activities in delivery, rideshare, and navigation apps — to your smartwatch. We already knew about Google’s plans to bring it to smartphones with Android 16, but in a developer session spotted by Android Authority, Google’s Aaron Labiaga confirmed that it will also work on wearables “later in 2026.”

Apple already has a similar feature, called Live Activities, that displays at-a-glance status information on watchOS devices.

Google Wallet can take out your boarding pass when you get to the airport

Google announced a bundle of upgrades for Google Wallet, including a new “Nearby Passes notification.” If you enable the feature, Google Wallet will prompt you to take out your pass when you reach a location where you might need to use it, like a coffee shop, airport, or gym. “This notification serves as a direct gateway, allowing users to seamlessly access the associated pass with a single tap,” Google says.

Additionally, Google revealed that it’s expanding digital IDs to Arkansas, Montana, Puerto Rico, and West Virginia, and is also adding support for UK passports. It will also allow airlines with loyalty cards to “automatically push” boarding passes to users’ wallets upon check-in.

Google Play will let you ask someone to pay for you

The Google Play Store is adding a new “Ask someone else to pay” button. The feature is exactly what it sounds like: it will let users “request purchases” from people outside their Google Family by sending them a payment link. It launched in India first, but now it’s coming to the US, Japan, Indonesia, and Mexico.

Google is also trying to streamline checkouts by letting users buy subscription add-ons with a base subscription with “one price and one transaction.”

Additionally, Google is trying to make it easier to stop the rollout of buggy apps as well. The company says it will let developers “halt fully-live releases” to prevent “the distribution of problematic versions to new users.” The Play Store is also letting developers enhance their listings with a content carousel and YouTube playlist, along with audio samples for health and wellness app developers.

There are new topic pages, too, that will let users browse through “timely, relevant, and visually engaging content” for shows, movies, and sports on the Play Store. 

Google and Samsung’s audio codec is coming to Google TV

Android 16 is coming to Google TV, introducing some Material 3 Expressive design changes, according to 9to5Google. It also adds new features like MediaQualityManager, which will let apps automatically “take control over selecting picture profiles.” Google TV will support the Eclipsa Audio codec, the spatial audio format that Google and Samsung are working on, as well.

If you’re looking to expand your 4K Blu-ray collection, Universal Pictures’ massive Gruv Day sale is worth checking out. The event features deals on everything from Steelbooks to Blu-Ray box sets and individual Blu-Ray titles.

There are plenty of great deals to be found, but a few standouts include The Lord of the Rings 4K trilogy for $41.99 ($25.81 off), which is nearly matching its Black Friday low. Along with all three movies in the series, it also includes the extended versions. Another highlight is HBO’s Chernobyl on 4K Blu-ray, with the complete series available for just $14.99, down from $39.99.

The best offer, though, is a 2-for-$24 deal featuring some of the biggest 4K Blu-ray releases from the past few years. The promo extends to over 65 movies, including recent films from the past year like The Wild Robot, Dune: Part Two, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Godzilla Minus One.The sale includes older hits too, ranging from Oppenheimer and The Super Mario Bros. Movie to The Matrix. You’ll even find classics from decades ago sprinkled in, like The Shining and Casablanca.

Just be sure to act fast – the sale ends today, May 23.

Eight years after it was acquired by Mozilla, the popular bookmarking tool Pocket has been sent to the apps graveyard. According to the company, Pocket is being trashed in order to let Mozilla turn its "resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs."

While Pocket might have lost its gloss in recent years, it was still useful for tracking online articles and other resources that you didn't have time for at the moment but wanted to get back to later. If you're a disappointed Pocket loyalist, or if you're just looking for some way to keep your bookmarks and saved sites in some kind of order, here are a few possibilities. Most offer free versions and sync across a number of devices, including web browsers, Android devices, and iPhones.

Instapaper

Like Pocket, Instapaper started out as a simple web add-on and has gone through several iterations (and owners); currently, it is part of an independent company called Instapaper Holdings. The web app has a nice and simple UI; while there is no grid view, you can turn thumbnails on and off. It works with (and syncs across) web browsers (using a Chrome extension, Safari extension, Firefox extension, or boo …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple CEO Tim Cook personally intervened in an attempt to stop a Texas age verification bill, The Wall Street Journal reports. SB 2420 — passed by the legislature but awaiting a signature by Gov. Greg Abbott — would require app store operators like Apple to verify the age of users accessing their stores. The company’s opposition puts it in conflict with social media giant Meta in an escalating fight over whether and how the internet should be age-gated.

In a statement to The Verge, Apple expressed its opposition to the bill. “We share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety but are deeply concerned that SB 2420 threatens the privacy of all users. If enacted, app marketplaces will be required to collect and keep sensitive personal identifying information for every Texan who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores,” says spokesperson Peter Ajemian.

As the Journal notes, several states have proposed sweeping age verification measures, at least nine of which specifically place the burden for checking ages on app stores; one state, Utah, has such a law already passed. These measures are frequently accompanied by plans to ban minors from accessing social media, either without parental consent or entirely, as in a Texas law that’s on the verge of passing. Texas, among other states, already requires age verification for adult websites; the law implementing that requirement has become the center of a Supreme Court battle over age verification that’s expected to be resolved in the coming months.

According to the Journal report, Cook and Abbot had a “cordial” conversation in which Cook asked for either amendments to or a veto of the bill. An Abbott spokesperson told the outlet that the governor will “thoughtfully review this legislation, as he does with any legislation sent to his desk.”

Civil liberties advocates staunchly and consistently oppose mandating digital age-verification systems, which tend to either pose significant privacy problems or be ineffectual. But over the past couple of years, the fight has evolved into a game of ping-pong between web services and device makers.

Meta and some others — including the Free Speech Coalition, which filed the suit against Texas’ porn age-verification law and represents the operators of adult websites — support making companies like Apple and Google build age-check systems into their products. Both phone makers already offer voluntary parental control systems, but a legal requirement would create substantial risk for them in the case of failure, on top of privacy concerns for users themselves.

Apple’s statement on SB 2420 instead pushed for the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act: a federal bill that would place liability on web platforms to prevent young users from harm. Google, meanwhile, has reportedly backed lobbying against both bills — as owner of the Android operating system and video platform YouTube, it’s stuck in the middle.

Following the failure of the 8th Starship test flight in early March that ended in another explosion, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has finally cleared SpaceX for a 9th test which could take place as soon as next week.

“The FAA conducted a comprehensive safety review of the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 mishap and determined that the company has satisfactorily addressed the causes of the mishap, and therefore, the Starship vehicle can return to flight,” the FAA said in a statement released yesterday.

Similar to how SpaceX’s 7th Starship test flight played out in January, Flight 8 saw the ship successfully separate from the Super Heavy booster rocket that returned to the launch site at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas where it was caught by the launch tower. But at around nine minutes into its flight, Starship began to tumble and eventually exploded before reaching its engine cutoff stage.

Previously failed test flights resulted in Starship debris raining down over Turks and Caicos and parts of the Bahamas. Although SpaceX has said the debris has been limited to pre-planned Debris Response Areas, on multiple occasions the FAA has briefly slowed and diverted flights, and initiated full ground stops at several Florida airports.

SpaceX plans to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster rocket for the first time for Flight 9 – specifically the rocket from Flight 7. As a result, the FAA is expanding the Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA) as an added safety precaution. For Flight 8, the AHA covered approximately 885 nautical miles. For Flight 9, it’s nearly twice the size at 1,600 nautical miles and covers parts of Texas and Florida, as well as the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.

In addition to expanding the hazard area, the FAA is also requiring the Flight 9 launch window “to be scheduled during non-peak transit periods” in order to “minimize disruption to U.S. and international airspace users.”

Thursday’s update follows the FAA’s decision to issue a launch license earlier this month for SpaceX’s 9th Starship test flight and modify the license to expand the company’s annual operations. “The approval includes final action allowing SpaceX to increase Starship operations from five up to 25 per year at Boca Chica, Texas.”

The FAA is still without a leader after Michael Whitaker stepped down as its administrator on January 20th following clashes with Elon Musk.

The first thing I noticed about the Fujifilm X Half is just how small and light it is. The camera is designed to give you no excuses - you should be able to bring it with you everywhere. And after spending a few hours walking around LA with the camera, I'm starting to understand why you'd want to.

Fujifilm's latest doesn't necessarily impress on paper. The X Half is an $850 camera with a vertically oriented 1-inch sensor capable of taking 18MP photos. There's no electric or hybrid viewfinder, no stabilization, no hot shoe, and it can't even take RAW photos. It's very easy to look at that list of missing features and disregard the camera altogether.

But the X Half's simplicity is very much the point. This is a camera for taking scrappy, quick photos and capturing memories. A lot of its flaws are masked with film simulations, filters, and superimposed grain. Its limitations are a feature, not a bug.

The camera comes with a fixed 32mm equivalent f/2.8 lens. Even with all the added grain and filters turned off, I found it to perform very well. The dynamic range is acceptable with natural highlight falloff, edges are sharp, and there's even some bokeh if you plan accor …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A Microsoft employee has managed to circumvent a block instituted earlier this week that limited mentions of "Palestine," "Gaza," and "Genocide" in email subject lines or in the body of a message. Nisreen Jaradat, a senior tech support engineer at Microsoft, emailed thousands of employees on May 23rd with the subject line: "You can't get rid of us."

"As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company," the note, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, reads. "I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees."

It's not immediately clear how Jaradat got around the block. The email calls on Microsoft employees to sign a petition by the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) group, which urges Microsoft to end its contracts with the Israeli government. NOAA is behind several high-profile protest actions in recent weeks, and Jaradat, a member, also encourages colleagues to join the group in different capacities. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw directed The Verge to a previous statement it s …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The original Vestaboard revived and modernized the split-flap mechanical displays that were once a mainstay of airports and train stations around the world, but at $3,499 it put a steep price on nostalgia. Its creators are back with a new version called the Vestaboard Note that’s much smaller and more affordable. It’s available for preorder now, starting at $899 — discounted from $1,299 — with deliveries expected to begin in December 2025.

The company had spent over a year developing a new version of the Vestaboard called the Smart Bits that was “a completely new way to experience Vestaboard’s patented character units” that also “pushed the limits of design, engineering, and manufacturing,” according to the company’s founder and CEO, Dorrian Porter. But, when faced with economic uncertainty as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made goods, the company pivoted and instead created the Note.

Functionally, the Note is nearly identical to the original Vestaboard. But instead of using 132 split-flap mechanisms, which the company calls Bits, the Note only features 45. Each can display 64 alphanumeric characters plus other symbols like punctuation, solid colors, and a newly added red heart. The display measures 24.5 inches wide, or 28.4 inches with an optional bezel frame that adds $169 to the full retail pricing.

Messages, patterns, and images can be created using a web interface or a free accompanying mobile app for iOS and Android. They’re sent to the Note over Wi-Fi or an ethernet cable. In addition to a library of existing designs and inspirational quotes, the app allows messages to be scheduled, sent to other Vestaboard users you’re friends with, or even silenced during certain hours of the day. As hypnotic as the sound of over 2,800 spinning flaps may be, you probably don’t want the Vestaboard Note waking you up in the middle of the night.

Elon Musk isn't as publicly, obviously involved in Washington as he used to be, that much is clear. But celebrations of his political exile are premature.

Sure, it's true that Musk and Donald Trump's bombastic joint press conferences have faded. Trump is no longer shooting Tesla ads on the White House lawn. And Musk has said that he'll be stepping away from government and focusing on Tesla.

But Musk loves to lie. He's said he'll spend "a lot less" on politics in the future, but I am also old enough to remember "funding secured." The government is still infested with his lackeys, such as Steve Davis, Chris Young, and Jehn Balajadia. Even in an announcement that was widely reported as Musk stepping back from DC, Musk made it clear he'd spend "a day or two per week" on politics for the rest of Trump's term.

I tend to view the credulous political obituaries people have written as wishful thinking, but I do understand the impulse. So much of Musk's whole thing is spectacle that when he's no longer publicly performing, it's possible to believe nothing is happening. This is a mistake. We don't even know the extent of what DOGE has done so far, and in the absence of a serious GAO repo …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sony announced a new version of its multi-function shooting grip and compact tripod that puts its wireless controls on a removable remote. Previous versions featured controls that could operate basic functions of an attached camera while holding onto the grip. The new GP-VPT3 makes them even more useful for solo content creators who can now operate a camera while standing in frame in front of it.

Sony still sells the older version for $139.99, but the added functionality of the new GP-VPT3 Multi-Function Shooting Grip comes with a small price bump to $159.99. The bundled remote, which Sony calls the RMT-VP2 Wireless Remote Commander, is sold separately for $89.99 for those who don’t need the grip or don’t want to replace their existing one.

The GP-VPT3 is compatible with Sony’s Alpha Series cameras and smaller vlogging cameras like last year’s ZV-E10 II. It can support up to 3.3 pounds, which means you can potentially use it with larger lenses too, as long as they don’t protrude too far off the camera and shift its center of balance.

The RMT-VP2 remote connects to Sony’s cameras over Bluetooth and has a range of about 33 feet. It includes a shutter button, a dedicated movie record button, a rocker that can be used to control zoom or focus, a button for turning autofocus on and off, and a C1 button that can be customized to control other functions.

As with previous versions of the grip, the new GP-VPT3 connects to a camera using its tripod mount and has a flexible head allowing an attached device to tilt forwards and back and swivel 360 degrees. It can function as an ergonomic handle, putting the most important camera controls at finger’s reach when shooting one-handed. It also unfolds and becomes a stubby tripod, making it easier to set the camera up at a specific angle for timelapses, or for filming yourself.

Here's what we know: it's probably not smart glasses. Beyond that, we don't know much about what Jony Ive and OpenAI are building through their newly combined company io, except that it's some kind of AI super-gadget. But after a couple of years of watching the industry try and shove AI into every form factor you can imagine, we have some guesses.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David are joined by The Verge's Alex Heath to talk through all the things we know, kind of know, and don't know at all about what io is up to. There's some interesting reporting on the notion of the device as a companion to your phone and laptop, some connections to the original iPod Shuffle, and still a lot of questions about how this will work and whether you'll want it. We won't see this device for a while, but don't worry - we'll surely keep talking about it.

After that, the hosts run down all the news from Google I/O, which both Alex and Nilay attended in person. We talk about Google's wildly ambitious and wildly confusing set of AI products, the ways Gemini and Search are encroaching on one another, and what this all means for the future of the web. It was an impressive, confident d …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Glitch, the coding platform where developers can share and remix projects, will soon no longer offer its core feature: hosting apps on the web. In an update on Thursday, Glitch CEO Anil Dash said it will stop hosting projects and close user profiles on July 8th, 2025 — but stopped short of saying that it’s shutting down completely.

Users will be able to access their dashboard and download code for their projects through the end of 2025, and Glitch is working on a new feature that allows users to redirect their project subdomains. The platform has also stopped taking new Pro subscriptions, but it will continue to honor existing subscriptions until July 8th.

Without these key features, it’s not clear what will be left of Glitch. When The Verge reached out to Dash for clarification, he said the dashboard, app redirects, and code download tools are the “only user features that we’ve confirmed availability” for after July 8th. “Anything else that we would have to share would come in a future update, but it’s just that very minimal feature set for now.”

Dash launched Glitch in 2017 under Fog Creek Software, but it was acquired by the cloud service provider Fastly in 2022. In the blog post announcing the update, Dash said the time and money required to host apps “has greatly increased as the platform has gotten older and bad actors try to misuse the platform.” However, Dash tells The Verge the team is “still figuring out what plans might be possible for Glitch and its community going forward.”

President Donald Trump has threatened Apple and other smartphone manufacturers with a tariff of “at least 25 percent” for iPhones and similar hardware unless production is moved to the United States.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”

Later on Friday, speaking to reporters in the White House, Trump said the tariff would apply to other companies too, including Samsung, and come out at the end of June. “It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair,” said Trump.

The threat comes a week after Trump declared that he’d “had a little problem with Tim Cook,” following reports that Apple intends to source all of its US iPhones from India, which will require ramping up Indian production. Just Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Foxconn, Apple’s main manufacturer, is developing a $1.5 billion plant in southern India’s Chennai to supply iPhone displays. Apple has been diversifying its production for several years, which was accelerated by both covid and US animosity towards China.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said of Cook, “He said he’s going to India to build plants. I said, that’s okay to go to India, but you’re not going to sell into here without tariffs, and that’s the way it is.”

India is currently subject to the “baseline” 10 percent tariff that applies worldwide, while China is at a higher 30 percent rate, though that could rise substantially in August once a 90-day reduction in rates lifts. Phones, and most of Apple’s other products, are exempt from the majority of those rates anyway, but the ongoing uncertainty gives Apple good reason to continue expanding production outside China.

While Apple has pledged to invest $500 billion in the US over the next four years (and CEO Cook personally invested $1 million in Trump’s inauguration fund), it’s widely acknowledged by industry experts that a “Made in America” iPhone isn’t realistic. As Steve Jobs reportedly told Barack Obama in 2011: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

Update, May 23rd: Added details from Trump’s White House comments.

After a six-year absence, Nike will soon begin selling products directly on Amazon, having previously stopped in 2019 to go it alone. At the same time, the company is reportedly set to increase prices across most of its sneakers and other clothes in the wake of recent US tariffs.

Nike stopped selling through Amazon after just two years on the platform, blaming the decision to end sales on Amazon’s inability to crack down on counterfeiters and unlicensed sellers. Just as pivotal was its desire to build its own direct-to-consumer sales platforms in the Nike app and website, which saw it reduce its other retail partners around the same time.

Nike goods have continued to appear on Amazon in the years since, but only sold by third-party sellers on the platform. According to The Information those merchants have been told that they have until July 19th to stop selling certain Nike products.

“While independent sellers have listed some Nike inventory in our store for many years, Amazon will soon begin sourcing a much wider range of Nike products directly to expand our selection for US customers,” Amazon spokesperson Megan Lagesse told The Verge. “We value independent sellers, and we’re providing an extended period of time for the small number of sellers affected to sell through their inventory of overlapping items.”

Nike’s direct-to-consumer strategy seemed to be working well during the covid pandemic, when online shopping spiked, but has wobbled since. In 2023 the company began restoring its relationships with retailers including Foot Locker and Macy’s, and new CEO Elliott Hill, who took up the post in October 2024, has made building back Nike’s wholesale business a key pillar of the company’s plans.

CNBC reports that Nike is also set to raise prices across its products from June 1st, likely in response to US tariffs. Adult clothes and shoes priced above $100 will rise by $2 to $10, though cheaper goods and children’s products won’t be affected. Nike will also avoid raising the price of its $115 Air Force 1 shoe and some of its Jordan-branded apparel.

Discord has become the place for gaming communities on the internet. The company just celebrated its 10th anniversary, and its impact is now big enough that it's available directly on PlayStation and Xbox and was ripped off by Nintendo for the Switch 2's GameChat.

But as it tries to grow, one of the big challenges Discord faces is that, for big or longer-running communities, it can be hard to know where to start, hard to catch up to the speed of real-time conversations, and hard to sift through the potentially huge amounts of conversations and channels. A lot of communities used to form around forums, but Discord just isn't a good replacement for that kind of structured messaging, as covered by Aftermath's Luke Plunkett.

"This is something we want to solve," Peter Sellis, Discord's SVP of product, tells The Verge. "It is not our intention to lock a bunch of this knowledge into Discord."

One way Discord wants to tackle the problem is add features that are "more amicable to structured knowledge sharing, like forums, that we could probably do a better job of investing in and is something we want to do for game developers," Sellis says.

Another involves LLMs. "There's an incredibl …

Read the full story at The Verge.