Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s dysfunctional cycle of fighting over the president’s “Big Beautiful” domestic policy bill has returned to the spotlight, with the president telling reporters Tuesday morning that “we’ll have to take a look” into deporting the billionaire.

He also proposed targeting Musk with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), saying, “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”

Musk has been a longtime critic of Trump’s budget bill, which he says he opposes because it will increase the budget deficit, though a proposed removal of EV tax credits that help Tesla likely plays a role.

After the pair traded mean posts in early June, both had retreated from publicly squabbling, and Musk deleted tweets that linked Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.

Then on Monday evening, as the Senate worked through a “vote-a-rama” in an attempt to pass the spending bill, Musk started posting again. He reiterated a threat to primary politicians who support the bill, and tweeted that “If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.” The president of the United States posted a response on his own social media site a bit after midnight, suggesting DOGE (which Musk led before publicly stepping down in May) could cut subsidies for Musk’s companies. Without them, Trump said, “Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.”

President Trump, on Truth Social:

Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!

Musk responded to a video of the president’s comments on X, claiming it’s “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”

Casio’s $120 CRW001-1 (AKA the Ring Watch) is back in stock on Casio’s website for the first time since it launched — then swiftly sold out — in December. The Ring Watch was released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its original digital watch. While it may look like a novelty, the fully-functional watch impressed The Verge’s Victoria Song as both a fashion statement and a practical gadget. The silver ring has a sub-inch screen and comes in one ring size: 10.5. However, Casio includes 16 and 19 millimeter spacers to accommodate smaller fingers. 

Casio CRW001-1 ring watch

A ring-sized, full-metal version of the Casio watch.

Where to Buy:

• $120 at Casio

The Ring Watch’s LCD screen can display six digits, and be set to standard or military time. The three buttons around its face can start a stopwatch, display the date, or show the time in a different timezone. An alarm function will flash in the corner of its screen when the counter is complete.

As previews for Donkey Kong Bananza come in ahead of the game’s July 17th release date, one tidbit has stood out on the development of this game. It’s been nearly eight years since Super Mario Odyssey, and now we know what that team has been up to, as Nintendo has officially revealed that the developers of Donkey Kong Bananza are the same team that made Odyssey.

Nintendo has a good track record of retaining and training up talent. Developers that worked on early entries in the Kirby, Mario, and Zelda franchises have stuck around to work on or lead the development of subsequent titles. The result has been relative consistency across Nintendo first-party titles, which has allowed the company to weather the last two years a bit better than its competitors. Super Mario Odyssey was one of the top five bestselling games for the original Switch, so Bananza is in more than capable hands.

According to The Verge’s Cameron Faulkner, Donkey Kong Bananza is its own game with a unique identity. But Odyssey’s development team has added a bit of Mario’s 3D platforming DNA to Donkey Kong’s first 3D platformer since Donkey Kong 64. And while the mystery of Bananza’s developer has been solved, a new one has taken its place: will there also be a 3D Mario game coming soon to the Switch 2, or is it just Bananza for now?

The Federal Communications Commission will suspend the enforcement of a rule that would lower the price of prison phone and video calls. On Monday, the Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced that prisons won’t have to comply with the pricing rules until April 1st, 2027, reversing plans to apply the caps this year.

Family members and friends of incarcerated people have long been charged fees the FCC described in 2024 as “exorbitant”  to keep in touch with phone or video calls. Though some states — like Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts — have made phone calls from prison free, the majority of states allow fees that can reach as high as $11.35 for a 15-minute phone call, often including kickbacks to the jails and local governments.

In 2023, former President Joe Biden aimed to address call prices by signing the Martha Wright-Reed law, a rule that allows the FCC to regulate the rates of phone calls from prison and lower existing price caps. The FCC voted to adopt the new rates last year, promising to drop the price of a 15-minute phone call to just 90 cents in larger prisons. The rules were set to go into effect on a staggered basis starting January 1st, 2025.

On Monday, however, the FCC declared it will hold off on enforcing these rules for two more years. In his announcement, Carr says that the efforts to regulate prison phone calls are “leading to negative, unintended consequences,” claiming that the rules would make the caps “too low” to cover “required safety measures” and wouldn’t give states enough time to find another source of funds. He adds that the decision to delay these rules is supposed to ensure that “important safety and security protocols are maintained,” which he indicates could include the adoption of public safety tools with “advanced AI and machine learning.” Carr partially voted to approve the phone call caps in 2024.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez slammed Carr’s decision to pause the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act. “Rather than enforce the law, the Commission is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities at the expense of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones,” Gomez said in a statement. “It’s time for the FCC to do its job. Its responsibility is not to protect profit-driven contracts — it is to uphold the law and serve the public.”

Allison Johnson is a reviewer for The Verge who writes about phones and mobile technology. “Occasionally,” she adds, “I yell at your wireless carrier.”

I asked her if there were any items that she especially liked using, and after thinking about it, she eventually came up with… a pencil sharpener.

Where did you first hear about the Blackwing One-Step Long Point Sharpener?

Last year, I told my husband all I wanted for Christmas was a nice pencil sharpener — and he understood the assignment. Initially, I was thinking of the big kind that you bolt to the wall, like in elementary school, but he found this one, and it’s way more practical. It’s small and light enough that I can just carry it around all the time, along with a couple of fancy Blackwing pencils, just in case a crossword puzzle breaks out at any given moment.

Why did you want one?

At some point over the past few years, I noticed that we didn’t have pencils in our house, which I blamed on a lack of pencil sharpeners. Sometimes, you need to make a little mark on a wall when you’re hanging a picture, and you kind of need a pencil for the job. Also, I wanted to get some Sudoku books, and you really need a pencil for those. So that’s why I landed on a pencil sharpener for Christmas. I also turned 40 this year; these things might all be related.

What do you like about it?

It’s just such a nice little object. It’s reassuringly weighty while still light enough to carry everyday. It has one job: it sharpens pencils beautifully. When the blade gets dull I can order a replacement from Blackwing, and I appreciate a little gadget with a lot of life.

Is there anything about it that you dislike, or that you think could be improved?

You do have to apply a bit of pressure to really get it sharp, and sometimes that creates kind of an indented ring on the pencil wood just above the point. Maybe that’s why people use two-stage sharpeners? I don’t know, I’m new to the luxury pencil game. If so, I think it’s an acceptable tradeoff for one-step sharpening.

Isn’t it a bit expensive for a pencil sharpener?

Yes, but I just tried out a cheaper sharpener from another brand and it absolutely mangled my pencil, so I think the extra cost is worth it.

Who would you recommend it to?

Anyone who appreciates a nice little thing that has a special job. Anyone who also misses having pencils around. Pencils are so handy!

Is there anything I should have asked that I didn’t?

I’ll just note that these are dark times and the simple joy of buying and using a Nice Pencil is way more load-bearing for my mental health than it should be.

Blackwing One-Step Long Point Sharpener

Where to Buy:

• $25 at Blackwing
• $25 at Amazon

AMC Theatres is making it easier for moviegoers to know the actual start time of their film screening and avoid sitting through lengthy ads. A new notice has started appearing when people purchase tickets via the AMC website, warning that “movies start 25-30 minutes after showtime.”

This already mirrors the estimated runtime of AMC’s pre-show content, which includes ads and trailers, but now customers will be better informed if they want to arrive a little later without missing the start of their movie. This small change also tracks with a report made by The Hollywood Reporter last week that said AMC will soon start “addressing the preshow on its ticketing platforms.”

Starting today, AMC will also show more ads than before, meaning its preshow lineup may have to be reconfigured to avoid exceeding the 30-minute mark. The company made an agreement with the National CineMedia ad network that includes as much as five minutes of commercials shown “after a movie’s official start time,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, and an additional 30-to-60-second “Platinum Spot” that plays before the last one or two trailers.

AMC was the only major theater chain to reject the National CineMedia ad spot when it was pitched in 2019, telling Bloomberg at the time that it believed “US moviegoers would react quite negatively.” Now struggling financially amid an overall decline in movie theater attendance and box office grosses, AMC has reversed course, telling The Hollywood Reporter that its competitors “have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance.”

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to remove a moratorium on states regulating AI systems from the Republican “big, beautiful bill.” Legislators agreed by a margin of 99 to 1 to drop the controversial proposal during a protracted fight over the omnibus budget bill, which is still under debate.

The vote followed failed attempts to revise the rule in a way that would placate holdouts, particularly Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of the moratorium’s first opponents. Over the weekend, Blackburn struck a deal with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would have cut the moratorium to five years and allowed states to continue enforcing AI laws that handled online child safety as well as individuals’ names, images, and likenesses. But after a day of furious backlash from the populist right, driven primarily by MAGA internet powerhouses Steve Bannon and Mike Davis, Blackburn relented at the last minute — and chose, instead, to attach her name to a Democrat-sponsored amendment that sought to remove the bill altogether.

“While I appreciate Chairman Cruz’s efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need those provisions the most,” she said in a statement on Monday night. “This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.”

Early fellow GOP defectors included Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME); Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), an anti-tech hawk; and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who raised concerns about federal overreach. But ultimately, nearly everyone agreed on removing the AI provisions — the lone vote against it was from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). The Senate must still vote on the budget reconciliation vote, after which it will return to the House before being passed to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The House of Representatives quietly lodged the first draft of the moratorium in its version of Trump’s funding megabill, passing it almost entirely along party lines by a vote of 215-214 in May. The stated goal was to avoid a patchwork of state AI regulations that could inhibit industry growth. But the plan was contentious even before the Senate began formal debate on its version, which required states to avoid regulating AI and “automated decision systems” if they wished to receive funding for broadband programs. It became a flash point in an already heated fight over the bill, resulting in furious backroom negotiations, an apparent deal, and then a daylong concerted effort to tank the bill. 

Senate Republicans had already fractured over several amendments inside the bill, but the addition of the AI moratorium turned the whip count into a trainwreck of competing interests — particularly within the Republican faction normally opposed to Big Tech and federal overreach. In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) last week, several GOP senators, including Hawley and Paul, joined Blackburn in voicing their opposition to the bill for varying reasons, including their concern that it would automatically curtail preexisting state AI laws. (Tennessee, for instance, passed a law in 2024 that protected individuals’ likenesses from being used by generative AI.)

On the other hand, Cruz, the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and widely considered as a hard-right figure, authored an amendment that would have specifically barred states with AI laws from accessing federal funds earmarked for AI development.

The moratorium has proven especially unpopular with state-level GOP figures: last week, 37 state attorneys general and 17 governors bombarded Thune with letters urging him to drop the clause. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Trump’s former White House press secretary, went so far as to author a Washington Post op-ed denouncing the bill as removing states’ abilities to protect their own citizens. Other critics contended that the bill’s definition of “AI” is broad enough to ban entire swathes of software- and internet-related regulations, including Republican-backed state-level online child safety laws.

As promised, the first trailer for director Edgar Wright’s take on Stephen King’s novel The Running Man is here — and it looks like a playful throwback to ‘80s action movies.

The story centers on a struggling man named Ben Richards, played by Glen Powell, who is a contestant on a mega-popular TV game show where he’s hunted by trained killers, and earns more money the longer he stays alive. The goal is to last a whole 30 days unscathed, which typically doesn’t happen. Oh, and basically every citizen is trying to catch him as well. Despite the dark premise, the trailer has a fairly lighthearted tone, mixed in with all of the death and destruction.

In addition to being helmed by Wright — who is best-known for movies like Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World — the new movie also includes a pretty large and notable cast. That includes Powell in the lead role, alongside Katy O’Brian, Daniel Ezra, Karl Glusman, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Jayme Lawson, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, William H. Macy, David Zayas, Sean Hayes, and Colman Domingo.

Of course, this isn’t the first adaptation of the book. It follows Paul Michael Glaser’s film from 1987, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and had something of a post-apocalyptic-meets-American Gladiators vibe.

The latest version of The Running Man also isn’t the only dystopic King adaptation in the works right now. The slightly slower-paced novel The Long Walk is also coming to theaters this year from Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence. It premieres on September 12th.

The Running Man is scheduled to hit theaters on November 7th.

One way to think about the tech industry is just as a series of people trying to build stuff they saw in movies. Ready Player One helped kick of a flood of interest in the metaverse, despite the movie's deeply dsytopian undertones. If you've talked to anyone working in AI, they've surely told you about the assistant in Her, despite that movie's dystopian undertones. From the gesture interface in Minority Report to the hand-phone from Total Recall to just about everything from Back to the Future and Star Trek, you really can't underestimate how important and inspirational these movies and shows are to the tech imagination.

On this episode of The Vergecast, a bunch of us try to figure out which tech we actually want to use. David is joined by The Verge's Allison Johnson, Jennifer Pattison-Tuohy, Mia Sato, and Victoria Song - aka the hosts of Hot Girl Vergecast Summer, coming to a feed near you for the next couple of months - to draft their way through the movie, show, and game tech they'd want to make real.

Take the poll and tell us who won the draft!

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Casts | More

There are only a few rules in the draft. Rule No. 1: You c …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Several moments of my two-hour hands-on preview of Donkey Kong Bananza felt like I was playing the gritty 2009 action game Red Faction: Guerilla - except this time I was actually playing as a gorilla. For example, I had to level a multistory building during a timed minigame. Just like in Guerilla, I targeted the load-bearing columns with Donkey Kong's ripped arms to quickly bring it down. Reveling in the destruction made me feel equal parts satisfied and sinister, all while Donkey Kong struck a goofy pose.

Other times, I could sense a direct throughline from Super Mario Odyssey and other major Nintendo franchises. The way that Donkey Kong can roll into a jump (and roll at the top of a jump) feels like maneuvering with Odyssey's Cappy, while exploring the heights and depths of sublevels and experimenting with physics is reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. But through it all, the new Switch 2 game coming out on July 17th feels, above all else, like it's breaking new ground as its own thing.

Bananza is an open-world platforming RPG, complete with a skill tree that you can chip away at as you collect banandium gems. Finding five of them grants you one skill poi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Google graveyard has claimed another victim: the company has killed the Apple Watch version of its Keep app. While the note-taking app is still available for iPhone and iPad, the 2.2025.26200 Google Keep App Store update released on Monday has removed watchOS support, bringing the total number of Google apps for Apple Watch back down to three.

This sours some hope that Google would expand its watchOS app offerings after quietly rolling out a new native Google Calendar app for Apple Watch yesterday, having initially pulled several Google apps from the platform in 2017. The Google Keep app was introduced to watchOS in 2019 but has largely been neglected since, lacking any meaningful updates. Now, Google Calendar, Maps, and YouTube Music are all that remain, with the latter two also in need of modernization.

While outdated, Keep was still functional on Apple Watch, providing a convenient way for users to quickly create lists or jot down information on the go. There doesn’t appear to be a notable third-party alternative on watchOS to replace it. Its removal confirms several reports made by Keep users on Reddit last month, who said Google had notified them that “the watch app would be deprecated soon.” We have reached out to Google to clarify why the app was removed.

Keep is still available for smartwatches running on Google’s own Wear OS platform. That’s unlikely to be of any comfort to Apple Watch users who are disrupted by the removal, however; they will need to wait until Apple brings a native version of the Notes app to watchOS 26 this fall.

Sure, everyone hates record labels - but the AI industry has figured out how to make them look like heroes. So that's at least one very impressive accomplishment for AI.

AI is cutting a swath across a number of creative industries - with AI-generated book covers, the Chicago Sun-Times publishing an AI-generated list of books that don't exist, and AI-generated stories at CNET under real authors' bylines. The music industry is no exception. But while many of these fields are mired in questions about whether AI models are illegally trained on pirated data, the music industry is coming at the issue from a position of unusual strength: the benefits of years of case law backing copyright protections, a regimented licensing system, and a handful of powerful companies that control the industry. Record labels have chosen to fight several AI companies on copyright law, and they have a strong hand to play.

Historically, whatever the tech industry inflicts on the music industry will eventually happen to every other creative industry, too. If that's true here, then all the AI companies that ganked copyrighted material are in a lot of trouble.

Can home prompting kill music careers?

There ar …

Read the full story at The Verge.

On June 2nd, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy traveled to Newark Liberty International Airport to celebrate the reopening of runway 4L-22R. This was unusual: few runway openings are glamorous enough to warrant a visit from the airport's CEO, let alone a cabinet secretary. But as we reported last month, few airports have come to symbolize USDOT's mismanagement of the air traffic control system as much as Newark.

The ceremony and press conference was meant to transform Newark into a different symbol - one of progress and action. In his speech, Duffy positioned Newark's problems as solvable, and the people onstage - who included the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)'s Acting Administrator Chris Rocheleau, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, and several other dignitaries - as the problem-solvers.

Together, they'd gotten union labor to rebuild a runway in 47 days instead of 60; they'd convinced Verizon to expedite a new fiber-optic cable; they'd identified and fixed the "glitch in the system" that left Newark's air traffic controllers blind and unable to speak to pilots for several terrifying minutes.

Because of this whirlwind of activity, Rocheleau expected that Newark wou …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The major internet architecture provider Cloudflare will now block known AI web crawlers by default to prevent them from “accessing content without permission or compensation,” according to an announcement on Tuesday. With the change, Cloudflare will start asking new domain owners whether they want to allow AI scrapers, and will even let some publishers implement a “Pay Per Crawl” fee.

The Pay Per Crawl program will let publishers set a price for AI scrapers to access their content. AI companies can then view pricing and choose whether to register for the “Pay Per Crawl” fee or turn away. This is only available for “a group of some of the leading publishers and content creators” for now, but Cloudflare says it will ensure “AI companies can use quality content the right way — with permission and compensation.”

Cloudflare has been helping domain owners fight AI crawlers for a while now. The company started letting websites block AI crawlers in 2023, but it only applied to ones that abide by a site’s robots.txt file, the unenforceable agreement that signals whether bots can scrape its content. Cloudflare began allowing websites to block “all” AI bots last year — whether they respect a site’s robots.txt file or not — and now this setting is enabled by default for new Cloudflare customers. (The company identifies scrapers to block by comparing them to its list of known AI bots.) Cloudflare also rolled out a feature in March that sends web-crawling bots into an “AI Labyrinth” to deter them from scraping sites without permission. 

Several major publishers and online platforms, including The Associated Press, The Atlantic, Fortune, Stack Overflow, and Quora, are on board with Cloudflare’s new AI crawler restrictions, as websites contend with a future where more people are finding information through AI chatbots, rather than search engines. “People trust the AI more over the last six months, which means they’re not reading original content,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said during the Axios Live event last week. 

Additionally, Cloudflare says it’s working with AI companies to help verify their crawlers and allow them to “clearly state their purpose,” such as whether they’re using the content for training, inference, or search. Website owners can then review this information and determine which crawlers to let in.

“Original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and we have to come together to protect it,” Prince said in the press release. “AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits. Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate.”

Tinder is trialing mandatory facial recognition security features in the US to verify profiles and crack down on impersonation and fake accounts. New users in California are now required to provide a biometric “Face Check” scan to confirm their face matches their profile photos for the dating service, Axios reported on Monday.

The Face Check feature involves taking a short video selfie that’s used to match biometric indicators and prove that the Tinder user isn’t a bot using artificially generated images, providing them with a verified badge upon completion. The scan will also check if the user’s face is being used in multiple accounts, which could help to prevent users from being impersonated or having their likeness used by deceptive “catfish” profiles. 

Face Check is separate from Tinder’s ID Check feature, which uses government-issued ID to verify users’ age and identity, while Face Check seemingly only requires users to upload a selfie video. Tinder users have provided video selfies to verify their profiles since 2023, but verification wasn’t a mandatory requirement for creating a Tinder account. This change means that Californians will have to complete some version of verification if they want to use the platform at all. 

“We see this as one part of a set of identity assurance options that are available to users,” Match Group’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, told Axios. “Face Check … is really meant to be about confirming that this person is a real, live person and not a bot or a spoofed account.”

Tinder says the selfie video is deleted once verification is complete, but that the platform stores a “non-reversible, encrypted face map” to detect duplicate user accounts in the future. 

The Face Check feature has already been piloted in Colombia and Canada, with Roth telling Axios that those tests showed “promising” results in “improving perceptions of authenticity” and reducing reports of bad actors. Tinder will now monitor how users in California respond to the Face Check feature before deciding if it should be rolled out more broadly across the US, according to Roth.

Valve has added a new performance monitor to Steam that can help you understand why a game may or may not be running smoothly. Not only does it break out a game’s overall frame rate, it can tell you how many of those frames were generated by techniques  like Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR, according to a post.

The change is included as part of an update to the Steam Client that’s available now, though Valve notes that this “first version” focuses on “Windows users and on the most common GPU hardware.”

The company says the new performance monitor currently offers up to four different levels of detail: a single FPS value, FPS details, CPU and GPU utilization, and “FPS, CPU, GPU & RAM Full Details.” The more you choose to show, the more of your screen will be taken up by the performance monitor.

Steam previously offered a simple FPS counter, but separating out generated frames from the frames fully rendered by your graphics cores can help you better understand key differences between what you see and how a game feels. “Frame generation can’t help with things like input latency that matter to competitive gamers, but it can make things look visually smoother on today’s high refresh rate monitors,” Valve says in a detailed support document about the performance monitor. 

In practice, what that should mean is that you can see whether your game feels like it’s running at just 30 fps because it actually is running at 30 fps inside the game engine, even though you’re seeing a visually smoother image due to Nvidia and AMD’s added “fake frames.” (It’s a whole debate in the PC gaming community, and it appears Valve isn’t taking sides here.) 

Valve has already given handheld gamers a taste of these quick insights by building tools like MangoHud into the Steam Deck and SteamOS, which similarly let you monitor your CPU, graphics, RAM, and carefully ration out your battery life. But having a way to do so built into desktop Steam will make the insights much more accessible to many more gamers.

Valve says that it has plans to “add some additional pieces of data to the performance overlay going forward, to detect certain common bad hardware performance scenarios, and to show a larger summary of your game’s performance in the overlay itself when you hit shift-tab.”

AT&T believes its network wasn’t at fault for a conference call where President Donald Trump accused the company of being “totally unable to make their equipment work properly.” Instead, AT&T is blaming an unnamed “conference call platform.” 

Earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump complained on Truth Social about apparent issues with AT&T’s network during a “major conference call with faith leaders from all over the country” that had “tens of thousands of people on the line.” Trump said that “this is the second time it’s happened” and that if “the Boss of AT&T, whoever that may be” would get involved, “it would be good.”

It appears AT&T initially wasn’t sure what was going on, as it replied to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X to say that it had reached out to the White House ”to quickly understand and assess the situation.”

At 6:53PM ET, the company said that “our initial analysis indicates the disruption was caused by an issue with the conference call platform, not our network. Unfortunately, this caused the delay, and we are working diligently to better understand the issue so we can prevent disruptions in the future.”

AT&T didn’t say which conference call platform it believes is at fault, and didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s question about that. The White House didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Shortly after his original post, Trump followed up to say that the call may be rescheduled and that “we’ll use another carrier next time.”

Apple is considering enlisting the help of OpenAI or Anthropic to power its AI-upgraded Siri, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. As Apple continues to struggle with the development of an upgraded “LLM Siri,” it reportedly asked OpenAI and Anthropic to create versions of their large language models to test on the company’s private cloud infrastructure.

For months, Apple has been working to get its AI-enhanced Siri back on track after delaying the overhauled assistant’s launch in March. Apple later appointed Vision Pro head Mike Rockwell as the leader of AI and Siri after CEO Tim Cook “lost confidence” in the team’s former chief, John Giannandrea.

As reported by Bloomberg, Rockwell asked his team to test whether Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Google’s Gemini performs better at handling basic requests compared to its own models, with Anthropic’s apparently seen as the most promising. While Google has Gemini AI features for Android and its Pixel lineup, Samsung licenses Google’s AI model for its phones. It is also reportedly close to cutting a deal with Perplexity, which already has a tie-up with Motorola. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported Apple executives had considered acquiring Perplexity to help boost its AI ambitions.

LLM Siri was largely absent from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, where SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak admitted that the technology “didn’t hit our quality standard.” Bloomberg notes that Apple’s plans to incorporate a third-party AI model into Siri are still at an “early stage” and that it’s still considering using in-house models.

Finding a Nintendo Switch 2 hasn’t been easy since its launch on June 5th, with sporadic availability over the past few weeks at various retailers. Luckily, if you’ve missed chances to pick one up, Best Buy will have more stock at its retail stores across the US starting tomorrow, July 1st. The Verge has reached out to Best Buy as to whether locations will primarily stock the standalone system ($449.99), the console bundle $499.99) that comes with Mario Kart World, or both. We’ll update this post if we hear back. To see a list of participating locations, head on over to Best Buy’s Switch 2 landing page.

Nintendo Switch 2

Where to Buy:

• $449.99 at Best Buy
• $499.99 at Best Buy (Mario Kart World bundle)

While you’ll have to physically go to a Best Buy for a Switch 2, the good news is you won’t have to deal with an online queue or a potentially finicky checkout process. Despite stock being hard to come by in its first month of availability, the Switch 2 has already become the fastest-selling console of all time, surpassing 3.5 million units sold in its first four days. The handheld’s 7.9-inch 1080p LCD display (up from the Switch’s 6.2-inch 720p screen), magnetic Joy-Con controllers, and improved performance make it a solid upgrade over its predecessor. Or, as The Verge’s Andrew Webster referred to it in his Switch 2 review, “exactly good enough.”

Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller

Where to Buy:

• $84 at Walmart
• $84.99 at Best Buy
• $84.99 at Target

Nintendo Switch 2 Camera

Where to Buy:

• $54 at Walmart
• $54.99 at Best Buy
• $54.99 at Target

Samsung microSD Express Card (256GB)

Where to Buy:

• $59.99 at Amazon
• $59.99 at Best Buy (256GB)
• $59.99 at Target (256GB)

Dbrand Killswitch – Switch 2

Where to Buy:

• $59.99 at Dbrand

A glass screen protector is one of a few "set it and forget it" purchases that every Switch 2 owner should make, along with buying a microSD Express card and a protective case for the console. In fact, it should be a priority to stick one onto the console's screen as soon as possible to avoid accidental scratches.

I've been installing and removing Switch 2 screen protectors to test others on my console at an alarming rate, more than any sane person should, and here are the most important takeaways:

• Do not buy a flimsy plastic screen protector. They won't protect your Switch 2 enough.
• It's impossible to tell different brands' protectors apart once they're on your screen; product packaging and the installation process are the biggest differences (as well as the key factors that increase cost).
• Some protectors are glossy and some are anti-reflective, each with its own tradeoffs. For my money, glossy is the way to go. The matte finish looks good, but it reduces the screen's vivid quality and its viewing angles.

Of the options below, it's easiest to recommend amFilm's three-pack of glossy screen protectors. Not only is the pack incredibly affordable ($7.19 from Amazon at th …

Read the full story at The Verge.