Microsoft unveiled its Xbox AI era earlier this year with a new Muse AI model that can generate gameplay. While it looked like Muse was still an early Microsoft Research project, the Xbox maker is now allowing Copilot users to try out Muse through an AI-generated version of Quake II.

The tech demo is part of Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming push, and features an AI-generated replica of Quake II that is playable in a browser. The Quake II level is very basic and includes blurry enemies and interactions, and Microsoft is limiting the amount of time you can even play this tech demo.

While Microsoft originally demonstrated its Muse AI model at 10fps and a 300 x 180 resolution, this latest demo runs at a playable frame rate and at a slightly higher resolution of 640 x 360. It’s still a very limited experience though, and more of hint at what might be possible in the future.

Microsoft is still positioning Muse as an AI model that can help game developers prototype games. When Muse was unveiled in February, Microsoft also mentioned it was exploring how this AI model could help improve classic games, just like Quake II, and bring them to modern hardware.

“You could imagine a world where from gameplay data and video that a model could learn old games and really make them portable to any platform where these models could run,” said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February. “We’ve talked about game preservation as an activity for us, and these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware opens up a ton of opportunity.”

It’s clear that Microsoft is now training Muse on more games than just Bleeding Edge, and it’s likely we’ll see more short interactive AI game experiences in Copilot Labs soon. Microsoft is also working on turning Copilot into a coach for games, allowing the AI assistant to see what you’re playing and help with tips and guides. Part of that experience will be available to Windows Insiders through Copilot Vision soon.

Disney just released the first trailer for Tron: Ares, the long-planned Tron: Legacy sequel. The minute-and-a-half trailer doesn’t say much about the story but shows plenty of the movie’s visuals, which look dark, moody, and filled with the series’ signature light trails.

The trailer opens in the physical world at night, as Jared Leto’s Ares, a Program made physical, flees from police on a light cycle, slicing one in half using his light trail as a weapon. The shots that follow show a massive airship hovering over the real-world city, visible only by the red light strips on its outside. The rest has people looking on in horror at the airship, dogfights between human aircraft and fighters from the Tron digital world, and what looks like a clip of Ares being given his physical body.

All of that is set to the music of Nine Inch Nails, which is handling the soundtrack this time around. It ends with a voiceover from Jeff Bridges, reprising his role as Kevin Flynn and saying, “Ready? There’s no going back.” The movie hits theaters on October 10th.

Disney included the poster above in an email to The Verge announcing the trailer’s release. In a YouTube video from Thursday’s CinemaCon presentation about Ares, Leto said his character is “a highly advanced program” who has entered the real world on a “do-or-die mission to fulfill his directive,” and promised that the movie “will hit you right in the grid … wherever that is.” In addition to Leto and Bridges, Tron: Ares is directed by Joachim Rønning and its stars include Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, and Cameron Monaghan.

There’s a famous two-decade-old Paris Review interview with Haruki Murakami in which he, one of the world’s most celebrated novelists, details his daily routine. He wakes up at 4AM, works for five hours, goes for a run, reads, goes to bed, and then repeats it all over again. The rigor and repetition are the point.

I am not Haruki Murakami.

In addition to my work at The Verge, I write novels — my second one is out today — and while I admire Murakami’s commitment to an immovable schedule, I’ve found that I produce my best work when I’m constantly rethinking routines, processes, and, mostly, how I’m writing. In the modern age, that means what software I’m using.

What I am about to describe will be a nightmare to anyone who likes all of their tools to work harmoniously. All of these apps are disconnected and do not interoperate with each other in any way. Many of the things they do are redundant and overlap. I suppose this process is quite the opposite of frictionless — but that’s precisely the point. I’m not sure I believe that ambitious creative work is borne from a perfectly efficient workflow.

This is, instead, a journey of moving the work through diffe …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says it’s delaying shipments to the US this month while it works out how it will deal with the wide-ranging tariffs President Donald Trump announced this week, according to The Guardian.

“As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans,” JLR told The Guardian. The automaker is responding to a 25 percent Trump-ordered tariff on imported vehicles that went into effect Thursday and could add $5,000 to $10,000 or more to the price of a new car in the US.

JLR said this week that its business remains “resilient,” but those living in the town where its cars are made weren’t optimistic, with one telling The Guardian that the tariffs could lead to job losses. About a quarter of the 400,000 vehicles JLR sells every year go to US buyers, as The Sunday Times notes in its own story about the pause this morning. It’s thought that the automaker has enough existing US stock to last about two months, and it would take about 21 days for more to come once shipments resume, the Times writes.

JLR isn’t alone in its concerns. Earlier this week, Nintendo blamed Trump’s new tariffs as it delayed US preorders of the Switch 2, originally scheduled to start on April 9th. In the wake of the tariffs announcement, the US Stock market lost $6.6 trillion in two days — a record, according to The Wall Street Journal — and industries are bracing for negative impacts to the cost and availability of just about everything, including the high-powered GPUs used by AI companies, gadgets of all types, and even board games

Views are the most visible metric on the internet. You can see, in more or less real time, how many views something got on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and most other video platforms. X tracks views for every single thing you post, as does Threads. A view is the universal currency of success — more views, more fun.

But it’s all nonsense. Views are nothing. Views are lies.

You may not need me to remind you of this. We’ve known for years that view counts are meaningless, to the point that Facebook wound up getting sued for aggressively inflating view counts in an effort to convince people to make Facebook videos. Others have written thoughtfully about how stupid view counts are. But we still talk about view counts, view counts are still everywhere, so let’s talk once again about view counts.

A “view,” in reality, is not a universal metric. It’s not really anything. It is whatever a platform wants it to be, which usually has no actual correlation to whether someone actually encountered and experienced a piece of content. You can just make the views whatever you want! And if you don’t like the way the numbers look, make views something else!

Let’s just r …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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.