Casey Newton and Kevin Roose launched the first episode of their new podcast Machine Gods today, after a successful run doing Hard Fork at the NYT. I’m dead serious about that logo tattoo. Thinking… armband?
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Continuing to push the widely unpopular data center projects, Trump said in a Truth Social post that some of them “have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck.” His plan sounds lot like Meta’s approach on the Hyperion project in Louisiana, where Mark Zuckerberg has touted $50,000 bonus checks for teachers despite a secretive approval process residents didn’t know much about.




She used a custom-built robot called “Hingey” to fold the Duo 17 times per minute “for eight hours straight,” for a total of 32,640 folds. You can watch Stern’s review to see how Hingey works, and check out The Verge’s iPhone Duo review for more on Apple’s new foldable.
As reported by Reuters, the job cuts will impact around 1,100 employees. In a memo seen by the outlet, eBay CEO Jamie Iannone tells workers the company must make “thoughtful choices about where we focus and invest” to “capture the significant opportunity ahead.”
The show’s encore comes over a decade after its sixth season ended in 2015. Variety reports Disney has greenlit the reboot, but hasn’t shared a release date yet or announced whether any of the original cast is returning.
The Wall Street Journal published a big profile of the Google DeepMind co-founder, who says his timeline for the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is becoming “nearer and nearer.”
He adds that “winning” the AI race “means helping humanity steward AGI into the world safely and securely for the benefit of everyone.”
[The Wall Street Journal]



7
Verge Score
Apple’s first foldable is an early adopter special.




That’s according to analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics, in a wider report on revenue from physical PlayStation games ahead of their elimination. 30 percent of Requiem’s PS5 revenue came from disc sales, exemplifying two trends Elliott finds: single-player AAA titles are especially reliant on discs, and the Japanese market is uniquely disc-centric.
[The Alinea Insight newsletter]
Eight certificates issued by India-based eMudhra have been compromised, theoretically allowing attackers to spoof trusted browser and app credentials. Cryptography engineer Filippo Valsorda told Ars that the number of affected devices means it’ll take longer to clean up than Heartbleed, an infamous OpenSSL vulnerability that rocked the internet in 2014 and took years to fix.
When unusual activity is detected on an account, the platform will now temporarily pause features for 24 hours, including uploading or updating videos, livestreaming, creating or adjusting playlists, uploading thumbnails, and making private videos public. Full feature access will be restored once the account’s security is verified.
Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet has been “cooking up retro vibes” as part of Microsoft’s new Xbox Labs effort. The result is what looks like a vibecoded option to pick your dashboard on an Xbox console. This is simply an experiment right now and it’s not clear if we’ll ever see such an option, but Xbox CEO Asha Sharma asks “blades on the web. Do we like this experiment?”
Twitch describes the recaps as a “highlight reel.” By default, they include clips made by a streamer and their editors, but Twitch says streamers can add, remove, or edit clips.
During today’s Q3 SpaceX earnings call, Musk also said the company should “probably” do a “longer presentation on the game plan” for the business.
In Q3, SpaceX’s Connectivity business reported $5.2 billion in revenue, and the company recently acquired low-band spectrum as part of a plan to become a “major mobile carrier” that competes with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
You can read more about SpaceX’s earnings in our story here.


After Ukraine said a Starshield slowdown had interrupted its military operations, Elon Musk claimed any limits “are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Then the president told reporters, “It wasn’t me... and I don’t think it was Elon.”
Now WSJ sources are pointing the finger back at Musk, with some claiming “Musk acted unilaterally.”
[Wall Street Journal]


OpenAI describes Orchestra Bio as “a platform that helps biopharma teams coordinate the complex process of drug development.” The company will bring Orchestra’s team and tech “together with Rosalind, our AI models and tools for life sciences research.”
[OpenAI]
Over the last several months, the AI industry has set its sights on some of the problems that have stymied mathematicians for years. In some cases, AI models have made huge progress — though exactly how much isn’t always obvious. The Verge’s Robert Hart explains what OpenAI and others have actually accomplished, the disastrously bad ways the companies have interacted with researchers, and whether there’s a future left for human mathematics.
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