38 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Nilay Patel

Nilay Patel

Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

    More From Nilay Patel

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Help us figure out what new products to build at The Verge!

    We have big ideas for the future of The Verge — and lot of them involve expanding our business into more subscription offerings like Command Line and Hot Pod. We’re going to take it slow, and we want to make sure we hear from our audience as clearly as possible, so if you’ve got a moment, please take our little survey! We are not going to paywall the entire site, I promise — but there are lots of other ideas floating around, and we’d like to narrow them down.

    The Verge Subscription Survey

    [voxmedia.iad1.qualtrics.com]

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Here I am on CNBC talking about Meta’s decision to allow election denial in political ads.

    You don’t have to take the money!

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Trump’s rhetoric is getting scarier — and openly fascist.

    Zack Beauchamp, in Vox:

    There’s been a long-running debate among American political observers as to whether Trump can reasonably be described as a fascist. Between his increasingly fascist rhetoric and increasingly fascist second-term policy proposals, the debate should now be considered settled. A political leader who vows to destroy opponents he calls “vermin,” to weaponize the Justice Department against his critics, and to conduct political purges in the federal government is in fascist territory.

    This is important no matter what, but you’re reading this in The Verge so here’s a tech angle: the big social platforms are facing a 2024 content-moderation nightmare. Emboldened by Elon Musk’s teardown of Twitter, they all want to pull back on moderation costs in various ways, but this election cycle will feature some of the most heated and dangerous rhetoric from a major party candidate any of us have ever experienced. It’s going to be incredibly messy all around.

    Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping Apple CarPlay is a mistake

    As cars become computers on wheels, the former BlackBerry and Dyson executive is approaching Volvo’s EV transformation with a consumer electronics mindset.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Brother Spirit, baby.

    I keep reading the big New York Times feature about Humane and it just keeps getting sillier and (delightfully) sillier:

    A Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit led them to Humane. Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno had developed concepts for two A.I. products: a women’s health device and the pin. Brother Spirit, whom they met through their acupuncturist, recommended that they shared the ideas with his friend, Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.

    Sitting beneath a palm tree on a cliff above the ocean at Mr. Benioff’s Hawaiian home in 2018, they explained both devices. “This one,” Mr. Benioff said, pointing at the Ai Pin, as dolphins breached the surf below, “is huge.”

    “It’s going to be a massive company,” he added.

    The best part about all this — beyond the Times printing this with perfect Times self-seriousness — is that Benioff is an investor in Humane, and the Benioff-owned Time magazine followed up by naming the AI Pin one of the “best inventions of 2023” before it had even been announced.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    It sure seems like Humane investor Sam Altman doesn’t care much for the Humane AI Pin.

    Altman on stage with the WSJ’s Joanna Stern last month, discussing AI hardware: “I think there is something great to do but I don’t know what it is yet.”

    Altman to the NYT for its shiny feature on the AI Pin, today (my emphasis):

    Humane has the advantage of being the first of those A.I.-focused devices to become available, but Mr. Altman said in an interview that was no guarantee of success. “That will be up to customers to decide,” he said. “Maybe it’s a bridge too far,” he said, “or maybe people are like, ‘This is much better than my phone.’” Plenty of technology that looked like a sure bet ends up selling for 90 percent off at Best Buy, he added.

    Props for honesty, Sam.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    This time it’s 5G robot cooking and it still sucks.

    It’s 2023 and mobile operators are still convincing general news pubs to write about the wonders of 5G. This time The Post in Wellington, New Zealand heroically tries to make a 5G robotic cooking demonstration sound convincing but, well.

    There’s no camera on the robot, rather it relies on clever spatial programming while two phones set up above the stainless steel prep area allowed Gault, armed with a tablet in Auckland, to issue it instructions.

    Local chefs lay the groundwork ‒ prepping and seasoning the tails, preparing the slaw and precise placement of the ingredients for the arm to collect.

    Two phones, a tablet, and local chefs, all to misplate the food! At this one actually happened. Will the wonders of 5G ever cease? Or... begin?

    A robot arm tries to plate a crab leg on a roll and drops it to the side.
    Whoops.