40 – 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
    T-Mobile can now “slice” its public 5G network into private 5G networks with dedicated bandwith.

    We’ve been talking about whether 5G was worth the hype for a few weeks now (sometimes, sort of, mostly it hasn’t returned the investment) and the best idea anyone really has is “private networks” where commercial customers can set up their own high-bandwith low-latency 5G networks to do... stuff. And now T-Mobile can do that by “slicing” its public 5G network, which it says it did successfully in June at a Red Bull event, creating a slice for a broadcast drone to achieve 276Mbps uplink speeds.

    Meanwhile, nearly 20,000 visitors were in attendance, using their devices as they normally would – uploading pictures and videos of the event. Because of network slicing and traffic management, their traffic did not impact the Red Bull production – and vice versa.

    Neat! But let’s not forget T-Mo can do this because it was allowed to buy Sprint and reduce wireless competition, which in turn has allowed it to raise prices and act way more like a traditional carrier.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    I love that Tesla keeps trying to disguise the Cybertruck.

    There have been traditional camo wraps, F-150 wraps, and now this Tundra wrap. I applaud the effort but it’s a gigantic triangle on wheels with a single massive wiper. We… we know what it is.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Okay, there’s one good CarPlay implementation.

    Gaze upon the Zenvo Aurora, which has a hybrid V12 engine and a €3 million pricetag.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    The law around web scraping is a chaotic mess and AI is going to make it worse.

    I wrote about Google’s essential hypocrisy when it comes to the value of AI training data this week, and now Kieran McCarthy has a good blog post outlining how incoherent and inconsistent the law around web scraping really is — in large part because the same big tech companies that scrape the entire web are quick to file lawsuits when you attempt to scrape their sites.

    There are few, if any, legal domains where hypocrisy is as baked into the ecosystem as it is with web scraping.

    Some of the biggest companies on earth—including Meta and Microsoft—take aggressive, litigious approaches to prohibiting web scraping on their own properties, while taking liberal approaches to scraping data on other companies’ properties.

    Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee

    [Technology & Marketing Law Blog]

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Please enjoy this “wellness” white noise podcast series from our friends at Switched on Pop,

    So Switched on Pop co-host (and Verge pal) Charlie Harding and I were chatting about the recent report from Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman (herself a notable Verge expat!) detailing Spotify’s panic over white noise podcasts taking away lucrative, um, white noise revenue. And well, he had ChatGPT create an entire white noise podcast series. It is called “Sonic Spectrum: Colors of Serenity” and it is just the funniest shit.

    Please enjoy the sounds of “Indigo Insights: The Deep Dive with Purple Noise” and “Solar Symphony: Yellow Noise and Radiance.” Bask in AI-generated blurbs that read like this:

    Crimson Currents: The Power of Red Noise: Dive deep into the lush waves of red noise, known to inspire feelings of passion, vitality, and grounding. Allow this frequency to energize and align your root energies, reconnecting you with Earth’s primal vibrations.

    Please send it to your most... crystalline friends. If anyone can get Aaron Rodgers to buy into this I’ll send you a very funny bottle of vodka.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    “I’ve always dreamed of having a dongle to charge my car.”

    Notable Verge traitor Joanna Stern has been in the market for an EV for the past few months. (I know because she keeps texting me about it.) Like any true reviewer, she solved her problem by taking the the Hyundai Ioniq 5, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, and the Tesla Model Y head-to-head on a road trip — and called up Marques Brownlee for a little advice along the way.

    Google and YouTube are trying to have it both ways with AI and copyright

    Google has made clear it is going to use the open web to inform and create anything it wants, and nothing can get in its way. Except maybe Frank Sinatra.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    “There is only one thing worse than a government monopoly. And that is a private monopoly that the government is dependent on.”

    We linked to the big Ronan Farrow profile of Elon Musk in the New Yorker earlier, but this part really caught my eye: Trump-appointed former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine decrying the government’s total reliance on SpaceX.

    “At some point, with new competitors emerging, progress will be thwarted when there’s an accident, and people won’t be confident in the capabilities commercial companies have,” Bridenstine said. “I mean, we just saw this submersible going down to visit the Titanic implode. I think we have to think about the non-regulatory environment as sometimes hurting the industry more than the regulatory environment.”

    The whole thing really is worth a read.

    Nilay Patel
    Nilay Patel
    The LG StanbyME Go sponcon is here and it is incredible.

    Vergecast listener Guy flags the sponsored appearance of the (hilarious, wonderful) LG StanbyME Go suitcase TV in a YouTube camping influencer’s video and... well, here’s a screenshot. I love everything about this situation.

    The LG StanbyME Go suitcase TV displaying a fire while sitting on a rock next to a tent.
    At night, the wolves come... to enjoy what is alleged to be Dolby Atmos surround sound.