104 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The latest rumor about Sam Altman’s AI chip-building dream could require up to $7 trillion.

    For context, here’s how the Wall Street Journal describes OpenAI’s once-again leader’s trillion dollar effort to “reshape the global semiconductor industry:”

    Such a sum of investment would dwarf the current size of the global semiconductor industry. Global sales of chips were $527 billion last year and are expected to rise to $1 trillion annually by 2030.

    The money is needed to fuel AI’s growth and solve the scarcity of expensive AI chips required to train the large language models that underpin systems like ChatGPT. According to the WSJ, Altman is pitching a chip-making partnership to investors from the UAE, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son (again), and TSMC.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    WWE Speed will stream 5-minute wrestling matches on X this spring.

    In addition to the WWE’s 2025 switch to Netflix, it will also broadcast timed matches via the platform formerly known as Twitter.

    Like Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, these will be produced live to tape exclusively for the platform, but they’ll only be five minutes long and will feature “your favorite WWE Superstars.” THR notes their agreement is for two years of weekly episodes.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Chris Dixon’s blockchain book is number nine on the NYT bestseller list, but...

    The Times marked it with a dagger, noting “institutional, special interest, group or bulk purchases” that may have helped it make the list.

    Motherboard points out the label, and includes statements from Dixon’s firm a16z and a few crypto companies it invested in, all acknowledging purchasing multiple copies of a book that one reviewer said “fails to identify a single blockchain project that has successfully provided a non-speculative service at any kind of scale”

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The $349 glasses that promise multimodal “AI superpowers.”

    Last year, Brilliant Labs brought AI to your existing eyewear with its $299 Monocle clip-on, and now it’s announced the Frame AI glasses, an open-source, hackable micro Python-based platform with a micro OLED display, front-facing camera, and more.

    There’s a Noa app to connect it with AI services from OpenAI and Perplexity (like Rabbit’s R1 AI device).

    Preorders are open now in black, gray, or clear, with the first glasses due to ship on April 15th.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The real standalone ESPN streaming channel will launch in the fall of 2025.

    Disney CEO Bob Iger had previously targeted next year for the launch of a streaming version of ESPN’s main channel (no watered-down ESPN Plus, just ESPN).

    Now that the deal for a sports streaming Voltron with Warner Bros. and Fox is sewed up, Iger said to CNBC’s Julia Boorstin that direct-to-consumer ESPN could launch in late August 2025, and confirmed to investors that it will be available in a bundle with Hulu and Disney Plus.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Google Maps on Android finally picked up a weather feature from the iOS version.

    9to5Google points out a new weather icon over the map layer has rolled out widely in the Android version of Google Maps with the current conditions and air quality (Maps also added dedicated wildfire and AQI layers in recent years). If tapped, it opens a tile showing the local forecast for the next few hours.

    This has existed in the iOS version for years, and some have seen it popping up on Android for months, but it might be new to you.

    Screenshots of Google Maps on Android, showing a new icon for the current weather over the city of Detroit, and a second image with it expanded and opened, showing the forecast over the next few hours along with the current air quality.
    Google Maps weather icon, next two a screenshot of the weather tile that open when it’s tapped.
    Screenshot: Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    SpaceX is being investigated for discrimination and sexual harassment.

    The California Civil Rights Department is investigating complaints by seven workers that SpaceX execs “discriminated against women, joked about sexual harassment and fired workers for raising concerns,” reports Bloomberg and Reuters.

    The same agency is also suing Tesla over charges of operating a “racially segregated workplace.”

    In the SpaceX complaints, employees cite a pattern of discrimination, as well as inappropriate tweets by Musk that they said they couldn’t easily avoid because he uses the platform for important company announcements.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The NBA is bringing this LED basketball court to All-Star Weekend 2024.

    Forget lasers and projectors — this is different. This ASB Lumiflex court has been seen previously in the 2023 FIBA women’s U-19 tournament and German Bundesliga games. It has LED panels under laminated glass, and you can see how it comes together here.

    A 2014 Nike event was the first to play on a full-sized LED court, and we even shot around on one at All-Star 2015.

    Expect to see this one used during activities like the celebrity game, dunk contest, and 3-point shootout, but not Sunday’s All-Star Game.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Google Meet is finally ready to let hosts pin multiple feeds for everyone.

    A feature rolling out over the next couple of weeks for Google Meet lets hosts pin up to three tiles so they’re featured for everyone.

    You’ve been able to pin feeds within your own view for years, and Zoom called it Spotlight in 2020. But now, one person can pin a few windows so everyone doesn’t have to figure out how it works on their own or which tiles are the right ones (and viewers can still unpin them in their own view).

    Animated image of a Google Meet video call with multiple participants, showing the steps to pin more than one feed that will be visible for everyone in the meeting.
    That’s easier than walking everyone through pinning multiple feeds on their own.
    Image: Google