17 – 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
    April Fools’ 2026: Stream Deck Plus Lever.

    Because everything is gambling now, Elgato has imagined a slot machine add-on for its handy button and dial-equipped accessory.

    While today’s update adding MCP hooks for AI bots to press virtual Steam Deck buttons is more real than the lever, Elgato is releasing this free Slotius plugin today for “purely entertainment” reasons — you can’t win a jackpot, but you can spin the reels.

    If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

    Image of a Stream Deck Plus with a slot machine-like pull lever on the side.
    Image of a Stream Deck Plus with a slot machine-like pull lever on the side.
    Image of a Stream Deck Plus with a slot machine-like pull lever on the side.
    1/3Image: Elgato
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    OpenAI’s big numbers: $122 billion funding round, 900 million weekly ChatGPT users.

    OpenAI’s latest round of private investment has closed, with participation from Amazon, Nvidia, Softbank, and Microsoft, as well as $3 billion from individual investors, as it prepares for a potential IPO. This comes after it announced the end of its video generator Sora, and the announcement says it will focus on building a “unified superapp” with ChatGPT, Codex, browsing, and other agents all built in.

    OpenAI:

    ChatGPT has 6x the monthly web visits and mobile sessions than the next largest AI app, while total AI time spent is 4x the next largest AI app and 4x all others combined. Search usage has nearly tripled in a year, and our ads pilot reached more than $100 million in ARR in under six weeks.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Paul McCartney’s mysterious Reddit ban.

    The musician’s account disappeared after posting pictures from his no-phones-allowed concert to r/PaulMcCartney, spurring media reports that mods had banned him. However, as 404Media points out, the subreddit’s mods say it wasn’t them, and a site admin commented with an attempt at an explanation:

    Hey all! Just for clarity, that account was never banned from the site (or the subreddit) there was a technical error that made it appear to be banned from the site. This has now been resolved. Sorry for any confusion this caused or issue for the mod team here!

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    What’s inside the White House app?

    According to “I Decompiled the White House’s New App,” the Android version has some odd choices for a government app that mostly shows content from the White House website.

    That includes enabling location tracking and other monitoring via OneSignal’s analytics (which the company says are opt-in at the OS level), JavaScript loaded from some guy’s GitHub, an injected script to hide things like consent dialogs on pages users open in the app, and other hooks to non-government third-party services.

    I Decompiled the White House's New App

    [Thereallo]

    Apple’s Mac Pro is dead, apparently for good this timeApple’s Mac Pro is dead, apparently for good this time
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Judge dismisses X lawsuit accusing advertisers of an “illegal boycott.”

    Elon Musk said it was “war” in 2024, as X filed its antitrust lawsuit against World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) members over their Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative.

    Now a judge has dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be brought again:

    …if facts existed that GARM operated at an X competitor’s behest to put X out of business or that GARM advertisers sought to unfairly exclude competing advertisers from doing business, X would have pleaded those facts. The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the Court
    therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    AMD says its first CPU with dual 3D V-Cache bridges the gap between workstation and gaming PCs.

    The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is a follow-up to last year’s excellent gaming chip, with 16 Zen 5 cores and 208MB of total cachem with the V-Cache split across both chiplets.

    However, its upgrades may not do much for gaming alone, with the company’s pitch instead highlighting a 5 - 10 percent performance bump in creative apps like DaVinci Resolve, positioning it as a compromise option between Threadripper CPUs and options like the Ryzen 7 9850X3D.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Elon’s next legal argument: LinkedIn emoji reactions.

    Musk’s lawyers are trying to overturn the recent verdict that found his self-described “stupid tweets” were liable for losses incurred by Twitter investors, pointing to an emoji reaction to a post on LinkedIn from the account of Judge Kathaleen McCormick. In a filing of her own, Reuters reports McCormick said she hadn’t read the post, and that “I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally.”

    Screenshot of a LinkedIn post from Musk’s court filing
    Screenshot: court filing
    Jay Peters
    Jay Peters
    Now blog posts can cross the fediverse.

    A New Social’s Bridgy Fed tech has been linking microblog posts and accounts across services like Mastodon and Bluesky for a while, but now that ability applies to more macro content as well:

    ….users on platforms like Mastodon will see the announcement with the article attached, but platforms that support long-form like WordPress and Ghost will get the whole article, and both will be treated as the same post across the Fediverse.

    OpenAI just gave up on Sora and its billion-dollar Disney dealOpenAI just gave up on Sora and its billion-dollar Disney deal

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