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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Bob Iger steps back in as Disney CEO, replacing Bob ChapekBob Iger steps back in as Disney CEO, replacing Bob Chapek
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    “Horizon Workrooms is bad.”

    If you haven’t listened to this week’s episode of The Vergecast yet or read Adi Robertson’s review of the Meta Quest Pro headset, that line about sums it up.

    On the other hand, can you afford to miss Meta’s Notorious B.I.G. “VR concert experience” on December 16th?

    It’s unclear exactly what that will be like, but this blog post makes the point that maybe Meta could have focused on living artists. It points out several who already perform VRChat, and other platforms that succeed in ways the Horizon environments haven’t yet.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Is Taylor Swift the one to take down Ticketmaster?

    You probably heard that Taylor Swift’s pre-sales event for her The Eras Tour crashed Ticketmaster, which the operator blamed on “unprecedented demand.”

    But now it’s bringing renewed attention to the combined market power of Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment. The New York Times reports the DOJ has opened an antitrust investigation.

    One way or another, the story isn’t over — you can keep up with the updates as they come in right here.

    The DOJ has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s owner

    Jay Peters
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Twitter’s now-former head of Trust and Safety predicts what’s next for its “custodians of the internet.”

    In this op-ed, Yoel Roth examines why he left Twitter last week (because all decisions now lie with one person, Elon Musk) and the hellish rules about content moderation Musk will have to navigate, whether made by regulators or the planned moderation council.

    But, as Roth explains, the most notable check on Elon’s “unilateral edict” and free speech platitudes may be Apple and Google:

    Twitter will have to balance its new owner’s goals against the practical realities of life on Apple and Google’s internet — no easy task for the employees who have chosen to remain. And as I departed the company, the calls from the app review teams had already begun

    Opinion | I Was the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. This Is What Could Become of It.

    [The New York Times]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now.

    How many people took their new boss’s offer and quit their jobs at Twitter last night?

    We don’t have a number to put on that, but Alex Heath has this email that was just sent from Elon Musk to Twitter’s software engineers.

    Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today.

    Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.

    Thanks,

    Elon

    The strangest part of all this is that just 18 hours ago, Twitter told employees that all office buildings will be closed until the 21st. But maybe they could really use the help.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Elon Musk’s long-term plan to make Twitter less dependent on advertising.

    For This Week in Elon, Liz Lopatto investigates what Elon Musk might actually envision for Twitter 2.0.

    If Musk can figure out a way to make inroads into the creator economy, that could maybe bring people to the platform in a way that’s cheaper than the $10 sign-up bonus he’s proposed.

    If there’s a way to keep the most fun, prolific Twitter users on the platform — either by paying them directly or by letting their fans pay them — I can imagine a world in which that creates a revenue stream that makes Twitter less dependent on advertising.

    Can Elon Musk turn Twitter into an ‘everything app’?

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Green light.

    Twitter survived the night, but we’re already in mourning for what it once was.

    Later today, Judge Edward Davila will announce sentencing for Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes, who faces up to 20 years in prison after being convicted of fraud. The hearing is scheduled to start at 1PM ET.

    You can keep track of that and all of today’s highlighted stories in our stream here.

    In other news:

    Mei is back, and auto aim is on in Overwatch 2.

    1Password is preparing for a zero-password future,

    Now you can DIY your Peloton.

    Ticketmaster isn’t selling Taylor Swift tickets today.

    FTX is a bigger mess than Enron, says the guy who has been in charge of cleaning up both Enron and FTX.

    A new Pixar trailer just dropped, meet Elemental.

    And now YouTube’s TV app has a new startup sound.

    Twitter’s living wake kicked off with Elon’s 5PM deadlineTwitter’s living wake kicked off with Elon’s 5PM deadline
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Green light.

    Surprise, things CAN get messier at FTX. We’re digging through the company’s latest filings (PDF 1 and 2) and... it’s not looking good.

    In other news (only some of which is Elon related):

    Sean Hollister explains why Nvidia and AMDs big new GPUs are going in the wrong direction.

    Blizzard’s licensing deal with NetEase in China is coming to an end, removing games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 from the country in January.

    The latest rumor about next year’s iPhone and USB-C suggests upgraded transfer speeds could be a Pro-only feature.

    Our final Homeland feature story examines problems with the way DHS became “an agency no one wanted and everyone is stuck with.”

    Elon Musk testified that he doesn’t want to be the CEO of Twitter forever.

    Amazon’s ongoing layoffs didn’t stop it from putting on a quick Steve Aoki concert.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    SBF is just going to tweet through it.

    Where is Sam Bankman-Fried? We know the 30-year-old former crypto boss “fucked up,” but where did FTX’s billions actually go?

    We don’t know the answers to those questions, but wherever he is, he’s still tweeting, letting us know that he thought unsolicited DMs sent to a Vox reporter would remain confidential under the legal principle of the frieNDA.

    (Feel free to keep track of the creeping crypto contagion in our feed right here.)

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