3 – 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: Yahoo’s Scroll Stopper stops doomscrolling.

    One way to reduce screen time? The Scrōll Stoppr by Yahoo. Who knows if it actually ships, but these are listed in the TikTok Shop at a price of $4.99 with free shipping for anyone who’s tried every other way to put their phone down.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    April Fools’ 2026: Connor Storrie’s big butt dialing problem.

    This four-minute Verizon short (there’s also a thirty second version if you can’t wait that long) starring Storrie and directed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) pays off their appearance at the Vanity Fair Oscar party by raising awareness about the Heated Rivalry star’s mobile phone struggles.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    April Fools’ 2026: Stream Deck Plus Lever.

    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?

    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.

    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.