76 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
Skip to main content
The homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.
The homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.

Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Ring camera features are back online following AWS problemsRing camera features are back online following AWS problems
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    ‘Friend’ CEO spent most of the company’s money buying Friend.com.

    As David Pierce wrote about the Friend AI gadget and company CEO Avi Schiffman:

    He wants Friend.com to eventually become a social network for real-life and AI friends, and he wants to build more kinds of devices and try everything.

    Apparently, he’s serious. 404 Media reports he spent $1.8 million on the domain after raising about $2.5 million. Schiffman said, “People just don’t get consumer, I view this as saving money. Much less money needs to be spent on marketing, it’s a one time thing.”

    AI ‘Friend’ Company Spent $1.8 Million and Most of Its Funds on Domain Name

    [404 Media]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Apple’s new AI features will reportedly miss the iOS 18 launch and wait for iOS 18.1.

    Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg that “Apple Intelligence” features will be available for developers to beta test this week.

    However, he also says the first ones won’t be released publicly until weeks after Apple’s big September updates for iPhone / iPad / Mac, etc. Rollouts for others from its WWDC showcase, like upgraded Siri, could stretch into 2025.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The DOJ enters its defense of the TikTok ban-or-divest law.

    A month after TikTok made its First Amendment case against a potential ban, lawyers for the government responded Friday. The partially redacted filings (available in full here) include their arguments that the Chinese government could use data collected by the app or manipulate its algorithm to influence US elections.

    One example pointed to search tools for the company’s internal Lark messaging tool, shown below.

    At least as of 2022, Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including U.S. user data. f. (U) One of those tools allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion. 
    Screenshot: Document #01208647195, TikTok v. Merrick Garland
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Microsoft releases a technical dive into the CrowdStrike outage.

    Along with CrowdStrike’s post incident review, this has Microsoft telemetry data and some explanations (performance, tamper resistance) for the kernel driver architecture that crashed millions of Windows systems.

    Microsoft has called for locking down that access, and this post again brings up alternate options:

    ...security vendors can use minimal sensors that run in kernel mode for data collection and enforcement limiting exposure to availability issues. The remainder of the key product functionality includes managing updates, parsing content, and other operations can occur isolated within user mode where recoverability is possible.

    Windows Security best practices for integrating and managing security tools

    [Microsoft Security Blog]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    iFixit tears into Samsung’s latest foldables.

    This teardown of the new Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 has a similar feel to Allison’s Z Fold 6 review — things inside are mostly the same as the previous generation. There are bigger batteries and other tweaks, but the similar layouts show how Samsung is iterating on the existing design, so hopefully, you think it’s already good enough.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Canada suspends women’s soccer coach as the drone spying scandal widens.

    Canadian officials now say that in addition to the drone practice spying incident earlier this week, “additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.”

    Canada Soccer CEO & General Secretary Kevin Blue:

    In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend Women’s National Soccer Team Head Coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review.

    Olympic drone spying scandal lands Canadian coach a red card

    Andrew Liszewski
    Overwatch 2 opens the door to a return for 6v6Overwatch 2 opens the door to a return for 6v6
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Maybe the right size for the iPhone is Mini?

    The discussion about what Apple will do next with the fourth iPhone slot in its lineup had a lot of agreement in the comments section, except it wasn’t exactly in favor of the rumored “iPhone 17 Slim.”

    Whether it’s a Mini, a Mini Pro, or a Mini Thick with extra battery packed inside, the people have their eye on one iPhone format in particular.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    CrowdStrike sent $10 Uber Eats gift cards to ”teammates and partners” who helped fix the outage.

    As reported by TechCrunch and in some social media posts, even if it seems a little light for a global outage affecting millions of systems (and codes that in some cases, didn’t work). In a statement sent to The Verge, spokesperson Kevin Benacci said:

    CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients. We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates.

    Most Popular

    Most Popular
    1. Elon Musk’s worst enemy in court is Elon Musk
    2. Your PS5 can now transform into a Linux PC
    3. Meta lost 20 million users last quarter
    4. Microsoft is giving its Xbox employees an Xbox email address
    5. Motorola just revealed the Razr Fold’s price and hoo boy