25 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Terrence O'Brien

Terrence O'Brien

Weekend Editor

Weekend Editor

    More From Terrence O'Brien

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Pro-Trump AI influencers are flooding social media.

    The New York Times has found hundreds of fake accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook that appear to be a pre-midterm push to get conservative voters to the polls in support of Trump’s agenda. The accounts often use the same captions and awkward phrasing.

    It’s not clear who created the A.I. accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult, experts said. They all agree, however, that creating such avatars is becoming easier, especially for contractors and marketing companies that now specialize in developing and dispatching A.I. avatars in bulk for increasingly low prices.

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Tonight’s Coachella schedule kicks off with Kacey Musgraves.

    Last week we got special guest, Jack White. This week it’s Musgraves who gets that honor, after releasing the title track from her upcoming album Middle of Nowhere, the second single after “Dry Spell.” This weekend’s livestream replaces the stage with Yuma. That means no Model / Actriz or Drain, but you do get Armin van Buuren and a solo Boys Noize set. Watch here.

    Coachella livestream schedule for April 18, 2026.
    Image: Coachella / Goldenvoice
    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Did YouTube killing music videos make Hollywood boring?

    YouTuber Patrick Willems has argued that movies look objectively worse than they did 25 years ago. Digital cameras and an overreliance on CGI are factors. But he also argues that YouTube killed off the music video-to-Hollywood pipeline, starving the industry of inventive visual stylists.

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Coachella week two kicks off tonight.

    The YouTube livestream starts at 4pm PT / 7pm ET. This is your chance to catch anything you missed last weekend (Tomora wasn’t on my radar), and for artists who had some issues to iron them out (sound for Slayyyter’s set was rough). Here’s the schedule for tonight:

    Coachella livestream schedule for Friday, April 17th.
    Image: Coachella / Goldenvoice
    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Google is reportedly in talks to let the Pentagon use Gemini in clasified settings.

    The company is apparently reversing course in its approach to military dealings. Google currently has a contract that allows the DOD to use Gemini for “all lawful purposes,” but only in unclassified settings. According to The Information:

    Google’s proposed contract language appears to mirror the terms OpenAI secured in an agreement it struck with the Pentagon over the use of its AI earlier this year… However, lawyers also said at the time that language in OpenAI’s contract that seemed to preclude the use of its AI for fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass domestic surveillance wouldn’t necessarily prevent those applications because OpenAI also agreed that its technology could be used for “all lawful purposes.”

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Spotify launches a new tablet-friendly UI.

    No more scaled-up mobile interface elements. The latest version of Spotify has a collapsible sidebar and specific portrait and landscape layouts on both iPads and Android tablets. There’s also the ability to browse in one pane, while a video or music keeps playing in the other.

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Someone made over $300,000 betting on Biden pardons.

    A Polymarket user with a curiously perfect track record made $316,346 betting on Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons, including the preemptive pardons of his brother Jim, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and Adam Kinzinger. It’s yet another example of potential insider trading on Polymarket. According to NPR:

    The trades linked to Biden’s pardons show that individuals could have been profiting from confidential government information before President Trump returned to office, when prescient bets related federal policy and military strikes on sites like Polymarket started to draw intense scrutiny.

    Terrence O'Brien
    Terrence O'Brien
    Glitch Boy turns your retro ROMs into video art.

    There are plenty of video synths that conjure pixels or warp video files. Glitch Boy loads playable NES ROMs and breaks them to create reactive art using audio or MIDI. It even has a built-in chiptune synth. Of course, the normal Kickstarter caveats apply.