TL;DR | The Verge

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want

2026-04-20T16:19:49-04:00

The long-term risks of the All-In Podcast, illustrated. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Turbosquid, Getty Images

One of the most mortifying things about knowing a lot of techies is listening to them tell me excitedly about some very important discovery that they believe they have made. Recently, I ran into an acquaintance of mine, who began talking my ear off about an amazing discovery he'd made with LLMs. Knowledge, it turns out, is structured into language! You could put one word into ChatGPT and it might understand what you wanted, or make up a word and see if it understood what you meant! These amazing new tools have revealed that the English corpus contains so much about its speakers!

He concluded that LLMs are a discovery on par with writing.

…

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April Fools’ Day 2026: the best and cringiest pranks

2026-04-01T21:03:19-04:00

Welcome to the worst day on the internet! As Chaim Gartenberg pointed out years ago, brands and a holiday dedicated to hoaxes are rarely a winning combo. If you’re a company with any kind of social media, internet, or AI chatbot presence in 2026, you really, truly only have four options on April Fools’ Day:

Don’t do an April Fools’ joke. Put the time and energy into doing something productive that will materially benefit the world (or, less idealistically, your business) instead. Or just don’t do anything. Abstaining entirely would still be a net positive over the drain of resources and mental energy.
Do an April Fools’ “joke,” but actually follow through on your stunt. This is arguably not a prank since you’ve actually created a video game skin or a real product that people can buy — but it doesn’t really hurt anyone.
Do an April Fools’ joke, but be extremely clear from the start that this is a dumb joke and you have no intention of doing the thing that you are “humorously” pretending to do. Does this defeat the purpose of doing an April Fools’ joke because you’re not “fooling” anyone anymore? Absolutely. (Please see my first two points.)
Lie to your customers, successfully tricking them into believing you are making some product, rebranding, or service you are not. By doing so, you will almost certainly annoy everyone once your deceit is made plain for the extremely small gain of pointless PR. The aphorism goes that there is no such thing as bad publicity; the seemingly endless line of companies willing to make fools out of themselves has proven this false time and time again.

So far, we’ve seen some socks that even you can’t lose, Snapchat “Reals” took a shot at Instagram’s Xerox machine approach to product development, and the monitor accessory cats want the most.

If you see anything that particularly sticks out for good, bad, or just unusual reasons, send it to us.

Marc Andreessen is a philosophical zombie

2026-03-19T16:07:54-04:00

What inner life? | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

I admit, this is an innovation I did not see coming: Silicon Valley has invented the philosophical zombie from the classic thought experiment "lol how crazy would it be if there were a philosophical zombie."

Until recently, the philosophical zombie was a concept closely associated with Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who defines it as "someone or something physically identical to me (or to any other conscious being), but lacking conscious experiences altogether." Chalmers' zombie twin is identical to him functionally and psychologically - except that he feels nothing. This is different from a Hollywood zombie, which has "little capac …

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Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

2025-09-22T20:10:47-04:00

Like many backpackers, I'm a sicko. I have weighed all my gear in order to maintain a spreadsheet for pack weight on every trip I'm on. I've spent more money than I care to think about in order to drop pounds, or even ounces. This is why I'm the proud new owner of a power bank that looks like a toy.

It's the Haribo-licensed gummy bear power bank. It's the lightest-ever 20,000mAH power bank, it's got a gummy-bear themed built-in USB-C cord, and it's taking over the ultralight backpacking world. The specs say it weighs 9.9 ounces - and in a world where ounces count, that's a big deal.

Ultralight culture seems a little nuts to the uninitiated …

Read the full story at The Verge.

April Fools’ Day 2025: the best and cringiest pranks

2025-04-03T11:53:03-04:00

Welcome to the worst day on the internet! As Chaim Gartenberg pointed out years ago, brands and a holiday dedicated to hoaxes are rarely a winning combo. If you’re a company with any kind of social media presence in 2025, you really, truly only have four options on April Fools’ Day:

Don’t do an April Fools’ joke. Put the time and energy into doing something productive that will materially benefit the world (or, less idealistically, your business) instead. Or just don’t do anything. Abstaining entirely would still be a net positive over the drain of resources and mental energy.
Do an April Fools’ “joke,” but actually follow through on your stunt. This is arguably not a prank since you’ve actually created a video game skin or a real product that people can buy — but it doesn’t really hurt anyone.
Do an April Fools’ joke, but be extremely clear from the start that this is a dumb joke and you have no intention of doing the thing that you are “humorously” pretending to do. Does this defeat the purpose of doing an April Fools’ joke because you’re not “fooling” anyone anymore? Absolutely. (Please see my first two points.)
Lie to your customers, successfully tricking them into believing you are making some product, rebranding, or service you are not. By doing so, you will almost certainly annoy everyone once your deceit is made plain for the extremely small gain of pointless PR. The aphorism goes that there is no such thing as bad publicity; the seemingly endless line of companies willing to make fools out of themselves has proven this false time and time again.

So far, we’ve seen a couple of dating sim spinoffs, Razer’s translation headset, and a few other things, but we’ll keep the list updated here.

If you see anything that particularly sticks out for good, bad, or just unusual reasons, send it to us.

Is Sleep’s Dopesmoker still the heaviest album of all time?

2025-01-01T08:00:00-05:00

A sojourn though the heaviest music I could find | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Tee Pee Records

Sleep's Dopesmoker is legendarily heavy. On any halfway decent sound system, it'll rattle your ribcage. It's sort of like being slowly assaulted by a massage chair. In 2015, Guitar World named it the heaviest album ever recorded. "You will definitely not find anything heavier," wrote Ethan Varian.

On November 6th, for no reason in particular, I was in the right mood to accept that challenge.

I wanted a riff that would flatten me. I listened to 26 extremely heavy albums, recommended by friends and strangers. Four challengers made it to a semi-final round, where I listened to them back-to-back followed by Dopesmoker. One album was so heavy I …

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I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice

2024-11-25T17:05:17-05:00

A gadget with no subscription fee and no terms of service.

Nilay's main love language is trolling, and so he sent me this video of Sam Altman talking about note-taking, because he knew it would annoy me.

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A post shared by FORTUNE (@fortunemag)

Now I recognize there is a school of thought which will say something like "Whatever it is that will get you to successfully take notes is correct." This is true if you are some kind of loser who doesn't care about pens and paper, in which case, vaya con dios I guess.

Let's start with what Altman is doing right: physically writing stuff down. I love my colleague David Pierce, but he is hideously wrong about basi …

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You must watch this amazing presentation about a bespoke McDonald’s mural

2024-10-11T14:44:03-04:00

I know there's a lot to do on the internet, but you really should stop what you're doing and watch this 19-minute talk about a bespoke mural that once lived inside a McDonald's.

The talk, given by Cabel Sasser of Panic at XOXO Fest 2024, was filled with silliness and deep dives down unexpected rabbit holes. (I'd expect nothing less from the founder of Panic, the company behind whimsical things like the Playdate handheld and Untitled Goose Game.) Much of the presentation is about the little-known artist behind the mural, the late Wes Cook, who also made some incredible designs that exist in real theme parks. It's fascinating to learn so much …

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Suggestions for how the stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts can entertain themselves

2024-08-15T13:27:00-04:00

Probably you have already heard that astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams may not be able to leave on the Boeing Starliner that brought them to the International Space Station. I have been thinking about it in quiet moments - when I wake up in the morning, on hikes, in the shower.

Those guys popped up there on June 5th, and they were supposed to spend a week on the ISS doing normal astronaut stuff and then go home. But apparently the Boeing Starliner was made about as well as the Boeing 737 Max, and so the astronauts have been on an unplanned vacation in orbit. They might be up there until next February - NASA hasn't made a …

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Weather advisory: unusually strong Meltdown May incoming

2024-05-06T12:38:06-04:00

Be safe out there! | Photo by Carmen Mandato / Getty Images

I don't know what the explanation is - warm weather? too many histamines? too much Benadryl? - but we have once again entered Meltdown May, a season in which vulnerable specimens go absolutely wild on social media. We are not even a full week in, and folks, this one looks like a doozy. The Kendrick Lamar / Drake feud escalation alone is a formidable front that threatens to envelop much of the music industry.

But even if you don't command the follower count of an extraordinarily popular rapper, knowing how to prepare for Meltdown May is the best way to avoid its dangers: becoming the main character of Online.

Warning signs of an incoming me …

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