13 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Why Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is the internet’s unlikely defender

What free speech, war zones, and Aristotle have to do with internet infrastructure.

Nilay Patel
AI is taking over your web browserAI is taking over your web browser
David Pierce
How to mix politics with your ThreadsHow to mix politics with your Threads
Barbara Krasnoff
Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar explains why an email company makes sense for Intuit

Intuit purchased Mailchimp in 2021, and less than a year later, co-founder Ben Chestnut was out. Here’s how new CEO Rania Succar is moving forward.

Nilay Patel
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Dan Lynch, early internet pioneer, is dead at 82.

The New York Times reports that he died at his St. Helena, California home on Saturday.

Lynch held two management positions at pre-internet ARPANET nodes before later starting workshops to demonstrate the power of the internet for business. From the Times, on his early workshops that became Interop, once a massive computer exhibition:

Mr. Lynch required the attendees to adhere to TCP/IP, a language spoken by computers connected to the internet that was quickly becoming the industry standard.

... Within a decade, it had become one of the world’s largest computer exhibitions, helping to create a global community of specialists capable of supporting a networking standard that made it possible for all the world’s computers to share data. One computer industry analyst called it “the plumbing exhibition for the information age.”

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Here’s one for all the iconheads out there.

I’m not sure if this great collection hosted by product engineer Alex Meub is all of the Windows 98 icons, but it sure has all the ones I remember.

Each one is downloadable, too. Might as well use them to replace your Windows or Mac icons. Or, if you’re a real sicko, you could swap them on Android or iOS.

A GIF of scrolling Meub’s icon collection.
Time to make your icons good again.
GIF: Wes Davis / The Verge
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Google Chat now lets you subject coworkers to your celebrity impressions.

Google is rolling out voice messages for enterprise Workspace users. To send one, tap the microphone button to record yourself. Others can react to your message, quote it, or reply to it.

Only the Android / iOS Google Chat apps support voice recordings right now, but web users can receive them, and will get recording later.

A GIF showing Google Chat voice messages.
[Ron Swanson voice] “Veganism is the sad result of a morally corrupt mind.”
Image: Google
Here’s why AI search engines really can’t kill Google

The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them.

David Pierce
Federation is the future of social media, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber

The head of Threads and Mastodon competitor Bluesky on why she thinks decentralization is the way forward in a post-Twitter internet.

Nilay Patel
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
D2, but not The Mighty Ducks.

I spent a little bit today fiddling with this playground for open-source diagram scripting language D2 (not to be confused with the system programming language D, Dreamcast survival horror game D2, or data visualization library D3).

It’s not a programming game like, say, Swift Playgrounds, but it offers some of the same easy satisfaction of entering text and seeing an immediate result.

D2 Playground

[D2 Playground]

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Google is starting to roll out AI answers in search results — even if you haven’t opted-in.

this is an experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the U.S.,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

Last year, we wrote about the AI takeover of Google Search and how Google wants you to forget the 10 blue links — but back then, it was opt-in. Just this week, Google’s head of AI search became the company’s head of search, period.

Why Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about AI and the future of design

The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW.

Nilay Patel
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Google Drive on the web goes to the dark (mode) side.

You may find that your Google Drive account has Dark mode on the web now — I have it on just one of mine, so far.

If Google has blessed you with the update, you’ll get a “New! Dark mode” prompt at login. After, the option lives under the gear icon > Settings > General > Appearance. Check the gallery below for more.

A screenshot of the Google Drive Dark mode notification.
A screenshot of Google Drive in Dark mode.
Screenshot of the new “Appearance” options for light and dark mode.
1/3
Be careful when you Drive in the dark.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Would you like to play a game?

Screenshots posted by App researcher Nima Owji show that LinkedIn is testing games, with companies ranked on how well their employees do. TechCrunch published some official screenshots supplied by LinkedIn, which confirmed the games.

Pour one out for the first team that gets berated by their boss over their company’s Crossclimb score.

Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
Bad news for Cohost.

The Twitter/X alternative’s latest financial update is dire: it may run out of money in April after losing contact with a single person who’s provided its funding so far. While the operators lay out backup plans like crowdfunding, the site’s future seems uncertain to say the least.

March 2024 Financial Update

[cohost dot org on cohost]

David Pierce
David Pierce
Google seems to be aggressively de-listing spammy search results.

Search VP Pandu Nayak told me the other day Google is dead serious about enforcing its policies against content designed to game search results. Looks like that’s already happening:

Many SEOs and site owners are saying their sites are no longer showing in the Google Search index, even for a site command, after receiving the manual actions.

Google helped make the web a mess. Now it has to fix it.

Jon Porter
Jon Porter
Major porn sites aren’t taking the EU’s new moderation rules lying down.

Pornhub and Xvideos, two porn sites designated as “very large online platforms” last December, are challenging their Digital Services Act obligations, Politico reports. Pornhub isn’t happy about its VLOP status, and it and Xvideos are asking for a pause on rules requiring them to publish a library of the ads on their services. The DSA is focused on content moderation, and fighting illegal and harmful content.