Down the street from the Los Angeles Angels’ stadium in Anaheim, a crowd gathers to watch two homes burn. In less than 30 minutes, one structure is reduced to its smoldering, blackened wood frame, while the other, thanks to simple changes to its design, is remarkably unscathed. Of course, this was the point of the … Read more
Anthropic has appointed Irina Ghose, a former Microsoft India managing director, to lead its India business as the U.S. AI startup prepares to open an office in Bengaluru. The move underscores how India is becoming a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand beyond the U.S. for major growth markets. Ghose brings deep big-tech … Read more
OpenAI and Microsoft tried to dodge a courtroom showdown with Elon Musk, but a federal judge on Thursday rejected their requests to dismiss the case.
This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Last month, Netflix made the surprising decision to kill off a key feature: With no prior warning, the company removed the ability to cast videos from its mobile apps to … Read more
Meta will also no longer sell its headsets and software as a service for businesses, another help page reads: “We are stopping sales of Meta Horizon managed services and commercial SKUs of Meta Quest, effective February 20, 2026.” Meta just laid off roughly 10 percent of its entire Reality Labs division, over 1,000 jobs. In … Read more
Newsrooms have been experimenting with AI for several years now but, for the most part, those efforts have been just that: experiments. A relatively unknown startup, Symbolic.ai, wants to change that, and it just signed a major deal with News Corp, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp, the major assets of which … Read more
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of X owner Elon Musk’s children, is suing his company for enabling its AI to virtually strip her down into a bikini without her consent. St. Clair is one of the many people over the past couple weeks who have found themselves undressed without permission by X’s AI … Read more
There’s a new name in charge of stewarding Star Wars at Lucasfilm. The studio just announced that Dave Filoni — best-known for his work on The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars — will be taking over as president. Former president Kathleen Kennedy, whose departure had been rumored for some time, will be stepping down and … Read more
Waiting for the midterms But pharmaceutical executives don’t appear comforted by the pushback. “Today it may be childhood vaccines or mRNA, but tomorrow it’s everything,” Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna, maker of mRNA vaccines, said. “We have to say not just ‘why is this happening?,’ but ‘Where will it stop?’” As a bad … Read more
Natural Cycles, the company behind a controversial FDA-cleared birth control app, is replacing its thermometer with a wristband that measures skin temperature, heart rate, and movement during sleep. The newly-launched wristband costs $129.99 and syncs with the Natural Cycles app, which uses an algorithm to determine a person’s “daily fertility status.” Users can already track … Read more