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We’re throwing a p̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ funeral for Twitter.

If you’re in the New York area on Monday, April 1st, we’ll be celebrating author (and Verge alum) Zoë Schiffer’s new book Extremely Hardcore. Tickets come with a hardcover and a drink. Space is limited, so sign up fast.


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Youtube
Another look at WhatsApp’s third-party chat support — now in video form.

Thanks to the Digital Markets Act, Meta is gearing up to allow WhatsApp and Messenger to send and receive messages from other services. We’ve already seen screenshots of how the feature might look thanks to WABetaInfo, and now TheSpAndroid has gone one better with a video of the onboarding process, and also reports that WhatsApp could soon offer new AI-powered image editing tools; backdrop, restyle, and expand.


Meet Jonathan Kanter, the man heading the antitrust charge against Apple.

This New York Times article provides an overview of Kanter’s career in criticizing competition, from representing Microsoft’s offensive against Google during the Obama administration to leading the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

“In some ways, he’s still looking for that more prominent trophy to go on the mantelpiece,” said former FTC chair William Kovacic. “You win one of these monopolization cases, you can take the rest of the decade off.”


We need more easy to read transportation apps.

Maybe it’s because I relocated to New Jersey, but its increasingly clear that transportation apps and APIs in most of the US kind of suck. Apparently, New Jersey Transit has a gnarly one.

But thankfully the PATH, an inexpensive commuter rail that runs between New York and New Jersey, has a robust enough API to make up for its often buggy app. That’s meant one developer has built a very handy app and widget that gives you exactly what you need: an easy to read train schedule.


An image of a train schedule.
Screenshot by Alex Cranz/The Verge

Apple’s antitrust fight begins

On The Vergecast: the case against Apple as a monopoly, how super apps became part of an antitrust fight, and why your Apple Watch can’t hang on Android.

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Apple’s plans for AI in China could involve Baidu.

WSJ reports Apple’s held talks with Baidu to power AI technology for iPhones in China. That’s not surprising, given China’s strict rules for AI bots covering their output, data used for training, and storage of user data.

So instead of ChatGPT or Google Gemini (like Apple reportedly discussed using everywhere else), Samsung similarly partnered with Baidu to bring its AI chatbot Ernie to the Galaxy S24 in China earlier this year.


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“Photography itself is not really real.”

That’s according to portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, who offered her hot take in the “what is a photo” debate on Wednesday while discussing how generative AI may impact the industry.

“That doesn’t worry me at all,” she told AFP, likening AI image generation to Photoshop. “With each technological progress, there are hesitations and concerns. You just have to take the plunge and learn how to use it.”


NASA’s tiny BurstCube satellite is en route to the International Space Station.

BurstCube is aboard SpaceX’s Dragon resupply spacecraft, which launched on the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Thursday. After it arrives and is unpacked, the shoebox-sized CubeSat will be released into orbit, where it will locate and study gamma-ray bursts linked to the gravitational waves that were first detected in 2016.

You can see NASA’s simulation of the BurstCube below.


CG rendering of the BurstCube satellite in space.
BurstCube rendering.
Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab burstcube-nasa.gif 
Apple released new updates for iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, but what are they for?

Small point updates were released this afternoon for iPhones and iPads running three different operating systems (9.9, 16.7, and 17.4), as well as the Vision Pro headset (visionOS 1.1.1), but there’s very little information on what’s changed.

Apple hasn’t added the details of security fixes in the new software, and the only other note we’ve seen is this support page saying 17.4.1 fixes a QR code scanning bug on iPads.


iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1 Details coming soon  iOS 16.7.7 and iPadOS 16.7.7 Details coming soon  visionOS 1.1.1 Details coming soon
Apple security updates details
Image: Screenshot of Apple.com
Samsung will just give you a free TV with that new TV you actually want.

I'm at Samsung's "Unbox and Discover" event, where the company formally launches all the new TVs it announced back at CES — yes, including that anti-glare OLED.

To sweeten the pot this year, Samsung will throw in a free 65-inch TV with select 2024 TV preorders. It's the lower-end TU690T, so it's not going to blow anyone away. But... free is free.

And no, you don’t need to spring for an 8K model to get the freebie.


Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Reddit’s stock price nearly doubled in its first day as a public company.

It ended trading at roughly $50, which means the business is valued at about $9.5 billion. That’s quite a pop from the $34 that Reddit priced its shares at going into the IPO. As a result, everyone who bought in at that price— like Reddit power users — saw a nice gain today.


Reddit Begins Trading On New York Stock Exchange
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman watches as the company goes public.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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The Verge
Tennessee’s ELVIS Act becomes law.

Governor Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, which updates the state’s right of publicity laws that dictate how a person’s likeness can be used. The ELVIS Act expands the law to protect voice, too, in the age of AI clones.

In 2023 I wrote about the patchwork system of right of publicity laws in the US. Tennessee — with its significant entertainment industry — has some of the strongest laws in the country.


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Twitter
Kotaku’s editor-in-chief has resigned.

For more on why, Aftermath (a new gaming site started by several former Kotaku writers) has several enlightening quotes from Glennon's letter of resignation that was sent to G/O Media execs Lea Goldman and Jim Spanfeller.

I firmly believe that the decision to ‘invert’ Kotaku’s editorial strategy to deprioritize news in favor of guides is fundamentally misguided given the current infrastructure of the site... [This decision is] directly contradicted by months of traffic data, and shows an astonishing disregard for the livelihoods of the remaining writers and editors who work here


Proton’s password manager now supports passkeys.

After rolling out its end-to-end encrypted password manager last year, Proton has announced that it will now let you manage passkeys across mobile and desktop devices, allowing you to log into sites without a password.


Image: Proton
Why is the Department of Justice suing Apple?

For a fast and clear explanation, deputy editor Alex Cranz spells out the antitrust lawsuit filed today in just under five minutes.


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SpaceX is facing another NLRB complaint.

SpaceX already filed one lawsuit claiming the agency’s actions o (on a complaint about workers who say they were fired illegally for criticizing Elon Musk) are unconstitutional and now there’s this complaint issued Wednesday night.

SpaceX is accused of using severance agreements with ”unlawful confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses, and an unlawful limit on participation in other claims against SpaceX,” among other issues. The parties can either settle (seems unlikely), or there will be a hearing on October 29th.


The lock-in problem at the heart of the Apple monopoly lawsuit

Apple’s approach to smartwatches, green bubbles, and digital wallets makes up a huge part of the DOJ’s antitrust case.

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Reddit shares jumped as much as 70 percent in their NYSE debut before dropping back.

Reddit (RDDT) is officially open for trading. According to CNBC, Reddit and selling shareholders raised about $750 million from the IPO.

With its current share price of $48, the 19-year-old website now has a market cap of $7.6 billion as it pursues business growth via “advertising, monetizing commerce on the platform, and licensing data.”


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GeForce Now is down around the world, for the second time this month.

GeForce NOW is currently experiencing a global outage. We are working on a fix to bring back the service as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience!

The first global outage this month was on Sunday, March 10th. This one’s on a Thursday, the day Nvidia adds new games; today it’s Alone in the Dark and Dragon’s Dogma 2. GFN has been down at least 50 minutes so far.

Update: At 2:28PM ET, Nvidia posted that “A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.”


How Apple’s war on super apps became the center of its antitrust fight

The Department of Justice claims Apple stifled the development of super apps because they would disrupt its “monopoly power.”

Five takeaways from the huge US antitrust lawsuit against Apple

The US government says Apple has gone too far in trying to preserve the iPhone’s sales momentum — with consumers and developers both paying the price.