That was said by our EIC Nilay Patel on an episode of the podcast Decoder last year about decentralized autonomous organizations.

Now, a lawsuit won by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against something called Ooki DAO establishes that these crypto-era decentralized finance (DeFi) orgs can be held liable for breaking the law.

CFTC Division of Enforcement Director Ian McGinley:

The founders created the Ooki DAO with an evasive purpose, and with the explicit goal of operating an illegal trading platform without legal accountability.

This decision should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who believes they can circumvent the law by adopting a DAO structure, intending to insulate themselves from law enforcement and ultimately putting the public at risk.

The Reddit co-founder posted what sure reads like a subtweet just a few hours after fellow co-founder and current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrapped up his poorly-received AMA. Harsh.

AT&T is moving to Google’s Jibe platform, which will mean that AT&T users “will get the latest RCS features instantly,” according to Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer. 9to5Google reports that AT&T’s previous backend would occasionally run into errors, so hopefully the change to Jibe is an improvement.

More than 800 million people have access to RCS, but iPhones still don’t.

A few subreddits, like r/TIHI and r/polls, went private on Friday ahead of the mass platform protest that’s set to start on Monday. A mod for r/polls cited CEO Steve Huffman’s AMA as the reason for going dark early.

Thousands of subreddits are expected to participate in the protest — the latest count I’ve seen is 3,589.

In Apple’s WWDC Platforms State of the Union video, the headset is shown on a table with what looks like a USB-C dongle, as pointed out by MacRumors. It could be a way to connect the headset to a Mac for development, a more convenient power connection than the battery pack, or maybe some kind of Apple-only diagnostic tool.

Whatever it is, it looks like no Apple product can escape #donglelife.

I can’t see anything in Reddit’s AMA with CEO Steve Huffman about the API changes to indicate that it’s over, but Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells me that it’s done. Based on Reddit’s stickied comment, Huffman answered 14 questions, while a few other admins jumped in with seven replies. As of this writing, the AMA had more than 16,000 comments.

My kids don’t know what an Amiibo is. They do know that I have a little orange-and-white box that can pretend to be “meebos” and unlock costumes in Mario Odyssey and Yoshi’s Crafted Word. (It’s also helped me a bunch in Tears of the Kingdom.)

There are many cheaper ways to emulate Amiibos. This is a gross underutilization of the Flipper Zero. Sure is fun, though.

If you didn’t catch the recent podcast bonus episode pitting the Vergecast crew against Waveform in a round of tech trivia, it’s a great Friday afternoon listen.

There’s a segment about G Fuel gamer energy drink flavors that had me in stitches. It also reminded me I have a stash of the stuff from, like, I think PAX East 2017? Why not finally try it?

Salut! 🥂

“Yes, hello? Poison control?”

In this week’s Command Line newsletter, I have my notes from being on the ground at Apple’s WWDC for the Vision Pro unveiling, including more about what my demo experience was like.

Moments after Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, I found myself standing outside of the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, facing a circle of Vision Pro headsets on stands for the media to photograph. Moody, instrumental music played as people scrambled to get a glimpse of the company’s first major new product in years.

After a while, the throng started to subside, and I noticed a few of Apple’s top execs trickling into the room, including VP of design Alan Dye, Dan Riccio, and Mike Rockwell, the leader of the headset project from the very beginning. A gaggle of Apple PR and security guards started to quietly make space around some of the headsets next to me while photographers got into position. Tim Cook was about to come out and pose for the cameras...

Subscribe at the link below to get the full issue in your inbox.

Apple laptop sales may be down, but while updating our guide to the best MacBook deals, I noticed all MacBooks and Mac Minis are currently selling at an all-time low.

How low? The M1 Air is $200 off. The 13-inch M2 Air is $999. The 14-inch Pro is $250 off. Even preordering the new 15-inch Air saves you $50.

Apparently, what’s bad for Apple is good for our wallets.

Kaytranada did make a few stops in between, with Grammy wins and Grammy losses (to Beyoncé), his 2016 debut album 99.9%, and the Wiz-inspired Coachella show a few weeks ago.

But before he was a magazine cover story, most of us found out about “Kaytradamus” from his SoundCloud remixes.

He’s set to discuss the API changes that have infuriated Redditors and led multiple developers to announce app shutdowns.

If you have wanted to ask Huffman some questions about this, now’s your chance.

Netflix’s animated King Kong spinoff, Skull Island, premieres later this month — and now we have a brand-new trailer. As expected, it’s full of huge beasts like a squids, crabs, and a big ol’ dog. And, of course, there’s Kong himself. The series starts streaming on June 22nd.

Did you know: Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are surfing and painting still lifes? Also, apparently Davies is thinking about AI. If you are curious about what Davies and Zhu are up to now, the answer is: having a nice time.

If you are more interested in the details of the Three Arrows Capital business and bankruptcy, you might check out a YouTuber instead: Hugh Hendry, whose interviews of Davies get into the guts of the firm.

The legendary webcomic is now an emote in Fortnite. It’s only available through the new season’s battle pass, so if you want it, you’ll have to buy the pass and level up or purchase levels before the season ends near the end of August.

(KC Green, the creator of the comic, was paid for Epic’s use of the emote.)

Apple’s Vision Pro isn’t coming until 2024, but you can grab new headset-themed gear from The Verge right now! Plus, you can use promo code: VISION to take 10% off 8-Bit Getaway products. Shop Now on The Verge store

The mesh Wi-Fi network that kept residents online during Hurricane Sandy more than a decade ago helped New York City residents face another disaster this week. Thanks to the network, a pollution monitor at an urban farm in Red Hook, BK can add the data it gathers to a national air quality map. That helped residents see how polluted the air was outside as wildfire smoke choked the city this week.

Bloomberg has done an amazing deep dive into the racial and gender biases in popular AI image generator Stable Diffusion.

Sadly, the results are exactly what you’d expect: generated images of people in higher-paying jobs are disproportionately white and male. And this pattern doesn’t just reflect social biases but amplifies it, as the graphic below shows.

Check out the full story here.

It’s the mid-2000’s again, apparently, because widgets are back and everybody’s bumping their phones to share contact information. So we spent the show debating which of Apple’s new-old ideas might stick around this time — plus where the new set of crypto scandals might lead the industry.

Privacy advocates balked at the initial rollout in 2011, causing Google to halt image collection, which will now be refreshed for the first time starting June 22nd. The German government is involved this time to ensure sufficient use of the blur brush.