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Emma Roth

Emma Roth

News Writer

Emma Roth is a news writer at The Verge. Her interest in tech started with the Dell Dimension 4600 her dad ordered from QVC. When she isn't behind a keyboard, Emma enjoys playing video games, going on bike rides, and gardening.

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The Verge
Sam Bankman-Fried is about to find out how much prison time he’s facing.

The FTX founder is in court now, waiting to see whether Judge Kaplan hands the 40 to 50 years in prison prosecutors recommend — or if his decision is closer to the more lenient five- to six-year sentence that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are pushing for.


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Even LinkedIn is trying TikTok-like videos now.

LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing a short-form video feed housed within a new “video” tab on the app, which one user shows off here.

The Microsoft-owned platform is the latest to jump on the vertical video bandwagon, following Twitch, Reddit, Spotify, and even Netflix in experimenting with similar features.


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Amazon has poured $2.75 billion more into AI startup Anthropic.

This comes as part of Amazon’s deal to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, starting with an initial $1.25 billion last September. Anthropic is the AI company behind the Claude 32 family of models, which the company claims outperforms ChatGPT and Google Gemini.


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Disney and Florida’s land battle is over.

Both sides came to an agreement on Wednesday that would end a nearly two-year-long legal battle over the self-governed special district that DeSantis took over from Disney.

Disney agreed to recognize its last-minute rule change in the district in 2023 as “null and void.” The company also agreed to drop its public records lawsuit against the district.


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Visa and Mastercard agree to put a limit on credit card swipe fees.

The proposed settlement, which stems from a years-long legal battle, will require Visa and Mastercard to lower swipe fees for merchants by 0.04 percentage points for three years, while capping these rates into 2030.

Even though it may seem like the deal will lower fees for customers, that may not be the case for everyone. The settlement will allow retailers to charge more when customers use premium cards that offer cashback rewards and other perks, as these come with higher swipe fees.


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Court documents reveal how Facebook’s Onavo VPN tracked Snapchat data for “Project Ghostbusters.”

Facebook's “In App Panel” program ran from 2016 to 2019 using Onavo’s technology as a man-in-the-middle attack to decrypt secured Snapchat traffic. Court documents unsealed as part of an ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuit show how the program came together.

A June 2016 email included in the documents from Mark Zuckerberg says:

Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them. . . .

Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this.


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Cities: Skylines II adds support for mods.

Following last year’s rocky launch, Cities: Skylines: II has released a new patch that introduces a whole bunch of performance fixes, along with support for code modding and a map editor that publisher Paradox Interactive previewed last year. The modding feature is still in beta, and it uses Paradox’s own platform rather than the Steam Workshop.

There’s also a new paid Beach Properties assets pack that adds new building types, variants, and palm trees.