For more than six decades, the Peace Corps has presented itself as an agency focused on helping underserved communities around the world. But a new initiative called “Tech Corps” threatens to destroy the agency’s original mission by hiring de facto Silicon Valley businessmen to promote the biggest names in AI — many of whom have … Read more
During his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump tried to quell Americans’ concerns about rising electricity costs by claiming he had negotiated a “rate-payer protection commitment” with big tech companies that would allow them to build or pay for new power generation for their data centers. Leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, … Read more
Discord is attempting to distance itself from age verification provider Persona after a steady stream of user backlash. In an emailed statement to The VergeDiscord’s head of product policy, Savannah Badalich, confirms that the company “conducted a limited test of Persona in the UK, where age-locking was previously in place, and that test has since … Read more
This is it Stepbacka weekly newsletter discussing one major story from the world of technology. For more on the dire state of technical regulations, follow Adi Robertson. Stepback will arrive in our subscribers’ mailboxes at 8:00 a.m. ET. Sign up for a subscription Stepback here. In 1973, long before the modern digital era, the US … Read more
Trump’s deregulatory order aims to facilitate rapid construction of new data centers and the fossil fuel infrastructure to power them “The Trump administration is gutting health protections that are important to protecting children from toxins like mercury just to save the coal industry some money,” Nicholas Morales, a lawyer for the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said … Read more
SerpApi, a company that offers web scraping tools, is fighting a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google that accuses it of vacuuming search results “on a staggering scale.” In a motion to dismiss filed Friday, SerpApi argues that Google does not copyright its search results, saying the engine is built “on the backs of others who … Read more
Where is Trump’s phone? We will talk about it every week. This week, we explain how the president’s phone company connects with the legacy company that actually runs the show. We’ve long known that Trump Mobile has been associated with Liberty Mobile, a carrier that for years has traded on liberty-themed branding to sell cheap … Read more
Here is a list of things you can bet on right now. This year’s Super Bowl winner, sure. Winner of Survivors season 49, ok. But how many presents will Santa deliver this year? Number of tweets Elon Musk will send in the next 7 days? How much money Avatar: Fire and Ashes will it do … Read more
Brian Boland spent over a decade figuring out how to build a system that would make Meta money. He told a California jury on Thursday that he was fueling the draw of more users, including teenagers, to Facebook and Instagram — despite the risks. Boland’s testimony came a day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took … Read more
West Virginia has filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of allowing the distribution and storage of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on iCloud. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey alleges that by abandoning CSAM’s detection system in favor of end-to-end encryption, iCloud has become “a secure seamless pathway … Read more