8
Verge Score
I should want this, but don’t.
Soon you’ll be able to play as The Office’s Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott in Fortnite when new skins of the characters debut in the game’s item shop. It’s one of Fortnite’s stranger collaborations, but it makes more sense when you consider how many people are still watching the show.
The Democratic state AGs think they’re the only officials standing up to Trump. They are probably right.
According to a post from earlier this month, you can set a form to stop taking responses after receiving a certain number of them or on a certain date and time. Previously, you had to close forms manually. Handy update!
But locals are organizing to keep each other safe from ICE agents.
Patent infringement lawsuits are heating up in the world of smart glasses, with Xreal suing Viture earlier this month and Meta being sued last year over the electromyography tech in the Neural Band used to control the Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Every time it gets really cold, the climate change deniers come out of the woodwork with their best “I am very intelligent” grins to sputter some version of “whither global warming?” Fortunately, The Verge’s senior science reporter Justine Calma knew to anticipate these inane inquiries in her story today about the approaching winter storm:
“People say, ‘Oh, well, it’s really cold or we’re getting a lot of snow — how is the world warming?’ Climate change is an increase in the baseline temperatures, but it’s also an increase in extremes from both ways,” says Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate at the nonprofit Climate Central. “It can make more extreme cold outcomes; it can make more extreme warm outcomes … judging climate change by a cold storm is like judging a baseball season by a single inning.”
The Nation interviewed Graham Granger, the student arrested for consuming part of an exhibit of AI-generated art — although apparently he didn’t eat everything he chewed up.
Do you have any qualms about the fact that AI art is made by scraping other artists?
Yeah, I mean, that’s part of why I spat it out, because AI chews up and spits out art made by other people.
President Trump has talked about dismantling FEMA as his administration slashes staff from federal agencies. But now, FEMA will “cease offboarding” workers, CNN reports. A major winter storm threatens to wreck power grids and make travel treacherous across much of the US over the weekend and into next week.
How Elon Musk and xAI are putting a nail in the coffin of content moderation.
The breach of Luxshare allegedly happened in December, though Cybernews reports that there is “no evidence” that “consumer iCloud accounts or user passwords were accessed.” The ransomware group RansomHub, which announced the breach, also claims that information from Nvidia, Tesla, and others is part of the stolen data.
Chrome 151, which Google tentatively plans to launch on July 28th, will be the first to require support for macOS 13 Ventura or later.
“Older versions of Chrome will continue to work, but there will be no further updates released for users on this operating system,” Google says.
[Google Chrome Help]
Musk has already donated $10 million to a super PAC supporting Nate Morris, who is running for the seat Mitch McConnell is leaving, and is “focused on” convincing voters who only vote when Trump is on the ballot to turn up for this year’s elections, The Wall Street Journal reports.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The next release from Blumhouse’s game division has an interesting twist: your character’s blood actually powers their weapons. The game is called Crisol: Theater of Idols, and it’s launching pretty soon, hitting PC, Xbox, and PlayStation on February 10th. (While you wait, check out another excellent Blumhouse title: Fear the Spotlight.)
The search for the contents of my mystery “GLP-3” vial leads further into the wellness wild west.
GM is ending production of its most affordable EV after the 2027 model year, replacing it with a gas-powered Buick. The decision came less than a year after the automaker rolled out a revamped version of the Bolt with better charging capabilities. Of course, this won’t be the first time that the automaker killed off the Bolt. But given the inhospitable environment around EVs these days, the Bolt’s days were likely numbered. GM has said its priority is profitable autos like the Buick that previously was built in China.
What better way to spend Sunday morning than with a fresh Super Mario Galaxy movie trailer. Nintendo is streaming its next Direct showcase for the sequel on January 25th at 9AM ET. Hopefully the talking flower will make an appearance. For a refresher, here’s the most recent look.
Some plurals are just more fun than others to say — this commenter gets it.
The Schpongler:
Must feel so good to use the plural “attorneys general” at a scale like this. It’s like “senators elect”, “notaries public”, or “Bigs Mac”.
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The withdrawal from the World Health Organization makes good on an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office. Per The New York Times:
The up-in-the-air status of the flu vaccine is just one of countless global health matters that are left hanging in the balance by the United States’ withdrawal. Global health experts are deeply concerned that if a novel bug similar to the coronavirus emerges, a lack of international coordination will lead to death and disaster.
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong’s arrest in connection to a Minnesota church protest against ICE, someone behind the White House account on X decided to post a version edited to make it look like she had been crying.
The war on reality continues.
During an earnings call on Thursday, Intel CFO David Zisner says the company was “relatively aggressive in terms of getting memory” ahead of the global shortage for its previous-gen Lunar Lake chips, which come with integrated RAM.
The company doesn’t have to worry about securing memory for its new Panther Lake laptop processors after Intel ditched the built-in memory design.
