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I re-created Google’s cute Gemini ad with my own kid’s stuffie, and I wish I hadn’t

AI can help you make it look like a plush toy is traveling the world. But I’m not convinced that’s a great idea.

Allison Johnson

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Hollywood slop

8 great games for your Steam Deck from 20258 great games for your Steam Deck from 2025
Entertainment
The Verge’s 2025 in review
Jay Peters
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Richard Lawler
JerryRigEverything bends the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold beyond its limits.

Samsung’s three-panel foldable phone won’t be officially available in the US until next year, but it’s already hit the YouTuber’s durability test table. Its thin frame (that’s different sizes across all three sections) doesn’t deal well with being bent the wrong way, even if Samsung’s hinge technology is pretty resilient, but... it didn’t explode.

Press play for a peek at the test results and a look at all three internal battery cells.

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Richard Lawler
Here’s a look at Nicolas Cage playing Madden.

John Madden, that is, filling the shoes of the legendary NFL coach and commentator, in David O. Russell’s upcoming biopic for Prime Video. There’s only the briefest still of a video game shown in this short teaser trailer, and a quick glimpse of John Mulaney as EA exec Trip Hawkins.

Madden is scheduled for release on Thanksgiving Day, 2026.

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Emma Roth
Hack drains $7 million in crypto from Binance’s Trust Wallet.

On Thursday, Trust Wallet announced a “security incident” affecting version 2.68 of its Chrome extension. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao confirmed that Trust Wallet “will cover” the losses and that the team is investigating the hack.

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Terrence O'Brien
A comedian snatched up Trump Kennedy Center domains months ago.

Most of us have been rolling our eyes at the (likely illegally) renamed The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. But Toby Morton, a comedian who has written for Mad TV and South Park, saw the move coming and snatched up trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com a while back. Morton told the Washington Post:

“As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, ‘Yep, that name’s going on the building.’”

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Emma Roth
Instagram wants to win over teens... but it might not understand them.

A report from The Washington Post reveals Meta’s recent push to attract more teens to Instagram, which reportedly involved setting up a “living museum” inside its offices “to help employees internalize the lifestyles of their teenage targets:”

In at least one case it featured photos of top teen hangout places — a fast-food restaurant and a mall — and instructions on how to take wacky, teen-style selfies, according to photos of the exhibit.

The 10 best shows to stream on Amazon Prime Video from 2025The 10 best shows to stream on Amazon Prime Video from 2025
Entertainment
The Verge’s 2025 in review
Emma Roth
Chipwrecked: Can Nvidia avoid the crash?

Nvidia has built an empire on circular deals for chips. Can anything knock it down?

Elizabeth Lopatto
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Richard Lawler
Tesla is still figuring out how to make the Cybertruck’s massive windshield wiper work.

According to Not A Tesla App, one owner shared a service message saying there’s an Engineering Investigation ongoing, and some service staff have said a third revision of the wiper is in testing.

The extra-long blade apparently has issues with improper stowage at high speeds, contact issues that leave the windshield dirty, and problems spraying wiper fluid, even after a software update. Also, Bloomberg reports NHTSA is expanding its investigation into passenger-trapping Tesla door handles to include Model 3 vehicles, along with the Model Y.

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Richard Lawler
Imran Ahmed obtains temporary restraining order against State Department sanctions.

The CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is suing Trump administration officials after they targeted him for deportation from the US because of his online content moderation work.

On Thursday morning, he announced that US District Judge Vernon Broderick granted a TRO and preliminary injunction blocking his arrest or detainment. A hearing has been scheduled for Monday.

Imran Ahmed TRO

[DocumentCloud]

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Richard Lawler
Imran Ahmed is suing Marco Rubio and other federal officials to fight their sanctions barring him from the US.

The Trump administration just sanctioned five people, including Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) founder Imran Ahmed, over their work in content moderation and anti-disinformation. On Wednesday he filed a lawsuit (pdf) to stop their “unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel him.”

Ahmed:

My life’s work is to protect children from the dangers of unregulated social media and AI and fight the spread of antisemitism online. That mission has pitted me against big tech executives – and Elon Musk in particular – multiple times. I am proud to call the United States my home. My wife and daughter are American, and instead of spending Christmas with them, I am fighting to prevent my unlawful deportation from my home country.

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Richard Lawler
Stranger Things fandom drama strikes one more time.

In an Elite Daily interview ahead of this week’s penultimate release, series star Gaten Matarazzo referenced the “Stonathan” pairing and said he liked the idea behind “Steddie” fanfics.

But saying the “Byler” shipping between Will and Mike, was “very funny. I see them as just very good friends,” seemingly went too far for some, with social media posts targeting the interviewer, and some even claiming it was a fake quote.

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Richard Lawler
DOJ explains an Epstein hoax to PopBase and claims it has a million unreleased files.

The feds have spent the last day or so replying to @PopBase on X and sloppily redacting documents. Now it’s claiming “The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice that they have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case,” which could take weeks to release.

The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time. The FBI made this conclusion based on the following facts: -The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s. -The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York.
Screenshot:DOJ (X)
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Richard Lawler
Nvidia pays a reported $20 billion for most of the AI chip startup Groq.

CNBC reports Nvidia isn’t buying all of Groq, which has inference AI tech that IBM’s CEO recently told us “looks like it’ll be 10x cheaper” than GPUs.

Nvidia’s getting a non-exclusive license, and members of the team, like Google TPU creator and Groq CEO Jonathan Ross, and former Autonomic CEO Sunny Madra.

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Richard Lawler
Waymo is working on a Google Gemini-powered in-car AI assistant.

In addition to an update for its power outage problem, Waymo is also working on an AI Ride Assistant. That’s according to security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who found details on the bot’s system prompt from Waymo’s mobile app code.

Details of the Waymo bot’s protocol for reassuring a rider who expresses anxiety, and a sample response reading “I understand it can feel different being driven this way. Please be assured that the Waymo Driver sees all around the vehicle and is designed to maintain a safe distance from everything it sees. Your safety is our absolute highest priority.”
The Waymo Ride Assistant’s “reassurance_protocol”
Screenshot: Jane Manchun Wong
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Richard Lawler
Nvidia tests of Intel’s 18A chip manufacturing process “stopped moving forward.”

In the spring, Reuters broke the news that Nvidia and Broadcom were testing Intel’s 18A process for chip production, but in a profile today of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the outlet now says Nvidia’s test has ended, regardless of their new $5 billion deal.

The report doesn’t say why, but in October, Intel CFO David Zinsner said 18A yields were “not where we need them to be to drive the appropriate level of margins,” and that it could be 2026 or 2027 before that changes.

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Richard Lawler
“...like e pluribus unum.”

Once you’ve watched the Pluribus (or, actually, Plur1bus?) season finale and read through Andrew Webster’s review, it’s time for Apple TV’s 20-minute behind-the-scenes video with Vince Gilligan & Co.

The best shows and movies to stream on Netflix in 2025The best shows and movies to stream on Netflix in 2025
Entertainment
The Verge’s 2025 in review
Ash Parrish
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Thomas Ricker
Apple’s foldable gets Prossered.

It’s unclear if Jon Prosser — Apple rumor monger and target of that Cupertino lawsuit — has his own sources, or is just regurgitating as fact reporting already done by the likes of Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo. Nevertheless, this video is a good summary of where rumors of the foldable iPhone have coalesced, less than a year before its supposed release.

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Richard Lawler
Waymo explains Saturday’s self-driving shutdown in San Francisco.

When a substation fire cut off electricity across the city, Waymo SUVs stuck at malfunctioning stoplights quickly became another headache, and now the company is explaining it as an issue of too many remote operator assistance requests:

While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.

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Richard Lawler
AT&T’s ‘wrapped’ says its network now averages an exabyte of data every day.

According to AT&T, the highest call day (through the beginning of December, because just like Spotify Wrapped, everyone’s data feed cuts off a bit early) was October 31st, and the most texts were sent on December 1st.

And as for how its data traffic compares to previous years:

Just ten years ago, we moved only 91 petabytes of data across our network each day. The leap to an exabyte marks an astonishing 1,000% increase over the past decade and more than 11,000% increase over the past 20 years

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Lauren Feiner
Another landlord agrees to steer clear of algorithmic rent price recommendations.

The Justice Department reached a proposed agreement with landlord LivCor to resolve claims that it illegally coordinated rent prices with other landlords using algorithmic recommendations from RealPage. The DOJ previously settled with RealPage, and two large landlords involved in the case.

These great digital gifts will arrive just in time for ChristmasThese great digital gifts will arrive just in time for Christmas
Gadgets
Gadgets
Cameron Faulkner and Sheena Vasani
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Richard Lawler
Former FTX US exec Brett Harrison raises $35 million for a “perpetual futures” exchange.

I don’t know what “AX, the financial industry’s first centralized exchange for perpetual futures on traditional asset classes,” is, but I do recognize Harrison.

He was once touting FTX Stocks, and later mentioned by the FDIC for statements about the insurance status of customers’ accounts that it considered “false and misleading,” before everything went boom.

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The Verge
Jay Peters
GeForce Now’s 100-hour cap for pretty much everyone comes into effect in January.

Active paid GeForce Now members who signed up before 2025 had been exempt, but starting January 1st, 2026, the cap is in place for them, too. Founders members will continue to have unlimited playtime, Nvidia says.

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