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Much ado about protein

Boy kibble, proteinmaxxing, protein washing. The wellness Wild West’s obsession with one macro is getting out of hand.

Victoria Song

Today’s Storystream

Feed refreshed 6 minutes ago

Saw that coming

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
‘Unnecessary’ Copilot buttons are being removed from Windows 11.

The Copilot buttons in Windows 11 have been getting out of control, and Microsoft is now starting to walk some of them back. It’s all part of the sweeping changes coming to Windows 11 to improve performance, reliability, and user experience. Microsoft says it’s “reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.”

Lina Khan was right

Khan’s FTC tried to expand the scope of antitrust law. Meta’s floundering VR ambitions shows why that mattered.

Victoria Song
Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Chuck Norris has died, but the memes will live forever.

In 2006, “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” got him to read some “Chuck Norris Facts” on air. His fav: “They wanted to put Chuck Norris’ face on Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t hard enough for his beard.”

For his 86th and final birthday, he contributed a Chuck Norris Fact himself: “I don’t age. I level up,” he said.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
State Department staffers found “no evidence” of censorship by the EU under the Digital Services Act.

As reported in a big piece by The Washington Post:

“There is no evidence that Member States of the European Union are overreaching the DSA to censor and criminalize online content,” they wrote in conclusion.

T.C. Sottek
T.C. Sottek
I just lost to a chess robot 27,000 feet above ground.

Jason Kottke led me to this video about the Delta Airlines seatback chess game kicking everyone’s butt — even on easy mode. It just so happens I am posting this from a Delta flight and can confirm this in-flight chess opponent is still serious business, only falling short when I pitted it against Chess.com’s most advanced bot.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Watch out for sloppy writing.

WordPress.com now allows AI agents like Claude and ChatGPT to draft and publish blog posts via MCP, as reported by TechCrunch. Any AI agent-written posts will start as drafts, so users will be able to check them before publishing.

Nvidia has lost the plot with gamers

Nvidia wanted its cake immediately.

Sean Hollister
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Kalshi barred from Nevada for at least 14 days.

A Nevada judge has issued a temporary restraining order, saying the company can’t operate without first getting a gaming license. This is an escalation of a turf war between the states and the CFTC over who regulates prediction markets.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Marty Supreme will stream on HBO Max starting April 24th.

Been meaning to catch the film, maybe I will once it’s available to stream. My colleague Kevin Nguyen reviewed it last year.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Two Google Messages updates:
  1. Google is replacing the delete action with a Trash folder, where deleted messages will live for 30 days before being permanently removed.
  2. In Google Messages RCS group chats, you can now use the @ sign to mention somebody so they get a notification.
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 will support AirDrop.

Choi Won-joon, COO of Samsung’s Mobile eXperience Business, made the announcement at a press conference in Japan, according to Korean publication EBN.

Android support for AirDrop has so far been limited to Pixel 10 devices, but Google said in February that it would come to more Android phones “very soon.”

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
The Pope’s AI advisor has called Peter Thiel a heretic.

And the headline of the essay in which this happens asks if he should be burned at the stake. Father Paolo Benanti, the Papal AI advisor, doesn’t seem too pleased about Thiel’s Antichrist lectures, which Thiel has brazenly brought to Rome. “La Silicon Valley s’était lancée dans un coup d’État permanent.” I don’t think you need to know French to get the gist of that. one, but linked below is a summary of the essay. Make auto-da-fe great again??

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Bari Weiss is laying off another 6% of CBS News employees.

Though CBS News’ ratings have already plummeted in the wake of Bari Weiss’ big-brained plan to remake the division in her own image, she’s sticking to her guns and sending out pink slips to dozens of now-unemployed staffers.

Amazon is making an Alexa phoneAmazon is making an Alexa phone
Stevie Bonifield
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Apple’s Family Sharing will soon let each member use their own payment method.

Currently, up to six family members or friends can share access to Apple services, apps, and subscriptions, but all purchases go through the family organizer’s payment method. When iOS 26.4 is released, Apple will let adult members of a Family Sharing group make purchases using their own payment methods, as spotted by MacRumors.

A screenshot of Apple’s Purchase Sharing settings on the iPhone.
Photo by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
The good old days.

There are some complex pros and cons to Google’s new “advanced flow” for sideloading unverified Android apps, which may well protect some users from scammers. But it would sure be nice if I could just install the apps I want on the computer I own.

orion_resident:

Remember when you didn’t need special permission to install software on your own computer? Those were the days.

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Google Messages gets live location sharing.

Just open a conversation, tap Attachment, and then Real-time location. You can let friends and family know where you are for specific durations or until you disable the feature. It comes almost a decade after WhatsApp, iMessage, and Facebook Messenger introduced live location sharing, but better late than never, right?

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
The folly of abandoning renewables.

As energy prices soar, Trump’s systemic pivot away from solar and wind in favor of big-beautiful fossil fuels is looking dumber than Brendan Carr. Spain invested heavily in renewables and France went nuclear to reduce its dependence on dinojuice. Both are expected to weather the latest energy crisis better than more oil-dependent neighbors, with Europe as a whole fairing better overall thanks to continued investment in solar panels and wind turbines.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Jeff Bezos wants his orbital data centers.

Blue Origin is seeking permission from the FCC to deploy nearly 52,000 solar-powered satellites into space that will handle artificial-intelligence computing, following similar applications from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and start-up Starcloud. The aim is to bolster terrestrial data centers, but experts are skeptical.

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Intel’s Big Battlemage GPU is imminent — but not for gamers.

A VideoCardz leak has the Arc Pro B70, with 32 Xe2 graphics cores, 32GB of RAM and a 230W TDP, launching next week alongside a B65 with 20 Xe2 cores. It’s not clear if we’ll ever get the B770 gaming variant; Intel deleted a tweet about it in December.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Meta says its AI moderation systems will replace contractors over the next few years.

Last year, content moderators who’ve risked consequences like PTSD working for Big Tech companies have started to organize for better treatment in the last several years. Now, Meta has announced a wide rollout of its AI support assistant for Facebook and Instagram, and that it will “reduce our reliance on third-party vendors” employing humans for content enforcement.

While we’ll still have people who review content, these systems will be able to take on work that’s better-suited to technology, like repetitive reviews of graphic content or areas where adversarial actors are constantly changing their tactics, such as with illicit drugs sales or scams.

Victoria Song
Victoria Song
Strava hates to see Le Monde coming.

This time, the French newspaper found the location of an aircraft carrier because a sailor jogging on deck was recording their run on Strava. This isn’t even the first time. In 2024, Le Monde also found President Emmanuel Macron’s bodyguards also leaked his location by tracking workouts on the platform.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Signal’s creator is working with Meta on encrypting its AI.

In a post on the website for his encrypted AI chatbot, Confer, Moxie Marlinspike says he’s working to “integrate Confer’s privacy technology so that it underpins Meta AI.”

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Microsoft launched a second-generation version of its AI image model.

According to Microsoft, MAI-Image-2 offers improvements like “enhanced photorealism” and more reliable text generation in images. It’s rolling out now in Copilot and the Bing Image Creator.

A series of images made by Microsoft’s MAI-Image-2 AI image model.
Image: Microsoft
Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
The tragedy of the cookie banner.

A modest proposal from law professor Kate Klonick: acknowledge the failure of the ubiquitous “accept cookies” screen and abolish it posthaste:

Government can point to the highly visible cookie banner and declare its promise met in addressing data privacy issues. Industry, now that a compliance solution has been agreed on and normalized, prefers a known system with which they can easily comply and are unmotivated to push for a reform. While users, faced with endless click-throughs, learn not to assert their rights but to surrender them reflexively.

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