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Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump says he wants service providers like Apple and Google to put TikTok back online in the US, and he proposed creating a joint venture where the US owns 50 percent of the app.I'm asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!" Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday. I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order." Screenshot: Truth Social Part of the motivation appears to be his own inauguration on Monday, which Trump says Americans deserve to see." He called the joint venture idea an initial thought" and said by doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions."Shortly after the ban took effect, Republican lawmakers poured cold water on the idea that Donald Trump will be able to halt the TikTok ban without a sale of the app when he resumes the presidency Monday. Trump had previously floated exercising a 90-day extension written into the law to lengthen the deadline for a sale and reportedly considered issuing an executive order.We will enforce the law," House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. When President Trump issued the Truth post and said, save TikTok,' the way we read that is that he's going to try to force along a true divestiture." Johnson added that the only way to extend that is if there's an actual deal in the works."Now that the law has taken effect, there's no legal basis for any kind of extension' of its effective date," Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) said in a statement. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law's qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China."With Trump's Republican allies in Congress casting doubt on the idea that a pause on the ban is viable without a bona fide deal that rids TikTok of its foreign adversary ownership, it's unlikely that service providers like Apple and Google will risk the billions in fines they could face should a court rule that Trump is wrong about his powers to halt the law.But creating a joint venture where the US owns 50 percent of a speech platform comes with its own potential First Amendment concerns. And Johnson's comments on Meet the Press about why lawmakers are concerned about the app to begin with further demonstrate that Congress did think about the content on the platform when deciding to pass the law - even though the Supreme Court didn't see that as reason to find it unconstitutional. They have been flooding the minds of American children with terrible messages glorifying violence and antisemitism and even suicide and eating disorders," Johnson says. It's a very dangerous thing. The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend, and we have to make sure this changes hands."

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Brandon Bell, Getty Images Tech leaders are set to have a big presence. On January 20th, Donald Trump is set to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States to serve his second term. Immediately after his victory, many tech leaders publicly congratulated Trump and started making moves to win his favor, including schmoozing with the incoming president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and making donations to his inauguration committee.Tech leaders should have a visible presence at Trump's inauguration, with Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Shou Zi Chew, Sundar Pichai, and Sam Altman all reported to be present. Musk is also scheduled to speak at a pre-inauguration rally, and Zuckerberg will reportedly host a black-tie event on Inauguration Day.We'll be covering the event and how tech leaders are a part of it.How to watch Donald Trump's inaugurationC-SPAN will be hosting a livestream on YouTube. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 7AM ET, and the swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 12PM ET. The inauguration will take place indoors at the United States Capitol Rotunda because of projected cold weather.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Gaussian splatting, a new way of capturing 3D content, is taking the AR / VR industry by storm - and could one day allow anyone to create photorealistic 3D worlds. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge With TikTok, CapCut, and Marvel Snap shut down in the US, Apple has taken the unusual step of articulating why it's following the law banning ByteDance apps and removing them from the App Stores for the Mac, iPhone, and other devices.Before the ban went into effect, the Biden administration released a statement saying enforcement of the law must fall to the next Administration." Still, it didn't stop the law from taking effect this weekend after TikTok's appeal to the Supreme Court failed.The support page from Apple says:

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images TikTok has gone dark in the US now that the ban-or-divest law passed last year is taking effect. The app has been removed from both Apple and Google's app stores, it's unavailable on the web, and users who open the app are blocked from viewing videos.The shutdown has the astonishing effect of removing a social network used by 170 million people in the US, according to TikTok's own numbers. While other social media platforms have experienced outages, even prolonged ones, no network as big as TikTok has simply shut down without any indication of if or when it will come back online.This is despite the Biden administration saying it's passing enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and calling TikTok's threat to go offline a stunt." TikTok has insisted that without clearer assurances, it has to close up shop in the US.Inside TikTok, a memo to employees said that, President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office" on January 20th and that teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible."A warning message started appearing in TikTok's app around 9PM ET on Saturday evening telling users of the pending shutdown:

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 9PM ET, the app began notifying people in the US with a message that said the ban will make our services temporarily unavailable."The message goes on to say that TikTok is working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible" - an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another. A similar message is showing up in the CapCut video editor, which is also owned by TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance.Inside TikTok, an internal memo viewed by The Verge calls the news disappointing" but tells employees that, President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office" on the 20th, and teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible." Shortly after the memo was shared with employees, both TikTok and Capcut started showing the same line about Trump to users.TikTok crashed into this outcome somewhat chaotically. It has known this was the deadline for being banned since Biden signed the bill in April, but the company never appeared to have a backup plan to save itself if the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional, which happened on Friday. At the same time, TikTok was promising advertisers it would sort things out as recently as last night.TikTok warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn't promise to delay enforcement of the law penalties on TikTok's service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok's threat to go offline a stunt."Trump - who tired to ban TikTok five years ago - has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th. It's not clear if he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending, or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok's users are decidedly upset, of course, although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they're pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.Update, January 18th: Noted that TikTok and CapCut app shutdowns have begun in the US.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikTok's threat to go dark" on Sunday, January 19th, a stunt," and that there is no reason for TikTok to shut itself down before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on the 20th.It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday," MSNBC quotes Jean-Pierre as saying. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them."The statement comes after TikTok threatened to go offline if the Biden administration doesn't offer reassurance that companies like Apple and Google won't be held liable for defying the ban, which the Supreme Court upheld on Friday. Meanwhile, TikTok CEO Shou Chew has appealed to Trump by saying the company is grateful" for his support of the platform.Trump said that a 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done" during an interview with Kristen Welker from NBC News. Other reporting suggests that the incoming President plans to issue an executive order to delay the ban.Given that the ban's deadline is before Trump is sworn in, it's not clear whether Trump can actually extend it. He can choose not to enforce the ban, just as Biden says he will, but that still leaves TikTok's US service providers, like Apple, Google, and Oracle, at legal risk.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram will now let you upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit the platform had in place before, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced today.He credits today's change to users' feedback saying that the 90 seconds is just too short." That's a big turnaround for Mosseri, who said in July last year that the platform wouldn't pursue longform videos because it could compromise the platform's core identity to connect people with friends."It also comes as TikTok, which started allowing 3-minute videos in 2021, is gearing up to go dark on Sunday in response to an imminent US ban.

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Donald Trump has launched a new meme coin, according to posts from his X and Truth Social accounts last night. The posts, which have come just days before Trump's inauguration, were initially met with suspicion by many that his accounts had been hacked.Skeptics highlighted by Decrypt last night pointed to several red flags, such as that the millions of dollars seeding the project came from Binance and Gate, which only serve overseas customers. The coin's website credits the project to the same group behind Trump's NFTs, as noted by Cointelegraph, which reports that sources close to Trump's family confirmed the announcements' legitimacy.Both posts remain up as of this morning. Screenshot: X Trump's official X account announced a new meme coin on Friday. The idea that Trump would debut a meme coin is no big surprise, given his multiple NFT collections and his introduction of a crypto platform last year. He has made cryptocurrency a big part of his new agenda and has assembled a crypto and AI-focused tech policy team led by crypto czar" David Sacks. Trump also plans to issue an executive order naming crypto a national imperative or priority" after he's inaugurated next week, Bloomberg reported ahead of the weekend.

The Google Pixel Watch 3, one of our favorite smartwatches for Android users, is $50 off for a limited time. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The clock is ticking if you want to save on the Pixel Watch 3, the Fitbit Charge 6, and other Google gadgets. The company kicked off the year with a solid New Year's sale, which is set to expire at 11:59PM PT today, January 18th. Other retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy, are currently matching Google's pricing in some instances, though we anticipate the matching promos will expire at the same time.On the smartwatch front, both the Pixel Watch 2 and the Pixel Watch 3 - the latter of which remains our favorite Fitbit" - are down to their second-best price to date. The Wi-Fi-enabled Pixel Watch 2 is available for $199.99 ($50 off) from Google, Best Buy, and Target, while the 41mm Pixel Watch 3 starts at $299.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store.Both wearables sport Google and Fitbit-powered features, including FDA-cleared EKGs, automatic workout tracking, and support for Google Assistant, Gmail, Calendar, and Wallet. However, the last-gen Pixel Watch 2 only comes in a single size - 41mm - while last year's Pixel 3 is also available in a larger 44mm configuration.The Pixel Watch 3 features a host of other welcome improvements, too, including offline Google Maps, slightly better battery life, AI-generated workout suggestions, and deeper integration with other Google devices. You can view a Nest Doorbell or Nest Cam feed with the Pixel Watch 3, for instance, or control your Google TV directly from your wrist - neither of which is possible on the Pixel Watch 2.Read our Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 reviews.If you prefer a cheap fitness tracker over a smartwatch, the Fitbit Charge 6 is also on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store for $129.95 ($30 off), which is about $30 more than its all-time low.Like its predecessor, the fitness band offers a wide range of sensors for keeping tabs on your health, along with built-in GPS and a vibrant OLED display. Unlike its predecessor, though, the Fitbit Charge 6 boasts an improved heart rate algorithm and can be paired with certain gym equipment over Bluetooth. It doesn't support as many Google services as a Pixel Watch 3, sure, but you can take advantage of Google Wallet and turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps.Read our Fitbit Charge 6 review.Along with fitness trackers and smartwatches, Google is discounting several pairs of wireless earbuds. Right now, you can buy the Pixel Buds Pro 2 from Amazon, Google, and Best Buy for $199 ($30 off), which remains their second-best price to date. Google is also selling them as part of a bundle with the Pixel Watch 3 for $441.99 ($58 off), or with the Fitbit Charge 6 for $130.95 ($29 off).Google's latest set of wireless earbuds are our top choice for Pixel phone owners. They offer powerful noise cancellation and a lighter design than the previous model, which makes them more comfortable to wear. They also offer some great Google-specific perks, allowing you to directly access Google's Gemini AI assistant and keep track of the charging case via the company's recently improved Find My Device network. The earbuds continue to support a number of Pixel-exclusive features as well, including head tracking spatial audio.Read our Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review.If the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are outside your budget, the Pixel Buds A-Series are also available from Amazon, Best Buy, and Google for $79.95 ($20 off), which is $20 shy of their all-time low. They don't offer active noise cancellation or some of the more advanced features found on the Pro model, but they do deliver impressive sound for the price and a secure fit thanks to an assortment of comfortable ear tips. The last-gen earbuds also integrate well with Pixel phones and support Google Assistant for hands-free voice control.Read our Pixel Buds A-Series review.Last but not least is the Pixel Tablet, which can pick up in the 128GB configuration at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store for $299 ($100 off), which is just $20 shy of its lowest price to date. You can also get the step-up 256GB model with a speaker dock for $479 ($120 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store.It's a shame Google reportedly canceled its next-gen Pixel tablet - after all, the original showed a lot of promise. The snappy Android tablet is great for carrying out typical tablet tasks, like video chatting and streaming, thanks in part to a sharp 11-inch display and an excellent speaker array. What makes the tablet really stand out, though, is the optional magnetic charging dock, which bolsters the tablet's sound and turns it into an ad hoc smart display. That means you can use the tablet as a digital photo frame, check in on your Nest Doorbell feed, or control a range of smart home devices via Google Assistant.Read our Google Pixel Tablet review.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Brandon Bell, Getty Images With Donald Trump stepping back into office, advocates are warning that access to important environmental and public health datasets could be at risk.Information about climate change vanished from federal websites under Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax." Now, federal agencies could face deep staff and budget cuts overseen by Trump cronies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The proposed cuts not only threaten what kind of data the government shares but also whether it can collect and organize it at all.The funding, the people, the cultural knowledge associated with these tools and the data are just as, if not more, important than the data itself."Federal agencies gather all kinds of data - from air quality readings to research on extreme weather events. Researchers and advocates have been scrambling to save as much data as they can, a skill they honed during Trump's first term. Even so, relying on outdated information has its pitfalls. Gaps in government data collection or maintenance could leave city planners and community groups stuck with an incomplete picture of the risks posed by pollution and climate change in their area.The funding, the... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Summitsphere Antonblast is kind of like playing a zany Saturday morning cartoon. It's brash, maximalist, and often, you'll feel like you don't actually understand what's happening. Somehow, that chaos gels into something that actually makes sense - and, at times, is even calming.Antonblast just launched in 2024, but it looks like a long-lost side-scrolling platformer from the 16-bit era of the SNES or Sega Genesis. That's not just due to the fantastic pixel art. There are fun touches like delightfully '90s-era character designs and Mode 7-like effects, such as your character splatting against the screen when you die, that really make it feel like a missing classic of the era.Summitsphere, Antonblast's developer, describes the game as a fast-paced explosive action platformer," and that's a good way to summarize how it actually feels to play. It's sort of what would happen if you put Wario, Sonic, Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rocko's Modern Life into a blender. Image: Summitsphere Yes, there is grinding. As Anton or Annie, you'll charge through various enemies and obstacles in your path, sometimes turning into a literal tornado of... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images TikTok says it plans to go offline on Sunday, January 19th if the Biden administration doesn't intervene.The company confirms earlier reporting that it will be forced to go dark" on the 19th unless the outgoing administration provides a definitive statement" assuring its most critical service providers" that they won't be held liable for breaking the law. Those providers include Apple and Google, which together distribute TikTok through their app stores, and its hosting partners, which include Amazon and Oracle.TikTok's statement follows Friday's Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law banning the app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests its ownership stake. Shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling, TikTok CEO Shou Chew appealed to President-elect Donald Trump in a video but didn't give any indication of what might happen when the law goes into effect at midnight on Saturday.Unfortunately for TikTok, the White House has already made clear that it intends to punt the fate of the app to Donald Trump, who has promised to save it and is set to be sworn in as president on Monday, January 20th. Trump said on Friday that he spoke with China President Xi Jinping about balancing trade, fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects."President Biden's position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President's desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law," the White House said in a statement on Friday. Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday."Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, which is tasked with enforcing the TikTok ban by fining its US service providers $5,000 per user with access to the app, has signaled that it's still behind the ban.Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans' sensitive data," Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday. The Court's decision affirms that this Act protects the national security of the United States in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."As the ban deadline gets nearer, politicians who voted for it have started flipping by arguing that ByteDance should have more time to divest. According to The New York Times, Senator Chuck Schumer told President Biden that allowing a ban to happen would damage his legacy."You can read TikTok's full statement about shutting down below:

Image: Paramount A law professor cited by CBS News called Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris ...so ill grounded that it comes close to being sanctionable as frivolous." But now, the The Wall Street Journal reports that executives at CBS' parent company, Paramount Global, have discussed settling the suit while gaming out options to reduce friction with the incoming administration" ahead of a government review of its merger with Skydance.The paper reports that incoming FCC chairman and censor-in-chief Brendan Carr warned execs last year that presidential dissatisfaction with CBS News will make a review tougher. He's also publicly displayed that view, saying during a Fox News interview in November, ...CBS has a transaction before the FCC. I'm pretty confident that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC's review of that transaction."The lawsuit claims that in airing two differently edited versions of Harris' response to a question about the war in Gaza, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news."But instead of mounting a defense of free speech against a lawsuit and Trump's accusations that the network said were false and completely without merit, Paramount is considering following the example of Disney and tech oligarchs who will line up at the inauguration like Mark Zuckerberg.The ABC News owner agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit in December. Zuckerberg sharply redirected Meta's policies to the right while meeting with Trump, reportedly in part to mediate a lawsuit Trump brought against Facebook and Zuckerberg in 2021 over the platform's suspension of Trump's account after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images You'd think that TikTok would have a Plan B by now.It's now clear the company never planned for a scenario in which it would lose to the Supreme Court. Maybe it couldn't, given that the Chinese government ultimately has final say on a sale. Now, TikTok's leaders are banking on Donald Trump to save them in a last-ditch effort that will unquestionably come with strings attached.Politically, TikTok misplayed its hand at every turn of this multi-year saga. Executives repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a ban, even going so far as to literally laugh at the idea. They were blindsided by Congress overwhelmingly agreeing on a ban. Then, they lost on appeal to the Supreme Court with only a day left before the law goes into effect. The only leverage they seemingly have left is that Trump thinks the app helped him win the election - plus their willingness to let him extract whatever pound of flesh he wants.TikTok backed itself into this corner technically, too. It spent over $1 billion on Project Texas to try and appease concerns about US data making its way to China. Amazingly, TikTok started Project Texas before the government gave its blessing, which of course never came. US... Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram's profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out over the weekend," Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an Instagram Story on Friday.I know some of you really like your squares. And square photos are sort of the heritage of Instagram. But at this point, most of what's uploaded, both photos and videos, are vertical in their orientation," Mosseri said. It's a bummer to overly crop them," he added.Mosseri recognizes that the change might be a bit of a pain," but he thinks that it's a transitional" pain. I think people will, over the long run, be excited that more of their photos and more of their videos are actually visible as intended in the profile as opposed to aggressively cropped," Mosseri said.Mosseri's justification is pretty similar to what he said in August when Instagram confirmed it was conducting a limited test" of the change.Instagram also announced today that it's adding a new spot in your Reels feed where you can see videos that your friends have liked.

Image: Nintendo Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, the just-launched port of the 2010 Wii game, doesn't include individual members of the original Retro Studios development team in the credits, as reported by GameSpot. Since the discovery, however, Nintendo has commented on the omission, giving a statement to Eurogamer.We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game's creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process," the statement reads, which is sourced only to Nintendo and not to a specific individual. The game's credits reveal that the port was done by Forever Entertainment.Crediting is an industry-wide issue, and this isn't the first time Nintendo has come under scrutiny for its crediting decisions. Some developers who worked on the original Metroid Prime - another Retro Studios game - were unhappy that Metroid Prime Remastered's credits didn't include the full original credits. And external translators have expressed frustrations with being left out of credits for some major Nintendo games, Game Developer reported last year.As of late, Nintendo has also been somewhat cagey about things like voice actors and the specific studios developing its games.

Image: Netflix Castlevania: Nocturne season 2 gets philosophical about what it means to be a monster who loves. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Now that TikTok has finally reached the end of its legal options in the US to avoid a ban, somehow its future seems less clear than ever.The Supreme Court couldn't have been more direct: the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to TikTok, withstands First Amendment scrutiny and can take effect on January 19th. The court agreed that the government had a compelling national security interest in passing the law and that its rationale was content neutral. The solution proposed - forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok or see it ousted from the US - was ruled appropriately tailored to meet those ends.Yet the government's response hardly feels like a victory lap. In fact, despite being still under ByteDance's control, it's not clear that anyone in the US government will even act like TikTok is banned on the 19th.TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling today. Given... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images In his first statement since the Supreme Court upheld a law that could ban TikTok from the US on Sunday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered no insight into what would happen to the app in just a few days. Instead, he took the opportunity to appeal to President-elect Donald Trump.I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," Chew says in a video on the platform. We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a President who truly understands our platform - one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process."

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Microsoft made a trio of announcements this week that are going to be very important for how the company approaches its big AI bet in 2025. It started off by creating a new AI engineering group to focus its developers on building an AI platform and tools for both Microsoft and its customers. Microsoft then announced pay-as-you-go agents for its relaunched Copilot Chat for businesses, and it finished the week by bundling Office AI features into Microsoft 365 for consumers and raising the subscription price.All three of these announcements are linked to Microsoft's insatiable hunger to win at AI. The company still prioritizes security through employee performance reviews, but it increasingly feels like promoting AI is an equally high priority.The new engineering group is a good example of Microsoft's priorities. Led by former Meta engineering chief Jay Parikh, the new CoreAI - Platform and Tools division will combine Microsoft's Dev Div and AI platform teams together. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the reorganization as entering the next innings of this AI platform shift" and said it will reshape all application categories." Nadella has regularly said that the pace of... Read the full story at The Verge.

If you saw my training load data for January, it would resemble a stock crashing. Hard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Every January, fitness tech and wearable companies love to remind us about New Year's Resolutions. For a small number of people, New Year's features, challenges, and marketing campaigns will be exactly the push they need. For everyone else, they're another reason to feel bad about yourself.The start of the new year is when Peloton Bikes go on sale, Apple trots out its annual Ring in the New Year Challenge badge and new Fitness Plus content, and anecdotally, it's when I see a lot of friends suddenly start logging miles in Strava. But this year, I saw a new marketing tactic: Quitter's day.Quitter's day is the second Friday in January - the day when most people throw in the towel on New Year's Resolutions, fitness related or otherwise. Apple rolled out an Apple Watch commercial around it, encouraging people to quit quitting" with a little extra wrist-based motivation. Popular strength training app Ladder also jumped on the trend with a humorous ad hinting that, if you just have Ladder coaches in your ear, you too can avoid quitting.I was on the ground at the giant CES trade show during this year's Quitter's day. CES is a week where I'm lucky if I get one workout in, eat three... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) are putting pressure on big tech firms to explain their motives for donating to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration fund. In letters to Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber, the lawmakers express concerns about the companies making contributions to avoid scrutiny, limit regulation, and buy favor."Over the past several weeks, Google, Microsoft, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all donated $1 million apiece to Trump's inauguration, while Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, each contributed $1 million. Many of these tech execs have already met with Trump, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is even hosting an inauguration party for the incoming president, according to The New York Times.These sizable donations surpass the amount most of these companies contributed to President Joe Biden's inauguration fund in 2021. A filing with the Federal Election Commission shows Uber donated $1 million to the event, followed by Microsoft with a $500,000 contribution, Google at $337,500, and Amazon at $276,509. Apple donated just $43,200 to Biden's inauguration, while Meta and OpenAI didn't contribute at all.In the letters, Sens. Warren and Bennet draw attention to the regulatory scrutiny the Biden administration has directed toward big tech firms. You have a clear and direct interest in obtaining favors from the incoming administration: your company and many other Big Tech donors are already the subject of ongoing federal investigations and regulatory actions," the lawmakers write. These donations raise questions about corruption and the influence of corporate money on the Trump administration, and Congress and the public deserve answers."

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images The Supreme Court ruled that the law that could oust TikTok from the US unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it is constitutional as applied to the company.There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community," the court wrote in a per curiam ruling, which is not attributed to any particular justice. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok's data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary."The ruling means that TikTok is still on track to be banned in the US on January 19th, unless President Joe Biden extends the deadline or ByteDance manages to sell the company in time. The Biden administration now appears poised to hold off on enforcement and leave it to the next administration once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Monday - though even that promise might not be enough to overcome the risk service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle could face if they choose not to comply with the law by continuing to service TikTok once the ban technically takes effect.Trump has said he'd try to save the app, though it's not clear how - and he won't be sworn into office until a day after the sale deadline. The app won't just disappear from users' phones; TikTok has reportedly planned to go beyond the law's requirements and go dark should the ban be upheld.The justices caution that their ruling should be understood to be narrowly focused" given that the case involves new technologies with transformative capabilities." They emphasized that even though it's common for companies to collect data, TikTok's scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government's national security concerns. A law targeting any other speaker would by necessity entail a distinct inquiry and separate considerations." Ultimately, the government had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment."The justices found that the law as applied to TikTok is content neutral" and justified by a content neutral rationale," citing the government's concern over the alleged potential for China to collect vast amounts of data on Americans through the app. They found that the law does not need to satisfy the highest possible form of First Amendment scrutiny and that, as applied to TikTok, it does satisfy intermediate scrutiny because the law furthers an important Government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression" and doesn't burden much more speech than necessary to accomplish that.The court was not swayed by TikTok's assurances that the Chinese government was unlikely" to compel TikTok to turn over user data for intelligence-gathering purposes, since China has more effective and efficient means of obtaining relevant information." The justices said that even if China had not already sought to use ByteDance's relationship with TikTok to access US data, TikTok didn't offer any good reason for the court to conclude that the US government's determination that China might seek to exploit that relationship is not at least a reasonable inferenc[e] based on substantial evidence.'" In the end, the justices afforded a great deal of deference to the government's assessments, noting, for example, We are especially wary of parsing Congress's motives on this record with regard to an Act passed with striking bipartisan support."There are some buyers waiting in the wings for this ruling, hoping it will change ByteDance's calculus on a sale. Billionaire Frank McCourt's Project Liberty, for example, wants to buy the app without the algorithm to run on its own social network protocol. But it's still not clear if China would allow a sale, even without the coveted algorithm - perhaps betting that the US will eventually relent or that it can continue to thrive in other countries around the world. Still, reports this week indicate that might be starting to change, as unnamed sources told several outlets that Chinese officials were mulling the idea of getting billionaire Elon Musk to act either as a buyer or broker of a potential deal.The case pitted free expression and national security concerns against each other. The justices heard oral arguments in the case last Friday, where lawyers for TikTok and a group of creators on the platform described why they believe the law would violate the First Amendment. The US government defended the law, which was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Biden, as important to national security.Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch offered their own statements, concurring in the final judgment. Sotomayor disagreed that the court need not determine that the law implicates the First Amendment because she thinks it's obvious it does. Even so, she agrees that the law can survive such scrutiny.Gorsuch points out the unusual speed of the case, writing that, We have had a fortnight to resolve, finally and on the merits, a major First Amendment dispute affecting more than 170 million Americans." He writes that he's pleased" the court did not consider the classified evidence presented to Congress to justify the law in this case, writing that, Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns."Gorsuch also says he has serious reservations" about whether the law is actually content neutral, though he finds the government's interest compelling and the law appropriately tailored to meet its goals. Whether it will actually do so is another matter, he points out. A determined foreign adversary may just seek to replace one lost surveillance application with another. As time passes and threats evolve, less dramatic and more effective solutions may emerge. Even what might happen next to TikTok remains unclear," Gorsuch writes. But the question we face today is not the law's wisdom, only its constitutionality. Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us. All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional."

A whole Steam Deck fits within the screen of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 tablet. Bigger is better, right? I added controllers to a 13-inch gaming tablet and I don't regret it. Read the full story at The Verge.

The Pokemon Company It's coming a little later than we initially thought, but The Pokemon Company (TCPi) has finally announced when Pokemon TCG Pocket's long-awaited trading functionality is rolling out.Today, TCPi revealed that, along with Pokemon TCG Pocket's next set of cards, the game's trading feature is set to launch later this month. TCPi didn't specify an exact date in its statement about the update, but it did explain that trading will involve some restrictions and costs.In order to swap cards, people will first have to be friends with one another in the game. Trades can only occur if players are offering up cards with the same rarity, meaning that you won't be able to trade powerful EX cards for more common ones that are easier to pull. Additionally, TCPi trading is limited to cards that have rarities of 1-4 diamonds or a single star full-art cards, and TCPi noted that items must be consumed in order to trade."It's not clear which particular items players will need for trades, but it feels likely that the process will involve spending Poke gold, one of Pocket's multiple in-game currencies that can be purchased in exchange for real money. The item requirement sounds like logical (but not exactly welcome) way for Pocket to generate even more revenue given how easy it is to accumulate certain duplicates from every set.In a follow-up post to X, Pocket's official account stated that it was hearing people's immediate concerns about how this is all going to work in practice, and encouraged everyone to provide more feedback once the feature is out.