Lead Hacker

New Kia vehicles at the Port of Seattle in Seattle, Washington, US, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. It started last week with Tesla , followed quickly by General Motors , Mercedes-Benz , and Volvo . Automakers across the spectrum are pulling their profit guidance for the year because they can’t figure out how to accurately plan for the future thanks to President Donald Trump’s ever-shifting tariffs . The auto industry is paralyzed by uncertainty. Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram, also recently scrapped its outlook for the year, with Chief Financial Officer Doug Ostermann telling analysts, “Most of us are in a period of waiting for a bit more clarity,” according to Reuters . The lack of clarity was even more stark this week, as Trump signed a new executive order walking back some of the tariffs he had just imposed. Now car companies that pay a 25 percent tariff on auto imports won’t have to pay other levies, like on steel and aluminum, or on certain imports fro...

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to know whether Amazon founder Jeff Bezos received any “promises or favors” from President Donald Trump in exchange for his “subservience” after dropping all plans to show customers the cost of tariffs. In a letter sent on Wednesday , Warren questions Bezos about the details of his conversation with Trump and raises concerns “about the potential for tariff-related corruption.” On Tuesday, Trump called Bezos to complain after a Punchbowl News report said that Amazon planned on showing the cost of tariffs right next to a product’s total price. Amazon later issued a statement saying that displaying tariff prices “is not going to happen,” adding that the company only “considered” showing the fees on its Haul store, which ships products directly from China. Trump then told reporters that Bezos is “very nice” and “solved the problem very quickly,” as reported by The New York Times . Warren says Bezos’ conversation represents “another example of Bi...

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, took the stand on Wednesday during the remedies phase of the company's search antitrust trial , and offered a simple message. The US government's plan to rectify Google's search monopoly, he said, would be so crushing to Google Search that it might be hard to justify continuing to build a search engine at all. Pichai was called by Google in its defense, the second witness in its portion of the trial after the Department of Justice finished more than a week of its own questioning . John Schmidtlein, one of Google's lead attorneys, first led Pichai through a tour of Google's R&D investments, asking him how much the company has spent on Search, AI, and other projects. (The answer: about $49 billion just last year.) Then he asked Pichai about the government's proposal to require Google to share much of its search data, and its search index, with competitors at a "marginal cost." Pichai said the data-sharing proposal ...

Cybersecurity firm Oligo has detailed a set of vulnerabilities its researchers found in Apple’s AirPlay protocol and software development kit that could serve as a point of entry to infect other devices on your network, Wired reports . Oligo’s researchers refer to the vulnerabilities and attacks they enable as “AirBorne.” According to Oligo, two of the bugs it found are “wormable” and could let attackers take over an AirPlay device and spread malware throughout “any local network the infected device connects to.” That said, they would need to already be on the same network as the device to carry out the attack. Other possible outcomes of an attack include hackers remotely executing code on your devices (also called an RCE attack), accessing local files and sensitive information, and carrying out denial-of-service attacks, Oligo says. It adds that an attacker could also show images on something like a smart speaker’s display — as demonstrated with an AirPlay-enabled Bose speaker in...

Commenters on the popular subreddit r/changemymind found out last weekend that they've been majorly duped for months. University of Zurich researchers set out to "investigate the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) in natural online environments" by unleashing bots pretending to be a trauma counselor, a "Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter," and a sexual assault survivor on unwitting posters. The bots left 1,783 comments and amassed over 10,000 comment karma before being exposed. Now, Reddit's Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee says the company is considering legal action over the "improper and highly unethical experiment" that is "deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level." The researchers have been banned from Reddit. The University of Zurich told 404 Media that it is investigating the experiment's methods and will not be publishing its results. However, you can still find parts of the research online . The pape...

President Donald Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to complain after a Punchbowl News report suggested the online marketplace planned on displaying the cost of tariffs next to product prices. White House officials told CNN that Trump called Bezos “shortly after” receiving information about the report. Before Amazon publicly commented on the report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon’s rumored move a “hostile and political act” during a press briefing on Tuesday. Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle later told The Verge that Amazon only “considered” adding the tariff breakdown to items sold within Haul, a hub for ultra-cheap products shipped directly from manufacturers in China. “The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Doyle said. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.” Amazon has also published the statement on its website . Trump’s sweeping tariffs appl...

Audio Overviews, the AI tool that turns your research into podcast-like conversations in Google’s NotebookLM app, is expanding beyond English . Now you can generate and listen to Audio Overviews in more than 50 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hindi, Turkish, Korean, and Chinese. You switch to a different language by heading to NotebookLM , selecting your settings in the top-right corner of the screen, and choosing Output Language . From there, you can select from a list of languages, allowing you to receive responses and hear Audio Overviews in the language of your choice. Google says this is only “an early look at what’s possible with this feature,” adding that it plans to continue “building and refining it” based on feedback. Since launching Audio Overviews last year , Google has expanded it to more than 200 countries and added a range of new features, giving you the ability to “guide” the AI hosts of the conversation and even interact with them .  Google ...

The latest iPad is now $50 off. If all you need is a reliable tablet for everyday tasks like streaming, checking email, or browsing the web, Apple’s latest entry-level iPad delivers good value — and right now, it’s more affordable than ever starting at just $299 ($50 off) with Wi-Fi at Amazon , Walmart , and Best Buy . This is its lowest price to date. The 11th-generation iPad is a step up from its predecessor. It’s powered by Apple’s faster A16 chip, and starts with 128GB of storage – double the base storage. The new 11-inch display also gives you more screen real estate, whether you’re catching up on your favorite show or shooting emails. Plus, the tablet has a good front-facing camera and support for the Apple Pencil with USB-C, making the slate handle jotting down notes and hopping on video calls. Of course, as the cheapest tablet in Apple’s current lineup, there are some features you’ll miss out on. You don’t get support for Apple Intelligence, nor is there support for the n...

If you’re an Android user who has been staring longingly at the wrists of people with smartwatches, but haven’t had the impetus (or the cash) to buy one yourself, this may be your chance. The last-gen Google Pixel Watch 2 is currently on sale at Amazon , Best Buy , and Google for about $149, a savings of $100 off of its usual price of $249 and only $4 more than its lowest past price of $145. The 41mm Pixel Watch 2 is Google’s second try at creating a smart watch that would compete with the Apple Watch, and while it doesn’t quite come up to the standards of the latest Google Watch 3 , it is still a solid and useful device. It comes with sensors for heart rate tracking, skin temperature, and stress management, Emergency SOS and fall detection, and a safety check feature for when you’re trying to get home okay in tricky situations. It also has a battery that will last you all day — something that its predecessor lacked. Read our review. On the other hand, if you’re determined to ge...

The Lightwear Headphones Hp1 weigh 103 grams thanks to their minimal design. | Image: km5 Headphones had existed for well over 50 years by the time Sony’s Walkman debuted in 1979, but the portable cassette player helped popularize the technology by miniaturizing it. km5’s new Lightwear Headphones Hp1 feature a minimal design similar to the one shipped with the Walkman over 40 years ago, but upgraded with wireless capabilities and more. First debuting last July through a Japanese crowdfunding platform, wider availability of the Lightwear Headphones Hp1 was expected late last year but delays resulted in them only rolling starting late last week. They’re now available through km5’s online store for $189. Featuring a thin and flexible polished stainless steel headband attached to compact earpads that sit on your ears instead of completely enveloping them, the Hp1 are reminiscent of the Walkman’s headphones but with an added square housing on each side with a pair of 120mAh batterie...

The Android Show: Google I/O Edition Google just announced that it will host a separate event ahead of I/O to discuss updates coming to Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition will land on YouTube and the Android website on May 13th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET and will feature Android ecosystem president Sameer Samat. That’s a full week ahead of Google I/O, which kicks off on May 20th . It’s not terribly surprising, given that the company has spent less time talking about Android at I/O. And it’s probably a big hint that we’re going to hear a lot more about Gemini and Google’s other AI efforts throughout the developer conference. Maybe we’ll even get an update on its Project Astra . “We’ll be sharing news now to get you ready for I/O where we’ll have even more special announcements and surprises in store,” Samat said. The company noted that Android will still have a presence at I/O in keynotes and developer technical sessions. While Android was once the highlight of Google I/O — back wh...

Elon Musk’s expansive portfolio of companies could avoid more than $2.37 billion in potential legal liability due to his unprecedented influence over the US government, a new Senate report finds. The figure comes from a report assembled by Democratic staff for the Senate Homeland Security permanent subcommittee on investigations (PSI) probing the impact of Musk’s closeness with President Donald Trump and creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on his financial interests. The staff endeavored to quantify “the financial impact of President Trump’s delegation of power on potential liabilities and scrutiny facing Mr. Musk and his companies.” To do so, it calculated the legal exposure The Boring Company, Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI could face as a result of federal investigations, litigation, or regulatory actions pending as of Trump’s inauguration. The staff called the number “a credible, conservative estimate.”  The subcommittee found that Musk and his com...

Yellow line shows actual power, red line is projected. Power went down Monday afternoon in vast areas of Spain, crossing over into Portugal and France causing widespread outages in homes and businesses and bringing transportation infrastructure to a halt. The cause of the outage is currently unknown. Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia are reportedly affected. The outage began at around 12:30PM CET. Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament, according to Sky News . Madrid’s underground rail system has reportedly been evacuated and traffic lights in the city aren’t operating. Air traffic in Spain and Portugal is also reportedly affected by outages at area airports. Red Eléctrica, Spain’s national electricity system operator, said it’s working with energy companies to restore power in regions that are affected by the outage. “We are beginning to recover power in the north and south of the peninsula, which is key to gradually addressing the electricit...

Nike’s Cryptokicks iRL, a physical sneaker released under the RTFKT brand. A group of people sued Nike this week over its decision to wind down its virtual show project RTFKT last year. The buyers of the digital assets accuse Nike of causing “the rug to be pulled out from under them,” and say they wouldn’t have bought its NFTs if they’d known they were “unregistered securities,” reports Reuters .  Filed in New York’s Eastern District, the proposed class action lawsuit seeks “unspecified damages of more than $5 million for alleged violations of New York, California, Florida and Oregon consumer protection laws.”  Nike tried to jump into the NFT game by buying RTFKT in 2021 . But, like Starbucks Odyssey , it never quite worked out and the company abandoned the idea, announcing in December via the RTFKT X account that it planned to “wind down RTFKT operations” by the end of January this year.  Since then, RTFKT has seemingly been maintained by a single person named Samu...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 80, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you had better luck than I did preordering a Switch 2, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about The Telepathy Tapes and extremely online parenting and translation glasses , watching The Men Who Built America , cackling at this incredible star-studded live reading of the original Star Wars , playing the whole archive of 4×3 , doing some writing in the new Easlo Journal app, testing some headphones I impulse-bought on the TikTok Shop, and seeing if the Kagi Assistant fits into my search-engine world. Oh, also: Thanks to everyone who sent me notes with thoughts about wallpapers! You've given me a bunch of fun ideas about how to expand the Screen Share section, including showing off more of your setups. More on that to come really soon. I also have for you a terrifi...

It's been a busy week for Alien: Earth 's marketing team, having released three new teasers over the last few days. The longest of them - titled "Gestation Complete" - spends two whole minutes on the gestation and birth of an alien creature. Another, "Crate," gives hints that Earth could be facing more than just a xenomorph, the franchise's shiny, acid-spitting ancient aliens. Both teasers were released today, following a goofy nature documentary-themed Earth Day teaser earlier this week. "Gestation Complete" is worth sitting through if you were a fan of the look of the 1979 Alien movie that kicked off the franchise. After the creepy alien birth, you're treated to shots of the inside of the Weyland-Yutani ship that's carrying the alien, complete with the retro-future CRT-style displays and blinking buttons from the ship's Mother's chamber - the room housing the ship's AI computer system interface. On one of the displays,...

Following a brief delay stemming from the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again tariff policy, Nintendo officially opened up preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2. As expected, the initial rollout process at Walmart, Best Buy, and other retailers on April 24th was an absolute mess — and GameStop didn’t fare much better later in the week. As of right now, none of the aforementioned retailers are accepting reservations for the $449 gaming console ahead of its release on June 5th. Nintendo is still accepting sign-ups for those looking to secure a Switch 2, though, if you do go that route, be aware that there are strict requirements . Nintendo also can’t guarantee an invite ahead of launch due to “the very high demand” for the console. Surprising, I know. We don’t know when the next Switch 2 preorders will open up, at least at traditional US retailers. Additional preorder inventory has popped up intermittently at Walmart and GameStop in recent days; however, so far, none of the ...

One of the most frustrating realities about modern technology products is that while so many of them can get exciting new features via the internet, they can lose them just as easily. That happened to owners of Nixplay smart digital photo frames this week when they were hit with a previously announced update the company said would “remove premium features and reduce limits,” including dropping cloud photo and video storage to just 500MB. Nixplay has offered free cloud storage for a long time — here’s a 2016 PCMag review that mentions an 8-inch frame that came with 10GB of space for no extra charge. In addition to losing higher storage limits, the company has also nixed the previously free ability to sync a single Google Photos album. The company’s announcement said that those whose existing free accounts already exceed the new 500MB limit would see some content “restricted from sharing or viewing on a frame without editing your content or upgrading your subscription.” People on ...

Google has just announced that it’s ending software updates for the first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, released in 2011, and the second-gen model that came a year later. This decision also affects the European Nest Learning Thermostat from 2014. “You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat,“ the company wrote in a Friday blog post. The cutoff date for software updates and general support within the Google Home and Nest apps is October 25th. No more controlling these “smart” thermostats from a phone. In other significant news, Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. “Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes,“ the company said. “The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2...

The Climacool’s complex lattice structure makes the shoe breathable all around the wearer’s foot. | Image: Adidas When Adidas’ launched its Climacool shoes last September , the 3D-printed slip-ons featuring a form-fitting and breathable lattice structure were only available in very limited quantities to those who joined the company’s Confirmed platform . Next week that’s going to change as Adidas will be launching the Climacool shoes globally making them available to everyone starting May 2nd for $140. The Climacool will still be available for purchase through Adidas’ Confirmed platform which offers a mobile app, but also through select Adidas store locations in New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Although the company is based in Germany, it hasn’t announced if the shoes will be available in international locations for in-store purchase. Adidas has been experimenting with the use of 3D-printing in its shoes for well over a decade, but so far it’s only been used f...

Phia will compare the prices of products with new and used options. | Screenshot: The Verge Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, has launched an AI shopping app with former roommate Sophia Kianni, The New York Times reports. The app, called Phia, is designed to help shoppers compare prices on listings of clothing, shoes, and accessories. It’s available on iOS and as a browser extension for Google Chrome. Once you install the app or extension, a “Should I Buy This?” button will appear when you land on a product page. Click the button, and Phia will scour the web to compare prices to new and used listings of the same and similar items before telling you whether the price is high, low, or typical. I tried it out for myself by heading to the product page for Louis Vuitton’s $1,950 Graceful PM bag. Phia told me it’s “worth the price,” and showed me secondhand options from Fashionphile and eBay, starting at $1,453. It also provided a link to Phia’s website , where I ...

Federal agents arrested a Milwaukee judge Friday on obstruction charges for allegedly interfering with an immigration arrest. Judge Hannah Dugan of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court was arrested in the county courthouse and remains in federal custody, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports . Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), posted about Dugan's arrest on X. He has since deleted the post. Dugan's arrest comes one day after federal agents arrested a former New Mexico county judge and his wife in their home. Former Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano and his wife, Nancy Cano, were charged with evidence tampering and harboring an alleged member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. (The administration has used spurious evidence, including innocuous tattoos, to accuse Venezuelan migrants of being Tren de Aragua members in order to exile them to a notorious prison in El Salvador.) The details of these arrests so far are scant, but s...

Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots anthology series has always featured pretty stacked casts, and it doesn’t sound like the show’s next season is going to be any exception. Along with a new trailer for the upcoming season, Netflix released a full listing of Love, Death, and Robots Vol. 4 ’s episodes detailing their plots and highlighting their casts. Director David Fincher’s episode “Can’t Stop” will recreate the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s 2003 performance at Slane Castle with digital puppets voiced by Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante, and Chad Smith. And “400 BOYS,” Canadian director Robert Valley’s episode about “a post-apocalyptic city where warring gangs follow a bushido-like code of honor,” will star John Boyega, Ed Skrein, Sienna King, and Rahul Kohli. Chris Parnell, John Oliver, Fred Tatasciore and Rachel Kimsey will lead Patrick Osborne’s “The Other Large Thing,” an episode about a cat with plans for world domination. And, in an interesting change of pace for the series, ...