Hello and welcome back to Regulator. It's been a very long two weeks away from your inboxes, but luckily for us, Big Tech and Big Government did not stop fighting. In fact, it's gotten even spicier. Let's get into it.
Last week, I was following up on several rumors that Donald Trump would sign an executive order that would fulfill a longstanding goal of the AI industry: legal preemption...
Earlier this year, I reviewed the Fractal Scape, a wireless gaming headset made for PC (also compatible with Switch 2) that really wowed me. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much in this debut headset from a company known mostly for making PC cases, but it’s one of the most thoughtfully-designed models that I’ve tried recently.
If you’re in the market for an elegant headset that sounds great...
Character.AI, under threat from several lawsuits over its alleged negative impact on teen mental health, is banning underage users from open-ended chats on its site. Instead, teens will be allowed to use a new “Stories” format that, unlike regular chats, offers “structured” choose-your-own-adventure-style experiences with the AI characters on its platform.
The feature is available to...
Let's get this out of the way: The Samsung Frame is not a good TV. None of the displays that I'd classify as art TVs are - at least not in the ways that we usually think about TVs. They only get a fraction as bright as comparably priced TVs, picture quality is middling, black level performance is bad (even for an LCD TV), and color accuracy out of the box leaves a lot to be desired. But...
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are both leaving WhatsApp thanks to upcoming changes to the messaging app’s terms of service that will prohibit using it to distribute AI chatbots not made by Meta.
OpenAI announced its planned departure a few weeks ago, with Microsoft following it this week. Both companies attributed the departures to Meta’s new terms of service for WhatsApp...
Hoto exists because someone got bored.
CEO Lidan Liu, the company's founder and a notable industrial designer, tells The Verge she was tired of advising from her consultancy Designaffairs China. I have to build something on my own, she thought. And back then, she was spending a lot of time in her workshop surrounded by the same old tools.
"The tool industry, it never changes, the products...
Poco is at pains to admit that this “denim blue” version of the F8 Ultra includes no actual denim fabric.
Xiaomi spin-off brand Poco has partnered with Bose to help its new F8 phones stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Both the F8 Pro and F8 Ultra feature stereo speakers designed collaboratively with the audio company, and the Ultra goes one step further by including a subwoofer...
Uber and WeRide are now deploying fully driverless vehicles as part of its robotaxi service in the United Arab Emarites. Customers in Abu Dhabi who request an UberX or Uber Comfort may be matched with a fully autonomous WeRide vehicle if the route is part of the company’s service area.
Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle operator WeRide first launched their robotaxi service with safety...
Qualcomm still sees this as a flagship chipset, just not an “Elite” one.
When Qualcomm announced its high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset in November, it mentioned that a non-Elite version was on the way, designed to power a more affordable tier of flagship phones. Now, that chip has finally arrived, with some drops in performance but the same core feature set.
Qualcomm compares the 8...
Campbell’s says it fired its vice president of information technology after leaked audio allegedly captured him saying the company uses meat that “came from a 3D printer.” The comments led Campbell’s to issue an explanation on its website, insisting its soups aren’t made with 3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or bioengineered meat.
“A recent video contained false comments about our...