Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about the technology, broligarchs and brainrot rapidly transforming politics and civic society. Not subscribed to The Verge yet? You should! It can materially improve your life. Last week was a grim reminder that no matter what sort of horror is being perpetrated or how many…
In the chaotic world of Large Language Model (LLM) optimization, engineers have spent the last few years developing increasingly esoteric rituals to get better answers. We’ve seen “Chain of Thought” (asking the model to think step-by-step and often, show those “reasoning traces” to the user), “Emotional Blackmail” (telling the model its career depends on the…
If you’ve already given up on your 2026 rebrand because you couldn’t stick to your six gym sessions a week and no-sweet-treats resolutions, adopting a “vegan plus bacon” mindset may be the answer to all your problems. TikTok creator @addietheoptimist broke the idea down in a recent video: “Someone on here went viral because they…
New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce legislation that would effectively legalize robotaxis in the state — except for its most populous metropolis: New York City. Hochul, who made the comments Tuesday during her State of the State address, said the legislation would advance the next phase of the state’s autonomous vehicle pilot program. …
The move aims to protect citizens from AI-generated explicit material, especially content involving women and children.
Several of Meta’s VR studios have been affected by the company’s metaverse-focused layoffs. The company has shuttered three of its VR studios, including Armature, Sanzaru and Twisted Pixel. VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content. Employees at Twisted Pixel, which released Marvel’s Deadpool VR in November, and Sanzaru, known for…
President Donald Trump made an unconventional pick for his nomination to the Federal Trade Commission: WeatherTech founder and CEO David MacNeil. MacNeil founded the company, which makes weather-resistant car floor mats, in 1989, according to its website, and he owns 100 percent of the company. WeatherTech has made it a mission to keep its manufacturing…
Egnyte, the $1.5 billion cloud content governance company, has embedded AI coding tools across its global team of more than 350 developers — but not to reduce headcount. Instead, the company continues to hire junior engineers, using AI to accelerate onboarding, deepen codebase understanding, and shorten the path from junior to senior contributor. The approach…
This year’s sinking signups mark the first time in the past four years that ACA enrollment has been down from the previous year at this point in the shopping window. Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for…
What does it take to bring a burned-out founder back to the company he sold to Amazon? For Jamie Siminoff of the video doorbell maker Ring, it was the explosive potential of AI — and the Palisades fires that destroyed his garage, the birthplace of Ring itself. Siminoff’s vision: turn Ring from a video doorbell…
