The gist: The Joshua Kushner-led Thrive Holdings is acquiring ADT in an all-cash deal valued at $7.6 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027 and will take ADT private, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Joshua Kushner is the brother of President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Thrive Holdings
The gist: Amazon is adding several new features to its AI shopping assistant, including ways to create, edit, and move items between shopping lists and gift registries. As an example, Amazon says you can now ask Alexa for Shopping to "Create a new shopping list" or "Show me what's left on my wedding registry." The ecommerce gian
The gist: A hacker stole a trove of personal information from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The breach exposes the names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses, and office locations of more than 41,000 employees, including those in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (
The gist: Google has released its latest frontier model, Gemini 4 Carbon, offering "significant gains" in coding, agentic tasks, and cybersecurity. In an announcement on Wednesday, Google highlights Carbon's top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5.0) benchmark, with Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra trailing beh
The gist: Apple closed out its week of product announcements with its "Pro and tell" event on Wednesday, where it took the wraps off its long-rumored touchscreen MacBook Pro. Though Apple may have saved its biggest and most exciting update for last, it revealed a few other device upgrades and updates in the days leading up to […
The gist: Meta says it may push the implementation of its new business terms past November 20th as it faces backlash from publishers over concerns about AI training. In a post on X, Meta communications head Andy Stone said the company does "not plan to make policy changes without a full consultation with industry groups and lead
The gist: A subsidiary of Elon Musk's xAI is offering to buy up homes in a Mississippi neighborhood, as long as residents don't join a lawsuit targeting the company's nearby data center and power plant, according to a report from The Guardian. A realtor going door-to-door in the Southaven neighborhood reportedly told one residen
The gist: Amazon has just taken the wraps off a bunch of new devices as part of a string of fall announcements. Today's news focuses largely on new Echo speakers, with a few new smart home gadgets sprinkled in. Here's a roundup of all of the updates Amazon revealed on Wednesday. Echo Show 16 adds a larger […]
The gist: Elon Musk claims Ukraine violated Starlink's terms of service before the recent slowdown, as reported earlier by Ars Technica. According to Musk, "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," however Ukrainian officials
The gist: Mozilla is updating Smart Window - Firefox's AI-powered browsing experience - with a new feature that can help you fill out online forms based on your open tabs. As an example, Mozilla says Smart Window can pull information from your online portfolio or LinkedIn page to paste your work history into a job application. Y
The gist: Apple is bringing an AI assistant to its suite of productivity apps, including Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. The assistant, which is built on AI models from Apple and OpenAI, can understand a document's context to perform tasks like designing, animating, and refining slides in Keynote. In Pages, Apple says the AI assist
The gist: Apple has just released iOS 27.2, bringing Apple Pencil support to the iPhone Duo. The software update also includes an "Edge Light" feature for the iPhone Duo that's intended to illuminate your face during video calls. Apple previously said the iPhone Duo would add support for the Apple Pencil "later this year." The c
The gist: Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees across the US, UK, Canada, and India. In a message to employees, Microsoft chief people officer Amy Coleman writes that this gives staff members "the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources" as the company look
The gist: T-Mobile is launching new "T-Mix" plans that bundle wireless service with subscriptions to services like Netflix, Apple TV, YouTube Premium, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, device promotions, and more, as reported earlier by Fierce Network. The Standard plan starts at $55 / month (with autopay) for one line and one "Pick," wh
The gist: This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more about AI's impact on the web, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started The digital publishing industry has relied on […]
The gist: OpenAI is now training its most advanced AI models without internet access following a string of rogue hacking incidents. In a blog post on Friday, OpenAI says it built an offline testing environment where AI models can interact with indexed and cached web content "without risk of affecting external systems." OpenAI pa
The gist: SpaceX plans to access at least 80,000 cell sites as part of efforts to compete directly with Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the publication that SpaceX is in talks with Crown Castle Inc., one of the nation's largest cell tower owners. The move would give SpaceX access t
The gist: Meta is delaying the enforcement of its new business terms after publishers raised concerns that they could allow the company to scrape news sites for AI training, as reported earlier by Fast Company. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts says the terms will go into effect on November 20th "to a
The gist: Canva is diving even deeper into AI with the launch of an image generation model that competes directly with those from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The model, called Canva Craft, uses a two-stage architecture that allows it to plan a design before generating an image, allowing for "greater precision, consistency and
The gist: Meta has tweaked its business terms to remove language suggesting that it could freely train its AI models on news sites, like The Verge - but legal experts say these changes aren't enough to address their concerns. "This does nothing to restrict the 'associated with your products or services' [language] that would let
The gist: Hackers attempted to exploit the PHP flaws impacting sites across the web days before they were patched, according to a report from Amazon Threat Intelligence. CJ Moses, Amazon chief information security officer, writes that the company's security team found a PHP2Shell exploit attempt on October 17th through a monitor
The gist: Apple is rolling out a new badge in the App Store to indicate whether an app is optimized for its new foldable. The new "Made for iPhone Duo" badge will appear across apps and games that work with the device's extra screen real estate. Though Apple doesn't include an image of what this badge might […]
The gist: Meta says it's issuing a new class of shares to fund its AI initiatives. As part of its third-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday, the company says the non-voting stock will also go toward potential acquisitions and employee compensation, with trading beginning in 2027. "The scale of investment required to co
The gist: Meta had to shell out $9.89 billion to pay for a chunk of the child safety settlement it reached with US attorneys general. That's according to the company's third-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday, which says Meta's income from operations would have been $22.89 billion without the settlement. In August, Me
The gist: Walmart will soon let AI agents shop on its website for you. Next month, the retail giant will allow you to use an AI agent on the site, with systems in place to let you approve and review purchases and set spending limits. The embrace of AI agents stands in stark contrast to Amazon, which […]
The gist: Apple says it will have "limited" iPhone Duo models for sale in stores, according to a report from Reuters. The iPhone Duo launches on Friday, October 23rd, but online preorders quickly sold out, with some delivery estimates extending into next year. "On Friday morning, our teams look forward to welcoming customers at
The gist: OpenAI disclosed a pair of safety incidents that involved AI agents weakening their safety monitoring systems during internal coding tasks. In one incident, OpenAI says its GPT-6 Astra agent disabled its safety monitor when copying reference code - and then lied about it. "The reference didn't configure a monitor, and
The gist: Google is bringing Personal Intelligence to Gemini AI in your car. With this update, Gemini in Android Auto and cars with Google built-in can tap into your information across Google apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Photos, YouTube, and Search. As an example, Google says you can ask Gemini about your flight status
The gist: Meta says it paused a Muse feature that lets you share conversations with the AI assistant after researchers found the URLs publicly available on the web, as reported by Ars Technica. In a report published this week, researchers at the security firm Claroc say they found more than 6,800 Muse links through public DNS re
The gist: Spotify says it has removed more than 50 million songs considered AI-generated slop or spam from user recommendations over the past year. That's according to an announcement on Tuesday that says Spotify has also made changes to its recommendation system to highlight more music made by human artists. "Our editors hold t
