How Claude Code Claude Codes
Claude Code is a developer tool for developers. And yet, over the last year and especially the last few months, the team at Anthropic has seen a huge number of people, across industries and disciplines, figure out how to access their terminal so that they could build new stuff too. Few AI products have found true product-market fit the way Claude Code has. But how did that happen? And are we ever going to get out of the terminal?
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On this episode of The Vergecast, Anthropic's Bo …
Samsung is on slop watch at Unpacked
Another Unpacked is nearly upon us. On February 25th, Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S26 series of flagship phones - potentially including the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra - with another round of AI-based features. That will come as a surprise to nobody. But as more AI creeps in on Samsung's AI phones, there's one important consideration: the slop factor.
I'm talking, of course, about AI slop. Last week, Samsung put out a blog post promoting a new "seamless Galaxy camera experience" on its newest phones. Based on the examples in the article, that experience includes turning a picture of a puppy into cute little stickers, filling …
This Chainsmokers-approved AI music producer is joining Google
ProducerAI, an AI-powered music-making platform, is joining Google. As part of the deal, Google will fold ProducerAI under the Labs umbrella and power the tool with a preview version of its new Lyria 3 music-making AI model.
ProducerAI is a music-making platform that allows users to work with an AI agent to generate sounds, workshop lyrics, remix songs, and even create new instruments based on a prompt. The platform launched in July 2025 as a successor to the AI music-making tool Riffusion, and initially used the startup's own AI model to help you generate songs and tweak existing ones. Seth Forsgren, the cofounder and CEO of ProducerAI, te …
This limited edition Death Stranding-inspired tablet is the coolest computer I’ve ever touched
The Asus ROG Flow Z13 was already a unique beast. It's a chunky gaming tablet with impressive AMD Strix Halo integrated graphics. I was really into it when I reviewed it around this time last year. But just look at it now, clad in the stylings of Hideo Kojima's game studio and his longtime collaborator, artist Yoji Shinkawa.
This is the Asus ROG Flow Z13-KJP, a collaboration between Asus and Kojima Productions announced at CES. It's officially inspired by Kojima Productions' mascot Ludens, though it feels very Death Stranding, which makes sense, since Yoji Shinkawa designed both. Shinkawa is famed for designing legendary characters and gadg …
More Shohei Ohtani content is coming to TikTok
Major League Baseball wants more of a footprint on TikTok. Just in time for spring training, the two companies announced Tuesday they were partnering to expand baseball content on TikTok, including creating an MLB hub in the app and, of course, bringing in more influencers.
Baseball is coming back after a season that was especially culturally relevant. The World Series last fall had its highest viewership in years, and an increasingly international audience tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays after seven games and extra innings. There was a surge in interest on TikTok, too: The company says posts that includ …
Apple will soon make (some) Mac Minis in the US
Apple is preparing to move some of its Mac Mini production to the US as part of the company's ongoing efforts to appease the Trump administration's push for domestic investment. Manufacturing is set to begin later this year in north Houston, Texas, at a Foxconn facility that currently assembles Apple's AI servers.
"Apple is deeply committed to the future of American manufacturing, and we're proud to significantly expand our footprint in Houston with the production of Mac Mini starting later this year," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the announcement. "We began shipping advanced AI servers from Houston ahead of schedule, and we're excited to ac …
Inside Anthropic’s existential negotiations with the Pentagon
Anthropic's weekslong battle with the Department of Defense has played out over social media posts, admonishing public statements, and direct quotes from unnamed Pentagon officials to the news media. But the future of the $380 billion AI startup comes down to just three words: "any lawful use." The new terms, which OpenAI and xAI have reportedly already agreed to, would give the US military carte blanche to use services for mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons, AI that has full power to track and kill targets with no humans involved in the decision-making process.
The negotiations have turned ugly, with Pentagon CTO Emil Michael …
Will Trump’s DOJ actually take on Ticketmaster?
In mid-February, the Department of Justice lost its head antitrust enforcer - just weeks before it was scheduled to argue one of the year's biggest anti-monopoly cases in court.
Antitrust Division chief Gail Slater announced her departure suddenly, via a post on her personal X account. But to those who follow the agency closely, it was far from surprising. For months, leaks about the division described tensions between Slater and her team with DOJ leadership, and President Donald Trump's penchant for personal dealmaking raised questions about who would really call the antitrust shots.
Over the summer, two of Slater's top deputies were fi …
Billions of dollars later and still nobody knows what an Xbox is
The last few years of Xbox have been expensive. Under Phil Spencer's leadership, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars in an attempt to build an ambitious future for gaming that looks a lot like Netflix. And while its subscription service Game Pass started out as a good deal for gamers (although now not so much), that spending spree has led to catastrophic layoffs, studio closures, and confused and inconsistent messaging about what Xbox actually stands for. And with Spencer set to retire as new leadership takes charge, the future of Microsoft's gaming efforts looks increasingly unclear.
Spencer announced his retirement last week, after ov …
Anthropic accuses DeepSeek and other Chinese firms of using Claude to train their AI
Anthropic claims DeepSeek and two other Chinese AI companies misused its Claude AI model in an attempt to improve their own products. In an announcement on Monday, Anthropic says the "industrial-scale campaigns" involved the creation of around 24,000 fraudulent accounts and more than 16 million exchanges with Claude, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
The three companies - DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot - are accused of "distilling" Claude, or training a smaller AI model based on a more advanced one. Though Anthropic says that distillation is a "legitimate training method," it adds that it can "also be used for illicit purpose …