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The crypto Clarity Act returns to the Senate this week. The banks are already trying to kill it.

Photo collage of Congress.

Hello and welcome to Regulator, the newsletter for Verge subscribers that goes into tech shenanigans that take place in the backrooms of Washington. Really, it sometimes does feel like the online series The Backrooms: a parallel universe with no internal logic, evil corporations lurking in the background, and mind-rending eldritch horrors around every corner. (Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here today. Have any tips about mind-rending eldritch horrors lurking in DC? Send that intel to me at tina.nguyen+tips@theverge.com.)

Speaking of liminal spaces and endless hallways that drive their inhabitants insane: Today, we're going to Capitol Hill …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Fighting Trump will make or break Disney’s new CEO

Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro holding a microphone while speaking to a group of people.

A week ago, newly appointed Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro was busy regaling investors with plans to turn Disney Plus into the company's "digital centerpiece." By last Friday, though, his attention had presumably shifted to a fight with the Trump administration over free speech.

Disney-owned ABC has now accused the administration of violating its First Amendment rights with an ongoing investigation into The View. D'Amaro - the former head of Disney's parks division - might have wanted his legacy to be defined by corporate synergy and a souped-up version of Disney Plus. But this fight with Donald Trump and the Federal Communications Commission is l …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Netflix’s ad ambitions just keep growing

An illustration of the Netflix logo.

For the second year in a row, Netflix's ad-supported tier more than doubled its monthly viewerbase. During its 2026 upfront presentation, Netflix revealed that its $8.99-per-month plan reaches more than 250 million people around the globe, a significant leap from 94 million users reported last year.

The streaming service reported earning $1.5 billion from ads in 2025, and now it's finding more areas to stick them across its service. Starting next year, Netflix will start showing ads in the vertical video feed it just launched on its mobile app, and in the lineup of podcasts it began adding to the platform late last year.

Netflix first roll …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Everything at The Criterion Collection is 30 percent off right now

A still from Mikey Madison in the film Anora
Classics as well as newer films like Anora are on sale. | Image: Neon

If you’ve been meaning to grow your physical movie collection, now’s a good time to do it. Through May 25th, The Criterion Collection is taking 30 percent off every disc on its site, including standard Blu-rays, 4K releases, box sets, and even films that are currently only available to preorder. The sale spans every category Criterion is known for, from Hollywood classics and international cinema to indie favorites, documentaries, concert films, and arthouse movies. 

In total, more than 1,000 titles from over 600 directors are discounted. You can browse the full sale here, but below, we’ve highlighted some of our favorites, including newer award winners like Anora, box sets like The Wes Anderson Archive, cult classics like The Breakfast Club, and international films like High and Low.

Isle of Dogs

Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film which follows a group of Japanese pet dogs that have been isolated on an island.
Isle of Dogs DVD cover with drawing of dog

Where to Buy:

The Wes Anderson Archive

The Wes Anderson Archive collects all of his films from Bottle Rocket through The French Dispatch in a single box set. The 20-disc trove includes every film on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray, plus over 25 hours of special features and 10 illustrated booklets containing essays and interviews.

Where to Buy:

Anora

The 2025 Oscar Best Picture-winning film directed and written by Sean Baker.

Where to Buy:

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese’s gripping historical crime drama follows the Osage murders of 1920s Oklahoma, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone.

Where to Buy:

Altered States

Director Ken Russell helmed this 1980 sci-fi horror film starring William Hurt.
DVD cover for Altered States, including face in green and red pattern

Where to Buy:

Chungking Express

Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film tells two stories that are compelling (and surprising) to watch unfold.

Where to Buy:

The Breakfast Club

Five high school students confront each other while stuck in detention.
Cover of Breakfast Club DVD showing five teens.

Where to Buy:

High and Low

The electric Kurosawa drama recently adapted by Spike Lee.

Where to Buy:

This Is Spinal Tap

Rob Reiner’s classic mockumentary on British heavy-metal group Spinal Tap.
Cover for film “This Is Spinal Tap” with faces of three rockers.

Where to Buy:

Parasite

Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning thriller follows two Seoul families from vastly different classes whose lives dangerously intertwine.

Where to Buy:

Instagram hits the copy button again with new disappearing Instants photos

Instagram is once again cribbing from competitors like Snapchat and BeReal with a new photo-sharing format it calls "Instants," which are ephemeral photos that you can't edit and that you can only share with your close friends or followers that follow you back. Instants are available globally beginning on Wednesday as a feature in the inbox in the Instagram app and as a separate app that's now in testing in select countries.

To access Instants from the Instagram app, go to your DM inbox and look in the bottom-right corner for an icon or a stack of photos. After you post a photo, your friends can emoji react to it and send a reply to your DM …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Mark Zuckerberg announces ‘completely private’ encrypted Meta AI chat

Screenshots of Incognito Chat in Meta AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says its new Incognito Chat is "the first major AI product where there is no log of your conversations stored on servers." Messages in Incognito Chat aren't saved or stored in users' chat history, similar to incognito modes on other AI chatbots, but Meta says its version is different because it also uses end-to-end encryption, which Meta recently removed from Instagram DMs:

"Other apps have introduced incognito-style modes, but they can still see the questions coming in and the answers going out. Incognito Chat with Meta AI is truly private, meaning no one - not even Meta - can read your conversations."

Google …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft doesn’t want any of this

Maybe I'm just punch-drunk in my third week attending Musk v. Altman, but I have become very, very fond of Microsoft during the course of this trial. They don't want to be here any more than I do.

Their opening statement was honestly one of the most Microsoft things I've ever seen. More than anything else, it was an ad for Microsoft that listed their products in some detail. The general implication, from that statement, was that this trial was absurd, their involvement was absurd, but you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, might still enjoy an Xbox game.

There's been a great deal of high drama on the stand, from Musk, his associates, and O …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sony ups its new A7R VI to 66.8 megapixels and jumps the price to $4,500

A Sony A7R VI camera against a gray background.
It looks just like the A7R V, and other Sony cameras. | Image: Sony

Sony announced its new flagship high-resolution camera, the A7R VI. The standout feature is its fully stacked full-frame sensor with 66.8 megapixels of resolution and up to 16 stops of dynamic range. That's only an increase of about six megapixels for the VI model, but its stacked architecture means a much faster readout speed for higher burst rates, better silent shooting with the electronic shutter, and improved video performance. The other increase comes to the price, as the A7R VI will cost $4,499.99 when it launches in June - $600 more than when the A7R V launched in 2022.

The new A7R camera has a slew of new features and ones it's inh …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Live updates from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI

Graphic photo collage of Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

Sam Altman and Elon Musk are facing off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of OpenAI and its most well-known product, ChatGPT. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead.

Elon Musk, his financial manager and Neuralink CEO, Jared Birchall, and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman have already testified before the jury. Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who shares four children with Musk, took the stand last week, and the courtroom also watched former OpenAI CTO Mura Murati’s videotaped deposition.

For the trial’s third week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared on Monday, followed by OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Altman took the stand on Tuesday to refute the Musk argument that he is a liar and a snake, while on the final day of testimony, Wednesday, we are hearing from Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.

Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and claims that Altman and Brockman tricked him into giving the company money, only to turn their backs on their original goal. However, OpenAI says that “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor” in a bid to boost Musk’s own SpaceX / xAI / X companies that have launched Grok as a competitor to ChatGPT.

In his lawsuit, Musk is asking for the removal of Altman and Brockman, and for OpenAI to stop operating as a public benefit corporation. Musk has also demanded that OpenAI’s nonprofit receive up to $150 billion in damages he’s asking for if he wins the case.

People to Know

Plaintiff

Elon Musk — plaintiff, OpenAI cofounder and now CEO of rival xAI

Steven Molo — lead counsel for the plaintiff

Jared Birchall — manager of Musk’s family office

Shivon Zilis — former OpenAI board member who shares multiple children with Musk

Defendant

Sam Altman — defendant, CEO of OpenAI 

William Savitt — lead counsel for the defendant

Greg Brockman — president of OpenAI as well as a cofounder 

Ilya Sutskever — former chief scientist at OpenAI and a cofounder

Judge

Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — aka YGR, trial judge

Here’s all the latest on the trial between Musk and Altman:

Garmin’s mini satellite communicators are on sale for up to 40 percent off

REI’s annual Anniversary Sale doesn’t start until March 15th, but that hasn’t stopped Garmin from rolling out discounts on a range of devices — including its InReach Mini satellite communicators. Right now, for instance, you can grab the Mini 2 at Amazon, REI, and Garmin for $249.99 ($150 off) or the Mini 3 for $399.99 ($50 off) through the same retailers (Amazon, REI, and Garmin). That’s the lowest price we’ve seen on the newer InReach model, which launched in late December.

As someone who has used both the Mini 2 and Mini 3 in the backcountry, I’m a big fan of dedicated satellite communicators over smartphones, even those with support for satellite SOS and messaging. Both the Mini 2 and Mini 3 are far more rugged than your average phone, for one thing, and each device offers multi-day battery life, which certainly isn’t the case with iPhone 17-series phones and Google’s newer Pixel phones. They also operate in higher temperatures and allow you to pull the weather report, which is a massive plus when you’re off the grid and exposed to ever-changing weather patterns.

The core functionality of the Mini 2 and Mini 3 is largely the same, however. The two palm-sized satellite communicators leverage the Iridium satellite network for coverage, allowing you to send text messages, share your location, and even trigger SOS alerts in the event of an emergency. The big differences between the last-gen model and the Mini 3 are that the latter features a color touchscreen interface, which makes it far easier to navigate menus and type messages (the Mini 3 Plus also adds support for photos and voice messages).

Keep in mind that whichever model you choose, you’ll need to sign up for one of Garmin’s InReach Consumer Plans, which start at $7.99 a month for the most basic plan. Each tier requires a $39.99 activation fee and includes a set number of messages per month; however, if you run out, you’ll have to pay an additional fee per message (live tracking always costs extra). Personally, I’ve never found the messaging limits to be that restrictive — my aim in the backcountry is to avoid copious amounts of human contact — but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re planning a longer trek in the woods or need more constant communication with someone back home.


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More ways to save today

  • It’s never been our No. 1 pick, but if you’re looking for a wireless outdoor camera, Blink’s Outdoor 4 Floodlight Camera is on sale at Amazon and Best Buy for $54.99 ($45 off), which is just $5 shy of its best price to date. The battery-powered, 700-lumen cam offers up to two years of battery life, Alexa support, and two-way audio, though, like most budget 1080p cameras, you’ll have to shell out for a premium subscription to leverage its more advanced features.
  • Lego’s 2,660-piece replica of Hogwarts Castle is down to $136.99 ($33 off) at Amazon and Target, nearly matching its all-time low. Is it as cool as Lego’s recently announced, LOTR-inspired Minas Tirith set? Probably not, but if you’re a Harry Potter fan obsessed with all things witchcraft and wizardry, the small scale model is a neat way to tide you over until the new HBO series kicks off on December 25th. It’s also, like, significantly cheaper.
  • One of our favorite pieces of beauty tech, L’Oréal’s Colorsonic Hair Color Device, is available from Amazon and Target for $87.49 (about $28 off), one of its lowest prices to date. The clever gadget is designed to make at-home hair dyeing less of a hassle, and while we have some gripes about its ability to cover grays and how long the cartridges last, it’s relatively straightforward to use and far quicker than box dye or a trip to your local salon. Read our review.