No Dogs in Space is back to feed your need for obsessive music history
In August, I wrote about my love of the music history podcast No Dogs in Space, but mourned the fact that there hadn't been a new episode in over two years. Little did I know that hosts Carolina Hidalgo and Marcus Parks were gearing up to announce the show's return with season four, Punk 2.0. The first episode premiered this week, part one of a series on the New York Dolls, a band near and dear to my heart as a native Staten Islander, home of frontman David Johansen.
For the new season, Hidalgo and Parks decided it was time to get back to basics. Part of that was that they felt punk rock was where their passion and expertise were strongest. …
No one is surprised that Nvidia’s Jensen Huang thinks AI fears are overblown.
The man who may stand to make the most money from the AI boom seems to think he knows better than anyone else, including researchers who have studied and worked on AI for decades. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, he claimed there was a "0% chance" of AI being the end of the world. He also said of people sounding the alarm about the dangers of AI that, "Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible."
He also claims that calls from CEOs like Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman to slow down the development of AI are "not grounded in science." He even argued that there was no need for new rules, laws, or guidelines, in …
Kojima Productions disputes reports the studio is in trouble
After it was announced that Sony was dropping Hideo Kojima's Physint, and that instead the Metal Gear Solid creator's latest title would be coming to Xbox, there were a flurry of rumors about the falling out. Bloomberg reported that the decision was driven by a number of factors, including missed deadlines, budget and profitability concerns, and its timed exclusivity.
In an interview with IGN, Kojima said that, considering the broader state of the industry, which has seen a number of studios close, he was worried about the future of Kojima Productions:
I know there's a lot of news in the game industry that many studios are closing down, …
Trump now says he wants to form an ‘AI Force’
The president posted on Truth Social that he wanted to appoint an "AI czar" to lead a new "AI force." He made the announcement amid growing calls from across the political spectrum and even within the industry to pump the brakes on AI development. He posted that his administration "will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!"
In the rambling post, Trump said that data centers were "wealthy and prestigious" and claimed without evidence that they raised salaries, lowered taxes, and made for safer streets in the communities in which they were …
A24’s reputation is on the line with the SCP Foundation movie
After the success of Backrooms, it looks like A24 is trying to cash in on yet another internet horror craze with a new installment in the V/H/S horror anthology series set in the SCP Foundation universe. But as soon as it was announced, the backlash started, and V/H/S: SCP already appears to be on shaky ground.
SCP is a creepypasta that, like Backrooms, originated on 4chan. The fictional SCP (Special Containment Procedures) Foundation documents, captures, and contains paranormal or supernatural anomalies. It's a sprawling story told primarily through wiki entries that mimic documentation you might file while working at a government agency. …
A great new video game movie
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 144, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, new tech season is here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I flew out to Los Angeles to try on and write about Snap's Specs. Along the way, I've been marveling at how Apple put the iPhone 18 Pro's Face ID sensor under the display, reading about new Xbox boss Asha Sharma, getting excited for bakes in the new Great British Baking Show trailer, watching Stephen Colbert shave his beard on Jimmy Kimmel, and hanging out at a lot of coffee shop tables to work.
I also ha …
The hidden monopoly behind your TI graphing calculator
The same calculator has been on most kids' back to school shopping list since the early 2000's and the dominance of Texas Instruments' calculator division goes back even farther.
In the next episode of Version History, David Pierce is joined by The Verge's Nilay Patel and Victoria Song to tell the story of TI graphing calculators and how one company managed to take over the market and never let it go.
This is the second episode of the fifth season of Version History where we're heading back to school. We've already talked about the perilous journeys of The Oregon Trail that many students experienced in the computer lab and over the cou …
Humans, not rogue AI, are still the biggest cybersecurity risk to energy systems
Before recent high-profile hacks raised the specter of AI possibly "killing all humans," our energy systems were already disturbingly vulnerable to cyberattack - and the risk is growing.
"We were always prey. We were just kind of surviving at the appetite of our predators," Joshua Corman, executive in residence for public safety and resilience at the Institute for Security and Technology (IST), told me last year. At the time, I was preoccupied with a Department of Homeland Security warning that Iranian actors and sympathizers could target the US with cyberattacks.
Last week, I called Corman up to chat about recent incidents of rogue AI a …
All roads lead to cable
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on streaming platforms, FAST channels, and the future of entertainment, follow Charles Pulliam-Moore. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
Before Netflix fully committed to becoming a streaming service and leaving DVDs behind, the company experimented with the idea of giving its subscribers a physical box that could access high-resolution digital copies of movies. Films would have been downloaded to the box in the evening and become available to users the next day. But …
Meta’s Muse is creepy, but maybe not for the reasons you think
Meta's Muse is apparently an effective AI assistant, but one that's a little creepy. Part of that is because of its new Mac app, which can access Messages, Calendar, and Notes. But for all its smarts, Muse doesn't actually know how to describe itself. Jason Aten, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine, posted on Threads screenshots of an interaction he had with Muse in which the assistant asks him some questions about a conversation he was having in Messages.
The problem is that Aten says he didn't give Muse access to his messages. When asked how it knew about the contents of his messages, Muse replied, "I saw the notification previews, not …