Author: News Room

Hi all,My name is Vaniya, and after 1.5 years as a software engineer at this company, I’ve decided to leave Microsoft. My last day is next Friday, April 11.You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary.Here’s why I decided to leave the company, and why I spoke up today.We are witnessing a genocideA year and a half ago, I joined Microsoft just as I started to witness the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel, which started in 1948. I’ve seen unspeakable suffering amidst Israel’s mass…

Earlier this week, when it seemed as though TikTok’s fate in the US would actually be decided by April 5th, everyone — from Amazon to the founder of OnlyFans — was coming out of the woodwork to buy it.As it turns out, none of them had a chance. And now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariff war, no one may get to buy TikTok. People familiar with the matter tell me that, despite all of the bids for the app, the White House was only seriously considering an Oracle-led consortium, which included many of ByteDance’s biggest investors who were set…

Meta’s US fact-checking program will come to an end by Monday afternoon. In a post on X, Meta’s global policy head Joel Kaplan said there will be “no new fact checks and no fact checkers” across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by that time as the company replaces it with Community Notes.Meta first announced its plans for an X-style Community Notes program in January, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying it would be “less prone to bias.” With Community Notes, contributors can write and rate notes that provide extra context for certain posts.The company started testing Community Notes on March 18th but…

Nice economy you have there, said President Donald Trump’s administration. It would be a shame if something happened to it.The something, announced earlier this week, is a set of globally applied tariffs that make no sense on their face. No sane economist would endorse this. Through a combination of stupidity, incompetence and sheer gangsterism, the Trump administration has decided to levy a series of taxes that encourage blatant corruption, entirely fail to encourage American manufacturing growth, and leave people and companies poorer. That is, assuming that the taxes come into play at all.“This is the craziest of the crazy things…

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff returned to Amazon this week, coming back to the company just about two years after he left, Bloomberg reports. He’s now a vice president at the company, and he will be heading up the Ring, Blink, Amazon Key, and Sidewalk teams. Siminoff is replacing Liz Hamren, who had taken over following Siminoff’s initial departure. Hamren and the team “have done an awesome job driving the business, delivering strong results, and bringing a lot of delightful experiences to neighbors,” Siminoff says in an Amazon Q&A. He adds that the “AI transformation happening right now” is a “once-in-a-generation…

Watches and Wonders 2025 was full of stories. With over 60 of the world’s best watch brands vying for wrist space and media attention, this year’s show delivered everything from ultra-complicated haute horlogerie to minimalist marvels. But one watch stole the limelight the moment it was unveiled: the Rolex Land-Dweller. With its integrated bracelet design that nods to the 1970s Oysterquartz, the Land-Dweller boasts no fewer than 32 patent applications – 18 exclusive to this model, and 16 relating to its new 5Hz movement. Everyone has an opinion on it. And fair enough – it’s Rolex doing quite unusual things…

President Donald Trump’s additional 75 day delay to TikTok’s sale-or-ban deadline leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground, and, according to one influential Democrat, is straight-up “against the law.”After Trump announced the extension on Friday, 12 Republican members of the House Select Committee on China, including Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), released a joint statement in response. The statement did not address legal concerns with the second extension, but it said that “any resolution must ensure that U.S. law is followed, and that the Chinese Communist Party does not have access to American user data or the…

We live in a golden age of controllers. The gamepads on the market now are of higher quality, more versatile, and more customizable than anything from even one console generation ago. If you play games on an Xbox Series X or Series S (or a Windows PC), you have the unenviable task of choosing between several high-quality controllers from Microsoft as well as a plethora of great options from the likes of 8BitDo, PowerA, Razer, Scuf, Nacon, and Turtle Beach. Some of them have drift-proof Hall effect sticks for improved longevity, yet all of them are good for one reason…

Four Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers have access to the government’s data on an untold number of immigrants, FedScoop reports. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles legal immigration, recently granted access to Kyle Shutt, Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, and Edward Coristine — the 19-year-old DOGE employee who also goes by “Big Balls” — according to an internal agency memo obtained by FedScoop. The March 28 memo asks Troy Edgar, the deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to have the department provide direction for the four DOGE staffers’ access to what the memo…

Microsoft is bringing its Copilot Vision feature to Windows and mobile, moving it beyond the web. Copilot Vision was a big part of Microsoft’s Copilot redesign last year, but so far, it has been limited to Edge webpages to help guide you through what you’re seeing.Copilot Vision will now be able to analyze real-time video from a mobile camera, allowing the AI assistant to offer tips for keeping plants healthy or decorating advice for your home. Microsoft is launching Copilot Vision inside the Copilot app for iOS and Android today, and a similar feature is also coming to Windows soon.The…

AI companies can’t figure out if the Trump tariffs are about to decimate them – and the fact that no one has a clear answer is sending them, and the tech industry overall, into a confusion spiral. The markets are in disarray. Nvidia is down 7.59%, TSMC is down 7.22%. In San Francisco, sources tell us that this isn’t a big deal. But in DC, people are panicking. The core question is whether GPUs – the graphics processing units that are crucial to AI computing and other industries – are exempted from Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, and the answer is…

Hi all,As you might have just seen on the livestream or witnessed in person, I disrupted the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during the highly-anticipated 50th anniversary celebration. Here’s why.My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org. I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice. This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise…