Author: News Room

Archive of Our Own (AO3) is officially exiting beta. The Organization for Transformative Works — the nonprofit behind the fanfiction site — announced the update on Thursday, which comes 17 years after AO3’s launch in 2009.“Since 2009, AO3 has grown and changed a lot,” the announcement says. “We’ve introduced many features over the years through the efforts of our volunteers and coding contributors, as well as the contractors we’ve been able to hire thanks to generous donations from our users.”The post highlights some of the features that AO3 has since its launch, including a tagging system, fanworks downloads, privacy settings…

Governor Kathy Hochul and other New York state lawmakers want 3D-printer companies to block the printing of components used to create “ghost guns” — firearms without serial numbers that can be printed privately, easily avoiding a background check.At a press event on Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said two 3D-printing companies had voluntarily agreed to adopt technology that would block the creation of guns using their printers; another digital design company agreed to remove some firearm CAD files (the printing blueprints) from their services, Bragg said. Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make it illegal to sell or possess…

During Wednesday’s game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Milwaukee Brewers, umpire CB Bucknor took a foul ball to the mask and had to be helped off the field. It was the cap to what has been a particularly bad week for one of the most controversial umpires in baseball.It started with perhaps the best example of how MLB’s Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System can inject drama in baseball. This is the first year for the new robot umpire, which allows hitters, catchers, and pitchers to challenge balls and strikes for the first time. Each team starts a game…

It was late January, and Pinterest engineer Teddy Martin was on edge about recent layoffs at the company. Martin had just survived a round of cuts, but he and other employees were confused about who was being let go and why, and explanations from top executives including CEO Bill Ready had done little to quell the unease. So when Martin saw someone mention a tool that would shed light on the scope of the impact, he decided to share it in Slack.The tool was a simple command known as ldapsearch — it aggregated a list of deactivated employee accounts from…

To be honest, I thought Elon Musk would confidentially file for SpaceX’s IPO on the 20th of this month, rather than the 1st. But maybe that just means he’s moved on to other numbers, and we should all mark our calendars for June 7th as an IPO date just in case.Based on the April 1st filing, and the general length of an SEC review before the S-1 document becomes public, the earliest I am expecting a SpaceX IPO is June. (At least, assuming there is still anyone left at the SEC who wants to do their job instead of just…

Samsung’s releasing a new version of The Frame sometime this year, though the exact date is still unknown and, based on past models, it’s likely to be pricey. If you’d rather not wait or want to save some cash, the 55-inch Hisense CanvasTV has hit a new low price of $599.99 ($400 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, making it one of the more affordable ways to get an art-inspired TV.The 4K QLED TV features a slim design and a matte, anti-glare display that disguises itself as artwork when you’re not watching movies. Samsung’s The Frame ultimately looks more…

Surf is a slightly hard app to explain. It’s sort of three things: a client for fediverse apps like Bluesky and Mastodon; a feed reader that lets you subscribe to almost any website, podcast, or YouTube channel; and a tool for creating and following feeds of interesting content, a la Flipboard magazines. It’s a browser for the fediverse, or for the open social web, if either of those phrases means anything to you. It’s also one of the most compelling ideas you’ll find about the future of the internet.After well over a year in beta, Surf is officially launching on…

Mustafa Suleyman has been preparing for his new job description for a long time. Suleyman is Microsoft’s inaugural CEO of AI, but after the company underwent a large-scale restructuring in mid-March, he’s handed off some duties and shifted focus to chasing superintelligence. Though the news was only made public last month, he tells The Verge, he’d been preparing for the transition for as many as nine months — and though renegotiating Microsoft’s contract with OpenAI is the thing that officially “unlocked [Microsoft’s] ability to pursue superintelligence,” he’d been planning even before the ink was dry.“This has been a long-held plan,”…

There’s a new smallest e-reader in my life. The Xteink X3 is even smaller and thinner than Xteink’s X4 while also improving on the X4 with refined (but still far from great) software, simplified buttons, and an improved magnetic mount on the back. It’s a better compact e-reader than the X4 if extreme portability is your priority, but its slimmer design comes at a terrible price that’s a potential deal-breaker. Instead of a USB-C port, the X3 charges through an uncommon magnetic pogo-pin connection.That was a heartbreaking discovery while unboxing the new X3 because it actually comes with a handful…

In mid-March, conspiracy theories swirled claiming Benjamin Netanyahu had been replaced by an AI clone. Though there was no actual proof that the Israeli Prime Minister had been injured or killed, on X this spurred a flurry of posts promoting prediction markets where people bet on whether he would be out of office by March 31st. One newly created Polymarket account in particular caught the attention of bettors: dududududu22, which had purchased more than $177,000 worth of “Yes” shares at 4.7 cents. Surely, only someone with inside knowledge would take such a risky position?“This makes him possible to get paid…

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is technically over, but not all of the deals are gone. In fact, dozens of deals are still here and selling at the same prices, while other discounts aren’t quite as low as before. If you didn’t partake in the past week of savings, some companies list today as the final day of discounts. Once they end, we’ll be waiting until Prime Day makes its return this summer. However, the wait may not be as long as in years past, as the company will reportedly host the sale event in late June instead of in July.To…

What’s expected to be the biggest IPO in human history is reportedly underway. SpaceX has filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a report from Bloomberg. But for now, the filing is confidential.Under SEC rules, SpaceX isn’t required to make its S-1 prospectus public until 15 days before it begins pitching to investors on its roadshow. That means we’ll have to wait for details like Starlink’s subscriber revenue, the cash burn rate of the Starship program, and how the recently absorbed xAI fits into the corporate structure. Read the full article here