Screens at the White House display AI-modified videos of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that were shared on social media by President Donald Trump. | Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about the technology, broligarchs and brainrot rapidly…
Dominion Energy, an offshore wind developer and utility serving Virginia’s “data center alley,” filed suit against the Trump administration this week over its decision to pause federal leases for large offshore wind projects. The move puts a sudden stop to five wind farms already under construction, including Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. The complaint…
Thierry Breton, former EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, speaks at the event “Economic Transformation, Net-Zero Valley and Digitalization” in May 2024. On Tuesday, the Trump Administration followed through on a threat of retaliation targeting foreigners who are involved in content moderation. The State Department announced sanctions barring US access for former EU commissioner…
The Federal Communications Commission has banned new drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the US unless the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security recommends them. Monday’s action added drones to the FCC’s Covered List, qualifying foreign-made drones and drone parts, like those from DJI, as communications equipment representing “unacceptable…
Today was the deadline for Google to reveal how it’s complying with Judge James Donato’s order to crack open Android for third-party app stores, stop illegally tying its Google Play Billing system to its app store, and let developers link to ways to download their apps outside the Play Store in the US. But Google…
TikTok has finalized a deal to sell enough of its US business satisfy the divest-or-ban law, as initially reported by Axios, The Hollywood Reporter, and CNBC. According to a memo sent from CEO Shou Zi Chew to employees (included in full below) on Thursday, they are targeting a closing date of January 22nd, 2026. Once…
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill Thursday that will require advertisers to identify if an ad includes AI-generated people. Hochul’s announcement said the bill, S.8420-A/A.8887-B, was the first of its kind in the US, describing it as a “common sense” law that would bring increased transparency and protect consumers. A separate bill also…
Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it’s been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a requirement for employee performance reviews. Now it’s scrapping its diversity report and dropping…
Hello and welcome back to Regulator. It’s been a very long two weeks away from your inboxes, but luckily for us, Big Tech and Big Government did not stop fighting. In fact, it’s gotten even spicier. Let’s get into it. Last week, I was following up on several rumors that Donald Trump would sign an…
For a long, long time, Windows looked like Windows. The version numbers and features changed, but the basic structure of the computer didn’t. With Windows 8, Microsoft tried to completely change things… and we know how that went over. So Windows, by and large, went back to being Windows. And people were mostly grateful for…
