Yes, this is a real AI-generated image that Microsoft has used in one of its corporate blog posts about Copilot (spotted by Albacore). I assume it’s supposed to say Copilot, but many AI models regularly fail at producing text correctly in images. Microsoft had a similar AI image fail earlier this year.

When the resurgent Chinese giant unveiled its new Pura 70 flagship phones last week, all eyes were on the chipset. Would it close the gap with the state-of-the-art 3nm fabrication process Taiwan’s TSMC uses to make chips in the latest iPhones, for example?

Not even close, says Verge alum Vlad Savov:

TechInsights, which was the first to identify the original 9000s in conjunction with Bloomberg News, said it found “with high confidence” that the Pura contained a Huawei Kirin 9010 fabricated using SMIC’s so-called 7nm N+2 process, an enhanced version of typical 7nm manufacturing.

So... sanctions are working?

G/O Media sold Deadspin, The A.V. Club, and The Takeout last month. Now Global Tetrahedron, which includes Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson and former NBC News reporter Ben Collins, has acquired The Onion.

Taking over as CEO, Collins told the NYT:

We’re keeping all the writers, we’re going to work with the union, we’re going to make it so they can hopefully get paid a little bit more money, and we’re going to give them the room to grow.

The first article published? Give Us $1 Or ‘The Onion’ Disappears Forever.

There’s a lack of cybersecurity products devoted to iOS and macOS, and the startup DoubleYou thinks it can fix that problem, says co-founders Patrick Wardle and Mikhail Sosonkin.

DoubleYou will be like a “supplier of car parts” for Apple cybersecurity solutions, developing tools that it can license to companies, who can then build them in their security products.

We warned you about pause ads nearly six years ago, and again when YouTube started trialing them last May. Now, Google’s Philipp Schindler says the results of that trial is that advertisers unsurprisingly love them!

They are driving strong results and “commanding premium pricing from advertisers,” he said on today’s earnings call. No news about a wider rollout, but...

No need for a Kill-A-Watt — fleet management companies can deploy ChargePoint’s Home Flex residential charging stations to keep track, which can tap into cheaper residential electric rates, as well as save time and money on stops at chargers.

ChargePoint says its software can handle reimbursement at public charging stations, and integrate with other fleet management software thanks to an open API.

According to the WSJ, Amazon, YouTube, and Peacock are all in the mix alongside incumbents Warner and Disney, with the possibility of snagging global streaming rights for some games.

When these deals kick in after 2024-2025, they’ll exist alongside the three-headed effort from Disney, Fox, and WBD, standalone ESPN, Netflix and the WWE, the NBA’s FAST channel and who knows what else.

Hertz said in its first quarter earnings report today that it plans to sell an additional 10,000 Teslas, after committing to off-loading 20,000 of the electric vehicles earlier this year. That means the rental car company plans on selling 15 percent of the initial 200,000 EVs it said it was going to buy from Tesla and Polestar back in the heady days of 2021.

Alphabet’s first-ever dividend will pay shareholders 20 cents per share on June 17th, and the Google owner “intends to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future” too. Meta made a big splash when it announced a 50 cent per share dividend in February, and Microsoft increased its dividend to 75 cents per share last September.

Because this guy apparently was quoted at $30,000 to activate the truck’s bidirectional vehicle-to-home Powershare capabilities. That’s about twice the amount that GM said it would cost to do the same with the Chevy Silverado EV.

In her Soundbite newsletter this week, Ashley Carman covers Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee. Lee is bucking the system by keeping the album, which earned a stellar Pitchfork review, off all the big music services like Spotify.

Instead, you can download WAVs from this Geocities site — I love that I just wrote that — or listen to it on YouTube.

Meanwhile, sources tell The Information that ByteDance is “internally exploring scenarios for selling.” It’s been literally one day since the divest-or-ban ultimatum became law, so I hope you’re ready for another nine to twelve months of spin.

The decentralized social network has awarded an $800 grant to SkyBridge, an “in-progress proxy web server that translates Mastodon API calls into appropriate Bluesky ones,” which will let people use their favorite Mastodon apps on Bluesky.

The funds came from Bluesky’s rather modest ($10,000 in its initial allocation) grant fund for developers on the AT Protocol.

Ahead of its earnings call today, T-Mobile announced a new joint venture with Swedish investment firm EQT to buy Lumos Fiber, which reaches over 350,000 households.

Once the deal closes, T-Mobile will invest $950 million for a 50 percent stake in Lumos and acquire all of its existing fiber customers, with plans to expand even further. The T-Mobile Fiber network is currently in 16 markets.

Our latest episode of Decoder is about the brand-new TikTok ban — and how years of congressional inaction on a federal privacy law helped lead us to this moment of apparent national panic about algorithmic social media.

This is a thorny discussion, and to help break it all down, I invited Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner on the show. Lauren has been closely covering efforts to ban TikTok for years now, and she’s also watched Congress fail to pass meaningful privacy regulation for even longer. We’ll go over how we got here, what this means for both TikTok and efforts to pass new privacy legislation, and what might happen next. 

‘Scuderia Ferrari’ is changing its name to ‘Scuderia Ferrari HP,’ and HP’s logo will appear on the cars from Maranello for the Miami Grand Prix in May.

I can’t see it being on the wheels like McLaren’s Google logo, but at least it’s not a cigarette brand in camouflage.

An overnight email from Apple said the company can’t complete the trade-in process... even though the people getting it, like our reader Kevin, traded in their iPhones last year. Apple has since sent a follow-up message saying, “Please disregard the previous email we sent:”

You recently received an email with incorrect information regarding your Apple Trade-in. Please disregard our email. There are no issues with your order or Apple Trade-in. We apologize for any confusion this caused.

The Comcast-owned streaming service says it added 3 million paid subscribers over the past few months, bringing it to 34 million total members. In addition to airing the “most-streamed event ever in the US” in January, Peacock also added Oppenheimer and other Christopher Nolan flicks to its lineup.

Stellar Blade launches tomorrow on PS5 and just in time for release day, PlayStation is sharing a new launch trailer and information on the game’s New Game + mode. Eve’s weapons, HP, and healing items will get level boosts. Skill trees will be expanded and there will be harder difficulties for players looking for a challenging fight. But most importantly, New Game + will add over 30 new outfits to collect.