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Silicon Roundabout

Trump and Mike Johnson think the AI industry is overreacting

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter saying it was time to "pace the frontier" and slow down AI development. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet's De...

The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker

Even for 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum had poor sound: a piezoelectric speaker that could beep. But you can do a lot with a single bit if you turn it on and off really fast. Michael Martin's Bumbershoot Software site has done some fascinating deep...

Apple is reportedly working on iPhone game controllers

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is developing two game controllers for the iPhone and will likely sell them under the Beats brand. Rumors that Apple might enter the game controller business have circulated for some time. But last week, MacRu...

The Units’ Digital Stimulation is synthpunk perfection

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there's no better way to get my...

Security through obscurity is dead, and AI delivered the fatal blow

The term "security through obscurity" describes an old idea that networks and systems will remain secure so long as their architecture, along with any vulnerabilities or other weaknesses, remains secret or hidden. It was never a sound strategy for p...

How to make Xfce look like almost any desktop you want

PART 1 Xfce is one of the oldest and smallest desktops, but it's also one of the most malleable: it can look and work like multiple other OSes. Best of all, an optional extra Xfce tool automates away most of the configuration. Xfce has been around f...

Waymo pulls over, calls cops on riders with a ghost gun

Two people were arrested in San Fransico while riding around in a Waymo robotaxi after the cab pulled over and called the cops on them. The riders were juveniles in possession of a loaded AR-style ghost gun and were taken to a juvenile hall. Wh...

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother will make you forget all about Marvel’s Blade disaster

Marvel's mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio's biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tari...

Your car is selling your data

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on cars, data privacy, and autonomous vehicles, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt...

Apple’s new phones are here

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 143, 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've b...

OpenAI’s rogue AI tried to hack another company in May

In May, hundreds of malicious and spam packages were uploaded to RubyGems, causing a serious disruption for the host. Now independent researchers have said that a swarm of OpenAI agents were responsible for the attack. Not only that, but the AI...

Sam Altman says OpenAI going public in 2026 would be ‘ill-advised’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that there would be no OpenAI IPO in 2026 during an interview with Fortune. Over the course of 45 minutes, Altman discussed a variety of subjects including the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improv...

StarCraft returns in 2030 as an open-world shooter

Blizzard originally tried to bring the StarCraft universe to the world of 3D shooters way back in 2002 with StarCraft: Ghost. It sat in development hell for years until Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that it had been canceled in 201...

Nvidia's Groq acquihire is on the DOJ's radar, but it's already too late

Nvidia spent a whopping $20 billion late last year to license Groq’s AI accelerator tech and hire away key members of its engineering team in an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink deal. The acquihire technically left Groq’s core inference-as-a-service...

Dell's 52-inch enormo-monitor is a tsunami of impractical fun

FIRST LOOK Dell's UltraSharp 52 display is a joyously enormous head-turner, but probably too much monitor for most users. Dell debuted the display at the CES show earlier this year. It's now on sale for $3,000. Sadly, I lack a PC capable of driving...

Sylvan Esso think you should splurge on good-quality yogurt

Sylvan Esso preparing to attend a frutiger aero renfaire. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, better known as Sylvan Esso, have been bringing their low-key electro-pop to the masses since 2014, bursting onto the scene with their self-titled debut a...

Anthropic CEO says it’s time to pump the brakes on AI

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the time has come to slow down AI development and will give third-party evaluators like METR access to its models to help ensure its "adherence to safety practices and commitments." In a winding essay, Amodei pro...

LG responds to TV spying allegations

Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG's TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying...

The aircraft might not be flying, but the certificate has gone on vacation

BORK!BORK!BORK! We still don't know what caused the air traffic control mayhem in the UK in early September, but one information board at Luton Airport appears to have gone out in sympathy. Spotted by Register reader Mark, the digital sign usually s...

Trump is giving data centers a pass to pollute

President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They...