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OpenSecrets: crypto companies spent $18.96M on US lobbying in Q1 2023 to Q3 2023, up from $16.1M during the same period in 2022; Coinbase spent $2.16M, the most (Hannah Lang/Reuters)

Hannah Lang / Reuters: OpenSecrets: crypto companies spent $18.96M on US lobbying in Q1 2023 to Q3 2023, up from $16.1M during the same period in 2022; Coinbase spent $2.16M, the most — The cryptocurrency industry was on track to hit a new record for federal lobbying spending, after a year in which firms scrambled

Uber launches ‘Store Pickup’ feature for those last-minute holiday shoppers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber launched a new “Store Pickup” feature for holiday procrastinators who may be in need of a little extra help with their gift distribution. For a fee, customers can request an Uber courier pick up a purchased item from a store to be delivered to a recipient of

Ford and Xcel Energy will build 30,000 EV charging ports for fleet businesses

Image: Ford Ford may be dialing back some of its larger EV investments, but it’s still operating under the assumption that a lot of businesses will be interested in electrifying their fleets eventually. The company is partnering with Xcel Energy to install 30,000 EV charging ports for fleet customers by 2030, at little to no

This Tandem Showerhead Turns Your Bathroom Into a Spa

Boona’s tandem showerhead is easy to install and has great water pressure. It’s one of my favorite pieces of gear this year.

Google could soon upgrade one of Pixel 8’s best AI camera features

Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Code within the Pixel Camera app suggests that Google could be bringing a new feature to the Pixel 8, possibly by merging the functionality of Best Take with Top Shot. We also learn that Video Boost cannot work if you have Locked Folder enabled on Google Photos, and

The battle to stop broadband discrimination has only just begun

Illustration by Sisi Kim for The Verge The FCC’s new rules could be a step toward more equitable internet access — but will the agency stand up to telecoms? Continue reading…

Interviews with 80+ sources describe how OpenAI releasing ChatGPT a year ago triggered a scramble by Google, Meta, and the rest of Silicon Valley to catch up (New York Times)

New York Times: Interviews with 80+ sources describe how OpenAI releasing ChatGPT a year ago triggered a scramble by Google, Meta, and the rest of Silicon Valley to catch up — ChatGPT’s release a year ago triggered a desperate scramble among tech companies and alarm from some of the people who helped invent it.

Here’s what intentionally crashing a plane for YouTube clicks gets you

Yea, you don’t typically eject from a malfunctioning plane without at least trying to save it. | Image: TrevorJacob A YouTuber pilot was sentenced to six months in federal prison by the Central District of California on Monday for intentionally crashing an airplane for online views. In May earlier this year, 30-year-old Trevor Daniel Jacob

A detailed look at the OnePlus 12 ahead of its global launch

The OnePlus 12 in its three colors. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus has officially launched the OnePlus 12 in China, and its highest-specced model comes with more RAM than I had in my desktop gaming PC until very recently. Although the flagship smartphone’s base model comes with 12GB of RAM alongside 256GB of storage, opting for

WhatsApp gets a big update for sending photos and videos from your iPhone

WhatsApp is enabling users to share photos and videos at their original quality, as long as they’re under a 2GB file size.

GM, EVgo, and Pilot are making progress on their big coast-to-coast EV charging network

EVgo General Motors, along with its partners EVgo and Pilot Travel Centers, announced that the first new stations of its “coast-to-coast” EV charging network will open before the end of the year. The companies announced the opening of 17 stations today. Before the end of the year, at least 25 stations will be open, with

Tesla whistleblower Łukasz Krupski says Autopilot is not safe to use on public roads due to its hardware and software not being “ready” (BBC)

BBC: Tesla whistleblower Łukasz Krupski says Autopilot is not safe to use on public roads due to its hardware and software not being “ready” — A former Tesla employee has told the BBC he believes the technology powering the firm’s self-driving vehicles is not safe enough to be used on public roads.

This might be the only check you’ll ever get from Steve Jobs

A check Steve Jobs signed back in 1973 has recently gone up for auction and has already skyrocketed up to $25,000.

Mini Apple IIe Now Fully Functional

Here at Hackaday, we love living in a future with miniaturized versions of our favorite retrocomputers. [James Lewis] has given us another with his fully functional Apple IIe from the Mega II chip. When we last checked in on the Mega IIe, it was only just booting and had a ways to go before being a

An analysis of 36GB of US school network logs covering January 2022 to August 2023 finds widespread use of filters to censor the internet, including health info (Wired)

Wired: An analysis of 36GB of US school network logs covering January 2022 to August 2023 finds widespread use of filters to censor the internet, including health info — A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information.

Foxconn reports November revenue up 18% YoY to ~$20.6B, the first YoY improvement since January 2023, and forecasts Q4 revenue to be better than expected (Jane Lanhee Lee/Bloomberg)

Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg: Foxconn reports November revenue up 18% YoY to ~$20.6B, the first YoY improvement since January 2023, and forecasts Q4 revenue to be better than expected — It was the first year-on-year improvement in monthly results since January, helped by a comparison to last year’s disruptions by Covid Zero lockdowns in

GTA VI trailer reviewed – Everything we learned from the early release

GTA VI Trailer Day turned out to be a damp squib in the end. The trailer leaked, Rockstar was forced to release it officially a day early alongside a frustrated tweet and we all re-learned the internet is a different place than it was when GTA V was unveiled to much less fanfare a decade

OnePlus 12 vs OnePlus 11: Should you upgrade?

As modern smartphones mature, it makes less economic sense for users to upgrade annually. This is the dilemma OnePlus fans are facing after the launch of the OnePlus 12. The new flagship is arguably the best-ever OnePlus device on paper, but OnePlus 11 owners will still feel they own a capable, competent smartphone. But if

Can cloud computing be truly federated?

Reporters often call me about whatever newfangled buzzword is out there and what it means to the typical enterprise. Recently, I’ve been questioned about the fediverse. The fediverse is a decentralized social network of independent servers that can communicate with each other. Are you sitting down? The term combines the words federated and universe. Clever. The

Don’t make Apache Kafka your database

It’s a tale as old as time. An enterprise is struggling against the performance and scalability limitations of its incumbent relational database. Teams tasked with finding a newer solution land on an event-driven architecture, take one look at Apache Kafka, and say, “Aha! Here’s our new database solution.” It’s fast. It’s scalable. It’s highly available.

The conversational nature of AI chatbots makes them more trustworthy, which could result in problems including “hidden exploitation” and outright fraud (Bruce Schneier/Schneier on Security)

Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security: The conversational nature of AI chatbots makes them more trustworthy, which could result in problems including “hidden exploitation” and outright fraud — I trusted a lot today. I trusted my phone to wake me on time. I trusted Uber to arrange a taxi for me, and the driver to

PlayStation banning IDs with no warning as users lose access to PSN

Some PlayStation users are waking up to unwelcome news this morning as a number have received emails explaining they have been banned from the PlayStation Network service for violation of its terms and conditions – the problem being nobody seems to know what they have done. X and Reddit are awash with complaints about the

Instagram and Facebook cross messaging is coming to an end

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From mid-December, Instagram and Facebook’s messaging services will no longer be cross-compatible, according to a pair of Meta support pages quietly updated. Once the feature is discontinued, you won’t be able to start new cross-platform chats, and existing conversations between services will go into read-only mode. It’s unclear

Google’s killer Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel Watch deals are back just in time for the holidays

Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Google is once again offering great discounts on the Pixel 8 series. The deals were previously available during the Black Friday sale. If you missed out back then, you can now pick up the Pixel 8 Pro for $200 less than its regular price of $999. The vanilla

SoftBank acquires a 51% stake in Dublin-based Cubic Telecom, which offers software-based networking for 17M+ vehicles, for €473M, valuing Cubic at €927M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: SoftBank acquires a 51% stake in Dublin-based Cubic Telecom, which offers software-based networking for 17M+ vehicles, for €473M, valuing Cubic at €927M — Automakers and technology companies are building ever-more sophisticated digital platforms into the future generations of cars and other vehicles.

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