News Go Read This: The Verge’s favorite reads from all over the web

[News]

The internet is filled with awesome stuff to read, and there’s new awesome stuff to read being published every day! That’s the good news. The bad news is that finding the good stuff feels harder than ever. You either find your favorite writers or sources and check them religiously or just hope that the algorithm gods deliver you something you’ll like. It’s all a lot more work than just tapping the TikTok icon, you know?

Allow The Verge to help a little. This is an endless, often-updated stream of the stuff we’re reading and think you should read, too. Whether it’s a great piece of longform journalism, a sharp take on the news, interesting new studies or lawsuits or whitepapers, a new sci-fi book that will inevitably convince a bunch of founders to build new kinds of robots a decade from now, or something else entirely, it’s all here. So scroll through, click on some stuff, let us know what you think in the comments, and get your read-later queue ready to rumble.

• Warner Bros. Games suffered $300 million in losses last year.
• The Supreme Court case that “could eliminate longstanding free speech protections for sexual content.”
• “From the means of production to a meme in production: It’s one kind of American dream.”
• An 1891 recording is country music history.
• Pedometers tracked philandering spouses and sleepy employees back in the 1800s.
• Amazon just axed a secret fertility tracker project.
• The whitewashing of the National Archives.
• Go read how the US government’s big bet on Intel is in jeopardy.
• How many people are donating to Trump in your neighborhood?
• Snapchat to the Trump campaign: We’ll take your money but not your posts.
• The problem with custom AI chatbots.
• Anthropic’s CEO has many, many, many thoughts about AGI.
• Uber and Lyft blocked drivers from working to save money.
• Here’s the scoop on why the Annapurna Interactive staff resigned.
• KitchenAid’s new walnut stand mixer is indeed as impractical as it is beautiful.
• A reminder about marketing.
• Microsoft pitches generative AI to oil and gas companies.
• The extraordinary Prince documentary we might never see.
• The battle of the Bobs.
• Why is comedy TikTok seemingly all crowd work clips?
• AI search “shouldn’t be this easy to manipulate.”
• “The Titanic was an insurance scam” is my new favorite conspiracy theory.
• The people who worry about killer AI are still worried about killer AI.
• Whistleblowin’ from 9 to 5.
• Tim Walz may have liked to make some cuh-razy money in Crazy Taxi.
• Don’t pick up a Project 2025 duffel bag, I guess?
• Some teachers worry generative AI hurts students’ critical thinking skills.
• Bloomberg has an interesting deep dive on Worldcoin.
• Thomas White reveals himself as a co-founder of Silk Road 2.0 and DDoSecrets.
• NFT FTX DAO WTF?
• It takes one to know one?
• “It never seemed like he was even working.”
• Do we really “live in a world of social media?”
• OpenAI wants in on the AI chip business.
• It is fully 2024 and J. D. Vance’s Venmo is still public.
• Posting godhood.
• Cops covet Cybertruck.
• The Netflix-ization of Disney.
• Amazon’s quality control issues led to the shipment of a dirty diaper.
• Bob Wehadababyitsaboy.
• Dark patterns are everywhere.
• The many, many, many, many definitions of AI.
• a16z is trying to keep AI alive with Oxygen initiative.
• Remember when the iPhone 15 Pro was rumored to have haptic buttons?
• Does Airbnb protect its guests’ privacy?
• Open secrets.
• Literary Theory for Robots is a compelling journey through generative AI’s analog roots.
• Are bitcoin miners causing major health problems?
• Scalpers: always one step ahead of Ticketmaster.
• What if being lonely is what makes people vulnerable to scams?
• Final Fantasy creator can’t stop playing Final Fantasy XIV.
• Japan finally quits the floppy.
• This is what climate change is doing to the US.
• The new hot gadget is… the Kindle?
• “A willingness to kiss without paperwork is now a form of chivalry.”
• George R.R. Martin on a potential Elden Ring adaptation:
• YouTube didn’t give Dr Disrespect a contract because of rumblings about his Twitch ban.
• “Be realistic, buddy. No one cares about you.”
• AI is eating its own tail, Perplexity edition.
• Artificial intelligence, good old-fashioned consulting fees.
• Teen sextortion.
• Sony once made a massive 45-inch CRT TV that cost $40,000.
• Just how complicit is Mark Zuckerberg?
• Can AI chatbots crack good jokes?
• Perplexity continues to piss off publishers.
• “The 2024 elections will be the most consequential in crypto’s history.”
• Another look at child influencers on Instagram.