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The “Dear Sydney” ad did not go over well with Olympics viewers. | Screenshot: Google

Google is not winning any gold medals for its Olympics ads this year. After days of backlash, the company has decided to pull its controversial “Dear Sydney” ad from Olympic coverage.
In the 60-second ad, a father seeks to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to her Olympic idol, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The premise is the sort of treacly ad you’d expect to see at the Olympics, but things take a twist when instead of helping his daughter write a letter, he just has Gemini do it for them. “This has to be just right,” he says, before prompting Gemini to tell Sydney how inspiring she is, that his daughter plans to break her record one day, and to add a “sorry, not sorry” joke at the end.

From the get-go, the ad has drawn the ire of the internet. Many have lambasted the ad on social media for completely missing the point of writing a fan letter. (Which is, ostensibly, to make a heart-to-heart, human-to-human connection by being vulnerable and expressing how much your hero’s work has impacted your life.) Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri penned a takedown stating she wants to “throw a sledgehammer into the television every time I see it.” Others have pointed out that the ad encourages taking the easy way out instead of practicing self-expression.
Meanwhile, in a statement to multiple outlets, Google acknowledged the negative feedback but said that the commercial wasn’t meant to imply Gemini could completely replace humans. The ad was meant to “show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing.”

This wouldn’t be the first time big tech stepped in it while trying to showcase the power of AI in an ad. A few months ago, Apple caught flack for its “Crush” ad, which showed a hydraulic press squishing creative tools into a shiny new iPad. People were understandably upset by the imagery, especially as AI sparks fears that technology will steal and replace the work of writers, artists, performers, and other creatives.
At the heart of the issue, tech companies still struggle to read the room with regard to AI. With the “Dear Sydney” ad, it isn’t even about AI stealing jobs. Generally speaking, humans crave authentic connection. What makes a fan letter precious is the knowledge that someone took time out of their busy life to express what you or your work means to them. It’s hard to imagine that McLaughlin-Levrone wouldn’t be moved by a rambling letter from a child with the occasional typo or awkward grammar.
Ironically, the father’s words leading up to his Gemini prompt were perfect enough. Conversely, the glimpses you can see of Gemini’s draft read more like a boilerplate cover letter. Google may have meant to show that Gemini is great at starting a draft, but it failed to understand that business emails are one thing, but personal letters are something else entirely. Writing them isn’t supposed to be easy. Being nervous, pushing through it, and sending your honest feelings anyway — that’s the entire point.

The “Dear Sydney” ad did not go over well with Olympics viewers. | Screenshot: Google

Google is not winning any gold medals for its Olympics ads this year. After days of backlash, the company has decided to pull its controversial “Dear Sydney” ad from Olympic coverage.

In the 60-second ad, a father seeks to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to her Olympic idol, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The premise is the sort of treacly ad you’d expect to see at the Olympics, but things take a twist when instead of helping his daughter write a letter, he just has Gemini do it for them. “This has to be just right,” he says, before prompting Gemini to tell Sydney how inspiring she is, that his daughter plans to break her record one day, and to add a “sorry, not sorry” joke at the end.

From the get-go, the ad has drawn the ire of the internet. Many have lambasted the ad on social media for completely missing the point of writing a fan letter. (Which is, ostensibly, to make a heart-to-heart, human-to-human connection by being vulnerable and expressing how much your hero’s work has impacted your life.) Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri penned a takedown stating she wants to “throw a sledgehammer into the television every time I see it.” Others have pointed out that the ad encourages taking the easy way out instead of practicing self-expression.

Meanwhile, in a statement to multiple outlets, Google acknowledged the negative feedback but said that the commercial wasn’t meant to imply Gemini could completely replace humans. The ad was meant to “show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing.”

This wouldn’t be the first time big tech stepped in it while trying to showcase the power of AI in an ad. A few months ago, Apple caught flack for its “Crush” ad, which showed a hydraulic press squishing creative tools into a shiny new iPad. People were understandably upset by the imagery, especially as AI sparks fears that technology will steal and replace the work of writers, artists, performers, and other creatives.

At the heart of the issue, tech companies still struggle to read the room with regard to AI. With the “Dear Sydney” ad, it isn’t even about AI stealing jobs. Generally speaking, humans crave authentic connection. What makes a fan letter precious is the knowledge that someone took time out of their busy life to express what you or your work means to them. It’s hard to imagine that McLaughlin-Levrone wouldn’t be moved by a rambling letter from a child with the occasional typo or awkward grammar.

Ironically, the father’s words leading up to his Gemini prompt were perfect enough. Conversely, the glimpses you can see of Gemini’s draft read more like a boilerplate cover letter. Google may have meant to show that Gemini is great at starting a draft, but it failed to understand that business emails are one thing, but personal letters are something else entirely. Writing them isn’t supposed to be easy. Being nervous, pushing through it, and sending your honest feelings anyway — that’s the entire point.

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Google’s high-end flagship is colorful, capable, and loaded with plenty of AI tricks. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google’s next Pixel hardware event is less than two weeks away, which, in turn, means the Pixel 9 lineup is nearly upon us. That being said, you don’t need to wait for the debut of Google’s next handset on August 13th if you want a future-proofed Android phone chockful of premium specs and newfangled AI capabilities. That’s because the Pixel 8 Pro — Google’s current high-end flagship — is on sale at Amazon and Best Buy with 128GB of storage starting at $699 ($300 off), an all-time low.

If the recent rumor mill is to be believed, Google’s next pro-grade smartphone will feature several distinct design changes and a modest performance boost thanks to its G4 Tensor chip. But the third-gen chipset in the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro is still plenty fast, allowing both phones to run large language models on-device. That means they can leverage a number of AI editing tools, including one that lets you choose the best expression for each person in a photo when you take multiple images and an enhanced Magic Eraser that allows you to easily remove larger objects from photos — albeit with varying degrees of success.
The Pixel 8 Pro has plenty going for it outside of AI, too. The 6.7-inch Android phone packs an excellent camera array with a 5x telephoto lens and 8-megapixel ultrawide, along with manual exposure controls not found on the standard Pixel 8. It also offers a speedy 120Hz refresh, expanded Face Unlock capabilities, and seven years of OS updates, so it will continue to receive support for years to come.

Read our Google Pixel 8 Pro review.

Some more ways to save today

You can grab the RoboVac 11S Max for just $149.99 ($100 off) at Amazon with an on-page coupon or direct from Eufy with promo code WS24T2126111. This older bump-and-run bot can’t hold a candle to the best robot vacuums or even some of our budget picks, but it’s not a bad option if all you need is a simple robovac with good suction, a decent-sized dustbin, and quiet operation.
One thing we don’t anticipate seeing at Google’s next hardware event is an updated Pixel Tablet — which makes the $150 discount we’re seeing at Woot on the dockless, 128GB base model a lot more attractive. Along with the OnePlus Pad 2, Google’s 11-inch slate remains one of the better Android tablets available, with responsive performance, great sound, and a lovely LCD that’s great for watching movies and playing games. Read our review.
The UE Wonderboom 4 is once again matching its all-time low of $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. As my colleague David Pierce pointed out in an earlier edition of Installer, Ultimate Ears’ latest Bluetooth speaker is well-equipped for the dog days of summer, namely because it offers the same rugged IP67 rating as earlier models, a new megaphone feature that amplifies your voice when you talk into it, and USB-C charging (finally).

Google’s high-end flagship is colorful, capable, and loaded with plenty of AI tricks. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google’s next Pixel hardware event is less than two weeks away, which, in turn, means the Pixel 9 lineup is nearly upon us. That being said, you don’t need to wait for the debut of Google’s next handset on August 13th if you want a future-proofed Android phone chockful of premium specs and newfangled AI capabilities. That’s because the Pixel 8 Pro — Google’s current high-end flagship — is on sale at Amazon and Best Buy with 128GB of storage starting at $699 ($300 off), an all-time low.

If the recent rumor mill is to be believed, Google’s next pro-grade smartphone will feature several distinct design changes and a modest performance boost thanks to its G4 Tensor chip. But the third-gen chipset in the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro is still plenty fast, allowing both phones to run large language models on-device. That means they can leverage a number of AI editing tools, including one that lets you choose the best expression for each person in a photo when you take multiple images and an enhanced Magic Eraser that allows you to easily remove larger objects from photos — albeit with varying degrees of success.

The Pixel 8 Pro has plenty going for it outside of AI, too. The 6.7-inch Android phone packs an excellent camera array with a 5x telephoto lens and 8-megapixel ultrawide, along with manual exposure controls not found on the standard Pixel 8. It also offers a speedy 120Hz refresh, expanded Face Unlock capabilities, and seven years of OS updates, so it will continue to receive support for years to come.

Read our Google Pixel 8 Pro review.

Some more ways to save today

You can grab the RoboVac 11S Max for just $149.99 ($100 off) at Amazon with an on-page coupon or direct from Eufy with promo code WS24T2126111. This older bump-and-run bot can’t hold a candle to the best robot vacuums or even some of our budget picks, but it’s not a bad option if all you need is a simple robovac with good suction, a decent-sized dustbin, and quiet operation.
One thing we don’t anticipate seeing at Google’s next hardware event is an updated Pixel Tablet — which makes the $150 discount we’re seeing at Woot on the dockless, 128GB base model a lot more attractive. Along with the OnePlus Pad 2, Google’s 11-inch slate remains one of the better Android tablets available, with responsive performance, great sound, and a lovely LCD that’s great for watching movies and playing games. Read our review.
The UE Wonderboom 4 is once again matching its all-time low of $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. As my colleague David Pierce pointed out in an earlier edition of Installer, Ultimate Ears’ latest Bluetooth speaker is well-equipped for the dog days of summer, namely because it offers the same rugged IP67 rating as earlier models, a new megaphone feature that amplifies your voice when you talk into it, and USB-C charging (finally).

Read More 

It looks like the SQ8 E-tron, but it’s not. | Image: Audi

Audi is giving its all-electric Q8 E-tron some premium add-on packages across the lineup as the automaker’s overall EV sales are falling quarter over quarter this year.
The 2025 Audi Q8 E-tron SUV and Sportback now have a “sportier” S line competition appearance package that feels a bit like a parts bin consolidation. It adds body components from the $90,000 SQ8 E-tron, making the vehicle wider, and includes a body-color Singleframe and special 21-inch five-spoke black wheels. It also gets black-painted brake calipers with S branding and door projection lights for the edition.
While the package is only launching in Europe right now, the company is “evaluating” bringing it to the US as well, according to Audi’s product communications manager, Nathan Hoyt.
There is some speculation that the automaker could end production of the vehicles due to a significant drop in demand. CleanTechnica reported Audi’s EV sales were down from 7.411 vehicles in Q4 2023 to 5,714 in Q1 2024. And earlier this year, Car and Driver reported that Audi was considering an early end to the Q8 E-tron’s production. However, Hoyt tells me there are “no plans at this time to end production of the Q8 e-tron.”
The 2025 Q8 E-tron lineup, starting at $74,800, was announced in early July, and it added new standard options, including Homelink buttons and Remote park assist plus that lets you park the car into tight spots while standing outside the vehicle. There’s also a Magnesium package that black out the colors and adds matte gold to the wheels.

The Q8 E-tron’s just announced S line appearance package also adds new carbon fiber components embedded in places like the front air curtains, side view mirrors, and on parts of all four doors. Of course, the real SQ8 E-tron models have the carbon fiber components, too — but only part of the Carbon Style package add-on.
Audi also includes the SQ8 E-tron’s adaptive air suspension sport system with the S line package, giving the regular Q8 E-tron the ability to change the ride height and add dynamic damping control for better comfort.
While the Q8 E-tron’s future is in question, Audi is working to bring the new A6 E-tron series which will likely have better range and a slicker appearance. Audi’s electric vehicle lineup has long had poorer range compared to Tesla, Ford, and Kia. And while Audi’s Porsche Taycan-based E-tron GT is a great effort, it’s far too expensive for a mainstream luxury EV.
Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is in a price-slashing competition, trying to get customers to choose their EV over the other — especially over Tesla (which is struggling to get new buyers).

It looks like the SQ8 E-tron, but it’s not. | Image: Audi

Audi is giving its all-electric Q8 E-tron some premium add-on packages across the lineup as the automaker’s overall EV sales are falling quarter over quarter this year.

The 2025 Audi Q8 E-tron SUV and Sportback now have a “sportier” S line competition appearance package that feels a bit like a parts bin consolidation. It adds body components from the $90,000 SQ8 E-tron, making the vehicle wider, and includes a body-color Singleframe and special 21-inch five-spoke black wheels. It also gets black-painted brake calipers with S branding and door projection lights for the edition.

While the package is only launching in Europe right now, the company is “evaluating” bringing it to the US as well, according to Audi’s product communications manager, Nathan Hoyt.

There is some speculation that the automaker could end production of the vehicles due to a significant drop in demand. CleanTechnica reported Audi’s EV sales were down from 7.411 vehicles in Q4 2023 to 5,714 in Q1 2024. And earlier this year, Car and Driver reported that Audi was considering an early end to the Q8 E-tron’s production. However, Hoyt tells me there are “no plans at this time to end production of the Q8 e-tron.”

The 2025 Q8 E-tron lineup, starting at $74,800, was announced in early July, and it added new standard options, including Homelink buttons and Remote park assist plus that lets you park the car into tight spots while standing outside the vehicle. There’s also a Magnesium package that black out the colors and adds matte gold to the wheels.

The Q8 E-tron’s just announced S line appearance package also adds new carbon fiber components embedded in places like the front air curtains, side view mirrors, and on parts of all four doors. Of course, the real SQ8 E-tron models have the carbon fiber components, too — but only part of the Carbon Style package add-on.

Audi also includes the SQ8 E-tron’s adaptive air suspension sport system with the S line package, giving the regular Q8 E-tron the ability to change the ride height and add dynamic damping control for better comfort.

While the Q8 E-tron’s future is in question, Audi is working to bring the new A6 E-tron series which will likely have better range and a slicker appearance. Audi’s electric vehicle lineup has long had poorer range compared to Tesla, Ford, and Kia. And while Audi’s Porsche Taycan-based E-tron GT is a great effort, it’s far too expensive for a mainstream luxury EV.

Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is in a price-slashing competition, trying to get customers to choose their EV over the other — especially over Tesla (which is struggling to get new buyers).

Read More 

Image: Apple

Following backlash criticizing an Apple ad’s outdated and stereotyped portrayal of Thailand, Apple has removed it and issued an apology. The negative attention follows Apple’s apology for the “Crush” iPad Pro ad and its removal from broadcasts in May after it attracted widespread criticism among the creative community.
“Thai people are deeply unhappy with the advertisement,” Thai lawmaker Sattra Sripan said in a statement reported by Bloomberg. “I encourage Thai people to stop using Apple products and change to other brands.”
The 10-minute ad, titled “OOO (Out of Office),” was the latest in Apple’s The Underdogs comedy series depicting a recurring cast of coworkers as they use Apple products to resolve issues within their workplace.
The ad debuted in mid-July and featured the Underdogs team navigating around Thailand on a quest to find a new packaging factory. Thai citizens, lawmakers, and influencers criticized the video’s use of sepia filters and depiction of an airport, transportation, clothing, and hotels for misrepresenting the country as being underdeveloped.

“Our intent was to celebrate the country’s optimism and culture, and we apologize for not fully capturing the vibrancy of Thailand today,” Apple said in a statement on Friday. “The film is no longer being aired.” Apple says it collaborated with a local production company in Thailand to create the video, according to 9to5Mac. The ad has since been removed from Apple’s YouTube channels, though the full version can still be viewed in this report by Campaign.
Thailand’s prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, who had previously promoted the ad, told reporters that there are two sides to every coin, reports local paper Thairath (translated). Asked by reporters if he was concerned “Apple might not want to invest in Thailand anymore because Thai people are against it and will turn to using Android more,” he said he was not.
While Apple’s iPad Pro “Crush” ad is still available to watch on Apple’s main YouTube channel, we can only find one of the five ads that were released in The Underdogs video series. We have asked Apple if additional videos have also been taken offline and will update if we hear back.

@bangkokpost.official Apple’s latest short film commercial ‘The Underdogs: OOO (Out Of Office)’ that aims to represent its gadgets filmed in Thailand has sparked criticism among Thai people as the commercial portrays Thailand in a low-tech and underdeveloped mood and tone, using a warm colour in several scenes of the film. #apple #Thailand #commercial #technology #gadgets #shortfilm #iphone #ipad #macbook #imac #applevisionpro #ios #applethailand #ไอโฟน #ไอแพด #แมคบุ๊ค #แอปเปิ้ล #โฆษณา #หนังสั้น #ข่าวtiktok #ข่าวเทคโนโลยี ♬ original sound – Bangkok Post – Bangkok Post

Image: Apple

Following backlash criticizing an Apple ad’s outdated and stereotyped portrayal of Thailand, Apple has removed it and issued an apology. The negative attention follows Apple’s apology for the “Crush” iPad Pro ad and its removal from broadcasts in May after it attracted widespread criticism among the creative community.

“Thai people are deeply unhappy with the advertisement,” Thai lawmaker Sattra Sripan said in a statement reported by Bloomberg. “I encourage Thai people to stop using Apple products and change to other brands.”

The 10-minute ad, titled “OOO (Out of Office),” was the latest in Apple’s The Underdogs comedy series depicting a recurring cast of coworkers as they use Apple products to resolve issues within their workplace.

The ad debuted in mid-July and featured the Underdogs team navigating around Thailand on a quest to find a new packaging factory. Thai citizens, lawmakers, and influencers criticized the video’s use of sepia filters and depiction of an airport, transportation, clothing, and hotels for misrepresenting the country as being underdeveloped.

“Our intent was to celebrate the country’s optimism and culture, and we apologize for not fully capturing the vibrancy of Thailand today,” Apple said in a statement on Friday. “The film is no longer being aired.” Apple says it collaborated with a local production company in Thailand to create the video, according to 9to5Mac. The ad has since been removed from Apple’s YouTube channels, though the full version can still be viewed in this report by Campaign.

Thailand’s prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, who had previously promoted the ad, told reporters that there are two sides to every coin, reports local paper Thairath (translated). Asked by reporters if he was concerned “Apple might not want to invest in Thailand anymore because Thai people are against it and will turn to using Android more,” he said he was not.

While Apple’s iPad Pro “Crush” ad is still available to watch on Apple’s main YouTube channel, we can only find one of the five ads that were released in The Underdogs video series. We have asked Apple if additional videos have also been taken offline and will update if we hear back.

Read More 

Image: Riot Games

Riot Games is surprise launching Valorant on Xbox Series S / X and PS5 consoles today. After a brief beta period in June, the console version of Valorant will be available in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Brazil and features all the same gameplay, heroes, and abilities as the PC version.
Valorant on console won’t have crossplay support because Riot Games wants to maintain “competitive integrity.” That means PC players won’t be getting controller support, either. The game will support cross-progression, so any skins and progression will carry over between PC and console. Both PC and console players will also receive simultaneous platform releases, including balance patches, new agents, map updates, premium content, and more.

Image: Riot Games
Valorant Xbox gameplay.

Riot Games has also made some tweaks to the console version of its 5v5 tactical shooter, largely to make it more controller-friendly for hip-fire gameplay. “Focus is a new shooting mode that behaves essentially like hip-fire, but with reduced sensitivity,” explains Arnar Gylfason, production director of Valorant. “This way, players can use hip-fire whenever they need speed in moving their camera / aim, but utilize focus mode whenever they need precision. This also approximates the shooting mechanic to what console players are used to in shooters, all of this without losing the added value Valorant’s aim down sights provides.”
Valorant is now available to play for free on PC, Xbox Series S / X, and PS5.

Image: Riot Games

Riot Games is surprise launching Valorant on Xbox Series S / X and PS5 consoles today. After a brief beta period in June, the console version of Valorant will be available in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Brazil and features all the same gameplay, heroes, and abilities as the PC version.

Valorant on console won’t have crossplay support because Riot Games wants to maintain “competitive integrity.” That means PC players won’t be getting controller support, either. The game will support cross-progression, so any skins and progression will carry over between PC and console. Both PC and console players will also receive simultaneous platform releases, including balance patches, new agents, map updates, premium content, and more.

Image: Riot Games
Valorant Xbox gameplay.

Riot Games has also made some tweaks to the console version of its 5v5 tactical shooter, largely to make it more controller-friendly for hip-fire gameplay. “Focus is a new shooting mode that behaves essentially like hip-fire, but with reduced sensitivity,” explains Arnar Gylfason, production director of Valorant. “This way, players can use hip-fire whenever they need speed in moving their camera / aim, but utilize focus mode whenever they need precision. This also approximates the shooting mechanic to what console players are used to in shooters, all of this without losing the added value Valorant’s aim down sights provides.”

Valorant is now available to play for free on PC, Xbox Series S / X, and PS5.

Read More 

Image: Puzzmo / Angie Wang

Everyone seems to want in on newspaper-style casual gaming. While The New York Times is leading the way with Wordle and its iconic crossword, major companies ranging from Netflix to LinkedIn are trying to carve out a place as well. So, when game designer Zach Gage, cofounder of the Hearst-owned site Puzzmo, started exploring the space, he knew the project needed more than great games. He says the goal was to “design a website that isn’t just links to games but is in fact a deeper community experience.” That’s why Puzzmo launched last year with a handful of titles and multiplayer features like leaderboards.
Now both of those aspects are expanding with a new game that’s also introducing new ways to play — inspired by some of the biggest online shooters around.
Back in June, the site introduced Pile-Up Poker, a game that takes the rules of poker — namely the various hands — and turns it into a solitaire-like experience with the goal of earning a high score in the form of virtual cash. It’s a great addition to Puzzmo’s growing library of word games and other puzzles. It also came with a communitywide goal for everyone to work toward: earning a collective $1 trillion of in-game money. The idea is that every Puzzmo player contributes a little bit each day over time by playing Pile-Up Poker and racking up dollars. (Games like Fortnite have similarly experimented with these kinds of collective goals.)

Image: Puzzmo
Pile-Up Poker.

As the community pot grows closer to the goal, new features will be added for everyone. At launch, there was a deck of physical cards designed by BoJack Horseman artist Lisa Hanawalt, and just last week, Puzzmo added the option for clubs — in-game friend groups — to have their own custom, game-specific leaderboards so they can compare scores in TypeShift or Really Bad Chess. The tool is built to be flexible, so people can create hyperspecific ways to play with their friends.
This idea of ongoing support and updates comes from the battle passes found in games like Fortnite and League of Legends. Gage is a hardcore Apex Legends player (he even does meetings inside of the shooter) and believes that the nature of a battle pass, with goals that encourage daily play, can nurture a more dedicated audience. “When you play every day, you start to care about the patch notes,” he explains. “It turns you into a quality community member instead of a person who is just stepping in and playing the game. You become invested.”
There are downsides, of course. A typical battle pass requires a huge investment from the developer to constantly make new in-game items for players, like Fortnite’s never-ending production line of skins. Daily missions can also become checklists for players rather than fun experiences. “Sometimes I have found myself playing a battle pass and wondered, ‘What am I doing? Why am I even playing this game right now? This is a waste of my time,’” Gage says. “That is a feeling that I don’t want anyone to have with any game that I’m making.”
“When you play every day, you start to care about the patch notes.”
Community objectives like the Pile-Up Poker pot, which are designed sort of like Kickstarter stretch goals, solve these problems in a few ways. They don’t require much additional work for the developers since the upcoming features were already part of the roadmap. And players don’t experience the same kind of FOMO because, even if you miss a day or two, the rest of the community is still building toward those goals. At the same time, the process of hitting such a huge number has given a nice jolt to the community, according to Gage, citing vibrant discussions in the Puzzmo Discord. (He notes that the $1 trillion figure was chosen simply because “it sounded cool.”)
The hope is that the combination of all of those elements — friends groups, community goals, a deep and growing library of games — will be what it takes for Puzzmo to go up against its entrenched competition. “Everybody who we are competing with is trying to make a crossword that has the gravitas of The New York Times crossword,” says Gage. “But nobody is building a community around their crossword. That is the appeal of the New York Times crossword — there’s community. You can do it and talk to your friends about it.”
Disclosure: Puzzmo has a partnership with Verge sister site Polygon.

Image: Puzzmo / Angie Wang

Everyone seems to want in on newspaper-style casual gaming. While The New York Times is leading the way with Wordle and its iconic crossword, major companies ranging from Netflix to LinkedIn are trying to carve out a place as well. So, when game designer Zach Gage, cofounder of the Hearst-owned site Puzzmo, started exploring the space, he knew the project needed more than great games. He says the goal was to “design a website that isn’t just links to games but is in fact a deeper community experience.” That’s why Puzzmo launched last year with a handful of titles and multiplayer features like leaderboards.

Now both of those aspects are expanding with a new game that’s also introducing new ways to play — inspired by some of the biggest online shooters around.

Back in June, the site introduced Pile-Up Poker, a game that takes the rules of poker — namely the various hands — and turns it into a solitaire-like experience with the goal of earning a high score in the form of virtual cash. It’s a great addition to Puzzmo’s growing library of word games and other puzzles. It also came with a communitywide goal for everyone to work toward: earning a collective $1 trillion of in-game money. The idea is that every Puzzmo player contributes a little bit each day over time by playing Pile-Up Poker and racking up dollars. (Games like Fortnite have similarly experimented with these kinds of collective goals.)

As the community pot grows closer to the goal, new features will be added for everyone. At launch, there was a deck of physical cards designed by BoJack Horseman artist Lisa Hanawalt, and just last week, Puzzmo added the option for clubs — in-game friend groups — to have their own custom, game-specific leaderboards so they can compare scores in TypeShift or Really Bad Chess. The tool is built to be flexible, so people can create hyperspecific ways to play with their friends.

This idea of ongoing support and updates comes from the battle passes found in games like Fortnite and League of Legends. Gage is a hardcore Apex Legends player (he even does meetings inside of the shooter) and believes that the nature of a battle pass, with goals that encourage daily play, can nurture a more dedicated audience. “When you play every day, you start to care about the patch notes,” he explains. “It turns you into a quality community member instead of a person who is just stepping in and playing the game. You become invested.”

There are downsides, of course. A typical battle pass requires a huge investment from the developer to constantly make new in-game items for players, like Fortnite’s never-ending production line of skins. Daily missions can also become checklists for players rather than fun experiences. “Sometimes I have found myself playing a battle pass and wondered, ‘What am I doing? Why am I even playing this game right now? This is a waste of my time,’” Gage says. “That is a feeling that I don’t want anyone to have with any game that I’m making.”

Community objectives like the Pile-Up Poker pot, which are designed sort of like Kickstarter stretch goals, solve these problems in a few ways. They don’t require much additional work for the developers since the upcoming features were already part of the roadmap. And players don’t experience the same kind of FOMO because, even if you miss a day or two, the rest of the community is still building toward those goals. At the same time, the process of hitting such a huge number has given a nice jolt to the community, according to Gage, citing vibrant discussions in the Puzzmo Discord. (He notes that the $1 trillion figure was chosen simply because “it sounded cool.”)

The hope is that the combination of all of those elements — friends groups, community goals, a deep and growing library of games — will be what it takes for Puzzmo to go up against its entrenched competition. “Everybody who we are competing with is trying to make a crossword that has the gravitas of The New York Times crossword,” says Gage. “But nobody is building a community around their crossword. That is the appeal of the New York Times crossword — there’s community. You can do it and talk to your friends about it.”

Disclosure: Puzzmo has a partnership with Verge sister site Polygon.

Read More 

Microsoft’s latest 2-in-1 is all in on Arm, and it’s the closest the company’s come to merging the power of a laptop with the battery life and flexibility of a tablet. For 11 years, the Surface Pro has been Microsoft’s best articulation of its vision for the future of personal computing: the power of a Windows laptop, with the flexibility and battery life of a tablet.
But x86 chips were too power-hungry, and Arm chips were too slow. So Microsoft split the Surface lineup in two: there was a fast Surface with an x86 chip and bad battery life and a slow Arm one with great battery life. But having to choose between them was never the dream.
The Surface Pro 11 is supposed to have it all. For the first time, it mostly does. Thanks to the new Snapdragon X processor, it’s the first Arm-based Surface Pro that runs Windows and most apps without tripping over itself. More than that, it’s fast as hell. It’s beautifully built and surprisingly repairable, and the new Flex Keyboard is downright magical.
I’ve spent over a month using the Surface Pro 11 as my main computer — forsaking my desktop PC, work MacBook Air, and iPad. Each of them is better than the Surface Pro in at least one way. The desktop has better app compatibility, and its eight-year-old midrange GPU mops the floor with the one in the Surface Pro. The MacBook has better battery life and a less cluttered operating system, and it’s nicer to use on your actual lap. The iPad is a much, much better tablet. And the Surface Pro costs more than any two of them put together. But it’s good enough at the important things and more flexible than any of the others. It’s the closest Microsoft has come to achieving the dream.

The Surface Pro 11 starts at $1,000 with a 10-core Snapdragon X Plus CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 13-inch, 2880 x 1920 LCD touchscreen — keyboard and stylus not included. The step-up model with a 12-core processor, 512GB of RAM, and OLED screen starts at $1,500.
I’ve spent a month using the $2,100 top-of-the-line configuration with a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an OLED screen. Add the new Flex Keyboard and stylus, and it costs $2,550.
The hardware is as refined as you’d expect from a device in its 11th year. The chassis is nearly identical to the 9th edition, from the ports to the peripheral venting that wraps around the top half of the tablet. The most significant differences are the OLED panel on the step-up model, the Flex Keyboard, and of course, the Snapdragon X processor.

The OLED display is Microsoft’s first. It’s bright and often beautiful. HDR video looks great. (Fallout’s wasteland really pops.) But Windows’ HDR support can get screwy — it washes out screenshots taken with the Snipping Tool, for example — so I keep it off most of the time.
And if you spend more time in documents than watching videos (which is a fair bet if you’re interested in the Surface Pro), the OLED may not be for you. The subpixel array can give it a grainy appearance, especially on a white background. It drives my colleague Tom Warren up the wall, but I barely notice it, possibly because I don’t have other OLED laptops lying around. I do notice the glare. There’s no antireflective coating on the screen, and I have to crank up the brightness if I’m near a window, even on a cloudy day.
Late into my time with the OLED Surface Pro, I bought a $1,199 model with an LCD screen. The LCD looks fine. It doesn’t have the grain. If I’d been using it the whole time, I’d be perfectly happy. But next to the OLED, it looks washed out, and it’s just as prone to glare. I’d rather have the OLED, grain and glare and $300 extra be damned.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
The Flex Keyboard has Bluetooth, so it keeps working when you detach it from the tablet.

The whole point of the Surface Pro is that you can take the keyboard off. Otherwise, you’d just get a laptop. Maybe you want to write or draw on the screen with the stylus, maybe you’re trying to get better ergonomics, maybe you want to use a keyboard you like better, or maybe you’re just trying to fit the darn thing on an airplane tray table so you can watch a movie. Most type covers stop working when you detach the keyboard, but the new Flex Keyboard cover has Bluetooth, so it just keeps going.
The handoff between the physical and Bluetooth connections is seamless, and the keyboard itself is pretty good. For $349 ($449 with the stylus), it ought to be. The keys are shallow but have a decent tactile bump on the downstroke and a snappy upstroke. It feels a lot like typing on a slightly flexible MacBook Air — Microsoft reinforced the base to protect the battery, so the keys feel less bouncy than previous type covers. The haptic trackpad is accurate and smooth but feels a little too short. The keyboard deck is wrapped in soft, heathered-looking alcantara fabric. It’s comfortable and feels warmer under the palms than metal would, but I wish Microsoft had switched to aluminum like it did with the Surface Laptop. The palm rests on my review unit have started yellowing after just a few weeks.

Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge
The Flex Keyboard is nice to type on, but the fabric on the palm rest is already starting to yellow.

The Flex Keyboard is expensive, and it’s not necessarily so nice that I’d want to use it instead of my regular keyboard and mouse when I’m at home — though I do end up using it that way since I have it around. Fortunately, the Surface Pro 11 works with a half-dozen current and previous Surface Pro keyboard covers, which start at $140. For that matter, the Flex Keyboard works with Surface Pro models back to the Surface Pro X from 2019. You can get a cheaper keyboard for the Surface Pro 11 or buy just the Flex Keyboard for your older Surface Pro.

The OLED display and the new keyboard are both optional, but the Arm chip isn’t. The Surface Pro 11 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform, which tries to do for Windows machines what Apple Silicon has done for Macs and iPads: combine the performance of a laptop with the battery life of a tablet. It feels like it was made for the Surface Pro.
Most of the time, the Surface Pro 11 is as fast as the other Snapdragon X laptops we’ve tested and faster than the Intel and AMD chips we put it up against. More importantly, it feels fast, which is more than any earlier Arm Surface Pro has managed. Even the 10-core chip on the base model is fine.
But it’s not quite a drop-in replacement for an Intel Surface Pro. Because most Windows apps are still compiled for x86 processors, Arm computers have to spend extra cycles on emulation. The new Snapdragon X chips are way better at emulation than earlier Arm processors, but they still struggle with some apps, especially graphics-heavy ones, and some programs refuse to run at all. You’ll need to make sure your must-have apps work well before committing to any of the new Arm laptops.
I’ve spent the past month using the Surface Pro 11 as my main work computer, and app compatibility doesn’t trip me up much. Almost all my day-to-day apps have Arm64 versions, including Slack, Spotify, and the browser. (I run a lot of tabs.) Most of those that don’t, like Beeper and Obsidian, work fine in emulation. The app I miss the most is the Arc browser (sorry, Edge), though my VPN client didn’t work, either, and I did have to switch back to my desktop to use the Via keyboard remapping software. Most games don’t run well on Arm yet, but GeForce Now game streaming works fine — much better than it did in mid-June.
Most days, I got about eight hours of battery life with the screen at around 50 or 60 percent brightness and all of Microsoft’s power-saving recommendations enabled, including dark mode and setting the Pro to sleep after three minutes of inactivity. One day, I got nearly 11 hours. But with great power comes great power consumption. Apps that really push the processor, like our Cinebench benchmark, chew through battery life — and so do video calls, for some reason.
Outside of video calls and benchmarks, I saw a 9 or 10 percent drop in battery level per hour. In calls, it’s twice that, and on days with lots of meetings, I got closer to six hours on a charge. And I looked bad the whole time.

Screenshot by Nathan Edwards / The Verge
The Surface Pro’s ultrawide webcam makes you look like you’re being filmed from waist level.

The front camera on the Surface Pro is a 1440p ultrawide, and its fish-eye effect and default framing are unflattering and distracting. You loom over everyone else in the call. There’s an automatic framing feature that digitally zooms into your face and keeps you centered, but it oversharpens facial features to compensate for the low resolution and never works the first time. This is not a computer to buy if you’re on a lot of calls.
On the bright side, Windows Hello face authentication reliably unlocks the Surface Pro as soon as I wake it up, which is a quality-of-life improvement I wasn’t expecting.

Microsoft calls the Surface Pro a 2-in-1. But you can’t really fit two into one without compromising somewhere. It’s less lappable than a laptop and less tablet-y than a tablet, and it costs as much as buying both. But there’s no better tablet to do office work on and no laptop quite this flexible, especially now that you don’t have to choose between decent battery life and the ability to run actual apps without stumbling.
Even if you’re sold on the idea of the Surface Pro, the smart move would be to wait six months and see how Arm compatibility shakes out, especially if your work requires any sort of graphics horsepower, you like to game, or you want 5G, which isn’t available yet. You should probably do that.
After a month with the Surface Pro 11, I’m not sure I can go back to a regular laptop. I don’t mind the OLED grain, and I could even live with the webcam situation. I wasn’t gaming much anyway, and I’m sure the Arc browser will come to Arm64 someday. I love being able to pop off the Flex Keyboard and stick the Surface Pro on a stack of books for better ergonomics or just plug it in below my monitor and use my regular keyboard and mouse. I’m not quite ready for it to be my only computer, but it feels like we’re nearly there.

Microsoft’s latest 2-in-1 is all in on Arm, and it’s the closest the company’s come to merging the power of a laptop with the battery life and flexibility of a tablet.

For 11 years, the Surface Pro has been Microsoft’s best articulation of its vision for the future of personal computing: the power of a Windows laptop, with the flexibility and battery life of a tablet.

But x86 chips were too power-hungry, and Arm chips were too slow. So Microsoft split the Surface lineup in two: there was a fast Surface with an x86 chip and bad battery life and a slow Arm one with great battery life. But having to choose between them was never the dream.

The Surface Pro 11 is supposed to have it all. For the first time, it mostly does. Thanks to the new Snapdragon X processor, it’s the first Arm-based Surface Pro that runs Windows and most apps without tripping over itself. More than that, it’s fast as hell. It’s beautifully built and surprisingly repairable, and the new Flex Keyboard is downright magical.

I’ve spent over a month using the Surface Pro 11 as my main computer — forsaking my desktop PC, work MacBook Air, and iPad. Each of them is better than the Surface Pro in at least one way. The desktop has better app compatibility, and its eight-year-old midrange GPU mops the floor with the one in the Surface Pro. The MacBook has better battery life and a less cluttered operating system, and it’s nicer to use on your actual lap. The iPad is a much, much better tablet. And the Surface Pro costs more than any two of them put together. But it’s good enough at the important things and more flexible than any of the others. It’s the closest Microsoft has come to achieving the dream.

The Surface Pro 11 starts at $1,000 with a 10-core Snapdragon X Plus CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 13-inch, 2880 x 1920 LCD touchscreen — keyboard and stylus not included. The step-up model with a 12-core processor, 512GB of RAM, and OLED screen starts at $1,500.

I’ve spent a month using the $2,100 top-of-the-line configuration with a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an OLED screen. Add the new Flex Keyboard and stylus, and it costs $2,550.

The hardware is as refined as you’d expect from a device in its 11th year. The chassis is nearly identical to the 9th edition, from the ports to the peripheral venting that wraps around the top half of the tablet. The most significant differences are the OLED panel on the step-up model, the Flex Keyboard, and of course, the Snapdragon X processor.

The OLED display is Microsoft’s first. It’s bright and often beautiful. HDR video looks great. (Fallout’s wasteland really pops.) But Windows’ HDR support can get screwy — it washes out screenshots taken with the Snipping Tool, for example — so I keep it off most of the time.

And if you spend more time in documents than watching videos (which is a fair bet if you’re interested in the Surface Pro), the OLED may not be for you. The subpixel array can give it a grainy appearance, especially on a white background. It drives my colleague Tom Warren up the wall, but I barely notice it, possibly because I don’t have other OLED laptops lying around. I do notice the glare. There’s no antireflective coating on the screen, and I have to crank up the brightness if I’m near a window, even on a cloudy day.

Late into my time with the OLED Surface Pro, I bought a $1,199 model with an LCD screen. The LCD looks fine. It doesn’t have the grain. If I’d been using it the whole time, I’d be perfectly happy. But next to the OLED, it looks washed out, and it’s just as prone to glare. I’d rather have the OLED, grain and glare and $300 extra be damned.

The whole point of the Surface Pro is that you can take the keyboard off. Otherwise, you’d just get a laptop. Maybe you want to write or draw on the screen with the stylus, maybe you’re trying to get better ergonomics, maybe you want to use a keyboard you like better, or maybe you’re just trying to fit the darn thing on an airplane tray table so you can watch a movie. Most type covers stop working when you detach the keyboard, but the new Flex Keyboard cover has Bluetooth, so it just keeps going.

The handoff between the physical and Bluetooth connections is seamless, and the keyboard itself is pretty good. For $349 ($449 with the stylus), it ought to be. The keys are shallow but have a decent tactile bump on the downstroke and a snappy upstroke. It feels a lot like typing on a slightly flexible MacBook Air — Microsoft reinforced the base to protect the battery, so the keys feel less bouncy than previous type covers. The haptic trackpad is accurate and smooth but feels a little too short. The keyboard deck is wrapped in soft, heathered-looking alcantara fabric. It’s comfortable and feels warmer under the palms than metal would, but I wish Microsoft had switched to aluminum like it did with the Surface Laptop. The palm rests on my review unit have started yellowing after just a few weeks.

Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge
The Flex Keyboard is nice to type on, but the fabric on the palm rest is already starting to yellow.

The Flex Keyboard is expensive, and it’s not necessarily so nice that I’d want to use it instead of my regular keyboard and mouse when I’m at home — though I do end up using it that way since I have it around. Fortunately, the Surface Pro 11 works with a half-dozen current and previous Surface Pro keyboard covers, which start at $140. For that matter, the Flex Keyboard works with Surface Pro models back to the Surface Pro X from 2019. You can get a cheaper keyboard for the Surface Pro 11 or buy just the Flex Keyboard for your older Surface Pro.

The OLED display and the new keyboard are both optional, but the Arm chip isn’t. The Surface Pro 11 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform, which tries to do for Windows machines what Apple Silicon has done for Macs and iPads: combine the performance of a laptop with the battery life of a tablet. It feels like it was made for the Surface Pro.

Most of the time, the Surface Pro 11 is as fast as the other Snapdragon X laptops we’ve tested and faster than the Intel and AMD chips we put it up against. More importantly, it feels fast, which is more than any earlier Arm Surface Pro has managed. Even the 10-core chip on the base model is fine.

But it’s not quite a drop-in replacement for an Intel Surface Pro. Because most Windows apps are still compiled for x86 processors, Arm computers have to spend extra cycles on emulation. The new Snapdragon X chips are way better at emulation than earlier Arm processors, but they still struggle with some apps, especially graphics-heavy ones, and some programs refuse to run at all. You’ll need to make sure your must-have apps work well before committing to any of the new Arm laptops.

I’ve spent the past month using the Surface Pro 11 as my main work computer, and app compatibility doesn’t trip me up much. Almost all my day-to-day apps have Arm64 versions, including Slack, Spotify, and the browser. (I run a lot of tabs.) Most of those that don’t, like Beeper and Obsidian, work fine in emulation. The app I miss the most is the Arc browser (sorry, Edge), though my VPN client didn’t work, either, and I did have to switch back to my desktop to use the Via keyboard remapping software. Most games don’t run well on Arm yet, but GeForce Now game streaming works fine — much better than it did in mid-June.

Most days, I got about eight hours of battery life with the screen at around 50 or 60 percent brightness and all of Microsoft’s power-saving recommendations enabled, including dark mode and setting the Pro to sleep after three minutes of inactivity. One day, I got nearly 11 hours. But with great power comes great power consumption. Apps that really push the processor, like our Cinebench benchmark, chew through battery life — and so do video calls, for some reason.

Outside of video calls and benchmarks, I saw a 9 or 10 percent drop in battery level per hour. In calls, it’s twice that, and on days with lots of meetings, I got closer to six hours on a charge. And I looked bad the whole time.

Screenshot by Nathan Edwards / The Verge
The Surface Pro’s ultrawide webcam makes you look like you’re being filmed from waist level.

The front camera on the Surface Pro is a 1440p ultrawide, and its fish-eye effect and default framing are unflattering and distracting. You loom over everyone else in the call. There’s an automatic framing feature that digitally zooms into your face and keeps you centered, but it oversharpens facial features to compensate for the low resolution and never works the first time. This is not a computer to buy if you’re on a lot of calls.

On the bright side, Windows Hello face authentication reliably unlocks the Surface Pro as soon as I wake it up, which is a quality-of-life improvement I wasn’t expecting.

Microsoft calls the Surface Pro a 2-in-1. But you can’t really fit two into one without compromising somewhere. It’s less lappable than a laptop and less tablet-y than a tablet, and it costs as much as buying both. But there’s no better tablet to do office work on and no laptop quite this flexible, especially now that you don’t have to choose between decent battery life and the ability to run actual apps without stumbling.

Even if you’re sold on the idea of the Surface Pro, the smart move would be to wait six months and see how Arm compatibility shakes out, especially if your work requires any sort of graphics horsepower, you like to game, or you want 5G, which isn’t available yet. You should probably do that.

After a month with the Surface Pro 11, I’m not sure I can go back to a regular laptop. I don’t mind the OLED grain, and I could even live with the webcam situation. I wasn’t gaming much anyway, and I’m sure the Arc browser will come to Arm64 someday. I love being able to pop off the Flex Keyboard and stick the Surface Pro on a stack of books for better ergonomics or just plug it in below my monitor and use my regular keyboard and mouse. I’m not quite ready for it to be my only computer, but it feels like we’re nearly there.

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Image: The Verge / Shutterstock

Several weeks after being targeted with copyright infringement lawsuits, AI music startups Suno and Udio have now accused the record labels that filed them of attempting to quell competition within the music industry. Both companies admitted to training their music-generating AI models on copyrighted materials in separate legal filings, arguing that doing so is lawful under fair-use doctrine.
The lawsuits against Suno and Udio were raised in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for every work infringed.

Both Udio and Suno’s AI-music generation tools allow users to produce songs by typing in written descriptions. According to the RIAA, some of these tracks contain vocals that sound identical to those by famous artists like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and ABBA. In May Suno said that its music generator had been used 12 million times since it was rolled out in December 2023.
In their responses, both Suno and Udio say the lawsuits highlight the music industry’s opposition to competition. “Helping people generate new artistic expression is what copyright law is designed to encourage, not prohibit,” Udio wrote in its filing. “Under longstanding doctrine, what Udio has done — use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations — is a quintessential ‘fair use’ under copyright law.”
In a blog post accompanying its own filing, Suno said that major record labels had misconceptions about how its AI music tools work, likening its model training to “a kid learning to write new rock songs by listening religiously to rock music” as opposed to just copying and repeating copyrighted tracks. Suno also admitted to training its model on online music, noting that other AI providers like OpenAI, Google, and Apple also source their training data from the open internet.
“Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”
“Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels,” Suno said in the blog. ”Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”
Plenty of other AI companies have attempted to use fair-use doctrine to defend against their own copyright infringement lawsuits. In June, Microsoft AI boss Mustafa Suleyman incorrectly claimed that anything published on the open web becomes “freeware” that anyone can freely copy and use.
In a statement to Musically responding to Suno and Udio’s filings, the RIAA said that the companies failed to obtain appropriate consent to use copyrighted works before bringing their tools to market, unlike competing services like YouTube. “There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals,” said the RIAA. “Their vision of the ‘future of music’ is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”

Image: The Verge / Shutterstock

Several weeks after being targeted with copyright infringement lawsuits, AI music startups Suno and Udio have now accused the record labels that filed them of attempting to quell competition within the music industry. Both companies admitted to training their music-generating AI models on copyrighted materials in separate legal filings, arguing that doing so is lawful under fair-use doctrine.

The lawsuits against Suno and Udio were raised in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for every work infringed.

Both Udio and Suno’s AI-music generation tools allow users to produce songs by typing in written descriptions. According to the RIAA, some of these tracks contain vocals that sound identical to those by famous artists like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and ABBA. In May Suno said that its music generator had been used 12 million times since it was rolled out in December 2023.

In their responses, both Suno and Udio say the lawsuits highlight the music industry’s opposition to competition. “Helping people generate new artistic expression is what copyright law is designed to encourage, not prohibit,” Udio wrote in its filing. “Under longstanding doctrine, what Udio has done — use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations — is a quintessential ‘fair use’ under copyright law.”

In a blog post accompanying its own filing, Suno said that major record labels had misconceptions about how its AI music tools work, likening its model training to “a kid learning to write new rock songs by listening religiously to rock music” as opposed to just copying and repeating copyrighted tracks. Suno also admitted to training its model on online music, noting that other AI providers like OpenAI, Google, and Apple also source their training data from the open internet.

“Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels,” Suno said in the blog. ”Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”

Plenty of other AI companies have attempted to use fair-use doctrine to defend against their own copyright infringement lawsuits. In June, Microsoft AI boss Mustafa Suleyman incorrectly claimed that anything published on the open web becomes “freeware” that anyone can freely copy and use.

In a statement to Musically responding to Suno and Udio’s filings, the RIAA said that the companies failed to obtain appropriate consent to use copyrighted works before bringing their tools to market, unlike competing services like YouTube. “There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals,” said the RIAA. “Their vision of the ‘future of music’ is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”

Read More 

Image: Squid Shock Studios

Humble Games “restructured” and reportedly laid off its 36-person team last week. The publisher, which is part of the IGN-owned Humble Bundle, started helping developers release games in 2017 and published notable games like Slay the Spire and Signalis. The resulting fallout from the layoffs has left developers working with the publisher uncertain about many plans for future games, leaving their console ports in jeopardy.
Amir Fassihi, studio director of Dead Mage, the team behind the in-development Wizard of Legend 2, is worried that the restructuring could impact their project. “We do not want to make any changes,” Fassihi tells The Verge. “However, we’re unsure what changes will be forced on us because everyone in the publisher we collaborated with in the past 2.5 years is suddenly gone.” Now, Dead Mage has to “wait and hope that the new team will deliver the various publishing services that we expected from Humble Games.”
The “new team,” according to a report from Aftermath and three of the developers I spoke with, is the Powell Group, a video game consulting company. The Powell Group and Humble Games didn’t reply to requests for comment. In a post last week, Humble Games didn’t mention the Powell Group’s involvement, only saying that “supporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority” and that “we are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.”

Image: Stairway Games
Coral Island.

Developers are mostly worried about console ports, which Humble Games seemed to have a major hand in for some of the projects it worked on.
“We are now in a difficult situation when it comes to updating the console ports, as both porting and QA support was tied into our deal with Humble,” Squid Shock Studios, developer of the newly released Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, said in a post on Monday. (The game is available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch in addition to Steam.) “We are actively pursuing all available avenues to allow us to roll out updates to console versions, but we regret to say this may take some time to put in place.” The studio is also planning to launch a Patreon.
Coral Island developer Stairway Games said last week that the impact of the restructuring “remains uncertain for all things related to consoles.” The game is out on Xbox Series X / S, PlayStation 5, and Steam, with a Switch port in the works. The team has a hotfix for its 1.1 update “nearing release” on Steam, but “we have no idea how to get this update out to other platform players as we don’t have the backend permission on console platforms to push updates out,” Stairway said. “We only have access to the Steam backend.” Stairway is offering Kickstarter backers who are still waiting for the Switch release the option to get a Steam key instead.
“Changing publishers would be an extremely uphill battle”
Even if developers wanted to make a change from Humble Games as a result of the restructuring, that might be difficult. “To the best of my understanding, Humble Games is fulfilling their contractual obligations to us, so changing publishers would be an extremely uphill battle,” says Matthew Taylor of Rolling Hills developer Catch & Release.
Not every studio appears to have been significantly impacted, and things do seem to be improving for developers since the restructuring. Cody Greenhalge, technical director at #Blud developer Exit 73 Studios, tells The Verge that the Powell Group has “worked well with us and we are hopeful our game won’t have any long lasting effects from this ordeal.”
Taylor says that the Powell Group has set Catch & Release up with a new release manager, producer, and back catalog specialist. “It’s still too early to know how efficiently all these new folks can work together and get onboarded quickly, but in the case of our game we only need someone to help us get new updates to Microsoft and manage discounts and events, so I think we’ll be OK,” Taylor says. “If we were working on a game still in development or having very recently released, I’d be way more stressed.”
Despite the uncertainties, Humble Games spokesperson Michael Brown said to Polygon that “nothing has changed and no developers have had to change their porting plans; every project is moving ahead.” Brown added that “when people see that the new team at Humble Games was brought in to improve operations and support levels for all the developers, all concerns will be laid to rest.”
Even if things are slowly improving, the situation has been messy, leaving developers unsure of how they’ll move forward with their games. “The layoff of the whole Humble team has been the strangest thing I have seen in my 20 years of experience working,” says Fassihi. “The fact that nothing was shared with us beforehand, and we had to read this in the news, makes it even worse.”

Image: Squid Shock Studios

Humble Games “restructured” and reportedly laid off its 36-person team last week. The publisher, which is part of the IGN-owned Humble Bundle, started helping developers release games in 2017 and published notable games like Slay the Spire and Signalis. The resulting fallout from the layoffs has left developers working with the publisher uncertain about many plans for future games, leaving their console ports in jeopardy.

Amir Fassihi, studio director of Dead Mage, the team behind the in-development Wizard of Legend 2, is worried that the restructuring could impact their project. “We do not want to make any changes,” Fassihi tells The Verge. “However, we’re unsure what changes will be forced on us because everyone in the publisher we collaborated with in the past 2.5 years is suddenly gone.” Now, Dead Mage has to “wait and hope that the new team will deliver the various publishing services that we expected from Humble Games.”

The “new team,” according to a report from Aftermath and three of the developers I spoke with, is the Powell Group, a video game consulting company. The Powell Group and Humble Games didn’t reply to requests for comment. In a post last week, Humble Games didn’t mention the Powell Group’s involvement, only saying that “supporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority” and that “we are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.”

Image: Stairway Games
Coral Island.

Developers are mostly worried about console ports, which Humble Games seemed to have a major hand in for some of the projects it worked on.

“We are now in a difficult situation when it comes to updating the console ports, as both porting and QA support was tied into our deal with Humble,” Squid Shock Studios, developer of the newly released Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, said in a post on Monday. (The game is available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch in addition to Steam.) “We are actively pursuing all available avenues to allow us to roll out updates to console versions, but we regret to say this may take some time to put in place.” The studio is also planning to launch a Patreon.

Coral Island developer Stairway Games said last week that the impact of the restructuring “remains uncertain for all things related to consoles.” The game is out on Xbox Series X / S, PlayStation 5, and Steam, with a Switch port in the works. The team has a hotfix for its 1.1 update “nearing release” on Steam, but “we have no idea how to get this update out to other platform players as we don’t have the backend permission on console platforms to push updates out,” Stairway said. “We only have access to the Steam backend.” Stairway is offering Kickstarter backers who are still waiting for the Switch release the option to get a Steam key instead.

Even if developers wanted to make a change from Humble Games as a result of the restructuring, that might be difficult. “To the best of my understanding, Humble Games is fulfilling their contractual obligations to us, so changing publishers would be an extremely uphill battle,” says Matthew Taylor of Rolling Hills developer Catch & Release.

Not every studio appears to have been significantly impacted, and things do seem to be improving for developers since the restructuring. Cody Greenhalge, technical director at #Blud developer Exit 73 Studios, tells The Verge that the Powell Group has “worked well with us and we are hopeful our game won’t have any long lasting effects from this ordeal.”

Taylor says that the Powell Group has set Catch & Release up with a new release manager, producer, and back catalog specialist. “It’s still too early to know how efficiently all these new folks can work together and get onboarded quickly, but in the case of our game we only need someone to help us get new updates to Microsoft and manage discounts and events, so I think we’ll be OK,” Taylor says. “If we were working on a game still in development or having very recently released, I’d be way more stressed.”

Despite the uncertainties, Humble Games spokesperson Michael Brown said to Polygon that “nothing has changed and no developers have had to change their porting plans; every project is moving ahead.” Brown added that “when people see that the new team at Humble Games was brought in to improve operations and support levels for all the developers, all concerns will be laid to rest.”

Even if things are slowly improving, the situation has been messy, leaving developers unsure of how they’ll move forward with their games. “The layoff of the whole Humble team has been the strangest thing I have seen in my 20 years of experience working,” says Fassihi. “The fact that nothing was shared with us beforehand, and we had to read this in the news, makes it even worse.”

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Inside the MAGA-fueled fever dream of the 2024 Bitcoin Conference. There were rumors that Elon Musk would introduce former President Donald Trump before his keynote speech at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference. Musk had pledged to donate tens of millions to a Trump super PAC; he was close with JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential nominee; he was into crypto and memes. People tracked Musk’s jet and noticed it was reducing altitude over Tennessee. It was happening. It would be historic.
The Bitcoin Conference is an annual affair, and each year, it’s bigger and flashier than the one before. The last few were in Miami, Florida; this time, the conference was moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to take place only a week after the Republican National Convention. My seatmate on the flight down told me he never misses a conference. He and his friends call it “Bitcoin prom,” a weekend that is just as much about partying as it is about networking. But things were different this year: scheduled to speak at the conference were more than a half-dozen Republican politicians, prostrating themselves before the crypto gods, chasing money and support from a community that once defined itself by its resistance to the government. And then there was Trump, the centerpiece of it all, hoping to welcome the techno-libertarians and the finance bros into his ever-expanding coalition.
The Bitcoiners were ready for Trump, and Trump was ready for their votes. But this marriage of cryptocurrency and the Republican political machine was off to a rocky start as the conference struggled to handle the logistics of hosting the former president and his retinue.
It was, frankly, a shitshow.
On the day that Trump was set to speak, I was told the Secret Service canceled Bitcoin Yoga. I was also told that Bitcoin Yoga had happened yesterday (it had; I was too tired from a late night of Bitcoin Topgolf to make it to yoga on time) and was not on the schedule for today (it was, in a timeslot an hour and five minutes before a session on “Self-Governance: Bitcoin and Beef”).
I was told the Secret Service canceled Bitcoin Yoga
As the staffers behind the help desk tried to get to the bottom of whether Bitcoin Yoga was actually on the schedule (it was), whether Bitcoin Yoga was happening (it wasn’t), and whether the Secret Service was responsible for its cancellation or there had just been some sort of miscommunication (a Secret Service spokesperson later told me the agency “did not request any cancellation of any conference events”), a Bitcoin Magazine writer inquired about his backpack, which he’d left in the “whale VIP room” overnight and which had since disappeared. He was told the Secret Service probably took it during their security sweep; maybe he could check the lost and found?
At the press desk, a crypto beat reporter was indignant to learn he wouldn’t be getting a “green pass,” the mysterious, higher-tier credential that conference organizers were giving to select reporters that allowed them to skip to the front of the Secret Service line. A different crypto beat reporter I’d met at a party had also been snubbed; he was a “small fry,” he told me. I had originally been denied one of these passes as well, a problem that could only be resolved after a frenzy of phone calls and emails from multiple editors. The press desk staffers told me the distribution of the passes had been decided by the Secret Service and said there was nothing they could do to get me on the list. A Secret Service spokesperson later told me that the “issuance of media credentials and the selective distribution of media credentials” didn’t “fall under our purview,” claiming those responsibilities were handled by the conference staff. As far as I could tell, the publications that were getting the press pass fell into two buckets: big names like The New York Times and right-wing media. It felt these outlets were being prioritized over the trade publications that had been covering Bitcoin for years. Was the Bitcoin Conference even a Bitcoin conference anymore?

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images
Trump’s face was inescapable at the Bitcoin Conference, as was his merch.

This was the final day of the conference, and everyone was on edge waiting for Trump’s scheduled speech that afternoon. Every crypto cause célèbre and fever dream was a possibility. Maybe he’d announce a plan to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, a bulwark against inflation. Maybe he’d promise to fire Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose name had been uttered hundreds of times over the weekend, never without contempt. Maybe he’d promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht — the operator of the Silk Road, a covert marketplace that ran largely on Bitcoin — who is currently serving a life sentence in prison. Maybe he’d reveal himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious, reclusive creator of Bitcoin, who in these circles was regarded as a prophet or maybe a god. Maybe, probably, none of that would happen — but the man was here, with us, and that was all that mattered.
Eight hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, the line spilled out the door and around the block
A bullet had narrowly missed Trump’s skull at a rally two weeks prior, so security was extra tight. Around 8AM, eight hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, the line to get into the Music City Center spilled out the door and around the block. Everyone around me was wearing red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats or red $MAGAA memecoin hats or red BITCOIN MADE IN AMERICA hats or orange MAKE BITCOIN GREAT AGAIN hats, the latter of which, I’d learn, were being given out for free by a crypto retirement platform called Bitcoin IRA. There were shirts that said DONALD PUMP, shirts that showed Trump in the aftermath of being shot, his fist in the air, that said FIGHT! FIGHT!, and shirts that said FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP that, like the orange hats, had been given away for free.
The guards at the door said no bags or outside food or drinks were allowed. A quartet of well-coiffed women demanded to be let in with their handbags, security rules be damned — they had Secret Service clearance, they said. They were told to find someone inside with the campaign or the conference who could vouch for them. “This is not a regular day,” one of the guards barked at another woman who asked if she could bring in a sandwich. Banal contraband piled up outside the glass building like offerings before a temple: tote bags, half-full water bottles and coffee cups, the remnants of breakfast.
This was only the first step. Getting to the main stage required passing through a metal detector, ascending a staircase and an escalator, and walking past a stage upon which a rotating cast of local musicians performed for an audience that mostly ignored them. From there, you would join the very back of a line that snaked through the expo floor. After a 45-minute wait and a second security screening — this one conducted by the Secret Service and the TSA — you’d be in the room where it happens, the Nakamoto stage. Leaving for any reason short of going to the bathroom, because thankfully there were bathrooms, meant doing it all over again: the line and the pat-down, the waiting, the anticipation.

The lines had been even longer on Friday, before the implementation of the no-bag rule. Unlike other events with Secret Service protection that I’d covered in the past, the Bitcoin Conference had no dedicated media entrance. There was a makeshift press room downstairs stocked with free coffee, tea, and water, but there was no expedited entry for journalists who wanted to see the show on the main stage. Vivian Cheng, the media liaison, escorted me to the front of the Secret Service line on Friday and told me not to count on her help again; after this, I was on my own. As we walked past the hundreds of people who had waited — were still waiting — for hours to get in, I asked if the rumors about the no-bag policy on Saturday were true. She wasn’t sure. And laptops? Also unsure.
Trapped amid what meager audience had made it past the screenings thus far, I attempted to make the best of the situation by listening in on panels I had planned on skipping. The tenor of the conversations was more politicized than the event descriptions had led me to believe. A panel that was ostensibly about the risks and rewards of public mining companies gave way to discussions of President Joe Biden’s “whole-of-government attack” on cryptocurrency, as Jason Les, the CEO of the Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms, put it. “President Trump, on the other hand, has been very positive.”
And what about the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris? (She had been invited to the conference but declined to attend.) “Harris hasn’t commented, but her political perspectives have historically been more to the progressive side than President Biden,” said Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings (no known relation to the Peter). What do Bitcoiners want? “We don’t need anything,” Les said. “We just need an active campaign to not fight against us.”
The problem with crypto law, they told me between rounds, was that there were no laws, so the government just makes up whatever rules it wants
This attitude tracked. The previous night, at a Bitcoin Topgolf party hosted by podcaster Crypto Megan and actor / alleged sex criminal T.J. Miller, a group of crypto attorneys complained to me about SEC regulations. The problem with crypto law, they told me between rounds, was that there were no laws, so the government just makes up whatever rules it wants to go after you. The oldest among them said the fact that Trump — someone who “legitimized white nationalism” — had embraced cryptocurrency wasn’t an entirely positive development. But we weren’t here to talk politics. One of the young lawyers handed me a golf club and told me to take a swing.
Yet politics seemed to be all anyone could talk about inside the convention center. “Under a Trump administration, we’re going to see Bitcoin mining flourish,” Thiel said. “Under a Harris administration, we have no idea what the energy policies are going to be.” To ensure its ongoing success, the Bitcoin community needs to have “the right pro-Bitcoin politicians in office, no matter the side of the aisle,” Les said. One side of the aisle had sent its presidential nominee and several sitting members of Congress to court Bitcoiners. The sole representative for the Democratic Party was Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who had come to make the “progressive case for Bitcoin.” And then there was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., representing both and neither.

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images
During his keynote speech, RFK Jr. said Trump was “early in the Bitcoin learning curve.”

Exhausted and hungry, I abandoned my post at the Nakamoto stage after realizing I could no longer sit in the cold, dim room without any caffeine or calories to sustain me. At a nearby coffee shop, I sipped on a cold brew and eavesdropped on a job interview; everyone involved had conference wristbands around their arms. One interviewer asked the interviewee his SAT score, and the group commiserated about the now-scrapped writing section, which was too subjective to be of any real use in college admissions. Back at the convention center, the line to get into the main stage area was the longest I had seen it yet, wrapping all the way around the expo floor. After a few minutes of waiting, I decided to try flashing my press credentials to the security guards working the door and asking if they’d let me skip the line, figuring the worst they could do was say no. (A spokesperson for the Secret Service later told me the decision to allow certain press pass holders to skip the line was not made by the agency.) I interrupted the guys behind me, who were having an impassioned conversation about the perils of DEI in the workplace, and asked them to hold my spot in case I came back.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) took the stage with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to talk about their love of country and Bitcoin
I got in without issue, somewhere near the middle of Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor’s diatribe about the power of holding your coin. Saylor spoke with messianic fervor: the people in this room would get rich, would stay rich, while everyone who failed to get on board would be left behind. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) took the stage with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to talk about their love of country and Bitcoin and the liberatory power of cryptocurrency. (Lummis, who unveiled a draft bill that would require the Treasury secretary to establish a network of Bitcoin storage facilities across the country, was supposed to be joined by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was taken off the program at the last minute.) “Free at last, free at last,” Scott proclaimed, seemingly evoking Martin Luther King Jr.
Edward Snowden took a more sober tone. He appeared virtually and was greeted with a standing ovation, before revealing that because of the technical setup, he could neither see nor hear the audience. (The crowd’s enthusiasm immediately deflated.)
“I spoke recently at the Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam and the things we talked about were very different. The last time, the topic was about how the game is rigged but we can’t leave,” Snowden said. The amount of political representation at this year’s conference, he said, was a “wonderful, remarkable thing,” but it was also cause for concern. “Cast a vote, but don’t join a cult,” he told the audience. “They are not our tribe, our personality — they have their own interests, their own values, their own things they’re chasing.”

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images
Edward Snowden, appearing virtually, temporarily killed the MAGA vibe by cautioning Bitcoiners to “cast a vote, but don’t join a cult.”

Snowden received far less applause when the speech ended, possibly because the crowd didn’t appreciate him killing the vibe, possibly because the audience knew he couldn’t hear them. Then it was time for RFK Jr. — introduced as “the next president of the United States” — who told the Bitcoiners that they have it all right.
“Bitcoin is the currency of hope,” he declared to roaring applause. “It is the perfect currency. It is an elegant, poetic, beautiful, pure specie.” If you fix the money, he said, you fix the world.

That night, I found myself at a party for Joe Allen, a tech correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room who had just published a book on transhumanism and the war against humanity. “What I see there,” he said of the Bitcoin Conference, “is an opportunity on the one hand, but it’s also a very dark temptation.” Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen are “every bit as perverse and Satanic” as the globalists toward whom Bannon and others on the nationalist right usually direct their ire, he said.
“These guys represent an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to anything like traditional religion and anything like an organic, as we would know it, existence for human beings,” Allen told me later. However, he took a remarkably pragmatic view on the perverse and Satanic. “In the long term, I think we are fundamentally opposed. In the short term, politics is dirty business.”
Few questioned whether the MAGA tent was big enough to cover the tech futurists and the evangelical Christians
But not many at the convention center shared Allen’s sentiment; few questioned whether the MAGA tent was big enough to cover the tech futurists and the evangelical Christians, the cattle ranchers who just want the Department of Agriculture out of their business, and the crypto bros who want the SEC out of their wallets. The movement, it turns out, is big enough for all of them: their disagreements on certain subjects are less salient than their disdain for the regulatory state — their desire to liberate themselves from the authorities who want to tell them what to do and how to live, who want to take their money and give it to people who didn’t work for it. The bureaucrats want to implement central banking digital currencies, to track what we buy and who we buy it from, to cut dissidents off from the economy. Bitcoin isn’t just a way to get rich; Bitcoin is a way to break free.
“Bitcoin is about decentralization, freedom, and getting to the source,” Grant, a 31-year-old from Arizona told me ahead of Trump’s speech. Neither side, he said, is going to stop printing money; the right is “pandering to voters” by taking a pro-Bitcoin stance, but it’s better than what the Democrats are doing. Like many of the other conference attendees, he proudly displayed his ideology on his shirt, which read STOP SUBSIDIZING VEGANS. The shirt, he explained, was merch from his company, CrowdHealth, a health insurance crowdfunding platform that describes itself as helping people “break free from corporate run sick care.” As we spoke, a woman approached us and asked how exactly we were subsidizing her vegan lifestyle. Then they, too, found common ground: both are RFK Jr. supporters and plan on voting for him in the presidential election.

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images
All weekend long, I watched party buses full of bachelorettes roll past this display of Trump’s face.

But most people I spoke to were not at the conference for the fringe player. They were there to see Trump, to hope the Republican presidential candidate would openly declare his allegiance to cryptocurrency. An hour before Trump was scheduled to speak, I got an email inviting me to watch the speech at the DNA House, a pop-up event space hosted by an asset management fund. “Skip the lines and yes you can bring a bag and have a drink,” the email read. Between the suffocating crowds, the harsh austerity of the Nakamoto stage, and the ominous alleged Secret Service seizures of other reporters’ backpacks, the invite was extremely tempting. I left.
The convention center was full of politicians and grifters and hangers-on, as were the surrounding events. The weekend kicked off with Bitcoin Karate, which I skipped because it sounded annoying, only to learn that both RFK Jr. and the “Hawk Tuah” girl had been in attendance. By the time I got there, the expo floor had booths for Bitcoin coffee grown in El Salvador and a booth where an artist painted Pepe portraits of attendees. People working a booth operated by The Daily Wire, the conservative news website, handed out SCAMALA signs to people waiting in line to see Trump. Upon entering the main stage area, attendees were greeted by a man handing out signs that said BITCOIN 2024 on one side and IN SATOSHI WE TRUST on the other. Everyone was selling or promoting something. Milling around the conference floor, I saw Madison Cawthorn, the erstwhile Gen Z member of Congress outside the main stage, and interviewed no fewer than six people involved with different MAGA-adjacent altcoins.

Photo by Bloomberg
Trump and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road, depicted on trading cards.

DNA House carried a promise of something different. I’d gone to a party there the night before after a brief interlude at a meetup for $EGIRL, a Musk-adjacent reactionary memecoin, at which I was one of approximately four women in attendance (not including a group of girls waiting to ride a mechanical bull). At DNA House, I was surprised to encounter a more or less “normie” crowd of crypto bros and finance types. The first man I met that night rattled off a list of his accomplishments: founder, chairman, cofounder, and so on. On the stairs outside, I smoked a cigarette with a compliance auditor who told me and a crypto beat reporter about his project to, if I understood him correctly, mine Bitcoin using hydrogen cells. Inside, people danced awkwardly to EDM and added each other on LinkedIn. There were very few women there, as was the case everywhere I went.
In the light of day, DNA House was more intimate, though the crowd was no less male. One man told me this was where the “whales” were; another invited me to a private afterparty at “Taylor Swift’s recording studio.” There was a catered lunch — grilled salmon, broccoli, a rice pilaf situation — and an open bar, one screen set to the livestream of the conference, another displaying the live price of both Bitcoin and the $MAGAA memecoin. The people at DNA House may have been less overtly MAGA than those at the convention center, but only marginally so. I overheard a bearded man tell someone he works with Young Americans for Liberty. Before Trump’s speech, someone told me he and several others had attended a $3,000-a-person event at the Westin Hotel rooftop the night before hosted by the $MAGAA coin developers at which Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. both spoke.
Trump was late, as he always was, and everyone assumed there had to be a good reason, maybe a special guest like Elon Musk. When he finally took the stage, around an hour after he was scheduled, Musk was nowhere to be found, and most of the people around me were too absorbed in conversation to notice that the stream had stopped working. We caught the highlights: in between his usual stump speech about the border and wokeness, Trump pledged to fire Gary Gensler and then repeated himself when he realized the audience had worked itself into a frenzy. It “sent the crowd into ecstasy,” a reporter friend who stayed behind at the convention center texted me. The same was true for the spectators at DNA House, though they were far less interested in the rest of Trump’s policies and couldn’t even spare a little applause for his promise to stop taxing tipped wages. (The audience at the convention center was much more impressed.)

Photo by Jon Cherry / Getty Images
Trump may have taken the stage later than expected, but he told the crowd (almost) everything they wanted to hear.

Still, they were hooked. Everyone was waiting for the same thing: for Trump to announce a plan to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He got close, danced right up to the line, and said that under his presidency, the US would never, ever sell its Bitcoin holdings. The room broke out in applause. People stood up. They pulled out their phones, ready to capture the moment their wealth doubled or tripled. “He’s going to announce it,” Scott Walker, a cofounder of DNA Fund said from a small stage. The price of Bitcoin shot up briefly, for a split second, then went back down. And then it was over.
Trump moved on. He promised to commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence and the audience at the conference roared again. There was a smattering of applause from the crowd at DNA House, too, but the mood in the room had shifted. People had put their phones away.
“Have a good time with your Bitcoin, and your crypto, and everything else that you’re playing with,” Trump told an enthusiastic convention center audience. “We’re going to make that one of the greatest industries on earth.”
The DNA House set was pleased but not thrilled; they were trying to manage their expectations. Sure, Trump hadn’t given them what they wanted, but he had come close. He wasn’t fighting them. He was still their guy.
“Trump went out there, he kind of promised, or kind of came up with a minimum of a promise, but he did not follow through,” Walker said after Trump’s speech. After a weekend of anticipation, the pomp and grandeur of the conference, all the waiting and every interminable line, the Bitcoin diehards and tryhards had been let down.
“I expect the market will react neutral at best,” Walker said.
“I expect the market will react neutral at best.”
Trump had a much better night than the Bitcoiners who were hoping to see their assets appreciate, rather than (briefly) decline. That night, while the DNA Fund hosted another party, Trump raked in a reported $21 million at a fundraiser where seats sold for as much as $800,000 a person. The biggest players were staying the course. The market would adjust. And maybe the Democrats would, too.
After the conference, I talked to Kyle Lawrence, a partner at Falcon Rappaport & Berkman, a crypto law firm based in New York City, whom I had met on the flight to Nashville. He’d watched Trump’s speech from an overflow room at the convention center, surrounded by people in MAGA hats, and told me that he hoped that rather than turning Bitcoin into a partisan issue, Trump’s speech would show Democrats the power of the crypto constituency. “It basically opened the door for Kamala Harris to change her party’s tune on cryptocurrency,” he said.
Someone I spoke to at the DNA party the night of Trump’s speech put it more bluntly: if Harris promises to fire Gary Gensler, or if Biden does it now, the Democrats can claw back some support from the Bitcoiners.
The morning after, almost everyone I saw at the Nashville airport had a hat or tote bag or shirt or wristband identifying them as a Bitcoin Conference attendee. Here we were, together, returning to reality, and everything still felt surreal. As I made my way to my gate, I walked past a man wearing a FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP shirt who looked curiously like Martin Shkreli. It was the pharma bro himself, seemingly delighted to have been recognized. When I identified myself as a reporter and asked if he wanted to talk about the conference, he laughed and walked away.
At the gate, a couple, both of whom were crypto content creators, asked what I thought of the conference. “The crowd was electric,” one of them said of the reaction to Trump’s speech. But, the other said, Trump didn’t fully deliver. Her fiancé disagreed; this was huge. Behind us, a man told his friend he skipped the entire conference on Saturday because he knew it’d be “such a shitshow” with Trump.
The friend told him he’d missed out. “It was historic.”

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Inside the MAGA-fueled fever dream of the 2024 Bitcoin Conference.

There were rumors that Elon Musk would introduce former President Donald Trump before his keynote speech at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference. Musk had pledged to donate tens of millions to a Trump super PAC; he was close with JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential nominee; he was into crypto and memes. People tracked Musk’s jet and noticed it was reducing altitude over Tennessee. It was happening. It would be historic.

The Bitcoin Conference is an annual affair, and each year, it’s bigger and flashier than the one before. The last few were in Miami, Florida; this time, the conference was moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to take place only a week after the Republican National Convention. My seatmate on the flight down told me he never misses a conference. He and his friends call it “Bitcoin prom,” a weekend that is just as much about partying as it is about networking. But things were different this year: scheduled to speak at the conference were more than a half-dozen Republican politicians, prostrating themselves before the crypto gods, chasing money and support from a community that once defined itself by its resistance to the government. And then there was Trump, the centerpiece of it all, hoping to welcome the techno-libertarians and the finance bros into his ever-expanding coalition.

The Bitcoiners were ready for Trump, and Trump was ready for their votes. But this marriage of cryptocurrency and the Republican political machine was off to a rocky start as the conference struggled to handle the logistics of hosting the former president and his retinue.

It was, frankly, a shitshow.

On the day that Trump was set to speak, I was told the Secret Service canceled Bitcoin Yoga. I was also told that Bitcoin Yoga had happened yesterday (it had; I was too tired from a late night of Bitcoin Topgolf to make it to yoga on time) and was not on the schedule for today (it was, in a timeslot an hour and five minutes before a session on “Self-Governance: Bitcoin and Beef”).

As the staffers behind the help desk tried to get to the bottom of whether Bitcoin Yoga was actually on the schedule (it was), whether Bitcoin Yoga was happening (it wasn’t), and whether the Secret Service was responsible for its cancellation or there had just been some sort of miscommunication (a Secret Service spokesperson later told me the agency “did not request any cancellation of any conference events”), a Bitcoin Magazine writer inquired about his backpack, which he’d left in the “whale VIP room” overnight and which had since disappeared. He was told the Secret Service probably took it during their security sweep; maybe he could check the lost and found?

At the press desk, a crypto beat reporter was indignant to learn he wouldn’t be getting a “green pass,” the mysterious, higher-tier credential that conference organizers were giving to select reporters that allowed them to skip to the front of the Secret Service line. A different crypto beat reporter I’d met at a party had also been snubbed; he was a “small fry,” he told me. I had originally been denied one of these passes as well, a problem that could only be resolved after a frenzy of phone calls and emails from multiple editors. The press desk staffers told me the distribution of the passes had been decided by the Secret Service and said there was nothing they could do to get me on the list. A Secret Service spokesperson later told me that the “issuance of media credentials and the selective distribution of media credentials” didn’t “fall under our purview,” claiming those responsibilities were handled by the conference staff. As far as I could tell, the publications that were getting the press pass fell into two buckets: big names like The New York Times and right-wing media. It felt these outlets were being prioritized over the trade publications that had been covering Bitcoin for years. Was the Bitcoin Conference even a Bitcoin conference anymore?

This was the final day of the conference, and everyone was on edge waiting for Trump’s scheduled speech that afternoon. Every crypto cause célèbre and fever dream was a possibility. Maybe he’d announce a plan to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, a bulwark against inflation. Maybe he’d promise to fire Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose name had been uttered hundreds of times over the weekend, never without contempt. Maybe he’d promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht — the operator of the Silk Road, a covert marketplace that ran largely on Bitcoin — who is currently serving a life sentence in prison. Maybe he’d reveal himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious, reclusive creator of Bitcoin, who in these circles was regarded as a prophet or maybe a god. Maybe, probably, none of that would happen — but the man was here, with us, and that was all that mattered.

A bullet had narrowly missed Trump’s skull at a rally two weeks prior, so security was extra tight. Around 8AM, eight hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, the line to get into the Music City Center spilled out the door and around the block. Everyone around me was wearing red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats or red $MAGAA memecoin hats or red BITCOIN MADE IN AMERICA hats or orange MAKE BITCOIN GREAT AGAIN hats, the latter of which, I’d learn, were being given out for free by a crypto retirement platform called Bitcoin IRA. There were shirts that said DONALD PUMP, shirts that showed Trump in the aftermath of being shot, his fist in the air, that said FIGHT! FIGHT!, and shirts that said FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP that, like the orange hats, had been given away for free.

The guards at the door said no bags or outside food or drinks were allowed. A quartet of well-coiffed women demanded to be let in with their handbags, security rules be damned — they had Secret Service clearance, they said. They were told to find someone inside with the campaign or the conference who could vouch for them. “This is not a regular day,” one of the guards barked at another woman who asked if she could bring in a sandwich. Banal contraband piled up outside the glass building like offerings before a temple: tote bags, half-full water bottles and coffee cups, the remnants of breakfast.

This was only the first step. Getting to the main stage required passing through a metal detector, ascending a staircase and an escalator, and walking past a stage upon which a rotating cast of local musicians performed for an audience that mostly ignored them. From there, you would join the very back of a line that snaked through the expo floor. After a 45-minute wait and a second security screening — this one conducted by the Secret Service and the TSA — you’d be in the room where it happens, the Nakamoto stage. Leaving for any reason short of going to the bathroom, because thankfully there were bathrooms, meant doing it all over again: the line and the pat-down, the waiting, the anticipation.

The lines had been even longer on Friday, before the implementation of the no-bag rule. Unlike other events with Secret Service protection that I’d covered in the past, the Bitcoin Conference had no dedicated media entrance. There was a makeshift press room downstairs stocked with free coffee, tea, and water, but there was no expedited entry for journalists who wanted to see the show on the main stage. Vivian Cheng, the media liaison, escorted me to the front of the Secret Service line on Friday and told me not to count on her help again; after this, I was on my own. As we walked past the hundreds of people who had waited — were still waiting — for hours to get in, I asked if the rumors about the no-bag policy on Saturday were true. She wasn’t sure. And laptops? Also unsure.

Trapped amid what meager audience had made it past the screenings thus far, I attempted to make the best of the situation by listening in on panels I had planned on skipping. The tenor of the conversations was more politicized than the event descriptions had led me to believe. A panel that was ostensibly about the risks and rewards of public mining companies gave way to discussions of President Joe Biden’s “whole-of-government attack” on cryptocurrency, as Jason Les, the CEO of the Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms, put it. “President Trump, on the other hand, has been very positive.”

And what about the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris? (She had been invited to the conference but declined to attend.) “Harris hasn’t commented, but her political perspectives have historically been more to the progressive side than President Biden,” said Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings (no known relation to the Peter). What do Bitcoiners want? “We don’t need anything,” Les said. “We just need an active campaign to not fight against us.”

This attitude tracked. The previous night, at a Bitcoin Topgolf party hosted by podcaster Crypto Megan and actor / alleged sex criminal T.J. Miller, a group of crypto attorneys complained to me about SEC regulations. The problem with crypto law, they told me between rounds, was that there were no laws, so the government just makes up whatever rules it wants to go after you. The oldest among them said the fact that Trump — someone who “legitimized white nationalism” — had embraced cryptocurrency wasn’t an entirely positive development. But we weren’t here to talk politics. One of the young lawyers handed me a golf club and told me to take a swing.

Yet politics seemed to be all anyone could talk about inside the convention center. “Under a Trump administration, we’re going to see Bitcoin mining flourish,” Thiel said. “Under a Harris administration, we have no idea what the energy policies are going to be.” To ensure its ongoing success, the Bitcoin community needs to have “the right pro-Bitcoin politicians in office, no matter the side of the aisle,” Les said. One side of the aisle had sent its presidential nominee and several sitting members of Congress to court Bitcoiners. The sole representative for the Democratic Party was Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who had come to make the “progressive case for Bitcoin.” And then there was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., representing both and neither.

Exhausted and hungry, I abandoned my post at the Nakamoto stage after realizing I could no longer sit in the cold, dim room without any caffeine or calories to sustain me. At a nearby coffee shop, I sipped on a cold brew and eavesdropped on a job interview; everyone involved had conference wristbands around their arms. One interviewer asked the interviewee his SAT score, and the group commiserated about the now-scrapped writing section, which was too subjective to be of any real use in college admissions. Back at the convention center, the line to get into the main stage area was the longest I had seen it yet, wrapping all the way around the expo floor. After a few minutes of waiting, I decided to try flashing my press credentials to the security guards working the door and asking if they’d let me skip the line, figuring the worst they could do was say no. (A spokesperson for the Secret Service later told me the decision to allow certain press pass holders to skip the line was not made by the agency.) I interrupted the guys behind me, who were having an impassioned conversation about the perils of DEI in the workplace, and asked them to hold my spot in case I came back.

I got in without issue, somewhere near the middle of Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor’s diatribe about the power of holding your coin. Saylor spoke with messianic fervor: the people in this room would get rich, would stay rich, while everyone who failed to get on board would be left behind. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) took the stage with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to talk about their love of country and Bitcoin and the liberatory power of cryptocurrency. (Lummis, who unveiled a draft bill that would require the Treasury secretary to establish a network of Bitcoin storage facilities across the country, was supposed to be joined by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was taken off the program at the last minute.) “Free at last, free at last,” Scott proclaimed, seemingly evoking Martin Luther King Jr.

Edward Snowden took a more sober tone. He appeared virtually and was greeted with a standing ovation, before revealing that because of the technical setup, he could neither see nor hear the audience. (The crowd’s enthusiasm immediately deflated.)

“I spoke recently at the Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam and the things we talked about were very different. The last time, the topic was about how the game is rigged but we can’t leave,” Snowden said. The amount of political representation at this year’s conference, he said, was a “wonderful, remarkable thing,” but it was also cause for concern. “Cast a vote, but don’t join a cult,” he told the audience. “They are not our tribe, our personality — they have their own interests, their own values, their own things they’re chasing.”

Snowden received far less applause when the speech ended, possibly because the crowd didn’t appreciate him killing the vibe, possibly because the audience knew he couldn’t hear them. Then it was time for RFK Jr. — introduced as “the next president of the United States” — who told the Bitcoiners that they have it all right.

“Bitcoin is the currency of hope,” he declared to roaring applause. “It is the perfect currency. It is an elegant, poetic, beautiful, pure specie.” If you fix the money, he said, you fix the world.

That night, I found myself at a party for Joe Allen, a tech correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room who had just published a book on transhumanism and the war against humanity. “What I see there,” he said of the Bitcoin Conference, “is an opportunity on the one hand, but it’s also a very dark temptation.” Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen are “every bit as perverse and Satanic” as the globalists toward whom Bannon and others on the nationalist right usually direct their ire, he said.

“These guys represent an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to anything like traditional religion and anything like an organic, as we would know it, existence for human beings,” Allen told me later. However, he took a remarkably pragmatic view on the perverse and Satanic. “In the long term, I think we are fundamentally opposed. In the short term, politics is dirty business.”

But not many at the convention center shared Allen’s sentiment; few questioned whether the MAGA tent was big enough to cover the tech futurists and the evangelical Christians, the cattle ranchers who just want the Department of Agriculture out of their business, and the crypto bros who want the SEC out of their wallets. The movement, it turns out, is big enough for all of them: their disagreements on certain subjects are less salient than their disdain for the regulatory state — their desire to liberate themselves from the authorities who want to tell them what to do and how to live, who want to take their money and give it to people who didn’t work for it. The bureaucrats want to implement central banking digital currencies, to track what we buy and who we buy it from, to cut dissidents off from the economy. Bitcoin isn’t just a way to get rich; Bitcoin is a way to break free.

“Bitcoin is about decentralization, freedom, and getting to the source,” Grant, a 31-year-old from Arizona told me ahead of Trump’s speech. Neither side, he said, is going to stop printing money; the right is “pandering to voters” by taking a pro-Bitcoin stance, but it’s better than what the Democrats are doing. Like many of the other conference attendees, he proudly displayed his ideology on his shirt, which read STOP SUBSIDIZING VEGANS. The shirt, he explained, was merch from his company, CrowdHealth, a health insurance crowdfunding platform that describes itself as helping people “break free from corporate run sick care.” As we spoke, a woman approached us and asked how exactly we were subsidizing her vegan lifestyle. Then they, too, found common ground: both are RFK Jr. supporters and plan on voting for him in the presidential election.

But most people I spoke to were not at the conference for the fringe player. They were there to see Trump, to hope the Republican presidential candidate would openly declare his allegiance to cryptocurrency. An hour before Trump was scheduled to speak, I got an email inviting me to watch the speech at the DNA House, a pop-up event space hosted by an asset management fund. “Skip the lines and yes you can bring a bag and have a drink,” the email read. Between the suffocating crowds, the harsh austerity of the Nakamoto stage, and the ominous alleged Secret Service seizures of other reporters’ backpacks, the invite was extremely tempting. I left.

The convention center was full of politicians and grifters and hangers-on, as were the surrounding events. The weekend kicked off with Bitcoin Karate, which I skipped because it sounded annoying, only to learn that both RFK Jr. and the “Hawk Tuah” girl had been in attendance. By the time I got there, the expo floor had booths for Bitcoin coffee grown in El Salvador and a booth where an artist painted Pepe portraits of attendees. People working a booth operated by The Daily Wire, the conservative news website, handed out SCAMALA signs to people waiting in line to see Trump. Upon entering the main stage area, attendees were greeted by a man handing out signs that said BITCOIN 2024 on one side and IN SATOSHI WE TRUST on the other. Everyone was selling or promoting something. Milling around the conference floor, I saw Madison Cawthorn, the erstwhile Gen Z member of Congress outside the main stage, and interviewed no fewer than six people involved with different MAGA-adjacent altcoins.

DNA House carried a promise of something different. I’d gone to a party there the night before after a brief interlude at a meetup for $EGIRL, a Musk-adjacent reactionary memecoin, at which I was one of approximately four women in attendance (not including a group of girls waiting to ride a mechanical bull). At DNA House, I was surprised to encounter a more or less “normie” crowd of crypto bros and finance types. The first man I met that night rattled off a list of his accomplishments: founder, chairman, cofounder, and so on. On the stairs outside, I smoked a cigarette with a compliance auditor who told me and a crypto beat reporter about his project to, if I understood him correctly, mine Bitcoin using hydrogen cells. Inside, people danced awkwardly to EDM and added each other on LinkedIn. There were very few women there, as was the case everywhere I went.

In the light of day, DNA House was more intimate, though the crowd was no less male. One man told me this was where the “whales” were; another invited me to a private afterparty at “Taylor Swift’s recording studio.” There was a catered lunch — grilled salmon, broccoli, a rice pilaf situation — and an open bar, one screen set to the livestream of the conference, another displaying the live price of both Bitcoin and the $MAGAA memecoin. The people at DNA House may have been less overtly MAGA than those at the convention center, but only marginally so. I overheard a bearded man tell someone he works with Young Americans for Liberty. Before Trump’s speech, someone told me he and several others had attended a $3,000-a-person event at the Westin Hotel rooftop the night before hosted by the $MAGAA coin developers at which Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. both spoke.

Trump was late, as he always was, and everyone assumed there had to be a good reason, maybe a special guest like Elon Musk. When he finally took the stage, around an hour after he was scheduled, Musk was nowhere to be found, and most of the people around me were too absorbed in conversation to notice that the stream had stopped working. We caught the highlights: in between his usual stump speech about the border and wokeness, Trump pledged to fire Gary Gensler and then repeated himself when he realized the audience had worked itself into a frenzy. It “sent the crowd into ecstasy,” a reporter friend who stayed behind at the convention center texted me. The same was true for the spectators at DNA House, though they were far less interested in the rest of Trump’s policies and couldn’t even spare a little applause for his promise to stop taxing tipped wages. (The audience at the convention center was much more impressed.)

Still, they were hooked. Everyone was waiting for the same thing: for Trump to announce a plan to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He got close, danced right up to the line, and said that under his presidency, the US would never, ever sell its Bitcoin holdings. The room broke out in applause. People stood up. They pulled out their phones, ready to capture the moment their wealth doubled or tripled. “He’s going to announce it,” Scott Walker, a cofounder of DNA Fund said from a small stage. The price of Bitcoin shot up briefly, for a split second, then went back down. And then it was over.

Trump moved on. He promised to commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence and the audience at the conference roared again. There was a smattering of applause from the crowd at DNA House, too, but the mood in the room had shifted. People had put their phones away.

“Have a good time with your Bitcoin, and your crypto, and everything else that you’re playing with,” Trump told an enthusiastic convention center audience. “We’re going to make that one of the greatest industries on earth.”

The DNA House set was pleased but not thrilled; they were trying to manage their expectations. Sure, Trump hadn’t given them what they wanted, but he had come close. He wasn’t fighting them. He was still their guy.

“Trump went out there, he kind of promised, or kind of came up with a minimum of a promise, but he did not follow through,” Walker said after Trump’s speech. After a weekend of anticipation, the pomp and grandeur of the conference, all the waiting and every interminable line, the Bitcoin diehards and tryhards had been let down.

“I expect the market will react neutral at best,” Walker said.

Trump had a much better night than the Bitcoiners who were hoping to see their assets appreciate, rather than (briefly) decline. That night, while the DNA Fund hosted another party, Trump raked in a reported $21 million at a fundraiser where seats sold for as much as $800,000 a person. The biggest players were staying the course. The market would adjust. And maybe the Democrats would, too.

After the conference, I talked to Kyle Lawrence, a partner at Falcon Rappaport & Berkman, a crypto law firm based in New York City, whom I had met on the flight to Nashville. He’d watched Trump’s speech from an overflow room at the convention center, surrounded by people in MAGA hats, and told me that he hoped that rather than turning Bitcoin into a partisan issue, Trump’s speech would show Democrats the power of the crypto constituency. “It basically opened the door for Kamala Harris to change her party’s tune on cryptocurrency,” he said.

Someone I spoke to at the DNA party the night of Trump’s speech put it more bluntly: if Harris promises to fire Gary Gensler, or if Biden does it now, the Democrats can claw back some support from the Bitcoiners.

The morning after, almost everyone I saw at the Nashville airport had a hat or tote bag or shirt or wristband identifying them as a Bitcoin Conference attendee. Here we were, together, returning to reality, and everything still felt surreal. As I made my way to my gate, I walked past a man wearing a FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP shirt who looked curiously like Martin Shkreli. It was the pharma bro himself, seemingly delighted to have been recognized. When I identified myself as a reporter and asked if he wanted to talk about the conference, he laughed and walked away.

At the gate, a couple, both of whom were crypto content creators, asked what I thought of the conference. “The crowd was electric,” one of them said of the reaction to Trump’s speech. But, the other said, Trump didn’t fully deliver. Her fiancé disagreed; this was huge. Behind us, a man told his friend he skipped the entire conference on Saturday because he knew it’d be “such a shitshow” with Trump.

The friend told him he’d missed out. “It was historic.”

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