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Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Amazon’s Prime Video has inked an 11-year deal that will bring NBA and WNBA games to the streaming service starting with the 2025-2026 season. Prime Video will air a total of 66 regular-season games and 20 playoff games each year. The league’s new agreements also include Disney and Comcast-owned NBC Universal, which will keep some games on the linear ESPN, ABC, and NBC channels.
They’ll air on Disney’s upcoming standalone ESPN streaming service and NBC’s Peacock as well. As reported by The New York Times, all three companies have agreed to shell out billions for the rights, with Disney paying $2.62 billion annually, Comcast paying $2.45 billion, and Amazon paying $1.93 billion.

Image: Amazon

The deal represents a major shift toward bringing sports to streaming, as the NBA has partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to air its games on TNT for almost 40 years. In a statement to ESPN, the NBA said Warner Bros. Disocvery’s proposal “did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer.”
The NBA will continue to air games on TNT during the 2024-2025 season — but the network isn’t happy about its decision to choose Prime Video. ”We think [the NBA has] grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and beyond, and we will take appropriate action,” TNT told ESPN.
The Prime Video broadcasts will start with an opening-week doubleheader and continue with Friday night games, select Saturday afternoon games, and Thursday night doubleheaders (after its Thursday Night Football schedule ends in January 2026). Prime Video will also air the NBA Cup, Play-In Tournament, NBA League Pass, and half of the NBA Summer League games.
“Over the past few years, we have worked hard to bring the very best of sports to Prime Video and to continue to innovate on the viewing experience,” Jay Marine, the global head of sports at Prime Video says in a press release. “We are grateful to partner with the NBA, and can’t wait to tip-off in 2025.”

Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Amazon’s Prime Video has inked an 11-year deal that will bring NBA and WNBA games to the streaming service starting with the 2025-2026 season. Prime Video will air a total of 66 regular-season games and 20 playoff games each year. The league’s new agreements also include Disney and Comcast-owned NBC Universal, which will keep some games on the linear ESPN, ABC, and NBC channels.

They’ll air on Disney’s upcoming standalone ESPN streaming service and NBC’s Peacock as well. As reported by The New York Times, all three companies have agreed to shell out billions for the rights, with Disney paying $2.62 billion annually, Comcast paying $2.45 billion, and Amazon paying $1.93 billion.

Image: Amazon

The deal represents a major shift toward bringing sports to streaming, as the NBA has partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to air its games on TNT for almost 40 years. In a statement to ESPN, the NBA said Warner Bros. Disocvery’s proposal “did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer.”

The NBA will continue to air games on TNT during the 2024-2025 season — but the network isn’t happy about its decision to choose Prime Video. ”We think [the NBA has] grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and beyond, and we will take appropriate action,” TNT told ESPN.

The Prime Video broadcasts will start with an opening-week doubleheader and continue with Friday night games, select Saturday afternoon games, and Thursday night doubleheaders (after its Thursday Night Football schedule ends in January 2026). Prime Video will also air the NBA Cup, Play-In Tournament, NBA League Pass, and half of the NBA Summer League games.

“Over the past few years, we have worked hard to bring the very best of sports to Prime Video and to continue to innovate on the viewing experience,” Jay Marine, the global head of sports at Prime Video says in a press release. “We are grateful to partner with the NBA, and can’t wait to tip-off in 2025.”

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A new Nest Learning Thermostat appears to be imminent. | Image: MysteryLupin via X

Leaked images posted on X by @MysteryLupin show a fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and new temperature sensors, as well as several other thermostats: Nest E, Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd Gen). Missing from the pictures is the Nest Thermostat (2020), presumably because it’s not compatible with Nest’s room sensors.
The new addition looks similar to the third-generation model but appears to have a more curved display while retaining the physical dial, as pointed out by 9to5Google. The display is likely a touchscreen, as with the third-generation model, and the image shows a new icon with three wavy lines.

This indicates that the new thermostat is also an indoor air quality monitor, which would be a new feature for Nest thermostats. A leaked screenshot of the Google Home app with a new Climate screen backs up this theory by showing an air quality index score.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The first new Nest Learning Thermostat from Google since 2015 could be on its way.

Since the Nest E, which has been discontinued in the US, is pictured, this could indicate that, unlike the Nest Thermostat (2020), the new model will also launch in Europe.
The thermostat appears to work with a redesigned Nest Temperature Sensor (second-gen), which, like the current models, is wall-mountable or can be placed on a table. However, it doesn’t have the Nest branding at this time and is rounder and squishier-looking. The posts indicate that these will cost $39 each, or three for $99, and have a three-year battery life.
That’s the same price as the current sensors, which feed the temperature from other rooms of your house to the thermostat to help balance heating and cooling. But as we said in our review, they are limited compared to those from competitors like Ecobee, as they don’t detect presence. Hopefully these new versions will bring more function.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The new temperature sensors appear to be more rounded, almost marshmallow-like. A new Climate screen in the Google Home app now shows air quality — according to the leaked images.

9to5Google has dug up FCC filings showing the new thermostat may sport Google’s Soli radar, used to light up the thermostat’s display when you approach it, and detect presence to feed into Google’s Home & Away Routines. Soli is in the Nest Thermostat (2020) but not in the third-gen Nest Learning Thermostat from 2015, which uses motion sensors.
The FCC filings didn’t indicate a Thread radio in the thermostat, which would be surprising considering Thread was developed for the original Nest thermostat, although the 2020 model doesn’t have it, either.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
This image shows the temp sensor mounted on a wall.

It’s been a long time since Google launched a new Learning Thermostat, which can adapt to your heating and cooling patterns instead of mainly sticking to a schedule, as the newer, cheaper Nest Thermostat does.
The current Nest Learning Thermostat has been on sale for $169 (down from $249) for a while now. It also doesn’t support Matter, the smart home standard Google is a big part of, while the cheaper Nest Thermostat does. With a big Google hardware event scheduled for August 13th, we will find out soon enough if these leaks are genuine.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The new Nest Temperature Sensors appear to have similar features to the current versions.

A new Nest Learning Thermostat appears to be imminent. | Image: MysteryLupin via X

Leaked images posted on X by @MysteryLupin show a fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and new temperature sensors, as well as several other thermostats: Nest E, Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd Gen). Missing from the pictures is the Nest Thermostat (2020), presumably because it’s not compatible with Nest’s room sensors.

The new addition looks similar to the third-generation model but appears to have a more curved display while retaining the physical dial, as pointed out by 9to5Google. The display is likely a touchscreen, as with the third-generation model, and the image shows a new icon with three wavy lines.

This indicates that the new thermostat is also an indoor air quality monitor, which would be a new feature for Nest thermostats. A leaked screenshot of the Google Home app with a new Climate screen backs up this theory by showing an air quality index score.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The first new Nest Learning Thermostat from Google since 2015 could be on its way.

Since the Nest E, which has been discontinued in the US, is pictured, this could indicate that, unlike the Nest Thermostat (2020), the new model will also launch in Europe.

The thermostat appears to work with a redesigned Nest Temperature Sensor (second-gen), which, like the current models, is wall-mountable or can be placed on a table. However, it doesn’t have the Nest branding at this time and is rounder and squishier-looking. The posts indicate that these will cost $39 each, or three for $99, and have a three-year battery life.

That’s the same price as the current sensors, which feed the temperature from other rooms of your house to the thermostat to help balance heating and cooling. But as we said in our review, they are limited compared to those from competitors like Ecobee, as they don’t detect presence. Hopefully these new versions will bring more function.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The new temperature sensors appear to be more rounded, almost marshmallow-like. A new Climate screen in the Google Home app now shows air quality — according to the leaked images.

9to5Google has dug up FCC filings showing the new thermostat may sport Google’s Soli radar, used to light up the thermostat’s display when you approach it, and detect presence to feed into Google’s Home & Away Routines. Soli is in the Nest Thermostat (2020) but not in the third-gen Nest Learning Thermostat from 2015, which uses motion sensors.

The FCC filings didn’t indicate a Thread radio in the thermostat, which would be surprising considering Thread was developed for the original Nest thermostat, although the 2020 model doesn’t have it, either.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
This image shows the temp sensor mounted on a wall.

It’s been a long time since Google launched a new Learning Thermostat, which can adapt to your heating and cooling patterns instead of mainly sticking to a schedule, as the newer, cheaper Nest Thermostat does.

The current Nest Learning Thermostat has been on sale for $169 (down from $249) for a while now. It also doesn’t support Matter, the smart home standard Google is a big part of, while the cheaper Nest Thermostat does. With a big Google hardware event scheduled for August 13th, we will find out soon enough if these leaks are genuine.

Image: MysteryLupin via X
The new Nest Temperature Sensors appear to have similar features to the current versions.

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A graphic representation of a laser communications relay between the International Space Station, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration spacecraft, and the Earth. | Image: NASA/Dave Ryan

NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications in space by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane in the sky to the International Space Station and back.
The feat demonstrates that the space agency could provide live coverage of a Moon landing during the Artemis missions and bodes well for the development of optical communications that could connect humans to Mars and beyond. NASA normally uses radio waves to send data and talk between the surface to space but says that laser communications using infrared light can transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radios.

GIF: NASA
Demonstration of the transmission’s journey.

Engineers fitted an airplane with a portable laser terminal, then it flew over Lake Erie and sent data back to the center in Cleveland. The data was then transmitted through a terrestrial network to NASA’s New Mexico test facility, where scientists controlled the process of beaming data up to the agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) satellite 22,000 miles away. The LCRD then relayed it to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) on the ISS.
Although Artemis missions have been delayed, the fourth one that takes humans back to the Moon is still on track for 2028. By then, we might see clear 4K livestreams of astronauts on the Moon displayed on mainstream 8K TVs.

A graphic representation of a laser communications relay between the International Space Station, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration spacecraft, and the Earth. | Image: NASA/Dave Ryan

NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications in space by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane in the sky to the International Space Station and back.

The feat demonstrates that the space agency could provide live coverage of a Moon landing during the Artemis missions and bodes well for the development of optical communications that could connect humans to Mars and beyond. NASA normally uses radio waves to send data and talk between the surface to space but says that laser communications using infrared light can transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radios.

GIF: NASA
Demonstration of the transmission’s journey.

Engineers fitted an airplane with a portable laser terminal, then it flew over Lake Erie and sent data back to the center in Cleveland. The data was then transmitted through a terrestrial network to NASA’s New Mexico test facility, where scientists controlled the process of beaming data up to the agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) satellite 22,000 miles away. The LCRD then relayed it to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) on the ISS.

Although Artemis missions have been delayed, the fourth one that takes humans back to the Moon is still on track for 2028. By then, we might see clear 4K livestreams of astronauts on the Moon displayed on mainstream 8K TVs.

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Illustration: The Verge

Bing’s new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side. The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.
Microsoft has shared an early look at what this search experience will look like… and it’s a lot. For the query “What is a spaghetti western?” Bing displays a summary explaining that it’s a “subgenre of western films produced by Italian filmmakers,” along with a series of bullet points of the genre’s key characteristics.

Image: Microsoft

I know that this feature isn’t fully rolled out yet, but as a Bing and Edge user (we exist!), I hope it’s either opt-in or comes with an off switch. Cutting off search descriptions after two lines is especially troublesome and would make it more difficult for me to peruse through the first page of actual search results.
Google has a similar feature called AI Overviews, which takes over the top of the search results page with AI-generated summaries. Shortly after its rollout, users found that the feature delivered inaccurate answers for certain queries, forcing Google to manually some of its responses.

But Bing’s new layout goes beyond general summaries. With the query about spaghetti westerns, you’ll see a blurb about the genre’s history and origins after scrolling past the initial answer, along with related videos, a chart with the best and most influential movies, and even details on music. That’s a lot of information for a single page, some of which you might not even need. Microsoft lists its sources beneath each section, while all the links you’d normally click on appear in a thin column on the right side of the screen.

Image: Microsoft

As noted by Microsoft, the new experience combines Bing search with large and small language models. “It understands the search query, reviews millions of sources of information, dynamically matches content, and generates search results in a new AI-generated layout to fulfill the intent of the user’s query more effectively,” the company says.
Microsoft is also taking the potential impact on search traffic into account. It says early data suggests it “maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem.”

Illustration: The Verge

Bing’s new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side. The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.

Microsoft has shared an early look at what this search experience will look like… and it’s a lot. For the query “What is a spaghetti western?” Bing displays a summary explaining that it’s a “subgenre of western films produced by Italian filmmakers,” along with a series of bullet points of the genre’s key characteristics.

Image: Microsoft

I know that this feature isn’t fully rolled out yet, but as a Bing and Edge user (we exist!), I hope it’s either opt-in or comes with an off switch. Cutting off search descriptions after two lines is especially troublesome and would make it more difficult for me to peruse through the first page of actual search results.

Google has a similar feature called AI Overviews, which takes over the top of the search results page with AI-generated summaries. Shortly after its rollout, users found that the feature delivered inaccurate answers for certain queries, forcing Google to manually some of its responses.

But Bing’s new layout goes beyond general summaries. With the query about spaghetti westerns, you’ll see a blurb about the genre’s history and origins after scrolling past the initial answer, along with related videos, a chart with the best and most influential movies, and even details on music. That’s a lot of information for a single page, some of which you might not even need. Microsoft lists its sources beneath each section, while all the links you’d normally click on appear in a thin column on the right side of the screen.

Image: Microsoft

As noted by Microsoft, the new experience combines Bing search with large and small language models. “It understands the search query, reviews millions of sources of information, dynamically matches content, and generates search results in a new AI-generated layout to fulfill the intent of the user’s query more effectively,” the company says.

Microsoft is also taking the potential impact on search traffic into account. It says early data suggests it “maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem.”

Read More 

An image representing AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 desktop parts. | Image: AMD

AMD was set to launch its new Zen 5 processors on July 31st, including the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X, a chip it’s calling “the world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor.” Instead, it’s now announcing a one- to two-week delay “out of an abundance of caution.” The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will now launch on August 8th, while the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X will go on sale on August 15th.
This is not because AMD’s found any issues with the actual chips, spokesperson Stacy MacDiarmid tells The Verge. Rather, AMD discovered some of its chips didn’t go through all of the proper testing procedures, and the company wants to make sure they do.
Here’s the full statement from AMD computing and graphics SVP Jack Huynh:
We appreciate the excitement around Ryzen 9000 series processors. During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations. Out of an abundance of caution and to maintain the highest quality experiences for every Ryzen user, we are working with our channel partners to replace the initial production units with fresh units. As a result, there will be a short delay in retail availability. The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X processors will now go on sale on August 8th and the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X processors will go on-sale on August 15th. We pride ourselves in providing a high-quality experience for every Ryzen user, and we look forward to our fans having a great experience with the new Ryzen 9000 series.
AMD already recalled the chips that needed the additional testing before they could go on sale, and it sounds like that testing is going smoothly; AMD’s engineers are confident the chips won’t be delayed further, according to MacDiarmid.

Image: AMD
AMD’s new desktop chips also include the Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X.

I can understand why AMD might feel the need (and opportunity) to be extra cautious right now, issue or not. Intel is still dealing with the fallout from its sometimes unstable 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors, including the Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K, which is turning out to be worse than we thought. While Intel has finally identified the root cause, a patch won’t arrive until August, and there’s apparently no fix for chips that are already unstable.
Tom’s Hardware reports that those crashing Intel chips have been permanently degraded and will need to be returned to Intel; we’ve reached out to Intel with a list of questions about how it’s handling the situation.
AMD is about to launch its Zen 5 laptop chips, too, codenamed Strix Point and formally known as Ryzen AI 9 300. AMD recently revealed a new higher-end chip in that lineup, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, with a more powerful 55 TOPS NPU.

An image representing AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 desktop parts. | Image: AMD

AMD was set to launch its new Zen 5 processors on July 31st, including the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X, a chip it’s calling “the world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor.” Instead, it’s now announcing a one- to two-week delay “out of an abundance of caution.” The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will now launch on August 8th, while the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X will go on sale on August 15th.

This is not because AMD’s found any issues with the actual chips, spokesperson Stacy MacDiarmid tells The Verge. Rather, AMD discovered some of its chips didn’t go through all of the proper testing procedures, and the company wants to make sure they do.

Here’s the full statement from AMD computing and graphics SVP Jack Huynh:

We appreciate the excitement around Ryzen 9000 series processors. During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations. Out of an abundance of caution and to maintain the highest quality experiences for every Ryzen user, we are working with our channel partners to replace the initial production units with fresh units. As a result, there will be a short delay in retail availability. The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X processors will now go on sale on August 8th and the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X processors will go on-sale on August 15th. We pride ourselves in providing a high-quality experience for every Ryzen user, and we look forward to our fans having a great experience with the new Ryzen 9000 series.

AMD already recalled the chips that needed the additional testing before they could go on sale, and it sounds like that testing is going smoothly; AMD’s engineers are confident the chips won’t be delayed further, according to MacDiarmid.

Image: AMD
AMD’s new desktop chips also include the Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X.

I can understand why AMD might feel the need (and opportunity) to be extra cautious right now, issue or not. Intel is still dealing with the fallout from its sometimes unstable 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors, including the Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K, which is turning out to be worse than we thought. While Intel has finally identified the root cause, a patch won’t arrive until August, and there’s apparently no fix for chips that are already unstable.

Tom’s Hardware reports that those crashing Intel chips have been permanently degraded and will need to be returned to Intel; we’ve reached out to Intel with a list of questions about how it’s handling the situation.

AMD is about to launch its Zen 5 laptop chips, too, codenamed Strix Point and formally known as Ryzen AI 9 300. AMD recently revealed a new higher-end chip in that lineup, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, with a more powerful 55 TOPS NPU.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union — or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines — at Microsoft.
This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union. These unions represent a major shift in video game union organization strategy, and The Verge spoke to two members of Blizzard’s organization committee about how this union came to be and the challenges of organizing such a large and comprehensive group.
Kathryn Friesen, a quest designer on the World of Warcraft team, spoke about how the impetus for the union came out of the desire to uphold one of Blizzard’s company values: “every voice matters.”
“You can tell just by talking to people how much they care about one another and the work that they do in the game,” Friesen said. “I think that that’s where [the unionization effort] comes from, the desire to stand together to fight for collective bargaining rights at the table.”
Paul Cox, senior quest designer and Blizzard veteran, agreed, saying that the company’s response to the state of California’s discrimination lawsuit spurred employee action. “A lot of the early responses felt very corporate and didn’t feel like they reflected the values that, as a company, we said we upheld,” Cox said.
As a result, employees at Blizzard took action with walkouts, which became the beginning of unionization efforts at the company.

The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild is made up of over 500 members across Blizzard offices in California and Massachusetts. Despite its size — it is the second largest union at Microsoft overall behind Activision’s 600-member QA union — Cox said that Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement helped get the organization ball rolling.
“We were able to come out into the open about it, and everybody was able to see that no retaliation was occurring,” he said.
With organization efforts out in the open, including CWA tents on Blizzard campuses, Friesen said that getting people across all the different departments was made simpler, too.
“Across departments, we had a lot of support,” she said. “I think we are actually well above 50 percent [union support] in each specific department.”
Interdisciplinary unions like Blizzard’s are relatively rare, especially in the video game industry, as each department has different needs and goals. Up until this point, the majority of unionization efforts in the video game industry have been spearheaded by QA workers who have traditionally been among the least paid and least protected employees.
The first union at Activision Blizzard was made up of QA workers, as was the first union at Microsoft’s game studios. In addition to the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, yet another new union made up of QA workers at Blizzard’s Austin, Texas, office has also formed. The Blizzard Quality Assurance United-CWA is a 60-person unit including QA testers for games like Diablo, Hearthstone, and other Blizzard games.
“It is really, really great that we are a wall-to-wall union. We’re all in it together, and it’s a signal that QA is dev as well. I am especially excited for that signal to go out to the rest of the industry,” Friesen said. “[QA employees] work with us every single day. Their desks are next to our desks. So, I hope that we can win better workplace protections for everyone on the team.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union — or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines — at Microsoft.

This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union. These unions represent a major shift in video game union organization strategy, and The Verge spoke to two members of Blizzard’s organization committee about how this union came to be and the challenges of organizing such a large and comprehensive group.

Kathryn Friesen, a quest designer on the World of Warcraft team, spoke about how the impetus for the union came out of the desire to uphold one of Blizzard’s company values: “every voice matters.”

“You can tell just by talking to people how much they care about one another and the work that they do in the game,” Friesen said. “I think that that’s where [the unionization effort] comes from, the desire to stand together to fight for collective bargaining rights at the table.”

Paul Cox, senior quest designer and Blizzard veteran, agreed, saying that the company’s response to the state of California’s discrimination lawsuit spurred employee action. “A lot of the early responses felt very corporate and didn’t feel like they reflected the values that, as a company, we said we upheld,” Cox said.

As a result, employees at Blizzard took action with walkouts, which became the beginning of unionization efforts at the company.

The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild is made up of over 500 members across Blizzard offices in California and Massachusetts. Despite its size — it is the second largest union at Microsoft overall behind Activision’s 600-member QA union — Cox said that Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement helped get the organization ball rolling.

“We were able to come out into the open about it, and everybody was able to see that no retaliation was occurring,” he said.

With organization efforts out in the open, including CWA tents on Blizzard campuses, Friesen said that getting people across all the different departments was made simpler, too.

“Across departments, we had a lot of support,” she said. “I think we are actually well above 50 percent [union support] in each specific department.”

Interdisciplinary unions like Blizzard’s are relatively rare, especially in the video game industry, as each department has different needs and goals. Up until this point, the majority of unionization efforts in the video game industry have been spearheaded by QA workers who have traditionally been among the least paid and least protected employees.

The first union at Activision Blizzard was made up of QA workers, as was the first union at Microsoft’s game studios. In addition to the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, yet another new union made up of QA workers at Blizzard’s Austin, Texas, office has also formed. The Blizzard Quality Assurance United-CWA is a 60-person unit including QA testers for games like Diablo, Hearthstone, and other Blizzard games.

“It is really, really great that we are a wall-to-wall union. We’re all in it together, and it’s a signal that QA is dev as well. I am especially excited for that signal to go out to the rest of the industry,” Friesen said. “[QA employees] work with us every single day. Their desks are next to our desks. So, I hope that we can win better workplace protections for everyone on the team.”

Read More 

Little phone, how I miss you. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We’ve already heard rumblings about an iPhone Slim model taking the place of the iPhone Plus in 2025, making it the iPhone 17 Slim. Now, a new report from Apple supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo corroborates earlier claims, suggesting that the company’s incredible shapeshifting non-Pro iPhone is about to evolve yet again.
Kuo agrees it will come with a 6.6-inch screen and adds that it’ll have just one rear-facing camera along with the company’s beleaguered in-house 5G chip. Kuo says that the Slim model won’t be a direct replacement for the Plus; instead, it represents “new design trends beyond the existing iPhone lineup.” That tracks with rumors that it might cost more than the $1,200 Pro Max.
Apple has had one heck of a time trying to figure out what the second non-Pro iPhone in its lineup should look like. First, it was Mini. That didn’t sell very well, so then it became Plus.
The answer now seems to be to ax it entirely. According to Kuo, the Plus “only accounts for 5-10 percent of new iPhone shipments,” and Apple has deemed it redundant to the other high-end models it sells. Starting next year (potentially), the Plus is out, and Slim is in.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
The iPhone 15 Plus (right) is big, but it’s also nearly as expensive as an iPhone 15 Pro.

It all feels like a yearslong “is this anything?” exercise. iPhone owners are holding onto older phones longer than they used to, and Apple very much wants us to upgrade our iPhones more often, so it keeps spinning the big Price is Right wheel to see which combination of size and features will kick the almighty upgrade cycle into high gear again. It wasn’t a small phone, and it wasn’t a big phone.
If AI doesn’t do it, then maybe Skinny Phone will.
Personally, I’m all for a skinny iPhone. I’m excited about putting it in my back pocket, forgetting about it, and cracking it right in half. Or maybe I’ll brandish it like a Swiss Army knife the next time I’m at a birthday party and we’re looking for a knife to cut the cake. Maybe I’ll get two slim iPhones, tape them together on the long edges like a book, and make the world’s first foldable iPhone. I’m just saying we shouldn’t limit our imaginations here.

More realistically, the iPhone Slim would just be the latest manifestation of Apple’s fixation with slim devices. That’s cool! But I’m hoping this is a stepping stone toward an actual folding iPhone, which is coincidentally also back in the rumor mill. A clamshell-style folding phone like the Motorola Razr or the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip would come with meaningful benefits compared to a regular old iPhone. And if Apple expects me to upgrade my beloved tiny iPhone 13 Mini for anything less, it better think differently.

Little phone, how I miss you. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

We’ve already heard rumblings about an iPhone Slim model taking the place of the iPhone Plus in 2025, making it the iPhone 17 Slim. Now, a new report from Apple supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo corroborates earlier claims, suggesting that the company’s incredible shapeshifting non-Pro iPhone is about to evolve yet again.

Kuo agrees it will come with a 6.6-inch screen and adds that it’ll have just one rear-facing camera along with the company’s beleaguered in-house 5G chip. Kuo says that the Slim model won’t be a direct replacement for the Plus; instead, it represents “new design trends beyond the existing iPhone lineup.” That tracks with rumors that it might cost more than the $1,200 Pro Max.

Apple has had one heck of a time trying to figure out what the second non-Pro iPhone in its lineup should look like. First, it was Mini. That didn’t sell very well, so then it became Plus.

The answer now seems to be to ax it entirely. According to Kuo, the Plus “only accounts for 5-10 percent of new iPhone shipments,” and Apple has deemed it redundant to the other high-end models it sells. Starting next year (potentially), the Plus is out, and Slim is in.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
The iPhone 15 Plus (right) is big, but it’s also nearly as expensive as an iPhone 15 Pro.

It all feels like a yearslong “is this anything?” exercise. iPhone owners are holding onto older phones longer than they used to, and Apple very much wants us to upgrade our iPhones more often, so it keeps spinning the big Price is Right wheel to see which combination of size and features will kick the almighty upgrade cycle into high gear again. It wasn’t a small phone, and it wasn’t a big phone.

If AI doesn’t do it, then maybe Skinny Phone will.

Personally, I’m all for a skinny iPhone. I’m excited about putting it in my back pocket, forgetting about it, and cracking it right in half. Or maybe I’ll brandish it like a Swiss Army knife the next time I’m at a birthday party and we’re looking for a knife to cut the cake. Maybe I’ll get two slim iPhones, tape them together on the long edges like a book, and make the world’s first foldable iPhone. I’m just saying we shouldn’t limit our imaginations here.

More realistically, the iPhone Slim would just be the latest manifestation of Apple’s fixation with slim devices. That’s cool! But I’m hoping this is a stepping stone toward an actual folding iPhone, which is coincidentally also back in the rumor mill. A clamshell-style folding phone like the Motorola Razr or the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip would come with meaningful benefits compared to a regular old iPhone. And if Apple expects me to upgrade my beloved tiny iPhone 13 Mini for anything less, it better think differently.

Read More 

A screenshot of Apple Maps on the web. | Screenshot: The Verge

Apple Maps is finally available on the web. Through a beta that launched Wednesday afternoon, you can now get driving and walking directions, as well as view ratings and reviews from the web version of Apple Maps in a desktop or mobile browser.
Apple Maps is available through the beta.maps.apple.com site. You can do most of what you can in the iOS version of the app, including view guides, order food directly from Maps, explore cities, and get information about businesses. Apple says it’s going to launch additional features, like Look Around, in the coming months.

The web-based version of Apple Maps is only available in English for now, and is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, along with Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs. Apple plans on rolling out support for other languages, browsers, and platforms in the future. Apple notes that all developers using its MapKit JS tool can link out to Maps on the web.
Users have long requested Apple Maps on the web since the app’s launch on iPhone in 2012. Now that it’s finally here, Apple Maps will be able to directly compete with Google, which has long been available on the web. Apple has been gradually adding new features to its mapping service, including detailed city maps, multi-stop routing, cycling directions, EV routing, offline navigation, and more.
Developing…

A screenshot of Apple Maps on the web. | Screenshot: The Verge

Apple Maps is finally available on the web. Through a beta that launched Wednesday afternoon, you can now get driving and walking directions, as well as view ratings and reviews from the web version of Apple Maps in a desktop or mobile browser.

Apple Maps is available through the beta.maps.apple.com site. You can do most of what you can in the iOS version of the app, including view guides, order food directly from Maps, explore cities, and get information about businesses. Apple says it’s going to launch additional features, like Look Around, in the coming months.

The web-based version of Apple Maps is only available in English for now, and is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, along with Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs. Apple plans on rolling out support for other languages, browsers, and platforms in the future. Apple notes that all developers using its MapKit JS tool can link out to Maps on the web.

Users have long requested Apple Maps on the web since the app’s launch on iPhone in 2012. Now that it’s finally here, Apple Maps will be able to directly compete with Google, which has long been available on the web. Apple has been gradually adding new features to its mapping service, including detailed city maps, multi-stop routing, cycling directions, EV routing, offline navigation, and more.

Developing…

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee is a cipher on many tech issues — here’s what we’ve been able to piece together. Vice President Kamala Harris is all but certain to become the Democratic presidential candidate. She was suddenly catapulted to front-runner status for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her for the position, and now key power brokers in the party have publicly backed her. If elected, Harris would be a president with roots in California’s Bay Area — the heart of the tech industry.
Despite her ties to this region, Harris is largely a cipher when it comes to tech policy. As vice president, she is inherently connected to every policy of the Biden administration, but it’s difficult to untangle which parts she would continue and which she would change. Her key focus areas as vice president — including artificial intelligence — and her interests as a senator and, before that, as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney, provide a handful of insights into what she might prioritize if she should become president.
We know where she stands on climate, we have some sense of how she feels about privacy, and we have a whole array of tantalizing statements about AI, but there is a wide range of key questions that she has yet to be asked or has successfully avoided answering. She remains an enigma when it comes to tech antitrust and the TikTok ban. And she has yet to speak directly to the issues that most concern the moneyed donor class of Silicon Valley, such as crypto regulation.

“I think this is a big opportunity for the Democratic Party to do a little bit of introspection and say — where have they lost certain communities?” Box CEO Aaron Levie, who frequently donates to Democratic candidates, told The Verge in an interview. He said the party has seen “missed opportunities” with the tech and business community, like in pushing for taxes on unrealized gains and failing to update the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers. Ultimately, he hopes for “a bit of a reset on some of either the policy initiatives, or just the the tone and the message from the party.”
For those in the tech industry, Harris’ policy stances are not particularly well known, says venture capitalist and political strategist Bradley Tusk. A campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign, Tusk says that’s largely because most tech regulation occurs at the state level, “so it’s not like she had this track record in the Senate, simply because they just don’t do very much.” That means there’s a lot to be learned in the next few weeks on where Harris plants her feet on a variety of tech issues.
The Verge took a look into how the vice president’s background and legislative history could inform what a Harris presidency could mean for tech — the industry, the workforce, and its impact on consumers.
Antitrust
Many of the recent legislative efforts to rein in the power of the largest tech companies gained momentum after Harris left the Senate. She was never one of the more outspoken politicians on antitrust policy to begin with. During the 2020 election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was the candidate out front calling for the breakup of big tech companies. Naturally, in 2019, The New York Times asked Harris point-blank whether firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google should be broken up. Instead of giving a direct answer, she steered the conversation to privacy regulation.
Still, she’s left open the possibility of enforcement. Also that year, she told CNN that “we have to seriously take a look at” breaking up Facebook. She also called the platform “essentially a utility that has gone unregulated.”

The Biden administration’s antitrust policy — as enacted by the enforcers he appointed, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s Lina Khan and the Department of Justice’s Jonathan Kanter — has been aggressive, maybe even unprecedentedly so. It’s not clear whether a Harris administration would keep that up. The question she dodged in 2019 will be increasingly difficult to avoid now that she’s facing down a self-proclaimed tech antitrust advocate in Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (OH).
Whichever path Harris chooses, she’ll find some friends in Silicon Valley, which itself has split on the issue of antitrust. (The most direct beneficiaries of antitrust policy, after all, are the rival companies.) “There’s not a dinner that I’ve been at where three people can agree on an antitrust policy,” Levie said. “I have friends that are the most ardent supporters of capitalism, of free markets, that also like what Lina Khan does to keep Big Tech in check.”
Privacy
When avoiding the Times’ question about breaking up big tech in 2019, Harris said that “the tech companies have got to be regulated in a way that we can ensure and the American consumer can be certain that their privacy is not being compromised.” She added, “My first priority is going to be that we ensure that privacy is something that is intact.”
The statement sounds strong, but it doesn’t actually say much about what substantive policies she will endorse. She and other legislators grilled Mark Zuckerberg in a public hearing in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, but her adversarial comments at the time were more or less in line with the tenor of the entire hearing.
Non-consensual images and sexual exploitation
There is one area of privacy in which Harris has had a strong, substantive record: legislation and enforcement targeting the sharing of non-consensual images. But this specific issue has not materialized into a more generalized policy position on data privacy — it has rather been an extension of her work around online sex trafficking.
While serving in the Senate between 2017 and 2021, Harris’ legislative focus on tech mostly centered around preventing the spread of non-consensual images on the internet. For example, in 2017, she introduced the Ending Nonconsensual Online User Graphic Harassment (ENOUGH) Act, which sought to make it a crime to knowingly distribute or threaten to distribute non-consensual intimate images. She also introduced the Stopping Harmful Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution Act (SHIELD) Act in 2019, similarly criminalizing the distribution of these kinds of images. That bill recently passed the Senate after it was re-introduced by Harris ally Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
Her work in this area predates her entry to Washington, DC. While she was California attorney general, Harris secured a guilty plea over a hacking scheme to steal intimate images off of people’s Google accounts.

Non-consensual images and sex trafficking are not the same thing. But legislative and prosecutorial action directed at either have run into the same issue: Section 230, a legal liability shield for online platforms. While Section 230 does not immunize an individual from spreading nonconsensual images or sexually exploiting someone, when it comes to the modern era, the most sweepingly powerful action is to intervene at the level of the platform, whether that platform is a juggernaut like Google or a nonprofit like Wikipedia. The creation of carve-outs to Section 230 for both nonconsensual images and sexual exploitation follows more or less the same model with the same stakeholders and the same legal issues.
Notably, Harris pressed criminal charges against the top executives of Backpage.com, a personals website that hosted advertisements for sex work. After becoming a senator, Harris also voted in favor of FOSTA-SESTA, a law excluding sex trafficking from Section 230. (FOSTA-SESTA was, in part, a reaction to Backpage.) As with all laws implicating speech, there are concerns that FOSTA-SESTA was too broad. Sex workers and their allies have argued that the law puts them in more danger, since finding clients online allowed for a degree of vetting and information sharing with others in the industry that’s less readily available now. The controversy over FOSTA-SESTA likely isn’t over.
Artificial intelligence
As vice president, Kamala Harris was tasked with being a point person in the administration on AI policy, leading roundtables for both leading companies in the industry, and labor and civil rights leaders.
Companies and labs developing advanced AI are facing growing regulatory scrutiny due to the technology’s associated risks, including privacy issues, job displacement, bias and discrimination, deepfakes, AI-powered weapons, and the controversial potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which could make these systems as intelligent as their human creators. To mitigate unforeseen risks, tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have urged the government to regulate AI.
Harris agrees, calling for “legislation that strengthens AI safety without stifling innovation” in an AI Safety Summit in the U.K. last November. At the summit, Harris said that they should “consider and address the full spectrum of AI risk threats to humanity as a whole as well as threats to individuals, communities, to our institutions, and to our most vulnerable populations.”
She has actively voiced concerns about how training data can introduce harmful biases
In March, Harris announced a government-wide policy that required U.S. federal agencies to show that their AI tools aren’t harming the public. (If they can’t meet those guidelines, they must cease using the system.) She has actively voiced concerns about how training data can introduce harmful biases and, when used at scale, could wind up discriminating against vulnerable populations.
“And when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of A.I.-enabled mis- and disinformation, I ask: Is that not existential for democracy?” Harris said at the U.K. summit.
Levie said the current administration hasn’t had “major missteps in AI,” though he wishes they’d come out strongly in favor of open source AI. But he sees it as more of a forward-looking issue. “I think the concern you could have is, the next four years are the most important, probably, for AI regulation. And so to some extent, you do have to believe that the party has the wherewithal to make really good decisions,” he said.
TikTok
In April, the U.S. enacted a law that could ban the popular social media platform TikTok as soon as January (unless its parent company, ByteDance, decides to sell it off). Even though President Biden signed the bill, Harris told reporters that a ban was not the goal.
“We need to deal with the owner and we have national security concerns about the owner of TikTok, but we have no intention to ban TikTok,” Harris told ABC News in March. She also added that TikTok has “very important” benefits, like serving as an income generator and “allowing people to share information in a free way.”
When asked about her specific views on TikTok itself during an on-stage interview at The New York Times DealBook summit last November, Harris declined to comment.
Crypto
The Biden administration has had a less-than-rosy relationship with the crypto industry due to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler’s stance on how it should be regulated. Tusk said that he expects Harris will improve relations with the sector, even if it’s just by putting in her own SEC chair pick instead of Gensler.
Meanwhile, Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have indicated they would be open to a less regulated environment for crypto — Trump is even slated to speak at a crypto conference over the weekend. This deregulatory attitude has reportedly attracted $160 million in campaign contributions to the Republican party from the crypto industry, as well as public backing from the likes of prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz. (Their firm, a16z, has a $4.5 billion crypto fund.)
Immigration and H-1Bs
As vice president, Harris has been tasked with addressing “root causes” of immigration from Central America. In that role, she focused in part on strengthening the economics of the region and secured private sector commitments from companies including Meta to help train entrepreneurs and small business owners there, and help women build their online presence and access financial services. Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has ramped up its use of border surveillance technology, a practice that could continue during a Harris presidency.
The right has already zeroed in on Harris’s tenure as so-called “border czar,” even though her actual role was focused on diplomacy with Central America. But immigration is much more than a border issue, and Harris would likely continue Biden’s policies with regards to legal immigration and visas. A key interest of the tech sector is in maintaining or expanding the H-1B visa program, which lets high-skilled workers remain in the country to work in highly specialized jobs. As a senator, Harris worked with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), to introduce the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which would “remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards,” according to a press release. “We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that high-skilled immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the U.S. and continue to contribute to the economy,” she said in a statement at the time. She has not spoken on the issue more recently.
Climate
Harris is much more of a known quantity when it comes to climate and energy policy. For that reason, she has already garnered support from some major environmental groups and business leaders in clean energy. That includes the League of Conservation Voters that rates lawmakers based on their environmental track records, and has given Harris a 90 percent on her scorecard.
The Biden administration managed to pass legislation marking the biggest investments in clean energy and climate yet in the US. And the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden and Harris has introduced sweeping new pollution regulations for cars, power plants, and industrial facilities. All in all, the measures could transform the way Americans get around, how their homes are built, and how they get their energy.
Nevertheless, the US is still not on track to meet climate goals it set under the Paris agreement of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by the end of the decade. Donald Trump could try to wipe existing climate policies off the books.
Harris has taken a tougher stance, for instance, on fracking
Harris is expected to defend those policies, of course. And there’s even some hope among climate advocates she could go farther than Biden to crack down on fossil fuels. Harris has taken a tougher stance, for instance, on fracking — going as far as filing suit against the Obama administration to stop offshore fracking back when she was California’s Attorney General.
Tech donations and connections
Having spent most of her political career either in California or representing it, tech and entertainment companies were among the top contributors to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks political donations and groups together organizations’ political action committee (PAC) spending and employee donations, the University of California was the top contributor to her campaign at $209,00. Harris raised $144,00 from Alphabet, $137,000 from Disney, and $134,000 from AT&T.
Her 2016 Senate campaign saw support from people from similar groups, including Comcast, Apple, and Cisco. She also got support from Venable, a law firm where her husband, Doug Emhoff, worked at the time, overseeing its Los Angeles and San Francisco offices. Emhoff represented clients in the entertainment industry, as well as large corporations like Walmart and Merck, according to The New York Times.

Harris, who was born in Oakland, has some personal connections in the tech industry as well. Her brother-in-law, for example, is Uber’s Chief Legal Officer Tony West. She also attended the wedding of Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker, according to The Washington Post.
None of these ties or donations elucidate what a Harris presidency means for tech. Despite being from the area, she is not a Silicon Valley politician; despite being one of those leading the most successful push to whittle down the immunity shield of Section 230, she is not an anti-tech politician, either.
But in an election year that saw both the passage of the TikTok ban and the once-in-a-generation DOJ antitrust suit against Apple, there are tech policy questions that Kamala Harris cannot avoid forever. The GOP ticket has already articulated its position — coherent or not — on some of those issues. It will be Harris’ turn soon enough.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee is a cipher on many tech issues — here’s what we’ve been able to piece together.

Vice President Kamala Harris is all but certain to become the Democratic presidential candidate. She was suddenly catapulted to front-runner status for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her for the position, and now key power brokers in the party have publicly backed her. If elected, Harris would be a president with roots in California’s Bay Area — the heart of the tech industry.

Despite her ties to this region, Harris is largely a cipher when it comes to tech policy. As vice president, she is inherently connected to every policy of the Biden administration, but it’s difficult to untangle which parts she would continue and which she would change. Her key focus areas as vice president — including artificial intelligence — and her interests as a senator and, before that, as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney, provide a handful of insights into what she might prioritize if she should become president.

We know where she stands on climate, we have some sense of how she feels about privacy, and we have a whole array of tantalizing statements about AI, but there is a wide range of key questions that she has yet to be asked or has successfully avoided answering. She remains an enigma when it comes to tech antitrust and the TikTok ban. And she has yet to speak directly to the issues that most concern the moneyed donor class of Silicon Valley, such as crypto regulation.

“I think this is a big opportunity for the Democratic Party to do a little bit of introspection and say — where have they lost certain communities?” Box CEO Aaron Levie, who frequently donates to Democratic candidates, told The Verge in an interview. He said the party has seen “missed opportunities” with the tech and business community, like in pushing for taxes on unrealized gains and failing to update the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers. Ultimately, he hopes for “a bit of a reset on some of either the policy initiatives, or just the the tone and the message from the party.”

For those in the tech industry, Harris’ policy stances are not particularly well known, says venture capitalist and political strategist Bradley Tusk. A campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign, Tusk says that’s largely because most tech regulation occurs at the state level, “so it’s not like she had this track record in the Senate, simply because they just don’t do very much.” That means there’s a lot to be learned in the next few weeks on where Harris plants her feet on a variety of tech issues.

The Verge took a look into how the vice president’s background and legislative history could inform what a Harris presidency could mean for tech — the industry, the workforce, and its impact on consumers.

Antitrust

Many of the recent legislative efforts to rein in the power of the largest tech companies gained momentum after Harris left the Senate. She was never one of the more outspoken politicians on antitrust policy to begin with. During the 2020 election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was the candidate out front calling for the breakup of big tech companies. Naturally, in 2019, The New York Times asked Harris point-blank whether firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google should be broken up. Instead of giving a direct answer, she steered the conversation to privacy regulation.

Still, she’s left open the possibility of enforcement. Also that year, she told CNN that “we have to seriously take a look at” breaking up Facebook. She also called the platform “essentially a utility that has gone unregulated.”

The Biden administration’s antitrust policy — as enacted by the enforcers he appointed, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s Lina Khan and the Department of Justice’s Jonathan Kanter — has been aggressive, maybe even unprecedentedly so. It’s not clear whether a Harris administration would keep that up. The question she dodged in 2019 will be increasingly difficult to avoid now that she’s facing down a self-proclaimed tech antitrust advocate in Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (OH).

Whichever path Harris chooses, she’ll find some friends in Silicon Valley, which itself has split on the issue of antitrust. (The most direct beneficiaries of antitrust policy, after all, are the rival companies.) “There’s not a dinner that I’ve been at where three people can agree on an antitrust policy,” Levie said. “I have friends that are the most ardent supporters of capitalism, of free markets, that also like what Lina Khan does to keep Big Tech in check.”

Privacy

When avoiding the Times’ question about breaking up big tech in 2019, Harris said that “the tech companies have got to be regulated in a way that we can ensure and the American consumer can be certain that their privacy is not being compromised.” She added, “My first priority is going to be that we ensure that privacy is something that is intact.”

The statement sounds strong, but it doesn’t actually say much about what substantive policies she will endorse. She and other legislators grilled Mark Zuckerberg in a public hearing in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, but her adversarial comments at the time were more or less in line with the tenor of the entire hearing.

Non-consensual images and sexual exploitation

There is one area of privacy in which Harris has had a strong, substantive record: legislation and enforcement targeting the sharing of non-consensual images. But this specific issue has not materialized into a more generalized policy position on data privacy — it has rather been an extension of her work around online sex trafficking.

While serving in the Senate between 2017 and 2021, Harris’ legislative focus on tech mostly centered around preventing the spread of non-consensual images on the internet. For example, in 2017, she introduced the Ending Nonconsensual Online User Graphic Harassment (ENOUGH) Act, which sought to make it a crime to knowingly distribute or threaten to distribute non-consensual intimate images. She also introduced the Stopping Harmful Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution Act (SHIELD) Act in 2019, similarly criminalizing the distribution of these kinds of images. That bill recently passed the Senate after it was re-introduced by Harris ally Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

Her work in this area predates her entry to Washington, DC. While she was California attorney general, Harris secured a guilty plea over a hacking scheme to steal intimate images off of people’s Google accounts.

Non-consensual images and sex trafficking are not the same thing. But legislative and prosecutorial action directed at either have run into the same issue: Section 230, a legal liability shield for online platforms. While Section 230 does not immunize an individual from spreading nonconsensual images or sexually exploiting someone, when it comes to the modern era, the most sweepingly powerful action is to intervene at the level of the platform, whether that platform is a juggernaut like Google or a nonprofit like Wikipedia. The creation of carve-outs to Section 230 for both nonconsensual images and sexual exploitation follows more or less the same model with the same stakeholders and the same legal issues.

Notably, Harris pressed criminal charges against the top executives of Backpage.com, a personals website that hosted advertisements for sex work. After becoming a senator, Harris also voted in favor of FOSTA-SESTA, a law excluding sex trafficking from Section 230. (FOSTA-SESTA was, in part, a reaction to Backpage.) As with all laws implicating speech, there are concerns that FOSTA-SESTA was too broad. Sex workers and their allies have argued that the law puts them in more danger, since finding clients online allowed for a degree of vetting and information sharing with others in the industry that’s less readily available now. The controversy over FOSTA-SESTA likely isn’t over.

Artificial intelligence

As vice president, Kamala Harris was tasked with being a point person in the administration on AI policy, leading roundtables for both leading companies in the industry, and labor and civil rights leaders.

Companies and labs developing advanced AI are facing growing regulatory scrutiny due to the technology’s associated risks, including privacy issues, job displacement, bias and discrimination, deepfakes, AI-powered weapons, and the controversial potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which could make these systems as intelligent as their human creators. To mitigate unforeseen risks, tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have urged the government to regulate AI.

Harris agrees, calling for “legislation that strengthens AI safety without stifling innovation” in an AI Safety Summit in the U.K. last November. At the summit, Harris said that they should “consider and address the full spectrum of AI risk threats to humanity as a whole as well as threats to individuals, communities, to our institutions, and to our most vulnerable populations.”

In March, Harris announced a government-wide policy that required U.S. federal agencies to show that their AI tools aren’t harming the public. (If they can’t meet those guidelines, they must cease using the system.) She has actively voiced concerns about how training data can introduce harmful biases and, when used at scale, could wind up discriminating against vulnerable populations.

“And when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of A.I.-enabled mis- and disinformation, I ask: Is that not existential for democracy?” Harris said at the U.K. summit.

Levie said the current administration hasn’t had “major missteps in AI,” though he wishes they’d come out strongly in favor of open source AI. But he sees it as more of a forward-looking issue. “I think the concern you could have is, the next four years are the most important, probably, for AI regulation. And so to some extent, you do have to believe that the party has the wherewithal to make really good decisions,” he said.

TikTok

In April, the U.S. enacted a law that could ban the popular social media platform TikTok as soon as January (unless its parent company, ByteDance, decides to sell it off). Even though President Biden signed the bill, Harris told reporters that a ban was not the goal.

“We need to deal with the owner and we have national security concerns about the owner of TikTok, but we have no intention to ban TikTok,” Harris told ABC News in March. She also added that TikTok has “very important” benefits, like serving as an income generator and “allowing people to share information in a free way.”

When asked about her specific views on TikTok itself during an on-stage interview at The New York Times DealBook summit last November, Harris declined to comment.

Crypto

The Biden administration has had a less-than-rosy relationship with the crypto industry due to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler’s stance on how it should be regulated. Tusk said that he expects Harris will improve relations with the sector, even if it’s just by putting in her own SEC chair pick instead of Gensler.

Meanwhile, Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have indicated they would be open to a less regulated environment for crypto — Trump is even slated to speak at a crypto conference over the weekend. This deregulatory attitude has reportedly attracted $160 million in campaign contributions to the Republican party from the crypto industry, as well as public backing from the likes of prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz. (Their firm, a16z, has a $4.5 billion crypto fund.)

Immigration and H-1Bs

As vice president, Harris has been tasked with addressing “root causes” of immigration from Central America. In that role, she focused in part on strengthening the economics of the region and secured private sector commitments from companies including Meta to help train entrepreneurs and small business owners there, and help women build their online presence and access financial services. Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has ramped up its use of border surveillance technology, a practice that could continue during a Harris presidency.

The right has already zeroed in on Harris’s tenure as so-called “border czar,” even though her actual role was focused on diplomacy with Central America. But immigration is much more than a border issue, and Harris would likely continue Biden’s policies with regards to legal immigration and visas. A key interest of the tech sector is in maintaining or expanding the H-1B visa program, which lets high-skilled workers remain in the country to work in highly specialized jobs. As a senator, Harris worked with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), to introduce the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which would “remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards,” according to a press release. “We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that high-skilled immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the U.S. and continue to contribute to the economy,” she said in a statement at the time. She has not spoken on the issue more recently.

Climate

Harris is much more of a known quantity when it comes to climate and energy policy. For that reason, she has already garnered support from some major environmental groups and business leaders in clean energy. That includes the League of Conservation Voters that rates lawmakers based on their environmental track records, and has given Harris a 90 percent on her scorecard.

The Biden administration managed to pass legislation marking the biggest investments in clean energy and climate yet in the US. And the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden and Harris has introduced sweeping new pollution regulations for cars, power plants, and industrial facilities. All in all, the measures could transform the way Americans get around, how their homes are built, and how they get their energy.

Nevertheless, the US is still not on track to meet climate goals it set under the Paris agreement of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by the end of the decade. Donald Trump could try to wipe existing climate policies off the books.

Harris is expected to defend those policies, of course. And there’s even some hope among climate advocates she could go farther than Biden to crack down on fossil fuels. Harris has taken a tougher stance, for instance, on fracking — going as far as filing suit against the Obama administration to stop offshore fracking back when she was California’s Attorney General.

Tech donations and connections

Having spent most of her political career either in California or representing it, tech and entertainment companies were among the top contributors to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks political donations and groups together organizations’ political action committee (PAC) spending and employee donations, the University of California was the top contributor to her campaign at $209,00. Harris raised $144,00 from Alphabet, $137,000 from Disney, and $134,000 from AT&T.

Her 2016 Senate campaign saw support from people from similar groups, including Comcast, Apple, and Cisco. She also got support from Venable, a law firm where her husband, Doug Emhoff, worked at the time, overseeing its Los Angeles and San Francisco offices. Emhoff represented clients in the entertainment industry, as well as large corporations like Walmart and Merck, according to The New York Times.

Harris, who was born in Oakland, has some personal connections in the tech industry as well. Her brother-in-law, for example, is Uber’s Chief Legal Officer Tony West. She also attended the wedding of Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker, according to The Washington Post.

None of these ties or donations elucidate what a Harris presidency means for tech. Despite being from the area, she is not a Silicon Valley politician; despite being one of those leading the most successful push to whittle down the immunity shield of Section 230, she is not an anti-tech politician, either.

But in an election year that saw both the passage of the TikTok ban and the once-in-a-generation DOJ antitrust suit against Apple, there are tech policy questions that Kamala Harris cannot avoid forever. The GOP ticket has already articulated its position — coherent or not — on some of those issues. It will be Harris’ turn soon enough.

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The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman can now be ordered with plant-based upholstery made from bamboo. | Image: Herman Miller

Can you finally feel guilt-free about buying an iconic piece of furniture design that starts at $6,395? For the first time in 68 years, Herman Miller’s Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman are being offered with a plant-based upholstery option that looks and feels like leather, but is primarily made from bamboo.
The plant-based fabric, called Banbū, was developed by von Holzhausen and first launched back in 2020 as a durable alternative to both leather derived from animals and vegan leathers made using plastic-based materials like polyurethane. Banbū is made by chopping up bamboo and extracting fibers that are spun into a yarn that can be woven into fabrics. Those fabrics are then treated with a plant-based topcoat sealant, according to von Holzhausen’s website. The company describes Banbū as being “buttery-soft and smooth as lambskin,” and claims the material is one third the weight of cow leather while also taking less than 250 days to biodegrade in a landfill.
Bamboo plants are highly renewable, growing quickly without the need for fertilizers or irrigation, allowing the plant to be harvested sustainably without deforestation. Herman Miller claims the plant-based leather reduces the chair’s carbon footprint by “up to 35 percent,” but von Holzhausen hasn’t shared specifics on how it makes Banbū, including the environmental impacts of breaking down the bamboo and what other materials may be used in the manufacturing process.
Using bamboo to make pseudo-leather might have a smaller carbon footprint than using cows, but the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman still feature complicated designs with layers of wood veneers glued together and molded into shape using presses applying heat and pressure.
If you want to keep the environmental impact of your furniture in mind but still want a Herman Miller in your home, an alternative is the company’s Eames Molded Plastic Armchair. Although they use a similar manufacturing process involving heat, the molded seats are made using 100 percent post-industrial recycled plastic instead of lumber or bamboo, allowing them to be recycled again when you’re ready to redecorate. (Although they aren’t quite as lounge-able.)

The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman can now be ordered with plant-based upholstery made from bamboo. | Image: Herman Miller

Can you finally feel guilt-free about buying an iconic piece of furniture design that starts at $6,395? For the first time in 68 years, Herman Miller’s Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman are being offered with a plant-based upholstery option that looks and feels like leather, but is primarily made from bamboo.

The plant-based fabric, called Banbū, was developed by von Holzhausen and first launched back in 2020 as a durable alternative to both leather derived from animals and vegan leathers made using plastic-based materials like polyurethane. Banbū is made by chopping up bamboo and extracting fibers that are spun into a yarn that can be woven into fabrics. Those fabrics are then treated with a plant-based topcoat sealant, according to von Holzhausen’s website. The company describes Banbū as being “buttery-soft and smooth as lambskin,” and claims the material is one third the weight of cow leather while also taking less than 250 days to biodegrade in a landfill.

Bamboo plants are highly renewable, growing quickly without the need for fertilizers or irrigation, allowing the plant to be harvested sustainably without deforestation. Herman Miller claims the plant-based leather reduces the chair’s carbon footprint by “up to 35 percent,” but von Holzhausen hasn’t shared specifics on how it makes Banbū, including the environmental impacts of breaking down the bamboo and what other materials may be used in the manufacturing process.

Using bamboo to make pseudo-leather might have a smaller carbon footprint than using cows, but the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman still feature complicated designs with layers of wood veneers glued together and molded into shape using presses applying heat and pressure.

If you want to keep the environmental impact of your furniture in mind but still want a Herman Miller in your home, an alternative is the company’s Eames Molded Plastic Armchair. Although they use a similar manufacturing process involving heat, the molded seats are made using 100 percent post-industrial recycled plastic instead of lumber or bamboo, allowing them to be recycled again when you’re ready to redecorate. (Although they aren’t quite as lounge-able.)

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