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Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Meta is apparently deprioritizing VR and its Oculus business to focus on reproducing the surprising success of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And it makes sense — VR is out, AI is in, and Meta’s smart glasses are the absolute standout gadget thus far for AI. But in the same week that Alex Heath reported this shake-up in Command Line, The Information reported that Apple is focusing on a cheaper Vision headset in favor of a successor to the Vision Pro. Something’s happening here, and it feels like it’s going to have a major impact on the most distinct visions of our VR and AR future.
So with David stepping away for a show, Alex Heath joins Nilay and myself to talk about what the heck is going on with AR and VR in Silicon Valley right now. But that’s not all we talk about. There’s also a very cool new universal remote with a big screen and a limited audience, Framework has a new laptop with a very curious processor, and Qualcomm’s new laptop processors are finally available to reviewers and the general public. While our team furiously benchmarks them, we dig into what it could mean for the wider industry.

And after those big discussions we, like Big Tech, pivot to talking about AI — because there was big news in that space this week, too! Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist and one of the major participants in last November’s attempted coup, has a whole new AI company. He doesn’t appear to have a big business plan, but he has grand ideas for the future of AI. Plus, Perplexity appears to be burning bridges to create a competitive AI search engine, and the tension between creators and the AI companies who want them both as customers and for training data grows more taut.
Finally, we hit a lightning round that’s got a surprising fashion focus.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started. First, we talked a lot about cool gadgets:

Happy Windows on Arm day.
Qualcomm inside.
Apple’s new hands-free unlocking feature won’t work with existing smart locks
Apple’s fancy new CarPlay will only work wirelessly
This universal remote wants to control your smart home sans hub
The Framework Laptop 13 is about to become one of the world’s first RISC-V laptops
Apple’s Vision Pro team is reportedly focused on building a cheaper headset
Meta forms new Wearables group and lays off some employees

And then, we made a pivot to AI:

OpenAI’s former chief scientist is starting a new AI company
Perplexity continues to piss off publishers.
An AI video tool just launched, and it’s already copying Disney’s IP
Anthropic has a fast new AI model — and a clever new way to interact with chatbots
AIs are coming for social networks
TikTok ads may soon contain AI avatars of your favorite creators
McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now

Finally, we had a lightning round:

Nvidia overtakes Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company
US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
Tech CEOs are hot now, so workers are hiring $500-an-hour fashion consultants

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Meta is apparently deprioritizing VR and its Oculus business to focus on reproducing the surprising success of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And it makes sense — VR is out, AI is in, and Meta’s smart glasses are the absolute standout gadget thus far for AI. But in the same week that Alex Heath reported this shake-up in Command Line, The Information reported that Apple is focusing on a cheaper Vision headset in favor of a successor to the Vision Pro. Something’s happening here, and it feels like it’s going to have a major impact on the most distinct visions of our VR and AR future.

So with David stepping away for a show, Alex Heath joins Nilay and myself to talk about what the heck is going on with AR and VR in Silicon Valley right now. But that’s not all we talk about. There’s also a very cool new universal remote with a big screen and a limited audience, Framework has a new laptop with a very curious processor, and Qualcomm’s new laptop processors are finally available to reviewers and the general public. While our team furiously benchmarks them, we dig into what it could mean for the wider industry.

And after those big discussions we, like Big Tech, pivot to talking about AI — because there was big news in that space this week, too! Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist and one of the major participants in last November’s attempted coup, has a whole new AI company. He doesn’t appear to have a big business plan, but he has grand ideas for the future of AI. Plus, Perplexity appears to be burning bridges to create a competitive AI search engine, and the tension between creators and the AI companies who want them both as customers and for training data grows more taut.

Finally, we hit a lightning round that’s got a surprising fashion focus.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started. First, we talked a lot about cool gadgets:

Happy Windows on Arm day.
Qualcomm inside.
Apple’s new hands-free unlocking feature won’t work with existing smart locks
Apple’s fancy new CarPlay will only work wirelessly
This universal remote wants to control your smart home sans hub
The Framework Laptop 13 is about to become one of the world’s first RISC-V laptops
Apple’s Vision Pro team is reportedly focused on building a cheaper headset
Meta forms new Wearables group and lays off some employees

And then, we made a pivot to AI:

OpenAI’s former chief scientist is starting a new AI company
Perplexity continues to piss off publishers.
An AI video tool just launched, and it’s already copying Disney’s IP
Anthropic has a fast new AI model — and a clever new way to interact with chatbots
AIs are coming for social networks
TikTok ads may soon contain AI avatars of your favorite creators
McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now

Finally, we had a lightning round:

Nvidia overtakes Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company
US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
Tech CEOs are hot now, so workers are hiring $500-an-hour fashion consultants

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Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify just announced that it would be increasing prices in the US, but on Friday, it announced a new Basic plan that brings back a $10.99 per month tier. This new offering gives you the same ad-free music listening perks you’d get on the $11.99 Premium Individual tier, but you won’t get the 15 monthly hours of audiobook listening that’s also included with Premium.
Last year, Spotify bumped up the cost of Premium from $9.99 per month — the price the service launched at in the US more than a decade ago — to $10.99 per month. Now that Premium costs an extra dollar beyond that, the new Basic plan seems to indicate that Spotify sees demand for a cheaper option that drops audiobooks. It also creates a music-only offering that’s the same price as the $10.99 per month plans for Apple Music and Tidal.
Spotify also has a $9.99 per month Audiobooks Access Tier that gives you 15 hours of monthly audiobook time, but if you want to listen to music on that plan, you’ll have to hear ads.

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify just announced that it would be increasing prices in the US, but on Friday, it announced a new Basic plan that brings back a $10.99 per month tier. This new offering gives you the same ad-free music listening perks you’d get on the $11.99 Premium Individual tier, but you won’t get the 15 monthly hours of audiobook listening that’s also included with Premium.

Last year, Spotify bumped up the cost of Premium from $9.99 per month — the price the service launched at in the US more than a decade ago — to $10.99 per month. Now that Premium costs an extra dollar beyond that, the new Basic plan seems to indicate that Spotify sees demand for a cheaper option that drops audiobooks. It also creates a music-only offering that’s the same price as the $10.99 per month plans for Apple Music and Tidal.

Spotify also has a $9.99 per month Audiobooks Access Tier that gives you 15 hours of monthly audiobook time, but if you want to listen to music on that plan, you’ll have to hear ads.

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Image: TC Sottek / The Verge

After years of pursuing a group of piracy advocates for illegally hosting and streaming thousands of stolen TV shows, the Department of Justice doled out a series of convictions.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber — five men who were responsible for running Netflix knockoff Jetflicks — have been convicted on multiple counts of copyright infringement and money laundering by concealment that could ultimately lead to jail time. The five defendants (along with three other individuals) were first charged back in 2019 when the US government argued that their illegally operated streaming service had led to the loss of millions in revenue for companies including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
For $9.99 a month, Jetflicks gave its subscribers access to just over 180,000 episodes of various television shows that were initially downloaded from a variety of pirating websites and subsequently uploaded to the company’s own servers in Las Vegas. According to prosecutors, Jetflicks was able to rake in millions of dollars with its subscription model, but as issues with payment processors and objections from studios began to trickle in, the company attempted to pivot and pass itself off as an organization focused on aviation media.
“When complaints from copyright holders and problems with payment service providers threatened to topple the illicit multimillion-dollar enterprise, the defendants tried to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company,” FBI Washington Field Office assistant director David Sundberg said.
Following their convictions, Dallman is now facing up to 48 years in prison, while the other defendants are looking at five years maximum, but an official sentencing date has yet to be set.

Image: TC Sottek / The Verge

After years of pursuing a group of piracy advocates for illegally hosting and streaming thousands of stolen TV shows, the Department of Justice doled out a series of convictions.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber — five men who were responsible for running Netflix knockoff Jetflicks — have been convicted on multiple counts of copyright infringement and money laundering by concealment that could ultimately lead to jail time. The five defendants (along with three other individuals) were first charged back in 2019 when the US government argued that their illegally operated streaming service had led to the loss of millions in revenue for companies including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

For $9.99 a month, Jetflicks gave its subscribers access to just over 180,000 episodes of various television shows that were initially downloaded from a variety of pirating websites and subsequently uploaded to the company’s own servers in Las Vegas. According to prosecutors, Jetflicks was able to rake in millions of dollars with its subscription model, but as issues with payment processors and objections from studios began to trickle in, the company attempted to pivot and pass itself off as an organization focused on aviation media.

“When complaints from copyright holders and problems with payment service providers threatened to topple the illicit multimillion-dollar enterprise, the defendants tried to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company,” FBI Washington Field Office assistant director David Sundberg said.

Following their convictions, Dallman is now facing up to 48 years in prison, while the other defendants are looking at five years maximum, but an official sentencing date has yet to be set.

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Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images

Elon Musk, who has long touted claims about the world’s supposed depopulation crisis, had another child with an executive at his brain implant company Neuralink, according to a report from Bloomberg. Neuralink director Shivon Zilis reportedly had the child with Musk earlier this year.
Musk already has twins with Zilis, which Business Insider discovered in 2022 after digging up a court document. He has three children with the musician Grimes and six children from previous relationships, making for a total of 12 that we know of. On Thursday, Musk reposted a chart that claims Europe is suffering from a “fertility crisis,” saying “civilization may end with a bang or with a whimper (in adult diapers).”

As noted by Bloomberg, Musk has repeated that line several times in the past, including during a 2022 interview with Tucker Carlson and again during an interview at the Milken Institute conference in May. He told Carlson “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.” In 2021, Musk’s nonprofit organization donated $10 million to the University of Austin to fund the Population Wellbeing Initiative, a research group that studies the human population.
The revelation also follows multiple reports alleging inappropriate conduct from Musk in the workplace and with subordinates. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal said Musk had a sexual relationship with a former SpaceX intern who later became one of the company’s executives. Another employee says she refused Musk’s requests to have children with him several times, according to the Journal.
Last week, eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Musk that claims the billionaire “knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community.” The complaint echoes past allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment at SpaceX, including an incident where Musk allegedly propositioned a flight attendant for sex.

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images

Elon Musk, who has long touted claims about the world’s supposed depopulation crisis, had another child with an executive at his brain implant company Neuralink, according to a report from Bloomberg. Neuralink director Shivon Zilis reportedly had the child with Musk earlier this year.

Musk already has twins with Zilis, which Business Insider discovered in 2022 after digging up a court document. He has three children with the musician Grimes and six children from previous relationships, making for a total of 12 that we know of. On Thursday, Musk reposted a chart that claims Europe is suffering from a “fertility crisis,” saying “civilization may end with a bang or with a whimper (in adult diapers).”

As noted by Bloomberg, Musk has repeated that line several times in the past, including during a 2022 interview with Tucker Carlson and again during an interview at the Milken Institute conference in May. He told Carlson “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.” In 2021, Musk’s nonprofit organization donated $10 million to the University of Austin to fund the Population Wellbeing Initiative, a research group that studies the human population.

The revelation also follows multiple reports alleging inappropriate conduct from Musk in the workplace and with subordinates. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal said Musk had a sexual relationship with a former SpaceX intern who later became one of the company’s executives. Another employee says she refused Musk’s requests to have children with him several times, according to the Journal.

Last week, eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Musk that claims the billionaire “knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community.” The complaint echoes past allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment at SpaceX, including an incident where Musk allegedly propositioned a flight attendant for sex.

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Tidal is dropping support for MQA. | Image: The Verge

Big news for audiophiles: Tidal is shaking up its audio formats. Starting July 24th, Tidal will drop support for Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) and 360 Reality Audio formats. Going forward, the streaming service says FLAC will be the default for stereo, while Dolby Atmos will be the format of choice for immersive sound.
Tidal allows users to stream in three tiers of audio quality: low, high, and max. Low uses AAC files, which go up to 320kbps. High offers CD-quality lossless FLAC files. And Max goes beyond that, with MQA and higher-res FLAC files. The Max tier is where the decision to drop MQA matters — and probably isn’t all that surprising to longtime Tidal users.

Tidal was one of the few services that supported streaming in MQA format. The main benefit of MQA is that you can retain superior audio quality, but with a smaller file size than FLAC. The problem is that MQA files require special hardware or software to play files. What signaled MQA’s days on Tidal were numbered was when the service introduced a new HiRes FLAC format last year. (HiRes FLAC is just a fancy way of referring to a FLAC file that’s larger than standard CD quality.) Not only was this new format introduced, but Tidal then made HiRes FLAC the preferred default for Max quality streaming. Not helping matters, last year, the company behind the MQA format entered administration in the UK, or the equivalent of filing for bankruptcy.
Based on Tidal’s FAQ, it appears these format decisions were made to prioritize access and cost. For example, it says it picked Dolby Atmos because it has a wide range of “compatible devices, catalog availability and artist adoption of the format.” While many audiophiles enjoy Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, it’s just not as widely adopted. Tidal also says it’s going with FLAC for stereo because it’s open-source, meaning artists won’t have to go through a third party. Also, unlike FLAC, MQA is a proprietary format, meaning licensing costs are involved.
For Tidal users who have MQA tracks or albums, those files will be automatically replaced with the highest quality FLAC versions that Tidal has available. This also applies to MQA files downloaded for offline playback. Meanwhile, 360 Reality Audio files will be grayed out and unavailable for streaming.
Tidal says it has “no further plans to change our audio format offerings.” However, the change comes soon after the company recently decided to lower its subscription price from upwards of $20 monthly to $10.99. It also decided to consolidate its HiFi and HiFi Plus plans into a single tier.

Tidal is dropping support for MQA. | Image: The Verge

Big news for audiophiles: Tidal is shaking up its audio formats. Starting July 24th, Tidal will drop support for Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) and 360 Reality Audio formats. Going forward, the streaming service says FLAC will be the default for stereo, while Dolby Atmos will be the format of choice for immersive sound.

Tidal allows users to stream in three tiers of audio quality: low, high, and max. Low uses AAC files, which go up to 320kbps. High offers CD-quality lossless FLAC files. And Max goes beyond that, with MQA and higher-res FLAC files. The Max tier is where the decision to drop MQA matters — and probably isn’t all that surprising to longtime Tidal users.

Tidal was one of the few services that supported streaming in MQA format. The main benefit of MQA is that you can retain superior audio quality, but with a smaller file size than FLAC. The problem is that MQA files require special hardware or software to play files. What signaled MQA’s days on Tidal were numbered was when the service introduced a new HiRes FLAC format last year. (HiRes FLAC is just a fancy way of referring to a FLAC file that’s larger than standard CD quality.) Not only was this new format introduced, but Tidal then made HiRes FLAC the preferred default for Max quality streaming. Not helping matters, last year, the company behind the MQA format entered administration in the UK, or the equivalent of filing for bankruptcy.

Based on Tidal’s FAQ, it appears these format decisions were made to prioritize access and cost. For example, it says it picked Dolby Atmos because it has a wide range of “compatible devices, catalog availability and artist adoption of the format.” While many audiophiles enjoy Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, it’s just not as widely adopted. Tidal also says it’s going with FLAC for stereo because it’s open-source, meaning artists won’t have to go through a third party. Also, unlike FLAC, MQA is a proprietary format, meaning licensing costs are involved.

For Tidal users who have MQA tracks or albums, those files will be automatically replaced with the highest quality FLAC versions that Tidal has available. This also applies to MQA files downloaded for offline playback. Meanwhile, 360 Reality Audio files will be grayed out and unavailable for streaming.

Tidal says it has “no further plans to change our audio format offerings.” However, the change comes soon after the company recently decided to lower its subscription price from upwards of $20 monthly to $10.99. It also decided to consolidate its HiFi and HiFi Plus plans into a single tier.

Read More 

Samsung’s The Frame TV is a stylish 4K TV with some impressive specs, including a 120Hz refresh rate. | Image: Samsung

If you plan on relaxing this summer by sitting back with a cold drink and streaming the Olympics and your favorite shows, it’s worth investing in a TV that isn’t an eyesore. Samsung’s The Frame TV is one of the most stylish TVs on the market, and through June 29th, you can buy the last-gen model from Woot in the 43-inch and 50-inch sizing for $687.99 ($300 off) and $837.99 ($460 off), respectively, which are their lowest prices to date. It’s also on sale in the massive 85-inch configuration for $2,497.99 ($1,800 off), which is one of its best prices.

As with the current 2024 lineup, the last-gen TV showcases artwork from around the world when idle. The screen’s colors aren’t as sharp as the newer model’s, but its anti-glare matte display still makes the art resemble an actual canvas. Yet, when switched on, The Frame transforms into a 4K QLED TV with support for several streaming apps. Granted, it doesn’t have the pristine image quality of an OLED display and lacks VRR for gaming, but it still offers a speedy 120Hz refresh rate and HDMI 2.1 support. It’s also compatible with major smart home platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, making it a good overall TV if you want to stream the summer away in style.

Now for some deals that won’t cost an arm and a leg…

The second-generation Polaroid Go, one of my favorite instant cameras, is currently down to $69.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is one of its better prices to date. The highly portable camera is a great upgrade over its predecessor, with new features like USB-C support, while continuing to print charming retro-style photos.
The JBL Go 3 wireless speaker is on sale through June 29th for $32.95 ($17 off), one of its best prices yet, at Woot in multiple colors. Along with IP67 weatherproofing, the tiny Bluetooth speaker can last for up to five hours on a single charge and recharges quickly via USB-C.
You can buy a four-pack of Apple’s AirTags for $79.99 ($20 off) from Amazon and Walmart, which is just $5 shy of their all-time low price. If you’re an iPhone owner, there’s no better Bluetooth tracker on the market. The ultra wideband trackers work with Apple’s vast Find My network, which allows for impressively precise tracking. Read our review.
You can pick up a pair of OnePlus Buds 3 for $79.99 ($20 off) directly from OnePlus, which is one of their better prices to date. The wireless earbuds arrive with some impressive perks for their price, including active noise cancellation that adjusts according to the shape of your ear canal as well as multipoint support and an IP55 rating for sweat resistance.

Samsung’s The Frame TV is a stylish 4K TV with some impressive specs, including a 120Hz refresh rate. | Image: Samsung

If you plan on relaxing this summer by sitting back with a cold drink and streaming the Olympics and your favorite shows, it’s worth investing in a TV that isn’t an eyesore. Samsung’s The Frame TV is one of the most stylish TVs on the market, and through June 29th, you can buy the last-gen model from Woot in the 43-inch and 50-inch sizing for $687.99 ($300 off) and $837.99 ($460 off), respectively, which are their lowest prices to date. It’s also on sale in the massive 85-inch configuration for $2,497.99 ($1,800 off), which is one of its best prices.

As with the current 2024 lineup, the last-gen TV showcases artwork from around the world when idle. The screen’s colors aren’t as sharp as the newer model’s, but its anti-glare matte display still makes the art resemble an actual canvas. Yet, when switched on, The Frame transforms into a 4K QLED TV with support for several streaming apps. Granted, it doesn’t have the pristine image quality of an OLED display and lacks VRR for gaming, but it still offers a speedy 120Hz refresh rate and HDMI 2.1 support. It’s also compatible with major smart home platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, making it a good overall TV if you want to stream the summer away in style.

Now for some deals that won’t cost an arm and a leg…

The second-generation Polaroid Go, one of my favorite instant cameras, is currently down to $69.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is one of its better prices to date. The highly portable camera is a great upgrade over its predecessor, with new features like USB-C support, while continuing to print charming retro-style photos.
The JBL Go 3 wireless speaker is on sale through June 29th for $32.95 ($17 off), one of its best prices yet, at Woot in multiple colors. Along with IP67 weatherproofing, the tiny Bluetooth speaker can last for up to five hours on a single charge and recharges quickly via USB-C.
You can buy a four-pack of Apple’s AirTags for $79.99 ($20 off) from Amazon and Walmart, which is just $5 shy of their all-time low price. If you’re an iPhone owner, there’s no better Bluetooth tracker on the market. The ultra wideband trackers work with Apple’s vast Find My network, which allows for impressively precise tracking. Read our review.
You can pick up a pair of OnePlus Buds 3 for $79.99 ($20 off) directly from OnePlus, which is one of their better prices to date. The wireless earbuds arrive with some impressive perks for their price, including active noise cancellation that adjusts according to the shape of your ear canal as well as multipoint support and an IP55 rating for sweat resistance.

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Antstream Arcade makes retro gaming on the iPhone easier with access to a library of licensed games. | Image: Antstream

Apple opened the door for game streaming services in its App Store following the implementation of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) last year, but the first such service that will arrive on iOS and iPadOS next week will cater to hardcore retro gamers, as pointed out by Cult of Mac.
Antstream, which is already available on several platforms like Xbox, Windows, Android, and Amazon devices, boasts a catalog of over 1,300 retro games that can be played on demand, including Missile Command, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Asteroids, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
There are now several excellent retro gaming emulators available for Apple’s mobile devices, including Delta, RetroArch, and PPSSPP, which focuses on the PlayStation Portable. The challenge with these emulators is that they don’t include any games. They rely on ROMs, digital copies of classic video games, that are plagued with complicated legal questions when it comes to using and acquiring them.
Antstream features a library of legally licensed retro titles that’s similar to the Evercade lineup of gaming consoles, so users don’t have to visit the dark corners of the web to source their own.
There are hundreds of titles from ancient platforms like the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, and the Commodore Amiga, but you’ll find just 28 Atari 2600 games, five from the Game Boy, two from the original PlayStation, and 42 from the Super Nintendo. So, even with 1,300-plus games offered through the Antstream service, you might have to dig a little to find something you’ll actually want to play.
As much as we enjoyed the Super Star Wars trilogy on the SNES, that might not be enough to justify the price of an Antstream subscription. For a limited time after launching on the App Store on June 27th, subscriptions will be discounted to $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year, which is just slightly cheaper than the standard $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year that Antstream usually charges.

Antstream Arcade makes retro gaming on the iPhone easier with access to a library of licensed games. | Image: Antstream

Apple opened the door for game streaming services in its App Store following the implementation of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) last year, but the first such service that will arrive on iOS and iPadOS next week will cater to hardcore retro gamers, as pointed out by Cult of Mac.

Antstream, which is already available on several platforms like Xbox, Windows, Android, and Amazon devices, boasts a catalog of over 1,300 retro games that can be played on demand, including Missile Command, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Asteroids, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

There are now several excellent retro gaming emulators available for Apple’s mobile devices, including Delta, RetroArch, and PPSSPP, which focuses on the PlayStation Portable. The challenge with these emulators is that they don’t include any games. They rely on ROMs, digital copies of classic video games, that are plagued with complicated legal questions when it comes to using and acquiring them.

Antstream features a library of legally licensed retro titles that’s similar to the Evercade lineup of gaming consoles, so users don’t have to visit the dark corners of the web to source their own.

There are hundreds of titles from ancient platforms like the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, and the Commodore Amiga, but you’ll find just 28 Atari 2600 games, five from the Game Boy, two from the original PlayStation, and 42 from the Super Nintendo. So, even with 1,300-plus games offered through the Antstream service, you might have to dig a little to find something you’ll actually want to play.

As much as we enjoyed the Super Star Wars trilogy on the SNES, that might not be enough to justify the price of an Antstream subscription. For a limited time after launching on the App Store on June 27th, subscriptions will be discounted to $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year, which is just slightly cheaper than the standard $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year that Antstream usually charges.

Read More 

Image: Alex Parkin and Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

For a crucial decade in print media’s transition to the internet, HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones was a boon in traffic… for everyone. But what happened when every publication started chasing the same thing? In the summer of 2017, I was brought on to be the third host of a weekly Game of Thrones recap show that streamed on Facebook Live. At the time, I was an editor at GQ, and I found the assignment beneath me. I was supposed to be squirreling away at the dark art of turning shoddy copy into less shoddy copy; I never wanted to be on camera.
Also, I barely knew anything about Game of Thrones. I watched it casually, but I hadn’t read any of the books. I was allergic to “lore.” I had trouble distinguishing the show’s various bearded white guys. But my boss had tasked me with de-nerdifying the Facebook Live show after someone had derogatorily suggested that the two current hosts, Scott and Josh, don fedoras on the stream.
“Pivot to video” is a phrase now associated with any boneheaded move in media, but there was a time before it was a joke. The spring of 2016, Facebook attempted to jump-start its new livestreaming feature the only way it knew how: with money. Publications were baited with small payouts. The higher-ups at Condé Nast, the parent company that owns GQ, handed down instructions to participate, and at least at the magazine level, there was some acknowledgment that the whole thing was silly. A year later, we were still playing ball, taking the easiest pitches imaginable. Game of Thrones was one of those things that people couldn’t get enough of. It didn’t matter if our coverage was smarter or better written than what was available on the hundreds of other sites running the same thing. We were all chasing the roulette of Google Search traffic, and the most embarrassing part was that it worked. So why not try the same thing for Facebook Live?
Despite my protests — about the show’s lazy concept, my forced involvement, the entire emphasis on Facebook streaming, a thing everyone seemed to agree was stupid but unable to opt out of — I actually had a good time doing the Game of Thrones series. Scott took on more of a play-by-play role, with Josh coming in for color commentary. I’d interject unhelpfully every once in a while to mispronounce the name of a major character. Scott and Josh showed up diligently and enthusiastically, despite it not being part of their contract and not being compensated extra. I turned into a decent foil as the show’s grump, and my inability to remember any character’s name became a running gag.

Each episode allegedly racked up thousands of views — not too shabby given the low production lift. In 2017, there weren’t a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future of media. Most magazines and newspapers were sustained by advertising revenue. But in the transition to digital, that business was subsumed by the web’s two largest advertising products: Google and Facebook. They controlled the flow of distribution and therefore had a stranglehold on journalism. When they fed your publication scraps, you lapped them up; if they told you the future was video, you lapped that up, too.
For a moment in 2016, Facebook Live appeared to be working. Nearly every other major media company was chasing the same high in various forms: Canada’s National Post tried to get its reporters to eat as many slices of cheese as possible; TechCrunch broadcast their annual $2,995-a-ticket conference; ABC News aired pre- and post-presidential debate analysis. But no one would top BuzzFeed — in both numbers and ingenuity — which had come out of the gate livestreaming a watermelon, placing rubber bands around the fruit, one by one, until it exploded.
Less than a year later, Facebook would stop paying publishers to support its livestreaming product. Then it would be revealed that the company had greatly inflated the metrics it reported. Facebook would settle that class action suit for $40 million, an amount of money that the company generates every three hours.
People have joked that the BuzzFeed watermelon is the perfect metaphor for journalism in the Facebook Live era. But in hindsight, I think the watermelon got off easy.

Each time it appeared that a publication had figured out a repeatable way to attract web traffic, everywhere else would follow suit: jockeying for the top search hit for “what time is the Super Bowl?”; aggregating viral tweets; competing to be the first to post clips from Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (before The Awl went bottoms up, John Herrman facetiously congratulated each week’s winner).
Yet, with Game of Thrones, the attention was sustained for nearly a decade — a crucial one, when a number of digital media properties emerged and the legacy print magazines saw the writing on the wall. No one knew where the industry was going, but everyone agreed Game of Thrones was a good way to garner traffic.
When I was at Condé Nast, I’d accidentally been given companywide permissions to the metrics dashboard, and I witnessed Joanna Robinson’s Game of Thrones coverage at Vanity Fair climb the charts every Sunday evening after new episodes aired. Even The New Yorker, the company’s platonic ideal of a prestige publication, was doing recaps (though still, an overwhelming amount of their page views were attributed to “satire by Andy Borowitz”).
This was happening outside of Condé as well. It felt like it was happening everywhere. Suddenly, The New York Times was doing the same thing as BuzzFeed; The Guardian, Time, and NPR were generating identical kinds of stories as sites called FanSided, Ranker, and Den of Geek. (The Verge’s series was called “Game of Game of Thrones.”) Publications are differentiated by their coverage areas, identity, and voice. What happens when they all start running the same kind of pieces?

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

“You end up getting a lot of sites chasing the same numbers, and at the same time, those numbers become self-reinforcing because every site is writing about Game of Thrones and everyone’s reading,” said Jared Keller, who was in The Atlantic’s digital newsroom. “It’s the only thing there is to read, and therefore you start seeing numbers on end. It becomes a snake eating its own tail. It really does homogenize media.”
Keller started at The Atlantic as an associate editor in 2010, initially at its digital offshoot, The Atlantic Wire. At the time, the magazine was the magazine — a prestigious print publication that had existed for over 150 years; The Atlantic Wire was the website, which had been around for only one year. Keller eventually became The Atlantic’s first social media editor, a role tailor-made for him. The job involved looking at a lot of metrics to inform the newsroom of “trends.”
Social media — Facebook primarily, but also Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon — was beginning to drive substantial numbers, only the traffic was unpredictable. What went viral often felt random and chaotic. Keller spent a great deal of energy trying to control the flow of social traffic, often by posting links to Reddit, with varying degrees of success. But for a publication with legacy trappings, Keller says, The Atlantic was very forward-thinking, more so than many of its contemporaries.
“If there was a down week and all the percentages fell in terms of week-over-week traffic, I would get questions: ‘Where did the traffic go?’” Keller recalled. “I’m 22 and I don’t know where the fuck the traffic went. I had to tell everyone to relax and try and create content that’s more conducive towards getting picked up on these social networks.”
But it didn’t take long for Keller to see the steady stream of page views coming for stories about Game of Thrones, then beginning its second season. It was like clockwork, spiking on Sundays when episodes would air.
“Game of Thrones was the first thing where we didn’t have to do anything to see it generate traffic,” Keller said. “We just had to create the content, and then people would come to it. If you built it, they would come.” It was the first time Keller could identify a consistent social media trend and program against it. So The Atlantic did what every other website was doing: publish episode recaps. Game of Thrones aired Sunday, and follow-up content went live the next morning.
“They’re making bullets. I’m just the gun,” Keller said. He’d look at the analytics, see what was generating attention, and try to convince writers and editors to assign stories from the data. “You find a button or a lever and you just push it and pull it as much as you can.”
(One source told me: “I remember all the clueless senior editors talking about [Keller] in awed whispers like he was a wizard.”)
Despite his success as a social media editor, Keller never liked the job, even with the power he wielded. “I was not happy doing it. Honestly, it felt like the most important and simultaneously least important job in the newsroom.” He’d grown up reading narrative magazine features and always wanted to write them — not “dig harder for content in the content mines.”
Keller has since had a tumultuous career in media, though, through it, you can track the ebbs and flows of the industry. He left to become the director of social media at Bloomberg, where he was let go after his DMs shit-talking management leaked. Then he was the editor of Al Jazeera America before being laid off. (The site eventually closed in 2016.) After that he was news director at Mic.com, which, for a moment, was thought to be the voice of news for millennials. He was let go after a Gawker piece accused him of plagiarizing stories. He got tapped to be the digital director for a relaunched version of Maxim — he got laid off from there, too. Keller was at home at Task & Purpose, a trade publication geared toward military veterans, for six years, before it was bought by Recurrent Ventures, a venture equity-backed media company that buys up flailing web publications and pushes them into e-commerce.
“I fucked up a lot… I made a lot of mistakes in a lot of different jobs, and a lot of them were very public mistakes,” he said. “But I’m happy that I’ve been able to redeem myself at least a little bit in the last 10 years or so.”
He’s had eight jobs since 2010. Now, Keller is settled at Military.com, where he is a managing editor. He’s grateful that he gets to keep working in the industry.

When Kim Renfro moved to New York at age 18, her dream was “to frost cupcakes all day.” She got the chance at a venerable bakery called Buttercup Bake Shop. After she graduated from college, her new dream was to have health insurance. Renfro landed at Business Insider as a temporary office manager, setting up desks for new hires and stocking the kitchen with seltzer and soda.
Even though she wasn’t a journalist, she loved the camaraderie of the newsroom. In the office kitchen, she talked about her favorite show, Game of Thrones. A huge fan of the books as well, Renfro spent a lot of her time on Reddit. By the end of the fifth season, the TV series had outpaced the plot of the novels — that gap opening a rich vein of theories and conspiracies about characters’ identities and fates. Eventually, an editor, overhearing Renfro’s enthusiasm, asked, “Why do you know so much about this thing?”
Surprisingly, the site didn’t have anyone covering Game of Thrones, so Renfro started pitching stories about the show in her free time and was eventually moved into an entry-level culture writer position. She would be, among other things, the site’s Game of Thrones person.
By the time she was entering the recap cycle full time, in the show’s sixth season, Game of Thrones coverage was an established machine. Readers who wanted recaps already knew where they wanted to get them. To differentiate herself, Renfro positioned herself as an expert on the texts. She’d pored over George R.R. Martin’s work and was able to pick apart the ways it was reflected in the show or, more crucially, deviated from it. She offered an obsessive’s expertise — of the books, of the mythology, of the subreddits.
“I would try and make people feel smarter about the show that they loved,” she explained to me, imagining the “water-cooler conversations on Monday mornings.” (After all, this is exactly the kind of chitchat that had gotten Renfro her job.)
Unlike most TV shows, HBO chose not to provide writers with advanced screeners during the later seasons, meaning they were watching it live on Sunday nights alongside the rest of the world. But it would take Renfro’s whole weekend. Starting on Saturday, she’d prep articles, making bets based on her own deductions of where the storyline was going or, mercifully, if there were any leaked plot details. She pre-wrote as much as possible, including Google-optimized headlines.
Then, Sunday evening would roll around. “I would watch the episode live with a notebook in hand and eyes glued to the screen, messily scribbling everything in my notebook,” Renfro said. After a quick break to survey online chatter, she’d start the episode again, watching more closely this time, with captions on. And then: writing.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

“I would try and have at least one article published that night, if not more, if I could sleep for a few hours. It was an adrenaline rush on Sunday nights for sure,” she said, recounting the experience excitedly. “I would sleep a little bit, wake up early, get to the office, sometimes rewatch the episode again in the morning just to sort of soak it in, especially if it was a good one. And then, yeah, I would really try and write as many articles as I could between Sunday night and Tuesday evening” — the publishing “sweet spot,” according to Renfro.
That first season of her coverage, she published over 150 stories. As she continued, she kept pushing. By the end of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones in 2019, she estimates she had published hundreds more.
According to Renfro, Business Insider was “metrics focused.” Many writers were held to traffic goals. With Game of Thrones, the page views were often in the millions. Renfro describes the internal pressure as “stressful” but admits she also thrived on it.
“There were some Sundays where I just didn’t sleep at all. I would just stay up,” she said. “I was on the West Coast, so I would stay up until my East Coast colleagues came online on Monday morning and then be like, ‘Okay, I’m handing this off. Now I’m going to go try and nap a little bit.’”
Watching the finale — famously disappointing to many fans — Renfro cried, particularly during a final montage of the Stark family. She was moved by her last glimpse of those characters, her time with them coming to an end. Then, over the next 24 hours, she put up 10 articles.
In the months that followed, Renfro felt like “a shell of a human,” one who had been taken over by “a weird burnout sort of depression.” Like many young people, too much of her self-worth was wrapped up in her job. “I had to unpack that a bit and address that and start getting my priorities in order. It was just a TV show.”
Game of Thrones concluded in May 2019. Since then, Renfro says she has been “a consistent therapy attender.”

James Hibberd spent the better part of a decade writing about Game of Thrones. By the time the show was over, he was, understandably, sick of it. “After the finale, the last thing I wanted to do was write more about Thrones,” he said. “I’d probably written over a thousand stories about the show across my time at The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Weekly.”
But a literary agent approached him about the possibility of doing a book, and Hibberd decided he couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Anyone who’s spent most of their career writing on the internet dreams of publishing something that lasts. Blog posts are ephemeral; a book is permanent.
Being on contract with a publisher ended up being, in his words, the toughest assignment of his career. The book was supposed to be 300 pages; Hibberd wrote nearly 500 over the course of nine months, while working his full-time writing job at Entertainment Weekly. (“If I had more time, I would have made the book even longer,” he said.)
According to BookScan, Hibberd’s Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series has sold a little shy of 10,000 copies. While books rarely have the reach of web media, readers have loved the book: it has an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon and sports an approving blurb from George R.R. Martin himself. Kim Renfro had also written a book, The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones, published by Atria Books in 2019. (Also a glowing 4.6 stars.) “I knew people were going to write books about the show, and I just decided to try and be one of them, which I’m very glad that I did,” Renfro said, and similarly described it as both a massive and satisfying undertaking. For both writers, writing books — thoroughly and quickly — was the thing they’d inadvertently spent the last decade preparing for.
“Doing such a long project on my own while on a deadline made me realize something about the making of TV shows and movies that I had never internalized before: what you see onscreen is never the best a creator can do,” Hibberd said. “It’s the best they can do with the time and resources they have.”
When Renfro covered the first season of House of the Dragon — a prequel series to Game of Thrones released by HBO in 2022 — she also began podcasting, a medium that she found much healthier. (Again, therapy.) But the overall attention paid to Dragon was much smaller than it had ever been with Thrones. The hunger from readers just wasn’t the same.
Everyone I spoke to agrees there will never be another phenomenon like Game of Thrones. There are various theories why — the fracturing of monoculture, the binge model, the fact that there’s too much TV, the fact that it sucks now, TikTok — but it also means there won’t be another Game of Thrones moment for journalistic outlets.
That’s likely because, as much of a singular phenomenon as Thrones was, it was the focus of a brief era when Facebook was sending a flood of traffic to publications, and nearly every major media company sold out the things that differentiated its publications in order to take a sip. I don’t think there was any illusion about how precarious a reliance on social media would be, but it was surprising just how quickly that source evaporated. Internet platforms shifted away from distributing articles, the page view boom times ended, and still today, publications are reeling.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Earlier this year, Renfro was laid off from Business Insider as part of an 8 percent staff reduction and an even larger, bleaker trend of a shrinking media industry. Over 2,000 media jobs were shed in 2023. We might never repeat the Game of Thrones moment solely because there won’t be enough publications left.
“It feels like this bananas, bananas cultural event that I don’t think a lot of people will ever experience the same way again,” Renfro said. She was still talking about the fantasy TV show, with an equal measure of relief and nostalgia, and as I listened, I hoped it would not one day be how people spoke about journalism, too.
My amateur Game of Thrones recapping crew — Josh, Scott, and I — have long since left GQ and become good friends, a bond that could only be forged in the humiliating fires of Facebook Live. In the years since the spring of pivoting to video, I had attended each of their weddings. As we sat down for dinner at Scott’s reception, he played, as a gag, the music that scored Game of Thrones’ notorious “Red Wedding” scene — when the Stark family is massacred and several major characters are killed off.
It was pretty funny, especially when the Nerf arrows started flying. I glanced around at the room of laughing people, many of whom were or had been writers, being “murdered” one by one. It was quite a scene, and I thought about how we might, at long last, have a more appropriate metaphor for what happened to journalism than the BuzzFeed watermelon.

Image: Alex Parkin and Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

For a crucial decade in print media’s transition to the internet, HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones was a boon in traffic… for everyone. But what happened when every publication started chasing the same thing?

In the summer of 2017, I was brought on to be the third host of a weekly Game of Thrones recap show that streamed on Facebook Live. At the time, I was an editor at GQ, and I found the assignment beneath me. I was supposed to be squirreling away at the dark art of turning shoddy copy into less shoddy copy; I never wanted to be on camera.

Also, I barely knew anything about Game of Thrones. I watched it casually, but I hadn’t read any of the books. I was allergic to “lore.” I had trouble distinguishing the show’s various bearded white guys. But my boss had tasked me with de-nerdifying the Facebook Live show after someone had derogatorily suggested that the two current hosts, Scott and Josh, don fedoras on the stream.

“Pivot to video” is a phrase now associated with any boneheaded move in media, but there was a time before it was a joke. The spring of 2016, Facebook attempted to jump-start its new livestreaming feature the only way it knew how: with money. Publications were baited with small payouts. The higher-ups at Condé Nast, the parent company that owns GQ, handed down instructions to participate, and at least at the magazine level, there was some acknowledgment that the whole thing was silly. A year later, we were still playing ball, taking the easiest pitches imaginable. Game of Thrones was one of those things that people couldn’t get enough of. It didn’t matter if our coverage was smarter or better written than what was available on the hundreds of other sites running the same thing. We were all chasing the roulette of Google Search traffic, and the most embarrassing part was that it worked. So why not try the same thing for Facebook Live?

Despite my protests — about the show’s lazy concept, my forced involvement, the entire emphasis on Facebook streaming, a thing everyone seemed to agree was stupid but unable to opt out of — I actually had a good time doing the Game of Thrones series. Scott took on more of a play-by-play role, with Josh coming in for color commentary. I’d interject unhelpfully every once in a while to mispronounce the name of a major character. Scott and Josh showed up diligently and enthusiastically, despite it not being part of their contract and not being compensated extra. I turned into a decent foil as the show’s grump, and my inability to remember any character’s name became a running gag.

Each episode allegedly racked up thousands of views — not too shabby given the low production lift. In 2017, there weren’t a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future of media. Most magazines and newspapers were sustained by advertising revenue. But in the transition to digital, that business was subsumed by the web’s two largest advertising products: Google and Facebook. They controlled the flow of distribution and therefore had a stranglehold on journalism. When they fed your publication scraps, you lapped them up; if they told you the future was video, you lapped that up, too.

For a moment in 2016, Facebook Live appeared to be working. Nearly every other major media company was chasing the same high in various forms: Canada’s National Post tried to get its reporters to eat as many slices of cheese as possible; TechCrunch broadcast their annual $2,995-a-ticket conference; ABC News aired pre- and post-presidential debate analysis. But no one would top BuzzFeed — in both numbers and ingenuity — which had come out of the gate livestreaming a watermelon, placing rubber bands around the fruit, one by one, until it exploded.

Less than a year later, Facebook would stop paying publishers to support its livestreaming product. Then it would be revealed that the company had greatly inflated the metrics it reported. Facebook would settle that class action suit for $40 million, an amount of money that the company generates every three hours.

People have joked that the BuzzFeed watermelon is the perfect metaphor for journalism in the Facebook Live era. But in hindsight, I think the watermelon got off easy.

Each time it appeared that a publication had figured out a repeatable way to attract web traffic, everywhere else would follow suit: jockeying for the top search hit for “what time is the Super Bowl?”; aggregating viral tweets; competing to be the first to post clips from Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (before The Awl went bottoms up, John Herrman facetiously congratulated each week’s winner).

Yet, with Game of Thrones, the attention was sustained for nearly a decade — a crucial one, when a number of digital media properties emerged and the legacy print magazines saw the writing on the wall. No one knew where the industry was going, but everyone agreed Game of Thrones was a good way to garner traffic.

When I was at Condé Nast, I’d accidentally been given companywide permissions to the metrics dashboard, and I witnessed Joanna Robinson’s Game of Thrones coverage at Vanity Fair climb the charts every Sunday evening after new episodes aired. Even The New Yorker, the company’s platonic ideal of a prestige publication, was doing recaps (though still, an overwhelming amount of their page views were attributed to “satire by Andy Borowitz”).

This was happening outside of Condé as well. It felt like it was happening everywhere. Suddenly, The New York Times was doing the same thing as BuzzFeed; The Guardian, Time, and NPR were generating identical kinds of stories as sites called FanSided, Ranker, and Den of Geek. (The Verge’s series was called “Game of Game of Thrones.”) Publications are differentiated by their coverage areas, identity, and voice. What happens when they all start running the same kind of pieces?

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

“You end up getting a lot of sites chasing the same numbers, and at the same time, those numbers become self-reinforcing because every site is writing about Game of Thrones and everyone’s reading,” said Jared Keller, who was in The Atlantic’s digital newsroom. “It’s the only thing there is to read, and therefore you start seeing numbers on end. It becomes a snake eating its own tail. It really does homogenize media.”

Keller started at The Atlantic as an associate editor in 2010, initially at its digital offshoot, The Atlantic Wire. At the time, the magazine was the magazine — a prestigious print publication that had existed for over 150 years; The Atlantic Wire was the website, which had been around for only one year. Keller eventually became The Atlantic’s first social media editor, a role tailor-made for him. The job involved looking at a lot of metrics to inform the newsroom of “trends.”

Social media — Facebook primarily, but also Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon — was beginning to drive substantial numbers, only the traffic was unpredictable. What went viral often felt random and chaotic. Keller spent a great deal of energy trying to control the flow of social traffic, often by posting links to Reddit, with varying degrees of success. But for a publication with legacy trappings, Keller says, The Atlantic was very forward-thinking, more so than many of its contemporaries.

“If there was a down week and all the percentages fell in terms of week-over-week traffic, I would get questions: ‘Where did the traffic go?’” Keller recalled. “I’m 22 and I don’t know where the fuck the traffic went. I had to tell everyone to relax and try and create content that’s more conducive towards getting picked up on these social networks.”

But it didn’t take long for Keller to see the steady stream of page views coming for stories about Game of Thrones, then beginning its second season. It was like clockwork, spiking on Sundays when episodes would air.

“Game of Thrones was the first thing where we didn’t have to do anything to see it generate traffic,” Keller said. “We just had to create the content, and then people would come to it. If you built it, they would come.” It was the first time Keller could identify a consistent social media trend and program against it. So The Atlantic did what every other website was doing: publish episode recaps. Game of Thrones aired Sunday, and follow-up content went live the next morning.

“They’re making bullets. I’m just the gun,” Keller said. He’d look at the analytics, see what was generating attention, and try to convince writers and editors to assign stories from the data. “You find a button or a lever and you just push it and pull it as much as you can.”

(One source told me: “I remember all the clueless senior editors talking about [Keller] in awed whispers like he was a wizard.”)

Despite his success as a social media editor, Keller never liked the job, even with the power he wielded. “I was not happy doing it. Honestly, it felt like the most important and simultaneously least important job in the newsroom.” He’d grown up reading narrative magazine features and always wanted to write them — not “dig harder for content in the content mines.”

Keller has since had a tumultuous career in media, though, through it, you can track the ebbs and flows of the industry. He left to become the director of social media at Bloomberg, where he was let go after his DMs shit-talking management leaked. Then he was the editor of Al Jazeera America before being laid off. (The site eventually closed in 2016.) After that he was news director at Mic.com, which, for a moment, was thought to be the voice of news for millennials. He was let go after a Gawker piece accused him of plagiarizing stories. He got tapped to be the digital director for a relaunched version of Maxim — he got laid off from there, too. Keller was at home at Task & Purpose, a trade publication geared toward military veterans, for six years, before it was bought by Recurrent Ventures, a venture equity-backed media company that buys up flailing web publications and pushes them into e-commerce.

“I fucked up a lot… I made a lot of mistakes in a lot of different jobs, and a lot of them were very public mistakes,” he said. “But I’m happy that I’ve been able to redeem myself at least a little bit in the last 10 years or so.”

He’s had eight jobs since 2010. Now, Keller is settled at Military.com, where he is a managing editor. He’s grateful that he gets to keep working in the industry.

When Kim Renfro moved to New York at age 18, her dream was “to frost cupcakes all day.” She got the chance at a venerable bakery called Buttercup Bake Shop. After she graduated from college, her new dream was to have health insurance. Renfro landed at Business Insider as a temporary office manager, setting up desks for new hires and stocking the kitchen with seltzer and soda.

Even though she wasn’t a journalist, she loved the camaraderie of the newsroom. In the office kitchen, she talked about her favorite show, Game of Thrones. A huge fan of the books as well, Renfro spent a lot of her time on Reddit. By the end of the fifth season, the TV series had outpaced the plot of the novels — that gap opening a rich vein of theories and conspiracies about characters’ identities and fates. Eventually, an editor, overhearing Renfro’s enthusiasm, asked, “Why do you know so much about this thing?”

Surprisingly, the site didn’t have anyone covering Game of Thrones, so Renfro started pitching stories about the show in her free time and was eventually moved into an entry-level culture writer position. She would be, among other things, the site’s Game of Thrones person.

By the time she was entering the recap cycle full time, in the show’s sixth season, Game of Thrones coverage was an established machine. Readers who wanted recaps already knew where they wanted to get them. To differentiate herself, Renfro positioned herself as an expert on the texts. She’d pored over George R.R. Martin’s work and was able to pick apart the ways it was reflected in the show or, more crucially, deviated from it. She offered an obsessive’s expertise — of the books, of the mythology, of the subreddits.

“I would try and make people feel smarter about the show that they loved,” she explained to me, imagining the “water-cooler conversations on Monday mornings.” (After all, this is exactly the kind of chitchat that had gotten Renfro her job.)

Unlike most TV shows, HBO chose not to provide writers with advanced screeners during the later seasons, meaning they were watching it live on Sunday nights alongside the rest of the world. But it would take Renfro’s whole weekend. Starting on Saturday, she’d prep articles, making bets based on her own deductions of where the storyline was going or, mercifully, if there were any leaked plot details. She pre-wrote as much as possible, including Google-optimized headlines.

Then, Sunday evening would roll around. “I would watch the episode live with a notebook in hand and eyes glued to the screen, messily scribbling everything in my notebook,” Renfro said. After a quick break to survey online chatter, she’d start the episode again, watching more closely this time, with captions on. And then: writing.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

“I would try and have at least one article published that night, if not more, if I could sleep for a few hours. It was an adrenaline rush on Sunday nights for sure,” she said, recounting the experience excitedly. “I would sleep a little bit, wake up early, get to the office, sometimes rewatch the episode again in the morning just to sort of soak it in, especially if it was a good one. And then, yeah, I would really try and write as many articles as I could between Sunday night and Tuesday evening” — the publishing “sweet spot,” according to Renfro.

That first season of her coverage, she published over 150 stories. As she continued, she kept pushing. By the end of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones in 2019, she estimates she had published hundreds more.

According to Renfro, Business Insider was “metrics focused.” Many writers were held to traffic goals. With Game of Thrones, the page views were often in the millions. Renfro describes the internal pressure as “stressful” but admits she also thrived on it.

“There were some Sundays where I just didn’t sleep at all. I would just stay up,” she said. “I was on the West Coast, so I would stay up until my East Coast colleagues came online on Monday morning and then be like, ‘Okay, I’m handing this off. Now I’m going to go try and nap a little bit.’”

Watching the finale — famously disappointing to many fans — Renfro cried, particularly during a final montage of the Stark family. She was moved by her last glimpse of those characters, her time with them coming to an end. Then, over the next 24 hours, she put up 10 articles.

In the months that followed, Renfro felt like “a shell of a human,” one who had been taken over by “a weird burnout sort of depression.” Like many young people, too much of her self-worth was wrapped up in her job. “I had to unpack that a bit and address that and start getting my priorities in order. It was just a TV show.”

Game of Thrones concluded in May 2019. Since then, Renfro says she has been “a consistent therapy attender.”

James Hibberd spent the better part of a decade writing about Game of Thrones. By the time the show was over, he was, understandably, sick of it. “After the finale, the last thing I wanted to do was write more about Thrones,” he said. “I’d probably written over a thousand stories about the show across my time at The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Weekly.”

But a literary agent approached him about the possibility of doing a book, and Hibberd decided he couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Anyone who’s spent most of their career writing on the internet dreams of publishing something that lasts. Blog posts are ephemeral; a book is permanent.

Being on contract with a publisher ended up being, in his words, the toughest assignment of his career. The book was supposed to be 300 pages; Hibberd wrote nearly 500 over the course of nine months, while working his full-time writing job at Entertainment Weekly. (“If I had more time, I would have made the book even longer,” he said.)

According to BookScan, Hibberd’s Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series has sold a little shy of 10,000 copies. While books rarely have the reach of web media, readers have loved the book: it has an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon and sports an approving blurb from George R.R. Martin himself. Kim Renfro had also written a book, The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones, published by Atria Books in 2019. (Also a glowing 4.6 stars.) “I knew people were going to write books about the show, and I just decided to try and be one of them, which I’m very glad that I did,” Renfro said, and similarly described it as both a massive and satisfying undertaking. For both writers, writing books — thoroughly and quickly — was the thing they’d inadvertently spent the last decade preparing for.

“Doing such a long project on my own while on a deadline made me realize something about the making of TV shows and movies that I had never internalized before: what you see onscreen is never the best a creator can do,” Hibberd said. “It’s the best they can do with the time and resources they have.”

When Renfro covered the first season of House of the Dragon — a prequel series to Game of Thrones released by HBO in 2022 — she also began podcasting, a medium that she found much healthier. (Again, therapy.) But the overall attention paid to Dragon was much smaller than it had ever been with Thrones. The hunger from readers just wasn’t the same.

Everyone I spoke to agrees there will never be another phenomenon like Game of Thrones. There are various theories why — the fracturing of monoculture, the binge model, the fact that there’s too much TV, the fact that it sucks now, TikTok — but it also means there won’t be another Game of Thrones moment for journalistic outlets.

That’s likely because, as much of a singular phenomenon as Thrones was, it was the focus of a brief era when Facebook was sending a flood of traffic to publications, and nearly every major media company sold out the things that differentiated its publications in order to take a sip. I don’t think there was any illusion about how precarious a reliance on social media would be, but it was surprising just how quickly that source evaporated. Internet platforms shifted away from distributing articles, the page view boom times ended, and still today, publications are reeling.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Earlier this year, Renfro was laid off from Business Insider as part of an 8 percent staff reduction and an even larger, bleaker trend of a shrinking media industry. Over 2,000 media jobs were shed in 2023. We might never repeat the Game of Thrones moment solely because there won’t be enough publications left.

“It feels like this bananas, bananas cultural event that I don’t think a lot of people will ever experience the same way again,” Renfro said. She was still talking about the fantasy TV show, with an equal measure of relief and nostalgia, and as I listened, I hoped it would not one day be how people spoke about journalism, too.

My amateur Game of Thrones recapping crew — Josh, Scott, and I — have long since left GQ and become good friends, a bond that could only be forged in the humiliating fires of Facebook Live. In the years since the spring of pivoting to video, I had attended each of their weddings. As we sat down for dinner at Scott’s reception, he played, as a gag, the music that scored Game of Thrones’ notorious “Red Wedding” scene — when the Stark family is massacred and several major characters are killed off.

It was pretty funny, especially when the Nerf arrows started flying. I glanced around at the room of laughing people, many of whom were or had been writers, being “murdered” one by one. It was quite a scene, and I thought about how we might, at long last, have a more appropriate metaphor for what happened to journalism than the BuzzFeed watermelon.

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Amazon launched its new Alexa-enabled Echo Hub in February. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Last year, David Limp, Amazon’s former senior vice president of devices and services, hinted at charging for a more capable version of Alexa — and now we have an idea of how much it might cost. A report from Reuters suggests that Amazon’s AI-supercharged version of Alexa could cost anywhere from $5 to $10 per month on top of your Prime membership.
Sources tell Reuters that Amazon is aiming to launch the new Alexa in August, marking a “desperate attempt” to overhaul the voice assistant. The paid version of Alexa might not require users to keep saying “Alexa” when talking to the assistant. It will reportedly be capable of completing multiple requests in one prompt, such as writing a short email and ordering takeout from Uber Eats.

As reported by Reuters, the more advanced Alexa could also offer the ability to “learn” from users and create routines, like turning a customer’s coffee pot on when their alarm goes off. This tracks with last month’s report from CNBC, which said Amazon plans on rolling out a subscription for Alexa that doesn’t come with Prime.
That doesn’t mean Amazon will leave out the free version of Alexa. As noted by Reuters, Amazon still plans on replacing the basic version with one that offers new generative AI features, but it will put a more advanced Alexa behind a paywall. The AI Alexa will let customers ask for shopping advice, such as what kind of hat and gloves they should buy for a mountain climbing trip, as reported by Reuters. That’s similar to the kind of information Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping chatbot, can provide.
When reached for comment, Amazon pointed The Verge to the statement it provided to Reuters: “We have already integrated generative AI into different components of Alexa, and are working hard on implementation at scale — in the over half a billion ambient, Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world — to enable even more proactive, personal, and trusted assistance for our customers.”
Over the past year, Amazon has been working to overhaul its AI assistant to keep up with the AI chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Even Apple has gotten into the AI game with an overhauled version of Siri coming to iOS 18. Amazon has already started testing elements of its new AI Alexa, which users join the waitlist for by saying, “Alexa, let’s chat.”

Amazon launched its new Alexa-enabled Echo Hub in February. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Last year, David Limp, Amazon’s former senior vice president of devices and services, hinted at charging for a more capable version of Alexa — and now we have an idea of how much it might cost. A report from Reuters suggests that Amazon’s AI-supercharged version of Alexa could cost anywhere from $5 to $10 per month on top of your Prime membership.

Sources tell Reuters that Amazon is aiming to launch the new Alexa in August, marking a “desperate attempt” to overhaul the voice assistant. The paid version of Alexa might not require users to keep saying “Alexa” when talking to the assistant. It will reportedly be capable of completing multiple requests in one prompt, such as writing a short email and ordering takeout from Uber Eats.

As reported by Reuters, the more advanced Alexa could also offer the ability to “learn” from users and create routines, like turning a customer’s coffee pot on when their alarm goes off. This tracks with last month’s report from CNBC, which said Amazon plans on rolling out a subscription for Alexa that doesn’t come with Prime.

That doesn’t mean Amazon will leave out the free version of Alexa. As noted by Reuters, Amazon still plans on replacing the basic version with one that offers new generative AI features, but it will put a more advanced Alexa behind a paywall. The AI Alexa will let customers ask for shopping advice, such as what kind of hat and gloves they should buy for a mountain climbing trip, as reported by Reuters. That’s similar to the kind of information Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping chatbot, can provide.

When reached for comment, Amazon pointed The Verge to the statement it provided to Reuters: “We have already integrated generative AI into different components of Alexa, and are working hard on implementation at scale — in the over half a billion ambient, Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world — to enable even more proactive, personal, and trusted assistance for our customers.”

Over the past year, Amazon has been working to overhaul its AI assistant to keep up with the AI chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Even Apple has gotten into the AI game with an overhauled version of Siri coming to iOS 18. Amazon has already started testing elements of its new AI Alexa, which users join the waitlist for by saying, “Alexa, let’s chat.”

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Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

TikTok says that the government didn’t adequately consider viable alternative options before charging ahead with a law that could ban the platform in the US. TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is based in China, claims that it provided the US government with an extensive and detailed plan to mitigate national security risks and that this plan was largely ignored when Congress passed a law with a huge impact on speech.
In briefs filed at the DC Circuit Court on Thursday, both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform who’ve filed their own suit spelled out their case for why they believe the new law violates the First Amendment. The court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on September 16th, just a few months before the current divest-or-ban deadline of January 19th, 2025.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would effectively ban TikTok from operating in the US unless it divests from ByteDance by the deadline. The president has the option to extend that deadline slightly if he sees progress toward a deal. But spinning out TikTok is not entirely simple, given the limited pool of possible buyers and the fact that Chinese export law would likely prevent a sale of its coveted recommendation algorithm.

But lawmakers who supported the legislation have said that divestiture is necessary to protect national security — both because they fear that the Chinese government could access US user information due to the company’s China-based ownership and because they fear ByteDance could be pressured by the Chinese government to tip the scales on the algorithm to spread propaganda in the US. TikTok denies that either is happening or could happen in the future, saying its operations are separate from ByteDance’s.
The broad strokes of TikTok’s arguments have already been laid out in the complaints. But the new filings provide a more extensive look into how TikTok engaged the US government over several years with detailed plans of how it thought it could mitigate national security concerns while continuing its operations.
In an appendix, TikTok submitted hundreds of pages of communications with the US government, including presentations the company gave to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) when it was evaluating national security risks of its ownership setup. One deck explains the basics of how its algorithm figures out what to recommend to users to watch next, as well as a detailed plan to mitigate risk of US user data being improperly accessed. It goes as far as to include a floor plan of a “Dedicated Transparency Center,” through its collaboration with Oracle, where a specific group of employees in TikTok’s US data operations could access the source code in a secure computing environment. According to the slide deck, no ByteDance employees would be allowed in the space.
TikTok called the law “unprecedented,” adding, “[n]ever before has Congress expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum. Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act.”

Courts usually apply a standard known as strict scrutiny in these kinds of speech cases — the government must have a compelling interest in restricting the speech, and the restriction must be narrowly tailored to achieve its aim.
TikTok claims that Congress has left the court “almost nothing to review” when scrutinizing “such an extraordinary speech restriction.” The company says Congress failed to produce findings to justify its reasoning behind the law, leaving only the statements of individual members of Congress for the court to go off of. (Many of those statements are included in an appendix filed by TikTok.)
“There is no indication Congress even considered TikTok Inc.’s exhaustive, multi-year efforts to address the government’s concerns that Chinese subsidiaries of its privately owned parent company, ByteDance Ltd., support the TikTok platform—concerns that would also apply to many other companies operating in China,” TikTok wrote in its brief. Lawmakers received classified briefings ahead of their votes, which some said impacted or solidified their final position on the bill. But the public still does not have access to the information in those briefings, although some lawmakers have pushed to declassify them.
The company also said that CFIUS, which was tasked with evaluating its risk mitigation plan in the first place, did not provide a substantive explanation for why it took such a hard line on divestment in March 2023. TikTok claims that when it explained why divestment wasn’t possible and asked to meet with government officials, it received “no meaningful responses.” CFIUS and the DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
TikTok has said it’s already implemented much of its plans voluntarily through its $2 billion Project Texas
The text of the draft National Security Agreement that TikTok presented to CFIUS was included in an appendix that was filed in court. The draft included proposed changes like the creation of TikTok US Data Security Inc., a subsidiary that would be tasked with managing operations involving US user data, as well as heavy oversight by the agencies that make up CFIUS. TikTok has said it’s already implemented much of its plans voluntarily through its $2 billion Project Texas. Still, recent reporting has raised questions about how effective that project really is for national security purposes. In a report in Fortune from April, former TikTok employees said the project was “largely cosmetic” and that workers still engage with China-based ByteDance executives.
Regardless, the court will have to consider whether the US government should have considered a less speech-restrictive route to achieving its national security aims, and TikTok says it should have. “In short, Congress reached for a sledgehammer without even considering if a scalpel would suffice,” TikTok wrote in its brief. “It ordered the closure of one of the largest platforms for speech in the United States and left Petitioners — and the public —to guess at the reasons why a wide range of less speech-restrictive alternatives were disregarded. The First Amendment demands much more.”

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

TikTok says that the government didn’t adequately consider viable alternative options before charging ahead with a law that could ban the platform in the US. TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is based in China, claims that it provided the US government with an extensive and detailed plan to mitigate national security risks and that this plan was largely ignored when Congress passed a law with a huge impact on speech.

In briefs filed at the DC Circuit Court on Thursday, both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform who’ve filed their own suit spelled out their case for why they believe the new law violates the First Amendment. The court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on September 16th, just a few months before the current divest-or-ban deadline of January 19th, 2025.

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would effectively ban TikTok from operating in the US unless it divests from ByteDance by the deadline. The president has the option to extend that deadline slightly if he sees progress toward a deal. But spinning out TikTok is not entirely simple, given the limited pool of possible buyers and the fact that Chinese export law would likely prevent a sale of its coveted recommendation algorithm.

But lawmakers who supported the legislation have said that divestiture is necessary to protect national security — both because they fear that the Chinese government could access US user information due to the company’s China-based ownership and because they fear ByteDance could be pressured by the Chinese government to tip the scales on the algorithm to spread propaganda in the US. TikTok denies that either is happening or could happen in the future, saying its operations are separate from ByteDance’s.

The broad strokes of TikTok’s arguments have already been laid out in the complaints. But the new filings provide a more extensive look into how TikTok engaged the US government over several years with detailed plans of how it thought it could mitigate national security concerns while continuing its operations.

In an appendix, TikTok submitted hundreds of pages of communications with the US government, including presentations the company gave to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) when it was evaluating national security risks of its ownership setup. One deck explains the basics of how its algorithm figures out what to recommend to users to watch next, as well as a detailed plan to mitigate risk of US user data being improperly accessed. It goes as far as to include a floor plan of a “Dedicated Transparency Center,” through its collaboration with Oracle, where a specific group of employees in TikTok’s US data operations could access the source code in a secure computing environment. According to the slide deck, no ByteDance employees would be allowed in the space.

TikTok called the law “unprecedented,” adding, “[n]ever before has Congress expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum. Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act.”

Courts usually apply a standard known as strict scrutiny in these kinds of speech cases — the government must have a compelling interest in restricting the speech, and the restriction must be narrowly tailored to achieve its aim.

TikTok claims that Congress has left the court “almost nothing to review” when scrutinizing “such an extraordinary speech restriction.” The company says Congress failed to produce findings to justify its reasoning behind the law, leaving only the statements of individual members of Congress for the court to go off of. (Many of those statements are included in an appendix filed by TikTok.)

“There is no indication Congress even considered TikTok Inc.’s exhaustive, multi-year efforts to address the government’s concerns that Chinese subsidiaries of its privately owned parent company, ByteDance Ltd., support the TikTok platform—concerns that would also apply to many other companies operating in China,” TikTok wrote in its brief. Lawmakers received classified briefings ahead of their votes, which some said impacted or solidified their final position on the bill. But the public still does not have access to the information in those briefings, although some lawmakers have pushed to declassify them.

The company also said that CFIUS, which was tasked with evaluating its risk mitigation plan in the first place, did not provide a substantive explanation for why it took such a hard line on divestment in March 2023. TikTok claims that when it explained why divestment wasn’t possible and asked to meet with government officials, it received “no meaningful responses.” CFIUS and the DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The text of the draft National Security Agreement that TikTok presented to CFIUS was included in an appendix that was filed in court. The draft included proposed changes like the creation of TikTok US Data Security Inc., a subsidiary that would be tasked with managing operations involving US user data, as well as heavy oversight by the agencies that make up CFIUS. TikTok has said it’s already implemented much of its plans voluntarily through its $2 billion Project Texas. Still, recent reporting has raised questions about how effective that project really is for national security purposes. In a report in Fortune from April, former TikTok employees said the project was “largely cosmetic” and that workers still engage with China-based ByteDance executives.

Regardless, the court will have to consider whether the US government should have considered a less speech-restrictive route to achieving its national security aims, and TikTok says it should have. “In short, Congress reached for a sledgehammer without even considering if a scalpel would suffice,” TikTok wrote in its brief. “It ordered the closure of one of the largest platforms for speech in the United States and left Petitioners — and the public —to guess at the reasons why a wide range of less speech-restrictive alternatives were disregarded. The First Amendment demands much more.”

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