A leading kids online safety bill died in the House last year. Can Congress resurrect it?
That means you can now organize bundles of tabs into groups labeled by name or color. Firefox is also testing an AI-powered tool that will suggest tab groups and names based on the pages you have open in the browser.
Mozilla says it introduced the feature after a request for tab groups became the most-upvoted post on its Connect forum, with more than 4,500 people showing support for the suggestion.
The excellent Tim Stevens joins The Vergecast to talk all things Slate, which recently unveiled its first product, an extremely barebones, all-electric, two-seater pickup truck.
Tune in as Tim and David talk about Slate’s philosophy, its minimalistic approach, and whether this truck will actually make its way to customers.
Today, a Flappy Bird game launched in the Epic Games Store on Android (and nowhere else, so far), but is it the Flappy Bird? It’s from the same “Flappy Bird Foundation” that said it acquired the trademark last year, and also seems to have some kind of crypto / Web 3 tie-in ambitions.
However, its clone is being released without any involvement or arrangement with the game’s creator, Dong Nguyen, who pulled it from app stores more than a decade ago, saying the game was “too addictive.” He tweeted about it last September:
Bloomberg reports that the tech conglomerate, which is looking to streamline its operation and recently began spinning off its financial arm, may list their semiconductor manufacturing arm as early as this year. This move would allow Sony, the maker of Playstation, to devote more resources to its gaming and entertainment businesses, though the plan may change due to market volatility caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs. (Sony denied the reports in a statement, calling them “speculation”.)
[bloomberg.com]
...if you link your Epic Games account to your MyDisney account, according to a blog post. It’s a “first step” ahead of the planned “universe” Disney and Epic are building together that’s tied to Fortnite. You’ll also be able to catch two episodes of Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld in Fortnite starting May 2nd, which is two days before the show debuts on Disney Plus.
Fortnite’s Star Wars-themed season kicks off on Friday.
0The newsletter-turned-more platform has been experiencing an outage for about an hour. However, the status page now says that “Substack publications, the publisher dashboard, and other functionality are fully recovered,” with work continuing on getting the app and webpage back up and running.
[substack.statuspage.io]
The studio will “step away” from “two early-stage incubation projects” and is making “targeted team adjustments” across its Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi teams. That translates to layoffs, though it’s unclear how many people are affected, per an IGN report.
Robyn Denholm, who was appointed chair of Tesla’s board of directors after the SEC forced Elon Musk to step down, just sold over $32 million worth of shares in the company. As Electrek notes, it appears that she is close to liquidating her entire position in Tesla, with only 85,000 shares left and 300,440 stock options expiring later this year. Several Tesla investors have urged the board to rein in Musk, who’s political alliance with the Trump administration has done irreparable damage to the company’s brand. But under Denholm’s leadership, the board has done essentially nothing to curb Musk’s worst tendencies.
I’m at Meta HQ for the company’s first-ever LlamaCon developer event, where CPO Chris Cox just announced the Llama API waitlist. It’s in “limited preview” for select partners with no pricing information yet, but the announcement still drew applause from the audience. Meta has been trying to make it easier for companies to use Llama, and this API feels like an important step in that direction.
[llama.developer.meta.com]
UPS revealed the job cuts in its earnings report released today, which it says are linked to “lower volumes from our largest customer,” Amazon. The company announced earlier this year that it will decrease its Amazon deliveries by more than 50 percent by the second half of 2026.
The layoffs will affect around 4 percent of the company’s 490,000 employees. UPS also plans to close 73 of its buildings by the end of June.
The Trump administration notified contributors to the national climate assessment on Monday that they’ve been “dismissed” as it re-evaluates the scope of the report, the New York Times says. Since 2000, the report has been a key resource detailing how each region of the US is affected by drought, wildfire, flooding and other climate disasters.
Companies that offer services will be able to use the AI-powered answering service, too. Yelp will “soon begin testing” the product, according to the description of its video about the tool.
15 years ago today, Steve Jobs published “Thoughts on Flash,” railing on Adobe’s platform for being bad for batteries, apps, and the web. Still a good read!
If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
Also, don’t miss our friend Walt Mossberg grilling Jobs about Flash at the D8 Conference.
[Archive.org]
Co-writer / director Matt Palmer’s Fear Street: Prom Queen is the first of Netflix’s new trilogy of horror features inspired by R.L. Stine’s books, and the movie’s first trailer makes it look like it’ll be a teen-friendly (albeit R-rated) riff on classic slashers when it debuts on May 23rd.
404 Media found that chatbots created by AI Studio — a custom AI character maker for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp — will claim to have non-existent therapy qualifications, training, and license numbers when asked if they’re a real therapist. In one example, a therapy chatbot also said that discussions are “completely confidential,” and it’s unclear if these chats are truly private or moderated by Meta.
More incoming tariff flip-flopping from the White House, The Wall Street Journal reports today. Trump is expected to rollback some duties on automakers so they don’t end up paying for multiple tariffs on materials like on steel and aluminum. You know, they stuff they usually make cars out of. And here’s the kicker: Trump may end up actually reimbursing some car companies for their tariffs based on the value of the vehicle! Folks, this is what real leadership looks like. According to the Journal:
The administration will also modify its tariffs on foreign auto parts—slated to be 25% and effective May 3—allowing automakers to be reimbursed for those tariffs up to an amount equal to 3.75% of the value of a U.S.-made car for one year. The reimbursement would fall to 2.5% of the car’s value in a second year, and then be phased out altogether.
