Starlink is in the White House, Siri is still bad, Pebble is back, up is down, everything is chaos. In this episode, Nilay and David start the show by running through some big gadget news, from a Siri-related shakeup at Apple to the new Google Pixel 9A. After that, The Verge's Lauren Feiner talks us through some of the  latest in tech regulation: Trump's illegal firings at the FTC, the confusing state of the TikTok ban, OpenAI and Google arguing their case for free-for-all AI, and more. Finally, in the lightning round, Nilay and David talk about the latest Tesla recall, the hugely popular book about Meta, some exciting ActivityPub news, and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos gently zinging Apple TV Plus.

Further reading:


From Bloomberg: Apple Shuffles AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri


The first new Pebble smartwatches are coming later this year

Europe is trying to get non-Apple smartwatches to work better with iPhones

Google’s Pixel 9A gets a bigger screen and beefier water resistance

Google briefly delays Pixel 9A release to investigate ‘component quality issue’ 

Huawei’s new flip phone is weirdly wide

Nvidia says ‘the age of generalist robotics is here’

Nvidia’s cute ‘Digits’ AI desktop is coming this summer with a new name and a big brother

Nvidia announces Blackwell Ultra GB300 and Vera Rubin, its next AI ‘superchips’




Musk’s Starlink gets deployed at the White House

Federal rural broadband program loses head

Oracle is reportedly in the lead to save TikTok from US ban


A”high-level” deal to save TikTok can probably happen by the April 5th deadline, Vance says.

Democratic FTC commissioners say they were ‘illegally fired’ by Trump

Fired FTC commissioner warns of the ‘corrupting influence of billionaires’

Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks will resign this spring

WBEZ, 12 other public media stations under investigation 

CTIA Announces Ajit Pai as New CEO and President

OpenAI and Google ask the government to let them train AI on content they don’t own

Hundreds of celebrities warn against letting OpenAI and Google ‘freely exploit’ Hollywood

Google Search charged with breaking EU antitrust rules

DHS’s airport panopticon is getting people deported and detained

Space science is under threat from the anti-DEI purge

DOGE stranded USAID workers with laptops full of sensitive data


They’re removing webpages about Black soldiers by adding ‘DEI’ to the URL.

‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters planning ‘biggest day of action’

﻿

Tesla recalls more than 46,000 Cybertrucks after trim starts falling off

From NYMag: Elon Musk Has Become Too Toxic for YouTube


‘Careless People’ debuts at the top of the NYT best sellers list.

Threads finally lets you set the following feed as default

Ghost connects its newsletters to the open web

Netflix’s CEO talks Apple TV, Amazon, and the NFL


Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump's confusing crusade against Big Tech