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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Richard Lawler joined The Verge as Senior News Editor in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget. He's been a tech blogger since before the word was invented, and will never log off.

Tuesday morning boom over New York may have been a "daylight fireball" meteor

After people in NYC reported a large boom at around 11:17AM that some attributed to military weapons tests, NASA Meteor Watch reports it was actually a meteor. With more reports collected from eyewitnesses, its latest update says the space rock's path took it west over New Jersey at 38,000 miles per hour.


Map of New York City with arrow showing the estimated path of the meteor moving west.
Image: NASA Meteor Watch (Facebook)
The pizza part sounds pretty cool.

I wasn’t expecting to read a dystopian fic about not-so-distant future office culture in our comments, but what other response could you have to a story about an HR company that wanted to treat AI bots like humans?


Elon Musk reportedly commits to sending “around $45 million a month” to a Trump Super PAC.

The Wall Street Journal put a number on Musk’s reported donation to a political action committee backing Donald Trump’s campaign and on the formation of America PAC. He’s not on the most recent list of contributors, but both Winklevoss twins, current SpaceX / former Tesla board director Antonio Gracias, and early PayPal exec Ken Howery are.


Federal Election Commission filing showing contributions to America PAC including $1 million from Antonio Gracias, $250k each from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and $1 million from Ken Howery.
Screenshot: FILING FEC-1801554
Remember Amazon’s Dash buttons?

Amazon’s brand-specific reordering buttons only lasted from 2015 through 2019, but in that time, they made enough of an impact to earn an eventual featured spot as a Button of the Month.

Some people did try to keep using them — let us know if your hacks are still working.


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Donald Trump rushed offstage after gunshots at a Pennsylvania rally.

While Trump was speaking onstage at an event, gunshots were heard, and Trump ducked to the ground before being eventually taken offstage by Secret Service agents.

According to The Associated Press, “A local prosecutor says the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead,” and in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

ABC News has live coverage, along with CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters.


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Will David Zaslav try to stop Amazon’s Prime Video from getting NBA broadcasting rights?

As explained by Front Office Sports, the NBA is waiting to see if TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery will try to match any part of the reported $76 billion in offers from NBC, ESPN, and Amazon.

WBD’s (not-HBO) Max could try to match Prime Video, but with a smaller audience than Amazon’s service, matching might not be enough.


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Intuit fires 1,800 employees to hire 1,800 employees and focus on AI.

Last spring, Business Insider noted that Intuit was unusual among its peers because it hadn’t done mass layoffs.

Following shutdowns of the Mint app and MailChimp-owned TinyLetter, CEO Sasan Goodarzi today announced layoffs, saying they include “approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations.” as it accelerates investing in data and AI like its Assist bot.


Google Gemini x Samsung.

Google and Samsung confirmed that their deal for Gemini AI features on Galaxy devices will bring updates (announced at I/O earlier this year) that let it read and respond to what’s on your phone screen or in a video you’re watching, as well as new Circle to Search features.


Gemini AI feature shown in split screen on a Galaxy Z Fold 6, with the video on one side and AI chat responses on the other side.
Image: Google
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Hacktivists release Heritage Foundation data allegedly stolen in response to “Project 2025.”

A group that has previously claimed responsibility for breaching NATO, as well as satellite systems used by Halliburton and Shell, tells CyberScoop they’ve released 2GB of data from the conservative think tank behind “Project 2025” policy proposals for a second Trump administration.

The data includes the “full names, email addresses, passwords, and usernames” of people associating with Heritage, vio said, including users with U.S. government email addresses. “This itself can have an impact to heritage’s (sic) reputation,” they added, “and it’ll especially push away users in positions of power.” 


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After years of delays, the European Space Agency has successfully launched Ariane 6.

The Ariane 6 vehicle was supposed to begin service in 2020, but then... some things happened.

At about 3PM ET, it finally took off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and successfully reignited its Vinci engine in orbit, beginning the journey’s second of three planned stages that you can continue to follow live.