T.C. is a Senior Editor at The Verge, where he has obsessed over headlines and internet speeds since 2011. Prior to The Verge, he worked in the nation’s capital as an advocate for the National Park System, which continues to be America’s best idea. (The internet is a close second.) Ethics statement: T.C. is the creator of Quest, a tabletop roleplaying game. As such, he is not involved in any kind of coverage of tabletop games for The Verge.
He probably thinks he’s invincible at this point, but Trump is actually now wading into a place that may even (sadly) be more dangerous for him than living in the Epstein files. Data centers, like Flock cameras, are remarkably unpopular among Americans of all stripes. He always manages to wiggle out of consequences, but this will be a compelling new test of how far people will go to drink his Kool-Aid.
As Netflix turns into a video podcast warehouse, HBO is planting its own flag with an original titan of radio. The Howard Stern Show arrives with weekly episodes on HBO Max September 17th. The series will be adapted from Stern’s SiriusXM program.
Even if it’s Trump, stepping away from your company’s all-hands to take a call from the president makes sense. But it’s very funny, as Wired reports, that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was still mic’d up when he stepped away, letting some staffers hear Trump’s voice on the call.
EA’s Iron Man game, first announced back in 2022, just had some internal video leaked on ResetEra. The video shows Tony Stark effortlessly zipping through New York City in a way that instantly recalls the well-received Spider-Man series. It’s nice that the studio in charge basically confirmed the leak in a social media post:
In an executive order signed today, President Trump established a commission to create a new academy to “educate and develop the next generation of leaders across the space domain.” Scant details so far, but it appears the academy would feed recruits and talent into both the Space Force and NASA.
[The White House]
I’m surprised it took this long for Nvidia to make its own PAC — something that seems like table stakes for any huge company trying to influence the US government. Well, now it’s here, according to Bloomberg. The PAC will take in voluntary contributions from employees, which is a classic way of giving big money in a distributed manner given caps on election contributions.
Tim Curry has died at 80 years-old. His credentials are legendary: including Rocky Horror, Clue, Home Alone 2, The Three Musketeers, The Hunt for Red October… well, the list goes on and on. But my personal favorite might be a lesser-known role in the weirdly live-acted Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 video game. May he rest in eternal peace… “in space!”
In a broad-ranging feature from Time on OpenAI, the company reveals it has been testing a new kind of sponsored ad. Clicking through an ad with “sponsored agents” would bring you into “an AI experience presented by a brand.”
[TIME]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic is “likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion” — topping SpaceX’s fever dream of a mere $28.5 trillion. It would be funny only if we were talking about Monopoly money.
[The Wall Street Journal]
