Grimes manager DAOuda made a lengthy post on X to clear the air about the technical mishap that occurred during Grimes’ Coachella set last weekend. It apparently boils down to a last-minute update and a computer swap.

NASA has finally found a fix after the 46-year-old space probe stopped sending readable data to Earth in November. Voyager 1 can only send information about its health and status for now, but NASA says it’s working to get it back to transmitting scientific data, too.

There are plenty of great stories to read today from our sister site, Vox — on everything from more efficient (and yet controversial) appliances to how phones affect kids’ experiences in nature and how climate change is transforming our sense of home.

And stay tuned this week for more reporting on reforestation in Costa Rica from The Verge. We published the first story — about restoring Indigenous territories — in our Earth Week package today.

Josh Dzieza got a rare glimpse at the meticulous work of undersea cable repair — the secretive industry that keeps internet infrastructure around the world up and running. If you haven’t read his excellent feature yet, here’s a quick overview of how cable repair works.

Aaron LaBerge is a big name at ESPN and Disney — he’s been there most of the last two decades, overseeing a lot of big projects including the recent Hulu / Disney Plus combination. He cited “personal reasons” for leaving in a note to staff, but also has a new job: after working on the joint betting project between ESPN and Penn Entertainment, he’s Penn’s new CTO.

The firings included “non-participating bystanders,” according to Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid. Google initially fired 28 employees after last week’s protest against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion defense contract. The sit-in lasted for eight hours before nine employees were arrested.

Chung said in an email to The Verge that these additional firings bring the total to over 50. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.

Speaking of Microsoft hedging bets, it’s been doing that with VR since day one. The original Oculus Rift shipped with an Xbox One gamepad and could stream games from Xbox, while Microsoft simultaneously pursued its HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality initiatives.

Microsoft recently brought Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta Quest, too, perhaps in preparation for today’s announce.

It’s only been dead and buried for three months, and yet Microsoft has already glommed onto a new “we don’t have to make this ourselves, OEMs will do it for us” VR headset initiative. Last time, it was Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung with tethered headsets; this time, it’s Meta, Asus, and Lenovo with Qualcomm-powered wireless ones.

Microsoft sure knows how to hedge its bets!

The company will offer the same deepfake protection to EU political parties as it did to US politicians. Political campaigns can use Microsoft’s tools to attach Content Credentials, aka watermarks, to media they release to track whether the image or video has been manipulated.

When Nintendo shut down Super Mario Maker’s servers, it gave players over three years to enjoy and document their own work before the bitter end.

But PlayStation isn’t giving fans time to say goodbye: it’s yanking the rug. Hope you saved a copy of your level locally!

A series of bot-filled communities on Facebook keep popping up to praise AI-generated images of Jesus Christ. The Dead Internet Theory explains why the internet might feel lonely even when there are many voices crying out “Amen 🙏.”
Well... if you can’t beat ‘em, #scarlettjohansson

Strange Scaffold, a studion know for a ton of really fun, really weird, indie games has been sitting on some of the coolest news I’ve heard all year:

El Paso Elsewhere, its Max Payne-style indie shooter that has you gunning down vampires and their queen who happens to be your ex-girlfriend, is getting a movie adaptation with Lakeith Stanfield tapped to play the main character.

It’s very common for US-based studios to outsource big chunks of their animation projects overseas where production costs are significantly cheaper. Less common, though, are things like CNN’s report about production sketches from Amazon’s Invincible series and Max’s Iyanu: Child of Wonder show somehow winding up on a computer server located in North Korea.

French business magazine Challenges reports that Apple acquired the Paris-based AI startup Datakalab in December. Datakalab specializes in developing “fast” and “cost-effective” computer vision, according to its LinkedIn page.

Last month, a report from Bloomberg revealed Apple acquired the Canadian AI firm DarwinAI, aligning with the company’s goals of bringing AI to the iPhone.

The EU Commission is taking notice after TikTok launched a “Lite” version of its app in Spain and France, which pays users for using and interacting with the platform.

Commissioner Thierry Breton says the agency believes the feature could be “toxic & addictive” to children. The Commission could suspend the reward program if TikTok doesn’t provide a risk assessment report in the next 24 hours.

If Nintendo’s recent showcase didn’t satisfy your need for indie game news, here comes Microsoft. The company just announced that its next ID@Xbox Digital Showcase will take place on April 29th, and will feature “another batch of hotly anticipated indies.” Of course, there’s one specific game we’ll all be looking out for.

E Ink has a few competing color electronic paper technologies, and this video gets down on the microscopic level with one of them. While this is a Boox device, its the same display tech Kobo is using in its new color e-readers.

Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 interviews a couple of Connecticut’s Kia Boys about the viral trend that has resulted in tens of thousands of Kias and Hyundais being stolen. One interesting takeaway: last year’s software update has made it more difficult — but not impossible — to steal the cars.

That’s what US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said on 60 Minutes about the in-house 5G chip powering Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro:

What it tells me is the export controls are working because that chip is not nearly as good... We have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world. China doesn’t.

Intel has been investigating games crashing on its Core i9 13th and 14th Gen processors. Now, Asus has started issuing BIOS updates for its latest Z790 motherboards that include a new “Intel Baseline Profile” option that should improve stability in certain games. We’re still waiting on Intel to comment, but it looks like some motherboards have been pushing Intel’s chips to their limits.