Podcast subscribers want more podcasts

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Hope you all had a great weekend. I don’t have any podcast thoughts today, but I did see the Roundabout Theater’s gender-reversed 1776, and it absolutely slapped. As … Read more

A government watchdog spent $15,000 to crack a federal agency’s passwords in minutes

A government watchdog has published a scathing rebuke of the Department of the Interior’s cybersecurity posture, finding it was able to crack thousands of employee user accounts because the department’s security policies allow easily guessable passwords like ‘Password1234’. The report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior, tasked with … Read more

Meta’s main content moderation partner in Africa shuts down operations

Meta’s main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, Sama, earlier Tuesday announced the closure of its content moderation arm at its hub in Kenya, citing the need to streamline operations. This comes months after Sama and Meta were sued in the East African country for union busting, and exploitation, and just weeks after another lawsuit … Read more

Marvel Snap’s bundle pricing is out of control

Image: Second Dinner Marvel Snap’s first patch of 2023 is here. And while it comes with an interesting set of buffs and long-asked-for nerfs, it also brings a new bundle in the shop that’s finally causing me to give my favorite mobile game ever a bit of side-eye. As mobile games go, Marvel Snap’s been … Read more

What a Speaker McCarthy means for Big Tech

Photo by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images The House Republican majority is finally underway, and newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy (CA) has made big promises about what his leadership means for big tech companies, including a brand new subcommittee tasked with investigating allegations of censorship. This new panel, called the Select … Read more

Scale AI cuts 20% of its workforce

Scale AI, the San Francisco-based company that uses software and people to label image, text, voice and video data for companies building machine learning algorithms, laid off 20% of its workforce this week. The decision, which was announced by founder and CEO Alexandr Wang via a company blog post, was made after rapid hiring in … Read more