published = 2025-02-04T20:24:38-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T20:24:38-05:00

Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry

President Donald Trump kicked off the first day of his presidency by signing a flurry of executive actions, including halting enforcement of the TikTok ban and rolling back the Biden administration’s artificial intelligence order.

Having already run the country once before, Trump entered the presidency with the goal of hitting the ground running, having already selected nominees and chairs for key agencies that oversee tech. This time, Trump has the backing of many tech billionaires who attended his inauguration and showed up at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

Read on below as we keep track of all the ways Trump is leaving his mark on tech in his first 100 days in office.


published = 2025-02-04T18:54:35-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T18:55:42-05:00

Apex Legends: everything you need to know about the Titanfall battle royale

Instead of making Titanfall 3, developer Respawn took the franchise in a completely different direction with Apex Legends. A free-to-play battle royale game that mashes together elements of Overwatch and Fortnite, Apex Legends was a complete surprise when it launched, but it has turned out to be a big hit early on, luring tens of millions of players. Keep up with the game as it continues to develop and grow right here.


published = 2025-02-04T18:29:45-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T18:29:45-05:00

Elgato’s Wave Link 2.0 promises clear vocals in any environment

Elgato is releasing a new version of its audio stream control software Wave Link that includes new AI-powered voice enhancements for your mic. It also has a new OS-level management system to redirect audio streams to certain apps, split audio to yourself and your audience, add audio effects, and quickly mute channels.

The latest version 2.0 update is available to download now and works with Elgato hardware, including the company’s Mic and Stream Deck control ecosystem.

Elgato and audio machine learning company AIcoustics are including Voice Focus in the Wave Link program, which can remove noise and fix acoustic problems so you can have professional-sounding audio regardless of your room situation.

It also supports audio effects, and you can include custom plugins to get your desired sound. However, you do need an Elgato microphone or a Stream Deck Plus to use Wave Link and its low-latency audio mixing magic.

Wave Link 2.0 now works more like SteelSeries GG, taking over the entire Windows audio process. It allows you complete control to route audio where you want it to go or group apps into one input channel so certain audio always stays together. Wave Link can create custom Stream Deck control buttons with “add to Stream Deck” that lets you quickly change the volume for each audio stream you manage. It can even show a volume slider that can span multiple buttons, so you know the current volume levels at a glance. It also works in conjunction with Stream Deck foot pads and the dials of the Stream Deck Plus.


published = 2025-02-04T18:19:05-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T18:19:05-05:00

Google expects to spend $75 billion this year on the AI race

Google parent company Alphabet expects to invest “approximately $75 billion” in capital expenditures in 2025, according to a statement from CEO Sundar Pichai in Alphabet’s Q4 2024 earnings release.

Capital expenditures have become a hot topic as of late as big tech companies race to build infrastructure to support their growing AI ambitions, and today’s announcement from Alphabet is clearly meant to keep the company in that conversation. Alphabet spent $32.3 billion on capital expenditures in 2023, so $75 billion in 2025 would be a big jump. And while Google’s press release today doesn’t specifically say that the upcoming capital expenditures are all for AI, given the amount of money flowing into AI infrastructure across the industry, it seems likely that a good amount of the expense will go toward benefitting Google’s AI work.

AI continues to benefit Google’s business as well. Overall revenues are up 12 percent year-over-year to $96.5 billion. Google Cloud revenues are up 10 percent to $12.0 billion, which Google says is “led by growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core GCP products, AI Infrastructure, and Generative AI Solutions.” 

On today’s investor call, Pichai said that the company has “very good ideas for native ad concepts” in its Gemini AI assistant. He also teased that Google plans to put new Search experiences “in front of users through the course of 2025.”

During its fourth quarter, the company made some big news about its AI products, including revealing Gemini 2.0, an AI agent called Project Mariner that can complete tasks in a Chrome browser, and its Deep Research tool that can research things on the web for you. It also demoed a new Android XR mixed reality OS.

Alphabet-owned Waymo had a pretty good 2024 overall, though today’s earnings report shows that “Other Bets,” which includes Waymo, had lower revenue and higher losses year-over-year.

In Q4, the Department of Justice also proposed that Google potentially divest itself of Chrome as a remedy for Judge Amit Mehta’s August ruling that the company is a monopolist in the search and advertising markets. The final outcome of those remedies could have a big impact on Google / Alphabet’s future.

Update, February 4th: Added details from Alphabet’s investor call.


published = 2025-02-04T18:09:49-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T18:20:00-05:00

Google has ‘very good ideas’ for native ads in Gemini

Google’s Gemini AI assistant doesn’t have ads today, but the company has “very good ideas” for ways they could show up down the road, CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet’s investor call this afternoon. Right now, you can access Gemini for free or pay for a subscription to use advanced features, but it sounds like ads could be part of the product at some point.

On the call, a Wells Fargo analyst asked Pichai how people should think about the “future monetization opportunity of Gemini” and if the company sees a potential “ad component.” Here’s my transcription of Pichai’s answer, which I’ve lightly edited for clarity:

On the monetization side, for now, we have focused on a free tier and subscriptions. But as you’ve seen [with] Google over time, we always want to lead with the user experience and we do have very good ideas for native ad concepts. But you will see us lead with the user experience.

I do think we’re always committed to making the products work and reach billions of users at scale. And advertising has been a great aspect of that strategy. Just like you’ve seen with YouTube, we’ll give people options over time. But for this year, I think you’ll see us be focused on the subscription direction.

Based on that last sentence, it doesn’t seem like you’ll have to worry about ads in Gemini at least through this year. But Google’s overall business is built on ads, and it seems like we should expect them to come to Gemini at some point. They’re already in AI Overviews, after all.

Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

As part of its earnings, Google also announced that it plans to spend $75 billion this year on capital expenditures to help it keep up in the AI race.


published = 2025-02-04T18:09:47-05:00
updated = 2025-02-04T22:55:55-05:00

Apple Invites is at its best for people already in Apple’s world

Naturally, there’s an AI element in the Apple Intelligence-created backgrounds.

Apple launched a new app today, called Apple Invites, which lets you create, share, and manage invitations for events. With it, you can generate a quick digital invitation that, when shared with your friends, lets them gather all the info about the event, RSVP, and add it to their calendar. That includes your Android friends, who can access invites using a web-based version of the app on the iCloud site.

It’s a mostly straightforward, easy-to-use app that offers a better way to invite friends to things than trying to cram all the details into a text message or make sure everyone checks their Facebook events. Creating an event using the plus button at the top of the Apple Invites app will let you type in a name and add time, date, and location details. You can also add an Apple-made background, pick a photo from your library, or, if you have a phone with Apple Intelligence support, whip up an AI-generated one using Apple’s Image Playground feature.

You can invite people by picking from your contacts, manually entering phone numbers or email addresses, or copying a link to your event and sending it from outside the app. The app also lets you choose whether each person is allowed to invite others, and you can send notes to invitees after the event is created.

The event’s info is shown with widgets, including one showing the weather forecast for that day and an Apple Maps box that you can tap to get directions. You can also create a photo album for people to peruse or add a music playlist, too, using Apple Music. All of that works mostly seamlessly on an iPhone, apart from some buggy behavior I encountered, like invitations that wouldn’t load and trouble getting the photo album in an invite to actually populate with pictures after I picked them.

The experience has some hiccups for those not fully in the Apple ecosystem, which isn’t surprising. For starters, where an iPhone user can go straight to the invitation using your link (assuming they’re already signed into iCloud), Android users have to enter their email address and then a verification code to get in. They’ll also need to sign up for an Apple account to look at a photo album if you add one, and Android user or not, your friends need an Apple Music subscription to hear your playlist (otherwise, they’ll only get a preview of it).

None of that will keep Android users from seeing key details about your event or RSVPing to it, but it’ll be obvious that they aren’t getting the whole experience. Event invite app Partiful offers largely the same experience — maybe a little too samey, as the app’s developers insinuated today — while remaining a “platform-agnostic product,” Partiful cofounder and CEO Shreya Murthy said in a statement emailed to The Verge.

Partiful has become a buzzy option for managing event invites over the past few years, adding a bunch of fun touches like the ability to RSVP to invites with GIFs and emoji. It’s also entirely free to use, which is a big distinction from Apple Invites. Apple’s app requires an iCloud Plus subscription in order to create events. That makes it a nice, safe option for people who are already subscribers, but it’s hard to imagine Apple Invites being the feature anyone signs up for.

Copycat accusations and bugs aside, Apple Invites seems like a promising start, particularly if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and want to keep friends in the loop without using Facebook events, third-party apps, texts, or emails. But it’s also an app with a social purpose that Apple claims in its announcement “brings people together for life’s special moments.” That sounds pleasant but feels less so once you get the mediocre Android version of the experience.

Update, February 4th: Added more detail on Partiful and the iCloud Plus requirement.


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