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Jay Peters
Is it 2025?

Google’s AI Overviews told Wired (and me, when I tried) that no, it is not 2025.

A Google spokesperson said to Wired that the company is “actively working on an update to address this type of issue.”

A screenshot of Google’s AI Overviews.
Image: Google
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External Link
Jay Peters
Severance spinoffs, maybe.

Ben Stiller tells Variety that there are “two specific ideas” that the Severance team has “talked about internally as possible spinoff ideas.” He says “they are nascent.”

Stiller also says it would be great to “have a Severance video game.” I’m not exactly sure how that would work?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a glimpse at Nintendo’s online future

One of the Switch’s biggest hits saw Nintendo slowly pushing into live-service games.

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Sean Hollister
Micro Center soft opened its Silicon Valley store with a truckload of GPUs.

The grand opening is tomorrow at 10AM PT, but you can already go shop — I even got a special look inside its GPU-filled stockroom! There’s a buttload of cards, including an RTX 5090 signed by Jensen (not for sale), plenty of AMD 9070, and it’ll have “very limited quantities” of Founders Edition (including the 5090 FE) tomorrow. Maybe open the boxes before you leave, though.

The highlight for me: a 12-foot-tall motorized revolving 3D filament wall which dispenses your color of choice.

<em>Gallery: Be sure to tap the pictures once or twice to zoom!</em>
<em>Outside the new store.</em>
<em>There was already a small line today; 6,000 people visited on Wednesday.</em>
<em>The main aisle.</em>
<em>Techs build your PC at open air benches.</em>
<em>A chance to touch PC cases in person before buying.</em>
<em>The fanciest cases on display.</em>
<em>Inside the stockroom, piles and piles of GPUs.</em>
<em>More GPUs.</em>
<em>Even more GPUs.</em>
<em>A motorized revolving 3D printer filament dispenser wall</em>; <em>scan a swatch’s barcode, and it’ll bring the matching color to you.</em>
<em>Exploded view laptops serve as art.</em>
<em>Glorious offers a full keyboard switch tester demo station.</em>
<em>Not as many TVs as Best Buy, but lots of TV mounts with handy guides.</em>
<em>A wall of racing wheels you can feel before you buy.</em>
<em>The rarely empty checkout line.</em>
<em>I didn’t buy this pricy GPU; that was a friend of mine.</em>
<em>But I couldn’t pass up a chance to down a Bawls soda, the old LAN party beverage of choice.</em>
<em>One more look at the signed gold GPU.</em>
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Gallery: Be sure to tap the pictures once or twice to zoom!
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Youtube
Richard Lawler
CFB 26 has more coaches, more music, and more commentary.

The first big reveal of EA’s relaunched college football game mentions that this year players can expect to hear more than just “Mo Bamba” and a few other tracks when facing key downs on the road, with new PA tracks, mascots, band music, and school-specific chants.

Other details include cross-platform online Dynasty play, and more than 300 real-world coaches so you can outcoach a photo-realistic version of the leader of your favorite school’s rival.

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External Link
Richard Lawler
Business Insider lays off 21 percent of staff to “endure extreme traffic drops.”

As reported by The Information and Axios reporter Sara Fischer, CEO Barbara Peng emailed staff on Thursday announcing Business Insider is “scaling back on categories that once performed well on other platforms” and mostly exiting its search-reliant Commerce business in an apparent acknowledgement of Google Zero, despite Sundar Pichai’s rebuttals.

Now it’s shrinking, noting “70 percent of our business has some degree of traffic sensitivity,” while going all-in on AI with a push to use Enterprise ChatGPT, gen-AI site search, an AI paywall, and other products.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome
Play

The head of Google discusses the next AI platform shift and how it could change how we use the internet forever.

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Cameron Faulkner
A Switch 2 case with some intriguing mechanisms.

Mechanism has teased its first Switch 2 accessory coming this summer. The company, which made its name with the Deckmate accessory ecosystem for Steam Deck and other handhelds, has unveiled the Basegrip Plus case.

It works with its vast ecosystem of platform-agnostic attachments, but contains swappable parts that only work on the Basegrip Plus, from rear plates to bigger Joy-Con 2 grips. Some of them will be available as free 3D files, if you want to print them out yourself.

It won’t move to production until it verifies that the Switch 2 actually fits in it, a cautious mindset that I respect (one that many accessory companies aren’t bothering with). One thing to note is that the case won’t fit in the dock at launch, but Mechanism plans to create an adapter.

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External Link
Jay Peters
Trump’s tariffs have been temporarily reinstated.

A federal appeals court has temporarily paused the Court of International Trade’s ruling yesterday that blocked the tariffs, CNBC reports.

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    Andrew Liszewski
    Lego’s next buildable sneaker is a Nike Dunk.

    In 2021, Lego collaborated with Adidas for a brick-built version of the brand’s iconic Superstar sneaker. This year the company has partnered with Nike for a 1,180-piece buildable replica of its Dunk sneaker that includes hidden storage, swappable lace colors, an exclusive minifigure, and a display stand featuring a spinning basketball.

    The set is available for preorder starting today for $99.99, and expected to ship starting on July 1st, 2025.

    <em>The set includes a display base featuring the Dunk logo and a miniature basketball replica.</em>
    <em>The shoe comes with either blue or green laces that can be swapped or mixed and matched.</em>
    <em>The shoe opens up and easily disassembles revealing storage spots for small items.</em>
    <em>B’Ball Head is an exclusive minifigure included with the set featuring Nike attire and its own pair of Dunk sneakers.</em>
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    The set includes a display base featuring the Dunk logo and a miniature basketball replica.
    Image: Lego
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    Andrew Liszewski
    The Nintendo Music app has added a sleep timer.

    Following updates to the Nintendo Switch App and the Nintendo Today app, the Nintendo Music app has also been updated and now features a new sleep timer for those wanting to drift off to their favorite soundtrack.

    A small crescent moon icon appearing in the lower right corner of the app’s interface while playing a track or playlist can be tapped to open a menu with timer options ranging from 5 minutes to 60 minutes.

    Two screenshots of the new sleep timer features in the Nintendo Music mobile app.
    The new sleep timer feature can be set for as long as 60 minutes.
    Screenshot: Nintendo Music
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    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Dumb and dumberer.

    Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey have buried the hatchet after Zuckerberg fired Luckey in 2017, so they can build virtual and augmented reality gear for the military. Oculus made, of course, the most successful VR headset and was also a tremendous flop for Meta. Anyway, here’s the WSJ story about their new team-up. Time and money heal all wounds, I guess?

    Palmer Luckey standing next to Mark Zuckerberg
    Image: Anduril
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    External Link
    Gaby Del Valle
    A federal judge says Trump’s rationale for trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil is probably illegal.

    Khalil, a Columbia student, was arrested by ICE in March over his involvement in pro-Palestine activism despite being a permanent resident. Citing a Cold War-era law, administration officials claimed Khalil’s presence in the country is detrimental to the US’s foreign policy interest.

    In a 106-page ruling, judge Michael Farbiarz said the State Department never explained whether Khalil’s activism “affected US relations with any other country,” making the deportation effort “unconstitutionally vague.” For now, Khalil remains detained in Louisiana.

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    Umar Shakir
    Free Zombies.

    Xbox Free Play Days weekend runs from today through Sunday, June 1st, with access to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (MP and Zombies only), no Game Pass membership required. For those with access to at least Game Pass Core, you can also play RK: Survival Ascended, Football Manager 2024, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game. Meanwhile, The Division 2 is also available with no paid membership through June 3rd.

    Image: Xbox
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    Youtube
    Andrew Liszewski
    Sony made the battery easier to replace in its WH-1000XM6 headphones.

    In addition to better ANC and the return to a folding design, Sony quietly improved access to the battery in its recently-launched WH-1000XM6 wireless headphones.

    During a teardown iFixit discovered the battery is now held in place by two screws instead of double-sided tape like Sony used on previous models, making it relatively easy to access and replace if you’re comfortable disassembling a $450 pair of headphones.

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    External Link
    Jay Peters
    Razer is making its AI tools available to all developers.

    The tools, including Razer Game Assistant and Razer QA Companion, which are part of its Wyvrn platform, are going to launch on the AWS Marketplace, according to an announcement.

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    External Link
    Justine Calma
    One of the next five years will probably be the hottest on record.

    2024 holds the current record, beating 2023. Now, there’s an 80 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will take the title, according to a recent forecast from the World Meteorological Organization.

    Unless countries can transition to carbon pollution-free energy like wind and solar power, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels will keep on heating up our planet.

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    External Link
    Charles Pulliam-Moore
    Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s much-needed performance patches are launching with the Switch 2.

    While the next big Pokémon game won’t be releasing until later this year, Nintendo’s Japanese site says that we can expect to see Scarlet and Violet getting their long-awaited patches that will improve the games’ frame rates, visuals, and draw distances on June 5 just in time for the Switch 2’s big debut.

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    External Link
    Andrew Liszewski
    macOS 26 may drop support for four older Macs.

    Following Bloomberg’s report that Apple plans to name the next versions of its operating systems based on years, Apple Insider is reporting that macOS 26 may drop support for several older Intel-based Macs, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Unsupported Macs will potentially include the 2018 MacBook Pro, the 2017 iMac Pro, the 2018 Mac mini, and the 2020 Intel-based MacBook Air, which are currently the oldest models currently supported by ‌macOS Sequoia‌.

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    External Link
    Charles Pulliam-Moore
    Paramount is willing to settle over Trump’s CBS lawsuit, but he wants more.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that, while Paramount offered to pay Donald Trump $15 million to make him drop his lawsuit against CBS News over the way a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was edited, the sitting president wants upwards of $25 million and a public apology from the news organization.

    The subtext here is obviously “grovel and supplicate if you want that Skydance merger to go through.”

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    The Verge
    Cameron Faulkner
    The cloud game streaming dream is alive and well.*

    At least, that’s the case if you have a Valve Steam Deck or another Linux handheld, like the new SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go S. Nvidia just launched its native GeForce Now app, and many of us here at The Verge have already put it to the test, attempting to perform countless parries in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, lining up headshots in Splitgate 2, and other timing-based feats to test how it performs.

    The verdict? Surprisingly great, both in terms of performance and battery efficiency, but with oh-so-many asterisks.

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    Richard Lawler
    DeepSeek says a new R1 update is closing the gap with OpenAI o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro.

    The Chinese AI model that shook up the industry as a more cost-efficient alternative to the ones from OpenAI, Google, and Meta, now has a new update dubbed DeepSeek-R1-0528.

    DeepSeek says its latest model has a reduced “hallucination” rate, and that it “has significantly improved its depth of reasoning and inference capabilities by leveraging increased computational resources and introducing algorithmic optimization mechanisms during post-training...overall performance is now approaching that of leading models, such as O3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro.”

    Graph of AI benchmark results comparing the new DeepSeek model favorably to OpenAI o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and the original R1 model.
    Image: DeepSeek (HuggingFace)
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    Charles Pulliam-Moore
    These pieces of David Lynch’s legacy can be yours.

    If you’ve ever wanted to own a piece of art, furniture, taxidermy, or other ephemera that was once owned and / or touched by the late, great David Lynch, Julien’s is running a massive auction beginning June 18th that you’re probably going to want to keep an eye on.

    Four “Mulholland Drive” Prop Menus.
    “Mulholland Drive” Scripts.
    Handmade Colorful Table.
    Personalized Director’s Chair.
    Personal 35mm Print of “Eraserhead.”
    “Dune” Production Office Moviola Film Viewer.
    Six Vintage Dazor Flying Saucer Lamps,
    Taxidermy Deer Heads.
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    Four “Mulholland Drive” Prop Menus.

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