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Meta has fired “roughly 20†employees who leaked “confidential information outside the company,†according to a spokesperson. “We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent,†Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold tells The Verge exclusively. “We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees being terminated for sharing confidential information outside the company, and we expect there will be more. We take this seriously, and will continue to take action when we identify leaks.” Meta has ramped up its efforts to find leakers due to a recent influx of stories detailing unannounced product plans and internal meetings, including a recent all-hands led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After we and other outlets reported on what Zuckerberg said during that meeting , employees were warned not to leak . In comments that were subsequently leaked, CTO Andrew...

Meta is making sweeping changes to its content moderation policies , including abandoning third-party fact-checks in favor of X’s crowd-sourced “Community Notes” approach and loosening restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. Under the updated Hateful Conduct policy, for example, calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” is now allowed, while an explicit ban on referring to women as “household objects” has been removed . Policy chief Joel Kaplan says that in pursuit of “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes,” Meta will focus more on preventing overenforcement of its content policies and less on mediating potentially harmful — but technically legal — discussions on its platform. The company is also ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement appeals to many of the new administration’s talking points . Zuckerberg, who has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago multiple times since the election and attended the inauguration, has promis...

PlayerUnknown Productions, the studio from PUBG creator Brendan Greene (aka PlayerUnknown), has shared a gameplay trailer for Prologue: Go Wayback! , a single-player survival game that’s launching in early access on Steam this year. The studio previously shared that the game would be built with “machine-learning-driven terrain generation technology,” and in this new trailer, you can see some gorgeous, wooded areas on display. In the game, you’ll also have to deal with various types of weather, including pouring rain and heavy snow. The point of the game, according to a fact sheet, is to explore and survive so that you can find a weather station to call for help. Prologue is just one of three games in the works from PlayerUnknown Productions. The “ultimate project,” dubbed Project Artemis , is going to be “a massive multiplayer sandbox experience” that builds on the technology featured in Prologue and a tech demo, Preface: Undiscovered World , that’s available on Steam . from ...

Exposure to extreme heat could lead to faster aging, a new study published today in the journal Science Advances suggests. Older people living in hotter areas of the US showed faster aging at the molecular level than people living in cooler areas. The study looked at measures of a person’s biological, or epigenetic, age, which is based on how a person’s body is functioning at the molecular and cellular levels and doesn’t necessarily match a person’s chronological age based on birth. Longer-term exposure to heat was associated with an increase in a person’s biological age by up to 2.48 years. The impact on the body is comparable to the effects of smoking, according to the study authors. Extreme heat is already the deadliest type of weather disaster in the US, a threat that’s growing as climate change leads to more frequent and intense heatwaves . The new research shows how there are more subtle, insidious ways that prolonged heat exposure can affect the body beyond heat illness or...

First-generation Echo speakers won’t get Alexa Plus. Amazon is bringing the new AI-powered Alexa Plus to a wide range of its existing Echo devices — but the upgrade will skip many of the earliest models. The majority of the company’s first-generation Echos won’t get support, according to the Alexa Plus FAQ page , though Amazon says they will continue to work with the standard Alexa. Alexa Plus won’t support “certain older generation Echo devices,” such as the first-generation Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Tap, Echo Spot, and Echo Show; the second-generation Echo Show won’t support it, either. Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt confirmed that is the full list of devices. If so, that still leaves many early Echo devices that will work with Alexa Plus. That means I’ll be able to ask Alexa to book a restaurant reservation through my Echo Flex , the quirky modular Echo speaker that plugs straight into a wall outlet. And people can still get an AI-generated song piped through sp...

The Dark Horse Digital service is being shut down, and as part of that, the Dark Horse Comics iOS app will no longer be supported, according to an announcement . Dark Horse Comics says people should download comics they’ve purchased by March 30th, as it will end support for its iOS app and the standalone  Plants vs. Zombies  comics app the following day. You can still visit the Dark Horse Digital website if you make an account before the deadline to read the comics you’ve bought — but only through “at least” summer 2025, the company  says in a FAQ . You can also sync your website account with the app to download issues, according to the announcement.  This isn’t totally the end for Dark Horse’s ebook comics; the company says its books will continue being available “on numerous digital reading platforms.” But it says it decided to stop its own direct-to-reader sales because “consumer reading preferences have evolved in different directions.” According to Dark Hors...