Richard Lawler

On Wednesday morning at 8:45AM ET, the Spotify Status account on X acknowledged that “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” A check around The Verge’s Slack channel and the wider internet reveals many users in the UK and across other European countries are having issues streaming anything on Spotify, with a significant spike on Downdetector in the UK. In the US, we spotted only a few error messages at first, but now the service has stopped working for us, too. We’ll let you know if there are any other updates. [Image: https://platform.theverge/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/spotify-status-tweet.jpg?quality=90&strip=all]

Remember 2018?

Says Luka Doncic, talking to ESPN’s Malika Andrews about the iPhone he threw after finding out he’d been traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this year. The back glass is cracked, but Luka is still using it. [Media: https://www.espn/video/clip/_/id/44735023]

On April 10th, a Microsoft executive stated that the company was “slowing or pausing some early-stage datacenter infrastructure projects.” Today, CNBC reports a note from Wells Fargo analysts stating that they have heard a similar story about Amazon. The article cites industry sources saying AWS has paused some leasing discussions, holding off on new projects without canceling already signed deals. [Link: Amazon has paused some data center lease commitments, Wells Fargo says

On Friday, a Wired report and allegation by Rep. Gerald Connolly surfaced, saying that DOGE is creating a “cross-agency master database” of personal information for surveillance on immigrants. Today, the Washington Post reports that several staffers were granted access to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System (ECAS). It’s a Justice Department system that one official said has “...every record of every interaction immigrants have had with the U.S. government in any way.” > The system...is used to store records of immigrants who have interacted with the U.S. immigration system, detailing their name, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony and any history of engagement with law enforcement, among other things.

After the success of Sonic, Mario, and (most recently), Minecraft, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter say that Universal has found its next videogame-to-movie adaptation: OutRun. Yes, the arcade racer with little more than a convertible driving down a road scrolling into infinity reportedly has Michael Bay attached to direct and produce, along with actress Sydney Sweeney as a producer, and Jayson Rothwell (Polar) writing the script. [Link: Michael Bay, Sydney Sweeney Jump-Start ‘OutRun’ Movie Based on Racing Video Game

After the September Pixel Watch update to Wear OS 5 ran into issues, Google released a fix in November and said its wearables would have to wait until March for another update. However, that March update and Google’s first attempt at an April update introduced some bugs of their own, and now it’s rolling out the April update again (version BP1A.250305.019.W8) to hopefully get Pixel Watch owners on Wear OS 5.1 without all of those problems. [Link: Google Pixel Watch Update - April 2025 - Google Pixel Watch Community

Android Central and leak hunter Assemble Debug point out that the feature has started to appear, as shown in this Reddit post. Beyond just displaying lyrics for certain songs, it allows users to highlight specific ones to create a social media-friendly sharing card, just like Spotify does. Let us know if you’re seeing this in your app. [Media: https://www.reddit/r/YoutubeMusic/comments/1k4uhbw/looks_like_you_can_now_share_lyrics/?rdt=48438]

As reported earlier by The Information, data shown in court during the remedies portion of Google’s search antitrust trial says that as of last month, Google’s internal data counted 35 million daily active users for Gemini. Those numbers show it trailing the Google analysts’ estimates for ChatGPT (160 million daily active users, with an additional one million users added in an hour at the end of March, according to Sam Altman), but ahead of other tools from Microsoft, Perplexity, and Anthropic. [Link: Money, Chrome, and ChatGPT: The high stakes of Google’s monopoly trial

Signed on Wednesday , it establishes an AI task force directing funding for various “resources for K-12 AI education.” It also outlines the creation of a “Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge” to “encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI.”