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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Richard Lawler joined The Verge as Senior News Editor in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget. He's been a tech blogger since before the word was invented, and will never log off.

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“The Man Who Made Nike Uncool” is out.

Nike is moving on from CEO John Donahoe less than a week after Bloomberg published its unflatteringly-titled profile of his four-year tenure.

Under Donahoe, Nike de-emphasized retail stores to chase direct sales, flooded the market with retros like the Panda Dunks, and put the RTFKT NFT shoe brand on the same level as the Swoosh and Jordan Jumpman.

Today’s announcement doesn’t include the RTFKT logo.


Nike brand logos on a black background, showing the Swoosh, the Jordan Jumpman, the Converse star, and some wacky lightning bolt for the NFT shoe brand RTFKT.
One of these logos doesn’t belong in this list, but Nike put it there anyway.
Image: Nike
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Iranian hackers offered stolen Trump data to the Biden campaign, say the feds.

A joint statement from ODNI, FBI, and CISA follows up on last month’s reports about Iranian Election Influence Efforts, which Iran’s government has denied.

Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails. There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied.


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Now, the Threads image carousels can count to 20.

I’ve enjoyed the sliding image carousels on Threads — although it still lacks a toggle to disable autoplaying video — and now Meta’s Twitter-like app can hold up to 20 photos in one post.

That matches the upgrade Instagram announced in August and should be enough for your next visually provocative masterpiece.


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Apple A16 chips are reportedly being made in America.

Former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan writes on Substack:

Apple’s A16 SoC, which first debuted two years ago in the iPhone 14 Pro, is currently being manufactured at Phase 1 of TSMC’s Fab 21 in Arizona in small, but significant, numbers, my sources tell me.

They’re only used in the iPhone 14 Pro and standard iPhone 15 right now, but maybe the American-made chips Apple signed up for will end up in a future iPhone SE someday. The question is if it’s worth the costs.


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Meta bans RT “for foreign interference activity.”

NBC News reports the following statement from an unnamed Meta spokesperson:

After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity.

The move follows warnings by the Biden administration that RT is part of Russian disinformation campaigns targeting the 2024 US election and a State Department notice last week saying, “[W]e now know that RT moved beyond being simply a media outlet and has been an entity with cyber capabilities.”


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Apple Sports 2.0 has arrived.

Last month, Apple announced an update for the Sports app that adds Live Activities support to help you follow games on the lock screen of your iPhone or Apple Watch.

Now, it has been released in the App Store just ahead of the launch of iOS 18 and watchOS 11, and it includes a new drop-down menu and search setup to switch between leagues and teams.


Simulated image of the Apple Sports app 2.0 Live Activities tracking scores on an iPhone and an Apple Watch.
Apple Sports 2.0 Live Activities