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We’ve been saying this for a while at The Verge: filtering CO2 out of the air is absurdly expensive and not a realistic alternative to fighting climate change by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nevertheless, Big Tech — including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — has pumped hella money into carbon removal strategies that have yet to prove that they can make a meaningful impact.

After a series of leaks, Epic has confirmed that Godzilla is coming to Fortnite. He’ll appear in a new season called “Hunters,” which also features Baymax of Big Hero 6 fame. It kicks off on December 1st — the day after the next in-game concert. Now to see what a kaiju looks like in Jordans.

Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade said it will fine Apple 250,000 real (about $43,000 USD) per day if it doesn’t meet the 20-day deadline, reports Reuters. The company must let developers link to outside payments and offer alternative in-app payment options to comply.

The ruling follows a 2022 complaint by Latin American e-commerce firm MercadoLibre, Reuters writes.

The TFL has announced plans to create additional parking spaces for dockless rental e-bikes and e-scooters, and will “consider taking action against operators” who allow them to be dumped in busier areas of the city.

Huawei announced its new Mate 70 flagship and Mate X6 foldable today — the first devices running the company’s homegrown Google-less HarmonyOS NEXT operating system. Both feature this nifty transfer feature, but it’s limited to just images for now.

Hotel-related search results in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia are temporarily stripping out the map, property info and other clutter as shown in the gallery below. After the test, Google will look at how the change impacted “both the user experience and traffic to websites.”

It’s part of a series of changes meant to appease the EU’s DMA police and travel sites that have lost traffic as Google’s search results became worse, according to users, but more helpful, according to the advertising giant.

Update, November 26th: Added before and after images.

Prospects of an acquisition have cooled, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg:

The complexities associated with acquiring all of Intel has made a deal less attractive to Qualcomm, said some of the people, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matters. It’s always possible Qualcomm looks at pieces of Intel instead or rekindles its interest later, they added.

Qualcomm first approached Intel with the idea of a takeover in September.

The outage affecting services like Exchange Online, Teams, and Outlook email hasn't been resolved despite starting early Monday morning. Now Microsoft's status page is forecasting a resolution "within 3 hours."

Filed in 2020, the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta accuses the social networking giant of stifling competition through its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. The trial will take place on April 14th — just days before a judge will hear the proposed remedies in Google’s antitrust case.

Matt Levine on some fintech weirdness is pretty sublime. Turns out old-school banks have some advantages, specifically that they are not going to simply lose track of your money.

According to Bloomberg, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office is considering adding “market-share limitations” to its proposal to revive the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate program. The program would be in lieu of a federal EV tax credit, which is on Donald Trump’s chopping block. Tesla CEO (and Trump donor) Elon Musk, unused to his chickens coming home to roost, is calling the proposal “insane.”

The era of the LLM means you now have to figure out whether you are talking to another person — or just some bot. There’s one sci-fi author who focused on just that.

The BEAD program — which my colleague Sean wrote about last year — is coming under fire as Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches:

Cruz sent a letter yesterday to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson in which he asked the agency to halt the program rollout until Trump takes over. Cruz also accused the NTIA of “technology bias” because the agency decided that fiber networks should be prioritized over other types of technology.

A pulsing light show isn’t a feature high on anyone’s projector wish list, but that didn’t stop TCL from including one on its new A1. Just 360 ISO lumens of brightness limits the 1080P projector’s use to dark rooms or nighttime showings, but for $499.99 it doubles as a 16W Bluetooth speaker with RGB lights that sync to your beats.

The BBC has colorized classic episodes of Doctor Who before, but its upcoming re-release of The War Games — the serial that introduced the Time Lords — will feature an all-new regeneration sequence that crystalizes how the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) became the Third (Jon Pertwee).

The 90-minute remaster hits the BBC iPlayer December 23rd.