Pegasus spyware maker NSO Group is liable for attacks on 1,400 WhatsApp users
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
NSO Group, the organization behind the Pegasus spyware, has been found liable in a lawsuit brought by Meta’s WhatsApp over attacks on about 1,400 devices, as reported by The Record.
NSO Group is liable for charges of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and breach of contract, according to today’s ruling. A trial will now move forward “only on the issue of damages.” The spyware maker has argued that it isn’t liable because Pegasus was operated by clients investigating crimes and cases of national security but the judge rejected those arguments, which could establish a precedent for other companies in the same business.
“This ruling is a huge win for privacy,” Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, says in a Threads post. “We spent five years presenting our case because we firmly believe that spyware companies could not hide behind immunity or avoid accountability for their unlawful actions. Surveillance companies should be on notice that illegal spying will not be tolerated.”
NSO Group didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
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Bluesky now has a mentions tab in your notifications area
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Bluesky now has a specific tab for mentions in your notifications as part of the app’s just-released 1.96 update. With the mentions tab, it’s much easier to see your replies or conversations you’ve been tagged in on the platform.
Speaking of replies, update 1.96 lets you easily access settings that let you control how replies on posts appear to you. Replies can be linear, meaning they show up one post after another, or threaded, which means they will appear in indented threads (kind of like how they appear on Reddit). You can also sort replies by newest, oldest, most-liked, “hot,” and “random” (which Bluesky also calls “Poster’s Roulette”).
App Version 1.96 is rolling out now (1/6) In this release: a notifications Mentions tab, reserving your default username when you verify your account with a domain, and other improvements!
If you choose to set a custom domain as your username, with 1.96, Bluesky will also reserve your old .bsky.social name so that it can’t be picked up by someone else. I wish this feature had been available when I set my custom domain — when I did that, I made an alt account that’s parked on my old .bsky.social name so that it doesn’t get taken.
And the platform has some big competition from Meta’s Threads, which seems to be doing everything it can to remind people that it can shiplots offeatures and that it’s much larger than Bluesky.
Here are the best iPad deals right now
Apple’s newest iPad Pro, which features an M4 chip, is on sale starting at $899 right now. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
While the best iPad deals usually land during major sale events like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day, many great iPad deals are attainable outside those times. The day-to-day discounts may come and go like changing winds, but there’s often something to be saved, particularly on the more affordable iPads. The most recent iPad Pro and iPad Air are also starting to see substantial price reductions, and you can even save a bit on Apple’s new iPad Mini.
It’s difficult to know where exactly you can find the most notable iPad deals unless you’re scouring the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal hunters at The Verge are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed the best deals you can get on each iPad model that is currently available, from the cheapo ninth-gen iPad of 2021 to the latest models equipped with Apple’s powerful M2 and M4 chips.
Announced alongside the iPhone 13 way back in 2021, the ninth-gen iPad is Apple’s aging entry-level tablet, one that’s still great at carrying out everyday tasks despite having been discontinued. The ninth-gen model originally started at $329 with Wi-Fi and 64GB of storage, which arguably makes the newer 10th-gen model the better deal if you don’t need a home button or a headphone jack, as it now starts at $349 and is often on sale for even less.
The last-gen iPad has been receiving a steep discount for quite a while, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find in most configurations. That being said, Amazon and Walmart are selling the 64GB base model with Wi-Fi for $249 ($80 off), which is about $50 shy of its all-time low. As for the step-up 256GB variant, Amazon is selling it in silver for $449 ($30 off), which is $100 more than the lowest price to date.
The last-gen iPad uses an A13 Bionic processor and a 12MP wide-angle camera with Center Stage, a feature designed to keep you framed up and centered while on video calls. The tablet also carries over a number of features from its predecessor, such as the 10.2-inch display, a Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the home button, and a smart connector for connecting a smart keyboard.
Although the newer 10th-gen iPad came out in late 2022, it’s still an excellent tablet — one we consider to be the best value for most people (once Apple dropped its price). The latest iPad modernizes the design with a switch to USB-C, uniform bezels with no home button, a side power button with a fingerprint sensor, and a larger display, but it eliminates the 3.5mm headphone jack.
In the past, you could often buy Apple’s latest entry-level iPad for $349 ($100 off its initial launch price) — which is now the MSRP. Right now, however, the base model with 64GB of storage is on sale at Amazon in select colors for an all-time low of $249.99 ($100 off) when you clip the on-page coupon. You can also find it at Best Buy and Walmart for $279 ($70 off), which is about $30 more than its lowest price to date. Amazon, Best Buy, and Target are also selling the 256GB model with Wi-Fi starting at $429 ($70 off), which is about $20 more than its best price to date.
The new seventh-gen iPad Mini is similar to the outgoing model but comes with faster Wi-Fi and USB-C speeds, support for the Apple Pencil Pro, and a newer A17 Pro processor with 8GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence. Otherwise, it boasts nearly identical specs and features as the last-gen model, meaning it has an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, a USB-C port, and options for 5G. It may not be worth upgrading if you already own a sixth-gen Mini, but newcomers to the category should appreciate the upgrades.
The 2024 iPad Mini starts at $499 with 128GB of storage, which was the price for the previous generation’s 64GB model. Electing for 256GB of storage brings the price up to $599, and the cellular models start at $649. These are some big numbers for a small iPad, and the larger iPad Air might be worth considering if you prefer your dollar to go further with more screen real estate. But if you want an Apple tablet in the smallest possible form factor, this is where the action is.
Right now, you can get the 128GB base configuration with Wi-Fi at Amazon for $479 ($20 off), which is $30 more than its lowest price to date. You can also get the Wi-Fi model with 256GB of storage at Amazon and B&H Photo for $569 ($30 off), its second-best price to date, though Amazon currently does not provide a shipping estimate for the tablet.
Apple just recently launched the 2024 iPad Air, which features several small upgrades. The newer model doesn’t feature any groundbreaking changes compared to the 2022 release, but notably, there is now a 13-inch configuration in addition to a base 11-inch model. Apple also added Wi-Fi 6E radios and upgraded the chipset to M2, which enables the hover feature when using Apple’s latest styluses. You can use the newer iPad Air with the Apple Pencil Pro and both previous-gen Magic Keyboards, too. The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, while the comparable 13-inch model starts at $799.
Deals for the 2024 iPad Air started to appear before the latest model even hit store shelves. Right now, you can pick up the 11-inch base model with 128GB of storage and Wi-Fi at Best Buy and Target starting at $499 ($100 off), which is its best price to date. The 13-inch iPad Air with 128GB of storage, meanwhile, is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy and Target for an all-time low of $699 ($100 off).
Compared to the latest iPad Air, the 2024 iPad Pro is a far more impressive upgrade. The 11- and 13-inch models start at $999 and $1,299, respectively, and they are the first Apple devices to feature the company’s latest M4 chip, which brings moderate performance gains and dedicated hardware for on-device Apple Intelligence processing. The new Pro models can claim other firsts, too, such as being the first iPad models with OLED displays and the lightest Pros yet, which is true for both sizes. They also feature repositioned front-facing cameras that sit along the horizontal edge, which prevent you from looking as though you’re staring off into space on a video call.
As for deals, the 11-inch iPad Pro with Wi-Fi / 256GB of storage is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo starting at $899 (about $100 off), which is only $2 more than the lowest price to date. The sleek and super-thin 13-inch model, meanwhile, is on sale in its 256GB base configuration at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $1,099 ($200 off), which is an all-time low price.
Wrapped 2024: the annual app recaps are here
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
You were listening, walking, and playing, and they were watching. The app recaps, best-of lists, and awards for 2024 that we can find are here.
It’s not just Spotify anymore — the Wrapped phenomenon has taken over. From music and podcasts to gaming (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam are all accounted for) and beyond, the data breakdowns of what you’ve been doing are a reminder that with so many connected devices, someone is always watching.
Once Dunkin and Shake Shack started doing roundups, the trend was cemented, and it doesn’t seem like it will turn around any time soon.
Of course, Spotify is still taking the lead. For 2024, Wrapped integrates Google’s NotebookLM to have two AI-generated podcast hosts review facts you already knew about your favorite musicians and track how your taste changed throughout the year. If you haven’t pulled up your Wrapped 2024 stats yet, here’s how you can find them.
If you have recaps to share or spot a few that we’ve missed, drop them in the comments.
GM and ChargePoint plan to install hundreds of fast EV chargers by the end of 2025
A station render with Chargepoint-built GM Energy chargers. | Image: GM
GM plans to install up to 500 DC fast-charging ports at stations deployed in “strategic” places across the US, with some equipped with ChargePoint’s Express Plus platform that supports charge speeds up to 500kW. GM and Chargepoint plan to open the stations “rapidly, with the locations deployed by the end of 2025.”
ChargePoint will bring its Omni Port charging hardware for the project, which can connect with vehicles fitted with either CCS or Tesla’s NACS ports so that owners generally would not need to carry an adapter.
“With ultra-fast charging, Omni Port technology, and excellent customer experiences, this collaboration should be another reason why EV drivers and the EV-curious should be excited,” GM Energy VP Wade Sheffer said in a statement.
Google Street View Captures a Man Loading a Bag Into a Trunk. Arrests Follow. The image, from northern Spain, showed a man with a white bag in the trunk of a car. The National Police said it helped them solve a missing-person case.
Grubhub pays $25 million for allegedly tricking customers and lying to drivers
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Grubhub has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that claimed the food delivery service misled customers and drivers while also damaging the reputation of restaurants. The proposed settlement will require Grubhub to make several changes to the platform, such as showing the total delivery cost when customers place an order.
Along with advertising “highly inflated hourly pay rates for drivers,” the FTC’s initial complaint accused Grubhub of hiding “the true cost of its services” by adding delivery fees that raised the price of customers’ final orders. The agency claimed that starting around 2019, Grubhub began advertising lower delivery fees to attract more customers but then began tacking on a “service” fee that increased the cost of orders anyway.
The FTC also alleged the company charged Grubhub Plus members for delivery despite advertising the subscription as having “free” or “$0” deliveries. The agency claimed Grubhub makes the plan easy to sign up for but difficult to cancel while also allegedly blocking the accounts of users with large gift card balances.
Screenshot: FTC
The FTC claimed Grubhub charged customers hidden fees, raising their total order price.
Additionally, the FTC accused Grubhub of adding restaurants to the platform even if they never signed up to sell food on the service. “Grubhub has had as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants on its platform — more than half of all of the available restaurants on Grubhub,” the FTC claims. As a result, many customers wound up having issues with their orders, resulting in bad feedback for unaffiliated restaurants.
Grubhub is now required to show customers the full cost of delivery and can no longer add “junk fees” to orders. It’s also banned from listing unaffiliated restaurants on the platform, and can only make driver earnings claims “that it can back up with evidence and in writing.” Grubhub must also notify customers when they’re banned and offer a way to appeal the decision, as well as make it easier to cancel Grubhub Plus.
“While we categorically deny the allegations made by the FTC, many of which are wrong, misleading or no longer applicable to our business, we believe settling this matter is in the best interest of Grubhub and allows us to move forward,” Grubhub spokesperson Najy Kamal said in a statement to The Verge. The company also responded to the settlement in a post on its website.
Though Grubhub was initially ordered to pay $140 million, it is “partially suspended based on the company’s inability to pay the full amount.” The company's $25 million will go toward refunding affected customers, but the FTC says the full judgment will be due “immediately” if Grubhub “is found to have misrepresented its financial status.”
Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has more than 100 million daily active users
Illustration: The Verge
Threads now has more than 100 million daily active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday. It’s a notable milestone not just because it’s a big number; it’s also the first time Meta has a daily active user figure publicly.
In recent weeks, Meta has been veryvocal about Threads’ growth after a lot of people flocked to Bluesky. While Bluesky tracker says that that platform currently has a little over 25 million total users, Zuckerberg shared Monday that Threads has more than 300 million monthly active users. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s clear that Threads is still much larger than Bluesky.
TikTok CEO meets with Trump as the platform tries to avoid a ban
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to meet with President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday as the platform faces a ban in the US, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. The move makes Chew the latest tech executive — following Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Though Trump initially led the ban on TikTok over claims about national security concerns, he started to reverse course earlier this year. In March, Trump said he didn’t want a TikTok ban because “...without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” He later joined TikTok in June.
Fediverse creator payment platform sub.club is shutting down
Sub.club, which lets fediverse creators offer paid subscriptions and premium content and launched at the end of August, is already shutting down. “With regret, we will be winding down this project over the next few weeks,” the sub.club team announced last week. Creators using the service will be “fully paid,” but sub.club feeds will stop working “by the end of January.”
As I wrote when I first covered sub.club, the service seemed like an interesting way to let people on the fediverse more easily monetize their audience without having to point them toward other platforms like Patreon. But the group that built it, The BLVD, has run out of funding.
“Unfortunately we were not able to quickly achieve sufficient traction with product-market fit / adoption for sub.club, or to attract investors, partnerships, etc.,” Bart Decrem, The BLVD’s founder, tells The Verge in an email. He says more than 150 creators were on sub.club. “Still bullish on the fediverse, and the success of Bluesky is a great thing, but it does look like it will take a while to connect all the pieces.”
“As we see more users onboard to platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads and the open ecosystem grows, the need will eventually arise for a subscription service that isn’t tied to a single platform, is protocol-based, and allows for user portability,” sub.club adviser Anuj Ahooja says. “Hopefully, sub.club, or a service like it, can fill the gap at that time.”
Because of The BLVD’s lack of funding, it is pulling the plug on two other projects, too: Mammoth, an open-source iOS app for Mastodon, and moth.social, a Mastodon instance that is the companion server to Mammoth. Late in November, the Mammoth Mastodon account said that Mammoth was “now operating without funding or a paid team.”
Europe’s Starlink competitor is go
A Starlink terminal in the wild. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge
The EU has signed a deal for its IRIS² constellation of 290 communication satellites that will operate in both medium and low-earth orbit. The Starlink rival will provide secure connectivity to governmental users as well as private companies and European citizens, and bring high-speed internet to dead-zones. The public-private deal valued at €10.6 billion (about $11 billion), according to The Financial Times, is expected to come online by 2030.
SpaceRISE — a consortium led by European satellite network operators SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, and supported by European satcom subcontractors like Airbus and Deutsche Telekom — has been given a 12-year concession contract to develop, deploy, and operate the IRIS² constellation. IRIS² is an acronym for Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite.
“This cutting-edge constellation will protect our critical infrastructures, connect our most remote areas and increase Europe’s strategic autonomy. By partnering with the SpaceRISE consortium, we are demonstrating the power of public-private collaboration to drive innovation and deliver tangible benefits to all Europeans,” said Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy.
In September, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said she wanted to see more competition to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which has already launched some 7,000 satellites since 2018. “Our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies... every communications market that has competition is strong, we see lower prices and more innovation, and honestly, space should be no exception.”
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Meta’s Instagram boss: who posted something matters more in the AI age
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
In a series of Threads posts this afternoon, Instagram head Adam Mosseri says users shouldn’t trust images they see online because AI is “clearly producing” content that’s easily mistaken for reality. Because of that, he says users should consider the source, and social platforms should help with that.
“Our role as internet platforms is to label content generated as AI as best we can,” Mosseri writes, but he admits “some content” will be missed by those labels. Because of that, platforms “must also provide context about who is sharing” so users can decide how much to trust their content.
Just as it’s good to remember that chatbots will confidently lie to you before you trust an AI-powered search engine, checking whether posted claims or images come from a reputable account can help you consider their veracity. At the moment, Meta’s platforms don’t offer much of the sort of context Mosseri posted about today, although the company recently hinted at big coming changes to its content rules.
What Mosseri describes sounds closer to user-led moderation like Community Notes on X and YouTube or Bluesky’s custom moderation filters. Whether Meta plans to introduce anything like those isn’t known, but then again, it has been known to take pages from Bluesky’s book.
For its next trick, Apple is reportedly preparing a Magic Mouse redesign
The Magic Mouse with USB-C was the tiniest revision. | Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge
Apple is working on a redesigned successor to the Magic Mouse, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. This new mouse would address complaints some users have had, including that pesky charging port.
Gurman writes that Apple’s design team has created prototypes of the mouse in recent months with an eye toward creating “something that better fits the modern era.” He doesn’t get into any specifics — the group still hasn’t settled on a design — except to say that the mouse will address the charging port location and other “longstanding complaints.” It’s at least 12 to 18 months away from release, according to Gurman.
How can Apple fix a mouse that’s objectively perfect? I’m kidding; after 15 years of largely the same design, the Magic Mouse has plenty of room for improvement, even with its recent USB-C revision for the M4 iMac release. Everyone is different, but my wishlist includes adding some mechanical controls, addressing ergonomics (my hand always cramps after a while), and not having to spear the mouse’s underbelly to charge it.
But even if Apple moves the port, I’m still a little grumpy when I have to dig out a cable to plug in the MX Master 3 that serves as my daily driver. There are better ways, like the Logitech mouse that charges wirelessly via a mousepad that my colleague, Sean Hollister, hasn’t had to intentionally charge for two years. I added MagSafe-style wireless charging by dropping my Magic Mouse into the wireless-charging equivalent of an ergonomic service industry sneaker — it ain’t pretty, and I still can’t use it while it’s charging, but it gets the job done. I’d bet Apple can do something better.
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 64, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for some weird documentaries, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a delightful new mobile game, an E Ink tablet worth a look, a gorgeous new to-dos app, and much more. It’s a strangely Netflix-centric week, which is odd for mid-December? But so it goes. Let’s dive in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / baking / listening to / soldering this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
How Student Phones and Social Media Are Fueling Fights in Schools Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools across the United States.
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Screenshot: FTC
