Netflix's homepage is getting a makeover. The streaming giant announced Wednesday that it is revamping its look to make the platform "more personal" and improve its interface. It is Netflix's first major redesign since 2013. “We’ve been constantly improving it over the last 12 years, mostly behind the scenes, but now, thanks to a combination of new technology and the expansion of our entertainment offerings, we think it’s time to take a giant leap forward," Eunice Kim, Netflix’s chief product officer, said in a presentation about the update. The new layout is designed to increase Netflix’s ability to tailor its suggestions to each viewer, make navigation easier and create a Netflix Hub, which will be personalized to each user, according to Netflix's publication, Tudum. Netflix continues to double down on its offerings to its subscribers, including live events programming. It has already hosted its first NFL games, and weekly World Wrestling Entertainment “Raw” shows began streaming this year. The homepage updates are “simpler, more intuitive and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today," Kim said, adding that Netflix "reaches a global audience of more than 700 million people with incredibly diverse tastes."

Meta Platforms won a $168 million verdict against the Israeli surveillance firm NSO, the company said Tuesday, capping a six-year arm wrestling match between America’s biggest social networking platform and the world’s best known spyware company. Meta had already won a December ruling finding that NSO had unlawfully exploited a bug in its messaging service WhatsApp to plant spy software on its users’ phones. On Tuesday, a jury in California ruled that NSO owed Meta $444,719 in compensatory damages — and $167.3 million in punitive damages, Meta said. “Today’s verdict in WhatsApp’s case is an important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone,” Meta said in a statement. In its statement, NSO said it would “carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal.” NSO, an Israeli firm that first drew global attention in 2016, has become “a poster child for the surveillance industry and their abuses and impunity,” said Natalia Krapiva, a senior lawyer with the human rights group Access Now. NSO has long argued that its software is used to track terrorists and pedophiles, but the firm has been implicated in abusive surveillance in countries around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico, Poland, and El Salvador. WhatsApp’s lawsuit — which was filed in 2019 and at one point made its way to the Supreme Court — has been closely followed both by NSO’s competitors in the surveillance technology space and by human rights advocates critical of the industry. Victims of state-backed hacking have struggled to hold suppliers of spy software accountable for what their customers do with their tools, while hacking firms have long worried that their products could draw legal sanctions. The WhatsApp verdict was a sign that both outcomes were possible, said Krapiva. “This is something that will hopefully show spyware companies that there will be consequences if you are careless, if you are brazen, and if you act in such a way as NSO did in these cases,” she said.

Amazon’s Zoox issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis after a crash in Las Vegas last month, the company said Tuesday. The recall surrounds a defect with the vehicle’s automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing “the risk of a crash,” according to a report submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Zoox submitted the recall after an April 8 incident in Las Vegas where an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, the NHTSA report states. There were no injuries in the crash and only minor damage occurred to both vehicles.“After analysis and rigorous testing, Zoox identified the root cause,” the company said in a blog post. “We issued a software update that was implemented across all Zoox vehicles. All Zoox vehicles on the road today, including our purpose-built robotaxi and test fleet, have the updated software.” Zoox paused all driverless vehicle operations while it reviewed the incident. It’s since resumed operations after rolling out the software update. Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for over $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.” However, Amazon has fallen far behind Alphabet’s Waymo, which has robotaxi services operating in multiple U.S. markets. Tesla has also announced plans to launch a robotaxi offering in Austin in June, though the company has missed many prior target dates for releasing its technology. Zoox has been testing its robotaxis in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Foster City, California. Last month, Zoox began testing a small fleet of retrofitted vehicles in Los Angeles. Last month, NHTSA closed a probe into two crashes involving Toyota Highlanders equipped with Zoox’s autonomous vehicle technology. The agency opened the probe last May after the vehicles braked suddenly and were rear-ended by motorcyclists, which led to minor injuries.

TeleMessage, the app that President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Waltz, appeared to use to archive his group chats, has suspended all services after hackers claimed to have stolen files from it. A spokesperson for Smarsh, the company that owns TeleMessage, said Monday that the company “is investigating a potential security incident. Upon detection, we acted quickly to contain it and engaged an external cybersecurity firm to support our investigation.” “Out of an abundance of caution, all TeleMessage services have been temporarily suspended,” the spokesperson said.The app, which uses encryption technology similar to that of the popular messaging service Signal but also offers government agencies and companies a way to back up copies of chats for compliance purposes, first came under public scrutiny after Waltz appeared to be using it during a Cabinet meeting last week. His use of the app reignited concerns about the security of his communication methods that were sparked by the “Signalgate” controversy, in which he accidentally invited a journalist into a Signal chat of top administration officials as it planned military strikes on Houthis in Yemen. Customs and Border Protection has paused its use of the app, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Texas has a brand-new city, and its name is Starbase. A vote Saturday to decide whether to turn part of south Texas into a new city centered around Elon Musk’s SpaceX delivered a victory to the tech billionaire and his rocket company. As expected, the measure passed with broad support, paving the way for a newly incorporated city made up almost exclusively of SpaceX employees and people connected to the company. The final vote tally Saturday night was 212 in favor of incorporation and six against; only 143 votes were needed for the measure to pass. “It’s officially statistically impossible for the measure to fail,” Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza said. “Cameron County is about to have a new city.” Musk celebrated the vote in a post on X Saturday night. “Starbase, Texas Is now a real city!” he wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried something new on Monday. Instead of just addressing credentialed journalists in the storied White House briefing room, she held a separate “influencer briefing” for 10 people. “Tens of millions of Americans are now turning to social media and independent media outlets to consume their news, and we are embracing that change, not ignoring it,” she said during her seven-minute introductory remarks. “All journalists, outlets and voices have a seat at the table now, and you being here today for this briefing proves that.” But as the new briefings continued through the week, it became clear that a very specific group was being given the special access. Of the 25 influencers identified by NBC News who attended the briefings, all but one have a history of explicit support for President Donald Trump’s administration, and some had direct connections to Trump — through either previously working in his administration, or maintaining a personal connection with his family or members of his Cabinet. “Where’s the list [of] conservative leaning voices the Biden administration invited to the White House for similar engagements? The fact of the matter is, the legacy media is furious that information flow is not exclusive to them anymore,” Kaelan Dorr, the White House deputy communications director, said in a statement. “We will ALWAYS find ways to meet people where they are, no hit piece will dissuade us.” Indeed, the Trump White House isn’t the first or only to engage with influencers. Joe Biden did so as president as well, at one point inviting more than 100 content creators to discuss a range of issues. But the current administration has more explicitly embraced pro-Trump media, pushing aside some traditional media outlets to exert more control over who gets access to the president. “The legacy media has had access to all open press events for decades, now new media gets access too,” a White House official added, noting that the influencer briefings were also livestreamed. Trump’s tribe In the first briefing, former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer, who has nearly 1 million followers across various platforms, was welcomed as one of the influencers. After complimenting Trump for his “commitment to transparency,” Spicer asked questions about Trump’s legislative priorities and why Trump continues to sit for interviews with mainstream outlets and publications. In the second briefing on Tuesday, two of the eight influencers welcomed had clear ties to Trump’s current and former administration. Link Lauren, who has over 1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, served as a senior adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his presidential campaign. In the briefing, Lauren threw a softball, asking Leavitt what advice she has for young working parents like herself. In the same briefing, former Treasury Department official William Upton appeared in his new role as political editor at the conservative publication The National Pulse, asking a question about the status of the Trump administration’s rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine. In the third briefing, on Wednesday, one of the nine influencers present was 18-year-old Bo Loudon. The son of Trump surrogate Gina Loudon and former Republican Missouri state Sen. John Loudon, Bo Loudon has called himself Barron Trump’s “best friend” and appeared in numerous photos with both Barron Trump and the president. Loudon praised Leavitt during the influencer confab, calling her “an inspiration to Gen Z,” before asking what her “biggest highlight” was “during these first 100 historic days.” Also present were Newsmax host David J. Harris, who was recognized by Trump at a Black History Month reception in February for being by his side “from Day 1,” and former Fox News host Eric Bolling, who authored the book “The Swamp: Washington’s Murky Pool of Corruption and Cronyism and How Trump Can Drain It” after he departed Fox News following allegations that he sent lewd photographs to three female colleagues. Bolling has denied the allegations. Jack Posobiec, a longtime Trump supporter who has promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, also attended Wednesday’s briefing. He has reportedly been invited on and attended trips with members of Trump’s Cabinet, according to a post Posobiec made himself and a report by The Washington Post. Fringe meme-makers Alongside the well-connected crowd was a slew of other right-wing influencers and personalities. On Monday, influencers Grant Godwin and Rogan O’Handley, who run the highly followed conservative meme accounts @the_typical_liberal and @DC_Draino, asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files and a campaign to implement laws that would allow concealed gun carrying in all 50 states. On Tuesday, Brenden Dilley, known for leading a pro-Trump meme team that created a controversial video shared by Trump in May 2024 that mentioned the “creation of a unified Reich,” played a game of “Truth or Trolling” with Leavitt. On Wednesday, Dom Lucre, a highly followed conspiracy theorist on X who was briefly banned from the platform after he shared child sexual abuse material, asked Leavitt about the possibility of an investigation into Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over election integrity. Leavitt welcomed the question and called it “refreshing.” ‘Opposite of authentic’ Jackson Gosnell, who appears semiregularly on right-leaning One America News, appeared at Monday’s briefing. On TikTok, he’s built a following of over 150,000 followers through videos where he shares news in a more traditional newscasting style. In a phone interview, he said he was surprised at how favorable some of the other influencers were to the Trump administration in the briefings.

Former national security adviser Mike Waltz was photographed using a Signal-like messaging app during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, more than a month after he first came under intense scrutiny for accidentally including a journalist in a group chat that discussed military plans. A photo published by Reuters showed the screen of Waltz’s smartphone with message threads labeled “JD Vance” and “Gabbard.” The app had a similar interface to Signal, the encrypted messenger that was at the heart of “Signalgate,” but appears to instead be an app called TeleMessage, which seemingly uses some of Signal’s encryption technology while also allowing clients to archive messages for compliance purposes. In the photo, the app displays a prompt for the user to “verify your TM SGNL PIN.” TeleMessage uses similar phrasing on its website. A search by NBC News did not turn up any other apps that use that terminology. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Waltz to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after being relieved from his role as national security adviser. The image adds to ongoing concerns around how Waltz and other members of the Trump administration are communicating, and especially how they are discussing classified or sensitive information. Waltz’s apparent use of the app was first reported by 404 Media. Even though Signal is highly regarded by cybersecurity experts, the federal government has specific systems and protocols for the transmission of sensitive information and messages. Officials are expected to use intranet systems that are almost entirely closed off from the rest of the digital world, to prevent the potential breach of information via physical theft of a compromised mobile device.

Voters in a part of south Texas that is home to Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, will decide Saturday whether to officially turn a small, coastal stretch at the southern tip of the Lone Star State into a city named Starbase. If the measure passes, which seems likely, the newly incorporated city would cover only about 1½ square miles, but it would be a much-needed win for the tech billionaire who has had a bruising past few months. In the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s administration, Musk was a mainstay at the White House, flexing his temporary role as chief of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw cuts and widespread layoffs across federal agencies. But while DOGE projects helped Musk gain enormous power and influence, his reputation has taken a beating in the process. His outsize role in the Trump administration and his efforts to downsize the federal workforce have made him the target of protests around the country. And his electric car company, Tesla, reported a steep drop in profits last month. But Saturday’s vote is expected to be a sure victory for the controversial billionaire. For one, most of the 283 eligible voters — residents of Cameron County whose homes would fall within the boundaries of the proposed new city — are SpaceX employees or have some connection to the company.

Apple violated a U.S. court order that required the iPhone maker to allow greater competition for app downloads and payment methods in its lucrative App Store and will be referred to federal prosecutors, a federal judge in California ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland said in an 80-page ruling that Apple failed to comply with her prior injunction order, which was imposed in an antitrust lawsuit brought by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games. “Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers said. She added: “This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.” Gonzalez Rogers referred Apple and one of its executives, Alex Roman, vice president of finance, to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation into their conduct in the case. Roman gave testimony about the steps Apple took to comply with her injunction that was “replete with misdirection and outright lies,” the judge wrote. Apple in a statement said “we strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.” Epic Games Chief Executive Tim Sweeney called the judge’s order a significant win for developers and consumers. “It forces Apple to compete with other payment services rather than blocking them, and this is what we wanted all along,” Sweeney told reporters. Sweeney said Epic Games would aim to bring back Fortnite to the Apple App Store next week. Apple in 2020 had pulled Epic’s account after the company let iPhone users navigate outside Apple’s ecosystem for better payment deals. Epic accused Apple of stifling competition for app downloads and overcharging commissions for in-app purchases.

Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer argues in his first TV ad of the New Jersey governor's race that he is ready to fight President Donald Trump — and he's using artificial intelligence to make his case. Gottheimer, who is in his fifth term, portrays himself as a boxer in the ad, shared first with NBC News, which uses AI to show him sparring with Trump in a boxing ring. The spot appears to be one of the first TV ads in a major race to lean significantly on AI. "He's a born fighter. Josh Gottheimer's been fighting for people all his life," a narrator says as images of a young Gottheimer wearing boxing gloves play on screen and as a disclaimer reads, "AI Generated Imagery."