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Terrence O'Brien

Terrence O'Brien

Weekend Editor

Weekend Editor

Terrence O’Brien is a journalist, editor, and producer from New York City with over 18 years of experience and is The Verge’s weekend editor. In addition to spending 10 years as managing editor at Engadget, his work has appeared on Wired, MusicTech, Guitar.com, Refinery 29, and more. He has also composed music for podcasts and feature films. In his spare time, Terrence collects hobbies at an alarming rate.

More From Terrence O'Brien

Teenage Engineering launched an instrument amp with a ton of built-in effectsTeenage Engineering launched an instrument amp with a ton of built-in effects
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Rhode Island is suing Meta for turning a blind eye to scam ads.

The state’s Attorney General Peter Neronha filed the suit in Providence Superior Court, accusing Meta of making billions in profits from scam ads, while simultaneously telling users it was working hard to protect them. The suit cites reporting on leaked Meta documents from Reuters that said:

… it was earning ​far more from high-risk scam ads than it expected to pay in fines for allowing them.

According to those documents, Meta displays around 15 billion “higher risk” scam ads to users every day, and earned roughly ​10% of its 2024 revenue from fraudulent e-commerce, dubious health products and other banned marketing.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Google’s AI overview led some people to think they were donating to James Talarico when they weren’t.

Instead, their money went to a political action committee that funneled the money to the reelection campaign of Colorado’s Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper. According to The Atlantic:

The mix-up wasn’t all AI’s fault. The link led to a misleading donation page that carried Talarico’s name and picture, and specified only at the bottom that the money would go to Hickenlooper. But Google’s AI tool evidently didn’t read the fine print. And perhaps no one would have clicked on it had Google not highlighted the page in an authoritative-sounding AI response.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
AI agents are causing massive headaches for banks.

According to Axios, banks have detected AI agents accessing customer accounts and taking actions, sometimes without clear authorization or instruction. JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley have started to restrict or block some third-party access because of it. But more concerning, it seems the banks just don’t know what AI agents are doing or why:

One bank executive told Axios they struggle to differentiate between agents, as well as whether an agent has been authorized by a user or has gone rogue and gained access to a customer account.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
The Internet Archive was briefly forced offline because of PHP.

The list of sites that had to go down, at least temporarily, because of the recently disclosed PHP vulnerability keeps growing. Thankfully, the Internet Archive’s ops team quickly got things patched, secured, and back online. Digital librarian Brewster Kahle posted his thanks on Mastodon last night: “Given the severity, there are heroes in many many orgs from last night. Could have been no lights, no traffic signals, real problems.“

PHP: The three little letters wreaking havoc across the webPHP: The three little letters wreaking havoc across the web
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Scientists are racing to save the banana.

We already basically lost the Gros Michel to Panama disease in the 1950s. The Cavendish replaced it in our fruit bowls, but because it’s sterile and relies on propagation, it’s threatened by climate change and disease. According to the Guardian, scientists may have found a solution:

This month, Yelloway – a research collaboration between Chiquita, the world’s largest banana company, and the crop-improvement company KeyGene – announced it had developed a fully fertile Cavendish banana, meaning it may be possible, through cross-breeding, to create new banana varieties that are commercially viable and resistant to disease.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Akai’s new MPK Mini Plus II is a lot of MIDI controller for $169.

The keys were always the worst part of the MPK lineup, so the “upgraded keybed” is good news, even though it’s clearing a pretty low bar. But Akai’s pads remain the best in the biz, and the second-gen MPK Mini Plus adds polyphonic aftertouch. Plus, it’s got a full-color display and more hands-on controls than the original.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Two old-school Japanese mobile games are shutting down over the PHP exploit.

World Quest and Save My Demonic World have run for over a decade, but they’re built on older tech that the developers say can’t be updated to patch the apocalyptic PHP exploit disclosed this week. Because the vulnerability affects almost 20 years of PHP, big chunks of internet history are in danger of being lost. Per Kotaku:

Many old websites and services that are no longer being actively updated (or may simply be too old to receive the update, as was the case for these two games) are now at risk of permanently going offline. Such an event would lock swathes of the old internet from public view, including bits that were already beginning to break down and become inaccessible.

PHP: The three letters that shut down sites all over the internet todayPHP: The three letters that shut down sites all over the internet today

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